Intersubjectivity: The Social Dimension of the Subject
The register of emotion and affect is not just foundational to subjective experience—it also embeds us in the world as the social beings we are. To answer the question of how aesthetic milieus can form the register of sensual expression to direct our attention to new potentialities of experience, in the following, I will explore processes of subjectivation with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of intersubjectivity.
Intersubjectivity has already been introduced as a conceptual frame for the ways we go beyond our conscious, ego-centric perspective in order to create meaningful relations with the world. The intersubjective world that can be designated with Merleau-Ponty as the “carnal other side of the flesh,”
(McCleary [1964] 1995, xxii) towards which the subject extends itself as it temporalizes, has served me to explain how we face alterity in the biochemical dimension of our own bodies. In the following, I will explicate how this open-ness towards alterity can open up possibilities for being-with others, of being intrinsically linked by sharing a world. Intersubjectivity, in this way, allows us to consider ways of sharing a world that encompass the biological as well as the social dimension of experience.
Intersubjectivity, as it was first developed by philosopher Edmund Husserl, is described as shared reality. By me acting in the presence of an other, and them in mine, a shared presence is created from which the “we together” (das
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wir beide) emerges (Husserl [1929–1935] 1973, 12). In sharing an experience of space and time, we can structure our behavior according to that of an other;
we can take on the perspective of an other because we are sharing a con-ception of the world. The anticipation of an other’s behavior in, for example, speeding up one’s own steps to catch up with somebody in front of us, is only possible because we share a rhythmical pattern with this other. My body schema anticipates how much faster I have to move in order to bring myself next to the person in front of me.
This sharing of a rhythm, of a “manner of handling the world” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 370). in intersubjectivity, Merleau-Ponty explicates, extends one’s own intentions in space and time, forming the social dimension of the subject:
[I]t is precisely my body that perceives the other’s body and finds there something of a miraculous extension of its own intentions, a familiar manner of handling the world. Henceforth, just as the parts of my body together form a system, the other’s body and my own are a single whole, two sides of a single phenomenon, and the anonymous existence, of which my body is continuously the trace, henceforth inhabits these two bodies simultaneously. ([1945] 2012, 370)
Intersubjectivity then relies on modes of perception that enable the perceiving subject to recognize a familiarity in the way others are handling the world.
In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty highlights how attention tends to reduce what we perceive to what we expect, what we are familiar with.
This points to the dilemma of the phenomenological method: Whatever is conceived in perception is perceived by a subject and is thus subjective. Yet, as the following passage shows, in his earlier work, Merleau-Ponty identified a certain manner in perception, that of “metaphysical and disinterested attention” as able to conceive of an alien, “silent Other”:
One cannot, as we said, conceive of a perceived thing without someone who perceives it. But moreover, the thing is presented as a thing in itself even to the person who perceives it, and thereby poses the problem of a genuine in-itself-for-us. We do not ordinarily catch sight of this because our perception, in the context of our everyday dealings, bears upon the things just enough to find in them their familiar presence, and not enough to rediscover what of the non-human is hidden within them. But the thing is unaware of us, it remains in itself. We will see this if we suspend our everyday dealings and bring a metaphysical and disinterested attention to bear upon the thing. The thing is then hostile and foreign, it is no longer our interlocutor, but rather a resolutely silent Other [Autre], a Self that escapes us as much as the intimacy of an external consciousness does.
([1945] 2012, 374)
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Can we become familiar with new rhythms in the environment as they reg-ister sensual expressions of how we are sharing the world with these “silent Others”? Can aesthetic perception function as an operative of intersub-jectivity? Referring to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intersubjectivity helps us to understand how the sense of sharing a world with others emerges from a pre-reflective embeddedness in the world. In the following, I will further explicate how a sense of this pre-reflective embeddedness might remain in aesthetic perception, and how it can become a meaningful aspect of the process of relating a perceived object or situation to an observer’s own life.
To recall this particular aspect of aesthetic perception is to first acknowledge that, in this mode, we begin to perceive a situation or an object in a non-ordinary way. Though non-non-ordinary, it appears in new meaningful constel-lations. In fact, as Seel states, we cannot really speak of an “object” of aes-thetic perception in the first place, as it is “not just individual things but quite often constellations of things that come aesthetically to intuition. It is also not just stationary things but equally events—and, in turn, constellations of events—that are occasions of aesthetic perception” (Seel 2005, 55).
To perceive aesthetically one must transcend the dichotomy of subject and object, and move beyond the being-so of an object or a situation. An aesthetic situation, as Seel describes it, gives “opportunities to perceive sensuously in a particular way” (2005, 21)—more specifically, in a way that reveals that what is brought to its appearing is different from its actual being-so in our perception. Confronted with this difference, we are enabled to attune towards the unfolding of new meaningful constellations in interactive sensual experi-ence, that is, through a synaesthetic attentiveness towards something in its appearing. Besides the involvement of several sense modalities, the attunement towards new meaningful relations, or, as Seel says in the following quote, “rhythms,” the aesthetic mode of perception is also designated by a certain attentiveness towards the here and now. As Seel states, it “is a basic characteristic of all aesthetic relations that in them we take time for the moment, though in entirely different rhythms. In a situation in which aesthetic perception is awakened we relinquish a solely functional orientation” (Seel 2005, 20).
