Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities: Interrogating Social, Cultural and Political Aspects of Embodiment

179 Pages·2016·3.503 MB·English

by  Lisa Folkmarson Käll (eds.)

Crossroads of Knowledge
Lisa Folkmarson Käll Editor
Bodies,
Boundaries and
Vulnerabilities
Interrogating Social, Cultural and
Political Aspects of Embodiment
Crossroads of Knowledge
More information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/11893
Lisa Folkmarson Käll
Editor
Bodies, Boundaries and
Vulnerabilities
Interrogating Social, Cultural and Political
Aspects of Embodiment
Editor
Lisa Folkmarson Käll
Stockholm University
Stockholm , Sweden
ISSN 2197-9634 ISSN 2197-9642 (electronic)
Crossroads of Knowledge
ISBN 978-3-319-22493-0 ISBN 978-3-319-22494-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-22494-7
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Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
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Contents
Vulnerable Bodies and Embodied Boundaries ............................................ 1
Lisa Folkmarson Käll
Rural Women’s Bodies and Invisible Hands: Neoliberalism
and Population Control in China ................................................................. 13
Lihua Wang and Linda M. Blum
Arrogant Perceptors, World-Travelers, and World-Backpackers:
Rethinking María Lugones’ Theoretical Framework Through
Lukas Moodysson’s M ammoth ...................................................................... 31
Jenny Björklund
Embodied Vulnerability in Large-Scale Technical Systems:
Vulnerable Dam Bodies, Water Bodies, and Human Bodies ...................... 47
May-Britt Öhman
Toxic Skin and Animal Mops: Ticks and Humanimal
Vulnerabilities ................................................................................................. 81
Jacob Bull
Mothering with Neuroscience in a Neoliberal Age:
Child Disorders and Embodied Brains ........................................................ 99
Linda M. Blum and Estye R. Fenton
Sexual Arousal, Danger, and Vulnerability .................................................. 119
Fredrik Palm
The Author’s Body: Almodóvar, Film Theory, and Embodiment ............. 141
Anne Fleche
Performativity and Expression: The Case of David
Cronenberg’s M. Butterfl y ............................................................................. 153
Lisa Folkmarson Käll
v
Vulnerable Bodies and Embodied Boundaries
Lisa Folkmarson Käll
A body, and especially a body considered as a whole, is a mass distinct from other
masses. It occupies space, and as a geometric fi gure, it is three-dimensional having
length, breadth, and thickness. Its dimensions and its weight can be measured. To be
a body is thus to have boundaries, to be singularized and exclusive of other bodies.
However, this view of the body is clearly not as simple and straightforward as it
sounds. Even though a body is a mass distinct from other bodies, it nevertheless
receives its distinct dimensions and forms only in relation to those other bodies
from which it is distinguished. Bodies are thus in their very singularity and exclu-
sivity intimately interrelated with one another. The boundaries distinguishing one
body from another are also what constitute their connection. Bodies are intercon-
nected both insofar as they share one another’s distinctive lines of demarcation and
insofar as the shared boundaries between them make them parts of one whole. Thus,
bodies are exclusive of one another only by virtue of their mutual inclusion within
each other’s boundaries and in the world. Further, even though the dimensions and
borders of a body can be measured, they are by no means fi xed and unchangeable;
rather, bodies continuously materialize in new ways as their boundaries are drawn
and redrawn, reinforced, transgressed, and altered.
Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities take bodies in this doubleness as both
bounded from and b ound to each other as its focus. More specifi cally, it targets this
double boundedness as the locus of a fundamental vulnerability intrinsic to embodi-
ment. Vulnerability is commonly understood in negative terms, as a loss or depriva-
tion to an otherwise whole individual, suggesting a weakness to be overcome in
order to reinstate an original integral and self-contained identity. In sharp contrast to
such an understanding, the essays in this volume instead recognize vulnerability in
L. F. K äll (*)
Stockholm University , Stockholm , Sweden
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 1
L.F. Käll (ed.), Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities,
Crossroads of Knowledge, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-22494-7_1
2 L.F. Käll
terms of a fundamental openness toward the world and others, as “part of bodily life
itself” in the words of Judith Butler (2 004, 29). In P recarious Life, Butler insists on
the body as the site of “a common human vulnerability […] that emerges with life
itself” and whose source we cannot recover as “it precedes the formation of ‘I’”
(Butler 2 004 , 31). This common vulnerability, she is careful to stress, “is always
articulated differently [and] cannot be properly thought of outside a differentiated
fi eld of power and, specifi cally, the differential operation of norms of recognition”
(Butler 2 004 , 44). Much in line with Butler’s discussion, this volume seeks to put
forth and explore an understanding of vulnerability as an essential aspect of being
embodied, having boundaries and being bound to others and a surrounding world.
