Writing Bodies Somatic Mind in Composition Studies Kristie s. Fleckenstein

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Writing Bodies: Somatic Mind in Composition StudiesAuthor(s): Kristie S. FleckensteinSource: College English, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Jan., 1999), pp. 281-306Published by: National Council of Teachers of English

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281

WRITING BODIES: SOMATIC MIND

IN COMPOSITION STUDIES

Kristie S. Fleckenstein

writing. However diverse their origins and their ideological and pedagogical

implications,all depend on conceptual or epistemologicalframeworks hat dis-

regard physicalbodies. Eclipsed in dualisticand idealistic theories of meaning

aiming at a "view from everywhere"or erasedin poststructuralist heories seeking a

"viewfrom nowhere"(Bordo),bodies as sites of andparticipantsn meaning-makinghave been elided. In sacrificingbodies to some illusion of either transcendenttruth

or culturallyconstitutedtextuality,we cut ourselves adriftfrom any organic anchor-

ing in the materialrealityof flesh. We-and the knowledge we create-lose ourpro-

prioception,oursecret sense, our sixth sense"by which neurophysiologistCharles S.Sherrington saysa body knowsitself to be real (qtd.in Sacks,Man 43). Without pro-

prioception, without a corporealway to addressthe tragedies and victories that playout in our classrooms,our lives, and our worlds,we cannot change or celebrate our

concrete existence.

We need an embodied discourse,one that interpretsbody as neither a passivetabularasa on which meanings are inscribed nor an inescapableanimal that must be

subduedbefore pure knowing can be achieved.The concept of somaticmind-mind

andbody asapermeable, ntertextualterritory hat is continuallymade andremade-

offersone means of

embodying

our discourseand ourknowledge

withouttotalizingeither. This "view from somewhere" locates an individualwithin concrete spatio-

temporal contexts. It also recognizes the cultural,historical,and ecological systemsthat penetrateand reconstitute these materialplaces. In this article, I wish to arguefor the value of a material-discursivesomatic mind and its fusion of flesh, ecology,

Kristie S. Fleckenstein teaches writing at the University of Missouri, KansasCity.Her research inter-ests include imageryand emotion in readingandwriting activities. She co-edits theJournal of theAssem-

bly or ExpandedPerspectivesnLearning JAEPL) and is currently co-editing a collection of essaystidtled

Imageryand Composition: lassrooms, urriculum, ndLives. A version of this paperwas presented at the1997 Penn State Conference on Rhetoric and Composition.

COLLEGE ENGLISH, VOLUME 61, NUMBER 3, JANUARY 1999







282 COLLEGE ENGLISH

and culture.Using James Berlin'spowerful and persuasiveRhetorics, oetics, nd Cul-

tures,in the first section I critique the poststructuralistdisregardof corporeality,

pointing out the limitations of a stance that defines materialitysolely as a discursive

text. In the second section, I extend poststructuralistcriticalstrategiesto develop the

concept of somatic mind-a conjunctionthat blursthe boundariesbetween fact and

fiction, sign and flesh, individualand other. Using the work of culturalanthropolo-

gist Gregory Bateson, I define the somatic mind as a "being-in-a-material-place,"whose fluid and permeable boundaries are (re)constitutedthrough the mutual playof discursive and corporeal coding. Finally, in the third section, I use the somatic

mind to reconfigureembodiment as the movement of immersion andemergence, of

pleasure and commitment. I then characterize disciplinary antagonism to writing

bodies as an outgrowth of a specific integration of codes and lived experience.

DISPOSSESSING BODIES

In the past two decades, the influence of poststructuralism n composition studies

has done much to counter the culturalacontextualityof early cognitive and roman-

tic paradigms. Poststructuralist theories offer fruitful ways of reconceptualizing

meaning and identity as fluid processes that are linguisticallymediated and consti-

tuted. The marvelously circular and self-referential critiques produced by post-

structuralistshave shown us the importance of focusing on the pointwhere the

metaphorsof our existence breakdown andunwrite themselves. But poststructural-

ism also unwrites itself, as any text inevitablydoes. A site of its unwritabilityis the

body, for poststructuralist heories displacebodies as thoroughly (althoughperhaps

less explicitly)as do Descartes and the Romantics. Whereas Descartes bracketsthe

materialismof resextensa rom the rationalismof rescogitans nd Romanticsembrace

the material as subjective consciousness, poststructuralismtransformsbodies into

discourse, corporeality into textuality.In her criticism of postmodernism, which

overlapswith poststructuralism,Canadianphilosopher GeraldineFinn claimsthat a

common featureof the postmodernstanceis that "thebody is dead--or at least irrel-

evant"(72). Under the sway of postmodernism, body "[functions]as an arbitrary

abstractionor floating signifier somehow separablefrom the local, specific histori-

cal and concrete bodies marked by it" (75). While we may know the body only

through (or as)some form of discourse,"this discourseis not entirelydivorced from

the materialmanifestationsof the 'flesh and blood' entity"(Balsamo 23). Nowhere

is the necessaryreciprocity of flesh and sign more clearlyillustratedthan in vision,

a process that depends on the interpretive mediation of culture and on a species-

specific neurophysiology.For instance, becauseof their differingphysiologies, frogs

and humans constructdifferingrealities.As N. KatherineHayles points out, even if

cognitively capable, frogs could not have evolved Newton's first law of motion-theidea that an object at rest remainsat rest until a force is exerted on it-because frogs







WRITING BODIES 283

do not see objectsat rest. Instead,they see small objectsin erratic motion. Throughits own physical makeup, before the mediational aspects of culture and cognitionblend in, the human eye speaksto the brainin "alanguage alreadyhighly organizedandinterpreted" Lettvin,Maturana,McCulloch, andPitts 251). Something astaken

for granted as sight depends on the melding of flesh and sign. Discourse similarly

depends on that same confluence. By eliding bodies and denying the language of

blood andbone, a poststructuralistorientationamputatesphysiology from meaning,

cripplingits own transformativecritiqueandunderminingits potential contribution

to transformativepedagogies in composition studies.

