The Contingency Of Identity In Trainspotting Philosophy Essay

The Contingency Of Identity In Trainspotting Philosophy EssayThe perimeters of close toones eubstance be often plan to signify the enclosure of a changeless perception of the world. For example, mainstream horse opera edict perceives corporeal limits as the impenetrable barrier between subjectiveness and external forces. This toughie emphasizes the subject as regulator over what external forces influence their subjectivity, and in turn implies that the subject is ego-governing in choosing or organism her own identity. philosophical projects such as the Enlightenment and the Ameri rouse dream expound on the Cartesian Isi assertion that anyone has the agency to construct an original, autonomous identity. These philosophies have helped bind Western ontology to a fantasy of mind over matter.However, 20th century thinkers have challenged this nonion. Philosopher and sociologistMichael Foucault posits the embody is transformed into an instrument for political power, and that idealualizing subjectivity as a unchangeable construct is crucial to the preservation of the state ForFoucault, any notion of autonomy is an articulation of political agenda. Correspondingly,Psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva shows that restricting subjectivity to an epidermal container oppresses an entire fashion of understanding subjectivity. Kristeva asks the reader to consider a perception of subjectivity that contingently and provisionally fluctuates in its relation to the bodys sensed borders. She claims subjectivity and the body are entwined in an ontology found on the transgression of borders, not the establishment of them. kind of of agreeing with theWests claim that citizens conduct their selfhood within epidermal boundaries, Kristeva argues that subjectivity is unstable, fragmented, and dispersed across various relations with the body.Therefore, subjectivity has the capacity to transform and be transformed through engagement with the body. Toward this end, I will investiga te the ever-fluctuating bodies and identities inIrvine Welshs multimedia text Trainspotting (Boyle, 1996 Welsh, 1996). The film and novel epitomise the permeable, fluctuating nature of subjectivity as conceived by Kristeva, and thushighlight the fact that selfhood fronts on a transgression rather than an establishment ofborders.Foucault and Doeile BodiesMichael Foucaults term body politics refers to the practices and policies through whichpowers of society regulate the human body, as well as the struggle over the degree of individualand social control of the body. institutional power uttered in government and laws is thepower at play in body politics (Body Politics). Foucault says that Western societys falseontology makes citizens think they have stable identities because of the governments regulationof the physical body through institutions and laws. In short, citizens perceive themselves asautonomous subjects because of the states emphasis on hygiene and refreshedliness. Foucau lt saysthis ontology is the effect of political power, and that any selfhood a proper citizen assumes is anarticulation of this power. Associate Professor Nick Mansfield, head of the cultural studiesdepartment at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, specializes in Foucaultian theory, andhis book on subjectivity lends a nice segue as to how body politics and self-hood coincideOur philosophies of science, our theories of the organization of society, our sense ofethical motive, purpose and integrity all partake of the same emphasis on the individual not only asa social quantity, provided as the point where all meaning and value gouge be judged. This individualism is described as freedom, and we still direct our most serious political ambitions towards perfecting that freedom. It to a fault insures as a duty, however. (60)Foucault focuses on the implicit sense of duty that is entailed with citizenship. He collide withs civic dutyas the submission of ones body to forces of pol itical power. Critically acclaimed Italian politicalphilosopher Giorgio Agamben has stated that one of the most persistent features of Foucaults work is its deciding(prenominal) abandonment of the traditional approach to the problem of power, which is found on juridico-institutional modalityls (the definition of sovereignty, the theory of the State), infavor of an unprejudiced analysis of the concrete ways in which power penetrates subjects verybodies and forms of life (5). Foucaults fine studies of social institutions reveal thatinstitutional surveillance of the body-specifically in delineating what is the clean and properbody-designates citizens corporal existence as a docile state. Foucault supports this claim withhis concept of processes of subjectivization, These processes under-thematize and universalizethe body