WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:00:00.899 --> 00:00:08.300 let me again start with the idea that we are more than human that we contain others and extend past 00:00:08.300 --> 00:00:14.900 the boundaries of the skin we are portmanteau so as I mentioned in the previous week we leave traces of 00:00:14.900 --> 00:00:23.000 ourselves and pick up traces of others but also most of the cells in our body are not our own here's 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:28.200 a fairly long quote from an article called the human is more than human then I'm going to just 00:00:28.200 --> 00:00:30.200 briefly read for you. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:00:30.200 --> 00:00:37.500 Life deals in mixed cultures it has been working with crowds for billions of years most of the DNA 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:45.200 of the estimated 100 quadrillion cells in our bodies is not ours but belong to cohabiting bacteria 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:51.800 10% of our dry weight is bacteria with there are 10 of their cells in our body for every one of ours 00:00:51.800 --> 00:00:58.700 what we call human is also in pure laced with germs we have met our friend and it is us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:00:58.700 --> 00:01:05.500 we are made up of cells and both are and are not ourselves, cells that you might see are not me but 00:01:05.500 --> 00:01:13.250 without whom I wouldn't be what I am. Each one of us is as are we gathering we are out there we have 00:01:13.250 --> 00:01:18.900 others within the and the author of this passage is compelled as you see the placed quotation marks 00:01:18.900 --> 00:01:25.900 around the words their's and our's because we are what our bodies are like makes these 00:01:25.900 --> 00:01:28.350 distinctions difficult to maintain NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:01:28.350 --> 00:01:34.900 and this is something that's always been the case to a certain extent but with exposure and toxicity 00:01:34.900 --> 00:01:42.700 and radiation and so on more of those not our own parts of our bodies are not just there they are 00:01:42.700 --> 00:01:48.400 not noticeable and they are unpredictable and unstable they become something we feel and not just 00:01:48.400 --> 00:01:54.300 something that's present but unnoticeable and they force us to live and feel this fact that we are 00:01:54.300 --> 00:01:58.350 not quite ourselves that we are not just ourselves they forced me to feel NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 71% (MEDIUM) 00:01:58.350 --> 00:02:06.300 and live this fact that my body isn't just mine that it isn't just here and it isn't just now. So 00:02:06.300 --> 00:02:13.500 how does toxicity and exposure prompt us to think I guess it's the question and what kind of 00:02:13.500 --> 00:02:22.200 thinking are we warned into by being exposed to an affected by toxicity, Chen in one of your 00:02:22.200 --> 00:02:28.400 readings describes a day in the life manouvering through the world how the world NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:35.300 effects them and how they because of the sensitivity that they have to toxins need to be alert to the 00:02:35.300 --> 00:02:41.700 surrounding World in a particular way they encounter pedestrians and quickly scan them for whether 00:02:41.700 --> 00:02:48.700 or not they're likely to be the sort of people who were perfumes or sunscreen there's movement that 00:02:48.700 --> 00:02:54.100 might signal the presence of cigarettes there are patterns of movement and breathing to 00:02:54.100 --> 00:02:58.300 avoid taking in something that the body could react to so in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:02:58.300 --> 00:03:06.200 Chen's case we can see how exposure and toxicity can change how one relates to one's own body to 00:03:06.200 --> 00:03:14.900 other bodies and other things and to the environment around us. Exposure can change the way we think 00:03:14.900 --> 00:03:22.200 of our own body and our own body in relation to others but it does so in certain sort of particular 00:03:22.200 --> 00:03:27.550 ways in pattern ways I think and really it can do so in kind of weird ways NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:03:27.550 --> 00:03:34.400 and what I would like to explore in the rest of this video is precisely this kind of weirdness and 00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:40.100 exposure prompts or sighting to confront weirdness and things that are uncanny about ourselves and 00:03:40.100 --> 00:03:46.900 our relation to the world and by weird here I mean situations where something 00:03:46.900 --> 00:03:54.800 appears not quite to conform to our expectations of how the world works, it can be situations that don't 00:03:54.800 --> 00:03:57.500 conform to our assumption about how time NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:03:57.500 --> 00:04:06.000 And space works or how life and death death works and another good word is uncanny for 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:12.000 for this kind of weirdness which refers to something that's mostly familiar and yet there's 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:14.850 something that's just not quite right. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:04:14.850 --> 00:04:22.500 I'll say a few more words about that so here's a couple of examples of things that we can 00:04:22.500 --> 00:04:31.150 say are uncanny and there's the main character from the cartoon peanuts 'Knøttene' in Norwegian 00:04:31.150 --> 00:04:39.600 but here he's rendered in a very realistic human like way you look at it and you maybe feel at that 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:45.100 it doesn't look quite right it's something we sort of disturbing he looks too human and also not NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:04:45.100 --> 00:04:53.200 quite human enough he's in a sort of a weird unsettling borderline, and the other one the other 00:04:53.200 --> 00:05:02.000 example there is sort of one of those classic examples of the uncanny humanoid robots so robots that 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:09.300 look just a little bit too close for comfort to being human which which is something that makes it 00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:15.050 sort of creepy right. Maybe you have seen this meme NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:05:15.050 --> 00:05:24.800 about The Uncanny Valley so it's the idea there's The Uncanny Valley is where things 00:05:24.800 --> 00:05:30.200 become uncanny on both sides of the uncanny valley are things that we are comfortable with them 00:05:30.200 --> 00:05:39.250 and deal with fine you know, and so on the one side there there are things that are clearly human 00:05:39.250 --> 00:05:45.049 recognisably human there's no doubt it's a human and those are fine NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:05:45.049 --> 00:05:50.400 We don't have a problem with those and then on the other side there are the things that are clearly 00:05:50.400 --> 00:05:56.500 clearly not human like a cartoon toaster and we were okay with those as well but it's in the Middle 00:05:56.500 --> 00:06:02.400 where it gets unsettling and weird where it's something too close to being human and yet not close 00:06:02.400 --> 00:06:08.200 enough to be properly human that's the stuff that disturbs us that's the stuff that haunts us in our 00:06:08.200 --> 00:06:15.050 dreams so to speak and so what I'm saying then is that experiences with exposure and toxicity NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:06:15.050 --> 00:06:22.100 can present us with situations that where things are weird and precisely this kind of 00:06:22.100 --> 00:06:28.600 weird where something is mostly familiar but also just a little bit off in an eerie and unsettling 00:06:28.600 --> 00:06:35.900 kind of way and weird in such a way that it disturbs our usually comfortable certainty about what is 00:06:35.900 --> 00:06:38.600 human and what is not. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:06:39.800 --> 00:06:47.900 So firstly the weirdness of exposure comes through in what I'm calling ghostly presencees they 00:06:47.900 --> 00:06:55.100 can be can be things that are local and very immediate present in other words but in a ghostly way 00:06:55.100 --> 00:07:01.900 it can be that they are very present and yet incredibly large and spanning in time large distances 00:07:01.900 --> 00:07:09.500 in time and space and the past or things that are very very far away sort of has a presence in our 00:07:09.500 --> 00:07:10.450 bodies but it is a NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:07:10.450 --> 00:07:20.250 ghostly or a lingering or a haunting presence that works via exposure a past or a Faraway occurrence 00:07:20.250 --> 00:07:28.600 can linger through exposure and this is the kind of exposure that Chernobyl has still to this day 00:07:28.600 --> 00:07:36.000 within bodies of reindeer and sheep in many parts of Norway for instance and and it's an occurrence 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:40.450 that happened a long time ago and quite far away but that still NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:07:40.450 --> 00:07:48.000 Lingers in physical ways in the bodies of animals in Norway. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:07:48.300 --> 00:07:55.500 and ghostly presence might also be ghostly because they cross boundaries between alive and 00:07:55.500 --> 00:08:03.000 dead and in a way toxicity is something that doesn't seem to respect that boundary so Chen writes 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:10.300 about lead and lead is ghostly in both of these ways. So lead points us towards this very long 00:08:10.300 --> 00:08:17.700 distance connection through lead there is this bond formed between the child in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:08:17.700 --> 00:08:25.900 the US replace with the plastic toy which has been painted with lead, and the factory worker in 00:08:25.900 --> 00:08:32.299 China who painted that toy with lead paint. This is a bond that has a certain kind of reality 00:08:32.299 --> 00:08:41.250 through this chemical through this exposure that the they both have been affected by 00:08:41.250 --> 00:08:46.700 the American child and the Chinese worker in certain way has quite an intimate bond not just the bond 00:08:46.700 --> 00:08:47.849 that lies in the fact that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:08:47.849 --> 00:08:52.600 one of them has made the toy that the older one is playing with but the bond lies in factors that 00:08:52.600 --> 00:08:59.100 each of them each of their bodies are materially affected by the same toxin and the same physical 00:08:59.100 --> 00:09:07.700 processes it's not just the tie through an intermediary the toy but it's a tie and that sits in the 00:09:07.700 --> 00:09:17.300 bodies of each of them in a sense, so lead animates them both in the words of Chen and counters such 00:09:17.300 --> 00:09:17.900 as the one NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:09:17.900 --> 00:09:26.400 Between the child and toy and thus leads deadness by reanimating Chen writes so lead can achieve 00:09:26.400 --> 00:09:34.100 this kind of animacy a kind of aliveness through its capacity to animate others and lead has the kind 00:09:34.100 --> 00:09:41.100 of aliveness in that it moves and effects parts of bodies it's not a living thing in itself then yet 00:09:41.100 --> 00:09:46.200 it's sort of is alive both in the body of the child who plays with the toy and in the body of the 00:09:46.200 --> 00:09:47.800 Chinese Factory workers NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:09:47.800 --> 00:09:52.950 who has to sit and paint toys with lead paint day in and day out. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:09:52.950 --> 00:09:59.300 So there's a sense in which through lead's interaction with the body of Thomas the Tank 00:09:59.300 --> 00:10:07.600 Engine who's already got a pretty uncanny creepy face comes alive in the cells of American Toddlers 00:10:07.600 --> 00:10:13.900 and crosses that boundary between dead and alive again and Thomas the Tank Engine becomes part of 00:10:13.900 --> 00:10:22.350 those parts of yourself that are you but not quite you. Contortions NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:10:22.350 --> 00:10:29.300 this point to another kind of weirdness that exposure and toxicity brings into view I'm using the 00:10:29.300 --> 00:10:35.000 word contortions here and that's inspired by the pine tree that you read about in Kate Browns 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:41.000 article about renewable and she writes about a contorted pine tree pine tree that's grown in the 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:48.950 twisted and sort of deformed way because of its exposure to radiation, contortions point to something 00:10:48.950 --> 00:10:52.250 familiar and recognisable that's had NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:10:52.250 --> 00:10:59.600 its shape or form altered in some sort of strange way, and one of the prime examples might be 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:07.000 bodies of animals or plants or people that seem just a little bit off right. So the pictures on 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:17.800 The slide here are paintings by an artist, paints insects that she finds in the areas around 00:11:17.800 --> 00:11:22.300 Chernobyl and other nuclear sites and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:11:22.300 --> 00:11:30.100 so these are insects whose bodies were contorted or deformed in different ways they are recognizably 00:11:30.100 --> 00:11:35.400 insects and there's no doubt about what kind of insects they are but they have parts that are 00:11:35.400 --> 00:11:40.300 misshapen and just little bit off and not quite right. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:47.700 We can also think about ways in which we have ourselves contorted we can have ourselves 00:11:47.700 --> 00:11:55.200 contorted in certain ways. A contorted self is you yet a little bit different same yet a bit 00:11:55.200 --> 00:12:01.900 different and it's something that we are familiar with that has been contorted or twisted or 00:12:01.900 --> 00:12:03.650 misshapen NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:12:03.650 --> 00:12:11.100 and they Jones article to return to that one shows us a good example of this and the men in 00:12:11.100 --> 00:12:18.200 Martinique who have been exposed to klordecone which as you recall was an environmental 00:12:18.200 --> 00:12:26.250 Oestrogen they may come to feel that their body exceeds their own agency or that their body isn't 00:12:26.250 --> 00:12:33.900 quiet themselves anymore it's sort of contorted in a way, and so contortions can involve a sense NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:12:33.900 --> 00:12:41.100 Defamiliarization of yourself you become an object for yourself because you are not familiar to 00:12:41.100 --> 00:12:48.300 yourself anymore, through their sensitivity to chemicals Chen becomes alert to their own body in a 00:12:48.300 --> 00:12:55.200 different way alert not just in the environment that's as unruly but to their own body as an unruly 00:12:55.200 --> 00:13:01.800 thing, a thing to pay attention to like an object of observation that is liable to behave in 00:13:01.800 --> 00:13:04.150 unpredictable ways. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:13:04.150 --> 00:13:10.700 Your body can become a thing that you can observe an unruly thing that doesn't that does things 00:13:10.700 --> 00:13:16.800 outside of your control it's sort of feeling that there are actions that my body does that I 00:13:16.800 --> 00:13:22.900 haven't consciously initiated and contortions can point to how you can become party alien to 00:13:22.900 --> 00:13:24.500 yourself NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:32.700 Mutual ingestions is the third and final version of toxic weirdness I'm going to point to in 00:13:32.700 --> 00:13:41.100 this video. So here again Chen writes about how we ingest each other when I interact with others 00:13:41.100 --> 00:13:45.350 there's ingestion and inhalation going on NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:13:45.350 --> 00:13:53.200 and Chen right spot something called inter objectivity and we can think about that in relation to the 00:13:53.200 --> 00:14:02.300 much more familiar concept intersubjectivity right so if intersubjectivity points to how we share 00:14:02.300 --> 00:14:09.300 thoughts right how we connect in terms of empathy and agreement or how we think in similar ways how 00:14:09.300 --> 