Embracing the Body of Culture: Understanding
cross-cultural psychology from the perspective of a phenomenology of embodiment.
In this paper I wish to help shape a new body of understanding. It
represents an initial attempt to ground our understanding of a cross-cultural
psychology in human bodyhood, a primordial and universal constituent of
human existence. I put forth that embodiment is what all human beings share,
but how we are embodied differs from culture to culture. That is,
the meaning and significance of our body differs across cultures. Based
on the work of existential-phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty I will
argue that the meaning of human existence in general (and our existence
within a culture in particular) must be founded on our embodied perceptual
consciousness, and that bodyhood is the unitary locus of existence from
which all expression and speech derive their meaning and significance.
Lastly I will show that it is in and through embodiment that intersubjectivity
and the incarnation of culture arise. Throughout this paper I put forth
that it is by way of phenomenological reflection that we may grasp
the meaning of an embodied existence different from our own.
Embodiment from an Etic Perspective: What we all have in common.
In looking at psychology from a cross-cultural (etic) perspective perhaps
the first thing we must consider is what it is all people have in common,
what we share, regardless of the culture we live in. Anthropologists and
ethnographers are expert in this, identifying the universals or aspects
shared by most if not all cultures, such as patterns of relationships,
societal structure, rituals, symbolic expression such as language, artwork,
and other cultural artifacts, religion and mythology, sexuality, child-rearing
practices, and attitudes towards death. And yet while every culture includes
all of these, in different cultures they are manifest in a multiplicity
of ways. What I wish to point out is that they all presuppose an embodied
subject.
Having, or more precisely "being" a body is a factical reality all
people have in common.1
What I am proposing in this paper is that in our inquiry into cross-cultural
psychology we embrace an even more fundamental aspect of culture, one that
is assumed yet remains unarticulated and forgotten in the literature of
cross-cultural psychology.2
From an etic perspective the gross bodily organization of a subject, or
rather the embodied subjects who are the foundation of any culture,
are manifest with little structural variation.3
This is not to say that there are no differences between people of the
world in these areas, or that these differences are not important. It is
only to say that the general physical characteristics of our human bodies
are for the most part similar. It is the significance that we ascribe
to being an embodied subject which is constituted and defined at the level
of culture, and thus varies from culture to culture. Stated another
way different cultures shape bodies differently.
To say that people exist as embodied beings in all cultures is to say
that without embodied subjects there would be no culture. Indeed the subjects
literally embody or constitute a culture as we know it, collectively they
not only can represent but are the "body" of a culture. The values,
assumptions, and attitudes of a culture are manifest in each and every
embodied subject through their comportment and the bodily practices mentioned
above.
The way a person carries themself through space, relates to themself,
other people, and to the objects of their environment, differs from culture
to culture. Stated existentially there are the factical givens of existence
and there is the inherent freedom in how we choose to take them up (our
intentions). In between or mediating these two poles are the values, assumptions,
and beliefs of the culture we live in. One of Heidegger's great insights
is to articulate the pervasiveness of culture as mediator between these
"existentials" or structures of human existence, and our freedom in how
we choose to take them up.4
For example an aboriginal woman negotiating the arid Australian outback
with bare feet will carry herself differently from an Anglo woman in New
York City wearing high heels. This is so for a multitude of reasons such
as her bodily capacities (her physiognomy and physiology, whether she has
full use of her body i.e. is handicapped, is with or without child, her
metabolism and diet, etc.), the geography, topography, and weather, her
clothing, her personal intentions, and the way that she chooses to take
up these factical "givens" (where she is going and what she is doing),
her past experience, as well as the intentions of her culture i.e. beliefs
and assumptions about human beings in general and women in particular.
It is important to remember that these aspects of our existence are not
mutually exclusive and in fact are interdependent and equally fundamental
in shaping our body, our bodily existence or being-in-the-world.5
What I wish to express is that "culture" presumes an incarnate subject,
and that embodiment provides a fundamental starting point and foundation
for understanding cross cultural psychology.
Embodiment from an Emic Perspective: Different bodies and different
perspectives.
In putting forth the notion that embodiment is foundational for understanding
differences between cultures- that different cultures shape bodies differently,
I wish also to say in the same breath that there are many equally important
differences between any two bodies. No two incarnate subjects are exactly
the same for each body is literally a different perspective on the world
and a different point of view. Your embodiment differs from mine in a multitude
of ways including differences in: the particular skeletal arrangement,
enervation, musculature, nervous, hormonal and metabolic functioning, all
of which are "shaped by the peculiar events of (one's) history and ideologies."6
The differences between our ways of embodiment may be subtle, however,
the meaning of these differences is immense. And as I hope to show, it
is in recognizing difference, and in particular the loss experienced in
differences in our intentions which can provide us with an invitation to
reflect back on the meaning and origin of our different ways of bodily
being in the world.
Embodiment and a psychology of existence-
Merleau-Ponty: the body as experienced.
Merleau-Ponty was a philosopher of the body, his philosophy one of
the flesh. For him the experiential body is the locus of human existence.
