Critical Art Ensemble 

Flesh Machine 


Introduction 

The sociologist Max Weber identified the historical tendencies and cultural 
trends of the 20th century as those primarily guided by a process of 
rationalization. Unlike many other social thinkers of his day across the 
political spectrum who believed that increased rationalization was the process 
underlying Western progress, Weber could only agree to the extent that it would 
culminate in a society more complex than any previous social order. Beyond this 
point, Weber split radically from the social theorists of progress in believing 
that the apocalyptic sacrifice of human well-being inherent in the process 
would create a state of general misery that would also exceed any that had come 
before. The idea of reducing cultural dynamics and human activity to a 
principle of instrumentality for the sake of increased political and economic 
efficiency is a disturbing notion when considered in the light of the hope for 
happiness and satisfaction in an age obsessed with management systems. 
Certainly, the hostile management systems which currently structure people’s 
everyday lives–production management, urban management, resource management, 
leisure management, and expression management, to name but a few–all require 
bureaucratic administration. These systems (whether corporate, governmental, or 
military) solidify the boundaries between segments of the division of labor 
(whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or class), and cause a profound 
sense of separation and alienation in individuals who share no solidarity 
beyond their common rationalized social roles and ranks in society. The 
feelings of alienation continue to intensify in proportion to the degree of 
isolation one feels from those outside one’s social segment. 

Weber’s notion of an "iron cage of bureaucracy" that exists as a construct of 
purely functional imperatives (the maintenance, expansion, and perpetuation of 
its structure) has come to pass, so it is little wonder that the only 
representation of the social that seems to have any descriptive or explanatory 
value is the machine system. The two key machinic schemata that have captivated 
the minds of resistant cultural producers are the war machine and the sight 
machine. These intersecting liquid maps have been used to build an 
understanding of the structure and dynamics of the current sociopolitical 
management apparatuses, and in the best of circumstances have been used to 
develop strategies to resist the hyper-rationalized state of pancapitalism. In 
this work, Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) offers a contribution to the development 
of a third machinic map–the flesh machine. The flesh machine is a heavily 
funded liquid network of scientific and medical institutions with knowledge 
specializations in genetics, cell biology, biochemistry, human reproduction, 
neurology, pharmacology, etc., combined with nomadic technocracies of interior 
vision and surgical development. The flesh machine intersects at many points 
with the other two machinic systems, yet it also has an autonomous sphere of 
action and its own particular agenda. It has two primary mandates–to completely 
invade the flesh with vision and mapping technologies (initiating a program of 
total body control from its wholistic, exterior configuration to its 
microscopic constellations), and to develop the political and economic 
frontiers of flesh products and services. 

While the war machine and the sight machine are useful devices for 
understanding the management of the structure and dynamics of social 
environments, they are less helpful for guiding resistant vectors through the 
new interior frontier of body invasion (the autonomous space of the flesh 
machine). The body is on the verge of being placed under new management, and 
like all exterior cultural phenomenon, it will be made to function 
instrumentally so that it may better fulfill the imperatives of pancapitalism 
(production, consumption, and order). Currently, pancapitalist power vectors’ 
attempts to inscribe these imperatives directly onto the code of the flesh are 
initiating a new wave of eugenics. Under this new bio-regime, physical 
perfection will be defined by an individual’s ability to separate he/rself from 
nonrational motivation and emergent desires, thus increasing he/r potential 
devotion to varieties of political-economic service to perpetuate the 
pancapitalist dynasty. 

Just when it seemed that eugenics could not return to the forefront of the 
social arena, it appears once again, although its spectacle has been modified 
to suit the times. Eugenics, at least on the surface, is only implicitly 
attached to issues of race improvement or gene pool cleansing. Now it hides 
under the authority of medical progress and the decoding of nature. This latter 
association is primarily what makes it palatable once again. The Western 
intellectual history of the 20th century is marked by an obsession with coding, 
whether with cultural codes (linguistic or iconic representation), machine 
codes, or biological codes. Power vectors have been swift to take advantage of 
this transition to once again begin the project of totally rationalizing 
organic territories. The last terrestrial frontier is about to fall to 
pancapitalist authority. 

In order to further distract the literate nonspecialist public from the 
development and ideological inscription of this new technological apparatus, 
the sight machine has consistently directed public perception toward new 
developments in telecommunications. Of particular importance is the idea that 
new telecommunication technology will make the body (if not the entire organic 
world) superfluous, and that human organics will "evolve" into a posthuman 
state of being. If such a belief is successfully deployed, questions about the 
goals and intentions of flesh rationalization become unimportant. After all, if 
the body is being done away with anyhow, and the Cartesian dream of freeing 
consciousness from the dead weight of the organic is on the verge of coming to 
pass, who cares what is done to the body or what becomes of it? Unfortunately, 
no virtual utopia is awaiting, nor is one even in an advanced stage of 
development. The current techno-revolution is designed to keep the body, but in 
a redesigned configuration that helps it adjust to the intensified rigors of 
pancapitalist imperatives and to adapt to its pathological social environment. 
Once the goals of the flesh machine are factored into the machine world 
equation, little doubt is left that power vectors have no desire to abandon or 
even undermine their material empire–all that is desired is better, if not 
total control over their dominion. 

Perhaps the greatest problem revealed in this collection of essays is the 
difficulty of knowing what to do to resist the current body invasion. While 
there is rapidly growing critical knowledge about the development of the flesh 
machine, strategic and tactical plans of resistance are few. Since the flesh is 
a frontier zone in the development of pancapitalism, and the situation and 
apparatus of invasion change with every passing moment, strategic commitment 
requires a very radical gamble on the part of resistant forces. Skepticism 
among specialized sectors of resistance regarding the quality of the critique 
of the flesh machine is running rampant, and to make matters worse, there is no 
significant history of resistance to organic colonization to look back upon 
(only scattered traces) to make possible an educated guess about the 
probability of strategic or tactical success. In addition, by attacking the 
flesh machine, which has been presented as a progressive boon to humanity, the 
attacker is immediately put in the position of a neo-luddite. Science and 
technology in and of themselves are not the problem, nor have they ever been. 
The real problem is that science and technology are developed, deployed, and 
controlled by the predatory system of pancapitalism. The mainstream development 
of knowledge and technology is guided by increased efficiency in militarized 
production of violence and/or by potential corporate profits in civilian 
markets. If a scientific producer cannot demonstrate a connection with at least 
one of these two possibilities, little if any investment in scientific 
initiatives will be forthcoming. Pancapitalism has yet to offer any sense of 
science in the public interest, and shows no sign of doing so in the future. 

Unfortunately, we are left with only more description and more critique. At 
best, narratives counter to the "official story" are being created. Counter-
spectacle aimed at the nonspecialist public is a significant step forward, 
since the mandates and methods of the flesh machine are kept as far away as 
possible from the scrutiny of the nonspecialist public, and because it is a 
step beyond the narratives of the bureaucratic ethicists whose teeth are not 
even the quality of dentures. However, since the flesh machine no longer works 
solely within the realm of the production of violence and has shifted its 
strategic fulcrum to the realm of seduction, much more is needed from resistant 
forces. What is needed is still the most elusive of all things to conjure, 
since this circumstance of resistance requires that the unspeakable be spoken 
and that the impossible be done. 


1. Posthuman Development in the Age of Pancapitalism 

For the first time in history there is one globally dominant political economy, 
that of capitalism. Under this regime, individuals of various social groups and 
classes are forced to submit their bodies for reconfiguration so they can 
function more efficiently under the obsessively rational imperatives of 
pancapitalism (production, consumption, and order). One means of 
reconfiguration is the blending of the organic and the electromechanical. 
Potentially, this process could result in a new living entity distinct from its 
predecessors. This process, now termed posthuman development, is in its 
experimental stages, which in turn has lead to speculations and theories about 
what form this new being will take and about its probable functions. The two 
entities of posthuman existence most commonly postulated by cyber-visionaries, 
techno-critics, and machine designers over the past twenty years are the cyborg 
and downloaded virtual consciousness. While robots, androids, and artificially 
intelligent machines are also generally considered part of the posthuman 
family, they do not emerge directly out of human organics, and hence constitute 
a different line of development. Cyborgs and virtual consciousness, on the 
other hand, are dependent upon human individuals who desire or are condemned to 
interface with the machine. The cyborg is a being which typically has an 
organic platform integrated with a complex technological superstructure; 
virtual consciousness is the transference of being into digitized form so that 
it can exist in immersive informational landscapes. This latter vision of the 
posthuman is one in which the Enlightenment principle of increased domination 
of the mind over the body moves toward full realization of complete organic 
erasure. 

The posthuman condition is still only a potential, since fully integrated, 
first-order cyborgs (in which the organic platform and technological 
superstructure are completely interdependent) are still on the cultural 
horizon, and virtual consciousness is at best an entertaining speculation. Yet, 
both of these posthuman possibilities are already having a dramatic social 
impact. While virtual consciousness acts as a mythic validation of the Age of 
Reason, second-order cyborgs (organic infrastructures with removable, 
integrated technological systems) are a common actuality. This situation often 
leads to the conjecture that the cyborg will be the step inbetween organic life 
and virtual life. However, when posthuman manifestations are taken out of the 
context of sci-fi speculation, and placed within the specific social and 
economic context of pancapitalism, a much different scenario emerges. While 
cyborg research is moving at top velocity, research into virtual reality (VR) 
is moving very slowly by comparison, and the research that is being done does 
not aim to develop a posthuman environment nor to create a posthuman entity; 
rather, this work is to fortify the pancapitalist dynasty in physical space by 
serving both spectacular and military apparatuses. The current functions of VR, 
as well as the limited research into its varied potentials, are indications 
that virtual consciousness is not a desirable posthuman condition from the 
perspective of primary power vectors of the current political economy.<1> 

Imaging Technology Divided 

Currently, imaging technology is deeply divided between the photographic and 
the postphotographic–one which records and one which renders. This division 
corresponds very well to Althusser’s division of the social into the Repressive 
State Apparatus (RSA) and the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). When placed in 
this theoretical matrix, the actual functions of immersive technology become 
intelligible, and indicate that inserting disembodied consciousness into 
virtual systems is not a current or future strategy for the development of 
posthuman entities by investing agencies.<2> 

The ISA is the structure of control maintained through the manipulation of a 
given culture’s symbolic order. Through this structure, ideology is deployed, 
reinforced, and morphed in order to maintain the integrity of the given power 
structure. When enveloped in the ISA, an individual’s perceptions, thought 
structures, and behaviors are molded to varying degrees so as not to conflict 
with dominant historical and socioeconomic imperatives and conventions. The 
family, schools, the church, and the media function as the pedagogical 
institutions through which ideology replicates itself. While family and 
religion were dominant in precapitalist society, in pancapitalist society, the 
education system and the media have become the dominant institutions of 
socialization, causing family and church to fall to a secondary support 
position. Of particular interest here is that communication technologies have 
been of tremendous aid in empowering these latter institutions and in causing 
this pedagogical shift to occur. The ideologically charged and immersive 
representational environment generated through the use of mass imaging 
technologies is called spectacle. 

The infrastructural counterpart of the ISA is the Repressive State Apparatus 
(RSA). It is the total structure of control maintained through violent, 
militarized social intervention. Its functions are to defend the social system 
from invasion, to protect "investments" in alien social systems, and to 
maintain internal social order. Institutions participating in this apparatus 
include armed services, national guards, police, prison systems, and 
intelligence and security agencies. Like the dominant institutions of the ISA, 
the RSA depends upon complex technology in order to remain effective; however, 
unlike the ISA, where imaging technologies are an end in themselves, the RSA 
requires a full array of weapons technology integrated with vision technology 
in order to carry out its mandate of repression through violence. 

The imaging technology of the RSA is generally superior to that of the ISA, but 
the functions of the technology for each system are so vastly different that 
concrete comparisons are very difficult. The unique characteristics of the 
technology for each system are many and make for highly contrasted systems. The 
first significant issue of difference is visibility. The imaging engines of the 
ISA are relatively open to public scrutiny. In fact, for these imaging systems 
to work, the technology which delivers its message (radios, televisions, 
cinema, etc.) must be widely deployed and/or made accessible. While the 
machinery that actually generates the spectacular images is typically kept out 
of the representational frame, that machinery too can and does become one of 
the objects of spectacle. Passive media participants are familiar with the 
existence and function of many components of media systems, including cameras, 
control rooms, editing suites, communications satellites, film studios, and so 
on. This is true to the extent that imaging systems are often the object of the 
jubilant celebrations of technology. For example, who can deny the public 
excitement generated over a cable system delivering 500 channels, or the public 
enthusiasm for surfing the World Wide Web? Couple this situation with media 
stunts engineered to further ingratiate new technology to the public, and the 
celebration becomes even more intense. 