until it can be treated as inert or disordered in other words, until physicality obtains adocile classification. Similarly, as cultural theorist Elizabeth Grosz arg ues, the body historicallyhas been conceived of as a vehicle for the expression of an otherwise sealed and self-contained,incommunicable psyche. It is through the body that people _ .. can receive, code, and translatethe inputs of the external world (9). Once I established how a favorable perception of thedocility is impressed upon greenswealths, I will discuss how Trainspotting characters controvert thisplatform with their own counter-culture philosophies and behavior. The characters struggle withthe implications of properness and duty that Foucault lift ups as essential to the function of acitizen. They are undecomposed examples of the insight that Julia Kristeva gleans from Foucaults work a society and state that glorifies corporeal purity is thus dependent on sources of misery anddegradation in order to have a standard to judge what is clean or unclean, appropriate orunfitting. barely first, I will establish how body hygiene becomes such an important factor forcitizens to v iew themselves as autonomous subjects. As mentioned, Foucault points to stateinstitutions that enact processes of subjectivization.Processes of subjectivization refer to government programs that exemplify epidermalperimeters as impenetrable borders that contain the supposed autonomous nature of citizensThese processes bring the individual to bind himself to his own identity and consciousness, and,at the same time, to an external power (Agamben 5). Mansield elucidates, in our fantasy of autonomous selfhood, we normally imagine our subjectivity to be set with the uniqueness and separateness of our individual bodies. We draw an imaginary line around the perimeters of our bodies and define our subjectivity as the unique density of matter contained within that line. When we operate in society as voters, taxpayers, welfare recipients and consumers, our identity seems to be married to this autonomy we front up for interviews, check ups and interrogations as the content of our bodies. (82) The tangible heraldic bearing bodies provide people with is taken to be absolute and final validation ofwho they are. When someone appears for a doctors appointment or a cotut trial she ceases beinga name on a paper and appears as herself These processes of subjectivization imply not only thenotion that someones tangible borders give them a real identity, but also that that identitymaintains its own agency. When analyzing state systems from Foucaults perspective, it becomesapparent that citizenship designates citizens as autonomous. Foucault insists that wheninstitutions seek to control and know the subject, they manipulate the body, fixing it strictly inplace, watching and measuring it this in turn gives citizens the sense that they are any intimacy but a closely monitored, social denomination. But in reality, the state has a vested interest in itscitizens health that is expressed by institutional programs emphasis on autonomy. Throughsubjectivization processes, an inherent notion of cleanliness is attached in the definition ofcitizen, and the upkeep of clean borders is expected to entail some sort of autonomy. Incontrast, Foucault claims that institutions endorsing corporeal cleanliness ensures a specific fiberof docility in the citizenry. If citizens believe that they are the agents merely because of theirhygiene, then the institutions have succeeded in transforming its citizens bodies into inertentities that can be prescribed or delineating in any way the state sees fit. The sense of autonomyis therefore revealed to preserve state power. Foucaults second example of subjectivization processes, that of policing strategies, explains this more(prenominal) explicitly.Foucault states that the laws of the penal system, which were once isolated in the form ofa public take downt (e.g. a criminal dismembered in the marketplace), have become instilled intonormative ontology with the universe of converse of prisons. Firstly, the prison does not simply incarcerat epeople arbitrarily. It depends on a system of proper proceedings that in turn must be reassert bycodes of law or legal precedent. When someone is convicted of a crime, she or he goes frombeing a person to being a phenomenon. As a type, the individual becomes subject to analysisaccording to scientific models. Questions begin to be asked, like, what personality traits makethis person a criminal? What social conditions lead to his or her crime? Here, the individual isnot free and autonomous, but the focal point of larger forces, analyzed by systems of knowledgein what they claim is impartial law (Lyon 7). Foucault uses the prison model of liberaleconomist and social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) to help explain the casual