The essential vulnerability implied by the boundedness of the body constitutes
an ever-present horizon to bodily life and, as indicated by the Greek word for bound-
ary, horos, boundaries can be understood in terms of horizon. The horizon is the line
in the perceptual fi eld where the earth meets the sky, the most distant point available
to perception, where earth curves out from view. It is both a point of separation and
of joining together. Depending on light and weather conditions, the line at the hori-
zon can appear more or less clearly, from a distinct separation of two planes to a
blurriness. Whether it appears as a sharp line or blurry fi eld, however, the horizon is
always at a distance in relation to the “here” and “now” of our bodies as
zero-point.1
Understanding bodily boundaries as horizons2 is fi rst of all a way of recognizing
that they can never be fi xed, determined, or completely secured. The horizon
changes with the body and its situation as well as with other bodies and the sur-
rounding world. It is a perpetual and unpredictable not-yet, exhibiting a constitutive
openness toward that which is other. Secondly, the horizon is not only a line of
demarcation between the ownness of one’s body and the otherness of that which is
exterior to it, but also a fi eld in which ownness and otherness blend and bleed into
one another. Insofar as my bodily boundaries are what open and expose me to the
world and insofar as they are also at the same time the boundaries of the world, open
and exposed to me, what is inside and what is outside these boundaries are in a
fundamental sense inseparable. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty puts it, “[t]he world is
wholly inside and I am wholly outside myself” (1 962 , 407).
N ot drawing the boundaries of the body as a sharp line, enveloping the body as a
positivity distinguished from an exterior negativity which it is not, but rather con-
ceptualizing them in terms of horizon locates an unpredictable radical otherness in
the midst of one’s own identity. The constitutive openness of the body, that is, its
fundamental vulnerability, and its incorporating of otherness involve an element of
risk or possible danger that cannot be predicted, calculated, or managed and that is
essential to fi nite life itself. Instead of seeing this element of risk and fundamental
bodily vulnerability as a necessary evil that we should strive to overcome, the
present volume underscores Butler’s point, quoted above, that bodily vulnerability
1 See Husserl 1 989 , § 41a, p 165f for a description of the lived body in terms of zero-point of
orientation.
2 For a further discussion of bodily boundaries in terms of horizon, see Käll 2 014 .
Vulnerable Bodies and Embodied Boundaries 3
precedes the formation of the “I,” and explores ways in which bodily “I’s,” bodily
identities, and subject positions are formed, negotiated and renegotiated, regulated,
and transgressed against the background of a common bodily vulnerability. The
volume addresses how vulnerability, as a necessary horizon and openness of bodily
being, is made manifest in various ways and with different degrees of urgency
depending on social, cultural, and political situatedness. It demonstrates that while
this bodily vulnerability cannot be done away with, it must be recognized and pro-
tected in different ways since it is articulated and lived within fi elds of power and
privilege.
A third aspect of thinking bodily boundaries in terms of horizon, and one that is
related to the presence of otherness within the ownness of one’s bodily being, is an
understanding of the body as incorporating a perpetual distance from itself. By
embodying its own horizon that is always at a distance and in the distance, the living
bodily being is never at one with itself in any undifferentiated manner. The horizon
of possibilities for its own being and becoming is present within its actuality pre-
cisely as possibility; an indeterminate and unpredictable not-yet is always present as
a constitutive moment of the actual. This perpetual distance of lived bodily being
from itself is captured in the phenomenological notion of the lived body (L eib ,
corps vécu ), which takes into consideration the body as being simultaneously both
a subject for the world and an object in the world as an integrated ambiguous unity.
