Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismPersonal PropertyThe Liberal heart bleeds, but what of its body? When Locke writes that "Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person," he links a man to his body by right of possession. Body is chattle. It can be bought and sold. It may be a unique possession, but it's interchangeable with others. [1] It has a prosthetic relation to the world: "Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, . . . become my property." [2] Locke's body accumulates. Its boundaries expand. It acquires property and requires prostheses. Notes1. It's the material ground for the theory of possessive individualism. See C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1962). 2. John Locke," Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 19, 19-20. Navigation |