disembodied
adjective
separated from or existing without the body
• (of a sound) lacking any obvious physical source
Researchers, particularly neurologists, and the general public have long been fascinated by sensory illusions and OBEs that happen “naturally” or without the use of technology, but the advent of new technologies obviously dramatically altered human perception of the self, as well as time and space. Bits of human identity that were disembodied from the individuals they represent began to circulate as soon as language and mark-making tools were invented. As Kelly Gates says in Our Biometric Future, “the circulation of visual and textual representations created the conditions whereby certain classes of human identities became unmoored from their bodily existence” long before audiovisual media and electronic databases (Gates). If you have an identity, you must have a body, and whether it is “at the level of immanent embodiment or transcendental disembodiment,” the body is the point of departure, return, and being itself (Ajana). The new communication technologies of the nineteenth century gave fragmented representation of human identity “new mediated forms and amplified the uncanny phenomenon” of these replicas “moving through society disarticulated from their embodied human counterparts” (Gates). Men and women of the nineteenth century, and Modernism, responded to the rapidly changing technological landscape of the phonograph, radio, telephones, photography, television, with alarm, anxiety, and discomfort. Frederic Myers of the Society of Psychical Research coined the phrase “phantasms of the living” to refer to the “proliferation of these humanoid replicas” (Gates). Over a century later, we have now gotten used to these phantasms, but disembodied elements of people are even more prevalent and take new forms on a regular basis as new technologies are invented.
adjective
separated from or existing without the body
• (of a sound) lacking any obvious physical source
Researchers, particularly neurologists, and the general public have long been fascinated by sensory illusions and OBEs that happen “naturally” or without the use of technology, but the advent of new technologies obviously dramatically altered human perception of the self, as well as time and space. Bits of human identity that were disembodied from the individuals they represent began to circulate as soon as language and mark-making tools were invented. As Kelly Gates says in Our Biometric Future, “the circulation of visual and textual representations created the conditions whereby certain classes of human identities became unmoored from their bodily existence” long before audiovisual media and electronic databases (Gates). If you have an identity, you must have a body, and whether it is “at the level of immanent embodiment or transcendental disembodiment,” the body is the point of departure, return, and being itself (Ajana). The new communication technologies of the nineteenth century gave fragmented representation of human identity “new mediated forms and amplified the uncanny phenomenon” of these replicas “moving through society disarticulated from their embodied human counterparts” (Gates). Men and women of the nineteenth century, and Modernism, responded to the rapidly changing technological landscape of the phonograph, radio, telephones, photography, television, with alarm, anxiety, and discomfort. Frederic Myers of the Society of Psychical Research coined the phrase “phantasms of the living” to refer to the “proliferation of these humanoid replicas” (Gates). Over a century later, we have now gotten used to these phantasms, but disembodied elements of people are even more prevalent and take new forms on a regular basis as new technologies are invented.