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Corpus mysticum digitale (mystical body digital)?: on the concept of two bodies in the era of digital technology

2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13576275.2015.1083696

1469-9885

Masato Fukushima,

Political Theology and Sovereignty

The purpose of this article is to analyse the theoretical connotation of the idea of our digital body surviving the death of our natural body, advocated by such evangelists of digital afterlife as Bell and Gemmel. For this purpose, I will explore the seminal notion of ‘two bodies in one’ first analysed by Ernst Kantorowicz in his The King’s Two Bodies, which details the emergence of the legal concept by which the king has both a natural body and a mystical body (corpus mysticum) understood as the everlasting polity. To explore the possibility of applying this notion to ideas concerning the body in the digital era, I will elaborate on two additional concepts, namely, the concept of diarchy in traditional authority, as proposed by Rodney Needham, and Toyo Ito’s concept of the natural and digital body originating from his peculiar view of contemporary architecture. Through the method of abductive comparison, I will discuss the limitation of Bell and Gemmell’s concept of an everlasting digital body, and the intrinsic lack of institutionality upon which the very notion of the two bodies of the king relies. Finally, I will introduce the concept of the corpus mysticum digitale, a figure, which, in the time of the decline of the power of ritual, legitimises the dead as a collective entity that lives eternally, but anonymously.