It is in and through our bodyhood that we experience all aspects of our
existence whether it be what is traditionally defined as "subjective" i.e.
our personal intentions and inner experience, or "objective" i.e. what
we encounter "out there in the world".7
Our bodyhood is what allows for our experience of spatiality, temporality,
the intersubjective human world, and the things of the natural world. Stated
differently our bodyhood is the basis of all perceptual consciousness.
Human bodyhood is already a being-in-the-world. "The perceived world is
the always presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value and all
existence."8
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analysis in his major work The
Phenomenology of Perception reinstates the consciousness of perception
as foundational for all human existence, and the body itself as the sine
qua non of perceptual experience. He criticizes the traditional theories
of sensation as a pure thing presented to our sense organs as well as the
mechanistic reduction of perception to a causal process in which the sensation
is the subsequent product of an excitation. Rather he argues that perception
takes place in a pre-objective realm or "phenomenal field" which is inherently
indeterminate and ambiguous. Things appear to us within a figure-ground
context or "horizon" of perception which shapes and gives meaning to our
sensations. Indeed the perceived is given to us always already imbued with
meaning, a meaning which is not derived simply from past memories or associations.
For example, I am visiting a colleague's home for the first time. As we
move through the various rooms we arrive at one which is hers alone. I
notice on one of the walls by the window several small paintings and photographs,
and a bookcase with many volumes. As I move across the room towards them
the vagueness of these objects recedes as their details emerge, out of
this ambiguity, and become clearer. The pictures, paintings, and book spines
present themselves to my gaze, inviting me to look closer and consider
their details, their meaning for me and even their significance for her.
They are an invitation to my imagination and sense of wonder. My self,
my colleague, and these objects exist within a "phenomenal field" or place
in which things appear to us. The objects which become present to me do
so within a certain perceptual context (a wall of her room) which already
provides them with a meaning (things which "hang" on a wall or "sit side
by side" on a shelf). The pictures, paintings, and books are not given
to me separately but as a whole or gestalt already imbued with meaning.
Like a figure emerging from an indeterminate background these objects become
present to me and solicit my gaze as they emerge from ambiguity and gain
meaning. In and through my perceptual consciousness I am present at the
birth of meaning.
Thus the world has for us as incarnate subjects a pre-reflective and
primordial significance, and sense experience is "that vital communication
with the world which makes it present as a familiar setting of our life."9
In taking us "back to the things themselves," to the "intentional tissue"
of perceptual consciousness which is the basis of all knowledge, Merleau-Ponty
finds that perception is not a passive event and that there is no absolute
standpoint from which we perceive. He finds that the embodied subject takes
an active constitutive role in what is perceived, and that their knowledge
is perspectival, indeterminate, and anything but impartial. Perception
is the advent of being to consciousness and is the foundation of human
existence. It is by way of phenomenology, by going back to our actual lived
bodily experience, that we (re)discover "the dialectical process of living
experience whereby we ourselves, other people and things come into being.
Merleau-Ponty designates this reawakening of perception and rediscovery
of phenomena 'the first philosophical act'."10
Perception is the primary basis of all experience and existence, and it
is in perception that the world is constituted and gains meaning for us,
or as Heidegger would say is "disclosed" to us.
There is a problem, however. We forget that objects exist for us,
the perceiver. We forget our own lived experience in which, as shown in
the example above, we move towards, wonder about, and address our senses
to the objects we perceive. In short, we forget that we play an active
constitutive role in perception. On the other hand the world is not entirely
created by the incarnate subject or their "mind". "Objects are not mere
projections or constructions of our minds; rather they are objects to be
encountered or discovered. In short, they are things offering a certain
resistance to our touch and a depth to our gaze."11
As embodied human beings we both shape and are shaped by
the world. In our naive, everyday perception we forget this. This is why
it takes an act of reflection, phenomenological reflection in particular,
to recover the origins of our experience. In phenomenological reflection
we go "back to the things themselves," reflecting back on the origins of
our lived bodily (perceptual) experience. We go back to the birth of
the object, which comes into being for us. This phenomenological
reflection allows us to witness the 'event of disclosure' in consciousness.
Phenomenology allows us to consciously witness the birth of all meaning,
all knowledge.
By these words, the "primacy of perception," we mean
that the experience of perception is our presence at the moment when things,
truths, and values are constituted for us; that perception is a nascent
logos;
that it teaches us, outside all dogmatism, the true conditions of objectivity
itself; that it summons us to the tasks of knowledge and action. It is
not a question of reducing human knowledge to sensation, but of assisting
at the birth of this knowledge, to make it as sensible as the sensible,
to recover the consciousness of rationality.12
We move through the world in a particular way guided
by our intentions or 'bodily projects'. By 'bodily project' I simply mean
one's intention(s) as they are made manifest in and through one's given13
bodily capacities. For example if I am on my way to an important meeting
and am not pressed for time I generally walk at an unrushed pace. If on
the other hand I am late I may find myself moving towards the meeting place
at a brisk pace. And the world around me will appear differently to me
in each case. In the former circumstance I am more apt to respond to the
perceptual 'call' of the people and objects in the natural environment,
discovering the richness and complexity of the multitude of its details
as they arise out of the ambiguity of the given perceptual horizon. Stated
more concretely if I am looking down as I walk I am more apt to
notice the color, textures, and shape of the concrete sidewalk, the sound
of my unhurried footsteps as one foot then the other comes down on the
ground and moves me along toward my intended destination, the smell of
the flowers and shrubs along the way, the feeling of my shoes against the
sidewalk and feet against my shoes, the kinesthetic sense of moving through
space as well as the temperature of the air.