For example, NASA’s use of the robotic walker Dante to record events in a 
volcano was basically a useless endeavor in terms of scientific data 
collection. NASA has very little use for volcanic data. However, this project 
did serve two functions: First, it acted as a public relations campaign to 
demonstrate in very dramatic terms the current state of hi-tech development. 
(In actuality, Dante was produced with robotic technology that was developed 
many years ago, but the data acquired sure seemed impressive, as did its 
descent into the volcano. The snapping of its retrieval cord at the end of the 
mission was a little embarrassing, but it was not highlighted). The second and 
primary reason for the Dante mission was to develop software for autonomous 
robots, which could then be used for other purposes. In addition to building a 
greater public appreciation for the technology itself, stunts such as this one 
also help to construct a heroic image for those who use complex technology. 
Certainly, this is part of the reason for the current series of multinational 
space missions. In all, this kind of celebratory spectacularization is great 
news for cyborg development, as people increasingly desire to be close to 
complex technology. One certainly cannot help but wonder if new technology is 
not the most important object of spectacle at this moment. 

For the RSA, technology is generally kept hidden, and at least during 
peacetime, it is no cause for celebration. This is not to say that military 
technology is not spectacularized, for it most certainly is. The public display 
of military technology is done primarily for purposes of disinformation. When a 
new weapon or imaging system is developed, sometimes it is wise to let others 
know that it exists; however, what must be kept secret are the precise 
parameters of what it can do. Such incomplete information leakage constructs an 
inflated sense of security in friendly populations, and a sense of fear in 
enemy populations. It also entices enemy powers to overestimate the 
capabilities of the system. For example, during the early years of the cold 
war, US military officials grossly overestimated the numbers of Soviet nuclear 
missiles; this caused not only a panic in the military over an assumed "missile 
gap," but also caused a panic in the civilian population. This situation was 
not corrected until data were retrieved from early spy satellite reconnaissance 
missions in the early 60s which showed that far fewer missiles existed than US 
intelligence orginally believed. A more contemporary example is the 
spectacularization of the Patriot Missile System during the Gulf War. As it was 
presented in the media, this piece of techno-junk required divine intervention 
for it to function. Even after the system was a proven battlefield failure, it 
was still presented as the ultimate anti-missile defense system, simply by 
either constantly replaying the footage of its few successes, or by showing 
images of it not working accompanied by an authoritative voice-over saying that 
it was working. 

The compelling point here is that spectacular engines employed for this duty 
are functional, because they use a postphotographic model in which imaging 
systems are totalizing rendering devices. The images produced under this model, 
and those presented within the media context, are inherently untrustworthy, and 
flow within the representational fictions of realistic illusionism. While the 
engines and methods of production do not call attention to themselves within 
the screen’s frame, it is common knowledge that media images–from fantasy 
cinema to nonfictional newscasts–are engineered and designed by a plethora of 
means too numerous to list in this essay. This skeptical view has become so 
common that conspiracy theorists can even claim that the moon landing was a US 
government hoax, and can do so with a modest amount of credibility. 
Paradoxically, and in a sublime moment of doublethink, the public implicitly 
understands the rendering hoax of postphotography, yet still often finds 
spectacular images credible. 

Contrary to the spectacular model of rendering is the more traditional model of 
photographic imaging systems, which focuses on principles of recording. While 
spectacular images created by the ISA for the public continually slide, 
dissolve, and recombine, images produced by the RSA for its own use are 
relatively stable, if the imaging systems function as intended. RSA images are 
produced for the purposes of mapping and/or surveying territories and 
populations: They have a material referent, which is validated through 
practical application based on information extracted from the image. The goal 
is to produce images in which the map is to the greatest extent possible a 
representational equivalent of the territory. The higher the accuracy of the 
representation in relation to the designated referent, the higher the value of 
the image. This strategy is based on the understanding that that which can be 
visualized and mapped can be controlled, as long as this vision system is 
integrated with an array of effective weapons systems (both human and 
electromechanical) that can be deployed in a contested territory or among a 
resistant population. 

The need for accurate images is not just a matter of strategic necessity, but 
also a matter of cost-effective control. The RSA is an incredible drain on 
financial resources when left standing, but it costs even more to use its 
forces (although it must be noted that wartime economy can be profitable). 
Given that the grand majority of contemporary first-world military conflicts 
fall into the category of "police action" (which is also the least profitable 
of military activities, as police actions maintain the empire rather than 
expand it), military deployment and use must be as precise as possible. The key 
distinction between images produced by the RSA and those produced by the ISA 
that arises out of this instrumental imperative is that RSA images serve a 
pragmatic military function, while those of the ISA serve an aestheticized 
sociopolitical function. 

To return to the issue of secrecy in regard to RSA activities, the pragmatic 
structure of its vision can maintain its integrity only as long as the 
specifics of the vision engines and the images they produce are kept 
classified. Once the images are recontextualized in the image barrage of the 
ISA, they fall victim to aestheticization, lose their usefulness, and become 
obsolete. This obsolescence typically occurs when one generation of vision 
technology is replaced by a new generation of more accurate technology, and 
creates the opportunity for technological spin-offs for the realm of spectacle. 
Computers, the Internet, and communication satellites are all examples of 
representational engines that lost some or all of their value as RSA systems, 
and hence no longer had to be kept monopolized. These engines were reconfigured 
and redeployed for the purpose of producing spectacle, which in turn indicates 
that there is a vast intersection between processes of aestheticization and 
obsolescence, which in turn further suggests that the much-celebrated 
postphotographic principle of rendering is often still in the service of its 
parent, the photographic model of recording. 

This is not to say that all institutions for image production fit neatly into 
either the RSA or the ISA. The centralization of capital in various 
multinational industries allows the development of vision engines with double 
functions serving both the ISA and the RSA. These engines are often developed 
independently by institutions that intersect both apparatuses. For example, the 
institution of medicine plays a pivotal role in both the ISA and the RSA. While 
on the one hand it participates in the ISA by producing a spectacle that 
dictates what is physiologically and psychologically "healthy" and "normal," it 
also participates in the function of the RSA through its ability to muster 
forces to support these standards, and through its administration of a system 
of institutions in which "deviants" may be imprisoned (asylums, hospitals, 
rehab clinics, halfway houses, etc). At the same time, this industry is still 
partly dependent on the RSA, since some of its technology comes from obsolete 
machines released to friendly institutions. For example, telepresent robotic 
surgery is now being developed by the military for use in the field. One can be 
fairly certain that before this med-tech begins to trickle down to civilian 
medicine, it will have become a fully functional military option, and that by 
that time the military will have moved onto newer and better options for field 
surgery. 

As the border between the ISA and RSA grows increasingly cluttered with 
relative independents, the technological state-of-the-art starts to drift back 
and forth between spectacular processes of aesthetic production and militarized 
processes of pragmatic production. Cutting-edge image production still favors 
the RSA, but the situation is becoming increasingly hazy because many imaging 
systems are assuming dual functions. What is certain is that rendering is the 
foundation for spectacular image production, and that recording is still the 
foundation for militarized image production. 

The Dual Function of Immersive Technology 

Given the theoretical matrix explained in the last section, the likelihood of 
realizing the dream of VR as a liberating future habitat for humanity seems 
quite remote. In fact, VR seems to be used for every imaging purpose except as 
a liberating habitat. Its use by the spectacle is minimal, as no investing 
agency seems able to conceive of a useful (instrumental) application for it. 
Currently, VR takes a very secondary position to older nonimmersive screen-
based systems. While the World Wide Web, the Internet, and cable television 
seem to be exploding with new possibilities (both compelling and loathsome), VR 
is beginning to stagnate. Its position is limited to arcade entertainment and 
to secondary-display technology that helps boost consumption. One example of 
this latter variety of application is the use of VR in some department and 
furniture stores in Japan. A shopper can enter a virtual environment and 
(within the limits of the product line) render a desired domestic environment 
to see if it meets with he/r expectations before purchasing the needed 
merchandise. If he/r virtual vision does not meet he/r expectations, s/he can 
redesign the space until it does. The buyer is thus given extra assurance that 
s/he will get what s/he wants. Obviously, a system like this functions only 
when there is a variety of purchasing options, when the object of consumption 
cannot be physically displayed, and when the purchase is costly. Hence this 
application has very limited spectacular use. Further, this application is only 
one small step beyond the use of X-ray machines in shoe stores back in the 30s 
and 40s. The shopper could X-ray he/r foot to make sure the shoes about to be 
purchased were a perfect fit. In terms of the spectacle of consumption, the 
real problem for VR is that there are very few occasions when the institutions 
selling the products want to give even the smallest amount of authentic choice 
to the consumer. 

The infinite choice and total control promised by VR are precisely the options 
that investment institutions want to avoid, and hence, they are not going to 
pursue VR technology with any vigor until someone is able to negate its 
liberating logic. This is also why investment capital is flowing overwhelmingly 
in the direction of screen technology, such as the World Wide Web. (The 
rocketing prices of shares of companies like Netscape and Yahoo when they went 
public clearly indicate the flow of capital). On the Web, the producer of the 
page controls the rendering process. While this element of Web production seems 
to favor the cyber-individual, and accounts for much of the celebration of the 
Web, institutions are aware that those with the greatest amount of capital can 
use the latest software and state-of-the-art trained labor to achieve maximum 
novelty and aesthetic seduction, overwhelm competitors for visibility through 
additional advertising in a variety of media, and offer additional incentives 
(usually chances at prizes or free merchandise) for using the page. (And, if 
consumers are willing to give personal information for market research to 
increase their chances of getting these incentives, so much the better). If the 
lure is carefully constructed, the advertiser can expect to monopolize a Web 
consumer’s time. Interactivity in this case means the ability of the consumer 
to view a product, purchase it, and/or move onto other purchasing opportunities 
in the given product line. This is the kind of spectacular technology that 
pancapitalist ISA will support, not just with investment, but also with 
legislative and regulatory support.<3> Technologies which truly offer emergent 
choice and devalue centralized economic control are not worth an investment. 
Currently, the posthuman has no place in VR, and VR has a very small material 
place in the ISA. 

VR’s primary value to the ISA is not as a technology at all, but as a myth. VR 
functions as a technology that is out on the horizon, promising that one day 
members of the public will be empowered by rendering capabilities which will 
allow them to create multisensual experiences to satisfy their own particular 
desires. The mysterious aura constructed around this technology associates it 
with the exotic, the erotic, and potentially, with the ethereal. By 
perpetuating the myth of a wish machine that is always about to arrive, the 
pancapitalist ISA builds in the population a desire to be close to image 
technology, to own it. Unfortunately, most technology is being designed for 
precisely the opposite purpose from that of a wish machine, that is, to make 
possible better control of the material world and its populations. This 
combination of myth and hardware sets the foundation for the material posthuman 
world of the cyborg. 

The RSA proceeds along a different route. All the potentials of VR are being 
used to create more accurate simulators. However, the core of this immersive 
image is based on recording. Usually, the technological environment which the 
VR system is designed to simulate has already been built or at the very least 
is under construction. As to be expected, the virtual image again has a very 
clear material referent. For example, a fighter jet simulator attempts to 
replicate the interior technological environment as accurately as possible. The 
quality of the replication is judged practically by how well a pilot trained in 
the simulator does in the actual cockpit. The exterior virtual environment in 
which the simulated technology functions makes use of both recording and 
rendering. However, recording is still dominant, as the trainers attempt to 
place trainees in specific rather than in general environments. Returning to 
the example of the jet fighter simulator, the pilot is placed in an environment 
closely resembling the one in which s/he will be flying. The ground, anti-
aircraft batteries, and enemy planes are rendered as accurately and as 
specifically as possible based on recorded photographic images and intelligence 
data, whereas more random variables, such as atmospheric conditions, will be 
rendered in accordance with generalized configurations. 

