Bodies of Thought

Embodiment, Identity and Modernity

Ian Burkitt

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9780803988491, 9780803988484
• eBook ISBN: 9781446223703
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this incisive and truly impressive book, Ian Burkitt critically addresses the dualism between mind and body, thought and emotion, rationality and irrationality, and the mental and the material, which haunt the post-Cartesian world.

Drawing on the work of contemporary social theorists and feminist writers, he argues that thought and the sense of being a person is inseparable from bodily practices within social relations, even though such active experience may be abstracted and expanded upon through the use of symbols. Overcoming classic dualisms in social thought, Burkitt argues that bodies are not purely the constructs of discourses of power: they are also productive, communicative, and invested with powerful capacities for changing the social and natural worlds. He goes on to consider how such powers can be developed in more ethical forms of relations and activities.

1 Prolegomenon to Bodies of Thought

In the Western world individuals have grown accustomed to a way of understanding themselves which divides their existence between the mind and the body. The classic statement of this dualism was made by Descartes in the seventeenth century when he equated human being with the rational mind which gave us clarity of thought and free will, placing us near to the divine: in contradistinction, the body is an automaton – a physical machine indistinguishable from the bodies of other animals. Many versions of this ‘Cartesian dualism’ have survived into the twentieth century, although perhaps shorn of its religious overtones; nevertheless, they survive in the contemporary social sciences and, most notably, in the cognitivism that is so popular in psychology. However, in this book I want to challenge this concentration on the mind when it comes to the study of humans and their behaviour, and instead will re-focus this study on social relations, activity and human embodiment. This means I wish to undermine the division between mind and body and to suggest that, instead, thought is an embodied, social activity. By the same token, I do not want to preserve the idea of the body as a machine whose operation is fixed in place by biological processes; rather, I want to explore the body as a social and natural construction, as a malleable organism which is open to re-formation through its location within networks of historically variable social relations. What will be explored here is the notion that the body is made active by social relations because it is brought into being and mobilized by its positioning in the interweaving networks of human interdependence. As Shilling (1993: 199) says, ‘the body is not only affected by social relations but forms a basis for and enters into the construction of social relations.’ From this basis, I will develop an outlook similar to Hirst and Woolley (1982), who argue that social relations have a decisive influence on human attributes, which cannot be characterized as either natural or social because they are both at the same time – human attributes are socio-natural. I also share their view that social relations do not form one interconnected whole, but may be fragmentary and disparate (Hirst and Woolley, 1982: 24). This means that bodily dispositions and capacities will not be uniform or even within cultures, and in any group we will find people of different characters, skills, beliefs or abilities, due largely to the varied influence of social relations upon them.

Throughout this book, then, I will develop and use notions of the productive, communicative, powerful, thinking body (Ilyenkov, 1977), metaphors which I hope will be enabling and which present our corporeal presence as not just trapped and constrained within social relations, but as possessing the capacities to change such relations and also to transform different aspects of the physical world. The transformation of the material world in which we live has been achieved through the creation of artifacts which we use to rework the conditions of our existence and, as such, are prosthetic extensions of the body. Indeed, my argument will be that we cannot separate the thoughtful activity that has previously been attributed to some inner realm of ‘the mind’ from the social and material contexts in which such activity takes place, including the means by which activity is accomplished. This position involves rejecting the Cartesian idea of the existence of two fundamentally different realms or substances, mind and matter, and replacing this notion with the assumption that there is one, complex reality. In order to develop this idea, I will use Elias’s (1987a) metaphor of a five-dimensional reality, which includes a symbolic dimension that is part of, but irreducible to, the other dimensions of space and time. I argue that this helps to lead us out of the division of mind and matter that is to be found in Cartesianism and its modern forms.

