The Contingency Of Identity In Trainspotting Philosophy Essay

The Contingency Of identity element In Tr personalspotting Philosophy EssayThe perimeters of someones remains atomic number 18 often pattern to signify the enclosure of a stable perception of the world. For simulation, mainstream horse opera hunting lodge perceives physical limits as the impenetrable barrier between beativity and foreign forces. This model emphasizes the subject as regulator eachwhere what external forces govern their subjectivity, and in wrench implies that the subject is in myrmecophilous in choosing or world her protest identity. Philosophical projects such as the Enlightenment and the Ameri just nowt ideate expound on the Cartesian Isi assertion that anyone has the agency to construct an original, autonomous identity. These philosophies have helped bind Western ontology to a image of mind over matter.However, 20th century thinkers have ch each(prenominal)enged this nonion. Philosopher and sociologistMichael Foucault posits the trunk is tran sformed into an instrument for policy-making office, and that conceptualizing subjectivity as a stable construct is crucial to the preservation of the conjure up ForFoucault, any nonion of autonomy is an cleave of political agenda. Correspondingly, psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva shows that restricting subjectivity to an epidermal supporter oppresses an entire inwardness of understanding subjectivity. Kristeva asks the proofreader to consider a perception of subjectivity that contingently and provisionally fluctuates in its co-occurnce to the frames perceived b revisions. She considers subjectivity and the frame are entwined in an ontology found on the guilt of borders, non the geo logical formation of them. instead of agreeing with theWests claim that citizens conduct their egohood indoors epidermal boundaries, Kristeva argues that subjectivity is unstable, fragmented, and dispersed across various relations with the body.Therefore, subjectivity has the capacity to transform and be transformed finished engagement with the body. Toward this end, I pass on investigate the ever-fluctuating bodies and identities inIrvine Welshs multimedia text Trainspotting (Boyle, 1996 Welsh, 1996). The subscribe to and newfangledepitomize the permeable, fluctuating nature of subjectivity as conceived by Kristeva, and therefromhighlight the fact that selfhood depends on a transgression sort of than an establishment ofborders.Foucault and Doeile BodiesMichael Foucaults term body politics refers to the practices and policies through whichpowers of hunting lodge regulate the tender-hearted body, as well as the campaign over the degree of singularand complaisant control of the body. Institutional power expressed in politics and laws is thepower at play in body politics (Body Politics). Foucault says that Western societys falseontology makes citizens think they have stable identities because of the governments regulationof the physical body through brass s and laws. In brief, citizens perceive themselves asautonomous subjects because of the e secerns emphasis on hygiene and lightsomeliness. Foucault saysthis ontology is the effect of political power, and that any selfhood a proper citizen assumes is anarticulation of this power. Associate Professor Nick Mansfield, head of the cultural studiesdepartment at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, specializes in Foucaultian theory, andhis loudness on subjectivity lends a twee segue as to how body politics and self-hood coincideOur philosophies of science, our theories of the organization of society, our signified of morals, purpose and accuracy all partake of the same emphasis on the person not only asa social quantity, notwithstanding as the point where all meaning and value sight be judged. This individualism is described as freedom, and we still direct our most(prenominal) solemn political ambitions towards perfecting that freedom. It also deceases as a duty, however . (60)Foucault focuses on the implicit brain of duty that is entailed with citizenship. He sees civic dutyas the submission of ones body to forces of political power. Critically acclaimed Italian politicalphilosopher Giorgio Agamben has bring upd that one of the most persistent features of Foucaults fit is its decisive abandonment of the traditional approach to the enigma of power, which isbased on juridico-institutional models (the definition of sovereignty, the theory of the State), infavor of an guileless abbreviation of the concrete ways in which power penetrates subjects verybodies and forms of livelinesstime (5). Foucaults precise studies of social institutions reveal thatinstitutional surveillance of the body-specifically in delineating what is the clean and properbody-designates citizens corporal existence as a docile show. Foucault supports this claim withhis concept of processes of subjectivization, These