The matter of avant or what precedes is crucial to scientific and philosophic inquiry and is attributed to the letter A in this alphabet. In the epigraph above, Charles Bernstein revised Henny Youngman’s joke to highlight the paradigm of theory and practice. The mind/body dichotomy is implicit in the theory/practice question as well as  postmodern theories of embodiment. This book proposes that theory usually follows practice, and argues for embodied experience (practice) as the motivating source informing new cultural theory and critique. These theories developed in the discourse about avant garde culture within artistic and technologic experiments. Embodiment also is a central locus in genetic research, and the proverbial nature/nurture question. Post-structuralism challenges ideas of embodiment in the principles of absence and the disappearing self, exemplified by Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida, while Posthumanism, described by Katherine Hayles and  Cyborg Feminism (Donna Haraway) reconfigure the embodied self.

Although deconstruction theory declared, the humanist subject dead, along with his empirical ethnocentric, and phallocentric inquiry into the origin of matter and history, theory itself continued to search for a cause of desire and inquiry. Although embodied theories may seem to have risen from the nostalgic hubris of the autopsy table of humanism’s dismembered corpse,  discourse on embodiment originated in several late-modern cultural movements that sought to revivify the idea of an embodied human.

The physicality of rock and roll music, beat poetry, sound poetry, the back to nature movement and physical fitness fads were cultural practices of the 1960’s and 1970’s that fostered a heightened dialectic of body consciousness. Feminist/Queer theory and politics also privileged the concept of the subjective self, differentiated by biologic function and body state. Artistic expressions of this period, by such writers as Nicole Brossard, Alan Ginsberg, Jerome Rothenberg, Leslie Scalopino, and Luce Irigaray, explored and argued for embodied consciousness. Photographers, Don Carson’s photographs of nudes in outdoor settings (1990s) are a characteristic example from visual art. Another rendition is, Skin Deep (1976), a mixed-media performance art program with ultra-close-up photographs of nudes, poetry and music.

Within and from the cultural and artistic practices of this era, theories of embodiment became formalized in the critique about these works that emphasized the body and human physicality. In the same period, new media and technology such as the video camera, tape recorder, plastic wrap, and the computer processor begin an information revolution that lead to the postmodern condition, the transition from analog to digital, from human to cyborg-enhanced human. The embodied structure of organic, conceptual and mechanical forms became recognized in the simultaneous sense of breakdown and evolution.

Theories of embodiment intersect with several disciplines. Of interest to this work are new bibliographic studies of language, book design and digital media, which examine the physical aspects of text matter, and other theories about embodied consciousness, in semiosis, cognitive research, metaphor logic, and philosophy. Charles Peirce, the founder of philosophic Pragmatism studied semiosis to understand the mechanisms of thought. He searched for a linguistic code to explain the logic of meaning, and the paradox of understanding within the context of representational multiplicity. His system of graphical notations, called existential graphs describes his theory of consciousness. This pictographic technique is it’s own alphabet to describe a new theory.

Cognitive research and brain mapping studies are describing the neurology of embodied mind, according to Mark Johnson’s, The Body in the Mind. A significant permutation in cognitive research occurs with George Lakoff’s work and others for a theory of metaphor logic. This study is gaining academic acceptance and in so doing becomes a metaphor for itself, in the academy, as the representation of a school of thought. While gaining recognition, the metaphor enters into common usage, migrates into the language of different disciplines, eventually becoming a new focal icon. Metaphors for theories about embodied logic in technology, philosophy, literature and cognition then converge with each other, and theory begins to influence practice.

Earlier media studies considered embodiment, through such proponents as Roland Barthes’ with his inquiry into the cognitive effects of the film apparatus, on the spectator. New digital technologies are now inspiring research into the psychological apparatus of reading and using new media. Electronic publishing and other digital media are raising questions into the psychology of the apparatus of literature and art in visual representation. The recognition of an evolving condition of representation calls for new modes of reading and critique. This work proposes that pictorial language is an emergent mode of reading, and considers how reading, language and ideas are embodied through cognition and the logic of metaphor. The idiom of the human figure in art is used as an iconic metaphor for several discourses about embodiment.

William Blake produced his engraved and hand-painted books of poetry and prophecy during the technological revolution of the Enlightenment in the late 1700s. His books were made using new technology—the printing press, and combined elaborate drawings of human figures with text. He celebrated human physical nature while simultaneously resisting empiricism and the constraints of form. The post 1960’s fascination with the body continues or perhaps resurrects Blake’s viewpoint in new modes.

As an innovator, Blake struggled with public resistance against the new media of his day. While the consuming public of the late 18th century would purchase books, they balked against the notion of buying reproduced or printed art. Paradoxically few of his elaborately illustrated printed books are identical although his works are printed. Modern reproduction proved difficult due to the graphical complexity of the content, and because the original engravings were lost. Full color printing was not perfected for another three hundred years, but still expensive. Electronic publishing allows Blake’s uniquely crafted and obscure books to reach a greater audience. Blake is cited in this New Alphabet both as an innovator in an earlier technologic revolution, and as a proponent of embodiment. Embodied consciousness later finds expression, during the 1960’s (and in other historic periods) in a renewed celebration of the body, through such influences as Alan Ginsberg, who claimed Blake for his poetic champion.

Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum--the reproduction of images of reality, is a well accepted metaphor for postmodern culture. The simulacrum is the logical outcome of cultural practices and technological innovations. According to Walter Benjamin reproduction withers the aura of original art by removing it from its context and liquidating the traditional value of cultural heritage into mass culture. From the printing press, through photography, into film and digital production of animated texts and graphics, the simulacrum is an ever increasing momentum that seems to erase the body in its fascination. Erasure then fosters the renewed effort to recover and reconstitute the body, using new media and new technology to fashion new modes of expression and fascination, leading to further erasure. This tension of polarities, replays fluxing metaphors across history, which in turn seed new cultural eras. In their agonistic interaction, like the yolk and the embryo, these polarities are inseparable without breaking the egg, or as Lyotard proposes, “without ending the game”. Critique continually seeks the loci of reference in the question, where is the beginning of the beginning?   

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