1 Corinthians 6:19-20: Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
“Glorifying god” in ones body means to appreciate the natural form in which our bodies were created in respect for the power that molded it, in this case being God. Essentially, this saying does not suggest that the holiness of our bodies derive from it’s use to humanity but as a form which was created in consecration. If God created human skin to encase the Holy Spirit and to glorify his powerful existence, then when can profanation of the body take place? According to Agamben, profanation occurs when the object is reverted to human use, but considering that the human body exists in reality as nothing but an instrument of human use and existence, then how would humanity ever avoid profaning the body immediately upon it’s creation? Considering the body to be a holy agent of God’s perfection but will be inevitably utilized by humanity creates a problematic paradox and blurs the definitions of what it means to be holy or profane causing an impossibility to attribute either to the human body.
In a passage from The Coming Community in which Agamben discusses Aristotle’s metaphysics in relation to the potential of thought, it is said that potential for thought can never exists because once a thought exists it is in itself actualized. Like a pure thought that can never be considered actualized because in it’s birth comes immediate actualization, with the creation of the body comes immediate profanation. A chunk of meat made by God to glorify God but that can only manifest as a human mortal.
One does not have to believe in the concept of God’s power being what molded the human body into existence to believe in the body’s origin and it’s a consecration. However, if one were to attribute the creation of the body simply to nature, there comes two sides of nature to be determined in comparison to the power of God. Is pure nature holy or profane? is our fundamental body, the flesh itself, holy due to it’s permanent status from the moment it is created, as flesh, to serve the same purpose and have the same form of existence throughout our lives? (After all, flesh is always flesh.) If so, then one can say that holiness is synonymous with the continuity of the functions that are imposed and demanded of it by it’s original consecration. On the other hand, does nature exists only in relation to humanity? It’s holiness derived from the indisputable reality of human existence? In comparison to the necessity of repetition (in relation to it’s function) that a consecrated body must serve, can it’s holiness derive simply from it’s existence without any responsibility to keep intact it’s original functions? Since I believe that it indeed lacks this responsibility, then the body is pure potentiality, an instrument of ultimate profanity. Also, Agamben states that profanation is more than reverting a holy and/or untouchable object/being from the property of the gods to mortal use, but it is also extracting and/or reforming it's initial function. Since there is no way of knowing whether nature created our bodies out of holiness or profanity, the body can be thought of as nothing but a clean slate, like thoughts, a pure potentiality. With the only exceptions being are it’s physical functions (sex, eating, excreting etc.), that exists whether they are holy or not. There is no true initial function for the body to play with. Agamben gives thought a potentiality beyond inevitable actualization by claiming that thought is pure potentiality due to the ability and choice to not think, comparable to a clean slate on which words can or can not be written on. I come to the same conclusion on the status of the body in relation to it’s original holiness or potential profanity. We don’t really have the choice of whether or not we can serve our basic bodily functions in repetition, but we can create a new status for our bodies.
This is what gives us the possibility to profane the body. Although it is difficult to define what consecrates our bodies, one can still consider the possibility of profaning them because we have the ability to push the limits of its functions or completely disregard those functions to a threatening point. We can control what our body represents, it’s use as a form-of-life or an
instrument to demonstrate our ability to act or to not act. We can even peel back the flesh itself, extracting a piece of it’s function as a barrier between our inner body (the blood, the muscles etc.) and the outside world.
Physical mutilation is a form of profaning the body because it occurs outside of the repetitious functions of the body, and pushes the limitations of the body’s existence. The alteration of ones flesh can be a defiant act against an oppressive state of existence (perhaps politically) or against the finality and irrefutable nature of our bodies, regardless of it’s questionable initial functions and who or what attributed it with those functions. Some artists present this concept of physical mutilation and use their bodies to physically withdraw themselves from the meaning of what their bodies represent in modern society. They vulnerably expose themselves as pure potentiality and then proceed to reassign the function of their bodies from a barrier or holy being to devices of human control or perhaps to represent lack there of.
Marina Abramovic is known for torturing herself and giving the audience the opportunity to inflict pain on her as well. Artists like Gunter Brus and Otto Muhl took part in extremely violent self-mutilating performance art, several of the pieces ending in their arrest, which only supports the effect of their art considering it meant to include themes of political desperation and oppression. Psychical violence on the body incorporated into art has many dimensions of significance and effects. When art is violent in terms of self-mutilation, it can create a personal relationship between the audience and the artist through a layer of physical pain that invokes a sense of humanistic reality in what could just as easily be a stagnant atmosphere. The logic behind this creation of woven subconsciousness between artist and audience is largely attributed to the simple fact that we are all encased in our bodies, our most tangible source of pure potentiality and profanity. Pain is indisputably identifiable between all human beings, but when one is present before that pain, the interestingly spiritual effect of seeing somebody in pain or inflict pain is, there exists an overwhelming sense of humanity that we feel for the status of our own bodies in relation to the body that is in pain (and perhaps for the life within the body). Doing harm to the body can be considered a way of fulfilling it’s potential because there are no limitations based on the nature of the existence of the body, there is no pattern of function that we must follow beyond sex and eating that limit the potential of our bodies. This is what makes our body necessary for use of action and apparatuses of profanation but with the status of the body as being pure potentiality comes the freedom to use or not use it for action. To feel pain or not to feel pain.
If we should ever decide to do so, how would one go about reverting the body to the bare use of what nature intended and nothing else? Is it possible to succumb to our spiritual origin and once again make our bodies holy, consecrate them? Sex and eating, two of the few functions of our body that are indisputably natural but are looked down upon by society as if they were unnatural. This judgement by culture and society of whether these natural functions should be glorified and/or exposed essentially open up a whole frame of judgement of how using or changing our bodies in different ways is profaning them. If the human body is pure nature, pure potentiality in it’s tangible form, then there is no way to actualize it’s function. Like playing or dancing, it exists in a realm of constant potentiality, a means without an end.