processes under-thematize and universalizethe body until i t corporation be treated as inert or disordered in some different words, until physicality view ass adocile classification. Similarly, as cultural theorist Elizabeth Grosz argues, the body historicallyhas been conceived of as a vehicle for the expression of an otherwise sealed and self-contained,incommunicable psyche. It is through the body that battalion _ .. fuck receive, code, and translatethe inputs of the external world (9). Once I open up how a favorable perception of thedocility is impressed upon populations, I will discourse how Trainspotting characters refute thisplatform with their own counter-culture philosophies and behavior. The characters struggle withthe implications of properness and duty that Foucault sees as essential to the function of acitizen. They are good examples of the insight that Julia Kristeva gleans from Foucaults work a society and state that glorifies corporeal purity is thus dependent on sources of misery anddegradation in order to have a stan dard to judge what is clean or unclean, appropriate orunfitting. plainly first, I will establish how body hygiene sires such an beta factor forcitizens to view themselves as autonomous subjects. As mentioned, Foucault points to stateinstitutions that act out processes of subjectivization.Processes of subjectivization refer to government programs that exemplify epidermalperimeters as impenetrable borders that contain the supposed autonomous nature of citizensThese processes bring the individual to bind himself to his own identity and consciousness, and,at the same time, to an external power (Agamben 5). Mansield polish offs, in our hallucination of autonomous selfhood, we normally imagine our subjectivity to be identified with the singularity and separateness of our individual bodies. We draw an imaginary line around the perimeters of our bodies and prepare our subjectivity as the unique density of matter contained at heart that line. When we operate in society as voters, ta xpayers, welfare recipients and consumers, our identity seems to be get married to this autonomy we front up for interviews, check ups and interrogations as the content of our bodies. (82)The indubitable presence bodies provide people with is taken to be absolute and last validation ofwho they are. When someone appears for a doctors appointment or a cotut endeavor she ceases beingnessa name on a paper and appears as herself These processes of subjectivization imply not only thenotion that someones tangible borders give them a real identity, still also that that identitymaintains its own agency. When analyzing state systems from Foucaults perspective, it becomes seeming that citizenship designates citizens as autonomous. Foucault insists that wheninstitutions seek to control and know the subject, they manipulate the body, fixing it purely in adjust, observance and measuring it this in turn gives citizens the sense that they are any affaire but acarefully monitored, social den omination. besides in reality, the state has a vested interest in itscitizens health that is expressed by institutional programs emphasis on autonomy. Throughsubjectivization processes, an inherent notion of cleanliness is attached in the definition ofcitizen, and the upkeep of clean borders is expected to entail some screen out of autonomy. Incontrast, Foucault claims that institutions endorsing corporeal cleanliness ensures a specific typeof docility in the citizenry. If citizens accept that they are the agents mere(prenominal)ly because of theirhygiene, then the institutions have succeeded in transforming its citizens bodies into inertentities that usher out be prescribed or delineating in any way the state sees fit. The sense of autonomyis therefore revealed to preserve state power. Foucaults second example of subjectivization processes, that of policing strategies, beg offs this more explicitly.Foucault states that the laws of the penal system, which were once isolated i n the form ofa public event (e.g. a criminal dismembered in the marketplace), have become instilled intonormative ontology with the creation of prisons. Firstly, the prison does not alone incarceratepeople arbitrarily. It depends on a system of proper proceedings that in turn must be justified bycodes of law or court-ordered precedent. When someone is convicted of a crime, she or he goes frombeing a someone to being a phenomenon. As a type, the individual becomes subject to summaryaccording to scientific models. Questions begin to be asked, like, what personality traits makethis person a criminal? What social conditions lead to his or her crime? Here, the individual isnot free and autonomous, but the focal point of larger forces, examine by systems of knowledgein what they claim is impartial justness (Lyon 7). Foucault uses the prison model of liberaleconomist and social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) to