This self-distance is thus not a matter of a Cartesian dualism between a subject-
mind and an object-body, but instead truly a distance of self from self that is fully
incorporated within the self. Effectively rejecting dualistic thinking, the notion of
the lived body draws attention to an immediate relation to one’s own body in terms
of being instead of having. Much more than only something we have or own as a
possession, the body is something we are; in a phenomenological framework the
body is not primarily an object of knowledge but rather fi rst and foremost the neces-
sary condition for experience, knowledge, and different forms of objectifi cation (de
Beauvoir 2 010; Heinämaa 1 996 , 2 003 , 2 011; Käll 2 009; Merleau-Ponty 1 962 ;
Weiss 1999 ; Young 1990 ). Further, many feminist thinkers who have applied and
developed the phenomenological notion of the lived body have underscored rela-
tional aspects of embodiment, stressing its situatedness and interrelation with the
world and others. Here, the notion of intercorporeality in Merleau-Ponty’s later
writings has formed a productive point of departure for further elaboration and
refi nement. In this volume, a phenomenological understanding of the lived body in
terms of intercorporeality forms a theoretical starting point for Jenny Björklund in
her exploration of material dimensions in relation to María Lugones’ infl uential
account of world-travelling. Also Lisa Folkmarson Käll’s discussion of Judith
Butler’s notion of performativity in relation to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s writings
on the expression of subjectivity offers a phenomenological perspective on embodi-
ment and intercorporeality.
The insight that the body is something we are, central to subjective life and the
necessary condition for our relation to others and the world, runs parallel, perhaps
somewhat paradoxically, with an infl uential view in contemporary culture and
society of the body as something we have. In contrast to the idea of the lived body
4 L.F. Käll
as immediately present to itself, the idea that the body is something we have puts
focus on the body as an object of possible transformation and improvement through
increasingly sophisticated biotechnological intervention. In an era of “fl exible”
bodies, to speak with Emily Martin (1 994) , bodily boundaries become more and
more plastic and changeable and we are compelled in different ways to work on our
bodies so that they will correspond to our “inner” sense of who we are and desires
of who we want to be. The 21st century body3 has become a worthy personal proj-
ect, and to make use of available technologies to perfect one’s body is framed in
terms of both personal responsibility and free choice as something we do (and
should want to do) in order to make the most of who we are and to achieve power,
success, and happiness. Body technologies and alterations are, as Gail Weiss points
out, often governed by a “rhetoric of enhancement” and framed as normalizing in
different ways (Weiss 2 014 ; see also Savalescu and Bostrom 2 009 ; Savalescu et al.
2 011 ). The directive of perfecting one’s body and enhancing its qualities and poten-
tials not only pertains to the outer appearance of the visible body but also to our
inner organs and, in an age of neuroscientifi c authority and anxiety, to the brain. In
this volume, the centrality of the brain is brought out clearly in Linda M. Blum’s
interviews with mothers of children diagnosed with invisible brain dysfunctions,
such as ADD and ADHD, who seek ways to manage and cultivate their children’s
brains in order to prepare them for a future of social and economic competition.
T reating one’s own body as an object to be worked on and perfected creates
another sense of distance than the distance of bodily being from itself implied by the
incorporation of its own horizon. The objectifying distance is one in which the inde-
terminate and unpredictable horizon of bodily boundaries is made graspable so as to
be controlled and directed in specifi c ways. Making the body an object of control
can thus be seen as a way of attempting to do away with the basic vulnerability of
bodily being, conceptualized in terms of weakness and unpredictability. Such an
attempt is in fact quite opposite to an ideal of fl exibility and fl uidity insofar as it
implies a denial of the body’s fundamental openness to the world and others. Some
of the chapters in this volume highlight and examine efforts of eliminating bodily
vulnerability through different forms of regulation and control. For instance, Jacob
Bull’s discussion of the marketing and use of precautionary treatments for protec-
tion against the threat of ticks shows how such treatments are used not only to pro-
tect the bodies of the individual pets to which they are applied but also to serve to
protect and maintain distinct boundaries of human bodies and spaces to control
risks and do away with vulnerability. Also May-Britt Öhman’s chapter dealing with
large-scale hydropower constructions puts focus on issues of risk management and
brings out how the upholding of discourses of control functions to draw seemingly
stable, yet volatile, boundaries between human, water, and dam bodies.
3 I take the term “the 21st century body” from a symposium with the same title that took place at
the University College London on May 18, 2012. The symposium raised questions of how percep-
tions of human identity and the meaning of being human are being recast in light of new scientifi c
and technological developments that seem to offer endless possibilities of transformation.