Simply put, "carnephobia" is the hatred and fear of
the flesh. It presupposes that humans' minds can be split from
their bodies. Though such a split is biologically impossible,
since the mind is an artifact of the brain, a very physical organ,
most western philosophy treats the male human being as free of
a body (projecting onto female human beings (and subordinate ethnic
groups and races) exclusive possession of flesh-- otherwise known
as "immanence"-- so necessary to life, but that males are allowed
to imagine they can escape from the moment they see themselves
as different-- and superior-- to the mothers and other women who
nurture them). Nicola Griffith's essay, "Writing from the Body"
addresses the consequences of this dualism. (The essay can be
found in Science Fiction Eye #15, Fall, 1997. It is also posted
at
Nicola Griffith's website.)
A lot of science fiction aims to free humans literally from
the burden of flesh. The most explicit fantasies of this can
be found in cyberpunk-- not in the cyborg fiction written by women,
but in the macho side of the subgenre. In the paradigmatic fiction
of male cyberpunk, Neuromancer by William Gibson, one finds repeated
expressions of disgust for "meat-existence," repeated insistence
on the ecstasy of "jacking-in" (not an accidental term), and the
fantasy that there's a better life for "cowboys" in cyberspace
after death, as constructs. ("Cowboys," of course, are always
male in Gibson's trilogy-- an essentialist notion contingent on
possession of a penis, despite the wish to be free of flesh-definitions.)
The fiction by women with strong cyberpunk elements either ignores
this attitude, negotiates with it, or outright disputes it. This
is likely because the body is something that is not as easily
dismissed by women as by men (though Griffith's essay shows that
women will on occasion fall into this attitude, too). Candas
Jane Dorsey's "Machine Sex" and my own "Bettina's Bet" are examples
of work by women writers that challenges the carnephobia underlying
cyberpunk.
I think this disgust for the physical-- biological-- aspects of
life harkens to a life-long longing for freedom from maternal power--
the first great power each of us, as humans, encounters in our
lives. If only we could be human without flesh, and the history
of flesh, and the back brain and hormones and above all mothers...
In the old days, back when de Beauvoir was hot, this was referred
to as the wish for "transcendence." Gibson's trilogy seems to
place all hope in the belief of a better life after flesh-- proposing
cyberspace as heaven, where permanent residence is granted only
after the body has flat-lined, and therefore ceased to weigh down
the mind and the soul.
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