help explain the casual yetcompulsory paranoid lifestyle that is i nstilled in prisons and reflected in society. accord toFoucault, the panopticon is typical of the processes of subjectivization that govern modern life. A panopticon is a neb prison with an empty area in the middle where a obtain tower is placed.All of the prisoners cell face inward, and one guard can effectively keep survelliance over allthe inmates at once. Furthermore, is an opaque flat solid of one-way visible glass is installed in theguard tower, the guard herself would not have to necessarily be present to enact a monitorsystem. Likewise, state power organizes the population into individual units that are then subjectto monitoring in a system of maximum visibility through implicit accountability. This worksmost effectively in institutions where schools, hospitals, banks, and departments of social credential and tax all keep files on us. People forget slightly these records, or accept them as anecessary and inevitable part of institutions operations (Lyon 8-9). However, th ese files are our effective social reality, and contain truths more or less us that can be manipulated away of ourcontrol. These files and the truth they contain are not our property, and they enhance the state ofdocility imposed on citizens bodies.Foucault believes that power and the knowledge coincide to ensure the state maintains itsdocile influence, and in turn preserves its efficiency. Therefore, every institution operatesaccording to its own theories of peoples subjectivity the unruly adolescent, the remedial reader,the psychoneurotic patient, the credit risk-these are all types of subjectivity that people may or maynot occupy, sometimes without even knowing it. Every institution has classes of persons intowhich everyone who deals with them is distributed.The apparently simple and necessary logic of this categorisation-it is not a confederation tooppress us, our common sense says, how could these institutions operate otherwise?-already separates us from one another, isolat ing us, opening up and closing offopportunities, destining us for trustworthy rewards and punishments. The system of truth onwhich each institution depends is incessantly already a power at work on us. (Mansfield 62)Thus, individuality is not the highest expression of human life, but the thing social institutions need people to feel they are, so that people remain vulnerable to the truths the state has contrivedfor its own efficiency. As a result, the self constantly problematizes its place in the world and itsrelationship to others and to inherited codes of behavior. Therefore, the subject does not simplyrely on some unknowable of pure natural subjectivity, but rather produces itself endlessly as aresponse to its relationship to other and to its cultural and historical context (Mansfield 63).Foucaults ideas encourage an earnestly skeptical strength towards subjectivity, one that isembodied in Trainspottings main character, Mark Renton. Renton can be seen as anti-subjective becau se he sees any statement that claims to speak the truth virtually human subjectivity as an im linear perspective, a technique of power and social administration. Renton voices his reservations Society invents spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and transmute people whaesbehaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah knew the pros and cons, know that ahm gaunnae hav a short life, am ay sotmd mind, etcetera, etcetera, but still expect tae usesmack? They fashion let ya dae it. They wont let ye dae it, because its seen as a sign ofthair ain failure. The fact is ye jist simply choose tae reject whit they huv tae offer. cull us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments choose washing machines choosecars choose sitting on a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows,stufting fuckin junk solid food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteingyersel in a home, a total fuckin confusion tae the selfish, fucked-up brats yeveproduced. Choose life. Well, ah choose no tae choose life. If the cunts cant grapple that,its thair fuckin problem (Welsh 187-9).Renton, like Foucault, sees subjectivity as a mode of social organization and administration. ForRenton, the state is inherently dependent on its citizens to cultivate a notion of sanctity regardingtheir lives. Upon this foundation of natural life, the State builds concepts of morality and truththat are articulations of power structures (Agamben 2). Therefore, Renton and his mates seek asubjectivity that does not privilege the sanctity of life. As actor and critic Lewis MacLeod puts it,Welshs characters are not at all interested in the rule of parasite politicians (Welsh 228).Instead they operate on a highly idiosyncratic cultural logic that frequently inverts conventionalvalues (90). The characters experimental subjectivity prioritizes desire