Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

Body knowledge becomes cognitive only through the gaze of the Other.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@sartre_being_1943, loc. 919, @sartre_being_1943, loc. 919, @foucault_discipline_1975, loc. 450

5 min read

Body knowledge becomes cognitive only through the gaze of the Other.

Evidence

The Illness which I suffer I can aim at in its In-itself; that is, precisely in its being-for-others. At this moment I know it; that is, I aim at it in its dimension of being which escapes me, at the face which it turns toward Others, and my aim is impregnated with the wisdom which language has brought to me;—i.e., I utilize instrumental concepts which come to me from the Other, and which I should in no case have been able to form by myself or think of directing upon my body. It is by means of the Other’s concepts that I know my body. But it follows that even in reflection I assume the Other’s point of view on my body; I try to apprehend it as if I were the Other in relation to it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 919 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Objectivating empirical knowledge, which presently surpasses the Illness suffered toward the stomach named, is the knowing of a certain objective nature possessed by the stomach. I know that it has the shape of a bagpipe, that is is a sack, that it produces juices, and enzymes, that it is inclosed by a muscular tunica with smooth fibres, etc. I can also know—because a physician has told me—that the stomach has an ulcer, and again I can more or less clearly picture the ulcer to myself. I can imagine it as a redness, a slight internal putrescence; I can conceive of it by means of analogy with abscesses, fever blisters, pus, canker sores, etc. All this on principle stems from bits of knowledge which I have acquired from Others or from such knowledge as Others have of me. In any case all this can constitute my Illness, not as I enjoy possession of it, but as it escapes me. The stomach and the ulcer become directions of flight, perspectives of alienation from the object which I possess. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 919 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The chiefs and their deputies at Mettray had to be not exactly judges, or teachers, or foremen, or non-commissioned officers, or ‘parents’, but something of all these things in a quite specific mode of intervention. They were in a sense technicians of behaviour: engineers of conduct, orthopaedists of individuality. Their task was to produce bodies that were both docile and capable; they supervised the nine or ten working hours of every day (whether in a workshop or in the fields); they directed the orderly movements of groups of inmates, physical exercises, military exercises, rising in the morning, going to bed at night, walks to the accompaniment of bugle and whistle; they taught gymnastics; they checked cleanliness, supervised bathing. Training was accompanied by permanent observation; a body of knowledge was being constantly built up from the everyday behaviour of the inmates; it was organized as an instrument of perpetual assessment: ‘On entering the colony, the child is subjected to a sort of interrogation as to his origins, the position of his family, the offence for which he was brought before the courts and all the other offences that make up his short and often very sad existence. This information is written down on a board on which everything concerning each inmate is noted in turn, his stay at the colony and the place to which he is sent when he leaves’ (Ducpétiaux, 1851, 61). The modelling of the body produces a knowledge of the individual, the apprenticeship of the techniques induces modes of behaviour and the acquisition of skills is inextricably linked with the establishment of power relations; strong, skilled agricultural workers are produced; in this very work, provided it is technically supervised, submissive subjects are produced and a dependable body of knowledge built up about them. This disciplinary technique exercised upon the body had a double effect: a ‘soul’ to be known and a subjection to be maintained. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 450 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Self-consciousness only becomes truth through the Other’s recognition — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 683; Even first-person knowledge of my own body is mediated by the Other’s concepts — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 919; Permanent observation of bodies simultaneously produces knowledge of the individual and subjection — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 450 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

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