However, Cartesian dualism is real in the sense that there is, in the contemporary Western world, a historical experience of being divided between mind and body, thought and emotion, which is lived by certain people in particular times and places. In this book I will explore some of the historical roots of this experience and trace it back to the social relations and power configurations that have shaped and sustained it. Yet this is only one aspect of Western tradition and historical experience; there are others, some that I will explore throughout this book, which emphasize the unity of mind and body rather than their dislocation. But to say that Cartesian dualism is an influential strand of historical experience means that we need to deal with it in a little more depth here before exploring alternative views throughout the rest of the book. It also means that we need to explore how such contradictory philosophical traditions, and the experiences that initiated them and still sustain them, can exist together within the same culture, pulling us in different directions.

The Cartesian View of Mind and Body, Knowledge and Objects

René Descartes gave the clearest expression, in philosophical terms, of an experience of which people in the seventeenth century were becoming increasingly more aware: that they existed as persons or minds which were somehow distinct from their bodies, or at least they could not be reduced to any aspect of their body. According to Descartes, people experience and understand themselves in two different ways: first, as bodies occupying a specific location in space and time, and, secondly, as persons or selves who are associated with the processes of thinking. Descartes claimed that, if we stop and reflect upon it, we cannot associate ourselves with any aspect of our own bodies, for if many of the attributes of our physical presence were to disappear we would still continue to exist as a self. We could still think of ourselves as the same person as we were before, even though our bodies may have changed, or certain of their characteristics have been lost. This is why as we grow older we may not associate ourselves with the age that we really are, feeling ourselves younger than our outward appearance; or why someone who has lost limbs or who is paralysed may feel that his or her personality has not changed. Who we are is not associated with our bodies, but with our thought processes. Indeed, if a person is medically considered to be ‘brain dead’ or in a ‘persistent vegetative state’ after an accident or illness, many people believe that they should not be kept physically alive, for once a person can no longer think of his or her own existence, can no longer act or is incapable of free will, then the person has really ‘died’ and his or her body is no more than a living carcass. Here we see a clear example of how a person is associated with his or her thought processes and not with his or her bodily existence.

However, while the body in such a personless state is a good illustration of Descartes’s idea, it should not be taken as proof that the idea is correct, certainly not for those people who are conscious and mobile. In these cases it does not necessarily apply that the person associates only with his or her thinking, nor that thought is somehow disassociated from a body which exists only as an unthinking thing – as a machine. As Descartes puts it:

therefore, from the mere fact that I know with certainty that I exist, and that I do not observe that any other thing belongs necessarily to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists in this alone, that I am a thinking thing, or a substance whose whole essence or nature consists in thinking. And although perhaps (or rather as I shall shortly say, certainly,) I have a body to which I am very closely united, nevertheless, because, on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself in so far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and because, on the other hand I have a distinct idea of the body in so far as it is only an extended thing but which does not think, it is certain that I, that is to say my mind, by which I am what I am, is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it. (Descartes, 1640/1968: 156)

This is an extremely radical and, in my view, very wrong idea of the body. While Descartes does admit that we are united with our bodies, he does not examine this unison in any way: instead, he maintains that because we have the idea that we exist purely in thought or spirit, then this is the basis for the sense of self – the inner being we refer to when we speak of T. In short, what Descartes does not pursue is the connection between embodiment and thought, nor does he question the notion that the sense of self can only emerge from the inner process of thinking. However, if we pursue the connection between mind and body we find that being embodied and located in the extended world of time and space is not only a necessary precondition for thought, it is, rather, its very basis. That Descartes conceptualizes this not to be the case stems from his view of the human mind and its role in the creation of knowledge.

Descartes claims that we cannot know our own selves through our bodies or through any bodily sensations, nor can we know anything about the external world of objects in this fashion. We cannot know that the different parts of our world are discrete and separate entities or objects purely through sensation, just as we cannot know that we are really associated with our bodies. Sensation cannot be the guarantor of knowledge because the senses can be fooled and are thus unreliable. What we know of the world is not based on the information gathered by touch, sight, smell or sound, but how this is classified and worked on by the intellect. It is the mind that defines the different objects of the world and creates ideas about their nature and their differences. Nothing can be known with certainty unless the mind creates ideas of the objective world, which are clear and distinct. Descartes, then, was asking in his philosophy whether any perception, consciousness or knowledge about the world could be regarded with any certainty. Do we possess any knowledge that, under certain circumstances, cannot be doubted? In the search for this certainty of knowledge, Descartes tested everything that we normally take as tacitly given by subjecting it to doubt, questioning everything that ordinarily would be regarded as certain. His doubting took him to the very extremes of uncertainty, rejecting even the notion that God would never allow humankind to deceive themselves totally about the true nature of the world. A truth can only be claimed as such after it has stood the test of doubt.

