Subjected to the Current: Batteries, Bodies, and the Early History of Electrification in the United States

“Subjected to the Current” charts the advent of electrolysis in nineteenth century America. Situating this technique of human hair removal within larger histories of electrification, the essay traces operators’ debates over the design of specific artifacts (needles, batteries, and so on) and the establishment of technical standards (for speed, current, etc.). Such technical developments, however, were but one feature of the technique: as early commentators were well aware, successful electrolysis depended equally on the rearrangement of human conduct and feeling. Operators and clients alike were hardened to their painstaking task, accommodating themselves to the financial, physiological, and emotional demands of hair removal by electric needle. Reflection on the intertwining of norms, affects, standards, and things in this instance serves to illuminate the history of power in both the literal and figural senses of that word: in the early history of electrolysis, we see the formation of power not as a discrete capacity which one might have or lack, but as a dynamic force flowing between elements of a complex system.