Science or Art?:
A (Postmodern) Matter of Life and Death

abstract

The stated intention of Gunter von Hagens' Body Worlds is to make anatomical knowledge available to the lay public, but the dialogue generated by the exhibit tends to focus on death as a central issue. However much the critics and lawmakers try to posit a conventional binary of "death" vs. "life," the recorded comments of lay audiences and individuals who have officially registered to be "body donors" imply an understanding of death in relation to life that is more complex than the traditional sense of direct opposites. Intertwined with the discussions of life and death is the question of whether Body Worlds is science or art. Von Hagens himself is adamant that the exhibit is not art. Others consider the "whole-body plastinates" that are positioned in a mimetic, almost performative, context to be more aesthetic than educational. A nervous system plays chess; a muscular system swims. For many critics, the display of dead human bodies for artistic purposes is absolutely inappropriate, but their use for scientific purposes is acceptable.

Playing into both the "life/death" and the "art/science" questions are notions of "reality" and "authenticity." Interestingly, these concepts as they appear in the exhibit and the discussion surrounding it are peculiarly recent. Indeed, one of the most striking things about the vast rhetoric generated by and about Body Worlds is how strongly it reflects an historically postmodern moment in its vocabulary and imagery. In this paper, I will explore the postmodernism inherent in the conceptions of life, death, art, and science as they are invoked by the public display of plastinated human bodies.

D. Ohlandt-Ross, University of Michigan