Outsider within. A fragmented self-performance

Abstract

Historically, Western philosophy has conceptualised the body in a dualistic approach, opposed to (and inferior) to the soul or mind. Through its political and ethical implications, dualism as such (mind-body dualism in particular) is rethought in new materialisms and in so doing, two novel concepts of the body are being articulated. The first approach aims to overcome mind-body dualism by revealing how once separated aspects are in fact entangled, resulting in a loss of distinction between psyche and soma, reason and instinct, consciousness and unconsciousness, logic and emotion. In her notion of corporeality (1987, 1994), Elizabeth Grosz describes the body and mind smoothly transforming into one another (without being able to precisely pinpoint the moment of transition). Due to the entangled nature of body and mind, both are considered not only interconnected and inseparable, but also intra-connected, and are therefore impossible to separate. The reconceptualisation of body-mind dualism has important political implications. The way in which we perceive the world, define, and appraise distinctions has political meaning: they reinforce power relations, challenge status quos, and reshape society. The second approach involves further engagement with the relationality of the body – the potential of the body to affect and to be affected, to move and to be moved, to feel and to arouse feelings. Hence, its active-passive qualities and dynamic structure are associated with movement, possibilities to act and be acted upon, and the possibility to form and be formed. The body in the sense of bodily, corporeal, material is inextricably entangled with the materiality of the world – it is not only located in the world but is of the world. As Karen Barad writes: "We are not outside observers of the world. Nor are we simply located at particular places in the world; rather, we are part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity." (2003) These concepts of the body enable thinking about an intimate and living relationship with the world, a world which is made up of other bodies. Skin opens our bodies to other bodies: through touch, the separation of self and other is undermined in the very intimacy or proximity of the encounter. The independent, separated, individualised notion of the body is no longer adequate to how the world and its complex entanglements are conceptualised. This concept of the body is somewhat erased, replacing it with others like bodily, materiality, matter, or (trans)corporeality, which reflect how the body is never one, but part of open systems. However, it is important to consider categories traditionally associated with the body such as gender, sexuality, race, (dis)ability, ethnicity, to understand how they are produced and reproduced by power relations. ‘Outsider within’ aims to challenge existing social values, mobilises the urgent need to destabilise political hierarchies, and contributes to thinking anew about our corporeal beings.