I shall suppose, therefore, that there is, not a true God, who is the sovereign source of truth, but some evil demon, no less cunning and deceiving than powerful, who has used all his artifice to deceive me. I will suppose that the heavens, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things we see, are only illusions and deceptions which he uses to take me in. I will consider myself as having no hands, eyes, flesh, blood or senses, but as believing wrongly that I have all these things. I shall cling obstinately to this notion; and if, by this means, it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, at the very least it is in my power to suspend my judgement. (Descartes, 1640/1968: 100)

However, there is one thing that Descartes concludes he cannot doubt and, thus, only one thing that is certain. ‘I had persuaded myself that there was nothing at all in the world: no sky, no earth, no minds or bodies; was I not, therefore, also persuaded that I did not exist? No indeed; I existed without doubt, by the fact that I was persuaded, or indeed by the mere fact that I thought at all’ (Descartes, 1640/1968: 103). The ability to think, then, is what gives Descartes the certainty of his own existence and for him to say, ‘I think therefore I am’ is the only thing that cannot be doubted.

As I said earlier, Descartes did believe that the mind and body were united, to such an extent that we do not view things which happen to our bodies in a passive and disinterested way. Descartes explains this in his Sixth Meditation by way of an analogy: we do not look at our bodies in the same way as a captain views his ship, so that if some damage occurs to it he sees it with his eyes and notes what has occurred. If damage occurs to our bodies we do not just note this, we feel it. The mind records this occurrence as if it has been injured, so that the relationship we have with our bodies is an intimate and necessary one. Similarly, when we experience dryness of the throat the mind will tell us that we are thirsty and need to drink: however, it is not the bodily sensation which we call thirst, but the ideas that are stimulated in the mind. It is ideas such as these that we associate with ourselves and which create the notion of our own body with its different needs and sensations. These will only be clear to the extent that the mind has clear ideas about what these needs and sensations are related to. It is still the mind, then, as distinct from the body, that makes possible the sense of self and which generates ideas about the nature of objects in the world, seeking in itself the essence of truth. The body can be considered as a reactive machine whose dispositions are set by its own organic nature, whereas the mind is the element that introduces to humankind free will, imagination and truth-seeking.

More than this, though, Descartes’s mechanical metaphor applies not only to the human body but also to all material objects in the universe and their interrelationships. Taking mathematical reasoning as the only science that had so far been able to arrive at any proofs, Descartes contemplated a perfectly geometrical universe wherein all bodies were aligned in symmetrical and regular constellation. It was through mathematical reasoning that Descartes felt secure enough to arrive at the conception of objects or ‘things’ whose existence was beyond doubt, and which were objectively located in the realms of time and space. Such reasoning allowed him mentally to divide the world into its constituent parts, the various things or individuals which compose it, ‘beginning with the simplest objects and the easiest to know, in order to climb gradually, as by degrees, as far as the knowledge of the most complex, and even supposing some order among those objects which do not precede each other naturally’ (Descartes, 1640/1968: 41). Here we see clearly the Cartesian method, which is to begin with the smallest indivisible individual entity and to build, through reason, one’s knowledge of larger complexes by working up to a picture of the whole as constituted by its individual parts. Such objects are ontologically prior to the whole, which in turn can only be understood as the sum of its parts. As Harvey (1993: 29) says, ‘relations between entities are, furthermore, clearly separable from the entities themselves. The study of relations is then a study of the contingent ways in which entities (e.g. billiard balls or people) collide.’ The method I employ in this book is directly opposed to this Cartesian method, beginning with relations between bodies and individuals within an ecosystem. Furthermore, time and space is not to be conceived of as externally given and absolute, but is itself immanent in the socio-natural system and, as such, is variable and multi-layered.

