Even near-total paralysis leaves a person intensely embodied through phantom sensations.
Evidence
Sacks’ experiences attest to how adaptable we can be. Even more extreme adjustments are described in Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, tr. Jeremy Leggatt (London: Fourth Estate, 1997), the story of his near-total loss of movement following a massive stroke. Bauby was able to communicate only through eye-blinks, yet even then he was far from disembodied: he still suffered an excruciating range of phantom sensations. His account does bring us about as close to disembodiment as a conscious human can be, and reminds us of the importance of the whole network of bodily sensation, thought and movement for all of us. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1679
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the chapter’s discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology and to Sacks’s leg injury case earlier in the book — the body’s resilience despite neurological loss. — connects to: Loss of proprioception reduces one’s self to an abstract Cartesian ghost — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 736; A person can control movement entirely through vision after losing proprioception — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1677
- SEED: Angle: how the philosophy of embodiment illuminates locked-in syndrome narratives like Bauby’s and Sacks’s work.
Broader Connections
- Loss of proprioception reduces one’s self to an abstract Cartesian ghost
#complicates(0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 736 - A person can control movement entirely through vision after losing proprioception
#exemplifies(0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1677