olga suslova  

Part 1. Doubt

If we don't aim at ontologizing body or giving it a substantial status, we can analyze (describe) the problem of bodyness by two different ways. The first one can be expressed by metaphor of "body-production" and is represented by works of structuralists with those of Foucault at the head. This point of view affirms body as an intersection of projections of Symbolic; body's limits are formed by socializing practices. These practices determine a functional being of body in socio-cultural context. Body-production of responsible, controlled, individual body works by using mental and cultural models through which the experience of body is being represented. Thus, we can say that individual body is the result of the modern level of human development. Just as form-Human (Incipit Homo), according to Foucault, exists during last two century only. The question doesn't consist in absence of personal body during the previous epoch, but in postulating that body perception, body-image construction depended upon theleological mode of human existence.

Indeed, individual body appears at the moment of limitation and formation; it is appropriated by man as a personal one under the influence of work of semiotic machines. The later "writes" upon body, just as Kafka's machine in "Reformatory school", and through the constant comparison with ideal body (body-canon) owes individual body to "gather" under the gaze of "Observer". This image of ideal body (body-canon) fulfils the function of normalizing and regulating of all living practices. But we see that this type of reflection begins the discussion about the power oders and the role of compulsory rather than about the source and characteristics of bodyness as such.

The second way can be characterized by metaphor of "body-in-becoming" and is ascribed to Deleuze and Gwattari. This approach renounces understanding of experience of body as separated practice, limited by spatial-temporal characteristics and postulates being of body in the field where brief but intensive appearances of body exist. This is the body-in-becoming.

In this case, anthropomorphic, individual and formal characteristics can't describe the concept of body-in-becoming properly. Stream of becoming goes through body, posing in question normative constructions, rather than body creates this stream of becoming. This concept of body has internal space and time. It is determined by intensities, forces and interrelation of these forces. This concept of body works in the Spinoza's field of immanence , where distinctions between two different substances don't matter. To this we can add neglecting of the distinction between natural and artificial, human and machinic, dead and alive. "We can notice that the plan of immanence of nature, that orders artifacts, doesn't distinguish things, so called natura,l and things, so called artificial. The Artificial is a part of nature, because all in the immanent plan of nature is determined by disposition of moovements and artifacts, despite of fact that natural or artificial kind of disposition compose the nature." (Deleuze, "Spinoza")

We see that one of the basic achievements of the theory of schizoanalysis is neglecting of oppositions : human-animal, human-machinic, soma-psyche, artificial-natural etc. The process of encoding body's reactions is always totalitarian one. To imagine body appearances as common (similar) to world (order of alive and dead nature) - is to elude compulsion. Nature for its existence need not be anthromorphized. Deleuze and Gwattari have demonstrated brilliantly that body isn't equal to organism and that Body Without Organs (BWO) doesn't endure the process of organization : body practices are historically determined and connected with the power orders. Nowadays, if we prolong to persist in the existence of differences (cultural or anatomical ones) of male and feminine body or seeking of ontologizing of gender identifications, we will prolong keeping the logic of binary oppositions that was criticized by schizoanalysis. This logic declares the difference of the poles and insist upon regular distinctions.

Indeed, if we proceed the logic of binary opposition, we are to suppose that after arising of ideology of feminism, ideology of "machismo" has foundation to appear. The body in its anatomical differences stays as a point of production of cultural and gender differences. For example, image of feminine body exists as a virtual one and, owing to this it, begins to play a role of passive unit of exchange. It is evident that this virtual image of woman hasn't any social references and exists in the semantic space only, acting as micro-order, based on notion of castration.

I suppose that bodyness in the cultural context is based on the collective practices of "gathering" the body , that is characterized by existentials of human being ( for example, as Heidegger have analyzed : Sorge, Furcht, Tod, Schuld etc). That's why the necessity to speak about Body Without Body (BWB) seems to me more correct one. (Here "Without Body" means that Body isn't determined by organism or gender organisation). Such type of body is more evidently represented by virtual space, where limits and functions of bodyness have opportunity to be decoded and encoded. (Where incorporeal - "Without Body" - is pure intensities, the possibility equal to zero). Owing to this, opposition of male-feminine has to be abolished.