00:14:15.550 we exist for each other as subjects as thinking a conscious beings and how we NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:14:15.550 --> 00:14:25.100 Interpret and interact with each other through an idea of the other is a thinking being such as 00:14:25.100 --> 00:14:31.650 Interobjectivity on the other hand is about how we interact and affect each other 00:14:31.650 --> 00:14:41.100 as a material and physical beings, as mentioned toxins changes what your body is to you but also what 00:14:41.100 --> 00:14:45.650 other bodies are to you. So for instance I might have a friend NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:14:45.650 --> 00:14:52.500 we can ask Will you know what is that person to me well with intersubjectivity we would say that my 00:14:52.500 --> 00:14:58.100 friend is another subject another thinking being to me he is a friend right but within their 00:14:58.100 --> 00:15:04.300 objectivity the question becomes what is that other person not to me as a subject a thinking person 00:15:04.300 --> 00:15:13.100 but for my body what is he in relation to my body and in that sense my friend might be 00:15:13.100 --> 00:15:16.100 something like a carrier of chemicals NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:15:16.100 --> 00:15:21.300 so you can be in a situation where we have an intersubjective connection to another 00:15:21.300 --> 00:15:27.600 person let's say you smile and nod to a person you know who passes on the street at the same 00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:35.200 time as parts of your body have an interobjective connection with chemicals or pheromones or 00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:40.800 microbes that your friend is a transmitter or carrier of. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:15:40.800 --> 00:15:49.000 Deliver screams hate Says Chen to describe how they feel the interobjective relation that is 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:56.500 their liver being affected by a toxin in the surrounding area so at the same time than I as I'm 00:15:56.500 --> 00:16:02.500 having an intersubjective meeting with a friend my liver might be having an interrupt active 00:16:02.500 --> 00:16:09.400 encounter with the chemical submitted from my friends perfume, if you have allergies I think that 00:16:09.400 --> 00:16:11.850 this is something that you probably experienced NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:16:11.850 --> 00:16:18.600 so it's the idea of your body interacts with the world without your conscious awareness in a 00:16:18.600 --> 00:16:25.400 sense that's the interobjective relation between parts of your body and grass pollen for 00:16:25.400 --> 00:16:31.800 instance or peanuts or what have you and in that sense you you sort of become or your body become 00:16:31.800 --> 00:16:38.700 something for you to observe as an object you are sort of distant from your own body in a way NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:16:38.700 --> 00:16:45.500 and on a larger scale interobjectivity points to the fact that the world is involved in and 00:16:45.500 --> 00:16:52.700 composed of mutual ingestions not individual discrete entities that go about the world on their 00:16:52.700 --> 00:16:59.700 own through toxicity we can become attuned to exchanges that happen sort of at a different level 00:16:59.700 --> 00:17:06.000 than what we normally see not individual discrete bounded individuals interacting with one another 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:08.650 but things that interact through me NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:17:08.650 --> 00:17:14.500 parts of my body that interact with the toxins in the environmental and distant humans are on involved 00:17:14.500 --> 00:17:21.200 with each other through intermediaries stuff that animates both of them so toxic interobjectivity 00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:28.500 for Chen also then points to the fact that segregations and containment that is you 00:17:28.500 --> 00:17:35.100 know to keep things apart is just categorically impossible these aren't things that are just very 00:17:35.100 --> 00:17:38.550 difficult or bound to fail because some shortcoming of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:17:38.550 --> 00:17:45.700 humans but they can't possibly be done because the world itself is composed of these inter- 00:17:45.700 --> 00:17:52.100 Objective encounters and this is something that becomes incredibly clear to us and especially 00:17:52.100 --> 00:17:54.949 clear to us when we look at toxins. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:17:54.949 --> 00:18:02.200 One final point I'd like to emphasize is that Chen points out that there is there is ambiguity 00:18:02.200 --> 00:18:11.449 Here so perhaps this isn't all just horrible the ties of toxic inter objectivity are ambiguous 00:18:11.449 --> 00:18:23.400 they harm us but they also involve as Chen writes peculiar intimacies our ties to the toxins are alien 00:18:23.400 --> 00:18:24.300 and dangerous NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:18:24.300 --> 00:18:31.100 they're all so intimate and toxins you know on the one hand they cause suffering and they cause 00:18:31.100 --> 00:18:38.900 death in some cases the toxins also have what Chen calls the queer productivity because of the 00:18:38.900 --> 00:18:45.400 things that it lets us imagine and imagine differently let's us imagine a world of ambiguous inter- 00:18:45.400 --> 00:18:52.600 objectivity world of mutual ingestions rather than the world of containment and segregation