Social epistemicism-the philosophical location in composition studies where

poststructuralismand social constructionismintersect--exemplifies the reasonswhy

we need to extend poststructuralistcritiqueso that we (re)writeflesh and text. Theneed to change the conditions that undergird victimization and predation drives

JamesBerlin, architect of socialepistemicism.To that end, Berlinin Rhetorics, oetics,andCultureslaudablyaimsat an integrationof the materialwith the discursive,argu-

ing that "humanscreatethe conditions of their experiencesas much as they arecre-

ated by them"(xviii).However, by textualizingthatjunctionbetween body andsign,social epistemicismskipsover ratherthanilluminates the dialecticbetween material-

ity andlanguage.Social epistemicismdraws onJacquesDerrida'sdeconstruction and

his emphasis on writing as opposed to the deceptive immediacy of speech. Berlin

points out that, for Derrida,presenceefers both to the physicalrealityof a speaker(gaining authorityfor self and referentialtruth by that physical immediacy) and to

the implied metaphysical presence of a truth outside of language stabilizing the

speaker'swords. Given the absence of any physical presence in writing (except for

the text itself), for Derridameaning is insteadtied to diffirance: ifference, diffusion,and delay(59-61). Readingbecomes a processof teasingout the points at which thetext (andauthor)unwrites itself. Berlin contends that subjectivityas well asmeaningis fragmented, uncertain,and decentered, the product of conflicted and negotiated

signifying codes, markedby absence instead of presence (71-72).Subsumedwithin the embrace of those

swirlingcodes is the

neurophysiologyof

the individual, he rangeof sensesandphysicalexperiences, he sheersurroundednessof what Nancy Mairs calls the "bonehouse" (Remembering). The social epistemicbody is merely anotherflurryof floating signifiers,signifyingnothing, markedby its

absence,its diffusion,andits delayedmeaning. Such positioning disregardsbodies asboth tangiblescenes of andagents in choice; corporeal,aswell as textual,realities are

formed,reformed,anddeformed in anundulation of challenge, concession,and com-

promise. By displacinga body,rendering it a site to be (mis)construed extually,dis-

cursivereality loses its epistemic basis in corporeality.Deprived of the continuous

sensoryflow that is the "startand basis of all knowledge and certainty" Sacks,Man

44), bodies and textsremainunrealandunpossessed,eternallyseparated.Or,asMairs

says of women, we lose the deed to our own dwelling (Remembering). From this







284 COLLEGE ENGLISH

poststructuralistorientation, the potential for both culturaland individualchange,essential goals of Berlin'ssocial epistemicism,is limited. Under the sway of the dis-

embodied, incorporeal sign, hard-edged reality is blurred,experiences in the world

"aretrivialized,"historian Allan Megill argues;"Realpeople who really died in the

gaschambersat Auschwitzor Treblinkabecome so much discourse"(qtd.in McLaren

151),offeringus the illusion that we can rewrite them into existence. And when death,

anguish,and sexualpredationsarereduced to texts-to fictions-"how do you pointout a lie? How do you answerthe contention that torturein Brazilnever took place?"

(Griffin 171). Written and rewrittenby discursivecodes, pain and death and mean-

ing are merely texts, possessing no persuasive presence, substance, or immediacy.Without bodies-those insistences of flesh that disruptthe consistency of style and

that point to a significationbefore and beyond language (Gallop 14-20)-no resis-tance or systemictransformationcan be effected because codes remain either textual

signs, pointing only to themselves, preventing us from recognizing their internal

inconsistencies,or traps,or both. Eraseour bodies andwe merely dance to music we

cannot hear.Those unheardmelodies might jostle, contend, and fight for some sort

of transient supremacy,but they remain unchanged and impenetrable. It is only

through he body that competing (con)textualitiesmaterialize-both the hegemonic

compliancethatshuffledvictims into docile lines leadinginto the "showers" tAusch-

witz and the counterhegemonic resistancethat organized rebellion in the Warsaw

ghetto. It is only throughbodies that floating signifiers and significationare ever sobriefly anchored.As C. S. Peirce's triadicsemiotics and interpretiverealism under-

line, neither sign nor interpretant exists outside of their analogousrelationshipsto

each other by means of a mutuallyevoked and mediated object. Embodiment is re-

quiredfor meaningandbeing ("On a New List"29; see Berthoff for the intersection

of Peirce andeducation;see Witte for atheoryof writingbased on Peirce'ssemiotics).

Reducing materialityto signifierslimits our abilityto formulate,recognize, and

challenge culturaltruths andmaterial conditions. A fragmentedsignificationlessens

the possibility (perhapseven eliminatesthe necessity) of changingculturaland indi-

vidualpathologies.

"If 'woman,'"

Teresa de Lauretisargues,"is a fiction, a locus of

pure difference and resistanceto logocentric power, and if there are no women as

such,then the veryissue of women'soppressionwould appear o be obsolete andfem-

inism itself would have no reason to exist"(10). Social epistemicidentities and bod-

ies cannot significantlyalter the forces that ensure their subjugationbecause they

don'treally exist or exist merely as fictions. Nothing is there to change, only disem-

bodied texts floating without anchors.To enact the social epistemic transformative

agenda for composition classrooms,a stable context of behavior,such as patriarchy

or racism,must exist.However, the self-reflexivityof deconstructedsignsshattersand

dissipates those contexts, rendering them void, providing no ground on which to

stand,no essentialfigureto evokeand to combat.Nor canindividualscastthemselvesas agents of that change becausethe uncertaintyof deconstructedpositioning erodes







WRITING BODIES 285

the embodiment necessaryfor agency.If a stable context is necessaryfor social epis-temic change, so too are stable identities-stable bodies-from which to effect that

change. To recognize and resist the state's genocidal edicts, Jews in the Warsaw

ghetto had to organize a physicalidentity apartfrom that dictatedby the state. Oth-

erwise, community leaders would have continued to siphon off the percentage of

"deportees"required by the state for "relocation."Without embodiment, without a

mouth to speak and a tongue to protest, disenfranchised minorities are reduced to

textual lacunae, constructed, filled, and colonized as the hegemony determines.

"What can we demand in the name of women," Linda Alcoff asks, "if 'women' do

not exist and demandsin their name simplyreinforce the myth that they do?"(272).

