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Spirits and souls were debated topics in early modern natural philosophy,
medicine and of course theology. Both the Christian dualism between body
and spirit and natural philosophical debates entailed and in turn necessitated
precise attempts at defining and distinguishing between body on the one
hand and spirit or soul on the other. In this essay, I analyze Cavendish's
participation in debates about soul and spirit and, in particular, her
innovative and playful approaches to this topic in her poetry and fiction,
which markedly distinguishes her from other writers and philosophers of
her time. I argue that Cavendish uses scientific and philosophical theories
about souls/spirits in order to fantasize in the medium of fiction about
an enhanced kind of humanity. This is connected with reconceptualizations
of space and time, thereby anticipating debates which are currently discussed
in the realm of cyber theory. Elizabeth Grosz writes about "the space-time
of bodies" (Grosz 120) as she investigates the history of
connections between bodies, disembodiment, space and time as it affects
today's theorization of cyberspace and virtual reality. Grosz states that
"Historically, it can be argued ... that as representations of subjectivity
changed, so too did representations of space and time" (Grosz 133).
Subjectivity in this case can be taken to include constitutive characteristics
of the human subject: experiences of bodiliness which involve the senses,
the brain and language. My focus will be on such matters of human corporeality,
alternative spatial and temporal models and spiritual disembodiment which
form the centre of many of Cavendish's poetic and fictional texts.
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Given Cavendish's self-fashioning as a playful deviator from textual
and scientific conventions, I would like to situate her in what at a first
glance appears to be an equally ex-centric conflation -- that of early
modern science and of twentieth-century theories of virtual reality and
the cyborg. Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto has become famous for its
appropriation of the idea of a hybrid, enhanced machine-human being in
feminist and socialist terms. This work illuminates Cavendish's conceptualizations
of ideal human beings and her specific textual approaches as much as early
modern scientific philosophy does. Cavendish does not "belong"
to either of these areas: whereas it appears to be self-evident that modern
explorations of cyberspace and more specifically the cyborg were not available
to Cavendish, her affiliation with early modern scientists and philosophers
seems to be central to most scholars today who have justly reclaimed Cavendish
as a scientist-philosopher who has to be taken seriously. [1]
In the realm of spirits and souls, Cavendish uses scientific-philosophical
theories in order to create original visions of humanity which depart
from other conceptions of the nature of spirits and souls in much the
same way as cyber theory departs from traditional concepts of embodiment
and space-time concepts. Science and fiction, spirit and body, disembodiment
and re-embodiment, situated between Thomas Hobbes and Donna Haraway: such
tensions will prove to be productive for my investigation of Cavendish's
envisioning of an enhanced form of humanity.
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Cavendish first of all has to be compared to other authors of her time
in two regards: her scientific-philosophical views and her experiments
with these views in different genres. [2] The
established classical and Christian dualism of material body and immaterial
soul was hotly debated in the 17th century. Whereas such groups as the
Cambridge Platonists, who feared an erosion of Christian beliefs by natural
philosophy, [3] held fast to the belief in immaterial
substances, other philosophers had different conceptions. Henry More defends
a vitalism with incorporeal spirits of nature. Similarly, in Anne Conway's
The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690)
spirit is the guiding principle. [4] Whereas
Conway regards spirit as all-pervasive, Cavendish argues for materiality
as the defining principle. [5] As Clucas points
out, "Effectively, she collapses the dichotomy between matter and
spirit, mechanism and vitalism, by insisting that matter is living and
sentient, but not spiritual" (Clucas 262). I want to argue that this
collapse of definitions and dichotomies leads to a more comprehensive
and fluid vision of a different kind of human being. As Sarah Hutton and
others have shown, [6] Cavendish sides with
Thomas Hobbes in his denial of immaterial spirits, but rejects his mechanist
argumentation, the most significant difference to Hobbes' theory being
that the source of movement is internal to matter. We know that Cavendish's
philosophy undergoes a development which can be traced in her works and
leads her to a vitalist materialism which is most pronounced in Observations
Upon Experimental Philosophy.
