representation and the body

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Representation and the Body 52580

The Importance of Representation and the Body in Existential Philosophy

For as long as there have been people there have been bodies. This is to say that

understanding of the body to the degree of representation is a phenomenon characteristic to

people, humans. Where there exists more one than one body there must necessarily be some

representation of one body to the Other. Being, or Dasein as phenomenologist and

inadvertently existentialist philosopher Heidegger calls it (1967 p. 27) finds itself not only

under representation by the Other, but also by itself. The body is presented before Dasein, and

Dasein in turn synthesises its representation in the form of description through art, music,

literature, philosophy and of course through the body via verbal discourse. Our physicality is

central to what it means to be human; the body is placed at the heart of the human condition,

or our transcendence thereof. This essay seeks to explicate the immanent fundamentality of

the ways in which the body is represented to the examined life.

The primacy of our investigation into the existential significance of our physical extension

into the external must go to representation of, through, with and to the body through the

unnumbered permutations of society and culture throughout the manifold fabric of the

anthropocentric aspects of spatio-temporal reality. From the moment of inception of the first

self-conscious, thought-involved human presence, the body has been re presented to an

individual Being. Through the modes of physical sensation and self-awareness, the mind

constructs a representation of the body from the first-person perspective; with language, this

construct gains the name of body. With the introduction of a second observer, another

person, the body becomes represented in another, unique way; the body is both experienced

directly through Daseins Being with the body, and through Daseins Being in the body.

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A community in itself is established from this alone; that the bodies of multiple parties are

represented to multiple parties necessarily results in a world of intersubjectivity, as discussed

by phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (1982 p. 107). At the present moment in time, our

societies and communities are so large that the representation of self through and by the body

has become complicated and contrived; we have so many factors to consider when

representing the body that we may easily lose our vantage over the most profound and basic

aspects of our faculty to represent. We must therefore strive to recognize the basic

foundations that representation and the body lays for human engagement with the external.

It is via the medium of the brain and the sensory faculties that humans may experience the

world and themselves. Representation and the body therefore can be shown to be intrinsic to

the human condition; it can be shown as essential to the human perspective on the world at

hand. To demonstrate this we must uncover the myriad ways in which representation and the

body is bound to our description and interaction with our knowledge and conceptualisation of

the external. Let us consider first then the earliest forms of representation to which we can

appeal, so that we may perhaps understand some raw and unadulterated means of

representation of the external, and the importance of the body therein. Thus we shall begin

our investigation into the manner of representations with cave paintings, examining their

content and the implications of any speculation toward the intention or underlying meaning

of the paintings. Through this it is hoped that the social and cultural significance of

representation and the body may begin to be illuminated, along too with its implications for

the existentialist philosopher.

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(Image taken from http://tinyurl.com/4yp7n8z)

In this cave painting, in the Argentinian Ceuva de Las Manos (cave of hands), we see

representation of the body through and as the body; each self has noted their presence in time

by the use of their body to directly represent some part of their own body, and this

representation leaves the recognisable form of the body for the Other to observe, almost free

from the time constraints which bind the represented to its inanimate form. How easy it is to

make conjecture about the information represented to and by us; we can imagine our

ancestors, pioneering the frontier of survival, small though their numbers may be, each new

child completing a coming-of-age ritual by adding their print to history. We can imagine

Dasein acting on the world through the body, to leave representation of its own body in some

physical aesthetic approximation, all as a part of compliance with a social norm; representing

the body as the salve of eternal life, everlasting presence in history.

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We can speculate on why the majority of these prints have been made with a left hand; the

use of the body to signify meanings and connotations, allegiances and familial ties. These

speculations do not necessarily reveal truths behind the actions of these people, rather they

reveal truths about those who are speculating. By searching for reasons behind aesthetic

representations of the body, we discover our own internal relationship to our body, and to our

mortality; what the body does for us, and how it is interwoven with our perception of the

external. Leaving our mark, we reflect on our representation, and realise how in its stillness it

extends through time, far beyond the meagre duration of our lifetimes.

By marking the external with some direct representation of our physical presence in this

world, namely our bodies, we reveal to ourselves the factuality of our physical presence in

the world; that is, we become more aware that we are Being, and that we are mortal. It is not

only the body of the self, nor of the intuited interpersonal representations of the bodies of

people, that link the human facility to communicate expressively to such an extensive degree

to the external. In cave paintings we not only find the mark of the man or woman for him or

herself, but we find the mark of the animal; the body animate, presented to their

consciousness for them to engage with, or as Heidegger calls it their presence-at-hand

(1967 p. 67). Indeed, the representation of animals shows some understanding, some

connection to our understanding of the body in extension, which recognizes the beast as

somehow worthy of the same representation as man and woman.