Incorporeal is the product of invention of corporeal as, in its turn, chaos is the product of order. In what way corporeal produces incorporeal? If the opposition of body - organism attacks the body's objectivations as cultural practices, incorporeal means the breaking of limits of body's representation in the forms of object's relation : objectifying conscious comes to stop the "stream of body", just as "shorting" on the object of desire inverses the process of desire. Existence of a separated thing is supported by binary logic, where the one is determined by the o(O)ther, subject by object, immanent by transcendent, body by organism.

We notice, that similar attempts to cancel (aufheben) this logic were made earlier. For example, within the boundaries of phenomenological project the problem of subject-object opposition was dissolved through the thesis of intentionality of conscious, where the object was analyzed as a result of constitutive work of conscious and was inseparable from it. But instead of neglecting subject-object opposition the point of transcendental ego was created, the later became opposite to the suchnessof the world as a whole. This point assumed the characteristics of transcendental subject that hasn't any opportunity of catching and analyzing affects (for example, TWO of Artaud), that leaved out the system of perception-apprehension. Intentionality became a causa sui "forced" characteristic of conscious, by cause of directing demande of conscious for constitution of objectifying reality. Thus, the source of the force functions as a transcendental one, and by this deprivesall efforts to immanentizate the being.

Part 2. Affirmation

The Corporeal is the territorialized : in the space of life - it is territorialized by existential repetitions, in psyche (psychoanalysis) - by symptom, in social space - by semiotic machines. In all these cases the base mechanism is automatism : motive (motor), psychic or reflexive one. This automatism stops and establishes equilibrium of repetition. Within psyche - it manifests itself in the balance, which the psychic economy aspire to. Within existential territories - it represents repetitions of ego-serials, that are hermetic and pathos ones; according to lacacnian notion, it works upon conservation of the imaginary unity of self. Within society - it develops itself in codes and structures , that revive "tradition"; without this revival of cultural stability power will loose its regulating force. Social automatism - it is the effort for escaping heterogeneous. In this case multiplicity, spontanity and assemblage exist ad marginem.

Incorporeal - it is the deterritorialized, that is the space of intensities and interactions of forces. (If under "interaction" we understand Nietzsche's notion of interaction of reactive and active forces).

Corporeal - Incorporeal doesn't work as an opposition, by cause of common intersection. Unrealized energy of functional units keeps itself as zone of potential, appearances of which are sporadic, unsystematic and evident ones. Similar to Spinoza's understanding of being, corporeal and incorporeal are the two modes of existence of immanent.

We can compare our desire of accentuating of incorporeality with the same process, when for keeping the wholeness of self-identity, it was necessary to postulate illusionary and imaginary nature of it. For preserving the moral space it was necessary to reject the moral as absolute value. For understanding of the life-process, it was useful to comprehend living nature as a particular case of the dead nature. Accordingly, for analyzing corporeal it is obligatory to refuse from opposition of body-organism and to analyze bodyness as an energetic unity, that is composed by conjunction of corporeal and incorporeal.

In that sense body, that is localized in social-cultural-gender coordinates, has lost definitive certainty. The bodyness is virtualizing by cause of the arbitrary of normative references. It doesn't exist nowadays as a constitutive element of social interrelations. It works as a phenomenal construction, that provides human interrelation with external field, but doesn't have regulative characteristics. Only one that we can say about it, is that in modern reality bodyness becomes peculiar region, that either limits or broadens the boundaries of Possibility. Discursive practices acquire secondary functions. The primary is the constant and unavoidable interconnections of corporeal and incorporeal. During various epochs different senses (libidinal saturated) are being actualized at the level of representations.

Thus, all interactions are included in the process of body-in-becoming : object (thing) has corporeal characteristics as much, as a human flesh.