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Apart from theology and science, another discourse preoccupied with spirits
comes into play. Paster traces the idea of spirits in connection with
early modern medical-philosophical discourses. According to Bacon and
others, spirit can be found in the blood vessels -- a belief which stems
from Aristotle and Galen and assumes that "living things are kept
alive and in motion by the action of spirit, variously composed of heat
and air, coursing through vessels" (Paster 109). Although Cavendish
seems to incorporate parts of these ideas in some of her depictions
of spirits/souls in her fiction -- the spirits in Blazing World
are made of air -- her depictions of soul/spirit in her fiction take up
neither Christian beliefs in divine souls or mystical beliefs in ghosts
nor scientific-medical ideas of spirits within the blood vessels of the
human body. Instead, Cavendish renounces these views of spirits as either
immaterial or material and, departing from philosophical theories, pushes
her explorations into previously uncharted territory envisioning a new
reality within the realm of the fictional and poetical.
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Merrens draws attention to the "dialogic interaction between 'science'
and 'literature' which marks early modern culture" (Merrens 423).
This, she argues, is especially crucial for Cavendish's work. While she
states that the purpose of Cavendish's natural philosophy is to offer
alternative ideas to patriarchal thinking, I wish to argue that only in
analyzing the reasons for Cavendish's uses of fiction for the transmission
of scientific-philosophical ideas and by highlighting the differences
between her natural science and her fiction and poetry, does this dialogic
interaction become evident. In this context, I am going to illustrate
why the issue of spirits and souls is central for understanding Cavendish's
motivations for not simply transferring scientific-philosophical insights
into fiction and poetry, but instead exploding and expanding the very
core of scientific opinions. These strategies serve to explore different
regions not previously envisioned either in the texts of early modern
philosophers or in Cavendish's own scientific texts. This integration
of philosophical ideas into Cavendish's theory and fiction proves to be
a crucial strategy, which is unlike what is done by other philosophical
writers who only theorize their ideas in the form of the philosophical
treatise or write didactic poetry. [7] Cavendish,
however, is rarely motivated by didactic intentions when dealing with
the topic of spirits/souls, but instead puts her abstract views on corporeality,
soul and space and time "to the test" in concrete fictional
situations.
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James, like others, maintains that "Commenting on the work of Hooke,
Power and Boyle in her Observations on Experimental Philosophy,
Cavendish dismissed their experimental approach in favour of her speculative
one" (James 219). This, however, is not Cavendish's only "deviation"
from other scientific points of views or established norms. Indeed, Cavendish's
experimentation goes much further: after speculating in very different
ways on the nature of spirits/souls in Observations than other
writers do, she takes an important step further by experimenting with
spirits/souls in her poetry and fiction. I will show that instead of fictionalizing
or appropriating scientific discourses, she takes parts out of these discourses
and develops them in completely different directions. Cavendish creates
something that would be impossible within the prevailing scientific discourses,
which were aimed at establishing a secure and objective knowledge about
the world. Thus, her "misappropriation" turns these discourses,
which were especially exclusive of women, into liberating tools for the
exploration of different interests and radically new topics. Instead of
clarifying the nature of spirits/souls as regards the human spirit and
soul, Cavendish experiments with an enhanced and utopian humanity.
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It is important to clarify that I employ the designations of soul and
spirit interchangeably, as many early modern authors, including Cavendish,
explicitly stated that spirits and souls are the same. [8]
However, although no clear-cut distinctions are made in Cavendish's
works, I have observed that while the term "spirit" is used
for describing both spirits originating from the human body and spirits
whose origins are clearly not human, the term "soul" is used
only in connection with human souls. Even if this is not necessarily revealing,
as both spirits and souls are utilized in order to illustrate the same
ideas about body and disembodiment in her fiction and poetry, it might
hint at the fact that Cavendish seems to be well aware of the different
discourses at her time and appears to be influenced by discourses both
on religion and mysticism, at least in her choice of terms.
