Avatar Bodies

A Tantra for Posthumanism

2003
Author:

Ann Weinstone

An ethically-based approach to human relations for the media age

Avatar Bodies develops a posthumanist vocabulary for human-to-human relationships that turns our capacities for devotion, personality, and pleasure. Drawing on both the philosophies and practices of Indian Tantra, Weinstone argues for the impossibility of absolute otherness; we are all avatar bodies, and she proposes that only when we stop ordering the other to be other will we truly become posthuman.

Avatar Bodies is a thoughtful book, one that engages with important questions of ethics and subjectivity in the 21st century with rigor and theoretical depth.

Science Fiction Studies

Otherness, alterity, the alien—over the course of the past fifty years many of us have based our hopes for more ethical relationships on concepts of difference. Combining philosophy, literary criticism, fiction, autobiography, and real and imagined correspondence, Ann Weinstone proposes that only when we stop ordering the other to be other—whether technological, animal, or simply inanimate—will we truly become posthuman.

Posthumanism has thus far focused nearly exclusively on human–technology relations. Avatar Bodies develops a posthumanist vocabulary for human-to-human relationships that turns our capacities for devotion, personality, and pleasure. Drawing on both the philosophies and practices of Indian Tantra, Weinstone argues for the impossibility of absolute otherness; we are all avatar bodies, consisting of undecidably shared gestures, skills, memories, sensations, beliefs, and affects.

Weinstone calls her book a “tantra”—by which she means a set of instructions for practices aimed at sensitizing the reader to the inherent permeability of self to other, self to world. This tantra for posthumanism elaborates devotional gestures that will expose us to more unfettered contacts and the transformative touch.

Ann Weinstone is assistant professor of literature and new media at Northwestern University and the winner of the 1994 Chelsea Award for Fiction.

Avatar Bodies is a thoughtful book, one that engages with important questions of ethics and subjectivity in the 21st century with rigor and theoretical depth.

Science Fiction Studies

Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Pleasure 1

Every Relation but One:Part I 3

(Post)Humanism 8

Suspension 23

Deconstruction and Posthumanism? 25

Nonphilosophy 17

Tidal Kneeplay 21

Deleuze and Derrida:You Are Other 23

To Have 25

To Belong 28

Fiora Raggi Kneeplay 31

Tantra for Posthumanism 33

Speaking ofAssimilation 37

Avatar Bodies 40

First City Kneeplay 43

Insect Threads 50

Case 52

Insects and Buddhists 55

The Insect Self 59

The Insect Yogi 62

Knowing,Caring 64

Second City Kneeplay 68

Sorcerer Series I:The Island Sorcerer (An Introduction) 71

Some Celibate Erotics 74

Vı raAction 77

The Wasp and the Orchid 79

Sorcerer Series II:The Yogi Sorcerer 83

Sex Scene 86

Becoming Woman,Becoming Yogini 89

English Tantra or the Imperceptible Man 91

¯raBha¯vaKneeplay 95

Sorcerer Series III:Rheya 96

Sorcerer Series IV:The Miracle of the Rogue 101

Heroes ofDifference 104

Third City Kneeplay:The Wasp and the Orchid Cross a Letter 108

Emanation/Expression 111

Three Bodies 115

Three Bodies:Exposition in Preparation for the Avatar Body 116

Avatar and Expression 118

The Difference Difference 121

Avatar Bodies,an Invitation 124

Itaraand Avata¯ra 126

Tantric Bodies 128

Fourth City Kneeplay 130

Eating,Well... 132

Eating Animals 134

Vegetarians,Brahmins 137

Tantra’s Third Way 139

The Responsibility of the (Postdeconstructive) Subject 142

Love and Justice 144

Experience 146

Intuition,Perhaps 149

A Tantra for Posthumanism 153

Bha¯va 153

I Am Speaking of Devotion (Bhakti) 154

Discipleship (Dı

¯ks

˙a¯) 158

Iteration (Japa) 159

Transindividualism (Nya¯sa) 161

Enjoyment,Intoxication (Bhoga) 163

Gesture (Mudra¯) 169

Fifth City Kneeplay:Solaris in Your Eyes 171

Epistlirium 173

Every Relation but One:Part II 175

Hard to Say 177

The Postal Age 181

(Post) Heroism 184

Post Heroism 187

Post Post 190

The Sacrificial Structure of the Post 193

Fire 197

Water 200

Flesh 202

Who? 204

E-Mail Mudra 206

Chance 210

Postscript 215

Works Cited 219