ABSTRACT
The noun ‘cell’ stems from the Latin cella, indicating a storeroom, chamber or chapel (OED). The word is related to the Latin celare, to hide, to conceal, and derives from the Proto-Indo-European *kel, which also produced the Old English word hol, cave, as well as the Gothic halja, Hell (ibid.). Moreover, a cell indicates a group of people working within a larger, often political or financial organisation. Having been described as the ‘fundamental unit of our bodily communication network in the contemporary imagination’, containing ‘human life literally and symbolically’ (Franklin et al., 2000: 37), the cell functions both individually and as part of a whole. Yet there is something inherent in the etymology of the word that also indicates a process of concealment. While there is no question about a cell’s actual existence, its capacity to act in ‘disguise’ may render it invisible, uncanny, even subversive.