yetcompulsory paranoid lifestyle that is instilled in prisons and reflected in society. According toFoucault, the panopticon is typical of the processes of subjectivization that govern modern life. A panopticon is a circular prison with an empty area in the m iddle where a guard tower is placed.All of the prisoners cell face inward, and one guard can effectively keep survelliance over allthe inmates at once. Furthermore, is an opaque sheet of one-way ocular glass is installed in theguard tower, the guard herself would not have to necessarily be present to enact a monitoringsystem. Likewise, state power organizes the population into individual units that are then subjectto monitoring in a system of maximum visibility through implicit accountability. This worksmost effectively in institutions where schools, hospitals, banks, and departments of socialsecurity and tax all keep files on us. People forget around these records, or accept them as a needful and inevitable part of institutions operations (Lyon 8-9). However, these files are our effective social reality, and contain true statements about us that can be manipulated orthogonal of ourcontrol. These files and the truth they contain are not our property, and they enhance the state ofdocility imposed on citizens bodies.Foucault believes that power and the knowledge coincide to ensure the state maintains itsdocile influence, and in turn preserves its efficiency. Therefore, any institution operatesaccording to its own theories of peoples subjectivity the unruly adolescent, the remedial reader,the hysterical patient, the credit risk-these are all types of subjectivity that people may or maynot occupy, sometimes without even knowing it. Every institution has classes of persons intowhich everyone who deals with them is distributed.The apparently simple and necessary logic of this categorisation-it is not a conspiracy tooppress us, our common sense says, how could these institutions operate otherwise?-already separates us from one another(prenominal), isolating us, opening up and closing offopportunities, destining us for accredited rewards and punishments. The system of truth onwhich each institution depends is always already a power at work on us. (Mansfield 6 2)Thus, individuality is not the highest expression of human life, but the liaison social institutionsneed people to feel they are, so that people remain vulnerable to the truths the state has contrivedfor its own efficiency. As a result, the self constantly problematizes its place in the world and itsrelationship to others and to inherited codes of behavior. Therefore, the subject does not simplyrely on some unknowable of pure natural subjectivity, but rather produces itself endlessly as aresponse to its relationship to other and to its cultural and historical context (Mansfield 63).Foucaults ideas encourage an earnestly skeptical pose towards subjectivity, one that isembodied in Trainspottings main character, Mark Renton. Renton can be seen as anti-subjective because he sees any statement that claims to speak the truth about human subjectivity as an imposition, a technique of power and social administration. Renton voices his reservations Society invents spurious convoluted log ic tae absorb and change people whaes doings is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah knew the pros and cons, know that ahm gaunnae hav a short life, am ay sotmd mind, etcetera, etcetera, but still pauperism tae usesmack? They wont allow ya dae it. They wont let ye dae it, because its seen as a sign ofthair ain failure. The fact is ye jist simply choose tae reject whit they huv tae offer. make out us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments choose swear out machines choosecars choose sitting on a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows,stufting fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteingyersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats yeveproduced. Choose life. Well, ah choose no tae choose life. If the cunts pious platitude handle that,its thair fuckin problem (Welsh 187-9).Renton, like Foucault, sees subjectivity as a mode of social organization and administration. ForRenton, the state is inheren tly dependent on its citizens to cultivate a notion of sanctity regardingtheir lives. Upon this foundation of natural life, the State builds concepts of morality and truththat are articulations of power structures (Agamben 2). Therefore, Renton and his mates seek asubjectivity that does not privilege the sanctity of life. As actor and critic Lewis MacLeod puts it,Welshs characters are not at all interested in the rule of parasite politicians (Welsh 228).Instead they operate on a highly idiosyncratic cultural logic that frequently inverts customaryvalues (90). The characters experimental subjectivity prioritizes desire and dependency as themost important