Attuning our senses to the multiple constellations an object appears within relates the perceived to our own life situation. This process is especially present if something appears in an atmospheric way: As Seel affirms, in aesthetic perception of atmospheric appearing, correspondences that are uncovered in the phenomenal field “activate a knowledge of cultural references” in which the perception of something is situated (2005, 94).
Besides cultural knowledge and former experiences, acts of imagination in which a different present is fantasized about or remembered can shape the way something is perceived (Seel 2005, 94). Thus, we transcend the conscious
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ego-perspective in aesthetic perception: What was, what could have been, and what will be, start to matter:
Facets of this life situation become perceptible to corresponsive aesthetic consciousness. While perceiving, we look into how it is, or how it was, or how it could be to exist here and now, or to have existed there and then.
With an alert sense of atmospheric appearing, we perceive our particular concrete, sensuously discoverable situation as a temporary form of our life. (Seel 2005, 95)
The Oxygenator might have enabled such an alert sense of atmospheric appearing, because the past, present, and future of the site could not be regarded separately, as the questions raised by the documentation suggest.
Additionally, figuratively and literally excavating a traumatic past, the installation surfaced new correspondences between past, present, and pos-sible futures.
By in this way disturbing the accustomed relation to the neighborhood, in blending past and future as well as the lines between the conscious and unconscious, affect and emotional feeling, a social situation was created that also enabled new perspectives on the site. In a “play of appearances,” (Seel 2005, 45) the site engaged the life situations of the residents in multiple ways, relating to the past, present, and future of the park in light of the historical events, but also as a context for the synaesthetic experience of oxygen-enriched air, re-directing their attention and enabling in some what might be described as Merleau-Ponty’s metaphysical attention. The different ways the residents engaged with the newly designed park, whether they enjoyed the sensuous experience of the oxygenated air, told stories of the past, or aimed to influence the future, reflect for me the involvements with the place they were able to conceive and the possibilities-to-be they derived from those involvements.
At the beginning of this section, I stated that intersubjectivity relies on modes of perception that enable the perceiving subject to recognize a familiarity in the way others are handling the world. I have further asked how we can become familiar with new rhythms in the environment as they register sensual expressions of how we share the world with others, without necessarily sharing sense modalities with those others. The example of Oxygenator gave insight into how what we pay attention to influences our actions. To become aware of new meaningful correspondences, it matters how we evaluate the present moment in relation to our past and future. Vice versa, how we see ourselves, how we project ourselves into the future, influences what we pay attention to and what is being ignored. Thus, not only do the bio-chemical make-up of our bodies, the affective dimension of our surroundings, and the cultural contexts we are born into matter, but also what we consider
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important for the development of our self. The next section will address the question of how we might become familiar with processes that are outside of our conscious grasp.
Possibilities of Being in Aesthetic Milieus of Shared Concern If an aesthetic situation brings to appearance additional and potential correspondences in an environment that become meaningful in relation to the perceiver’s life situation, then the perceiving subject might also expand its perceived possibilities to act in that environment. An aesthetics of metab-olism as it relates something in its appearing on the bio-chemical level of a subject’s life-situation can be further elaborated on with Heidegger’s notion of attunement.
Attunement (Stimmung) is that through which, for Heidegger, the world can be disclosed for Being. It allows human beings to perceive different events in this world as events in the first place (Wallrup 2015, 11). Attunement as such is never an operation of objectification. Instead, it is where the attuned world is allowed to emerge (Wallrup 2015, 10). It follows that, in attunement, humans can reveal how they are in the world and how they can project themselves into the future. Going back to Heidegger, I want to suggest that a sense of the pre-reflective dimension of being that forgoes any objectification can then remain in aesthetic perception, if our being in the world amidst things not only appears as processual and momentary, but also becomes meaningful because of it.
As I already discussed in the previous chapter, Being for Heidegger was to be regarded as spatial ([1927] 2008, 138), which gives ontological meaning to the feeling of belonging to a place. Being in Heidegger’s philosophy finds itself when becoming conscious of itself in this way as already being-in a world.
Being is, as such, being thrown into the world; it is being-towards-death. The understanding of our own mortality defines our life as such.
Even though human beings cannot escape their mortality, they tend to forget it, to distract tjemselves from it. Heidegger called this phenomenon the
“inauthentic way of being” ([1927] 2008, 388). In forgetting that Being is being-towards-death, the inauthentic being awaits the future based on assumptions derived from its past; it is concerned with what it is and not what it could be.