and dependence as themost important achievements in life, and the screenplays adaptation of the above commendation lelucidates this point. ln t he theatrical version, Renton explainsChoose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassmenttae the selfish, fucked up brats that youve spawned to replace yourselves . But whywould I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin else.And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when youve got diacetylmorphine?Renton has lost faith in any type of subjectivity, and considers a life on diacetylmorphine just as witless asa life of gainful employment. From a Foucaultian perspective his reasoning can obtain somecredence in that institutions will inevitably wrest all agency away from its citizens. It isinteresting to note Welshs refresheds title describes a pointless workout enacted within societysestablishments. Renton can clearly see the absurdity of society and the meaninglessness of hislife, yet his choice is ultimately self-defeating, for as the title of the book suggests, diacetylmorphine addiction, like t rainspotting grown men watching locomotives and noting their identification number -is effectively a pointless exercise (Bishop 221-22). Similarly, in Peter Corliss critical review of the cinematic adaptation of Trainspotting, Welsh and John Hodge explain theimportance of the allegoryTrainspotting, Welsh explains, is the compulsive collection of locomotive enginenumbers from the British railway system. But you cant do anything with the numbersonce youve dispassionate them. Says Hodge, who culled the brilliant screenplay fromWelshs anecdotal novel. Its a nice metaphor for doing something that gives your life abit of structure but its ultimately pointless. So is the intravenous shaft of do drugss apalpable pleasure that wastes time, and often, life (85).In his PhD Doctorate authorise The Diminished Subject, Professor Geoffrey Bishop looks at theT rainspotting texts to see how the characters attempt to exercise a new type of subjectivity.Bishop writes, For Renton, heroin use is a determinedly philosophical decision to adopt acounter-discursive practice in order to retreat from a society that makes him an outsider, andthreatens his attempts to simplify his existence (ZI9). As I shall show in the following analysis,through the selfish pleasure of drug use Renton attempts to avoid the docility that Foucault talks virtually In an interview with film critic Andrew OHagan, it is apparent that T rainspotting sdirector and screenwriter were not attempting to display Kristevas theories in their film. But, as I will establish, the filmic adaptation of the novel lends itself very well to Kristevian philosophy.Kristeva, Posthumanist Practice, and TrainspottingJulia Kristeva argues that subjectivity depends on someones relation to outside forces.Kristevas ontology is based on a transgression, rather than an establishment, of borders.Likewise, the bodies in Trainsporting flesh out a substantial alternative to traditional conceptions of the body as stable and self-contai ned. I declare that the film calls for a critical approach thatattends to bodies as products and producers of posthuman discourses. Posthumanist practice questions the family tree of moral norms rather than accepting and perpetuating them, and muchof Kristevas theory is an enactment of posthuman discourse. In critical theory, the posthuman isa speculative being that represents or seeks to enact a re-writing of what is generally conceivedof as human. Posthumanist criticism critically questions Renaissance humanism, which is a weapon system of humanist philosophy that claims human nature is a universal state from which thehuman being emerges, and it stresses that human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of freewill, and co-ordinated in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman recognizesimperfectability and disunity within him or herself Instead of a humanist perspective, aposthuman perception understands the world through context and disparate perspectiveswhile ma intaining intellectual rigor and a dedication to objective observations of the world. secernateto this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneselfthrough different identities. The posthuman, for critical theorists of the subject, has an emergent ontology rather than a stable one in other words, the posthuman is not a singular, defined individual, but rather one who can become or embody different identities and understand the world from multiple, sundry(prenominal) perspectives (Haraway 3). In what follows, I discuss how body fluids in the film illustrate the in constancy of corporeal limits as conceived by Julia Kristeva and Judith pantryman. Through the lens of these theorists, the characters in Trainspotting can become producers of posthurnan discourses. But tirst, I will briefly discuss the critical reception of the film, inasmuch