achievements in life, and the screenplays fitting of the above quote lelucidates this point. ln the theatrical version, Renton explainsChoose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassmenttae the selfish, fucked up brats that youve spawned to replace yourselves . But whywould I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin else.And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when youve got heroin?Renton has lost faith in any type of subjectivity, and considers a life on heroin just as supererogatory asa life of gainful employment. From a Foucaultian perspective his reasoning can obtain somecredence in that institutions will inevitably wrest all agency away from its citizens. It isinteresting to note Welshs novels title describes a pointless exercise enacted within societysestablishments. Renton can clearly see the absurdity of society and the meaninglessness of hislife, yet his choice is in conclusion self-defeating, for as the title of the book suggests, heroin addiction, like trainspotting grown men watching locomotives and noting their identificationnumbers -is effectively a pointless exercise (Bishop 221-22). Similarly, in Peter Corlissreview of the cinematic adaptation of Trainspotting, Welsh and John Hodge explain theimportanc e of the metaphorTrainspotting, Welsh explains, is the compulsive collection of locomotive enginenumbers from the British railway system. But you cant do anything with the numbersonce youve collected them. Says Hodge, who culled the brilliant screenplay fromWelshs anecdotal novel. Its a nice metaphor for doing something that gives your life abit of structure but its ultimately pointless. So is the intravenous injection of medicates apalpable pleasure that wastes time, and often, life (85).In his PhD Doctorate entitled The Diminished Subject, Professor Geoffrey Bishop looks at theT rainspotting texts to see how the characters attempt to exercise a new type of subjectivity.Bishop writes, For Renton, heroin use is a determinedly philosophical decision to adopt acounter-discursive practice in order to retreat from a society that makes him an outsider, andthreatens his attempts to simplify his existence (ZI9). As I shall show in the following analysis,through the selfish pleasure of dr ug use Renton attempts to avoid the docility that Foucault talksabout In an interview with film critic Andrew OHagan, it is apparent that T rainspotting sdirector and screenwriter were not attempting to break Kristevas theories in their film. But, as I will discuss, the filmic adaptation of the novel lends itself very well to Kristevian philosophy.Kristeva, Posthumanist Practice, and TrainspottingJulia Kristeva argues that subjectivity depends on someones relation to outside forces.Kristevas ontology is based on a transgression, rather than an establishment, of borders.Likewise, the bodies in Trainsporting illustrate a significant alternative to traditional conceptions of the body as stable and self-contained. I propose that the film calls for a critical approach thatattends to bodies as products and producers of posthuman discourses. Posthumanist practice questions the genealogy of moral norms rather than accepting and perpetuating them, and much(prenominal)of Kristevas theory is an enactment of posthuman discourse. In critical theory, the posthuman isa speculative being that represents or seeks to enact a re-writing of what is generally conceivedof as human. Posthumanist criticism critically questions Renaissance humanism, which is abranch of humanist philosophy that claims human nature is a universal state from which thehuman being emerges, and it stresses that human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of freewill, and unified in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman recognizesimperfectability and disunity within him or herself Instead of a humanist perspective, aposthuman perception understands the world through context and heterogeneous perspectiveswhile maintaining intellectual rigor and a dedication to objective observations of the world. chance onto this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneselfthrough different identities. The posthuman, for critical theorists of the subject, has an eme rgent ontology rather than a stable one in other words, the posthuman is not a singular, defined individual, but rather one who can become or embody different identities and understand the world from multiple, heterogeneous perspectives (Haraway 3). In what follows, I discuss how body fluids in the film illustrate the instability of corporeal limits as conceived by Julia Kristeva and Judith butler. Through the lens of these theorists, the characters in Trainspotting can become producers of posthurnan discourses. But tirst, I will briefly discuss the critical reception of the film, inasmuch as responses to it characterize the kind of