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In Observations, Cavendish denies the existence of immaterial
substances: for her, everything is corporeal, material and self-moving,
even mind, soul and spirit (137). Although she somehow allows for
an immaterial soul, she does not thematize its workings, but relegates
it to the realm of theology, thus removing it from real world experience,
scientific interest and provability: "I mean only the natural, not
the divine soul of man, which I leave to the Church. And this natural
soul ... is nothing else but corporeal natural self-motion..." (221).
This leads to a revalorization of matter, which is not dependent on the
power of an immaterial soul to move it, as matter possesses an inherent
power of movement. Her clearest definition of soul can be found in the
second part of Observations: "Of all the opinions concerning
the natural soul, of man, I like that best which affirms the soul to be
a self-moving substance; but yet I will add a material self-moving
substance; for the soul of man is part of the soul of nature, and the
soul of nature is material" (221). When she enters into a critical
dialogue with other philosophers and their theories, she thus mainly contradicts
their views on materiality and on an immaterial soul/spirit.
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My initial interest in this topic was triggered by the questions: if
spirits/souls are material, thus possessing "material" characteristics,
why is Cavendish so interested in making use of and discussing spirits/souls
in varying discourses and in different ways in so many of her texts? Which
"advantages" do spirits have compared to body? How productive
is the tension between disembodiment (spirits and souls are not body)
and re-embodiment (they are like bodies in the sense that they are material)
with respect to matters of space and time?
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Cavendish uses parts of her philosophical theory in her fiction and poetry
in order to give new -- playful -- models of freedom and a free, fluid
self. By travelling, the spirits/souls open up new temporal and spatial
realms and create a new imaginary connection between the world, the universe,
time and human beings. Especially in Blazing World and in three
shorter prose texts from Nature's Pictures, spirits and souls enable
the persons to whom they belong to literally expand their horizons and
experience new ways of freedom -- a freedom, however, within corporeal
bounds.
- Tracing soul and spirit in Poems, and Fancies (1653) helps to understand
Cavendish's experimental uses of her scientific-philosophical views in other
genres as well as to pave the way for an even more unconventional approach
to materiality and disembodiment in Blazing World (1666) and Nature's
Pictures (1656). In the poem "Its hard to beleive [sic], that there
are other Worlds in this World," Cavendish defines the belief in incorporeal
spirits as an irrational superstition:
Things against Nature we do thinke are true,
That Spirits change, and can take Bodies new;
That Life may be, yet in no Body live,
For which no Sense, nor Reason, we can give.
As Incorporeall Spirits this Fancy faines,
Yet Fancy cannot be without some Braines.
If Fancy without Substance cannot bee,
Then Soules are more, then Reason well can see. (Nature's
Pictures 44)
The poem is one of the few on spirits/souls, which is didactic in the
sense that it puts philosophical insights into verse. Thus, it can be
contrasted against other poems which deal with concrete situations and
involve fictional characters. In this poem, Cavendish argues that immaterial
spirits are "against nature", as souls/spirits have to be material,
because they require a brain. Cavendish's fiction, however, shows that
souls/spirits can enter other bodies (particularly in Blazing World),
but that they still need a material "body" or vehicle of their
own in order to move at all.
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In Blazing World (1666), spirits and souls play crucial roles
in the plot of the narrative. In order to learn more about the world,
the newly-crowned Empress orders "immaterial spirits" who answer
all questions -- first and foremost questions about themselves and their
nature, which is a direct extension of Cavendish's writings on natural
philosophy in Observations. It is these spirits who then arrange
a meeting with the soul of the Duchess of Newcastle. The subsequent contact
between the Empress and the soul of the Duchess and their soul-voyages
together show that souls/spirits are dependent on having a bodily material
vehicle.
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The origin of spirits in the Blazing World remains obscure and cannot
be traced back to a former life or to a location as is the case with Ariel
in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Whereas Ariel is a spirit originating
from the elements who lost his power to the witch Sycorax and is now subject
to the magician and conjurer Prospero, the spirits of the Blazing World
serve the Empress, but retain their free will and their independent power
(this is exemplified by the spirits' journey to the centre of the earth
and the antipodes which they perform without informing the Empress; 180).