If I am late and my intention is to get to my meeting
as soon as possible I may very well see the world in a different way. I
may choose not to reply to the invitation of the perceptual world in the
same way. If hurrying along I am apt not to notice the details of those
things around me. Instead of appearing to me clearly the things in my environment
remain indistinct and undifferentiated from their background. My perceptual
horizon remains ambiguous. The concrete sidewalk on which I am traveling
may just be a blur along with the building facades I am passing. I may
be only vaguely aware, if at all, of the sounds and smells around me, or
even of a sense of my own body. As it may become clear to the reader from
this example, and by recourse to their own experience, the world literally
looks differently based on one's differing intentions and bodily capacities.
And it is in the impingement or loss of some bodily capacity
that we are invited to reflect on our current experience in relation to
prior experience, and come to find that we have a choice in and take an
active part in shaping the world as it is discovered through our perception.
That is, our loss can invite phenomenological reflection. Stated
differently with a loss in my bodily capacities I find that I am a 'present
body' which is now different from my 'habitual body'. Recall the example
of walking down the street to my meeting. Let us say that I have since
twisted my ankle. It now occurs to me that I cannot walk to my meeting
in my habitual way as my ankle is swollen and tender. I find myself moving
at a slower pace, painfully aware of my injury. The cracks and the unevenness
of the sidewalk do not interest me in the same way as before, for, if anything,
they interest me much more. I quite literally do not experience the sidewalk,
or the rest of the world for that matter, in the same way. My 'present'
injured body is different from my 'past' habitual body. Thus with this
injury, this change in my bodily capacities, I discover the temporality
of my embodiment. Langer makes this point well and I will quote her at
length here.
The body is seen to comprise 'like two distinct layers',
the 'habitual body' and the 'present body'. The former signifies the body
as it has been lived in the past, in virtue of which it has acquired certain
habitual ways of relating to the world. The 'habitual body' already projects
a habitual setting around itself, thereby giving a general structure to
the subjects situation.. it outlines, prior to all reflection, those objects
which it 'expects' to encounter...As such, it draws together a comprehensive
past which it puts at the disposal of each new present, thereby already
laying down the general form of a future it anticipates. With its 'two
layers' the body is the meeting place, so to speak, of past, present and
future because it is the carrying forward of the past in the outlining
of a future.14
Langer points out that it is in this way that our past
'haunts' our present. "(The) haunting of the present by a particular past
experience is possible because we carry our past with us insofar as its
structures have become 'sedimented' in our habitual body."15
Thus present, future, and past are not separate aspects of our existence
but rather are a unity in which each implicates the others.
I take this lengthy digression regarding the discovery
within phenomenological reflection of the temporal structure of our embodiment
in order to make an analogous point with regard to understanding cross-cultural
psychology. In our everyday, naive, habitual, ethnocentric approach to
other cultures we "forget" what is given to us in reflection: that what
we call culture, like perception, is not simply "given" to us. There is
not one culture, "ours", but in fact many. And as is the case with perception
no one cultural perspective is inherently more privileged than another,
though cultures certainly do differ qualitatively. We take an active, albeit
"forgotten"16
role in its constitution. Culture, like perception, is made manifest in
and through the incarnate subject. It is constituted for me. For
without the incarnate subject culture would not exist. In our everyday
attitude we approach other cultures as we approach the world in our habitual
embodiment. And when in psychology we find that our typical ways of understanding
and working with people who are assumed to be similar to us "do not work",
at this point we are invited to consider this person or people in their
own right, for who and what they are, for their different embodied being-in-the-world.
As a twisted ankle invites us into reflection upon the 'sedimented' ways
we structure our perception and being-in-the-world, being with a person
from another culture invites us to reflect on what we take for granted.
And like a twisted ankle our "methods" of understanding and treatment of
other people become lame and unhelpful when we encounter another incarnate
subject with a different way of cultural being-in-the-world.17
To reiterate a central theme of this paper: it is in taking up the invitation
to reflect phenomenologically that will allow us to grasp a more essential
understanding of embodied existence in another culture.
