The slimy reverses possession so that the For-itself is possessed

Evidence

Actually we have here the image of destruction-creation. The slimy is docile. Only at the very moment when I believe that I possess it, behold by a curious reversal, it possesses me. Here appears its essential character: its softness is leech-like. If an object which I hold in my hands is solid, I can let go when I please; its inertia symbolizes for me my total power; I give it its foundation, but it does not furnish any foundation for me; the For-itself collects the In-itself in the object and raises the object to the dignity of the In-itself without compromising itself (i.e., the self of the For-itself) but always remaining an assimilating and creative power. It is the For-itself which absorbs the In-itself. In other words, possession asserts the primacy of the For-itself in the synthetic being “In-itself-For-itself.” Yet here is the slimy reversing the terms; the For-itself is suddenly compromised. I open my hands, I want to let go of the slimy and it sticks to me, it draws me, it sucks at me. Its mode of being is neither the reassuring inertia of the solid nor a dynamism like that in water which is exhausted in fleeing from me. It is a soft, yielding action, a moist and feminine sucking, it lives obscurely under my fingers, and I sense it like a dizziness; it draws me to it as the bottom of a precipice might draw me. There is something like a tactile fascination in the slimy. I am no longer the master in arresting the process of appropriation. It continues. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1402

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sartre defines the slimy’s essential character as a reversal of the appropriation in which the For-itself loses mastery.
• XREF: connects to: The slimy haunts consciousness as its own feared dissolution into facticity; Sliminess symbolizes a possible fusion of for-itself and in-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1399; The slimy symbolizes the In-itself absorbing the For-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1403 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The slimy symbolizes the In-itself absorbing the For-itself #expands (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1403
• The slimy’s horror is the fear that facticity will absorb the For-itself #expands (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1406
• Possession is a magical relation projecting the ideal of the in-itself-for-itself #expands (0.85)
• In possession the for-itself seeks to become its own foundation as in-itself #contradicts (0.80)