As with the imaging systems of the ISA, the goal is not to prepare a person for 
life in the virtual, but to specify, regulate, and habituate he/r role in the 
material world. Virtuality has no independent primary function in the RSA; 
rather, it has a dependent secondary support function. What is really odd about 
this situation is that the mythic gift of VR–complete control of the image–is 
negated. The virtual images are completely overdetermined by specific 
configurations in the material world. The limited evidence available to the 
public indicates that no preparations are being made for immersive virtual 
information warfare. This possibility seems limited to the screenal economy of 
cyberspace. However, since RSA activities are classified, plenty of room exists 
for conspiracy theorists to speculate. At the same time, given current trends 
in investment, research, and development, combined with the very clear 
imperatives of pancapitalism, such speculations have only a very modest amount 
of credibility. 

Preparing for Posthumanity 

If the habitat of VR and the virtual entity are eliminated as practical 
categories of the posthuman, the only possibility left is the cyborg. In terms 
of social perception in technologically saturated economic systems, being a 
first-order cyborg covers a broad range of possibilities, ranging from a 
desirable empowering condition to an undesirable, dehumanizing one. However, 
there is plenty of time for spectacle to sort out differing perceptions of the 
first-order cyborg. Cyborg development is moving at a pace which allows 
adequate time for adjustment to the techno-human synthesis. Currently, the 
process is in very different stages at specific institutions. For example, the 
military has advanced furthest, and has developed a fully integrated second-
order cyborg, while corporate and bureaucratic institutions are meeting with 
reasonable success in their attempts to convince workers of the need to meld 
body and technology. 

Within many civilian social institutions, cyborg development is progressing 
cautiously enough that members have a difficult time knowing what a cyborg is, 
perceiving one, or realizing that they are being transformed into one. Is a 
cyborg any person who has a technological body part? Does having an artificial 
limb or even contact lenses place one in the category of cyborg? In a sense, 
the answer is yes, as these pieces of technology are integrated with the body, 
and the individual is relatively dependent upon them. However, in terms of 
posthuman discourse, the answer is probably no, as there is only a simple 
engineered interface between the technological and the organic. The posthuman 
model that seems to be developing is McLuhanesque–that is, the techno-organic 
interface should extend the body beyond the fluctuating degree zero of everyday 
normalization. What is spoken about in the case of artificial limbs or contact 
lenses is the means to make the body, to the greatest extent possible, conform 
to "accepted" social standards. What is interesting about precyborgian 
technological additions to the body is that one key ideological imperative 
having a direct affect on posthuman development begins to show itself–body-tech 
is valued as means to better integrate oneself into the social. 

Another common question is whether radical technological body intervention, 
such as gender reassignment, makes one a cyborg. Obviously, since such 
procedures are only organic recombinations devoid of technology, they fail to 
create a cyborg class being. However, these interventions do play a role in 
cyborg development, because they continue to prepare specific publics to 
perceive these operations as normal and often desirable. This is particularly 
true of interventions done solely for aesthetic purposes. The social 
"abnormality" of organic decay acts as an ideological sign that channels people 
toward the consumption of services for body reconfiguration, to enable them to 
best fulfill the social imperatives of body presentation in pancapitalist 
society. What is truly important about this development is that technological 
intervention disconnected from issues of deviance, sickness, and death is being 
normalized. Extreme body invasion as a socially accepted practice is a key step 
in cyborg development. 

Military and Civilian Cyborgs 

There is no need to dwell on the development of a second-order military cyborg. 
The only surprise here is that it took so long to happen. From the common grunt 
to the heroic jet fighter pilot, the military conversion of humans to cyborgs 
has become a necessity. The Hughes Corporation has successfully developed a 
custom-fitted techno-organic interface for the infantry which offers an 
integrated system of vision, communication, and firepower. Soldiers are no 
longer soldiers; as the military says, now they are "weapons systems." The 
posthuman has announced itself in a happy moment of military efficiency. 
However, the infantry "weapons system," while actual and functioning, is a 
minor interface when compared to the developing "Pilot’s Associate" (McDonnell-
Douglas). In addition to having a state-of-the-art interdependent pilot/machine 
interface (unless the machine thinks that the organics are failing, and it must 
take over the mission), the "Pilot’s Associate" offers Artificial Intelligence 
(AI) support analysis in mission planning, tactics, system status, and 
situation assessment. Here we find a clear indication of what body 
"enhancement" is going to mean in the age of the posthuman. Body enhancement 
will be specific to goal-oriented tasks. These tasks will be dictated by the 
pancapitalist division of labor, and technology for body modification will only 
allow for the more efficient service of a particular institution. 

Unfortunately for the multinationals, the development of the civilian cyborg 
has not moved along as quickly. Since the civilian sector does not have the 
advantage of telling its forces that being-as-cyborg will prolong one’s life in 
the field, corporate power vectors are still deploying ideological campaigns to 
convince civilians of the bureaucratic and technocratic classes that they 
should desire to be cyborgs. The spectacle of the civilian cyborg moves in two 
opposing directions. The first is the utopian spectacle. The usual promises of 
convenience, access to knowledge and free speech, entertainment, and 
communication are being trotted out by the usual media systems with varying 
degrees of success; but anyone who has paid attention to strategies of 
manufacturing desire for new technologies can read right through the surface of 
these codes. Convenience is supposed to mean that work becomes easier, and is 
accomplished faster; in turn, this means that individuals work less and have 
more free time because they work more efficiently. What this code actually 
means is that the workload can be intensified because the worker is producing 
more efficiently. Entertainment and information access are codes of seduction 
that really mean that individuals will have greater access to consumer markets 
of manufactured desire. Better communication is supposed to mean greater access 
to those with whom an individual wants to communicate. The actuality is that 
agencies of production and consumption have greater surveillance power over the 
individual.* 

*The deployment of utopian promise is commonly used to form future markets. For 
additional information on the development of utopian promises associated with 
telecommunication technologies, please see the Appendix. 

In contrast to utopian spectacle is the spectacle of anxiety. The gist of this 
campaign is to threaten individuals with the claim that if a person falls 
behind in the technological revolution, s/he will be trampled under the feet of 
those who use the advantages of technology. This campaign recalls the 
socioeconomic bloodbath of the ideology of Social Darwinism. The consumer must 
either adapt or die. From the perspective of pancapitalism, this campaign is 
quite brilliant, because unlike the military (where the soldier is supplied 
with technology to transform he/rself into a weapon system), the civilian force 
will buy the technology of their enslavement, thereby underwriting a healthy 
portion of the cost of cyborg development as well as the cost of its 
spectacularization. 

The current spectacle of technology is having an effect on the civilian 
population of the appropriate classes, although cyborg development in this 
sector is a little more subtle than in the military. Most people have seen the 
first phases of the civilian cyborg, which is typically an information cyborg. 
They are usually equipped with lap-top computers and cellular phones. 
Everywhere they go, their technology goes with them. They are always prepared 
to work, and even in their leisure hours they can be activated for duty. 
Basically, these beings are intelligent, autonomous workstations that are on 
call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and at the same time can be transformed 
into electronic consumers, whenever necessary. 

In this phase of posthuman development, the will to purity, explicit in the 
spectacle of anxiety, manifests itself in two significant forms: First is the 
purification of the pancapitalist cycle of waking everyday life. Cyborgs are 
reduced to acting out rational, pragmatic, instrumental behaviors, and in so 
doing, the cycles of production (work) and consumption (leisure) are purified 
of those elements deemed nonrational and useless (by the pancapitalist system). 
It seems reasonable to expect that attempts will be made to reduce or eliminate 
regenerative, nonproductive processes like sleeping through the use of both 
technological and biological enhancement. The second is a manifestation of 
ideological purity which persuades the cyborg to obsessively value that which 
perpetuates and maintains the system, and to act accordingly. The prime 
disrupter of this manifestation of purity is the body itself with its endlessly 
disruptive physical functions, and the libidinal motivations inherent in human 
psychology. Hence technological advancement alone will not create the best 
posthuman; it must be supported by developments in rationalized body design. 

Final Preparations for Posthumanity 

The military has long understood that the body must be trained to meet the 
demands of its technology. Consequently, it puts its organic units through very 
rigorous mental and physical training, but in the end, it is clear that this 
training is not enough. Training can only take a body to the limits of its 
predisposition. Pancapitalism has realized that the body must be designed for 
specific, goal-oriented tasks that better complement its interface with 
technology within the real space of production. Human characteristics must also 
be rationally designed and engineered in order to eliminate body functions and 
psychological characteristics that refuse ideological inscription. 

The mature appearance of the flesh machine is perhaps the greatest indication 
that the magical data dump of consciousness into VR is not being seriously 
considered. If it were, why invest so heavily in body products and services? 
Conversely, why should capital refuse an opportunity that appears to be the 
greatest market bonanza since colonization? Digital flesh is significant in the 
mapping of the body, but its value depends upon the practical applications that 
are derived from it; these, in turn, can be looped back into the material 
world. The body is here to stay. Unfortunately, the body of the future will not 
be the liquid, free-forming body which yields to individual desire; rather, it 
will be a solid entity whose behaviors are fortified by task-oriented 
technological armor interfacing with ideologically engineered flesh. Little 
evidence is available to indicate that liquescence is different in 
postmodernity from what it was in modernity–the privilege of capital-saturated 
power vectors. 


2. Nihilism in the Flesh 

While much of the current cultural discussion regarding technoculture focuses 
on issues emerging from new communications technology, there is an 
exponentially growing interest in and discussion of flesh technology. Like the 
discussion of new communications technologies, this discourse vacillates wildly 
from the intensely critical and skeptical to the accepting and utopian. 
However, the most significant intersection between the two discourses is their 
parallel critique of vision enhancement. Whether it is the development of 
global satellite vision or the development of micro interior vision, imaging 
systems are key to both apocalyptic or utopian tendencies. For example, 
sonography can be used to map an ocean floor, or it can be used to map uterine 
space. In both cases, such an imaging system functions as a first step toward 
the ability to culturally engineer and ideologically design those spaces. As 
these two spheres of technology continue to intermingle, a recombinant theory 
of the relationship of populations and bodies to technology has begun to emerge 
that conflates theories of the social and the natural. The existence of such 
theories under the legitimizing mantle of the authority of science is not new, 
and in fact the theories have fallen in and out of favor since the 19th 
century. They continually re-emerge in different guises, such as Social 
Darwinism (Malthusian and Spencerian philosophy), eugenics, and sociobiology. 
In each case the results of such thinking have been socially catastrophic, 
setting loose the unrestrained deployment of authoritarian ideology and 
nihilistic social policy. 

Apparently theories of deep social evolution have come into favor again, and 
are rising from the grave to haunt unsuspecting populations. Socially dangerous 
principles of cultural development, such as fitness, natural selection, and 
adaptability, are again in fashion. Consider the following quote from the 
announcement for the 1996 Ars Electronica Symposium and Exhibition (Ars 
Electronica is a very prestigious annual conference for multimedia artists, 
media critics, scientists, hackers, and technicians): 

Human evolution, characterized by our ability to process information, is 
fundamentally entwined with technological development. Complex tools and 
technologies are an integral part of our evolutionary "fitness." Genes that are 
not able to cope with this reality will not survive the next millennium. 

This quote contains some of the most frightening authoritarian language since 
the Final Solution, and presents the threat of "adapt or die" as a value-free 
social given. To what is the reader expected to adapt? To the technology 
developed under the regime of pancapitalism for the purpose of better 
implementing its imperatives of production, consumption, and control. There is 
nothing evolutionary (in the biological sense) about the pancapitalist 
situation. It was engineered and designed by rational agencies. "Fitness" is a 
designated status that is relative to the ideological environment, not the 
natural environment. History repeats itself, as those resistant to 
authoritarian order must once again separate the cultural and the natural, and 
expose the horrific nihilistic tendency that arises when the two are confused. 

