To see for oneself.

Yesterday was a whirlwind, yes it was. We woke up relatively early to continue arranging our finances overseas: our respective student loans require some bureaucratic shuffling to get them cashed, like having them sent to Slovenia then back to Canada. Lisa's parents have kindly taken power of attorney over our administrative documents so they can deposit them into our accounts.

I should take a moment here to thank our wonderful friends and family for helping us move, driving us around, providing company and support and all the other favours that have made this whole process easier. You know who you are! You are a nice and wonderful!

Later, we met with Chris for a coffee and a chat at Trees (which, by the way, has an incredible apple pie) and then we met Kevin and Tania for dinner at their place and then a late-night excursion to Science World for the Body Worlds exhibit.

What can I say about this exhibit? Well, I was thinking about the secularization of the body. For centuries, the body was considered sacred (and, of course, the male body was privileged), since the body was considered the center of experience (indeed, it is) and hence the center of the universe. Furthermore, human dissection was limited or outright banned until the Catholic church deemed it acceptable in the 17th century. Body Worlds posits that the body is malleable, made of common components found in other living beings. By lifting muscle groups to expose organs or cutting away at the cranium to display sliced brain tissue, the exhibit is presenting the body as a biological wonder that is understood and thus controllable.

Although other cultures practiced body modification for centuries, "Western" culture is only now catching up. Subdermal implants and plastic surgery are here (for extreme examples see ModBlog, but be careful: definitely NSFW) and new methods are approaching fast. Surgical techniques enable doctors to perform radical facial reconstructions or attach severed limbs. The body is up for grabs.

Kevin problematized my idea. By removing the sacred from the body, the danger lies in how the body is intellectually conceived. The body can be abused by feeding it unhealthy food or not exercising it because there is no real investment, nothing to protect. Post-modernism counters metanarratives; if the body was confined by narratives defining its sacredness, then is the secularization of the body a post-modern endeavour?

Autopsy is derived from the Greek words "auto" and "opsis," meaning "to see for oneself." We really did see for ourselves.

Okay, I am packed. We only have a few small details to finish up. Our flight is eight hours away. Here we go.