Berlin, with his Marxist cultural studies orientation and his passion for social

change, recognizes the dangersof "ludicpostmodernism"(65), citing the critiqueofMarxist feminist Teresa Ebert. He attempts to tame the self-regressive nature of

deconstructedmeaning by grounding signification in socially constructedcontexts:

"Waysof living and dying are finallynegotiated through historicallyand culturally

specificsignifyingpractices,the semiotic codes of a time andplace"(72). While such

a stance allows us to see the ways in which bodies are sculpted by discursiveprac-

tices, bodies too easily become passive prisoners of those practices, contributing

nothing to the discourse.A body is not an ideology, not solely a discourse.As histo-

rianof science Donna Haraway argues,nature(thus bodies) is "acommonplace and

a powerful discursive construction, effected in the interactions among material-semiotic actors,human and not" ("Promise"298). A body is not an object, nor is it

merely a sign. It is an object-sign. Quoting Cornel West, Berlin cites his concern for

the nondiscursive,for the "raggededge of necessity"(72), but ultimately he frames

that ragged edge discursively.So this theoreticalshift, while possessingthe power of

definition so necessaryfor agency and politicalchange, cannot and does not account

for the corporealityof the object-sign.Instead,it risksthrowing bodies into pre-givencontexts that can be neither controlled nor escaped, a kind of cultural-discursive

determinism or neodeterminism (Alcoff). If we are only and alwaysframed discur-

sively,then like the prisonersin Foucault'sPanopticon we become complicit in our

own subjugation,defining ourselves (seeingourselves) in terms of disembodied lin-

guistic practices that carry power in our culture. Like the Jews at Auschwitz, we

become participants,both by standing naked in an obedient line and by organizingthe line itself. We become victims and enforcers.

Such complicity is illustrated in the reaction of women graduate students to

sexual harassment in the academy.As Linda Brodkey and Michelle Fine detail in

"Presence of Mind in the Absence of Body,"when women in the academy narrate

experiences of sexual harassment,because of their physicaland culturalpositioning

they write from the hegemonic (rationalistic/male)perspective,excising any record

of the ugly details of their physical experiences. Instead of describingtheir ordeals,they analyzeandexplain(almostjustify)the actions of theirharassers.Because of their







286 COLLEGE ENGLISH

placement within an academic context that is both masculinist and disembodied,"the sensual reality of ['housework, or childbirth, or sexuality,or rape'] is stripped

awayso that they may enter public discourse"(Griffin 165). Severed from the impe-tus of incarnatepassion, dissipated n andby the textsthey write, the victimsin Brod-

key and Fine's study pith themselves discursively.In complying with what they

perceive to be the dictates of the academichegemony, they sacrifice the certaintyof

their bodies, losing faith in their own experiences. Disembodied, the graduatestu-

dents conclude that they are helpless to change the system that enables their vic-

timization, submitting to and maintainingthat status quo. Therein lies the dangerof a philosophy that disregardsthe object-sign.

As Hklene Cixous argues, writing with the white ink necessaryfor the linguis-

tic liberation of women requires that breastsand bodily fluids be something otherthan discourse;it requires that the penis be more than the Lacanianphallus.Other-

wise, ill-mannered bodies, regardless of gender, remain "frigidified"within the

mirror of hegemonic discursive structures. To flesh out Berlin's social epistemic

agenda, to embrace object-signs, and to extend the boundaries of poststructuralist

critiques,we must recognize our bodies as places of and participants n the violence

of choosing--of resistingor submittingto, of negotiating or challengingculturaland

moral ideologies-or we negate our power to (re)createour realities.

REPOSSESSING BODIES

One means of reclaiming corporealitywithout sacrificing poststructuralist nsightslies in what I call somatic mind: a permeable materialityin which mind and body

resolve into a single entity which is (re)formedby the constantlyshifting boundaries

of discursive and corporeal intertextualities. By fusing materiality and discourse

without totalizing or essentializing identity and meaning, somatic mind offers the

hope of transforminglives, cultures,and meanings.The first important qualityof somatic mind is its almost paradoxicalpermeable

materiality,a contextualspatio-temporalplacement in which an organism's dentity

is (re)formed reciprocally with that of a physical position. The materialityof the

somatic mind is tangible locationplus being. It is being-in-a-material-place.oth or-

ganism and place can only be identified by their immanence within each other; an

organismin thisplace (body,clothing, culturalscene, geographical point) is not the

same organismin thatplace.Who andwhere (thus,what)arecoextensive. Survival-

ecological, psychological, and political-does not depend on the fate of a discrete,

atomisticreproducing organism(or subjectivity)becausesuch an organismdoes not

exist. Instead,what exists (andwhat survivesor expires) s the locatednessof somatic

mind:being-in-a-material-place.CulturalanthropologistGregory Bateson baseshis

holistic epistemology on such a materiality.Departingfrom conventionalevolution-ary theory, Bateson argues that any survivingunit must be what he calls a "flexible-







WRITING BODIES 287

organism-in-its-environment"(Steps457). "Turf was the evolving response of the

vegetation to the evolution of the horse. It is the contextwhich evolves,"not the indi-

vidualorganismor the environment(155;his emphasis).Neither horse nor turfcould

have evolved without the other because each is mutuallyconstituted in a dynamic,

dialectical, non-linear process of change (see also Haraway'sdiscussion of social

nature,"Promise"309-12). Somatic mind similarlyemphasizes the immanence and

dialecticism of place and being, granting place the "renewed respect" Edward S.

Casey demands for it "byspecifyingits power to direct and stabilizeus, to memori-

alize and identify us, to tell us who and what we are in terms of whereweare(aswell

as where we arenot)" xv;Casey's emphasis).The materialityof somatic mind is also permeable. Place, in all its various in-

carnations,is not a thing but a process continually making and remaking its ownboundaries to accommodate the constant stream of information penetrating (and

constituting)the entire system.The tangiblerealityof being-in-a-material-placere-

sults from a contingencyof relationshipsestablishedby the creationand exchangeof

informationthroughoutthe varioustransacting evels composingthat eco-organism.Material place-cell, organ, bone house, concrete building,culturalcommune, nat-

ural environment-exists relationally,formed within the spaces created by all the

pathwaysthat communicate what Bateson calls "differences hat make a difference"

(Steps459). Included in those pathways permeating and comprising being-in-a-

material-placeare the physiologicalroutes of information insideandoutside n organ-ism's epidermal boundaries. Because a cell's walls are osmotic, we cannot markthe

precise boundary where a cell begins and ends. Because a body's epidermal layer

inspires, transpires,and communicates information,we cannot determine the exact

point where flesh begins and ends. Is a blind man'scane a partof him when he walks?

