Abstract

The human body is a space through which we encounter and decipher the world, society, and ourselves. Édouard Glissant has linked the concept of knowledge opacities to the physical quality of opaqueness. In the case of the body as a subject of knowledge, technoscientific practices attempt to overcome our embodied opacity and make it transparent, that is, to have embodied and cognitive functions known and controlled. As scientific and technological paradigms weave new transparencies and opacities across bodies, core conceptions of embodied representations and senses of self fluctuate. Digital mediations and immersive technologies further blur the boundaries between physical and digital identities by offering unbound and fluid modes of self-representation. This novel state of biodigital being(s) melds together material and immaterial body politics, ethos, and cultures. The chapter examines how the emerging biodigital condition echoes and redefines nature/culture entanglements in the context of digital body mediation, and what paths could be taken to unveil new body agencies and imaginaries stemming from our (wonderfully) flawed material state.