The Embodied Self and Wordless Knowing

SrnrcR KNuurru-R Sounding Out the Core: The Embodied Self and Wordless Knowing This essay outlines the concept of the embodied self as a tentative part in for- mulating postrational subjectivity. It serves the idea of empathic reading that can resist numbness under the pressure of growing media. Postulating a self which has an embodied core implies a capability of becoming aware and re- flecting affectively on the non-verbal exchange of self and other. For this pur- pose, I investigate the neural basis of this hypothesis in terms of Antonio Damasio, and adapt it to Daniel N. Stern's idea of the present moment as the felt locus of implicit knowing. Moreover, to illuminate the working of the embodied self in reading, I use as an example Friederike Mayröcker's poem "Fotografie." Since the poem sensitively echoes implicit memory in traumatic loss, I explore its figures as multisensory signs which the poet transfers from her emotional memory into language. Especially the metonymies of the poem express the dual affect of sorrow and love when verbally bridging the temporal delay typical of traumatic memory. I. Towards Embodied Symbolization As I read Friederike Mayröcker's poem "Fotografie" for the first time in 2004, its perceptual and emotional power pervaded my reading experience on a multisensory bodily level. Every time since, Mayröcker's lyrical 'l' epitomizes for me a profound sense of dialogical subjectivity with her beloved, Ernst Jandl. When viewing an old photo in 2003, three years after Jandl's death, Mayröcker writes: Photography for Ernst Jandl with his big left hand he covers my big right hand with his big warm left hand he covers my big cold right hand I have hidden my big right cold hand his big left warm hand rests protectively on my fleeting 52 Sirkka Knuuttila right big cold hand while Stefan Moses is taking our picture in the year'76 each ofus covering up face with the other big hand (as Stefan Moses asks) - we hold on to each other in this unprepossessing gesture that in retrospect brings tears to my invisible eye .. your bloodstream spills over into my bloodstream and then in overgrown undying lover Unavoidably, for me the poem brings about the question of the role of the implicit, emotional memory in the constitution of selftrood.2 But "Fotografie" also incamates in language the photo's double temporal structure of 'this will be' and 'this has been' defined famously by Roland Barthes in his Za chambre claire (Barthes 1981,96).3 This effect is not provided only with an abstract experience of the fusion of 'now' and 'then'. Rather, in order to be experienced, this dual temporality necessitates a memorized sensation of the sensory quali- ties of the body such as the touching hands, tears, and pulsating bloodstream. Just as Barthes re-experienced the affect-laden memory of his mother while viewing her photograph, Mayröcker's writing integrates the past and present by simulating the earlier experience of perceptual and emotional sensations that arise from her implicit memory (cf. ibid., 64f .,78f .). This evokes the idea that in order to reach the poem's meaning potential, any reader must have in her or his embodied mind the same capability of simulating the reciprocal touch of the writer and her beloved. Vigorously awakening the sensory perceptions of my experiential self,a "Fotografie" points to the exigency of a revised notion of post-Cartesian sub- Mayröcker, 2004, 762; translated by Kevin Perryman, Babel XIY , 2006, 7,1 . The original poem with the photo is also found in ibid., 69f. The ideas ofmy essay are inspired by the presentations and discussions ofthe Con- ference "Hello, I Say, Itk Me"- (Re)Constructions of Subjectivity in Contemporary Literature and Culture, held in Dlisseldorf, in April,2008. Especially, the status of the concept of self came clearly visible during the final discussions, which gave me new insights into this fascinating topic. In his early essays, Barthes outlines the temporal double structure of the photo as a combination of 'being-there' and 'having-been-there.' On this double temporality in relation to affectivity, see Knuuttila, 2008. The term 'experiential self draws from Vittorio Guidano's cognitive theory of mind (Guidano, 1991). Sounding Out the Core 53 jectivity. It leads me to think anew of the postmodern concept of a fragmented human subject, especially its bodiless, decentered nature. Considered to be constituted by discourses, norTns, and ways of being, the postmodern subject is understood as a process which is continually built and rebuilt in and by preva- lent hegemonic narratives (Braidotti, 1991, Somers, 1994, Seigel, 2005, 603- 650). Such a construction seems to not permit the subject to have any experiential, emotional core or centre. Rather, being figured