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Meet Eva Baphomet Tiamat Legion Medusa. It (preferred pronoun) recently made news for removing its external ears and nose to further its modification into a dragon (Madre Tiamat). Its case interests me as a posthuman experiment at embodying the Other. It radically transgresses ideas of gender as a preop transgender woman, but also ideas of species as it extensively reworks its body in order to claim a reptilian identity. I think that gender first is intriguing, since sex is embodied, but gender, well, gender is fluid, manifesting in different cultures and among different peoples in different ways. However, how much is the idea of species physical and how much is perception? Both Nagel and Churchland explore this idea in their articles, but neither has committed to the experiment as thoroughly as Tiamat, who has taken on the role of dragon. Still, is the dragon true of it? Or not? Since dragon are mythical creatures, can one make the dragon true of oneself? Can removing one’s physical ears and nose enable one to “see” heat with one’s tongue?
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4 Comments on "The Posthumanist Art of Embodiment"
It certainly has changed its identity in many ways. It would seem that no bodily changes would change its reality as a human, but dyed corneas and modified ears and nose would change its experience sensorially and maybe in some ways its consciousness of itself? It’s an interesting attempt to become something that one can never achieve, but isn’t that the ultimate heartbreak in any art?
If anything is clear from explorations such as that of Nagel’s, and even Churchland’s critique of Nagel, it is that different physiologies should produce different experiences. I wonder whether and how Tiamat’s experience of the world has changed as it has transformed its physiology (at least superficially)?