Organs-without-body: a study on the genealogy of vision leading to the posthuman age

The paper investigates the visual thinking and epistemic frameworks underpinning Lam Qua’s nineteenth-century medical portraits commissioned by Peter Parker in Canton/Guangzhou. It asks how medical observation practices and their representational conventions (cases, lesions, identity) operated and were transmitted across domains such as ethnographic display and fashion, and how these practices contributed to a mode of discourse where parts (organs) come to stand in for wholes (bodies). Using Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, the study situates Lam Qua’s portraits within a genealogy that includes Pinel and Alibert’s case-based medical images, freak shows and racialized ethnographic viewing, and contemporary cultural practices in fashion and dance. The purpose is to reveal how the separation and circulation of partial information—termed organs-without-body—prefigures a posthuman orientation privileging information over material embodiment and to show its cultural consequences.

Prior scholarship on Lam Qua’s portraits has emphasized their roles in Sino-Western exchange and medical iconography (Heinrich 2008; Wagner 2015; Gilman 1986) and read them through critical lenses including identity and pathology (Rachman 2005). The paper draws on Foucault’s archaeology (1989; 2012; 2013) to conceptualize archives and discursive formations, and on Sontag (1978) regarding illness as metaphor linking body, clothing, and identity. Dermatology and psychiatric illustration traditions (Pinel; Alibert) foregrounded external signs and classification (Gilman 1986; Hennepe 2007; Fend 2013). Studies of freak shows and medical display (Durbach 2014) and colonial racial discourse (Outlaw 1992; Gilman 1985; Lindfors 1984; Rawson 2002) contextualize the spectacle of difference exemplified by Sarah Baartman. Fashion histories of bums/bustles and pregnancy pads (e.g., Wahrman 2004) trace how detachable enhancements codified organ-focused aesthetics. Contemporary analyses of Rei Kawakubo’s deconstructive fashion (Bolton 2017; Seely 2012) and Merce Cunningham’s non-narrative, movement-centered dance and digital collaborations (Cunningham 1991; 1955/2015; Carpenter 2012; Foster 2001) inform the extension of organ-centric discourse into posthuman, information-driven practices. Hayles (1999) and Virilio (1989) frame the privileging of informational patterns over material instantiation.

The study applies Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge to assemble an archive of statements and images across periods and domains, tracing rules of formation that enable organs to function as mobile signifiers beyond the body. Empirically, it analyzes 80 digitized medical portraits by Lam Qua (Yale collection) as a cross-section of surgical observation, reading their visual conventions (emphasis on lesions, facial identifiability, omission of non-salient body parts) and exhibition contexts (hospital reception hall; Parker’s transatlantic displays before medical and elite audiences). Comparative visual-genealogical analysis links these portraits to earlier medical illustration regimes (Pinel’s standardized depictions; Alibert’s dermatological atlases), to freak-show and ethnographic images (e.g., Baartman), and to contemporaneous and later fashion prints and practices (bums/bustles, pregnancy pads) that highlight detachable or augmentable organs. The method extends to modern cultural practices by examining Rei Kawakubo’s collections (1995 Sweeter than Sweet; 1997 Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body) and Merce Cunningham’s dance works and digital motion-capture collaborations (Hand-drawn Spaces; BIPED) as downstream articulations of the same discursive logic. Across cases, the analysis tracks how partial information (organs, movement traces) becomes detached from bodies and circulates as autonomous discourse, evidencing the organs-without-body formation.

- Lam Qua’s medical portraits inherit and transform case-based medical visualization: like Alibert’s, they present identifiable patients while isolating lesions as focal organs, often omitting other bodily detail, thereby forging a medical portrait that separates personhood (face/identity) from pathological signifiers (lesions). - These portraits functioned within a display economy akin to freak shows: their exhibition in medical and public spaces positioned deformed organs as spectacles subject to both clinical and popular consumption, intertwining rational observation with entertainment and moral politics. - The emphasis on detachable, organ-level information echoes and intersects with racialized ethnographic viewing, exemplified by the Hottentot Venus (Sarah Baartman), where hips/genitals were medicalized and spectacularized, contrasting with fashion’s celebrated artificial enhancements (bums/bustles), revealing how organs accrue anonymous symbolic power beyond bodies. - Fashion history demonstrates a long trajectory of augmentable organs (hips, bellies via pads), culminating in Rei Kawakubo’s deconstructive silhouettes (1995, 1997) that collage and redistribute padding, destabilizing patriarchal body norms and converting organs into mobile signifiers. - Merce Cunningham’s work further abstracts the body by privileging movement information over narrative and identity, and through motion-capture collaborations (Hand-drawn Spaces), renders the body as data traces, advancing a posthuman visuality that privileges information over material instantiation. - Across these domains, a coherent discursive system—organs-without-body—emerges, wherein parts detach from wholes to operate as autonomous information, shaping modern and posthuman conceptions of body, identity, and representation.

The findings demonstrate that the visual logic underpinning Lam Qua’s portraits—privileging lesions and identifiable faces while suppressing the rest of the body—both arises from and reinforces a discursive shift whereby parts come to stand for wholes. This addresses the research problem by showing a continuous genealogy from medical observation and classification to ethnographic spectacle, fashion augmentation, and contemporary performance and digital arts. The organs-without-body concept elucidates how visual and cultural practices transform bodily components into transportable information, enabling meanings to migrate across contexts (clinic, stage, runway, screen). The significance lies in reframing these heterogeneous materials as an archive governed by rules that produce a posthuman orientation: information (organs, movement traces) supersedes material embodiment in structuring perception and value. This perspective bridges medical humanities, visual culture, fashion studies, dance studies, and media theory, revealing how modern bodies are culturally constructed through practices that extract, display, and circulate partial information. It also complicates narratives of progress by showing the entanglement of scientific rationality with racialized spectacle and consumption, prompting critical reflection on contemporary aesthetics and technologies that continue to de-center the embodied subject.

The body in modernity is reconfigured as an assemblage of organs and components subject to medical adjustment and cultural re-styling. This fosters a mode of perception and representation that separates information from matter—organs-without-body—where organs function as signifiers that circulate beyond their original corporeal context. Through a Foucauldian archaeological lens, the paper shows how medical portraits (Pinel, Alibert, Lam Qua), freak-show and colonial displays (Baartman), fashion augmentations and deconstruction (Kawakubo), and posthuman dance/digital practices (Cunningham, motion capture) belong to a shared archive. While this de-hierarchizing movement opens posthuman imaginaries that privilege informational patterns, it risks oversimplification when material embodiment is neglected. A balanced understanding recognizes both the autonomy of informational forms and the irreducibility of bodily experience. Future research could further map organs-without-body across contemporary digital cultures (VR, virtual idols, AI-driven avatars), examine non-Western archives and reception histories, and develop critical frameworks for ethical display and interpretation of decontextualized bodily information.