Nihilism 

Nihilism can have either positive or negative political associations. For 
example, some liberationists view nihilism as a revolutionary strategy capable 
of dissolving boundaries which retard the full exploration of human experience, 
while those interested in maintaining the status quo view it as a method of 
social disruption which manifests itself in destruction and chaos. Certainly 
the original description of nihilism, in Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, 
presented it as a revolutionary method designed to promote Enlightenment 
political principles. The engine of nihilism in this case was reason, and its 
application manifested itself in an overly deterministic and domineering model 
of Western science. Turgenev contrasts the nihilist position with Christian 
models of faith and a monarchist social order. While many who situate 
themselves on the left can sympathize with the nihilist’s will to free he/rself 
from the constraints of the traditional model of church and state, there is 
also an uneasy feeling about this variety of nihilism, as a danger exists of 
replacing one tyrant with another. One cannot help but question if replacing 
faith and understanding with reason and knowledge could lead to an equivalent 
state of oppression. Nietzsche makes this point very elegantly in his 
assertions that movement toward purity and uncritical acceptance (in this case, 
of reason) always leads to hegemony and domination. 

The case of Nietzsche in regard to nihilism is peculiar. While the Nietzschean 
notion of philosophy with a hammer seems to fit well with the nihilistic 
process, Nietzsche actually inverts the argument. From his perspective, the 
ability of humans to challenge dominant institutions is an affirming quality. 
It affirms life and the world. While the process has elements of conflict and 
destruction, acts of skepticism, disavowal, and resistance are intentionally 
directed toward the possibility of freedom, and thereby redeem people from the 
horrid fate of willing nothingness, rather than not willing at all. From this 
perspective, the primary example of the pathologically nihilistic will made 
manifest is the institution of the church in particular and religion in 
general. Religions encourage the subject to bring about he/r own disappearance, 
and thereby, to eliminate the world which envelops he/r. One abhors presence, 
and seeks absence. The problem for Nietzsche is that he cannot accept the 
principles of absence (the soul, God, the heavenly kingdom) that are dictated 
to society under the authority of church rule, and perpetuated by an 
unquestioning faith. Nietzsche demands that life rest in experience and in 
presence. To negate the given is an unacceptable nihilistic position that 
undermines humanity itself. 

On the other hand, if theological principles are accepted, one can easily see 
how the positions of secularists appear nihilistic. To sacrifice one’s soul to 
the immediacy of experience is eternally destructive. The immediacy of the 
sensual world should be understood as a site of temptation that negates the joy 
of eternity. Those who focus their daily activities on the sensual world are 
doomed to the torture of privation in this life, and to damnation in the next 
life. To choose an object other than God is to be continuously left 
unfulfilled, and during this time the soul decays from neglect. In terms of 
Eastern theology, the situation of subject-object is mediated by the hell of 
desire, which can only be pacified when the subject is erased, and thereby 
returned to the unitary void. In both the Western and the Eastern varieties of 
religious life, the subject can only find peace by affirming God (as opposed to 
affirming the world). 

The truly interesting and relevant point here in regard to evolutionary social 
theory is that the 19th century conflict over the nature of nihilism has a 
common thread. No matter what side of the debate one favors, the discourse 
centers around institutional criticism. Nietzsche attacks the church and its 
doctrines, while the church attacks secular institutions such as science. 
People are not the object of nihilism, no matter how it is defined. However, 
when nihilism is combined with notions of social evolution, the object of 
nihilism (whether valued as good or bad) is people! It speaks of the fitness of 
some, and the elimination of others. It is not a racial construction that the 
authoritarians of social evolution seek to eliminate, but people of a race; it 
is not a class that they seek to eliminate, but people of a class; it is not an 
anachronistic skill that they seek to eliminate, but people who have this 
skill. 

Evolution is a Theory, Not a Fact 

To be sure, evolutionary theory has become such a key principle in organizing 
biological information that some toxic spillage into other disciplines is 
almost inevitable. It commands such great authority that its spectacle is often 
confused for fact. At present, evolutionary theory is primarily speculative; no 
valid and reliable empirical method has been developed to overcome the temporal 
darkness that this conjecture is supposed to illuminate. Consequently, 
evolutionary theory circles around in its own self-fulfilling principles. It is 
in an epistemological crisis, in spite of authoritative claims to the contrary. 

The tautological reasoning of evolutionary theory proceeds as follows: Those 
species with the greatest ability to adapt to a changing environment are 
naturally selected for survival. Those that are selected not only survive, but 
often expand their genetic and environmental domains. So how is it known that a 
species has a capacity for adaptation? Because it was naturally selected. How 
is it known that it was selected? Because it survived. Why did it survive? 
Because it was able to adapt to its environment. In spite of this logical flaw 
of rotating first principles, evolutionary theory brings a narrative to the 
discipline that makes biological dynamics intelligible. While the theory can in 
no way approach the realm of certainty, it does have tremendous common-sense 
value. If for no other reason, evolutionary theory is dominant because no one 
has been able to produce a secular counternarrative that has such 
organizational possibilities. 

Evolution is an intriguing notion for other reasons too. The idea that natural 
selection is a blind process is certainly a turning point in Western thinking. 
There is no teleology, not even the guiding "invisible hand." Instead, 
evolution gropes through time, producing both successful and unsuccessful 
species. Its varied manifestations display no order, only accident. This notion 
is an incredible challenge to the Western desire for rational order. At best, 
God is playing dice with the universe. The very anarchistic strength of this 
notion is also its scientific downfall. How can the accidental be measured in 
causal terms? For example, the engine of physical adaptability is mutation. If 
mutation is the accidental, uncommon, unexpected, and anomalous, how can it be 
quantified, when the knowledge systems of science are based on the value of 
expectation and typicality? 

Can we say with any degree of assurance that social development is analogous to 
this model of biological development? It seems extremely unlikely that culture 
and nature proceed in a similar fashion. Cultural dynamics appear to be neither 
blind nor accidental. While the occurrence of chaotic moments in social 
development cannot be denied, unlike with biological evolution, they do not 
render the same totalizing picture. Cultural evolution, if there is such a 
thing, seems for the most part to be orderly and intentional. It is structured 
by the distribution of power, which can be deployed in either a negating or 
affirming manner. 

Culture and Causality 

The ever-changing and transforming manifestations of power over time are the 
foundation of what may be considered history. Power manifests itself in 
countless forms, both as material artifacts and ideational representation, 
including architecture, art, language, laws, norms, population networks, and so 
on, which is to say as culture itself. When considering either culture or 
history, it seems reasonable to contend that evolution (in its biological 
sense) plays little if any role in the configuration of social structure or 
dynamics. For example, the history of industrial capitalism spans only a brief 
200 years. In the evolutionary timetable, this span of time scarcely registers. 
The biological systems of humans have not significantly changed during this 
period, nor for the last 10,000 years, and hence it would be foolish to think 
that evolution played any kind of causal role in the development of capitalism. 
In fact, humankind’s seeming evolutionary specialization (a mammal that 
specializes in intelligence) places it in a post-evolutionary position. With 
the ability for advanced communication using language capable of forming 
abstract ideas, in conjunction with the ability to affect and even control 
elements of the body and the environment, humans have at least temporarily 
inverted significant portions of the evolutionary dynamic. In an astounding 
number of cases, the body and the environment do not control the destiny of 
"humanity"; rather, "humanity" controls the destiny of the body and its 
environment. Unlike the evolutionary process, social development is 
overwhelmingly a rationalized and engineered process. 

If the proposition that social development is a rationalized process (perhaps 
even hyper-rationalized, under the pancapitalist regime) is accepted, can 
evolutionary principles such as natural selection or fitness have any 
explanatory value? This possibility seems very unlikely. For instance, there is 
nothing "natural" about natural selection. At the macro level, the populations 
that have the greatest probability of coming to an untimely end are not 
selected for elimination by a blind natural process; rather, they are 
designated as expendable populations. In the US, for example, the problem of 
homelessness exists not because there is insufficient food and shelter for 
every citizen, nor because this social aggregate is unfit, but because various 
power sources have chosen to let the homeless continue in their present state. 
The selection process in this case has agency; it is not a blind and accidental 
process. What is being selected for in the age of pancapitalism (and for most 
of human history) are cultural characteristics that will perpetuate the system, 
and maintain the current power structure. This process is intentional, self-
reflexive, and at its worst, systematic–in other words, intensely rational. 

The concept of fitness follows the same unfortunate trajectory. Once this 
concept is taken out of its original biological context and placed into a 
social context, its explanatory power evaporates. When the concept of fitness 
intersects an intentional environment, the idea is transformed from a 
relatively neutral one to one that is intensely value-laden. Unlike the 
biological concept of fitness, a category measured by the emergent 
manifestations of survival, the sociological concept of fitness functions as a 
reflection of a particular population that is then projected and inscribed onto 
the general population. The valued characteristics (beauty, intelligence, 
"normal" body configuration, etc.) that constitute fitness are designed and 
deployed in a top-down manner by power vectors which control social policy 
construction and image management and distribution. In a social environment 
which has solved the challenge of production, fitness has no real meaning other 
than to mark acceptable subjects, which in turn marginalizes and/or eliminates 
"deviant" subjects. Without question, when fitness is placed into a 
sociological context, it becomes a hideous ideological marker representing the 
imperatives of the political-economy that deployed it. 

Nature as Ideology 

Three decades ago Roland Barthes sent an illuminating flare into the political 
air to warn us of the socially catastrophic results of using nature as a code 
to legitimate social value. Under authoritarian rule, the social realm is 
divided into the natural and the unnatural (the perverse). Everything of value 
and of benefit to the empowered vectors of a given social system is coded as 
natural, while everything which negates its demands by prompting alternative or 
resistant forms of social activity and organization is coded as unnatural in 
the environment of representation. But this binary system is more complex. 
Given that one of these values of empowered vectors is that of militarization 
in all its forms, a nasty wound opens as the social fabric is ripped by 
contradictory ideological forces. On one hand, nature is viewed in a very 
gentle sense as moral and pure, and thereby good. Hence that which is natural 
is also good. On the other hand, when perceived through the evolutionary 
ideological filter as a realm in which only the strong survive the bloodbath of 
life, nature becomes abject, dangerous, and amoral. Hence, that which is 
natural (sovereign) must be repelled. The ideological role of the code of 
nature is doubled, and simultaneously exists as value and as detriment, thereby 
allowing the code to float from one meaning to its opposite. All that 
authoritarian power must do is contextualize the code, and it will speak in 
whatever manner is desired by the social vectors with the power to deploy it. 
In addition, for this code of control to function, its inherent contradiction 
must be flawlessly sutured. This is done through spectacular narrowcasts into 
the fragmented condition of everyday life. 

It seems rather obvious that importing legitimized theories of natural dynamics 
(in the case of pancapitalism, evolutionary principles) into the ideological 
fabric is a necessity if this overall coding system is to function. In this 
manner the constructive qualities of a given regime can be coded as natural, as 
can its pathologically nihilistic and destructive tendencies, even, and perhaps 
especially, when they are aimed at other people! Thus the code truly is 
totalizing. It does not have to be split into a binary which has a boundary 
that authoritarian order cannot cross. Authoritarian power can occupy all 
social space with impunity, both normal and deviant, for constructive or 
destructive purposes. 

Biohazards 

When the dark code of nature (survival of the fittest) is efficiently deployed 
within a given population, genocidal nihilism becomes an acceptable course of 
social action. While the code legitimizes and masks military aggression for the 
purpose of acquiring territory and resources, the will to purity has been known 
to function as an independent parallel goal, as in the case of Nazi Germany. 
Currently, there is a shift in temperament; genocide is increasingly becoming 
less a matter of territory and resources, and more a matter of the will to 
purity. In the days of early capital, when the riddle of production was still 
unsolved, land/resource appropriations were the primary reason for genocide. 
The examples are, of course, well known: the kulak genocide under Stalin, or 
the aboriginal genocides in the US and Australia. In these cases, the will to 
purity (ideological in the case of the former and racial in the case of the 
latter), was secondary, and functioned primarily as the rhetoric and the 
justification for the actions. Certainly, one can expect to see more genocides 
typical of early capital in the third world, where for reasons of imperial 
design, production cannot meet the demands of the population. The same may be 
said for industrial nations in the process of restabilizing, as in Bosnia. 
However, in the time of first-world late capital with its consumer culture, 
global media, global markets, and product excess, direct military actions seem 
less necessary, because geographic territory is in the process of being 
devalued. 