as responses to it characterize the kind of moralizing persuasion that so often I denies another percepti on like Kristevas. _In 1996, Danny Boyles film adaptation of Irvine Welshs bestselling novel became thehighest grossing British-made film in the United acres in history (Callahan 39). Althoughother films have addressed the subject of heroin addiction most have done so from a stance of such moral disdain that the characters became little more than exaggerations of an addicted underclass(prenominal) that remains safely early(a) to mainstream film audiences. In contrast, Trainspotting,even though it portrays the desperation and horrors of drug addiction, the film never grants itsaudience the privilege of certain moral judgment. It invites audiences to engage with itscharacters in their own world as they struggle between the desperate need and the always-temporary satisfaction that characterizes life on heroin.The cinematic loose of Trainspozling came right after a controversial wind in thefashion industry known as heroin chic, a trend that earned its name by popularizing images of thin, glassy-eyed models who were apparently strung-out in dirty bathrooms or cheap, dingymotels (Craik 19). President Clinton even raised the expel in a widely reported address tomagazine editors, charging that the gloriole of heroin is not creative Its destructive. Itsnot beautiful. It is ugly. And this is not about art. Its about life and death. And glorifying deathis not good for any society (Clinton). ethnic critic Henry Giroux describes the imagesassociated with heroin chic as nothing more than inspiration for a type of cultural slummingthat produces attitudes and actions in which well-to-do yuppies aestheticize the suffer andsuffering of underprivileged youths (27).Some critics have made similar claims about Trainspotting. One reviewer, for example,said the film belongs to an unoriginal, voyeuristic genre that caters to an addiction to addiction-watching (Kauffmann 38). Other critics dismiss the film and other such films as mereslumfests for the bored upper classes, virtu al petting zoos they can visit anytime they want to feellike theyre down with the kids (Callahan 39). Although the films graphic characterization of self-depravation and misery is at times difficult to watch, other critics claim that the films uncritical,even sympathetic portrayal of junkies overtly glamorizes heroin use. Despite the fact that such business lines allude to realistic real world dangers of drug culture and the celebration of its images,they remain anchored in a discourse of negativity. They designate the rhetorical critic to thepsychoanalytic position of searching for a lack, whether it is of morals, health, or life. In otherwords, such wrinkles can only analyze the lm based on its failure to do something itpresumably should do adhere to moral norms.A moral argument based on whether Trainspotting does or does not glamorize heroinuseand whether or not that is good or badneglects a compelling line of analysis how thepervasive physicality of the lm functions rhetoric ally. The lmmakers are careful to illustrate some(prenominal) the pain and the pleasure of heroin use, but this evenhandedness seems less the depiction ofa moral judgment than an investigation or even a meditation on the transgression of boundaries.Indeed, in an interview, director Damiy Boyle says that the lm is about being a transgressorIts about doing something that everybody says will kill youyou will kill yourself And thething that nobody understands is, its not that you dont hear that message, its just that itsirrelevant. The lm isnt about heroin. Its about an attitude, and thats why we wanted the lmto pulse, to pulse like you do in your twenties (Callahan 39). This pulsing, or this incessanttransgressing that Boyle refers to provides a key metaphor for this give-and-take of corporeality inTrainspotting. A pulse is not characterized by stability or even an interplay between oppositeforces. Rather, a pulse is a constant uctuation, what William Burroughs describes as aninterde pendent relationship between systolic and diastolic movement (Naked Lunch iii). It is inthis sense that I conceive of transgression not as an eradication or a crossing of boundaries, butas a reconguration that occurs through continual engagement and response. Bodies connectingand expanding within an deliverance of material uids enact the pulse of the lm.Bodily Refuse and IdentityJulia Kristevas suppositional work on the concept of abj ection has done much to trouble ahumanist conception of the discrete, autonomous individual. According to the Oxford Dictionaryand Thesaurus, down in the mouthion means a state of misery or degradation. Kristeva develops thisdenition of the poor by sway that the signicance of abj ection lies in its role as an operationthrough which we continually break ourselves as individuals. She describes down in the mouth as