In his discussion of the spatiality of one's own body
and its relation to motility Merleau-Ponty introduces a new notion of "body
image". This "body image" is the means by which we 'locate' our body and
its different parts in the world. As his analysis is phenomenological or
a reflecting back on one's lived experience of embodiment he finds that
we do not experience ourselves as a collection of bodily parts and organs
(arms, nose, ears, tongue, eyes, etc.) located somewhere in objective space
or some sort of global awareness of these parts, but rather we experience
our body within the implied context of a 'bodily project' or purpose. We
are aware of the different parts of our body in and through our intentions
as they are made manifest in the world. Stated differently I become aware
of my body image as my body takes up a task and 'projects' itself towards
the world. I am a 'lived body' who experiences space not in terms of its
objective 'position' within it but rather I experience space in terms of
a particular 'situation' I am in. I experience the spatiality of my body
not by associating a multitude of discrete sensations into some sort of
perceptual unity and locating 'it' in the 'objective' world, but as a 'lived
body' engaged in a situation in a particular way, as the 'incarnate intentionality'
of motility. Take the earlier example of walking to a meeting for which
I am late. As I move hurriedly up the street with the intention of arriving
as soon as possible I do not fully respond to the invitation of the perceptual
world by taking much notice of what is around me. I am vaguely aware of
the sidewalk under my feet or the sights, sounds, and smells that surround
me. The building which will house this meeting is vague in my sight and
I am dimly aware of my legs moving and the sensation of my being propelled
forward towards the building. I am not present to myself walking down the
street but rather I am already standing outside the closed door of the
meeting which has started and which I am about to enter. Phenomenologically,
experientially I am not located 20 yards (as "objectively" measured) from
the building but am already inside about to enter the meeting room. As
I move forward and approach the building my gaze fixes upon at first the
whole side of the building and then the finer details as they emerge into
the foreground of my perceptual horizon. As I move closer still and approach
the front door the upper and lower part of my right arm moves from the
background to the foreground of my awareness as I raise it to the level
of the doorknob. I seemingly without thought or reflection shape my hand
and fingers around the elongated knob and press down and in so doing my
hand and fingers become present to me. I am dimly aware, if at all, of
the rest of my body. The presence of my 'lived body' has, as it were, shrunk
or confined itself into my right arm and hand. My lived body and its spatiality
becomes present to me in the way in which I am engaged with the world.
My bodyhood is disclosed to me in the context of my 'motor projects', my
'incarnate intentionality'. Though it is possible for me to do so I typically
do not experience spatiality in terms of my body's "objective' location
in calculable space i.e. I don't experience my arms as existing 16" apart
from each other while resting at my side. Rather as in this example I experience
the spatiality of my body in terms of hurriedly walking to the building
and opening the front door so that I may get to my meeting.
My awareness of my body is inseparable from the world
of my perception. The things which I perceive, I perceive always in reference
to my body, and this is so only because I have an immediate awareness of
my body itself as it exists 'towards them'. The body image thus
involves a primordial, pre-reflective orientation and motility
insofar as I am immediately aware of where my limbs are as my body
projects
itself towards the world of its tasks. I am always already situated in
the world and it is my manner of engaging in particular projects which
reveals most clearly the nature of my bodily spatiality.18
Through his analysis of lived spatiality and motility
Merleau-Ponty comes to find a distinction between what he calls the 'phenomenal
body' and the 'objective body'. Stated another way there is a difference
between the body as 'experienced' and the body as 'conceptualized'. In
and through our inherent bodily capacities we have the ability to shape
and be shaped by the world. I shape my world by opening the front door
to the clinic where my meeting is held, yet am also shaped by the world
as I must adjust my arm and hand in order to open that door and engage
in my 'motor projects'. The incarnate subject has an ability to 'carve
out', as it were, a meaningful place in the world, to in-corporate (take
into one's body) as one's own and manipulate the objects of the world.
My clothing, shoes, walking stick, jewelry or other ornamentation- anything
which I use habitually- becomes a part of me or conversely I become a part
of it.
To get used to a hat, a car or a stick is to be transplanted
into them, or conversely, to incorporate them into the bulk of our own
body. Habit expresses our power of dilating our being-in-the-world, or
changing our existence by appropriating fresh instruments.19
This passage represents the central theme taken up in
the next section- that when we appropriate something, be it an article
of clothing or a cultural assumption about the nature of a woman's or man's
sexuality, it becomes a part of us and literally shapes our embodied existence
and the way we perceive the world. Culture is a shaper of our existence,
of our bodies. "Bodily spatiality, inherently dynamic, is the very condition
for the coming into being of a meaningful world. Thus it subtends our entire
existence as human beings."20
It is the 'motor project' which projects our intentions
into the world and incarnates them, allowing us to 'carve out' a "zone
of reflection and subjectivity" which "organizes the given world in accordance
with the projects of the present moment, to build into the geographical
setting a behavioral one, a system of meanings outwardly expressive of
the subject's internal activity."21
This is to say that the body is a power of transcendence towards the world
and the objects therein where "something begins to exist for us precisely
to the extent that the body as a power of transcendence towards it."22
Bodyhood as expression
and speech: Gesture and language as incarnate intentionality.
It is this power we have to shape the world which is
the basis for all expression and speech. And it is the lived spatiality
of existence which is the foundation of gesture and language. By examining
'the body as expression and speech' we will be able to grasp the inherent
and essential connection between intentionality (thought) and the body,
that in fact they are two aspects of the same thing. In this way Merleau-Ponty
bridges once and for all the dualism of mind and body which has plagued
western metaphysics for over two thousand years.
For Merleau-Ponty one's intentions are inseparable from
their bodily expression (gestures and speech) and can only be split apart
artificially by reflecting abstractly on one's experience. Our intentions
and their expression are a living unity, two aspects of the same phenomenon.