Bateson asks in his KorzybskiMemorial Lecture. Yes,he answers.The physicalde-

marcationsconstitutingwho we are (andthat we are)at any one moment "must en-

close, not cut, the relevant pathways" hat create a specific context (Bateson,Steps

467), therebyblurringthe boundaries of what constitutesflesh and technology,flesh

and culture, flesh and other (see also Balsamo;Douglas;Haraway,

Simians).Identityis an emergent process, ensuing from the permeable materialityof the being-in-a-

material-place.Becauseof that permeability,neithersubjectivity, ertainty,nor phys-

icality is monadic. They are all systemic, forming hybrid entities or cyborg bodies,those "multiplyconstitutedpartsof cybernetic systems-what we now recognize as

socialandinformationalnetworks,"crafted"simultaneouslyromthe matter of mate-

rialbodies and culturalfictions"(Balsamo11;see also Haraway,Simians149-82).

Spatio-temporalrealityis both position anddis-position simultaneously.We all

inhabit a discrete place during a specific moment. But flesh-its material weight,

shape, and form, its ability to carve out space and stake out (or concede) territory

outside itself-is relational andsystemic.Therefore, being-in-a-material-placeexistsonly as long as the relationshipsexist.The life of essayistNancy Mairsillustrates the







288 COLLEGE ENGLISH

paradoxicalquality of (dis)position. Using a wheelchair because of multiple sclero-

sis, Mairs claims that her identity, her "Nancy-ness," cannot be separated either

from her MS or from the reality that begins and ends "waist-high"(Waist-High

8-11). From the perspective of somatic mind, the delimitation of Mairs'sbeing-

in-a-material-place includes the person, the wheelchair, and the doorway she

struggles to enter. Corporeal certainty is not the human being in the wheelchair

(the illusory "I"),but the body, the chair,and the doorway simultaneously.dentity

expandsto include the entire system of information exchange that comprisesthe lo-

cation of an individual in a specific place at a specific moment. But shift the en-

vironment, thus the nature of the constituting transaction, and the certainty of

being-in-a-material-place repositions itself. The borders of "identity" coalesce

along different axes.The Mairs-in-a-wheelchairwho discovers thather seatedheightpositions her perfectly to nuzzle her husband'scrotch and share the joy of erotic

pleasureachieves a differentsubjectivityfrom the Mairs-in-a-wheelchairstruggling

through a doorway (Waist-High54). Her somatic mind aligns accordingto a differ-

ent logic in that different time and place, constituted by and constituting the path-

ways of information exchange.Because placement is transactionaland transitory,somatic mind can be neither

biologically nor environmentallydetermined. Any kind of determinism-that of a

lake'sexistence, awoman'sidentity,a feather'sdefinition-depends on alinearityand

timelessness absent from the systemic evolution andelusive boundariesof somatic

mind. A dramatic llustrationof an anti-deterministapproach ies in biosemiotics, an

approachto genetics which combines the work of Bateson and Peirce to reconcep-

tualize how information is created and communicated in a developing organism.

Currently, he mastermetaphor dominatingstudiesof genetic development presentsDNA as the commander-in-chief of embryonic development. DNA is positioned

hierarchically, ending ordersdown the line to RNA to ribosome to proteins.As the

controller,DNA never receives information, is never affected by informationcom-

ing backup the line. Embryonic development is a linearprocess, leading to biolog-

ical determinismandpop theories aboutthe tyrannyof the selfish or nurturing gene.

Theoretical biochemists Claus Emmeche andJesper Hoffmeyer, however, counter

this DNA master metaphor by arguing that DNA does not function linearly,nor

does it maintain its hierarchicalposition. Instead, it functions as a somatic mind, a

biosemiotic process.A level of mixing goes on in the cell in which DNA, RNA, ribo-

some, proteins, and so on servevariouslyas sign, object, and interpretant.Informa-

tion does not exist in the gene or in the environment, but is constructed in the

developmental context: "[B]oth grammar and biological structure are products of

communicationaland organizationalprocess .... The tissues of the plant could not

'read' the genotypic instructionscarried n the chromosomesof everycell unless cell

and tissue exist, at that given moment, in a contextual structure"(Bateson, Steps153-56; see alsoKeller,Reflections50-57). Biological identity cannot be determined







WRITING BODIES 289

by some sort of master code because one does not exist. Physical identity is con-

structedcontextually-biologically and semiotically.

In additionto its contextualconstitution,once formed somaticmind turnsback

on its own constitutingsystemto (re)constitute he contextthat creates t. It becomes

a sign-a differencethat makes a difference-in its own system.As identity materi-

alizes,it becomes its own information,feedingback into the constitutingexchangeof

information, reverberatingon the pattern to evoke new relationships, opening upnew spacesfrom which to call forth anotherbeing-in-a-material-place.By becomingit own message, it dispositionsas it positions itself. Like the contextualmix of geneand cell in which DNA is sign, object, and interpretant,"thestoryyou tell yourselfin creating a life" Mairs wryly notes, "follows different rules, forcing you to keep

detailsyou'd justas soon leaveout, like the fact that a zit burst out on the end of yournose the night beforeyour juniorprom," mpinging on the story,requiringa rewrite

(CarnalActs 123-24). The particulars constitutedonly in relationshipto the whole

and can be understoodonly in relationshipto that whole; but the whole is, in turn,constituted and changed by the configurationof particularsand can be understood

only by reference to those particulars.Somatic mind comes into being and in its

be(com)ing possessesthe potentialto change its own existence,persuadinga woman

to leave an abusivespouse, a Danish town to protect condemnedJews, or a newlycolorblindpainterto createin blackand white (Sacks,Anthropologist-41).

Theintertextualityof somatic mind also highlights its (dis)positionality.Being-

in-a-material-place coalesces by means of the mediation of what I call discursive

and corporeal texts, but, to slightly misquoteJudith Butler, "[t]hinkingthe body as

[textual]demands a rethinking of the meaning of [textual]itself" (xi). Being-in-a-

material-placeis neither self-regressive text nor linguistic fiction. Rather, it is an

intertext,reflectingthe "ideologicalsedimentation of the social structure"McLaren

150) andbecoming the "very lesh of society"thatsociologistJohn O'Neill calls"the

incarnatebond between self and society"(qtd. in Berman 56). There is no natural,

biologicallyessentialbody;but there is no textual or symbolic body, either.Instead,there is only the nexus between physicalandsymbolicbodies, a "continualexchangeof meanings between two kinds of bodily experience" (Douglas 65), a material-

discursivefusionthatforces us to remainconscious of whatPeirce calls the "Outward

Clash,"the constant tug of resistancebetween meaning and object ("AnAmerican

Plato,"233-34; see also "On a New List" for the intensity of excess meaning).This

intertextualexchange results from the integrationof discursive and corporealcodes

structuringan organism'sperceptions,interpretations,and expressionsof the differ-ences thatmatter.These transformational ules createandalignthe relationships hat

yield a context (or body) and, thus, the content of any transaction.

