Intimacy strips disguises to expose the other’s flesh as pure contingency

Evidence

But in the course of long acquaintance with a person there always comes an instant when all these disguises are thrown off and when I find myself in the presence of the pure contingency of his presence. In this case I achieve in the face or the other parts of a body the pure intuition of the flesh. This intuition is not only knowledge; it is the affective apprehension of an absolute contingency, and this apprehension is a particular type of nausea. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 897

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the flesh as the pure contingency of presence, revealed when disguises fall away.
• XREF: Flesh-as-contingency and the nausea of absolute contingency anticipates Beauvoir’s reading of the flesh and the feminine. — connects to: Desire strips the Other’s body of movement and garb to reveal pure flesh; Clothing creates mirages that dissolve under sustained intimacy — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1576; The other’s love reveals the self by exposing its own otherness — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1884 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that intimacy culminates not in connection but in an affectively felt nausea at another’s absolute contingency is a paradigm-level reframing of what closeness is.

Broader Connections

• Desire strips the Other’s body of movement and garb to reveal pure flesh #corroborates (0.95)
• Clothing creates mirages that dissolve under sustained intimacy #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1576
• The other’s love reveals the self by exposing its own otherness #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1884