Invisible self-

Prof. Ejgil
Jespersen
movement
Jozef Pilsudski
University of
of the body
Physical Education
in Warsaw,
Branch in Biala
Podlaska
The 17th Annual Conference of the
Polish Phenomenological Association,
Warsaw, December, 15-16, 2017
The transparent body
Selfie -
culture
Being a body in
movement
”I cannot see myself in movement,
witness my own movement. But this de
jure invisible signifies in reality that
Wahrnehmen and Sich bewegen are
synonymous: it is for this reason that
the Wahrnehmen never rejoins the Sich
bewegen it wishes to apprehend: it is
another of the same. (…) A sort of
reflection by Ec-stasy, they are the same
tuft”
The Visible and the Invisible
(1964/1968, pp. 254-55)
 While movement of the
lived body in Merleau-
Ponty’s sense may be we should not forget
considered as “the about self-movement of

I claim that ultimate subject of

perception” oriented
towards perceiving
the living body in terms
of the actual shape and
innate capacities of the
subjectivity as self- human body.
movement, as Barbaras
(2000) is claiming
What I am going to
do
• Firstly, I present “the inborn complex” in terms of
the organism, as Merleau-Ponty understands it in
Phenomenology of Perception, and his proposal
to “repress” the organism by personal existence
• Secondly, I suggest we take self-movement of the
living body as part of “the body schema” into
account alongside the lived body in order to deal
with the “inborn complex” in a healing way.
• Thirdly, I want, shortly, to pointing at a possible
convergence between Merleau-Ponty and
Patocka in the latter’s conception of
asubjectivity.
My organism
an innate complex
“My organism – as a pre-personal adhesion to
the general form of the world, as an anonymous
and general existence – plays the role of an
innate complex beneath the level of my personal
life” (PhP, 1945/2012, p. 86).
However,
“My organism is not like some inert thing, it
itself sketches out the movement of existence”
(PhP, 1945/2012, p. 86)
Erasing my biological
existence…
• “It can even happen that when I am in danger, my human
situation erases my biological existence and that my body
completely emerges with action” (PhP, 1945/2012, p. 86).
• ”Thus, Saint-Exupery, high above Arras and surrounded by
enemy fire, no longer senses as distinct from himself this
body, that just a moment previously had seemed to
escape him” (Note 24).
• Man, the Hero (of Pilote de guerre/War pilot) in Sense
and Non-Sense (1948/1964).
Only moments of great
ec-stacy
• But these moments - where my body completely emerges
with action - can be no more than moments
• “Most of the time personal existence represses the
organism without being able to transcend it or to renounce
it, and without being able to reduce the organism to itself
or itself to the organism” (PhP, 1945/2012, p. 86)
• We hide the precariousness of our personal existence from
ourselves by mostly repressing the organism and reducing
the past to a collection of ideas or images.
• Sport: Fighting with limits of ec-stasy due to “The
resistance of the sensible world” (Emmanuel Alloa)
The phantom limb
syndrome
• Merleau-Ponty is discussing the phantom
limb syndrome, i.e. a condition in which a
patient continues to experience the presence
of a limb that has been amputated, alongside
the parallel condition of anosognosia, in
which the patient puts his paralyzed arm out
of play in order not to sense its degeneration
• “To have a phantom arm is to remain open to
all the actions of which the arm alone is
capable and to stay within the practical field
that one had prior to the mutilation” (PhP
1945/2012, p. 84), he says.
The ambiguity of the body
• To understand this state of affairs, Merleau-Ponty has to
operate with the ambiguity of the body: “Our body
comprises as it were two distinct layers, that of the habit-
body and that of the body at this moment. In the case of
the amputee, manipulatory movements remain in the
habit-body but have ‘disappeared from body at this
moment” (PP 82/95).
• “the body is the vehicle of being in the world and, for a
living being, having a body means being united with a
definite milieu, merging with certain projects, and being
perpetually engaged therein“(PhP 2012, 84).
Something manipulable in
itself
• But how can I perceive objects as manipulable when I can no
longer manipulate them, Merleau-Ponty is, then, asking. The
manipulable must have ceased being something manipulable for
me and have become something manipulable in itself:
• “Correlatively, my body must be grasped not merely in an
instantaneous, singular, and full experience, but moreover under
an aspect of generality and as an impersonal being.” (PhP,
1945/2012, p. 85).
Approaching Merleau-Ponty’s From the body
Thus, the
organism and its
inner organs
the largely phenomenology
a search for the
of
consciousness
must also be
taken into

unconscious
limits of to the body of account, but
consciousness flesh and blood certainly not
(Madison) (Leder) only with the

depths
help of cameras
and x-rays
Drew Leder writes on Merleau-
Ponty’s conception of the flesh
in The Body (1999, p. 203)