With economic expansion via territorial occupation in the process of 
disappearing, the will to purity (fitness) stands on its own as a prime reason 
for genocide. Currently, genocidal nihilism tends toward elimination of 
"deviant" subjectivity. This new form of nihilism is much more subtle. The day 
of the death camp designed for maximum efficiency is over, and in its place are 
prisons, ghettos, and spaces of economic neglect. By making it seem that the 
condition of extreme privation is a part of the natural order, rational 
authority can eliminate populations without direct militarized action. In some 
cases, the designated excess population will participate in its own destruction 
as individuals are forced by artificially produced physical need and 
environmental pressures to do whatever is necessary to acquire withheld 
resources. In turn, these actions are replayed by the media as representations 
of the dangerous natural qualities of given races, ethnicities, or classes that 
must be controlled. Ironically, activities and environments which were 
intentionally designed become representations of nature, and proof of fitness 
theory. 

Accidental opportunities also have great potential for exploitation. In the 
early years of the AIDS crisis in the US, when the virus seemed to affect only 
gay men, IV drug users, and Haitians, the Reagan Administration exploited this 
opportunity to eliminate some "degenerate" populations; after all, they were 
unnatural, impure, and unfit. By refusing to intervene or even acknowledge the 
existence of the virus, the Reagan Administration allowed this plague to take 
its course from 1981 to 1985. Not until it was realized that AIDS would not 
stay confined to the designated deviant population was legitimized political 
action taken to contain the virus and control its symptoms. 

Engineering the death of populations by neglect is not a recent innovation. 
Certainly the Irish genocide at the time of the potato blight indicates that 
this strategy has been around for while (although it should be remembered that 
this genocide was also primarily done for land and resources, and less for 
reasons of purity). Death by neglect is a haunting reminder that Social 
Darwinism and the anti-welfare recommendations of Malthus and Spencer in the 
time of early capital are not only alive and well, but are once again gaining 
in strength. 

For acts of passive genocide to be perceived as legitimate (natural), the 
public must participate in eugenic ideology. It must believe that the species 
is in a biological process that is striving for perfection through a selection 
process. It must believe that some populations are more fit than others. It 
must desire to emulate the fit, and to have faith that the unfit will be 
eliminated. With this belief in place, social vectors of power only have to 
contextualize the ideological system in a particular social moment to see its 
design come to fruition for a political-economy that is encoded directly into 
the flesh. Returning to the announcement from Ars Electronica, an indicator of 
this process at work can be observed when we read: "Complex tools and 
technologies are an integral part of our evolutionary ‘fitness.’ Genes that are 
not able to cope with this reality will not survive the next millennium." Who 
benefits from beliefs such as this? Those who profit most from the development 
of technocratic pancapitalism. There is not a shred of evidence that nature 
selects for genes with a predisposition for using complex tools. In fact, if 
survival is taken as the signifier of fitness, those who use complex tools are 
a small and stable minority of the world’s population, which would indicate 
that they are less fit. The majority and expanding populations do not use 
complex tools. (What is truly odd is that such rhetoric implies that "quality 
of life" is a characteristic that demonstrates fitness and adaptability. This 
is a peculiar return to the Calvinist belief in finding signs that one is in 
God’s grace by one's proximity to economic bounty). It seems just as likely 
that complex tools are signs of devolution, or even the source of species 
destruction. What is clear is that the power vectors which currently engineer 
social policy are at the moment selecting for and rewarding those who can use 
complex tools and punishing those who cannot, and that this intentional process 
is at times passed off as a natural development. 

The sweeping condemnation of those outside technoculture bodes badly for less 
technologically saturated societies, since they presently appear to be "unfit" 
according to this line of thinking. Traces of the colonial narrative replay 
themselves in this rhetoric, since technoculture is not accessible to the grand 
majority of nonwestern races and ethnicities. At the same time, the colonial 
narrative is being reconfigured for postwar technoculture. As women are brought 
into the bureaucratic and technocratic workforce, fitness designated by 
biological characteristics is starting to be replaced by fitness designated by 
behavior. This way, power vectors have an alibi which masks the traces of the 
colonial narrative alive in technoculture, but which can also allow them to 
embrace "fit" individuals that emerge from "unfit" populations. 

Conclusion 

Two key problems occur in attempting to use evolutionary theory in the analysis 
of cultural development. First, presenting cultural development as analogous to 
biological development is like trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. 
There is little basis for likening a blind, groping process of species 
configuration within a chaotic, uncontrolled environment to a rationally 
engineered process of social and economic development within an orderly, 
controlled environment. Retrograde notions of cultural development, such as 
providence, progress, and manifest destiny, have more explanatory power, 
because they at least recognize intentional design in cultural dynamics, and at 
the very least they imply the existence of a power structure within the 
cultural environment. Evolutionary theory, in its social sense, is blind to the 
variable of power, let alone to the inequalities in its distribution. 

The second problem is historical. Since the application of evolutionary theory 
has continuously been the foundational rhetoric and justification of social 
atrocity for the last 150 years, why would anyone want to open this Pandora’s 
box yet again? At a time when biotech products and services are being developed 
that will allow imperatives of political economy to be inscribed directly into 
the flesh and into its reproductive cycle, why would anyone want to use a 
theoretical system with little, if any, informative power, that if deployed 
through pancapitalist media filters will promote eugenic ideology? While it 
cannot be denied that all inquiries for the purpose of gaining knowledge bring 
with them a high probability that the information collected could be misused in 
its application, in the case of social evolutionary theory, the historical 
evidence that it will be misused is overwhelming. This situation is not fuzzy 
enough to make this roll of the dice a smart gambit, and the good intentions of 
individuals who engage this discourse will not save it from capitalist 
appropriation and reconfiguration to better serve its authoritarian and 
nihilistic tendencies. 


3. The Coming of Age of the Flesh Machine 

Over the past century, the two machines that comprise the general state 
apparatus have reached a level of sophistication which neither is likely to 
transcend. These complex mechanisms, the war machine and the sight machine, 
will go through many generations of refinement in the years to come; for the 
time being, however, the boundaries of their influence have stabilized. 

The war machine is the apparatus of violence engineered to maintain the social, 
political, and economic relationships that support its continued existence in 
the world. The war machine consumes the assets of the world in classified 
rituals of uselessness (for example, missile systems that are designed never to 
be used, but rather to pull competing systems of violence into high-velocity 
cycles of war-tech production) and in spectacles of hopeless massacre (such as 
the Persian Gulf war). The history of the war machine has generally been 
perceived in the West as history itself (although some resistance to this 
belief began during the 19th century), and while the war machine has not 
followed a unilinear course of progress, due to disruptions by moments of 
inertia caused by natural disasters or cultural exhaustion, its engines have 
continued to creep toward realizing the historical construction of becoming the 
totality of social existence. Now it has reached an unsurpassable peak—a 
violence of such intensity that species annihilation is not only possible, but 
probable. Under these militarized conditions, the human condition becomes one 
of continuous alarm and preparation for the final moment of collective 
mortality. 

The well-known counterpart of the war machine is the sight machine. It has two 
purposes: to mark the space of violent spectacle and sacrifice, and to control 
the symbolic order. The first task is accomplished through surveying and 
mapping all varieties of space, from the geographic to the social. Through the 
development of satellite-based imaging technologies, in combination with 
computer networks capable of sorting, storing, and retrieving vast amounts of 
visual information, a wholistic representation has been constructed of the 
social, political, economic, and geographical landscape(s) that allows for near-
perfect surveillance of all areas, from the micro to the macro. Through such 
visualization techniques, any situation or population deemed unsuitable for 
perpetuating the war machine can be targeted for sacrifice or for containment. 

The second function of the sight machine, to control the symbolic order, means 
that the sight machine must generate representations that normalize the state 
of war in everyday life, and which socialize new generations of individuals 
into their machinic roles and identities. These representations are produced 
using all types of imaging technologies, from those as low-tech as a paint 
brush to ones as high-tech as supercomputers. The images are then distributed 
through the mass media in a ceaseless barrage of visual stimulation. To make 
sure that an individual cannot escape the imperatives of the sight machine for 
a single waking moment, ideological signatures are also deployed through the 
design and engineering of all artifacts and architectures. This latter strategy 
is ancient in its origins, but combined with the mass media's velocity and its 
absence of spatial restrictions, the sight machine now has the power to 
systematically encompass the globe in its spectacle. This is not to say that 
the world will be homogenized in any specific sense. The machinic sensibility 
understands that differentiation is both useful and necessary. However, the 
world will be homogenized in a general sense. Now that the machines are 
globally and specifically interlinked with the ideology and practices of 
pancapitalism, we can be certain that a hyper-rationalized cycle of production 
and consumption, under the authority of nomadic corporate-military control, 
will become the guiding dynamic of the day. How a given population or territory 
arrives at this principle is open to negotiation, and is measured by the extent 
to which profit (tribute paid to the war machine) increases within a given area 
or among a given population. 

In spite of the great maturity of these machines, a necessary element still 
seems to be missing. While representation has been globally and rationally 
encoded with the imperatives of pancapitalism, the flesh upon which these 
codings are further inscribed has been left to reproduce and develop in a less 
than instrumental manner. To be sure, the flesh machine has intersected both 
the sight and war machines since ancient times, but comparatively speaking, the 
flesh machine is truly the slowest to develop. This is particularly true in the 
West, where practices in health and medicine, genetic engineering, or 
recombinant organisms have thoroughly intersected nonrational practices 
(particularly those of the spirit). Even when they were secularized after the 
Renaissance, these practices have consistently been less successful, when 
compared to their counterparts, in insuring the continuance of a given regime 
of state power. Unlike the war machine and the sight machine, which have 
accomplished their supreme tasks—the potential for species annihilation for the 
former, and global mapping and mass distribution of ideologically coded 
representation for the latter—the flesh machine has utterly failed to 
concretize its imagined world of global eugenics. 

The simple explanation for the flesh machine’s startling lack of development is 
cultural lag. As the West shifted from a feudal to a capitalist economy, 
demonstrating the benefits of rationalizing production in regard to war was a 
relatively simple task. National wealth and border expansion were clearly 
marked and blended well with the trace leftovers of feudal ideology. Manifest 
destiny, for example, did not stand in contradiction to Christian expansionism. 
War, economy, politics, and ideology (the slowest of social manifestations to 
change) were still working toward a common end (total domination). The 
rationalization of the flesh, however, could not find a point of connection 
with theologically informed ideology. Flesh ideology could only coexist as 
parallel rather than as intersecting tracks. For this reason it is no surprise 
that one of the fathers of flesh machine ideology was a man of God. The work of 
Thomas Malthus represents the ideological dilemma presented to the flesh 
machine on the cusp of the feudal/capitalist economic shift. 

Malthus argued that the flesh did not have to be rationalized through secular 
engineering, since it was already rationalized by the divine order of the 
cosmos designed by God Himself. Although the nonrational motivation of original 
sin would guarantee replication of the work force, God had placed "natural 
checks" on the population, so only those who were needed would be produced. The 
uncivilized lower classes could be encouraged to have as many children as 
possible without fear that the population would overrun those in God’s grace, 
because God would sort the good from the bad through famine, disease, and other 
natural catastrophes. For this reason, the flesh could be left to its own 
means, free of human intervention, and human progress could focus on fruition 
through economic progress. Spencerian philosophy, arriving half a century 
later, complemented this notion by suggesting that those fit for survival would 
be naturally selected in the social realm. The most skillful, intelligent, 
beautiful, athletic, etc., would be naturally selected by the structure of the 
society itself—that of "open" capitalist competition. Hence the flesh machine 
was still in no need of vigorous attention; however, Spencer did act as a hinge 
for the development of eugenic consciousness. Spencer constructed an 
ideological predisposition for conflating natural and social models of 
selection (the former arrived a decade or so after Spencer’s primary theses 
were published). This made it possible for genetic engineering to become a 
naturalized social function, intimately tied to social progress without being a 
perversion of nature—in fact, it was now a part of nature. At this point 
eugenic consciousness could continue to develop uninterrupted by feudal 
religious dogma until its traces evaporated out of capitalist economy, or until 
it could be better reconfigured to suit the needs of capitalism. While the idea 
of a eugenic world continued to flourish in all capitalist countries, and 
culminated in the Nazi flesh experiment of the 30s and early 40s, the research 
never materialized that would be necessary to elevate the flesh machine to a 
developmental level on a par with the war machine. 