Associated with what Bateson calls "prose consciousness" or "prose space"

(Sacred266), discursivetextualityis linguistic in nature:diffused,abstract,and lack-ing meaning in and of itself (Steps139), similar in many ways to the poststructuralist







290 COLLEGEENGLISH

definition of textuality.The predominant means by which we carryculture in the

mind, discursivecoding follows roughly the rules of inner speech: a discontinuous

streamof internalmonologues aboutsubjects,frequentlyunnamed,attachedto pred-

icates, a present-indicativetype of meaning (Steps139; Vygotsky 142-48; see also

Rieber on the similaritiesbetween Bateson'sandVygotsky'swork). Through discur-

sive texts, we make statements (Langer 128);we classify(usually by binaryopposi-

tions), generalize, and define (Aylwin23-27). Essentially,discursive codes function

according to "as if" logic, comparable to the logic undergirdingsimiles. Like the

digitalcodes of cybernetics,similescreatelinguisticallymarkedunequalrelationshipswhere items of one class are juxtaposedwith items of another class which they are

"sortof like"and "sortof not like"(Steps34-38; see also Peirce, "On a New List").

The "truth"of discursivetexts, like the "truth"of similes, derives from identifyingclassesand associatingmembers of those classesin a subject-predicaterelationship.In the simile, "My love is like a red, red rose," "my love" is identified as similarto

members of the classcalled "redrose";therefore, it assumes some of the characteris-

tics of members of that classas if it were a member of that class. But since it is not a

member of that class,it also rejectssome of the characteristicsof that class. It is sim-

ilar and not-similar, heterogeneous and homogeneous simultaneously.Discursive

textualityfunctionsvia that systemic relationshipto itself, enablingthe abstractions

necessaryfor the creation of classes,categories,and subject-predicaterelationships,

butlimited as well

bythat

system.The

power,as well as the

danger,of the as

if logicof discursivecodes is that it allows us the illusion of distinguishingon a daily basis

between what is andwhat is not. Thus, discursive exts provideus the means to make

separationsand categorizations(Jews are like ...), then justifyan action (genocide)on the basis of that classification.Potentially,discursivecoding can form the ostensi-

ble content of information (its facticity,as if it were real), but discursive textualityis essentiallyfragmented,uncertain,andunanchoredexcept to itself. Glory,Humpty

Dumpty tells a confusedAlice, can mean whateverhe chooses it to mean.

Operating accordingto metaphoric rather than as if logic, corporeal texts are

the means by which we carryour bodies in our minds. Related to the analogiccod-

ing Batesonrepeatedly calls "algorithmsof the heart,"corporealcodes stabilizedis-

cursive codes and produce a language from pulse beats, memories, and images.

Predominantly imagistic, they lack such linguistics markersas verb tenses, modals,

and negatives.They are also physicallybased-gestural and iconic-originating, at

least in part, on the cellular level. For instance, medical semioticists suggest that

lymphocytes communicate corporeally,especially iconically (Sebeok 30), matchingthemselves analogicallyto the myriad forms of invading organisms. Bateson also

suggests that genes and chromosomes communicate (and learn) through corporeal

codes (Steps58; Bateson and Bateson 24-27). We acquirecorporealcodes in at least

two ways. First, we are schooled in corporeal rules through our physical interac-tions within specificlocal contexts:potty training,tablemanners,driving,kissing...







WRITING BODIES 291

(Bordo 16). Second, we are born with corporeal texts that are somatically innate,

such as depth perception, an unconscious process that transformsthe monocular

information from left and right eyes into three-dimensional vision (see Sacks,

Anthropologist08-52 on vision as a complex amalgamationof corporealanddiscur-

sive codes).The primacyof affect,the initialneurological routing of stimuli throughemotional centers of the brain, and the body schemas that yield our proprioceptionalso serve as innate sourcesof corporeal codes (see Zajonc on the primacyof affect;Damasio on neurological pathways;and Sacks,Man 43-54 on body schemas).

Unlike the as if logic of discursivetextuality,corporealtexts function accordingto metaphoric or is logic and serve as "the dominant mode of communicatinginter-

connection of ideas in all pre-verbalrealms"(Bateson and Bateson 27). Evolution,

biological data,play,art,dreaming,sacrament,andschizophreniaalldependin vary-ing degrees on metaphoric logic, Bateson argues.The is logic of metaphors differs

from the as if logic of discursivetexts in that it reflects the reasoning of what Bate-

son calls "syllogismin grass":"Grassdies;/ Men die; / Men aregrass"(Batesonand

Bateson26;Bateson,Sacred 40-41). The "truth"of the conclusionthat men aregrassis based not on the unequal (and categorical) linkages of similes, but on the fusion

of ostensibly different items into the equality of corresponding relationships.To

illustrate,an elephant's runk and a humannose maybe identified asmembers of the

same classbecause of similarityin function-they are things which smell (the cate-

goricalas if logic of discursivecodes). But neither function nor substantivesexist inembryology-humans andelephantsdo not smell in utero; therefore,trunksarenoses

because of the corresponding relationship of their physical placement (Bateson,Sacred193-95). There are no discursivecodes in the pre-verbalrealm of the womb

or the body, only corporeal codes. While discursivecoding focuses potentially on

"facticity," n naming or classifyingsubstantives, he focus of corporealtextuality(as

suggested by its imagisticand metaphoricnature)is on relationshipsbetween things

-particularly the relationshipsbetween self andother,self andenvironment-not on

the things themselves (Bateson,Steps140; see also Aylwin27-38). Finally, corporealtexts possess no

signs-no linguisticmarkers-indicatingtheir own

metaphoricna-

ture.They are neither interpretednor ascribedmeaning; they merely are. As a result,the demarcationbetween classes,an essentialcharacteristicof the as if logic of dis-

cursivecodes, disappearswith corporealtexts:My love is a red, red rose.

