In Existence and the Absolute, Jean-Yves Lacoste writes about the inseparability of soul and body.
“The problem of the body is that it is an I: not some ‘thing’ that we may or
may not possess, but something we are: and, more rigorously, something that defines
us as man: as someone.” (p.7) Lacoste is not interested in the importance of
the body per se. Rather, his point is that the experience of the self cannot be
divorced from an existence of place in the world. Lacoste is speaking against
the possibility of an interiority apart from an exterior orientation toward
place. However, Lacoste’s comments suggest that body and soul exist as a
unified whole, both being essential to our identity in the world. Many recent
books and film question this premise, suggesting a growing obsession with the
life  of the flesh and the fate of
the soul.

     To begin with, the movie Avatar portrays a world in which a manipulating
consciousness, through technical support, can switch or even swap bodies
altogether. When not in-use, these bodies lie inert, although subject to
biological requirements. Not only are these switches between empty bodies
undetrimental to self, but seem to offer an opportunity for a more beneficial
expression of the self. By finding the right body, a person can inhabit their
“true” selves. Predictably, the movie portrays the main character’s disability
(he is paralyzed in the course of military service) not as a condition which
might inform his person, but that which represses the self and should therefore
be rightfully discarded. As opposed to an integrated necessity, the body is
presented as an amenity which can be upgraded or exchanged given the right
resources.

     Along different lines, recent “undead” moves, books, and
video games depict bodies animated beyond consciousness. Beginning with the
classic zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead, zombies are depicted, not as supernatural beings, but reanimated flesh
devoid of the human characteristics of intellect, will, and emotion. More
importantly, in the recent undead narratives, the undead are almost always a
consequence of some bioengineering project gone wrong (e.g. the book,
The
Passage
by Justin Cronin; the film, 28
Days Later
; or the series of video games, Resident
Evil)
. Certainly, these stories express current
anxieties about genetic manipulation, but more pointedly speaks to fears about
the elusiveness of the soul in spite of our growing mastery of biology. When
our cells can be manipulated beyond consciousness, how do we define identity?
These stories typically offer an answer no less bloody than the affliction: the
infected are inhuman and therefore all forms of retaliation are not only
warranted, but demanded. More often than not, these movies completely relieve
the living characters of the ethical quandary of “killing” undead family
members and friends due to the barbarity of their attack. There is much more
that can be said about the amoral forces at work in these narratives (Rowan
Williams, in fact, has said much on this point in his
The Truce of
God
). However, the point I wish to make is
that these stories seem to forcefully reject that the body is an integrated
part of the person.

     In contrast to these fictional accounts, I offer the
conclusions of Rebecca Skloot’s book,
The Immortal
Life of Henrietta Lacks
(the book was
also featured on fantastic episode
of Radio Lab
). In it, Skloot writes about the cells of cancer patient
Henrietta Lacks. After these cells were taken without her knowledge, they were
then reproduced for research. Henrietta’s cells became central to many
advancements in medicine, including the polo vaccine. The cells were replicated
millions and billions of times. When Henrietta’s youngest daughter, Deborah,
learned that her mother’s cells were still in existence, she was at first
confused. She worried that her mother was still alive and was being harmed in
some way by the medical experiments. After a lot of emotional and spiritual
anguish, she arrived at a comforting conclusion. Her answer was not to
disconnect her mother’s identity from the cells, but to believe that her
mother’s cells were living out a philanthropic purpose; she was a kind of an
angel aiding medical research. As the title of the book suggests, as far as her
daughter is concerned, Henrietta continues through her cells in a kind of
immortality.

    Although I am not anxiously anticipating a zombie
apocalypse, the need to readdress the relationship of body and soul has never
been more important in light of the very real possibility that our bodies may
indeed exist, at least in part, apart from us. When our ability to identify a
person extents to an individual cell, what happens to personal identity? When
the soul is unquantifiable and the body is potentially reproducible, how do we
continue to make a case for the unique human condition of being, at once body
and soul?