Episode 45 Can’t you do something with her?
Structured Visions
English - May 19, 2016 12:50 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBPhilosophy Society & Culture Science Social Sciences society creativity language linguistics socialjustice Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
More this week on the human body and the social body. What about the self? In this episode I go against the idea that there’s a one-to-one correspondence between the self and the human body – that each time we see a human body there’s a singular self/mind/consciousness that is attached to/merged with/inhabiting it.
Did you ever read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy? The characters in Pullman’s worlds each have a ‘daimon’ – an animal form that represents the character’s ‘self’. As fantastical as that idea seems, it reflects back a commonly held understanding of the self: that an integral, intimate part of each human body is a self, which cannot be separated from the body without dire consequences.
The idea I put forward today is that the self attaches/merges with/inhabits/identifies with bodies – but not necessarily with the human body, and certainly not in a sustained, stable way. Instead, the self attaches more frequently to the social body. I explain that looking at conversational data gives me access to the many incipient forms of the social body, and it allows me to see how the grammatically constructed self identifies with it.
Why this particular perspective on selves and bodies? I propose that if we start to see the self as no longer necessarily attached to the human body, we can start to see the human body as something that is in relationship with the human body. We can also recognise those moments – and they’re frequent – in which the human body is co-opted for the social body’s purposes. Situations in which the human body is simply seen as an instrument to carry out the social body’s demands. I compare these types of situations with my experiences of babysitting the grandchildren of a woman who couldn’t see me beyond my role as her hired help.
Is the social body treating the human body as ‘hired help’? What would it see if it were to enter into a more fulfilling relationship with the human body?
Oh, and I look at this transcript again (first seen in Episode 44):
(Click to enlarge)