Although the Empress and her scientists appear as spirit-conjurers (the
Empress wants to have news of her native world and regards the spirits
as travelling messengers), the spirits cannot be commanded (165). The
role of the conjurer and magician and subsequently the belief in apparitions
of ghosts and spirits are rendered absurd when Cavendish re-embodies spirits
as material instead of perceiving them as supernatural entities: she simultaneously
"invokes" and dismisses the (in)famous Elizabethan magicians
Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly, who became well-known by "spirit-encounters,"
as "mere cheats" (166).
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Spirits in the Blazing World live in the air, and the fly-men (some of
the Empress' scientists) tell her "that those spirits were always
clothed in some sort or other of material garments; which garments
were their bodies, made for the most part, of air; and when occasion
served, they could put on any other sort of substances; but yet they could
not put these substances into any form or shape, as they pleased"
(emphasis mine) (165). The spirits concur: "we spirits, being incorporeal,
have no motion but from our corporeal vehicles, so that we move by the
help of our bodies, and not the bodies by the help of us" (168).
Here it becomes obvious that there are two definitions of "body"
in use which have to be distinguished also in the other texts: spirits
and souls can be immaterial in the sense that they do not need a human
body. But what all spirits and souls need is a form of substance, matter,
or corporeality in the sense that they consist of a material body, of
a vehicle. This vehicle enables them not only to move, but also to have
human perception, knowledge and speech (168-169). Although the Empress
tries very hard to make sense of the spirits' nature in her own terms
("Then I suppose, replied the Empress, that those airy vehicles,
are your corporeal summer-suits" 173), not only do the many repeated
discussions and speculations on the nature of the vehicles show that the
Empress really does not understand the nature of the spirits, but they
also indicate that there are several complications in equating Cavendish's
theoretical Observations and her views in Blazing World.
Whereas in Observations, she makes clear that spirits are material
but leaves open questions about a certain divine immateriality, the talking
and travelling spirits in Blazing World repeatedly try to explain
to the uncomprehending Empress that although they have a vehicle, they
are immaterial. What conclusions can be drawn from this seeming contradiction?
Whereas Eileen O'Neill argues that Blazing World "parodies
views about incorporeal spirits" (O'Neill 263) for which Cavendish
criticizes other philosophers in her Observations, Mary Baine Campbell
takes the vehicle described in the Blazing World as the required
materiality of Observations (Campbell 207). If we ask ourselves
about the activities and the fictional depiction of the spirits, we come
to the following characteristics, which help to resolve these contradictions:
spirits possess a brain and knowledge as well as senses, they can talk,
they can establish (human) contact, and they need a vehicle -- all material
features which enable them to live like humans. However, they do not suffer
from human limitations. Their material features are combined with immaterial,
disembodied characteristics: they are immortal, they can change vehicles,
travel quickly and conveniently (180), and can grasp, know and perceive
much more of the world (spatially and temporally, as they also know about
the past) than human beings normally can. What the spirits in Blazing
World definitely show is that Cavendish goes beyond a mere parody
by deliberately experimenting with the possibilities inherent in (virtual)
reality with a combination of the advantages of the human body
and its senses with immaterial movement and understanding.
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Aside from the spirits, it is the Duchess of Newcastle's soul which is
central for the text, since she is fetched by the spirits to write down
the Empress' cabbala. As has often been remarked, the encounter and subsequent
friendship of the two women is repeatedly described as "platonic,"
but in keeping with this tradition, vocabulary of bodily contact is used
("the Empress embraced and saluted her with a spiritual kiss"
181; "embracing her soul" 183). Transferring her philosophical
theories into this fictional context enables Cavendish to depict a close
friendship between women, to show a transgression of spatial boundaries
and develop a new model of mobility and motion, but without sacrificing
human characteristics. When the Empress plans to travel to the "real
world" together with the soul of the Duchess, the principles of separating
soul/spirit from body are again explained in detail: that it is possible
to replace the absent soul in the body, that many spirits can enter into
one body and that there is no difference of sex in spirits (189). The
journey itself makes it possible for the two souls to see and survey the
whole world at the same time (190). The narrator also supplies the reader
with the description of the language and vehicles of souls: "yet
by reason souls cannot travel without vehicles, they use such language
as the nature and propriety of their vehicles require" (193). Both
the language and the body/vehicle of the souls differ from human language
and body, but they continue to function just like human experience. Similarly,
the features of embodiment are combined with the features of disembodiment,
allowing for spatial and temporal mobility.