moralizing judgment that so often I denies another perception like Kristevas. _In 1996, Danny Boyles film adaptation of Irvine Welshs bestselling novel became thehighest grossing British-made film in the United Kingdom in history (Callahan 39). Althoughother films have communicate the subject of heroin addiction most have done so from a stance of such m oral disdain that the characters became little more than exaggerations of an proneunderclass that remains safely Other to mainstream film audiences. In contrast, Trainspotting,even though it portrays the desperation and horrors of drug addiction, the film never grants itsaudience the privilege of certain moral judgment. It invites audiences to engage with itscharacters in their own world as they struggle between the desperate need and the always-temporary satisfaction that characterizes life on heroin.The cinematic release of Trainspozling came right after a controversial trend in thefashion industry known as heroin chic, a trend that clear its name by popularizing images ofthin, glassy-eyed models who were apparently strung-out in dirty bathrooms or cheap, dingymotels (Craik 19). President Clinton even raised the issue in a astray reported address tomagazine editors, charging that the glorification of heroin is not creative Its destructive. Itsnot beautiful. It is ugly. And this is not about art. Its about life and death. And glorifying deathis not good for any society (Clinton). Cultural critic Henry Giroux describes the imagesassociated with heroin chic as nothing more than inspiration for a type of cultural slummingthat produces attitudes and actions in which well-to-do yuppies aestheticize the pain andsuffering of underprivileged youths (27).Some critics have made similar claims about Trainspotting. One reviewer, for example,said the film belongs to an unoriginal, voyeuristic genre that caters to an addiction to addiction-watching (Kauffmann 38). Other critics dismiss the film and other such films as mereslumfests for the bored upper classes, virtual petting zoos they can visit anytime they want to feellike theyre down with the kids (Callahan 39). Although the films graphic portrayal of self-depravation and misery is at times difficult to watch, other critics claim that the films uncritical,even sympathetic portrayal of junkies overtly glamorizes heroi n use. Despite the fact that such arguments allude to possible real world dangers of drug culture and the celebration of its images,they remain anchored in a discourse of negativity. They designate the rhetorical critic to thepsychoanalytic position of searching for a lack, whether it is of morals, health, or life. In otherwords, such arguments can only analyze the lm based on its failure to do something itpresumably should do adhere to moral norms.A moral argument based on whether Trainspotting does or does not glamorize heroinuseand whether or not that is good or badneglects a compelling line of analysis how thepervasive physicality of the lm functions rhetorically. The lmmakers are careful to illustrateboth the pain and the pleasure of heroin use, but this evenhandedness seems less the depiction ofa moral judgment than an investigation or even a meditation on the transgression of boundaries.Indeed, in an interview, director Damiy Boyle says that the lm is about being a transgress orIts about doing something that everybody says will kill youyou will kill yourself And thething that nobody understands is, its not that you dont hear that message, its just that itsirrelevant. The lm isnt about heroin. Its about an attitude, and thats why we wanted the lmto pulse, to pulse like you do in your mid-twenties (Callahan 39). This pulsing, or this incessanttransgressing that Boyle refers to provides a recognise metaphor for this discussion of corporeality inTrainspotting. A pulse is not characterized by stability or even an interplay between oppositeforces. Rather, a pulse is a constant uctuation, what William Burroughs describes as aninterdependent relationship between systolic and diastolic movement (Naked Lunch iii). It is inthis sense that I conceive of transgression not as an eradication or a crossing of boundaries, butas a reconguration that occurs through repetitive engagement and response. Bodies connectingand expanding within an economy of bodily uids enact the pulse of the lm.Bodily Refuse and IdentityJulia Kristevas theoretical work on the concept of abj ection has done much to trouble ahumanist conception of the discrete, autonomous individual. According to the Oxford Dictionaryand Thesaurus, abjection means a state of misery or degradation. Kristeva develops thisdenition of the abject by arguing that the signicance of abj ection lies in its role as an operationthrough which we continually distinguish ourselves as individuals. She describes abject as ajettisoned object that is opposed to 1 and is radically