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Tag: body

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    Overreach backlash: the internal spread of sovereignty

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    1–2 minutes

    The once governed will not be governed anymore: they can now take the authority of the state upon (and into) themselves.

    This is an unintended reversal after state overreach: as grand-scale economic and judicial governance moved into “biopolitics,” the state breached the realm of the subjective individual.

    This prompted a reclamation of personal sovereignty and a citizen’s extension of the new precedent, not authority without but within. We grasped the line of power pushed into us, and before it could retract, we pulled the rest of state authority into us as well: if they can govern our body, we can govern ourselves.

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    recreating aura in the age of replication

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    1–2 minutes

    Jean Baudrillard argues that replication and cloning represent the final stage of modeling the human body. From here on we begin to model “the model.”

    This is where we lose access to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the unique “aura” that gives something a nominal spirit and a sense of authenticity in the here and now.

    Once we reach this stage, similar to the mass-produced items discussed by Benjamin, the only way back to “authenticity” is through the creation of a manufactured historical nostalgia: we must artificially recreate aura.

    ~ From Mark Fisher

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    Controlled descent

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    1–2 minutes

    At some point (in life’s journey), our inertia diminishes. At this apogee/apex/peak, we start to slide down, captured by the physics of time.

    How we handle it is a difference between tumbling downhill like a stone or skiing.

    Both will lead you to the same place, yet one is done with skillful control, while the other is painful to observe and takes out anything in proximity.

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    Removal of the Problematic

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    1–2 minutes

    When an argument shows up and is escalated (appealed) to a higher authority, the problematic situation is dutifully regulated out of existence.

    Authority only knows how to be authoritarian, thus, the solution for liberty is restriction.

    For instance, the argument over bathroom use by gender/sex has led to noncommunal spaces, which is to say, an isolated solo experience. Protests lead to a dearth of options, not an abundance of diversity.

    Equally, bestowed authority can brutally slice through the Gordian Knot with an edict, such as King Solomon pronouncing the baby should be cut in half.

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    You are your health

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    1–2 minutes

    The self that you recognize as your “true self” is when you are in optimal health.

    When ill, depressed, or stressed, it is not the real you.

    However, for most of our lives, we are not at an optimal state, much less peak mental and physical health.

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    Body moving vs. thinking

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    1–2 minutes

    There is joy in discovering your body to be functional.

    Productive movement is also termed “labor,” often negatively associated with “work.” However, the system that has captured natural joy (movement as an accomplishment) has replaced it (or displaced it) with an abstracted fulfillment: intellectual insight.

    Yet, academic pleasure offers me less joy than utilitarian physicality.

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    utility as a means to social realignment

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    1–2 minutes

    When you are snubbed socially, the impulse is to regain your position in another way: if you are laughed at, you prove social worth by over-indexing on utility value (you increase your productivity) to compensate. 

    This operational and social alignment means if someone wants you to work harder, they leverage social exclusion: the more they snub you, the harder you work.

    The clever manager or bully only pushes so far, then allows a taste of the good life before resubmerging you.

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    first, we must find a worthy vessel

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    1–2 minutes

    When it comes to experimentation, it historically is carried out by those on high, with the testing and results falling on those beneath.

    The selection process follows two paths: 1) our compassionate empathy compels us to save you from your wretched self, or 2) your loyalty is rewarded by the uncountenanced opportunity to be raised up.

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    death of affect, and it’s return

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    1–2 minutes

    As the human figure is replicated and flattened (allá Warhol) and enlarged (allá Oldenburg) the body loses affect. This representation mirrors advertised, commodified objects: objects without spirit or agency.

    Frederic Jameson calls this the “death of affect.”

    To clarify, it is a spread or dispersal of affect. Affect of the body (it’s agency to produce effect) is siphoned into the image and distributed ubiquitously. This is not profound, but a banal vampiric bleeding-off the affect of a real body into a sans-animate representation.

    Our true death is that we lose the ability to experience the real.

    But, let’s not be hasty: one encounter with the primal real, a real body, can reactivate the giddy potency so carefully neutered.

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    Utopia of the body

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    1–2 minutes

    Utopia, definitionally, means “no place.”

    It is a place outside of us, which makes the body unwelcome, since it is indeed a place in which we reside.

    However, Michel Foucault says the body itself is unknowable, making it a place we cannot define, and thus a “no place” similar to the utopia.

    Our attempts to escape ourself into a mysterious better place are refuted, because our literal self (physically) is an unknown place, rich with mystery that denies escape.