body centres its experiential space, perceives and acts” (Lindemann 1997: 90). In my reading of Jäger’s and Lindemann’s work, one can (to a certain degree) generalize and thus extend the footprint of Lindemann’s research (as it focuses in analyzing accounts of people identifying as transgender). Yet, my readings of her work, particularly the sections quoted [60] here, points to the need to further investigate the relationship between experienced and objectifiable body. Both Merleau-Ponty and Lindemann, amongst others, are concerned with language, in their own complex ways. Without going into detail here, their concern gives rise to questions such as the following: in what ways is “the language of the objectified body” incorporated into narratives of the experienced body, such that the experience itself becomes embedded in, informed by, and inscribed by processes of objectification? It is imperative that the linguistic shift in Lindemann’s conclusion, as expressed in her second quotation above, is addressed with respect to its reliance on mechanical metaphors, which refer to the programmatic regulation of experience. “Lindemann’s body” clicks into meaning. The terminology here might well be subject to translation, yet it establishes a relationship to descriptions of computerized or mechanic processes. During my research, I learned that a similar reliance on the mix of computerized and mechanical actions of the everyday in relation to descriptions of contemporary biomedical practice and research is evident in representations of stem cell research, somatic cell nuclear programming, fertility treatment, and so forth.
A reading of Lindemann’s and Jäger’s investigations, offered to me as part of a discussion with a colleague, would suggest that Leib cannot be erfahrbar (experienced) without reference to (natural-) scientific knowledge. This is, however, (in my opinion) difficult when it comes to looking at how leibliche experience acts as an impulse for the creation and manifestation of body knowledge. Hence, in order to write about the relationship between experience and knowledge, and to allow for the data used to unfold within the analyses, I emphasize a relational but non-dichotomous understanding of experience and knowledge. Neither experience nor natural scientific knowledge is given temporal priority in the circuitous co-constitution of both.
The term “Leib,” following Lindemann’s and Jäger’s investigations into Plessner’s writings, refers to body that is stimulated from within (belebt) and experienced by a subject from inside as (the) very own entity (Jäger 2004: 49f). In line with Jäger’s explanation, the Leib stands in for the own body, the body that one experiences as what the self feels in and about itself (ibid). Jäger’s theoretical investigation into the relationship between Körper/body and Leib from a sociological point of view leads her to explain the relationship between Körper/body and Leib with the following words: “Der Körper ist nie nur Körper, und der Leib ist nie nur Leib”52 (Jäger 2004: 51). The beauty of the statement resides in its simplicity. Neither one, body nor Leib, is ever without the other being part of it, relational, entwined, reciprocal, or engaged in a Bedeutungsverhältnis.53 The “how” of the relationality between Leib and body has been and is crucial in the work of the thinkers introduced above. As much as “how” is an important question, in the field of my research the insistence on [61] an existential relationality between Leib and body is in a pragmatic sense just as important.
In March 2016, I read an interview in Die Zeit Wissen with writer and organ recipient David Wagner. In this article, I read about a surgeon who had performed organ transfers for a long time, yet stated that prior to being confronted with Wagner’s autobiographical book Leben, which is a multi-layered (emotional) testimony of becoming and being a liver recipient, he (the surgeon) never thought that there was more to organ transfer, as the cutting out and inserting of material matter (Wagner 2014 and 2016).54 As long as professionals engaging in biomedical practice are “treating bodies,” unaware of the Leib, Gernot Böhme’s call to rehabilitate “Leibsein als Aufgabe” (being Leib as a task) in his homonymous book, translates in my work into a research practice that includes notions of Leib as crucial tools to (re-)consider the leibhaftige way of existance (Existenzweise) of humans as the basis of encounters not only in medicalized spaces, but given the focus of my study, particularly in that sphere (Böhme 2003, 2010). Referring to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Böhme lays out that “Leib ist bei ihm ein Kampfbegriff […] Gegen die europäische Tradition, das eigentliche des Menschen in der Vernunft, der Seele, dem Geist zu sehen, setzt er das Leibsein als Existenzweise der Zukunft”55 (Böhme 2003: 17). From this point of view, the Leib is a constitutive (zukunftsgestaltendes) element of the future development of human kind.
Using a notion of Leib (as intertwined with the body) as a key element of the matrix of this study, this means the theoretical environment the analyses develops within acts as a means of directing my research and analytical practice away from furthering modes of (theoretical) fragmentation, by emphasizing the importance of Leib as intertwined with body, and thus potentially fostering and feeding into discourses that seek to work against “fremdvermittelte, veräußertlichte Erfahrungsweisen”56 (Böhme 2003: 37). The inner guidance for me as a researcher thus, is that fragmenting, even in thought, is not an option.
Introducing notions of Leib into the process of my research, as well as the analysis of my data, provides an experimental tool to engage with the imbrication of experiential and theoretical knowledge and understandings of embodiment and subjectivity in the field of RGTs and related biomedical practices. As mentioned before, this study involves conversations with women about their bodies and their theoretical and experiential encounters with RGTs. However, this cannot be seen as already allowing insights into both spheres, as talking about [62] can be located in the area of discourse. The fact that what is talked about refers to, or is based on, subjective experience, following Jäger, is not enough to state that what is at stake is body itself (Jäger 2004).
By including the term “Leib” in the terminology used during this research, it is understood that the discourse of Leib is one alongside other discourses. Yet, while the historical development of natural scientific knowledge of the body is situated in the study of corpuses, Leib discourse is concerned with the body, which is alive and always includes the individual self, which is excluded when using a concept of the body as mere object (Laqueur 1992). Including notions of Leib in this empirical study promises therefore, a different perspective.
2.5 Leib Confrontations
The matrix of this study aims, to a certain extent, to respond to Jäger’s call to integrate concepts arising out of phenomenological work in empirical research (Jäger 2004). Jäger’s theoretical investigation provides a useful approach that allows one, when looking at biomedical processes of fragmentation in space and time, to look for individual stories and forms of embodiment on different levels and at various locations within the practices. Such an approach offers a means of avoiding the hierarchies of visibility and invisibility, and embodiment and dis-embodiment, as illustrated in the coverage of the recipient of the face transplantation or the stem cell treatment and described in the opening section of this chapter. Employing a social scientific approach to the analysis of the difference between and intertwinement of Leib and body/Körper can furthermore act as a methodological tool and as a means of momentum for situating this study within the broader domain of research. If, when talking about body, one can merely refer to the body as an object which presents itself to the consciousness like any other object, then, building onto Jäger’s theoretical investigation, a study concerned with women’s embodiment and subjectivity in the field of biomedicine must find a way in which to capture the encounter of both, the body, as object and surface for the impact of power, as well as the Leib, as experiential momentum of individual life. This is where Jäger’s theoretical approach to the entwinement of Leib and Körper/body becomes interesting for this study (Jäger 2004). It is hoped that this theoretical approach will prove helpful in terms of how identity can be captured within a study concerned with women’s bodies, such that it will facilitate a reference to life, as experienced by a subject. It will, furthermore, help to develop an approach for looking at the changeability inherent in the body and the difficulties this creates when mechanical concepts are applied about the very same.
[63] In my analysis chapters,