Within our daily lives, corporealand discursivetexts transactcontinually,reat-

ing the intertextualboundaries of being-in-a-material-place.Corporeal textualityevokes and anchorsdiscursivetextualityby providingthe somaticcomplement nec-

essaryfor meaning (on the integrationof representationalandnon-representationalmodes in meaning-making,see alsoAylwin;Cain;SadoskiandPaivio).Always n con-

junctionwith corporealtextuality,discursivecoding providesthe "what"of commu-

nication, while corporeal texts provide metamessagesthat enable communicants to

(re)constructthat what (Bateson,Steps177-93). Corporeal texts can be meaningful







292 COLLEGE ENGLISH

without discursivecoding (for instance,anythingfrom riding a bike to lymphocytes

identifying and fighting a virus),but discursivetexts cannot exist without corporeal

coding. In other words,prose consciousness or prose spacecannot existwithout cor-

poreality,mind cannot exist without body, society cannot exist without materiality.There can be no textualitywithout materiality, ncluding the materialityof the text

itself. As Susanne K. Langer argues, language evolves out of images, out of corpo-real texts, and can never be amputatedfrom its initiatingmatrix(128;see alsoVygot-

sky'saffective-volitional basisof thought). Everythingwe know about the body mayexist as some form of discourse,but that discourseis never fully separatedfrom the

bone house, from the bodyhome (Mairs,Remembering). Without corporeal textu-

ality,languageis oppositional,diffused,and delayed.With corporeal textuality, an-

guageno longer disintegratesself-regressively. nstead,we form a propositionalunityof being and substance, temporarilyintegrating them. Even if only momentarily,

meaningis anchored,thereby allowingus to write (think,read, talk,andlisten) about

genocide, rape, love, or MS without losing our proprioception(see especiallyPeirce,

"On a New List"for the relationshipsnecessaryto unite-if only transiently-beingand substance).

In addition,the fusion, not just the integration,of as if andis logic enables such

experiencesassacrament,art,and aestheticreading.Yeatsconcludes his famouspoem

"AmongSchool Children"by asking"How can we knowthe dancerfrom the dance?"

capturing n those lines the moments when the performerbecomes the performance.In Christianitythe act of communion ceases to be empty ritual and becomes sacra-

ment when the breadandwine become the body and blood of Christ andyet simul-

taneously remain similes for the blood and body of Christ (Bateson,Steps33-37).

Such moments-art and sacrament,poetry and ecstasy-occur when discursiveand

corporeal codes fuse to create what Bateson calls a "sacredspace"(Bateson,Sacred

265-70). Within this space,as if and is logic merge into one, collapsing message and

metaphor,prose and poetry. By means of this intertextual fusion, wine and bread

simultaneouslyremain wine and bread and become the blood and body of Christ;

Pavlova s both a swanand a womandancing

asaswan. This sacredspaceis the matrix

from which issue what RichardRorty calls "shuddersof awe,"the exaltationwe feel

when we connect emotionallywith literatureand art.It is also the matrixfrom which

issueswhat Emily Dickinson calls"zero at the bone,"the terror and revulsion we feel

when we connect to the ugly detailsof life (or confrontan "Other").Finally, t is the

spacefrom which issue pathologiessuch as schizophreniaand "monstersof aesthetic

creation" (Bateson and Bateson 257). A characteristicof schizophrenia, Bateson

explains,is that the individual(or a culture)collapsesdiscursiveand corporealtextu-

alities,creating a realityin which discursivetexts function accordingto the relational

logic of syllogism in grass (Bateson and Bateson 27). Similarly,aesthetic pathology

finds its birthplace n Bateson'ssacredspace.There is no doubt, Batesonargues,thatCromwell's soldiers, running around England in a religious frenzy destroying the







WRITING BODIES 293

heads, hands, and genitals of church statuary,were creating their "own (horrible)

poetry by their acts of vandalism-in which indeedthey smashedthe metaphoricgen-

itals as if they were 'real'in the left brain sense"(Batesonand Bateson29). So, dur-

ing this violence, the statues were simultaneouslythemselves-stone representations

-and flesh. More recently,the notorious Tailhook'91 incident can also be seen as a

manifestation of aesthetic pathology,a monstrous sacramentduring which aviators

fusedas if andis logic so thatwomen, especiallythe women navalofficers,were both

themselves and sexualobjects.The demarcationbetween categories and correspon-dences blurredfor the male aviatorsparticipating n the gauntlet, enabling them to

assaultfellow navalofficers.Thus, ecstasy,empathy,and pathologyexist aspotentialswithin those moments when logics merge.

Somatic mind validates the contradictorycorporeal certaintyof both the uglydetails andthe glorious experiencesof life withoutdefiningitselfexclusivelyby either.

Without somaticmind acknowledging ts own corporeality,we have no good way of

"writing"he sordid or the sublime,the pathologicalor the sacramental.With being-

in-a-material-placemooring us organically,we can evolve discoursesand identities

that testify for and to the ragged edge of necessityand the shudders of awe. Simulta-

neously, the permeablematerialityand intertextualityof somatic mind allow for the

possibilityof change so elusivein poststructuralistheoriesof meaning, both for indi-

viduals (struggling with alcoholism, anorexia, schizophrenia,etc.) and for cultures

(strugglingwith genocide, colonialism,etc.).As intertexts,corporealityand discoursepossess the power to mutually disrupt,as well as mutuallyconstitute and stabilize,themselves. Being-in-a-material-placeexists as a temporal circuit or system;there-

fore, corporeality can disorder and transformprose space. Words are made flesh

within particularmaterialevocations,so flesh has the power to disturb its own signi-fication, to disable its own systems, to challenge its own rules. This my daughterdiscovered at three, when, pulled from a pool after almost drowning, she sobbed,

"Mama, I can't breathe under water."The materialityof place, the constraintsof

flesh, requiredher to reconstructthe rules of her system;the samematerialityevoked

for me the realization that nothing could have erased or rewritten her death, chal-

lenging my own postmodernphilosophicalsystem. Being-in-a-material-placemightencode its own destruction-abusive co-dependencies,sexualpredation,suicidalde-

pression, genocidal collusion-but that destructiveness s enfleshed within specificcircumstanceswhich then serve as a point of resistance to those texts and that sub-

jectivity.Drive a systeminsane with its own internalcontradictions(itsown slippage),and it holds the possibilityof reorganizing at a higher, more complex level of exis-tence. AsHolocaustwriterJeanAmerypainfullyrecallsfromhis own politicallymoti-

vated torture, "the crackingand splinteringin the shoulderjoints"has the power to

destroy identity, soul, and consciousness (qtd. in Griffin 168) and open up inter-

textual spaces. It is Cornel West's ragged edge of necessity-the experienceof hurtand betrayal,the insanityof culturalstories contradictingphysical experience-that







294 COLLEGE ENGLISH

empowers the destructionor reconstruction of an epistemology,a social system, or a

psyche (see Bateson'stheory of the double-bind andhis criterion of historicalimpor-

tance in Steps194-279 and 477-85).

