Body Optics and Skin Signs: Technology and the Body in Transformation in Mann, Kafka and Tawada

This interdisciplinary paper that unites science and art analyses the body and its borders as 1) a locus of perpetual transformation due to the interminable advancement of technology and 2) forever in a state of flux as a result of its tactile relationship to language and how living in a cultural and linguistic interstice can alter one's relationship to his or her body. In considering selected works by three German language authors, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Yoko Tawada, this work investigates how the body and skin as performative spaces and cultural configurations have been influenced and transformed (made transparent, stored or 'saved', perceptually altered) by technological advancements (X-ray, gramophone, film, typewriter, transportation, internet), and how bodies and skin are disciplined, observed and written upon and therefore become sites of signification, highlighting the body's physical relationship to language, identity and human subjectivity.