Perhaps there is an even simpler explanation. Machinic development can only 
occur at the pace of one machine at a time, since scarce resources allow for 
only so much indirect military research. After the war machine came to full 
fruition with the implementation of fully matured total war during World War 
II, along with the attendant economic expansion, it became possible to allocate 
a generous helping of excess capital for the expansion of the next machine. In 
this case, it was the sight machine which had proved its value during the war 
effort with the development of radar and sonar, and thereby jumped to the front 
of the line for maximum investment. It was also clearly understood at this 
point that global warfare required new attention to logistic organization. The 
road between strategic and tactical weapons and logistical needs had leveled 
out, and this realization also pushed the sight machine to the front of the 
funding line. Conversely, the need of the Allied powers to separate themselves 
ideologically as far as possible from Nazi ideology pushed the desired 
development of the flesh machine back into the realm of nonhuman intervention. 
Consequently, the alliance between the war machine and the sight machine 
continued without interruption, delivering ever-increasingly sophisticated 
weapons of mass destruction. It also created an ever more enveloping 
visual/information apparatus—most notably satellite technology, television, 
video, computers, and the Net. 

While the war machine reached relative completion in the 60s, the sight machine 
did not reach relative completion until the 80s (die-hard Web-users might want 
to argue for the 90s). Now a third machine can claim its share of excess 
capital, so the funds are flowing in increasing abundance to a long deferred 
dream. The flesh machine is here. It has been turned on, and like its siblings, 
the war machine and the sight machine, it cannot be turned off. As is to be 
expected, the flesh machine replicates elements of the sight and war machines 
in its construction. It is these moments of replication which are of interest 
in this essay. 

A Brief Note on Scientific Imagination, Ethics, and the Flesh Machine 

In the best of all possible worlds, ethical positions relevant to the flesh 
machine would be primary to any discussion about it. In fact, to read the 
literature on the flesh machine (which at this point is dominated by the 
medical and scientific establishments), one would think that ethics is of key 
concern to those in the midst of flesh machine development; however, nothing 
could be further from reality. The scientific establishment has long since 
demonstrated that when it comes to machinic development, ethics has no real 
place other than its ideological role as spectacle. Ethical discourse is not a 
point of blockage in regard to machinic development. Take the case of nuclear 
weapons development. The ethical argument that species annihilation is an 
unacceptable direction for scientific inquiry should certainly have been enough 
to block the production of such weaponry; however, the needs of the war machine 
rendered this discourse silent. In fact, the need of the war machine to 
overcome competing machinic systems moved nuclear weapons development along at 
top velocity. Handsome rewards and honors were paid to individuals and 
institutions participating in the nuclear initiative. In a word, ethical 
discourse was totally ignored. If big science can ignore nuclear holocaust and 
species annihilation, it seems very safe to assume that concerns about eugenics 
or any of the other possible flesh catastrophes are not going to be very 
meaningful in its deliberations about flesh machine policy and practice. 
Without question, it is in the interest of pancapitalism to rationalize the 
flesh, and consequently it is in the financial interest of big science to see 
that this desire manifests itself in the world. 

Another problem with machinic development could be the institutionally-
contained panglossian reification of the scientific imagination. Consider the 
following quote from Eli Friedman, president of International Society for 
Artifial Organs, in regard to the development of artificial organs: 

Each of us attempting to advance medical science—whether an engineer, chemist, 
theoretician, or physician—depends on personal enthusiasm to sustain our work. 
Optimistic, self-driven investigators succeed beyond the point where the 
pessimist, convinced that the project cannot be done, has given up. Commitment 
to the design, construction, and implanting of artificial internal organs 
requires a positive, romantic, and unrestrained view of what may be attainable. 
Members of our society share a bond gained by the belief that fantasy can be 
transformed into reality. 

and: 

ISAO convenes an extraordinary admixture of mavericks, "marchers to different 
drums," and very smart scientists capable of converting "what if" into "why 
not." 

These lovely rhetorical flourishes primarily function to rally the troops in 
what will be a hard-fought battle for funding. It’s time to move fast (the less 
reflection the better) if the AO model is to dominate the market; after all, 
there is serious competition from those who believe that harvesting organs from 
animals (transgenic animals if need be) is the better path along which to 
proceed. But it is the subtext of such thinking that is really of the greatest 
interest. From this perspective, science lives in a transcendental world beyond 
the social relationships of domination. If something is perceived as good in 
the lab, it will be good in the world, and the way a scientist imagines a 
concept/application to function in the world is the way it will in fact 
function. The most horrifying notion, however, is the idea (bred from a 
maniacal sense of entitlement) that "if you can imagine it, you may as well do 
it," as if science is unconnected to any social structures or dynamics other 
than utopia and progress. 

Perhaps the only hope is that the funding and the optimism becomes so excessive 
that it undermines machinic development. Star Wars is a perfect example of 
incidental resistance from the scientific establishment. During the Reagan-era 
big bonanza for war machine funding, the most ludicrous promises were made by 
big science in order to obtain research funds. The result was a series of 
contraptions that truly defines the comedy of science. Two of the finest 
examples are the rail gun that self-destructed upon launching its pellet 
projectile, and the deadly laser ray that had a range of only three feet. While 
the American taxpayers might see red over the excessive waste, a major section 
of the scientific establishment was apparently distracted enough by the 
blizzard of money that they failed to make any useful lethal devices. 

If I Can See It, It’s Already Dead 

The war machine and the sight machine intersect at two key points—in the visual 
targeting of enemy forces (military sites, production sites, and population 
centers), and in visualizing logistical routes. Once sited and accurately 
placed within a detailed spatial grid, the enemy may be dispatched at the 
attacker’s leisure, using the most efficient routes and means of attack. As 
long as the enemy can remain invisible, determining proper strategic action is 
difficult, if not impossible. Hence any successful offensive military action 
begins with visualization and representation. A strong defensive posture also 
requires proper visual intelligence. The better the vision, the more time 
available to configure a counterattack. The significant principle here—the one 
being replicated in the development of the flesh machine—is that vision equals 
control. Therefore the flesh machine, like its counterparts, is becoming 
increasingly photocentric. 

Not surprisingly, much of the funding for the flesh machine is intended to 
develop maps of the body and to design imaging systems that will expedite this 
process. From the macro to the micro (the Human Genome Project being the best 
known), no stone can remain unturned. Every aspect of the body must be open to 
the vision of medical and scientific authority. Once the body is thoroughly 
mapped and its "mechanistic" splendor revealed, any body invader (organic or 
otherwise) can be eliminated, and the future of that body can be accurately 
predicted. While such developments sound like a boon to humanity, one need not 
be an expert in the field to be skeptical of such prospects. 

While it is hard to doubt the success of the war machine in reducing military 
activity to the mechanized (that is, fully rationalized structures and 
dynamics), it is questionable whether the body can be reduced to a similar 
state regardless of how well it is represented. One major problem is that the 
body cannot be separated from its environment, since so many of its processes 
are set in motion by environmental conditions. For example, a toxic environment 
can produce undesirable effects in the body. Visual representation alerts 
medicine to an invasion, so action can be taken to contain or eliminate the 
invader. In this situation, medicine is reactive rather than preventive, and 
treats only the effect and not the cause. In fact, it diverts causality away 
from ecological pathologies, and reinvests it back in the body. In this manner, 
medicine becomes an alibi for whatever created the toxic situation that 
infected the body in the first place, by acting as if the infectant emerged 
internally. The problem raised here is the limited frame of representation in 
regard to the body map, in conjunction with an emphasis on tactical solutions 
to physical pathologies. This situation is, of course, understandable, since 
strategic action would have an undermining effect on the medical market. The 
one exception to this rule is when the toxic body emerges due to behavioral 
factors. In this case, the scientific/medical establishment can expand its 
authority over the body by suggesting and often enforcing behavioral 
restrictions on patients. In this situation, the science and medical 
establishment functions as a benevolent police force deployed against 
individuals to better mold them to the needs of the state. 

To complicate matters further, flesh machine science and medicine have the 
unfortunate but necessary habit of putting the cart before the horse. The flesh 
machine, unlike its counterparts, does not have the luxury of developing its 
visual and weapons systems simultaneously, nor can weapons development precede 
advanced visual capabilities. The visual apparatus must come first. For 
example, antibiotics probably could not have been invented before the 
development of a microscope. Consequently, as in most research and development, 
a shotgun method is employed, whereby all varieties of vision machines are 
developed in the hopes that a few may be of some use. This leads to thrilling 
headlines like the following from Daniel Haney of the Associated Press: "Brain 
Imagery Exposes a Killer." What this headline refers to is a new medical map, 
acquired through the use of positron-emission tomography, which reveals the 
part of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease, and the degree to which the 
brain has been eroded by the disease. This map can help physicians to diagnose 
Alzheimer’s up to ten years before symptom onset. The comedy begins with the 
admission that there is no way to predict when symptoms will begin to appear, 
and that there is still no known treatment for the disease. All that medical 
science can do is tell the patient that s/he has the disease, and that s/he 
will be feeling its effect sometime in the future. The excitement over being 
able to visualize this disease comes from the belief that if the disease can be 
seen, then cure is near at hand. Or, in the words of the war machine, "If I can 
see it, it’s already dead." 

Since the process of visualization and representation in this case is at best 
only an indication of a far-off possibility for cure, and hence is of little 
use for the patient already diagnosed with the disease, it must be asked: Who 
could benefit from this information? Alzheimer’s is in fact doubly problematic 
because it can be visualized before symptom onset, and because genetic mapping 
can also be used to indicate an individual’s likelihood of developing it. The 
flesh machine’s intersection with the surveying function of the sight machine 
becomes dramatically clear in this situation. Those who would benefit most from 
this information are insurance companies and the employer of the person likely 
to be afflicted with the ailment. Such information would be a tremendous cost-
cutting device for both. However, ethical discussions about collecting bio-data 
lead one to believe that such information would remain confidential in the 
doctor-patient relationship. Perhaps privacy will be maintained. However, it 
seems more likely that if the information is perceived to lead to significantly 
higher profits, resources will be allocated by corporate sources to acquire it. 
The most common strategy to watch for is legislative initiatives pursued under 
the spectacle of benevolence. Mandatory drug testing for some private and 
public employment, under the authority of employee and public security, is an 
example of the means by which privacy can be eroded. 

Finally there is the problem of representation itself. As the war machine 
demonstrates, the greater the visualization of a frontier territory, the 
greater the degree of contestation at the visualized sight. In other words, the 
more that is seen, the more power realizes what needs to be controlled and how 
to control it. The brain is certainly going to be the key, but happily, at this 
point, the research is too immature to warrant strategic intervention on behalf 
of state power. There are, however, good indicators of how the coming battle 
will take shape. One need only think of the visualization of the body and its 
connection to varieties of smoking bans from the legalistic to the normative, 
or in terms of populist countersurveillance, the relationship of toxins (DDT, 
for example) in the environment to body visualization, to understand the 
connection between vision, discipline, and contestation. The prizewinner, 
however, is the visualization of uterine space. Feminist critics have long 
shown how this point of ultra-violent contestation is but the beginning of the 
age of flesh machine violence. (This is also a point of great hope, as the 
discourse of the flesh machine has been appropriated from the experts. At the 
same time, this conflict has shown how fascist popular fronts are just as adept 
at appropriation). In regard to uterine space, feminist critics have 
consistently pointed out that this variety of representation loads the 
ideological dice by presenting the space as separate from the wholistic bio-
system of the woman, thus reinforcing the notion of "fetal space." This idea 
acts as a basis for "fetal rights," which are then argued as taking precedence 
over the rights of women. 

A new era of bio-marginality has surely begun. Certainly this situation will 
only be reinforced by the visualization of either diseases or abnormalities 
(actual or potential) in subjects soon to be classified under the sign of the 
unfit. The unfit will be defined in accordance with their utility in 
relationship to the machine world of pancapitalism. The mapped body is the 
quantified body. Its use is measured down to the penny. Without such a 
development, how could any consumer trust in the markets of the flesh machine? 