as a mere textual inter- section of cultural discourses which undertake the role of meaning making for any social subject, the postmodern textual subjectivity erases the socio- historical agency of an individual-in-the-flesh and makes it bloodless, even dispensable. However, after three decades of postmodern irony in literature, anthropol- ogy and historiography, the concept of a historically situated subjectivity is revived in a new shape. In the humanities, much as a response to feminist and postcolonial theories, any subject is defined in relation to an 'other,' and char- acterized by the dimensions of sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, and social class. Furthernore, non-dualistic ideas in the philosophical and psychological theories of mind are encouraged by discoveries made by current neuroimaging techniques and neuropsychological testing. Typical of this double revival is a change in conceptualization when rejecting the notion of a fixed 'identity.' In- stead of a fragmented 'subject(ivity),' the debate now circles around a variety of concepts of stratified 'self or 'selfhood' and the relationship between its self- reflective part and experiential bodily components (Seigel, 2005, 33f.). Two interconnected points stand out in this theoretical shift. First, despite their call for historical positioning, many new approaches repudiate the possibility of a core for (any) concept of self (Martin and Barresi, 2006,297ff.). Just as a decentered postmodern 'subjectivity' was seen as a battlefield of discourses, now the 'self is believed to be disjointed for the benefit of its discursive multiplica- tion.s Second, following this thinking, 'self is not (yet) understood as unified by the human body. That is, even though the unity of the organism as an experienced entity is seen to provide a background for the self, the human body is s The theories of self explore extensively the differences compared to other terms such as'identity' and'person(ality)' (see Martin and Barresi, 2006). The'self is held also as fragmented or divided within itself, while the Freudian division of subjectivity into .go, iO, and superego has a number of pertinent alternatives, presented in ob- ject relation and attachment theories. 54 Sirkka Knuuttila not yet taken as a social and dialogical entity in itself (ibid.,299,304, Seigel, 2005,652f ).6 But as Solms and Turnbull (2002, 105) state, aside from discursive modes, an emotional awareness of the felt condition of the self is an integral source of individual knowledge, action, and change. Prompted by this thought, my essay argues for the dialogical nature of an embodied, emotional selfhood. As its tentative core, I will examine the psychic correlate of the neural core self out- lined by the neurophysiologist Antonio Damasio (2000).7 On the basis of this embodied core self, I propose with Arnold Modell (2003, 33ff.) that human metaphorical activity is regulated in and by an emotional unconscious which pervades all human interaction, and is responsible for the symbolic cooperation of memory and imagination. What is more, in this metaphorical information processing, metonymy acts as an affective marker in the continual recontextu- alization of an embodied subjectivity (ibid., 102f.). As I will show in the following four parts of this essay, direct embodied experience is constitutive to the notion of self. I start with some remarks on postrational subjectivity and the concept of the embodied mind developed by current cognitive science. Second, I will speciS the concept of an embodied mind by elaborating on Damasio's idea of the core self and his theory of emo- tion in the formation of an extended consciousness and the autobiographical self. Third, I will enrich the idea of the embodied mind with Stern's theory of wordless cognition which is supposed to be a function of our implicit, bodily memory. I thus argue for an intentional self which is innately constructed to encounter the other in a two-way intersubjective exchange of wordless cognition that organizes any symbolic language with dynamic emotional meanings. Fourth, in the light of these ideas I will analyze the meanings of Mayröcker's "Fotografie" by focusing on those literary devices which mediate an empathic reciprocity between the poet and her beloved. With its bodily metonymies which mediate the affect felt towards the lost other, I wish to show the impor- As Jerrold Seigel (2005,652) states in the spirit of Max Weber, the problem of how social, bodily, and reflective factors contribute to the formation ofthe selfin cultural relations is a value-loaded issue since it always depends on some partial point of view. My approach originates from my studies of trauma narratives, which represent an important case in

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