What is Wrong with Cartesian Dualism?

While I think Descartes is right to claim that the person or self does not entirely reside within the body and cannot be identified with any of its parts, I believe he is wrong to set up a duality between body and mind on this basis. Although they cannot be reduced to one another, what we call ‘mind’ only exists because we have bodies that give us the potential to be active and animate within the world, exploring, touching, seeing, hearing, wondering, explaining; and we can only become persons and selves because we are located bodily at a particular place in space and time, in relation to other people and things around us. Furthermore, it is not necessarily the ‘mind’ that brings us understanding of the world and of ourselves, so that none of these things would exist without some spiritual essence that we can label the ‘mind’. Rather, I want to suggest throughout this book, using the work of a diverse range of social scientists, that there is no such ‘thing’ as the ‘mind’ considered as something complete and contained within itself: that is, as an entity or essence separate from the (non-mechanical) body and its spatially and temporally located practices. Rather, the ‘mind’ is an effect of bodily action in the world and of becoming a person from the recognition of one’s position in a diverse network of social relations.

I am also opposed, then, to the Cartesian method that begins with individuals or things and works up to studying the higher levels of relatedness. In Cartesianism, even at higher levels of relations, bodies remain discrete in themselves, so although they may affect each other’s movements in time and space, they cannot affect each other’s pre-given individual identity. The view I am putting forward here fundamentally challenges this, for, in terms of human individuals, embodied persons become identified within the multiple relations in which they are located and which, as agents, they change through their mutual interactions. Put in the language of parts and wholes, this means that, in the dialectical view of Levins and Lewontin (1985: 3):

Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves. These are the properties of things that we call dialectical: that one thing cannot exist without the other, that one acquires its properties from its relation to the other, that the properties of both evolve as a consequence of their interpenetration.

In this dialectical view, things are assumed from the beginning to be heterogeneous at every level, but this heterogeneity does not mean that they are constituted by fixed, natural identities or essences. People and things have their own individual identities, making the system heterogeneous, and yet these identities develop within the system of interrelationships, so that it becomes difficult to draw exact boundaries between identities. For example, in a nation-state, people will share similar values, beliefs, lifestyles, work and leisure activities, and so identify as part of a community and its practices. But where does that identity reside: in the individuals, their neighbourhood, local community or region, or in the national boundaries as a whole? It would be impossible to identify the cut-off point between these analytically distinct forms of human association. This also means that none of these ‘entities’ is discrete and so the identities within them are heterogeneous: for example, a Muslim living in Britain may have different sets of identifications – with things that are British and also with values and beliefs from Muslim culture. Even at the level of the nation-state, this ‘system’ leaks into others and makes it impossible to draw boundaries. Thus, there are no ‘basic’ individuals or entities, for all ‘things’ can be decomposed into smaller units which are themselves systems with internal relations. Without the notion of fixed and given individuals with which we can begin an enquiry in absolute certainty, we must focus on the series of interrelated systems in which parts make wholes and wholes make parts, and neither can be seen as having ontological priority.

This view also has drastic implications for Descartes’s view of time and space as given, unchanging dimensions. I don’t think that I could put this better than Harvey (1993: 31):

Space and time are neither absolute nor external processes but are contingent and contained within them. There are multiple spaces and times (and space-times) implicated in different physical, biological and social processes. The latter all produce . . . their own forms of space and time. Processes do not operate in but actively construct space and time and in so doing define distinctive scales for their development.

This t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Prolegomenon to Bodies of Thought
• 2 The Ecology of Bodies of Thought
• 3 The Body as Object: from the Grotesque to the Closed Body
• 4 The Thinking Body
• 5 Feminism and the Challenge to Dualism
• 6 Social Relations, Embodiment and Emotions
• 7 Modernity, Self and Embodiment
• Conclusion: Relations and the Embodied Person
• References
• Index