Take the case of my smiling upon seeing an old friend. My smile, a gesture,
does not represent (i.e. re-present) the pleasure that I experience upon
recognizing my friend. Rather my smile is that pleasure incarnate.
The pleasure I experience (an intention on my part) and my smile (bodily
gesture) are not two separate things. I am not a mind who experiences pleasure
and a body who expresses it. They are one and the same. My smile is a living
expression of my love for my friend, the presencing of pleasure to conscious
being.
The same is true for speech. My greeting of hello and
question about how they have been is not just the outward manifestation
of an inward sense of concern and wonder. My question is my care
for them and wonder at how they are. Speech is living thought, the natural
completion of a thought incarnate in the world, for "thought tends towards
expression as towards its completion."23
Language is the body of thought, a giving birth in flesh of thought. Thought
lends itself to expression and it is in the expression that the thought
becomes real. For example the words that I write on this page are my thoughts
made manifest. In fact it isn't until I express these thoughts that they
become my own, that they become real.24
I am 'ignorant' of my thoughts until I express them. It is through their
expression that we 'present our thoughts to ourselves'. The word, as the
expression of a thought, does not re-present the thought, but rather is
the thought. Thus words are not mere representations of meanings, they
are the meanings themselves. Merleau-Ponty reminds us that "the word, far
from being the mere sign of objects and meanings, inhabits things and is
the vehicle of meanings. Thus speech, in the speaker, does not translate
ready-made thought, but accomplishes it..the listener receives thought
from speech itself."25
For him the act of naming and the act of recognition are one in the same.
We understand the speech of others by taking up the perspective
of the speaker, by more or less grasping their thought as our own. In listening26
to their words we embrace the flesh of their thoughts. We 'feel our way
into', as it were, the thought of another. Their speech conveys an immediate,
existential, or 'gestural' meaning. It is based on this 'gestural meaning'
that we, as listeners, are able to deduce and apply any abstract or conceptual
meanings.
There is, then, a taking up of others' thought through
speech, a reflection in others, an ability to think according to others
which enriches our own thoughts. Here the meaning of words must be finally
induced by the words themselves, or more exactly, there conceptual meaning
must be formed by a kind of deduction from their gestural meaning,
which is immanent in speech.27
We understand each other because we inhabit a "shared
linguistic world." And in both speaking and listening we are manifesting
a potential use of our bodies. Our language, which is a cultural phenomenon,
shapes our body from the way we move our mouth, lips, and tongue to the
way we breath. And again it is in the interruption or failure of this bodily
capacity that we are invited to reflect on its essence and significance.
Merleau-Ponty uses the example of aphasia though one need only visit the
dentist and receive a shot of anesthetic to realize the importance of lips
and tongue in speaking, the inherent relationship between thought and bodily
expression, the fundamental need to communicate and the frustration, anxiety,
and despair that can accompany the loss of this bodily capacity.
To understand the thoughts of another is to take up their
perspective in our shared linguistic world, a taking up of their intention
as our own. Listening to the speech of another is an invitation to temporarily
take up their perspective on the world, and our response by adjusting ourselves
to their manner of being. The speaker offers their thoughts in speech and
we appropriate them in the act of listening. The same is true of our bodily
gestures.
Communication and comprehension of a gesture are achieved
through the establishing of a reciprocity between the other's intention
and my own. Neither his intention nor mine is thematized; in both cases
it 'inhabits' our bodies. Our interaction involves neither a mechanical
process nor an intellectual operation, but a pre-reflective act of structuring
the world on the part of the body-subject and a corresponding pre-reflective
act of recapturing the meaning of that structuration on the part of the
other incarnate subject. What we have here is a pre-reflective dialogue
involving the invitation to concur with a certain way of perceiving the
world, and a response to that invitation by an adjusting of the body's
powers so as to overlap the intentional object outlined by the other's
gesture.28
It is through the body that any and all expression and
comprehension are possible.
An important implication of this for our purposes is
that the meaning we are trying to express is immediate and inalienable
from the language we are using. Different languages signify different ways
of perceiving and being-in-the-world. Again this becomes clear when language
fails us, such as when we encounter a person who speaks a language that
we do not. Their thoughts, the way they perceive the world is different,
literally as different as the way they express them. And it is through
embodied listening, taking up their way of being-in-the-world by learning
some (or all) of their language, embracing their bodily way of being as
expressing thoughts in their language; it is by "adjusting the body's powers
so as to overlap the intentional object outlined by (their) gesture" that
we come to know and understand the other's meaning and significance. It
is a listening that takes practice, a practice of listening, a phenomenological
listening that allows us to accomplish this. The failure of language, for
whatever reason, is a failure to either express or grasp an incarnate intention.
It is a tear in the "intentional tissue" of our existence, which goes far
in explaining why a failure in communication between two people can be
so disturbing, the disorganized thought and speech often associated with
schizophrenia for example.