Finally,somatic mind encouragescultural andindividualchange becauseit pre-vents any totalizing or essentializing of identity and meaning. Both discursiveand

corporealtextualitiesexistcontextuallyaswell asintertextually.Therefore, they can-

not essentializeidentity.The rules of the game-either corporealor discursive-are

subjectto the same interpenetration,constitution, andreconstitutionthat create the

game and the participantsin the first place. The "essence"of a thing bends and

changes in response to the materialization and dissolution of relationships.Discur-

sive and corporeal interactions may determine the kinds of relationshipsthat can

evolve, but those relationshipscan simultaneouslyupend those same intertextualitiesandchange the system.An identity might remaincontextuallystable,but it is not lim-

ited to its definitionwithin thatparticularcontext. The mother my daughterseeksin

the aftermathof a nightmareis not the same one she frantically ignalsnot to kiss her

in the elementary school halls. Essentialismonly occurs when we confuse one kind

of logic or text with the other. One way in which we essentializewomen is by con-

fusing a discursivecategory-which is coded according to as if logic-with a corpo-real text. "Women" s acategory,so by sayingthat "womenare mothers"(the is logicof corporeal codes) instead of "women are like mothers"(the as if logic of discursive

codes), we confuse logical types and essentialize as homogeneous identities that areheterogeneous. By forgetting that we are symbolizing a relationship,we ignore the

inevitable slippage between codes; we ignore the gaps within which agency, possi-

bility, and transformationmaterialize (see Cornell 4; see also Peirce, "On a New

List"for the slippagethat underlines the temporal and relationalnatureof symbolic

unity). On the other hand, the flaw of non-essentialist positions arising out of the

instabilityof discursivetexts is that they deny the metaphoric logic of corporeality.In specific placements,women are the mothers whom daughterscravewhen night-maresprey on them. The intertextualityand permeablematerialityof somatic mind

underscore the systemic integration of as if and is logic, forestallingthe question of

essentialism. Finally, the site where "women are mothers" fuses with "women are

like mothers"-the site where the boundariesbetween is logic and asif logic meld-

is also the site where both ethics, such as the ethics of care, and pathology, such as

pornography, are born. Achieving and maintaining a culture's or an individual's

health require the integration of the entire system of textualities,not focusing on

one to the exclusion of the other. Identities, ecologies, and cultures need both the

stability of context, in which a woman is a mother, and the flexibilityof contextual

change, in which a woman is like a mother.

As a being-in-a-material-place, (re)constitutedby the entire system of infor-

mation exchange that is coded discursivelyand corporeally,somatic mind is simplyindeterminate, always only partiallydefinable,by turn solid and immaterial.It is cre-







WRITING BODIES 295

ated by culturaland natural scripts that it undoes, allowing transformationof and

resistance to formative discourses.Being-in-a-material-place s paradoxicallybound,

unbound, and rebound in spiralingtransactionsamong flesh, ecology, and culture.

WRITING BODIES

Gesa Kirsch andJoy Ritchie in "Beyondthe Personal" cite the need in compositionstudies for a politics of location, an approach to writing and research that, in the

words of Adrienne Rich, locates the self within "the body of this particularhuman

being"(qtd. in Kirsch and Ritchie 7) while simultaneouslyaffirmingthe limitations

of such sites. Permeable, material, and intertextual,somatic mind offers the possi-

bility of embodying discourse,of writing in a form that is "both immersed and dis-tant, far-seeingand swallowed"(Griffin 175). It offers the possibility"forpleasuren

the confusion of boundaries and for responsibilityn their construction"(Haraway,Simians150;her emphasis).To write somatically, o writemateriallyanddiscursively,

requiresof us two paradoxicalexperiences-immersion and emergence. Immersion,

reflecting the metaphoricislogic of corporealcoding, and emergence, reflecting the

as if logic of discursive coding, are dialecticallyrelated in nonlinear, undulatingmovements. Both experiencesevolve with and within the scene of a particularmate-

rial placement. In this final section, I describe these paradoxicalmovements, then

circle backto explainhow immersion and emergence, plus disciplinaryresistance towriting bodies, arisefrom and together with a specific somatic mind.

Although frequentlycharacterizedby a descriptionof stylisticor content attrib-

utes, the process of embodyingwriting cannot be reduced to a list of discursivefea-

tures or defined solely by an agenda of genre-crossing.The product of a process is

not the process, although the two are inextricably ntertwined. So experimentationwith form and function, characteristicespeciallyof feminist efforts to rewrite phal-

logocentric discourse,grows out of, feeds into, and reflects embodiment;but writ-

ing somaticallycan also be manifestedin less innovativetextual forms. The crucial

qualities of writing somaticallyare not formal but

(dis)positional,and, like

cyborgsubjectivity, require a commitment "to partiality, irony, intimacy,and perversity"(Haraway,Simians151).To embody writing,writersmust make a contradictorybut

complementary commitment to immersion and emergence. Immersion is charac-

terized by the moments in writing(andliving)when the boundariesbetween self and

reality dissolve, when we experience that slippage between the is and the as if. It is

not a transcendence of or an ascent beyond the transactinglevels of context, but a

burrowinginto Mairs's bone house of identity and of place. As writers and as know-

ers, we come to be onlyby our engagement with(in) a multilayeredcorporeal scene.

Therefore, placement within particularsites is a "necessary precondition for any

existence, including the existence of something we suppose to be abstractand cere-bral,like the essay"(Griffin 164-65)--or a writerly identity.Essentialto immersion







296 COLLEGE ENGLISH

is the sense that individual(and rhetorical)subjectivity s anamalgamof actor, action,and environment-an ironically temporal unification. Historian of science Morris

Berman labels the subjectivity evolving from this immersion as the "selfother,"an

osmotic transactionbetween world and self-consciousness.Knowledge of the world

and of the self, Bermanexplains,results when a "notself" and a "self"permeateeach

other. Selfother (somatic mind) exists because the mutual blurring of boundaries

between inside and outside create the being-in-a-material-place.Self is not lost in

the process; awareness of self as a discrete organism separate(and separable)from

one's environment is lost.