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In Nature's Pictures, many poems and stories contain descriptions
of souls and spirits. A common scenario is following a dead lover in order
to meet his/her soul again. In "Of the faithfull Widow, or mournfull
Wife," for example, the widow wants to follow her husband:
In Melancholy Shades my Soul doth lye,
And grieves my Body will not quickly dye;
My Spirits long to wander in the Air,
Hoping to Finde its loving Partner there (4)
"My Spirits long to wander in the Air" seems to convey a "conventional"
separation from the body. However, according to Cavendish's philosophical
view, this is only made possible by the materiality of spirit/soul which
endows them at the same time with the self-movement characteristic of
nature as a whole. When Cavendish criticizes Pythagoras' views in her
Observations by pointing out that she "cannot conceive ...
how the soul, being incorporeal, can walk in the air, like a body;
for, incorporeal beings cannot have corporeal actions..." (my emphasis)
(Observations 260), she does not believe in a general impossibility
for souls/spirits to move, but the impossibility for immaterial
souls/spirits to move. In her poetry and fiction, she shows that it is
important that souls/spirits are disembodied but still material in order
to "walk in the air," which implies gaining mobility and rediscovering
the space around them.
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In "A Description of Constancy," this freedom of the spirit/soul
is heightened by a special kind of perception of the soul. Senses, I have
already argued, are dependent on bodily materiality, although in this
case they function differently:
On which my Soul doth view with much delight,
Because the Soul sees not with vulgar sight.
For Souls do see, not as the Senses do:
But as transparent Glass, the Minds quite through;
Or rather, as the Gods see all that's past,
Present, or what's to come, or the World vast,
Or what can be, to them is known... (my emphasis) (26)
Here, the perception of the soul comprises spatial freedom ("World
vast") and temporal freedom (past, present, future).
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Three shorter texts in Nature's Pictures deal with souls and spirits.
"The Tale of the Lady in the Elyzium" is a story which also
depends on the combination of disembodiment and a new kind of material
bodiliness. Here, a lady swoons when she hears rumours about her lover
being married. She appears to be dead, and it looks like "her Soul
had utterly forsaken her Mansion the Body" (148). However, she returns
and talks about her soul's experience in Elysium: "'twas onely the
sudden and violent passion which had hurried my Soul to Charon's
Boat in a distracted Whirlwinde of Sighs, where in the Croud I was ferryed
over to the Elyzium Fields" (148). Again, the materiality of the
soul comprises senses, perception and language. In Elysium, she meets
the souls of famous people such as Solomon, Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra.
When she finally asks Charon to bring her back, as she perceives that
she is not yet dead, "he set my Soul where he had taken it up, and
from thence it returned into my Body to be alive again" (149). Here,
mobility is combined with the well-known motif of a trip to the underworld.
The soul which still possesses senses and speech comes into contact with
other souls, thus bridging the gap between past and present, between history
and myth.
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"The propagating Souls" deals with the souls of two lovers
who have died because of forbidden love. The Lovers' souls meet in the
"Elyzium Fields" (132) where they finally enjoy "bodily"
contact even without their human bodies, but made possible by their materiality:
at which meeting they were extreamly joyed, but know not how to express
it, for they had no Lips to kiss, nor Arms to embrace, being Bodyless,
and onely Spirits. But the passion of Love being allwayes ingenuous,
found out a way, as thus; their Souls, which are their Spirits, did
mingle and intermix, as liquid Essences, whereby each others
Soul became as one (my emphasis) (132-3)
Although they no longer possess their human bodies, they are material
-- consisting of "Essences" -- and thus experience tangible
contact which still recalls human body contact. Neither do they have to
renounce communication, as they are "speaking in the Souls Language"
(133). The souls/spirits have more freedom compared to an "embodied"
human being, which is made clear as "They began to remember each
other of their crosses and interpositions whilst they lived in their Bodyes"
(133). The souls travel through space and the whole universe, agree to
live in one of the planets, but instead they produce meteors which are
their "issues." After that "they became one fix'd Star,
as being eternal, and not subject to dye" (134), and so the journey
is finished. The striking ability of the souls to produce "children"
highlights their human characteristics. However, reproduction is no longer
connected to specific sexual characteristics or gender differences. Therefore,
the outstanding innovations of total mobility, immortality and a non-sex-specific
way of reproduction in "The propagating Souls" already hint
at a utopian conception of humanity in a world beyond gender.
