of touch […]” (Butler 2015: 36).
“[…] flesh is not a contingency,
chaos, but a texture that returns to
itself,
and conforms to itself”
(Merleau-Ponty 1968: 146).
Duden comprehends the term “Körper” as being used in an inflationary manner (e.g. in contemporary medical discourses) and offering almost no relationality to the (individually) experienced Fleisch (flesh)47, but rather to fleischige Materialität (meaty materiality) (Duden 1993, Duden 2002a and 2002b). In German, [57] the term “fleischige” establishes both a connection to the experiencing subject through notions as they relate to “flesh”48 and a connection to minced meat; the type of meat that does not allow any clear connection to the body from which it originates. If in Duden’s account the term “body” (as in Körper) refers to what can be translated as meaty materiality, working between German and English one has to distinguish between flesh and meat. When looking at the materiality of bodies, then one possible understanding of “meaty materiality” as characteristically of postmodern understandings of bodies in medical spaces is to read the “image” of meat that Duden offers in her metaphor as referring to the body as being “robbed” of any marker that would allow identification to a/for a living being, either self-identification or identification for others. Yet, self-identification and experience are the markers of the Leib.
The term flesh, conversely, can (in a first understanding) be assumed to refer to lebendiges (alive) Fleisch, which is ever changeable due to its deep relation to life as subject to process. “Das “Fleisch” (chair) ist hier weder mit dem Leib, noch mit bloßer Materialität zu verwechseln. Es ist vielmehr gelebte, gespürte, phänomenal erfahrene Materialität. Das “Fleisch” ist damit genau der Punkt, an dem sich Leib und Welt treffen”49 (Kuhn 2016). Flesh in this sense is clearly distinguishable from any objectifiable notion of meat, with the term or notion “flesh” offering a source for identification. The momentum of life refers to the Inwendigkeit (the being from the inside – inner) and thus to (an individual) life, in contrast to minced meat, which has no inside; it has been turned to the outside50
Interestingly enough, in Merleau-Ponty’s posthumously published The Visible and the Invisible he reviews his distinction between consciousness and the object as it was key to “the Phenomenology of Perception” and considers both the perceiving subject and the perceivable object to reside in a (reciprocal) perceptual field. “Flesh” becomes a key term in Merleau- Ponty’s later work as he writes: “[…] die gesehene Welt ist nicht 'in' meinem Leib, und mein Leib ist letztlich nicht 'in' der sichtbaren Welt: als Fleisch, das es mit einem Fleisch zu tun hat, umgibt ihn weder die Welt, noch ist sie von ihm umgeben. […] Es gibt ein wechselseitiges Eingelassensein und Verflochtensein des einen ins andere”51 (Merleau-Ponty 1986: 182). The structure that is within the fabric of [58] the subject-object relation is flesh (Landes 2013). “Living flesh,” so Cathryn Vasseleu with reference to Merleau-Ponty’s later work “is the modality of the body inscribed within sensibility” (Vasseleu 1998: 27).
The term flesh “transports” various notions and occupies different meanings and although not making use of the concept frequently, this study will navigate this circumstance in awareness. What is interesting from my point of view is that, in various ways, the term flesh allows for philosophical investigations into being as it is the basis to/for existence or as Merleau-Ponty puts it, “The flesh is at the heart of the world” (Merleau-Ponty 1968). In this image, flesh ages, breathes, beats, is webbed and flushed; it is all and yet nothing without the connection to what it contains within and as itself. Butler summarizes her reading of Merleau-Ponty’s “flesh” stating that “for Merleau-Ponty, the embodied status of the “I” is precisely what implicates the “I” in a fleshy world outside of itself, that is, in a world in which the “I” is no longer its own center or ground” (Butler 2015: 162). Merleau-Ponty’s later work can thus be read as crucial contributing to “a more embodied “I” […]” (ibid). In this sense Merleau-Ponty’s flesh provides a crucial notion to this study as it is in my reading of it, concerned both with being and with embodiment, although not in a restricted philosophical sense.
To return to Duden’s thoughts, as these were introduced at the beginning of this section, I understand her analysis of the body (as it refers to contemporary social scientific work) to point to the need for “new” methodological tools for empirical research in the field. I furthermore read her work as call to carefully consider the usage and “meaningful occupation(s)” of the terms, “body” or “Körper.” This is in awareness of the previously addressed inflationary use of this term. Yet, do we know what we talk about when talking about body or Körper or Leib? And, if not, how could those terms then be used in an analytic investigation that additionally must bridge questions that arise in bilingual and interdisciplinary work? Responding to Duden’s statement that Körper is used in an inflationary manner, what is important to me in this study is to address the experiential level (when focusing on bodies). Following Duden, it is imperative not to assume a shared understanding of body/Körper. I find it additionally necessary to allow for communication about the effects of normative understandings or awareness that arise in the light of realization that definitions of body/Körper are not shared. Considering the work of other scholars who are working at the intersections of Leib and body/Körper, in the following pages I explore what this study can learn from their approaches.
[59] 2.4.1 On the Entwinement of Body/Körper and Leib
“The lived body and oriented space are
not outside of each other”
(Besoli 2018: 46).
“Sind unsere Körper noch wir
selbst?” (Paul 2005: 186).
In her book Der Körper, der Leib und die Soziologie, Ulle Jäger calls for empirical work with respect to Leib, offering her theoretical investigations as a starting point. Her inquiries follow a re-recognition of the original phenomenological work of Husserl, Schmitz, and Merleau-Ponty within sociological or related research areas in the German speaking academic context, such as transgender research as carried out by Lindemann as well as Manzei’s research on intensive care and notions of personhood and life in connection with medical and social ideas as they regard to concepts of brain death.
Looking at gender differences, Lindemann develops the following hypothesis:
[…] knowledge – in a concrete or vivid form – about the objectified body and the experienced body have a relationship of reciprocal meaning. The visible and tangible gestalt of the objectified body determines how the living body is experienced, directly and without any reflection or propositional knowledge. To experience one’s own body in this way means that a person’s objectified body is his or her experienced reality. The experienced body thus carries the meaning and the objectified body is the meaning itself. Conversely, knowledge about the objectified body tells the experienced body which form it should assume. In other words, having knowledge of which objectified body I have means to me that I know how my experienced body is constituted. The reflexive relationship between objectified and living body is demonstrated to be a normative meaning relationship. (Lindemann 2010: 288f.)
Although very different in detail, Merleau-Ponty’s later work and Lindemann’s works as cited above meet insofar that they discuss processes of reciprocity as being key to the relationality between Leib and body. Looking at narratives told by persons identifying as transgender, Lindemann comes to the conclusion: “As the modern living body clicks into a reflexive meaning relationship with the objectified body, the objectified body becomes a vivid, exemplary