excluded the abject draws metoward the place where meaning collapses (Powers 1-2). For example, an image of theemaciated body of a person living with AIDS may evoke sympathy, or in, in some cases, fear,but it also fullls the role of the abject, infected Other that enables the healthy to feel clean, vital,and even morally superior. Similarly, the starving bodies of third-world countries serve asboundaries or limits that consecrate to this countrys sense of nationhood. According to this logic,American identity depends on what America precisely is not (Debrix 1 158). Kristevas notion ofa disorganized, abject body challenging the concept of order itself aids to an understanding ofTrainspotting in which the characters experiment with a unique ontology based on thetransgression of corporeal terms. Rather than quietly remaining outside of the mainstream atdesignated margins, the abject, as the heroin bodies exhibited in Trainspotting, breaks apart thesanctity and homogeneity of rational public space.Kristeva indicates that bodily boundaries are never nal and neither are the identities thatdepend on them. She argues that the self depends on the abject to constitute its border, to be thatwhich lies outside, beyond the set (Powers 2). But she also notes that from its place ofbanishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master (Powers 2). In this sense, the abjectOther never remains at the margins. The abject never remains stagnant, creating stable boundaries for the self. Kristeva thus introduces a dynamism into the concept of identity thatdepends on a subjects ability to recognize and reject the abject asit gets articulated andrearticulated through the selfs interaction with the Other. In other words, the Cartesian Ibecomes destabilized to the expiration that the humanist emphasis on the mind/body split has beensufficiently troubled with regard to how we construct or acquire a sense of self. Foucault showshow someones perceived autonomy is often merely an extension of state power, and this isimportant when observing how the characters in Trainspotting both celebrate and struggle for therelease of moral or wholesome ideologies that treat them as docile bodies. As Bishop has recentlynoted, Although Trainspotting was attacked for romanticising drug use, glamorising heroinchic, and over the validity of Welshs description of heroin addiction, such literalist readings notonly failed to se e past the subject matter, they ignored the possibility of political andphilosophical content (219). Kristeva suggests an ontology that is grounded in relations toothers rather than in the conscious mind, and when her theories are used in an analysis ofTrainspotting they can certainly produce philosophical insight into the concept of subjectivity.Judith Butler links much of her work in Bodies that Matter to Kristevas consideration ofthe abject. Our self-identication, Butler argues, operates within what she calls an exclusionarymatrix that relates subjects and necessitates a simultaneous production of a domain of abjectbeings, those who are not yet subjects, but who form the constitutive outside to the domain ofthe subject (3 ). She agrees with Kristeva that the abject zone of uninhabitability that denesthe boundaries of the subject will constitute that site of dreaded identication against whichand by virtue of whichthe domain of the subject will hinder its own claim to autonomyand to life (3). However, Butler builds upon Kristevas argument with a point that is essentialfor this discussion of the abject bodies in Trainspotting. According to Butler, the abjected through abj ection kind of of inherently possessing autonomy. Therefore, Renton can be seen asexistential explorer of subjectivity, and there are no guarantees in this novel, no happy endings,and no transcendence of the characters into holistic self-present subjects (Bishop 223). gAlthough Butlers introduction of permeability is helpful, I want to offer anotherimportant perspective before continuing. Butler posits a concept of subjectivity based on therepudiation of abj ection. As I have suggested and will explore further throughout this discussion,subjects in the lm do not and cannot sufficiently counteract the abject. Rather, the abject is integralto pulsing-or, what William S. Burroughs might call a constant state of kicking-on whichsubjectivity depends (Junky xvi).Trainspotting s Alternative Subje ctivityThe cinematic adaptation of Trainspotting has some key scenes that should elucidate theontological force of abjection. Depictions of body uids in the lm illustrate the uctuating,permeable corporeality that Butler describes. The lm seems to attack any trace of morality orcleanliness inherent in Foucaults analysis, as images abound of body uids contaminatingspaces in the most inappropriate of manners. Film critic Andrew OHagan notes that for theyoung characters shi