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(Image taken from http://tinyurl.com/3kywbro)

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This painting, the oldest discovered cave painting, found in France () quite clearly resembles

a spotted hyena. Why should the artist, Dasein, feel so inclined as to produce a representation

of this body? Were they enchanted by the aesthetic appeal of the hyena? Was it in order to

pose some warning expressing and achieving education through representation of the body

with the body, in a physical format? The recognition of other bodies, bodies in space and in

motion, which hold some significance to Dasein, are stored and preserved; immortalised in

art for purposes unknown to rediscovers of the distant future. Yet again in our search for

understanding the representation and the significance of the body at hand, we ask ourselves

well, why mightIcreate that?, and in our speculative answers we reveal our own intentions

and deep dependence on representation of bodies, human and beast.

Through our mental presentations and further our representations of bodies in the external,

we connect our own body through our production of art to that external world; we show that

we can represent what we have experienced (in this case, the sighting of a Hyena, or even

perhaps some dream vision of a beast that coincidentally resembles the Hyena many

explanations can be posited here)

Now that the grounding for this essay has been incontrovertibly established such that

representation and the body are held with the understanding that the two are inseparable, and

further the conjunction of these two extrinsically human facets is inseparable from the

humans interaction with the external, their own extension into the external, and consequently

their own mortality we can begin to explore representation and the body in the context of

greater and more complex society. Let consideration of representation and the body now

move toward a most influential and critical part of western culture and society: Christianity.

Throughout Christian dogma, principally via the Bible as the supposed word of God the

creator, the body becomes something not of Daseins inherent connection to the oneness of

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being that lies in being constituted in a physical, mortal form, but rather something which is

intertwined with sin, shame, supplication to undesirable hedonistic desire, and humiliation.

In Genesis (here referencing Genesis I : 14-31), the book of the bible bearing testament to the

inception of being and the conception of man and woman alongside beasts, the humans

through their actions with the external uncover a shame; their naked bodies, their most raw

and unabashed form, become something to be hidden from perception, hidden from

consciousness. The body is denied any representation. Running freely, unhindered by sin and

self-disdain, Eve and Adam venture in the world as part of it; created from the dust of the

land. But knowledge, the arrival of comprehensive thought about the external, leads to an

embarrassment of ones own physical presence.

Further we find denial of other representations of the body; denial of lust, of the sexual

representation of the Other; denial of suicide, the one means of ultimate control over its own

life that Dasein has in the face of lifes absurdity, for them to equip their single greatest power

and to choose to deny their own life.

The Christian text goes on to shun the modification of the body, for man to shape himself in

the same way as God is blasphemy the body seen as a forbidden power, of which the use

holds consequences presumably incomprehensible to the mind of man in comparison to the

Judaeo-Christian God. Once again the body is relegated to the position of mere flesh, as far as

human interaction with it is concerned; mind and spirit, considered separate from the body,

are given precedence, somehow holding more truth to the Church than the vessel which

actually grants Dasein its physical presence in existence.

Later in the bible we find the figure Jesus Christ. Christ, the physical manifestation of the

creator as God incarnate, can be viewed as a return to the recognition and appreciation of the

extension of the body. In order to remove the sin of man from the physical universe, God

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must adopt the form of man, and in turn be destroyed by man while in his image. The creator

is depicted as entering life and mortality by way of the body. The Roman Catholic church

holds communion ceremonies, in which bread and wine are consumed in representation of the

Christ body. The multifaceted approach of the Roman Catholic church toward the body

demonstrates a simultaneous appreciation and denial of the body culminates in this ritualistic

homage to the universe and totality adopting mortal, tangible form. The body is recognized

as the persistent reminder of our mortality and of our ability to make actions, which in turn

have moral baselines which have permeated through the mind to the body in the adaptation of

social and cultural behaviours.

It is not only in cultures and societies so deeply influenced by Christian culture that we find

the body under scrutiny. Take as the case in point the Venus De Milo, the Ancient Greek

sculpture by Alexandros of Antioch.

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(Image taken from http://tinyurl.com/44egymp)

In this iconic artwork, we see some compromise between the Judaeo-Christian perception and

the body, and our initially defined conception of the raw relationship between human and

body. We see that the figure in the statue, Roman and Greek goddess of love, beauty and

sexuality Aphrodite, is partly clothed, partly nude. We see the recognition of the purest form

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of the body the naked form, simultaneously as the maintenance of dignity, the denial of the

genitals; Daseins use of the inanimate body of being to fashion and disguise its own nature.

Representation and the body, then, is not just a point of recognition of the physical self or of

the inevitability of mortality: it also serves as a portal through which negative and restrictive

emotion may be encountered, where the physical self and thus Daseins window into the

world are represented as a distraction from some more pure, spiritual purpose. The

importance of the body is overshadowed by the notion of a soul or mind. Rationalist

philosopher and polymath RenDescartes, in an effort to produce deductive conclusions

regarding the truth behind the nature of reality, deduces that the mind and body are separate;

that he can conceive of the thinker as existing independent from the body (1968 pp. 97-101).

Indeed, it is from this key distinction that Descartes draws his first supposedly indubitable

certainty, that because he thinks, and that therefore there must be a thing thinking (namely

himself), it is by virtue of his own thinking that he may be sure that he, at least, exists.