This basic power to incarnate and body-forth29
our intentions in gesture and speech is the basis for being with another
human being. It is the foundation for the possibility of all intersubjective
experience. As Langer points out in drawing a distinction between this
basic power in normal and pathological subjects:
Unlike the psychologists' patients, (normal subjects)
experience a bodily intentionality which opens them to the perceptible
world, enabling them to discern its significance and to structure it according
to present demands. This pre-reflective incarnate intentionality further
allows normal subjects to project themselves towards a world..., and to
participate actively in cultural life. Language is inseparable here from
this basic activity of transcendence, so that their language is their 'taking
up of a position' in this.. cultural world. Merleau-Ponty stresses that
just as for normal subjects a pattern of their bodily behavior invests
the surrounding objects with a particular significance for themselves and
others, so their 'phonetic "gesticulation"'- their speech- brings about
a certain intersubjective co-ordinating of experience.30
Being-with others in
the human world: The ambiguity of intersubjectivity and the incarnation
of culture.
As infants we are born into
a particular time that precedes our personal existence, one which we do
not constitute. Likewise we are born into a cultural world which is pre-personal.
I have no recollection of existence either before or after my own. The
past and the future remain veiled in ambiguity which makes certainty about
either one impossible. Likewise my present I could only understand completely
in light of having a tight grasp of what lies ahead in my future, which
of course I can never have. I am "thrown" into a natural time and a natural
world. "My hold on the past and the future is precarious," as is my experience
of the present. Absolute knowledge, pure objectivity, is not humanly possible.
All human knowledge is achieved through our interpretation of the
present in light of the future and the past, within this twin temporal
horizon. Or as was stated above all perception is perspectival, and hence
by its very nature incomplete. We are "thrown", as Heidegger said, into
a particular historical time and place, a certain cultural situation. This
is the 'background of nature' against which my perceptions stand out. Thus
there is a natural world I am born into which is 'anterior' and remains
'alien' and ambiguous to my personal life, but to which I am inextricably
linked. "The cultural world is then ambiguous, but it is already present."31
I exist in fundamental relation to culture, a shared
world with others, and come to relate to this world in a certain habitual
way. The cultural objects which I encounter call to me to take them up
and relate to them in a distinctly human way that is determined, to a lesser
or greater degree, by the purpose which it serves or is intended. "Just
as nature finds its way to the core of my personal life and becomes inextricably
linked with it, so behavior patterns settle into that nature, being
deposited in the form of a cultural world."32
This is by no means a merely intellectual or cognitive "learning process"
as most developmental psychologists would have it, Piaget for example.
The depositing of a cultural world in behavior patterns is an eminently
embodied, corporal way of relating to the world. It is a particular
way of shaping our bodies in relation to the natural and human worlds.
It is the shaping of a personal body into a public cultural one. We may
speak of this abstractly as the 'body of culture' where each culture has
a different 'cultural body'. Each cultural body is literally a different
embodied way of being-in-the-world, a different way of relating to the
world, of perceiving the world, which has been 'sedimented' in 'behavioral
patterns'. I incarnate my culture. I give it a body, my body, and
it in turn shapes my body. I give shape to my culture as it shapes me.
This is similar to how I encounter others. I do not experience
them as some sort of free-floating consciousness or as an object among
many objects. I perceive them as fellow human beings in a shared cultural
and natural world. More precisely I perceive them with and through my body.
I perceive their intentions as they are made manifest in their bodily gestures.
I recognize in the other what I myself am, a certain though different 'view'
of the world. This differing view I can never inhabit fully or completely,
and in the process forsake my own perspective on the world. I can never
fully transcend my own existence. I can never experience the world precisely
as they themself do, nor they as I do. When I recognize another person
the world takes on a new and enriched significance as now my perspective
on the world is broadened to accommodate other perspectives on the world.
My perspective is never complete for there are always other perspectives
which may be taken. And it is the integration of these multiple perspectives
which come to shape the social world. This integration of another possible
perspective on the world is immediate and pre-thematic, though it can be
raised to the level of thematic awareness through phenomenological reflection.
This 'inhabiting' another perspective on the world, as I will describe
below, can come about through carefully listening to the narrative life-stories
that others tell. It is through their narratives that we may come to grasp
the meaning and significance of their experience, their 'view' or 'hold'
on the world. As Langer so succinctly states:
I am not first and foremost a spectacle for an alien
consciousness, or a spectator of others; rather, as a body-subject I enjoy
an anterior organic relationship to the natural and the human world. My
body's insertion into the world is the condition for my interacting with
other people..My body is always perspectival- I never have an all-encompasing
hold on the world; there is therefore room for other incarnate subjectivities,
and their points of views complement my own. Their body expressed their
intentions and I perceive those intentions with my own body; insofar as
my body takes up the other's intentions, there is an internal relation
between our bodies. It is thus first of all the body which opens itself
to others and responds to them...The hold on the world which other's have-
and which they are- enriches me by enabling me to achieve a more comprehensive
view of the world than is offered by my own hold alone. Far from being
mutually exclusive, these multiple modes of being-in-the-world are internally
related and form a social world.33
Thus encountering and being-with others, and this is
especially true with regard to people from other cultures, broadens and
enriches my hold on the world. Others help make the world more complete
by offering different perspectives. Not only is one's embodiment the basis
for one's 'insertion into the world' and existence, all language and gesture,
it is also the basis for the social world, the world of intersubjectivity,
the world of culture.
In this paper I have attempted
to provide a new and embodied foundation for understanding cross-cultural
psychology.