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"The Traveling Spirit" deals with completely different motivations
for a journey out of the human body. Here, a man consults a witch "for,
said he, I have a curiosity to travel, but I would go into those Countryes,
which, without your power to assist me, I cannot do" (144). This
text thus starts with a deliberate intent to travel where the human body
is not able to go. Before travelling to the centre of the earth, the body
has to be left at home: "your Body will be too cumbersome, wherefore
we will leave that behinde, that you may go the lighter, as being all
Spirit" (145). This is achieved by taking opium which makes him swoon,
"in the mean while, his Spirit stole out, and left the Body asleep"
(145). Mobility is possible, because the witch says that "there is
no danger, since our Bodyes are not here" (145). But since the spirits
are not immaterial, they also feel pain (145). The journey and its different
stages are described in detail, emphasizing the enormous new realms of
experience made possible by disembodiment and the ensuing mobility, on
the one hand, and by retaining language, intellect, human senses and bodily
sensations such as pain on the other. The spirits are able to travel through
very different climates (spatial) and through landscapes of the dead (temporal)
(146), until they arrive at the centre of the earth. The spirits have
the ability to talk to the man who lives in the centre of the earth and
an intellect to form ideas that they discuss with him.
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Whereas in poems such as "Soule, and Body" in Poems and
Fancies, the body is a garment which is separated from the soul in
death, the spirit in "The Traveling Spirit" can leave the body
behind like a garment even in life, and can travel on its own because
it is also made of matter, even without the human body. Finally, after
having satisfied his curiosity, the man returns and "found his Body
where he left it, so putting on the Body as a Garment" (148). Thus,
"The Traveling Spirit" and Cavendish's other texts on spirits/souls
ultimately envision a reality which includes rich perceptual feedback
for all sensual modalities, unrestricted mobility, and interaction with
the environment -- in short, something which could be termed the ultimate
virtual reality. Rheingold defines two key features of virtual reality
as immersion in an artificially created world and navigation
as the ability to move freely in this environment in order to allow a
human being to actively explore the world (Rheingold 122-23). Cavendish
adds to these mainly spatial characteristics the temporal dimension thus
providing spatio-temporal freedom for her characters. These virtual reality
experiences in Cavendish's texts are dependent on bodily spirits, a concept
far beyond early modern scientific discourse, and are presented as a vision
of enhanced humanity.
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Like Cavendish, Donna Haraway develops new concepts which would be impossible
within traditional scientific discourses. In taking several points from
established discourses and developing them in different directions, such
discourses are not only appropriated, but significantly modified. Instead
of constructing a store of secure scientific knowledge, Haraway uses different
aspects as starting points for a subversion of the attempt at scientific
definition. In Haraway's case, this is aimed at the technical discourse
on cyborgs which is apolitical and does not take into account gendered
implications. In much the same way as Cavendish experiments with space-time
and body concepts, this transformation opens up ways for discourses which
are not only liberating for women, but which are also concerned with the
liberating fluidity of the concepts of body and matter in general.
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Haraway develops cyborg ideas mainly in feminist directions, thus politicizing
and gendering them. She also frees herself from restricting discourses
by working with these discourses in a way that goes beyond their main
focus. This is also what Cavendish achieves in appropriating ideas about
spirits and souls from early modern discourses and from her own scientific
ideas in Observations. Cavendish's last step focuses on the spiritual
dis- and re-embodiment of humans in the here (with spatial mobility) and
now (with temporal mobility) without supernatural associations which would
imply that souls/spirits leave the body only after death.
