Ward on Bodies

Graham Ward, writing about the “displaced body of Jesus,” argues that “none of us has access to bodies as such, only to bodies that are mediated through the giving and receiving of signs.” To which I want to say, Hmmm. On the one hand, I want to agree that our knowledge of another, and even of another’s body, comes to us in coded forms that are always already there. Strip away the culturally coded accoutrements of clothing, and you still have a body in a certain posture, sending certain messages, that are to some extent culturally specific. Yet, that “always already” makes me suspicious of Ward’s formulation, which indicates that there is some body behind the signs that is inaccessible. This seems to me a transcription of a Kantian problematic into the realm of bodiliness, with the Ding an sich outside our knowledge. But if the body simply IS the gestured/signified/symbolized body, then there is no “noumenal” body that is coming to us through signs. Ward’s theory, though, lends itself to his effort to “ambiguize” Jesus’ masculinity, for if there is no access to bodies as such then there is only cultural construct and code. To put it crassly: Jesus had a penis (we know that it was circumcised), and though that organ has a specific significance in ancient Judaism (thus, this organ comes already encoded), it remains that there IS an organ that is culturally coded. It appears that Ward considers the cultural coding as a veil that keeps the organ ever distant.