I have put forth that perceptual consciousness is the foundation of all
existence, and that embodiment is the sine qua non of perceptual experience.
As incarnate subjects the world has for us a pre-reflective and primordial
significance which presents itself through perception. That objects exist
for an embodied perceiver is forgotten and instead we presume that they
exist independently of us. Phenomenological reflection allows us to go
back to the origins of our lived bodily experience and birth of an object
as it comes into being for us. I hope to have demonstrated that how we
perceive the world depends on our intentions as they are made manifest
through our bodily capacities. It is in the failure to grasp the intention
of another or the loss of a bodily capacity that we are invited into phenomenological
reflection. This loss in bodily capacity presents to us the (temporal)
difference between our 'present' and 'habitual' body. While the 'habitual'
body is rooted in the past and the 'present' body in the present our 'body
image' is rooted in our future projected possibilities. As a lived body
of incarnate intentionality we find ourselves engaged in our situation
in a particular way. Thus we find that there is an experiential difference
between our 'phenomenal' and our 'objective' body. An implication of this
is that we both shape and are shaped by the world. Thus we find that in
the manifestation of our intentions in gesture and speech intention and
expression are inseparable. It is in and through the bodily expression
of another that we may or may not capture their immediate and unmediated
intention. It is this basic power to incarnate and body-forth our
intentions in gesture and speech that is the basis for being with another
human being and is the foundation for all intersubjective experience.
In and through culture we come to relate to others and the objects of our
world in certain habitual ways, and it is by way of phenomenological reflection
on our embodiment that will allow us to understand the meaning of these
different ways of relating to things and each other.
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and Psychology. Trans. Conway, S. & Cleaves, A. Northvale, NJ:
Jason Aronson.
Heidegger, M. (1927/62). Being and Time. Trans.
Macquarrie, J., and Robinson, E. NY: Harper & Row.
Husserl, E. (1925/77). Phenomenological Psychology:
Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925. Trans. Scanlon, J. Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1950/64). Idea of Phenomenology.
Trans. Biemel, W. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1953/80). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure
Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. Book 3: Phenomenology and
the Foundation of the Sciences. Trans. Klein, T. & Poll, W. The
Hague: Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1954/70). The Crisis of the European
Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological
Philosophy. Trans. Carr, D. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Johnson, D. (1983). Body: Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom.
Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Johnson, D. (1994). Body, Spirit, and Democracy.
Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Johnson, D. (Ed.). (1995). Bone, Breath, & Gesture:
Practices of Embodiment. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Langer, M. (1989). Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of
Perception: A Guide and Commentary. Tallahassee: Florida State
University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/62), Phenomenology of Perception,
Trans. Colin Smith, London: Routledge.
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and Its Philosophical Consequences. In Primacy of Perception, Ed.
James Edie, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964/68). The Intertwining- The Chiasm.
In The Visible and the Invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort. Evanston, IL:
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Sartre, J. (1956). Being and Nothingness: Essay on
Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Barnes, H. NY: Philosophical Library.
1To
say that one 'has' a body may seem painfully obvious, however it is misleading.
For we do not 'have' or 'possess' a body, our body, as if we possess
a thing. In fact and experience we are our bodies. To have
a body is very different than being our body. Stated differently
to "have" a body is already to objectify "it" as a "thing", whereas the
expression "being a body" captures the reflexive process which characterizes
our experience of our own embodiment. The difference between having and
being is not merely semantic, rather it is an ontological one. To have
a body is as if to possess a thing, and as Heidegger (1927/62) takes pains
to point out in Being and Time, the human kind of Being, which he
calls Dasein, is not a thing to be understood in an objective sense. The
human Being is different from any other kind of being, a point that is
made more or less explicitly by Nietzsche, Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty,
and all others within the existential and phenomenological traditions.
2This criticism,
that the body and bodily experience are everywhere assumed but never articulated
(with rare exception i.e. Somatic psychology), applies equally to the field
of psychology in general. As I will show below we often "forget" to consider
our own embodiment, that it is but one perspective on the world, what the
philosopher Husserl came to call the 'natural attitude of consciousness'
and Heidegger the 'forgetfulness of Dasein'. For further variations on
this theme see note 5ff and my discussion of the active, constitutive role
the incarnate subject plays in perception in Merleau-Ponty.
3Perhaps this is
one reason human beings have made so much of the differences that do separate
one person from another, such a skin color, height, weight, gender, and
other aspects of physiognomy. And it is no coincidence that this is done
at the "level" of culture.
4Heidegger (1927/62)
Being
and Time part I, chapter 4, pp. 149-168. Sartre (1966) takes up this
theme explicitly and at length in Being and Nothingness. See part
IV, chapter 1, specifically pp. 619-706.