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Haraway and Cavendish depart from a totalizing theory by "stealing"
parts of the discourses and developing them in different directions. Haraway's
methodological statement that cyborg imagery can prove useful illustrating
that "the production of universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake
that misses most of reality" (181) also lies very much at the core
of Cavendish's thinking and writing and parallels her use of the spirit/soul
concept.
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In addition to a parallel in textual method, Cavendish's material spirits
and Haraway's cyborgs share similarities which at a first glance appear
to be impossible, given the contrast between a spirit-human being and
a machine-human being. However, Haraway's catch-phrase "Cyborgs for
earthly survival!" (Haraway, Introduction 4) draws attention both
to her transformation of the discourse on cyborgs (much as Cavendish transforms
early modern discourses on spirits/souls) and to similarities between
spirits and cyborgs which lie in the idea of a modified human being. The
term "cyborg" was popularized in the 1960s by Manfred E. Clynes
and Nathan S. Kline who described their project of creating an enhanced
human being who would be able to survive in an extraterrestrial environment.
[9] What started as an experiment in space exploration
was subsequently diversified and extended to several kinds of machine-human
relationships (Figueroa-Sarriera and Gray). Haraway, however, and this
is crucial for the immense influence of her concept of the cyborg since
the early 1980s, is not only focused on feminist concerns. She also devises
the cyborg as a vision, a metaphor and catalyst of an enhanced human being
not for space exploration, but for leaving behind human (and gender) restrictions
in the material world. Her particular view on the cyborg is certainly
not in the centre of cyber theory in general: "The cyborg is resolutely
committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional,
utopian, and completely without innocence" (151). Cavendish, as already
demonstrated, does the same: instead of leaving the issue of spirits/souls
to the realms of theology or scientific philosophy, she uses the concept
in order to combine bodily and sensual features of humanity with spiritual
features which serve to leave human (and gender) restrictions behind in
our world.
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"Applying" Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto to Cavendish is
not my intention here. Instead, I trust in the automatic revelation of
potential intersections which, while they can and should not be equated,
serve to render visible very similar strategies and utopian visions. Haraway's
claim that "The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and
material reality" (159) can easily be utilized to draw attention
to Cavendish's fictional experimentation with spirits and embodiment.
Having accounted for material reality and material bodies, however, does
not exclude characteristics of fluidity -- neither in Cavendish, nor in
Haraway's conceptions of the cyborg: "People are nowhere near so
fluid, being both material and opaque. Cyborgs are ether, quintessence"
(my emphasis) (153). Such a two-sided but necessarily fused conception
of enhanced humanity presupposes an experimental and transgressive approach
for which Cavendish has been praised in the last decades and which is
central also to Haraway's effect. Haraway similarly to Cavendish states
that "my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions,
and dangerous possibilities" (154). She also underlines fluidity
and transgression in her textuality. Her programmatic statement "This
chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries
and for responsibility in their construction" (150) mirrors
Cavendish's hybridity and transgression of generic, stylistic and scientific
boundaries. [10] Finally, Haraway's basic conception
of the cyborg aims at the dissolution of gender binaries: "The cyborg
is a creature in a post-gender world" (150). Cavendish likewise provides
glimpses of a vision of a post-gender world, especially with the spirits
in Blazing World and the souls in "The propagating Souls"
who do not have sex/gender or reproduce sexually.