Selling Flesh 

One of the oldest manifestations of the flesh machine is the idea of 
engineering the breeding of plants and livestock to produce what are perceived 
to be the most functional products within a given cultural situation. Increased 
knowledge about this task has certainly contributed to the great abundance in 
the food supply in the first world, thus shifting an individual’s relationship 
to food from one of need to one of desire. In light of this achievement, 
industrial food producers have been faced with the task of developing foods 
that meet the logistical demands of broad-based distribution, while still 
maintaining a product that the manufacturer can market as desirable. The most 
productive solution thus far is the manufacture of processed foods; however, 
the market for food cannot be limited to processed food. The desire for 
perishable foods is too deeply etched into the culture, and no amount of 
spectacle can root out this desire. Fortunately for the producers of perishable 
foods, the product and the market can be rationalized to a great extent. This 
particular market is of interest because it provides at this moment the best 
illustration of the market imperatives that are being replicated in the 
industrial production and distribution of human flesh products. (This is not to 
say that flesh production will not one day be more akin to processed food, it 
is only to argue that at present the means of production are still too 
immature). 

To better illuminate this point, consider the case of apples. At the turn of 
the century, there were dozens of various types of apples available to the 
buying public. Now when a consumer cruises through a supermarket in search of 
apples, the choice has been limited to three (red, green, and yellow). Choice 
has become increasingly limited partly because of logistical considerations. 
Like most perishable fruits and vegetables these days, apples are bred to have 
a long shelf life. In order to have apples all year round, they must be 
transported from locations that have the conditions to produce them when other 
locations cannot. Hence these apples must be able to survive an extended 
distribution process, and not all varieties of apples are capable of resisting 
rotting for long periods of time. However, logistics alone does not adequately 
explain choice limitations. Perhaps more important to the formula are market 
considerations. 

Marketing agencies have understood for decades that desire is intensified most 
through visual appeal. How a product looks determines the probability of a 
consumer purchase more than any other variable. For apples, the consumer wants 
brightly colored surfaces, a rounded form, and white inner flesh. In other 
words, consumers want the perfect storybook apple that they have seen 
represented since they were children. Apples are bred to suit the cultural 
construction of "an apple," and only a few varieties of apples can simulate 
this appearance and meet this desire. This situation is yet another case of 
Baudrillard’s universe of platonic madness, where consumers are caught in the 
tyranny of representation that passes as essence. 

Along with the domination of vision, there comes the need of the producer to 
offer the consumer a reliable product, meaning that the apples one buys 
tomorrow will look and taste like the ones bought today. Consequently, there is 
an elimination of sense data other than the visual. If all that is needed to 
excite desire is a good visual, why bother to develop taste and smell? 
Especially when a good product can be guaranteed if it is completely tasteless 
(one can be sure that the apple purchased tomorrow will taste like the one 
purchased today)? In this situation, the tyranny of the image becomes glaringly 
apparent; one would think that smell and taste would be the dominating senses 
when buying foods, since they would best articulate the pleasure of 
consumption. Not so, it is vision, and unfortunately many of the most tasty 
apples do not look very good because they have none of the necessary storybook 
appeal. Consequently various types of apples have been eliminated, or limited 
to distribution in localized markets. 

If the principles of product reliability and visual appeal are applied to the 
production/consumption components (as opposed to those concerned with control) 
of the flesh machine, the reasons for some recent developments become a little 
clearer. The first problem that flesh producers must face is how to get a 
reliable product. At present too little is known about genetic processes to 
fulfill this necessary market imperative. Consequently, they have had to rely 
on fooling the naive consumer. For example, one characteristic commonly sought 
after by those in the techno-baby market is intelligence. Unfortunately this 
characteristic cannot be guaranteed; in fact, flesh producers haven’t the 
slightest idea how to replicate intelligence. However, they can promise 
breeding materials from intelligent donors. While using the sperm of a Nobel 
Prize winner in no way guarantees a smart child, and doesn’t even increase the 
probability (nor does it decrease the probability of having a below average 
child), flesh dealers are able to use false analogies to sell their product. 
(If two tall parents have a child, the probability of the child being tall is 
increased, so wouldn’t it be correct to say that if two people of above average 
intelligence have a child, that it would increase the probability that the 
child will have above average intelligence?) Many consumers believe this line 
of thought (the myth of hard genetic determinism has always been very 
seductive) and are therefore willing to pay higher prices for the sperm of an 
intelligent man than they are for the sperm of an average donor. Although this 
fraud will probably not continue indefinitely in the future, an important 
ideological seed is being sown. People are being taught to think eugenically. 
The perception is growing that in order to give a child every possible benefit 
in life, its conception should be engineered. 

Another common strategy to better regulate flesh products is to take a genetic 
reading of the embryo while still in the petri dish. If a genetic 
characteristic is discovered that is deemed defective, the creature can be 
terminated before implantation. Again, parents-to-be can have their eugenic 
dreams come true within the limits of the genetic test. Even parents using the 
old-fashioned method of conception at least have the option of visualization 
(sonar) to make sure that the desired gender characteristic is realized. In 
each of these cases, better visualization and representation, along with an 
expanded range of genetic tests, will help to insure that desired 
characteristics are always a part of the flesh product, which leads to the 
conclusion that better vision machines are as important for profit as they are 
for control. 

At the same time, remember that the marketing practices of postmodernity do not 
wholly apply to the flesh machine, and at present tend to function on an as-
needed basis. Fertility clinics, for example, participate as much in the 
economy of scarcity (although it must be noted that these products and 
processes do not intersect the economy of need) as they do in the economy of 
desire. While they may use the practices described above, they also have the 
luxury of being the only option for those who have been denied the ability to 
produce flesh materials. Those clinics that can boast a product success rate of 
over 20% (most notably the Center for Reproductive Medicines and Infertility at 
New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, with a success rate of 34%) cannot 
meet the demand for their goods and services. Apparently, the market for flesh 
goods and services has been preconstructed in the bio-ideology of capitalism. 

When Worlds Collide 

Assuming that the flesh machine is guided by the pancapitalist imperatives of 
control and profit, what will occur if these two principles come into conflict 
with one another? This has been known to happen as social machines march toward 
maturity. The sight machine is currently facing this very contradiction in the 
development of the Net. Currently the Net has some space that is relatively 
open to the virtual public. In these free zones, one can get information on 
anything, from radical politics to the latest in commodity development. As to 
be expected, a lot of information floating about is resistant to the causes and 
imperatives of pancapitalism, and from the perspective of the state is badly in 
need of censorship. However, the enforcement of limited speech on the Net would 
require measures that would be devastating to on-line services and phone 
service providers, and could seriously damage the market potential of this new 
tool. (The Net has an unbelievably high concentration of wealthy literate 
consumers. It’s a market pool that corporate authority does not want to annoy). 
The dominant choice at present is to let the disorder of the Net continue until 
the market mechanisms are fully in place, and the virtual public is socialized 
to their use; then more repressive measures may be considered. Social 
conservatism taking a back seat to fiscal conservatism seems fairly 
representative of pancapitalist conflict resolution. The question is, will this 
policy replicate itself in the flesh machine? 

A good example to speculate on in regard to this issue is the ever-elusive "gay 
gene," always on the verge of discovery, isolation, and visualization. Many 
actually anxiously await this discovery to prove once and for all that gayness 
is an essential quality and not just a "lifestyle" choice. However, once placed 
in the eugenic matrix this discovery might elicit some less positive 
associations. In the typical alarmist view, if the gene comes under the control 
of the flesh machine, then it will be eliminated from the gene pool, thus 
giving compulsory heterosexuality a whole new meaning. Under the imperative of 
control this possibility seems likely; however, when the imperative of 
marketability is considered, a different scenario emerges. There may well be a 
sizable market population for whom the selection of a gay gene would be 
desirable. Why would a good capitalist turn his back on a population that 
represents so much profit, not to mention that gay individuals as a submarket 
(CAE is assuming that some heterosexuals would select the gay gene too) must 
submit to the flesh machine to reproduce? Again, market and social imperatives 
come into conflict, but it is unknown which imperative will be selected for 
enforcement. 

Such an issue at least demonstrates the complexity of the flesh machine, and 
how difficult the task of analyzing this third leviathan will be. What is 
certain is that the flesh machine is interdependent with and interrelated to 
the war machine and the sight machine of pancapitalism, and that it is 
certainly going to intensify the violence and the repression of its 
predecessors through the rationalization of the final component (i.e., the 
flesh) of the production/consumption process. Until maps are produced for the 
purpose of resistance and are crossed-referenced through the perspectives of 
numerous contestational voices, there will be no way, practical or strategic, 
to resist this new attack on liberationist visions, discourse, and practice. 


4. Buying Time for the Flesh Machine: Pharmacology and Social Order 

Drugs are a part of everyday life in pancapitalist society, and serve a variety 
of social purposes including the medicinal, the recreational, and upon occasion 
the spiritual. These categories overlap and intersect to a greater or lesser 
degree, depending on the context in which they are used. Nestled within this 
pharmacological collection is another category of drugs that also intersects 
the other varieties. These drugs are designed to "normalize" behavior as well 
as the social presentation of the body. They are usually perceived under the 
sign of the medicinal, but they are different in quality and function. Unlike 
drugs used to prolong life, where their quality is primarily measured by a 
patient’s proximity to death (ideological factors are a secondary measurement), 
the quality of drugs used to normalize behavior is measured by the patient’s 
willingness to conform to social imperatives and the patient’s ability to 
integrate he/rself into specific social contexts beneficial to the given 
political economy. Within the context of pancapitalism, the general social 
imperatives inscribed on the individual are those of production, consumption, 
and order under the guiding metaprinciple of efficiency. When individuals break 
from these imperatives by taking up disruptive behavior that is beyond the 
norm, but is still perceived as manageable, biochemical intervention becomes a 
viable, simple, and profitable option for ideological re-inscription. The drugs 
used for this purpose primarily function as a means of social control, and they 
maintain a social environment that is valued above and beyond the physical, 
mental, or spiritual well-being of the individual. 

The problem with such biochemical interventions is that they are not a very 
efficient means of ideological re-inscription. Too often, the drugs used have 
side effects that are as counterproductive as the behavior they seek to 
eliminate. This situation may change as researchers learn more about 
biochemistry, but biochemical intervention is not the most desirable from the 
perspective of pancapitalism. Interventionist drugs, being merely symptom 
managers, do not function preventively, and their great fiscal value is offset 
by their modest value as behavioral control mechanisms. The answer to this 
problem is to eliminate any biological cause for "anti-social" behavior by 
ideologically designing and engineering the flesh. This goal is among the key 
mandates of the flesh machine. Unfortunately, the flesh machine is at present 
too immature to implement practical strategies in this biological arena, and 
hence cannot meet this goal. Until it can prepare strategies of flesh 
intervention that reduce deviant behavior, social control drugs can be used 
temporarily to reinforce the prison walls of social imperatives and normative 
behavior. This is not to say that drugs for the purpose of social control will 
completely disappear when the flesh machine matures; it is only to say that 
biochemical intervention will be minimized in the future. Social control drugs 
will always have a place in reforming or eliminating deviant behavior that is 
primarily caused by cultural conditions, and to enhance normative behavior 
(smart drugs). 

Neutralizing Emotion 

Most antidepressants and mood stabilizers are designed for people who are still 
socially functional and reasonably well integrated into their social systems. 
The problem with these people is that their mood swings can disrupt the spaces 
of production and consumption. Efficient work requires stabilized, rational, 
instrumental behavior. Behaviors which fall outside of these parameters are 
considered undesirable and disruptive. Excessive emotion that does not 
originate within the process of work itself decreases a worker’s output. This 
would not be so bad if it were self-contained; unfortunately, work is generally 
a group process. When excessive emotion affects a worker so much that it 
manifests itself in behavior, it initiates a social current that has a 
detrimental effect on the other workers, both in terms of morale and behavior. 
Consequently, interventionist practices become necessary. Antidepressants and 
mood stabilizers arrest the behavioral symptoms of excessive emotion. While 
they do not necessarily help the individual using them find peace of mind, they 
do tend to function well by stopping the individual from becoming a catalyst 
for detrimental social currents in the space of production.<4>

The downside of this strategy is that chemical intervention of this class 
cannot be too widespread, since the manufacture of desire requires an affective 
response from its target populations. How could store displays, impulse racks, 
product advertisements, political advertisements, architectural designs, and 
other manifestations of manufactured desire possibly function if the population 
were emotionally neutral? Unlike the environment of production, where stable, 
rational, and instrumental action is required, the environment of excess 
consumption requires unstable, nonrational, and affective action. Without it, 
consumers could not be convinced to buy that which they do not really need 
(preferably with the money that they have yet to earn). The product providers 
must establish an emotional-based pleasure switch in consumers that can be 
activated by spectacular means. Mood-stabilizing drugs confound the strategies 
to do this, so–ironically enough–movement away from such chemicals is also 
desirable, when placed in the context of consumption. Mood stabilizers place 
capital in the awkward position of using a social control strategy that negates 
itself as it moves from the context of production to consumption. 

