In this text the author takes up Luce Irigaray’s call upon women to image their ‘God’: a quality or attribute that makes them divine women when they realize it in their lives. She presents ‘human dignity’ as such a ‘divine’ quality and as a value that is understood by many to be the ultimate of our human being. Inspired by Ina Praetorius’ expression that seven billion dignitaries walk the earth, the author connects the different aspects of the concept of human (...) dignity with the image of the dignitary, arguing that this image evokes the idea that the subject is free to move and is meant to flourish according to their capabilities. The author also discusses the difficulties of the idea of human flourishing as an ideal for humanity, especially in the context of disability and illness. She offers the notion of ‘becoming, infinitely’ as an alternative for flourishing. (shrink)

All media begin as a potential in our bodies, expand into the public domain, creating a world – and finally end again in the body, as a way of being, a range of feeling, a belief system. Media theory studies this trajectory. For media theory, media have two limits. Media cannot, by definition, make contact with the extramedial. And when media are translated into software they lose their identity and become part of something beyond media theory.

Living together peacefully in a world of differences asks for a practice of respecting the irreducible difference of the other. Acknowledging this `not-me' of the other subject generates an in-between: a space/time between subjects that cannot be transgressed other than by violence. Following Irigaray, I argue that this `in-between' comes about through the passion of wonder, a being touched in the flesh in the encounter with the other, which opens the subject to him/herself and to the other. To perceive this (...) touch asks for a life-style directed at keeping open and sensitizing the sensibilities of the senses, so that the subject's aesthesis or awareness for the perceptions of the sensible flesh and of its reactions to the other is heightened. Key-element in this aesthetics is the practice of breathing. It enables the subject to remain rooted in him/or herself and open to the other: generating and respecting the in-between between them. (shrink)