It is driven by the “groundlessness and nullity of inauthentic everydayness”
(Heidegger [1927] 2008, 223) that prevents human beings from realizing their potential as Being. Therefore, an authentic being-in-the-world can be described as follows:
Rather than living as though they were fulfilling the manifest destiny of some pre-established goals for all mankind, people foresee the world in
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terms of incomplete possibility. They care for people and things with the anticipation that lives will continue to be incomplete, marked by pos-sibility and always in need of care. (Scott 2010, 63)
To move beyond the mere present state of things, people, and oneself, the temporality and the finitude of Being must become apparent. Central to my own analysis is that, here, he declares moods as the key to the realization of the temporality of Being: “Having a mood brings Dasein face to face with its thrownness in such a manner that this thrownness is not known as such but disclosed far more primordially in ‘how one is’” (Heidegger [1927] 2008, 389). Because being-in-the-world is always mooded in a certain way, moods, for Heidegger, can be cultivated. Being has the possibility of cultivating a certain way of life, of turning the passiveness suggested by the being-thrown into a more active way of creating one’s own life, in the face of death. If the cultivation of moods is closely connected with an openness towards possible ways of life, another central aspect of authentic life enters the picture: care.
Caring is the account for future possibilities: “To live is to care. Broadly under-stood, to live is to care for our privations or needs, for example, ‘our daily bread.’ What we care for and about, what caring adheres to, can be defined as meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is a categorial determination of the con-textured world” (Kisiel 2010, 21). Care, then, can be seen as being expressed in what we pay attention to, what bares meaning for us, which ultimately defines how we come to see our possibilities-to-be (Heidegger [1927] 2008, 402). In clearing (Lichtung), knowledge about being becomes possible. As a space of intelligibility, it calls humans to take part in “these events, which appropriate us into the world as a place of significant relations wherein we belong” (Davis 2010, 9).
The “we” that Heidegger addresses here must be considered critically against the background of his political stance. It raises the question of those who are excluded from this “we.” If I adopt Heidegger’s terms for my conceptualization of a metabolic aesthetics in the following, then I do so in the sense of a radical extension, which includes in a possible “we” human and non-human organisms as well as materials, which are connected by metabolic pathways.
Heidegger’s notions of mood and care will be regarded more closely in the following section. Aesthetic experience will be considered a mode in which certain moods are cultivated that disclose relations with the environment and make them available to the senses.
In an aesthetics of metabolism, what is revealed is revealed in its transfor-mation, in its already being otherwise. In an aesthetics of metabolism, we would thus rather turn to the soil beneath this clearing, the layer of worms and microbes, the humus of the earth, to become aware of the bio-chemical constitution of living beings. As Haraway, in her non-anthropocentric
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vision and pledge for a new cosmology, put it: “We are humus, not Homo, not anthropos; we are compost, not posthuman” (2016, 55). Being humus instead of homo sapiens means, for Haraway, a being with others that shares operations and processes that are central for an aesthetics of metabolism as well: “Critters interpenetrate one another, loop around and through one another, eat each another, get indigestion, and partially digest and partially assimilate one another, and thereby establish sympoietic arrangements that are otherwise known as cells, organisms, and ecological assemblages” (2016, 58). To become aware of the metabolic constitution of being means regarding processes of interpenetration, transformation, digestion, assimilation, and so on as a basis for possible engagements with the world, and, more so, seeking these processes as productive in engaging with others with whom we are sharing the world. If not the humus, to follow Irigaray again, it might be the air that reveals possibilities for metabolic attunements, rather than Heidegger’s clearing.
Although Heidegger had his own at least anthropocentric and elitist agenda that cannot be fully adjusted to a theory of a metabolic aesthetics, which considers bio-chemical processes, I am sympathetic towards the way his philosophy nevertheless shows the human subject as embedded in the world with others and that the nature of this being can never fully be grasped in rational thought. This not only has consequences for the relation of human subjects and their surroundings and the role of pre-reflective subjective experience, but also, for me, ultimately points towards a need for forms of knowledge and practices of engagement that do not reside in rational thought alone. An aesthetics of metabolism can help to assign new value to those aspects of engagement with others that remain intangible, pre-reflective, and latent, but that can be sensed through effects on different layers internal and external to the subjects’ bodies.
Heidegger’s emphasis on care as foundational to understanding Being as being-amidst-others will be expanded and related in the following to the experience of the metabolic dimension that is being shared. In the following, I will propose that the aesthetic sense, as that which relates newly perceived correspondences in a situation to the perceiver’s own life in a meaningful way, can allow for an attunement towards the bio-chemical dimension and the role it plays in this relation. This attunement, I will argue, also reveals the pos-sibilities-to-be that come with the being-with-others that we share metabolic pathways with.
Habits of Care
Why is this revealing of possibilities-to-be relevant in relation to the sharing of atmosphere and metabolic pathways? The intangibility of the ways we connect
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with others through sharing the same air is recognized as a crucial factor in discussions about calls for action in the face of climate change and related inequalities. It becomes increasingly clear that what is needed for people to change their behavior and to recognize their role in the global climate crisis
with others through sharing the same air is recognized as a crucial factor in discussions about calls for action in the face of climate change and related inequalities. It becomes increasingly clear that what is needed for people to change their behavior and to recognize their role in the global climate crisis