“The flesh remains, in its broadest sense, an

ontology of perception. It includes the
intertwining of perceiver and perceived; the
synergic crossing of different perceptual
modalities; the reversibility of my perception
with that of another; the fleshing out of
perception with ideality and language. Another
name Merleau-Ponty offers for the flesh is
“Visibility”. It is ultimately the body surface,
visioning and visible, that is taken as the
exemplar sensible of flesh.”
Leder continues…
• “My inner organs are, for the most
part, neither the agents nor objects
of sensibility. (…) Rather than
“Visibility”, one might call this the
dimension of “Viscerality.” Like the
Visible, the Visceral cannot be
properly said to belong to the
subject: it is a power that traverses
me, granting me life in ways I have
never fully willed nor understood.”
 • On the behavioral level the image and schema are
connected and affect one another
• The body image consists of a complex set of
intentional states – perceptions, mental
Body image – representations, beliefs, attitudes – in which the
intentional object of such states is one’s own body
body schema: • A body schema involves a system of motor capacities,
abilities, and habits that enable movement and the
A conceptual maintenance of posture
• The difference between body image and body
distinction schema is like the difference between a perception
(or analysis or monitoring) of movement and the
actual accomplishment of movement
• The body schema as image is the lived body as visible
body for others
 Invisible
imitation in
early infancy
1
 • Experiments show that newborn infants less
than one hour old can imitate facial gestures
• The studies on infant imitation suggest that
the infant has both an innate body schema (a
Invisible system that works automatically to make
imitation in possible the co-ordination of posture and
movement) and
early infancy • an innate capacity for proprioceptive
experience, an important element of a
2 primitive body image
• Invisible imitation of actions (conducts,
gestures) is possible from the very beginning
Ian Waterman –
impairment of body schema
• A subject (IW) who at 19 has lost tactile and proprioceptive
input from the neck down – due to a rare viral infection
• He can control his movement only by cognitive intervention
and visual guidance of his limbs.
• In effect he employs his body image (primarily a visual
perception of his body) in a unique way to make up for the
impairment of his body schema
• In other words: IW lost the major functional aspects of his
body schema including his motor habits. They were no
longer accessible when he lost proprioceptive feedback
• IW came back to movement by rebuilding a partial body
schema and by using body image to help control movement
IW walking
carefully
The living body unlike the lived body
“Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body and a world, I sustain
intentions around myself that are not decided upon and that
affect my surroundings in ways I do not choose. These
intentions are general in a double sense, first in the sense that
they constitute a system in which all possible objects are
enclosed: If the mountain seems large and vertical, then the
tree appears small and diagonal; and second in the sense that
these intentions do not belong to me, they come from farther
away than myself and I am not surprised to find them in all
psycho-physical objects who have a similar organization to my
own.”
(Phenomenology of Perception, 1945/2012, p. 465)
“The body is our general means of having a world. Sometimes
it restricts itself to gestures necessary for the
conversation of life, and correlatively it posits a
biological world around us. Sometimes, playing upon
these first gestures and passing from their literal to their figurative
sense, it brings forth a new core of significance through them – this
is the case of new motor habits, such as dance. And finally,
sometimes the signification aimed at cannot be reached by the
natural means of the body. We must, then, construct an
instrument, and the body projects a cultural world. At all levels, the
body exercises the same function, which is to lend “a bit of
renewable action and independent existence” to the momentary
movements of freedom”
(Phenomenology of Perception, 1945/2012, 147-48).
Two kinds of background practice related to presence and non-
presence
There is a functioning
background in terms of a
past, which has been
present, for example in skill
learning, which is becoming
embodied as habits when
involving “the prenoetic
level of the body schema”
(Gallagher, 1999, p. 26).
But there is also a
functioning background in
terms of a past, which has
never been present, an
original past, as it is related
to the organism and part of
the rudimentarily innate
body schema
The body schema includes two
aspects:
“(1) the close-to automatic system
of processes that constantly
regulates posture and movement to
serve intentional action; and
(2) our pre-reflective and non-
objectifying body-awareness.”
Gallagher and Zahavi (2008, p. 146).
Now what about ”the innate
complex” and our ”organic
repression” by personal
existence?

Is self-movement really
dealing with the “innate
complex” in a healing way?

The primacy of movement is

coming to the fore
• ”Our goal is to understand the relation of consciousness and
nature: organic, psychological or even social. By nature we
understand here a multiplicity of events external to each other
and bound together by relations of causality” (SB, 1942/1963,
p. 3)
• In PhP (1945/2012) Merleau-Ponty is conceptualizing the
immanent unity of the lived body (one’s own body) as a
reflexive synthesis
• In a lecture of ‘Le Monde sensible et le monde de l’expression’
in 1953 the philosophy of consciousness is replaced by the
primacy of movement (according to Stefan Kristensen, 2012)

The primacy of movement

• Instead of presupposing an entity, that stands for the unity of
movement (consciousness, body etc.), it is now the movement
that generates the body’s unity.
• Movement is in this sense according to Merleau-Ponty
“disclosing being” and, thereby, in my perspective healing “the
innate complex” as part of the human condition
• Do we, then, still need “to repress” the organism?

Movement is disclosing being

• If instead of seeing the world in movement as ”subject of
perception”, I look at my retina, if I am forgetful of ”the
perspectivism of my experience”, I then ”treat my eyes as
fragments of matter”
• The ”repression” of my body pre-reflectively lived as a mode of
”Zur-der-Welt-sein” thus give way to my body as object
• However, Merleau-Ponty also describes repression as an
undividable intermeshing of the lived body with the impersonal
organic functioning of the living body, which most of the time
remains non conscious.
• What Merleau-Ponty describes as ”organic repression” is
related to the living, impersonal, in-different body.

Two kinds of repression

• The ”organic repression” never fully divides the lived body from
its living support
• ”Organic repression” is not the mere deletion of the organism
from the field of consciousness but rather the ”advent of the
impersonal” (PhP 1945/2012, p. 86) as an ”active nothingness”
which ”continually offers me some form of living” (ibid., p. 168)
by opening my living body to the world.
• Thus, movement in terms of ”organic repression” induces the
”advent of the impersonal” and discloses a common body,
comparable to the body of any other man, a body, therefore,
which does not singularize itself

The advent of the impersonal

The question of
asubjectivity
• While Merleau-Ponty indicates that what ties
together the subjectively lived body and the
asubjective living body is the unconscious in
movement
• Patocka is, likewise, occupied with the
significance of the conception of ”movement”
and a asubjective phenomenology.
• I’ll leave for discussion to detect a possible
convergence between Merleau-Ponty and
Patocka in this matter