-
In Blazing World and the texts from Nature's Pictures,
the exploration of a completely new world becomes possible, but without
the loss of human perception and senses. Elizabeth Grosz in her essay
"Space, Time, and Bodies" argues that "If bodies are to
be reconceived, not only must their matter and form be rethought, but
so too must their environment and spacio-temporal location" (Grosz
120). It has become clear that in many of her texts Cavendish connects
fantasies about an enhanced kind of humanity with reconceptualizations
of space and time. These fantasies and reconceptualizations mirror Haraway's
fantasies of the cyborg, who is likewise envisioned as a hybrid being,
"both material and opaque," thus combining corporeality with
fluidity, limitations with transgression. In Cavendish's texts, the idea
of material souls and spirits leads to an expanded and enriched conception
of humanity as far as mobility and transgression of boundaries of time
and space are concerned, while paradoxically corporeality has to be retained
in order to make this transgressive fluidity possible. Thus souls/spirits
remain human to a degree but are used as a means to explore alternative
models of time, space and corporeality. Haraway similarly combines such
utopian visions of the body for an improvement of the human condition
as she perceives it. Cavendish's fluid fictionalization of the duality
between freedom and its limits for souls and spirits thus extends their
rigid definitions of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Her experiments
parallel Haraway's departure from a "universal totalizing theory"
in appropriating and transforming restricting discourses. Margaret Cavendish
thus combines scientific theories and fictional speculation ("science-fiction")
in order to develop a new kind of corporeal space-time finally leading
to the creation of her very own "virtual reality".
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 Conference of
the Margaret Cavendish Society in Chester. I would like to thank Sylvia Bowerbank,
Oddvar Holmesland and Ingrid Hotz-Davies for helpful comments and inspiration
especially concerning Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto and Ariel in Shakespeare's
The Tempest.
1. Among others Eve Keller, "Producing Petty
Gods: Margaret Cavendish's Critique of Experimental Science," ELH
6 (1997): 447-471; Jay Stevenson, "The Mechanist-Vitalist Soul of Margaret
Cavendish," SEL 36 (1996): 527-543. See also Sarah Hutton.
2. Several studies are focused on different aspects
of Cavendish's work and compare her to other scientists and philosophers:
Susan James, "The Philosophical Innovations of Margaret Cavendish,"
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7/2 (1999): 219; Elisabeth
Wilhelmine Strauß, Die Arithmetik der Leidenschaften: Margaret
Cavendish's Naturphilosophie (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999).
3. See John Henry, J., "The Matter of Souls:
Medical Theory and Theology in Seventeenth-Century England," Roger
French and Andrew Wear, eds. The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), 87-113.
4. "Thus, a body is always able to become
more and more spiritual to infinity since God, who is the first and highest
spirit, is infinite and does not and cannot partake of the least corporeality."
Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 42.
5. For a comparison see Sarah Hutton, "Anne
Conway, Margaret Cavendish and Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought,"
in Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton, eds. Women, Science and Medicine
1500-1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society (Stroud: Sutton,
1997), 218-234.
6. Sarah Hutton, "In Dialogue with Thomas
Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish's Natural Philosophy," Women's Writing
4/3 (1997): 421-432; Eileen O'Neill, "Cavendish, Margaret Lucas (1623-73),"
in Edward Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London:
Routledge, 1998), 261.
7. For the classical models of didactic poetry
(Lucretius's De Rerum Natura, Ovid's Ars Amatoria and Virgil's
Georgica) see Alexander Dalzell, The Criticism of Didactic Poetry:
Essays on Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1996).
8. In the short story "The propagating Souls,"
for example, this becomes obvious by the phrase "Their Souls, which
are their Spirits." Margaret Cavendish, Nature's Pictures Drawn
by Fancies Pencil to the Life (London: 1656), 133.
9. "The Cyborg deliberately incorporates
exogenous components extending the self-regulatory control function of the
organism in order to adapt it to new environments." Manfred E. Clynes
and Nathan S. Kline, "Cyborgs and Space," Astronautics
(September 1960); reprinted in Chris Hables Gray, ed., The Cyborg Handbook
(London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 30.
10. Lilley states that "Her writings, collectively
and individually, demonstrate an abiding fascination [...] with impure and
unexpected hybrids. An interrogation of systems of knowledge and modes of
description, as well as the fluid relations of gender and genre, informs
all of Cavendish's writing, and marks it as generically self-conscious and
ambitious." Kate Lilley, "Introduction," Margaret Cavendish.
The Blazing World & Other Writings. Kate Lilley, ed. (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1994), xi.