5That culture is
a mediator between our facticity and our freedom is given to us in our
everyday experience i.e. phenomenologically although we are rarely "conscious"
of it as it remains at the prethematic level. For example it may never
occur to me that I have a choice in the way I walk. I walk the way I do
because it is the way my body "is supposed to". I would not attribute the
pace of my footsteps, the length of my stride, how I move my hips and upper
body to my culture. At a certain point in time it may occur to me, say
when I twist my ankle, that I do have a choice in the way I walk. Again
I would probably not attribute this to culture. Why is this so? I would
suggest that our culture is something so pervasive and all encompassing,
something so omnipresent and close to us that we do not recognize it even
when we see it with our own eyes. Once again it was Heidegger (1927/62)
in his discussion of something being present-at-hand who addresses this
very issue. To paraphrase he said that it is only when an object fails
to function in the way it was intended that its significance is disclosed
to us. Or when we lose to some degree, permanently or temporarily, a bodily
capacity only then do we reflect on the meaning of that capacity for us
in our everyday life. This is true also for the people who inhabit our
lives, whose meaning is so often "lived" and goes unspoken until their
loss or death throws their significance to us into sharp and painful relief.
It is in this way that loss invites us to reflect on our experience.
6Johnson, D. (1994),
Body, Spirit and Democracy, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, p. 5.
7Though I make reference
here to the common categories of "subjectivity" and "objectivity" I do
not mean to imply that Merleau-Ponty condoned this distinction. As any
reader of his works knows well one of his great philosophical contributions
was his radical critique and overcoming of this subject/object schism,
a long-standing metaphysical dualism articulated so well by Descartes in
his distinction between "res cogitans" and "res extensa", pure thought
(mind) and pure matter (body). For Merleau-Ponty who takes the phenomenological
approach of analyzing one's lived bodily experience we are neither a pure
subject nor a pure object, but an ambiguous 'in-between' which he later
came to call "the intertwining" of the perceiver and perceived. That is,
as incarnate subjects we are paradoxically both subject and object, both
perceiver and perceived at the same time, "by which the subject's
own corporeity is given to him as a 'lived body' or 'I-body,' distinguished
from his objective body..." [Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964/68), The Intertwining-
The Chiasm, In The Visible and the Invisible, Ed. Claude Lefort,
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, p. liv]. Likewise I am part
of the world (which includes culture) and the world is part of me. As a
living human being I am "the flesh of the world," not an object separate
from it but an inherent and inalienable part of it.
8Merleau-Ponty,
M. (1947/64), The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences,
In Primacy of Perception, Ed. James Edie, Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, p. 13.
9Merleau-Ponty,
M. (1945/66), Phenomenology of Perception, Trans. Colin Smith, London:
Routledge, pp. 52-53.
10Langer, M. (1989),
Merleau-Ponty's
Phenomenology of Perception, Tallahassee: Florida State University
Press, pp. 17-18.
12Merleau-Ponty,
op. cit., p. 25 (italics his).
13In this and other
examples in this paper I am assuming the bodily capacities of a "typical"
able-bodied person unless specifically stated otherwise. My intention is
not to discriminate in favor of those without handicaps, though I realize
in many instances these examples do assume and thereby privilege the experience
of people without disabilities. To the readers with disabilities I apologize
for my inability to address your specific bodily experience in this paper.
For a phenomenological discussion of being dis-abled see the paper by Mark
Phillips (1994) entitled Throwing from the Chair: Being-disabled-in-the-world
and Other Marginalizations located at "http://www.accesscom.com/~marx/"
on the world wide web.
14Langer, op. cit.,
p. 32.
16Our forgetfulness
we might call the 'natural attitude of culture' after Husserl's description
of the 'natural attitude' of consciousness whereby consciousness forgets
itself and the role it plays in constituting the world. Merleau-Ponty is
clearly following Husserl who proposed over and against the forgetful and
habitual 'natural attitude' a reflective, phenomenological one (also
called the epoche). See for example Husserl, E. (1925/77). Phenomenological
Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925. Trans. Scanlon, J. Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, p. 112 ff. and Husserl, E. (1950/64). Idea of Phenomenology.
Trans. Biemel, W. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, p. 13ff.
17I will return
to this discussion in more detail in the final part of this paper where
I take up the issue of how we may embody a response to the call
of phenomenological reflection, namely by our inherent embodied capacity
of listening to the narrative of another's experience and embracing
the differences between us.
18Langer, op. cit.,
p. 41 (italics hers).
20Langer, op. cit.,
p. 47.
24This notion of
the appropriation of meaning through its expression has tremendous implications
for psychotherapy, and is the existential basis for Freud's technique of
'free association' whereby one claims as one's own parts of oneself previously
unacceptable. I will discuss the implications of this fully in my dissertation
on the similarities between Freud's 'free association' and Heidegger's
"meditative thinking'. This is a very old notion in the west. Consider
the biblical expression that "Jesus is the Word (of God i.e. Spirit) made
flesh." For the purposes of this paper the spoken word is the flesh of
thought.
26Or more precisely
by listening phenomenologically we are able to take up and comprehend the
perspective or situatedness of another. This topic will be discussed in
greater detail in the last section of this paper.
27Ibid. p. 179
(italics his, footnote omitted).
29"Body-forth"
is an expression often used by the Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss who discusses
at length the notion of bodyhood as an 'existential' or structure of human
existence. See Boss, M. (1979). Existential Foundations of Medicine
and Psychology. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, especially pp. 85-126.
30Ibid., p. 64
(Italics hers).
32Ibid., p. 347
(Italics mine).
33Langer, p. 103-104
(italics mine).