Children’s Pathologies 

Two common pathologies believed to cause behavior problems in children are 
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Hyperactivity. The former has recently 
been recognized as an affliction which also affects adults, but medical 
interest in the disorder is still centered on children. One must wonder why it 
is so important to diagnose and manage this ailment in children, and why it is 
less important to do so in adults. The answer is primarily cultural. Once 
children leave the confines of domestic space, and are shuttled off to their 
first institutional environment (school), a new level of socialization begins. 
The education system accelerates the process of teaching the child that there 
is a hierarchical social order, that it is meticulously rule-laden, and that 
these rules must be followed. When it functions as intended, mass socialization 
teaches the child obedience to authority, acceptance of the instrumental 
fragmentation of time, the importance of repetitive labor, and a tolerance for 
boredom simply by repeatedly placing the child within the bureaucratic context 
day after day. These social fundamentals set the context in which the child 
learns verbal and analytic skills. If this process is successfully completed, 
the young adult will be adequately prepared to begin work as a low-level 
bureaucrat, or as a semi-skilled or skilled laborer. Others who excel in verbal 
or analytic skills can move on to further education and train for a place in 
managerial, professional, or high-level technocratic work. Those who are for 
any reason unable to cope with any part of the system are cast adrift. 

The process of forcing out the incapable (whether the incapacity is due to 
physical, psychological, sociological, or economic reasons) takes time. Until 
it becomes clear which students are unable to "adapt" to the process, all are 
served to insure that both the work force itself and the ideological conditions 
for an efficient work force are continually replicated. Given the significance 
of this general process, one which the adult transcends by entering a more 
specialized field, it is little wonder that behavior which disrupts the 
replication of the primary educational imperatives will not be tolerated. 
Children must know that they must be at certain places at certain times 
engaging in specific tasks. They must know that they must focus their attention 
on work, no matter how boring, when they are told to do so. They must know that 
they must recognize and obey those who are of a higher rank. And if they do 
not, bureaucratic officials can only conclude that they are mentally ill or 
incapable (resistance to instrumental consciousness is rarely viewed as a sign 
of intelligence). For those who are found to be mentally ill (in this case 
suffering from ADD or hyperactivity), biochemical intervention is a necessity. 
Like the worker on antidepressants, the child treated with drugs can better 
integrate he/rself into the social environment, but these drugs will ensure 
that the teacher’s work is not interrupted by the child, and that the other 
children’s socialization process is not disrupted. After all, what use is a 
child who resists the given social order? What need is there for a child who 
would rather drift into the realm of the imagination instead of doing he/r 
boring assignment, or a child who would rather engage the emergent 
possibilities of play than engage the overdetermined structure of work? Such 
children are not only disruptive, but potentially serve as damaging role models 
for other children, since they represent the beginnings of a formation of 
resistant thinking and activity. Unfortunately, educators who see a significant 
place for such children and reject interventionist drug practices geared toward 
maintaining the status quo of the bureaucratic environment are marginalized as 
radical pedagogues. 

An ailment like ADD, or any other anti-work disorder, is seldom diagnosed in 
the adult environment, because it is not needed. Since it is assumed that an 
adult’s socialization process is complete, and hence the punishment for poor 
production is known (dismissal from duty), the option of biochemical 
intervention need only be suggested. Employers expect that adults will 
acquiesce out of conditioned fear. However, if the socialization process has 
really worked effectively, adults will volunteer for intervention as soon as 
they realize that production is dropping. 

Relieving Anxiety and Stress 

Like antidepressants, anxiety and stress relievers are designed primarily for 
those who are still functioning adequately in their social environments. In 
fact, for these drugs to be profitable, individuals must be competent enough to 
realize that their mental/physical condition is not suitable for a particular 
social environment, and at least have modest knowledge of how and where to "get 
help." Since anxiety and stress disorders are so common in everyday life, 
considerable research and development has been done to improve the products for 
this mass market. The members of this class of interventionist drugs have been 
refined to minimize addictive characteristics, and to eliminate recreational 
and other noninstrumental characteristics. Unlike in the 50s and 60s when 
powerful and potentially addicting drugs, like Seconol, could be prescribed for 
various stress disorders, physicians now prescribe less powerful drugs such as 
Ativan or Xanax. These drugs have less euphoric or stupefying effects than 
their predecessors while maintaining the desired effects on the individual, and 
hence are perceived as improvements over their predecessors. In cases where 
drugs could not be cleansed of their recreational characteristics, nor be 
redeployed in specialized medical markets, they were simply made illegal 
(methaqualone for example). The result is an array of products that will 
maintain the mass market for stress relief, while minimizing unacceptable side 
effects. 

Indeed such a market for pharmaceuticals is currently more profitable than 
ever. In the US, as work intensifies, the workday grows longer, and real wages 
dramatically decrease, stress levels rise. The stress effect is doubled in the 
economy of excess: Individuals not only worry about survival, but are taught to 
fear losing the goods which they have accumulated. The pancapitalist medical 
establishment has responded to this social development by offering their 
services as mental mechanics to keep unstable bodies performing at peak levels. 
Managed drug intervention is a primary tactic used to accomplish this task. 
Even corporations have begun to respond by offering their employees access to 
exercise classes and gymnasiums, and a rare few offer access to on-the-clock 
tactical meditation, hypnosis, and rest. The important factor here is that the 
body is perceived as the culprit in need of normalization, because it is 
failing to adequately adapt to its environment. However, since the environment 
in which pathologically stressful conditions occur is intentionally designed to 
exceed human potential, the real culprit causing bodily disruption is the 
social situation in which the individual finds he/rself trapped. As to be 
expected, few attempts are made to correct the pathological conditions which 
cause individuals to work themselves into sickness, and thereby place 
themselves in need of drug intervention. Quite the opposite–environmental 
conditions in the space of production and service are becoming more detrimental 
to human well-being, and the responsibility for maintaining one’s body in this 
hostile environment is being placed squarely on the individual. 

Here the mandate of the flesh machine is to engineer the body in a manner that 
increases its ability to more readily adapt to cultural conditions that have 
transcended human biology. On the one hand, the flesh machine must select 
characteristics that will increase production/service, such as increased 
concentration and stamina, while on the other hand, it must eliminate stress 
mechanisms (since fight or flight behaviors are becoming less necessary in 
complex culture, the biological mechanisms which produce them are perceived by 
some power vectors as having outlived their use). The flesh machine must 
accomplish this task at a rate that at least parallels other pancapitalist 
demands on the body, demands that cannot be solved through technological 
intervention. The ebb and flow of drugs used to bring the body up to standard 
will depend on such developments. The further the flesh machine is behind 
pancapitalist demands, the greater the use of such drugs (given the mass 
deployment of stress relievers, it is obvious that the flesh machine has a lot 
of work left to do). If the flesh machine meets its goal or surpasses it, use 
of drugs such as these will decrease or even disappear. 

Smart Drugs 

This class of drugs often complements the use of antidepressants and stress 
relievers. In the best-case scenario, they consist of nutritional supplements 
and "natural" medicines which are supposed to enhance memory, stamina, immune 
systems, and general health. These drugs tend to benefit both the individual 
and the social system. They pick up where drugs such as stress relievers stop. 
Rather than bringing the body back to normality, they push the body into 
supernormality. For consumers, the downside of this category of smart drugs is 
that their high level of social acceptance creates profitability, which causes 
a tremendous array of questionable products to appear on the market. Some of 
these products seem to offer nothing more than a placebo effect (such as the 
claim that melatonin can reset the biological clock or that ginseng improves 
sexual performance), while others encourage very profitable useless excess 
(such as megadoses of vitamins that the body is unable to process). Such 
corporate cons are bound to parallel any product trend, but what is most 
interesting is that the desire for smart drugs, which has been manufactured 
through spectacle to further develop this market, has the potential of 
expanding their domain, increasing the intersection of smart drugs with other 
varieties of drugs. In terms of drugs used for body enhancement, those which 
are developed for medical purposes (to restore normality) and for recreational 
purposes can be used for "smart" purposes. 

When smart drugs are used in this manner, they indicate a victory for 
pancapitalist socialization, since they are not being used to regulate the 
maladapted body, and are instead being used to give an individual an "edge" 
within the space of production/service, indicating an extreme conformity to 
imperatives of production. The list of possibilities extends from everyday life 
chemical intervention, like excessive coffee consumption, to illicit and at 
times counterproductive drugs such as methedrine and cocaine. When used in 
proper doses, these drugs allow the individual to work longer and harder due to 
artificial stimulation. Unfortunately, prolonged use of high-powered drugs in 
everyday life leads to a point of diminishing returns, and finally to 
counterproduction. This potential problem, combined with a lack of 
authoritative supervision in the consumption of these substances, places them 
in a unacceptable category from the perspective of pancapitalist power vectors. 
However, by submitting to and paying for proper supervision, alternative high-
powered drugs can be obtained. The most notable example of the use of social 
control drugs for body enhancement is the emergence of the "Prozac advantage" 
among professional and managerial classes. Prozac is among the most commonly 
prescribed antidepressants. For example, in 1993 in the US, 650,000 
prescriptions per month were written for patients. (It is difficult to say how 
many were actually in need of the drug as a means to cope with physically 
generated depression or to cope with pathological social conditions, as opposed 
to those using it for its smart qualities. It should also be noted that any 
skewing of this statistic toward the middle class is primarily indicative of 
inequitable distribution of health care.) Given the extremely wide availability 
of this drug, there are, at the very least, anecdotal cases of the adapted body 
searching for regulated flesh enhancers that catapult the user into 
artificially accelerated instrumental action. 

Smart drugs aside, the drastic deployment of social control drugs in general 
indicates a growing intensity in the pathology of social space, from the 
domestic to the productive. At the same time, it must be noted that a trend 
toward social acceptance of the psychological/psychiatric industry as a 
necessary part of postindustrial life has paralleled this deployment. Indeed, 
the growth and empowerment of medical authority and its industries is currently 
a structural social necessity, somewhat akin to the structural need in early 
capital to construct a massive bureaucratic class out of the displaced agrarian 
class. As late capital has matured into pancapitalism, all possible measures 
must be taken to resituate "significant" people in constantly and rapidly 
changing conditions as quickly as possible. Smart drugs will obviously help in 
this endeavor. Whenever cyborg technology fails to meet social demands for body 
enhancement, biochemical intervention will function as a key 
supplement–particularly in maintaining and enhancing interior ideological 
inscription. 

Steroids 

In addition to drugs for mental/behavioral social control are those which 
enhance the presentation of the body in everyday life. Steroids are an unusual 
example, because their use went through a significant transition during the 70s 
and 80s. Steroids were originally and primarily task-oriented drugs which were 
used by athletes training to reach peak bodily performance. For sports which 
required inordinate amounts of bulk, strength, and stamina, steroids were a 
means to accelerate and enhance the training process. Unfortunately, they 
rapidly showed themselves to have side effects that did not necessarily aid in 
accomplishing the goal at hand. The primary problem was that steroids produced 
psychological and behavioral effects (such as uncontrollable aggression) that 
were less than "sportspersonlike." As the use of steroids progressed, the drug 
began to show serious signs of diminishing returns for the physical body in the 
form of organ decay. Even without long-term studies on the detrimental effects 
of steroids, the short-term evidence of physical catastrophe was so 
overwhelming that steps were taken to eliminate steroid use among those 
participating in spectacular sports, from the schoolyard to the stadiums. 
Spectacle had turned against itself, as sports fans watched their heroes die at 
an early age in exchange for a successful but brief sports career. The 
situation was rapidly corrected by introducing mandatory drug testing for 
athletes in institutionally sponsored sports. 

Steroids thus became black market drugs. While they still were used as task-
oriented body enhancers, this function fell back into a secondary position. The 
former secondary characteristic rose to the primary position–it was now a drug 
of body spectacle. Since those who were using the