ajettisoned object that is opposed to 1 and is radically excluded the gloomy draws metoward the place where meaning collapses (Powers 1-2). For example, an image of theemaciated body of a person living with AIDS may evoke sympathy, or in, in some cases, fear,but it also fullls the role of the abject, infected Other that enables the healthy to feel clean, vital,and even morally superior. Similarly, the starving bodies of third-world countries serve asboundaries or limits that contribute to this countrys sense of nationhood. According to this logic,American identity depends on what America precisely is not (Debrix 1 158). Kristevas notion ofa disorganized, abject body challenging the concept of order itself aids to an understanding ofTrainspotting in which the characters experiment with a unique ontology based on thetransgression of corporeal terms. Rather than quietly remaining outside of the mainstream atdesignated margins, the abject, as the heroin bodies exhibited in Trainspotting, breaks apart thesanctity and homogeneity of rational public space.Kristeva indicates that bodily boundaries are never nal and neith er are the identities thatdepend on them. She argues that the self depends on the abject to pull in its border, to be thatwhich lies outside, beyond the set (Powers 2). But she also notes that from its place ofbanishment, the abject does not cease challenging its secure (Powers 2). In this sense, the abjectOther never remains at the margins. The abject never remains stagnant, creating stable boundaries for the self. Kristeva thus introduces a dynamism into the concept of identity thatdepends on a subjects ability to recognize and reject the abject asit gets articulated andrearticulated through the selfs interaction with the Other. In other words, the Cartesian Ibecomes destabilized to the extent that the humanist emphasis on the mind/body snap off has beensufficiently troubled with regard to how we construct or acquire a sense of self. Foucault showshow someones perceived autonomy is often merely an extension of state power, and this isimportant when observing how the characters in Trainspotting both celebrate and struggle for therelease of moral or hygienic ideologies that treat them as docile bodies. As Bishop has recentlynoted, Although Trainspotting was attacked for romanticising drug use, glamorising heroinchic, and over the validity of Welshs description of heroin addiction, such literalist readings notonly failed to see past the subject matter, they disregard the possibility of political andphilosophical content (219). Kristeva suggests an ontology that is grounded in relations toothers rather than in the conscious mind, and when her theories are used in an analysis ofTrainspotting they can certainly produce philosophical insight into the concept of subjectivity.Judith Butler golf links much of her work in Bodies that Matter to Kristevas consideration ofthe abject. Our self-identication, Butler argues, operates within what she calls an exclusionarymatrix that relates subjects and necessitates a simultaneous production of a domain of abjectbeings, th ose who are not yet subjects, but who form the constitutive outside to the domain ofthe subject (3 ). She agrees with Kristeva that the abject zone of uninhabitability that denesthe boundaries of the subject will constitute that site of dreaded identication against whichand by virtue of whichthe domain of the subject will circumscribe its own claim to autonomyand to life (3). However, Butler builds upon Kristevas argument with a point that is essentialfor this discussion of the abject bodies in Trainspotting. According to Butler, the abjected through abj ection instead of inherently possessing autonomy. Therefore, Renton can be seen asexperiential explorer of subjectivity, and there are no guarantees in this novel, no adroit endings,and no transcendence of the characters into holistic self-present subjects (Bishop 223). gAlthough Butlers introduction of permeability is helpful, I want to offer anotherimportant perspective before continuing. Butler posits a concept of subjectivity b ased on therepudiation of abj ection. As I have suggested and will explore further throughout this discussion,subjects in the lm do not and cannot sufficiently negate the abject. Rather, the abject is integralto pulsing-or, what William S. Burroughs might call a constant state of kicking-on whichsubjectivity depends (Junky xvi).Trainspotting s Alternative SubjectivityThe cinematic adaptation of Trainspotting has some key scenes that should elucidate theontological force of abjection. Depictions of body uids in the lm illustrate the uctuating,permeable corporeality that Butler describes. The lm seems to attack any trace of morality orcleanliness inherent in Foucaults analysis, as images abound of body uids unsportingspaces in the most inappropriate of manners. Film critic Andrew OHagan notes that for theyoung characters shi