Body

Distinguish between: "a body" and "the body"

 

Body (normative definitions):

           

1) The entire material or physical structure of an organism, especially human or animal

           

2) The physical part of a person

           

3) A group of individuals (e.g., leg. def. for "a corporation")

           

4) Etymological: The trunk or torso of a human / animal

 

 

"A body" (normative definitions):

           

1) cf above, an individual instance or example of

           

2) the material presence of a person or group as entity

           

3) an instantiation, or one example of, "the body"

 

“The body”:

 

1) An idea or ideas about bodies (generally and/or within particular discourses)

 

2) a la Butler, the performance of a body in a particular context

 

3)  "a surface on which events are inscribed (whereas language marks events and ideas dissolve them), place where the Me is dissociated (a Me to which it tries to lend the illusion of a substantial unity), it is a volume perpetually crumbling away" – Foucault

 

4)   Some potentially useful starter ideas about the body (both mine and from others):

 

--object of power/object-enclosures of capital: by neoliberal capitalism, understood as unitary, fixed and gendered physical units of measure, machines for output and/or instruments of service, with well-defined characteristics and capacities just like portioned pieces of land for the taking 

 

--"a symptom and an effect of political power" -- Diamela Eltit

 

--“an extension of energy…not defined by our sexual positions as men or women..." --Anne Waldman

 

--"biologically incomplete… a series of uncoordinated potentials that require social triggering, ordering, and long-term ‘administration'" -- Liz Grosz

 

RELATED (in relation to the commons curriculum)

 

For purposes of relating somatic practices to commoning in western practice and theory, we can think of the body, after Foucault, as (generally) the socially constructed set of ideas, utterances, faultines and power grids that make up overlapping discourses about "the body" within a given culture:

 

--Is there a sense in which a body and by conditional implication, the body is or can be—potentially—a commons? Thru somatic practices, a re-articulation of terms and conditions? Is there is any possibility of disidentification and deterritorializing (Deleuze) of the body from capitalism?=> Body as ghetto, as enclosure; and likewise, the affective capacities of the body as wound(s) to be managed. By deterritorialization of triggered potentials, or unearthing new ones (pre-occupied potentials), to whatever degree. Is there a sense in which we can manifest a body (individual and/or group) as a site that is neither subject nor object, self nor other, and that in its relational existence can be a self-sustaining motional space for mutual care, sustenance? 

 

--If the pre-occupied nonsite of the page (a la Waldman) inserts a language of futurity into our discourses, and is thus a social triggering, then the question arises as to how to move from that page to what it articulates or activates, how to move from nonsite to site, re-articulation to sustainable activation.

 

Aggregate Body: 

 

--a term denoting the re-articulation of a body or bodies as contiguous set of potentials consensually activated into a self-sustaining, submitting resource for another body or bodies; as nutrient (and nutrient producer) for (and with) another

 

--acknowledgment of relational aspects of "the body" and work surrounding it a retraining that involves collective use of affective capacities not yet acknowledged (managed) by the wider market as such

***

Where the wound meets touch

The body is

 

In commons