Descartes, finding his self living in a period in time in which life and liberty are heavily

governed and restricted by Christian Dogma, ultimately resorts to justifying his denial of

solipsism on the grace and benevolence of God. The body for him becomes almost a point of

contention; it no longer serves as the rooting of Dasein in the external, rather it becomes

superfluous, entirely overshadowed by the new status being granted to the mind over

spirituality and physicalism.

Moving closer to the present in our investigation into the body, possibly the most influential

and controversial understandings of the body is that held by the facist Nazi regime in 1940s

Germany. The demigod status granted to the Aryan archetype of the manifest body (blonde

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hair, blue eyes, genetic coding for superior physical size and strength) contrasted against the

illusory projection of some supposedly inherent feebleness and depreciative nature of those

persons whose bodies do not meet up to the archetype, shows a return to an understanding of

the body in its raw relation to man; to allow man his physical presence in the world, to grant

him dominion over himself and his actions.

Moreover a harsh and lonely perspective arises; the man is thrown against his own Being,

competing with the Other for the sake of status of worthiness to reproduce, to maintain their

bloodline. We no longer see the community together in spite of the brutal realities of survival

that we saw in the Cueva Del Manos cave painting. Those realities of survival are seen to

surpass the community, leaving Dasein alone against others and himself; insecure over the

inability to meet the impossible expectations of projected social preferences.

As has been repeatedly clarified in this essay, the body is represented not only to Dasein, but

to the Other; Dasein holds representations of the bodies of the Other. Throughout the history

of art and representation, the ability to depict the Other and at the same time reflect the nature

of Dasein. Paintings, photographs, film and literature all make effort to accurately describe

the expressions of the other; Dasein takes his body, and manipulates the inanimate bodies of

the physical world to create a further physical representation of the expression and internal

Being of the Other. We have also discussed the body in terms of animals and motion; that

humans recognize and honour with their conscious attention the bodies of being. There is one

more form of body to be considered here; that of the projected representation of the self onto

the body by Dasein via the mind.

Contemporary spiritual teacher and philosopher Eckhart Tolle describes the representation of

what he calls the Pain-Body (2005 p. 29), expanding on the spiritual concepts not just of

Christianity but of all mainstream religion, both eastern and western. The pain-body is that

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representation by the mind to Dasein of unhappiness and suffering; the accumulation of

various physical sensations, found in and within the body, which constitute our Being in the

world in times of despair.

We see from this that the body not only acts as the vessel for Daseins physical presence, but

also as the medium for Daseins understand of its own state of being how it feels, what its

emotions are and what constitutes its evaluation of life in the present moment.

For Tolle, Being is inseparable from the inner body (2005 pp. 20-21); the sensations that

constitute our conscious presence consist of experiences generated through the body. For

Tolle, to be truely aware that you are involves awareness of the inner body; of how it literally

feels to be alive, in every conceivable context. Tolle describes awareness of the body in this

sense as feeling inner body as a single field of energy (2005 p. 107); being aware of your

body as your manifest physical presence in the universe as a unity of sensation. We begin

uncover a realm of understanding of representation and the body that encompasses not just an

acknowledgement of the body as existing, nor just as representation of the body, but

representation as the body; realising the entirety of the self to be composed of a presence in

the universe, and of the consciousness that is implicit in that presence, is caught up entirely in

this direct relation and awareness of the inner body, and also of the emotional egoic

identification formed on the basis of the sensation in the inner body.

The importance to existentialism of representation of, with, through and as the body should

now be clear. That which we acknowledge and honour with our conscious attention takes the

form of body. That which allows us to understand ourselves as a thing in the physical world is

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the body. That which constructs our sensations of self, where the data for the evaluation of

the subjective experience of human life is formed for Dasein. Those wishing to live an

examined life cannot but involve themselves wholly with their body and representation.

References / Bibliography

Photograph of Cueva Del Los Manos, taken from http://tinyurl.com/4yp7n8z

(accessed 10/05/2011)

Photograph of Hyena cave painting taken from http://tinyurl.com/3kywbro (accessed

10/05/2011)

Photograph of Venus De Milo sculpture taken from http://tinyurl.com/44egymp

(accessed 10/05/2011)

Holy Bible, New International Bible version (Genesis 1) accessed online athttp://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis&version=NIV on 09/05/2011

Descartes, Ren (1968) Discourse on Method and the Meditations, Penguin classics, London

(pp. 97-101)

Heidegger, Martin (1967) Being and Time (Trans. M. Macquarrie & E. Robinson) Blackwell

(pp. 27 109)

Husserl, Edmund(1982) Cartesian Meditations (Trans. D. Cairns) Martinus Nijoff

Publishers, The Hague (pp. 107)

Tolle, Eckhart (2005) The Power Of Now Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. (pp. 20-107)

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http://tinyurl.com/4yp7n8zhttp://tinyurl.com/3kywbrohttp://tinyurl.com/44egymphttp://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis&version=NIVhttp://tinyurl.com/4yp7n8zhttp://tinyurl.com/3kywbrohttp://tinyurl.com/44egymphttp://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis&version=NIV

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