The work of Nobel LaureateBarbaraMcClintock exemplifiesthe integrativeis

logic of immersion. How was McClintock able to see into the mysteriesof genetics

more perceptively than her colleagues (Keller, Feeling 197-98)? Because she im-mersed herself in the material context of her corn plants. Through a deep reverence

and capacityfor union with that which is to be known (201), McClintock developedin her words "afeeling for the organism"(198), or,as Evelyn Fox Keller explains,"a

longing to embrace the world in its very being, through reason and beyond"(199).

Through that feeling for the organism, McClintock dissolves the boundaries be-

tween self and other, creating a being-in-a-material-placethat comprisescorn plantsand scientist. From this worm'seye view, a subjectivitythat renders moot the tradi-

tional boundariesbetween inside and outside, McClintock was able to perceive mi-

nute changes imperceptible to other biologists and evolve her theory of genetictransposition. (For related approaches,see Heshusius on participatoryconscious-

ness; Flinders and Eisner on educationalcriticism.)

Rhetorically,immersion involves a multifaceted engagement among readers,

writers,materialplace, andevolving textworlds.As Batesonargues,neitherhorse nor

turfevolves atomistically;nstead,the relationshipor the context createddialecticallybetween horse and turf evolves. By extension, a text does not evolve; an intertext

evolves. The relationshipbetween reader,writer,and text evolves. From a somatic

perspective, immersion is a fallinginto focus or passion, in which reader,writer,and

text come into being co-terminously, reflecting the metaphoricor is logic of corpo-real codes. There is no reader,no writer,no text apartfrom the relationships amongthem: the reader is the text, just as the writer is the reader and the text. It is inac-

curate, Bateson argues, to ask how many fingers we have because fingers-or anysubstantive-do not exit in embryology (or in the mind). Instead, gaps or relation-

ships exist. Similarly, n writing, the crucialquestion to ask is not, "What does this

mean?" but, instead, "What is the constellation of relationships that renders this

meaningful?"Immersion requires that we identify ourselvesby these relationships,

that we function according to the logic of the syllogism in grass.Any "I"outside or

inside the text is a consolidation of writer,word, and reader at a precise moment: a

writing-being-in-a-material-place.That complex identification relies on writersen-gaging with the corporeal codes immanent within the context of readers, writers,







WRITING BODIES 297

and worlds. All meaning issues from an affective-volitionalmatrix. "Behindevery

thought," Vygotsky says, "there is an affective-volitionaltendency which holds the

answerto the last 'why' in the analysisof thinking"(150), and immersion demandsthe integration of that matrix.We need to align ourselveswith those algorithmsof

the heart, awarethat we become complicit with both the pathology andthe sublim-

ity that potentially exist within the evolution of any being-in-a-material-place.Such alignments take place on a varietyof levels. First,we write as bodies, at-

tending to the undulation of inscription and response.We immerse ourselves in-

create a subjectivityout of-our own bodily reactions aswriters. We are our bodies;we arewriting bodies, caught in that slippagebetween bodies that write as they are

written. Therefore, we need to attend to visceral rhythms as we compose writerly

identities, readers,and textworlds at a specific time and in a very specific physicalplace (body, clothes, room, technology, culture, etc.). Second, we write intertextu-

ally,aligningourselvescorporeallywith ourpermeabletextworlds,heeding the pulseof beliefs, carnality,and dream life. Embodying writing includes "puttingup there

[acrossthe chalkboard] n public words [we] have dredged, sieved up from dreams,from behind screen memories, out of silence-words [we]have dreaded and needed

in order to know [we] exist"(Rich 33). We write with Bateson'salgorithms of the

heart, creatingwhat I. A. Richardscalls a "machine to feel with"(qtd. in RichardE.

Miller 273), or,perhapsmore accurately,a system that feels. Third, we engage with

readerswe evoke as we evokeourselves,listening to theirwhispers so that we mightbe heard(Miller283). Ultimately,immersionmeans that we write and readsensitive

to the subjectivityof placement, receptive to the emotional charge intricatelyinter-

woven with the ecology of that placement, "excavatingbodily responses for mater-

ial evidence of the ways culture is present in the writer'svery act of experiencingthe

composing process"(Miller 273).But writing somatically also requires emergence, the contextualizing of per-

sonal body within public body, the discriminationof as if from is logic. Writing so-

maticallyrequiresthat we commit ourselvesto more than the pleasurederived from

the confusion of boundaries;we must also make ourselves responsible for their

construction (Haraway,Simians150). Even if they aredredgedfrom the integrative

realityof dreams,memories, or silence-places where the is logic of corporealcodes

dominates-it is words that we write across a public chalkboard."We'reunable towrite love, as we so much wish to do, without writing politics,"Adrienne Rich cau-tions (23). Maximizing experience and engagement without also maximizingcultureand accountability s perilous.The dangerof nondiscursivethought, Langer argues,is that it too easily becomes no thought at all. The danger of immersion, as textu-

allymanifested,perhaps,in confessionalwriting, is that it maybecome no writing atall or writingthat takes no responsibilityfor the boundaries t inevitably, f only tem-

porally,constructs.The pleasuresof immersion must be balanced with the answer-abilityof emergence. Both "[c]ommitmentand engagement, not their invalidation,







298 COLLEGE ENGLISH

in an emerging collective are the conditions of joining knowledge-producing and

worldbuildingpractices,"Harawaycautions("Promise"315). Emergence is the cru-

cial difference between what Rich distinguishesas a "New Age blurof the personal-for-its-own-sake... an individualisttelling with no place to go" and "a collective

movement to empower[ment]" (x). In the beginning may have been the deed or

the action, but the word is the "end of development, crowning the deed"(Vygotsky

153), which can then become a new development, a new deed. Therefore, writing

somaticallyrequires emergence into the abstractas if logic of politics, of ideology,of hegemony-into the responsibility of and for boundaries. Richard E. Miller

writes that his father,to save himself after a second suicide attempt, must do more

than medicate the bodywith drugs;he must medicate the bodywith language:"[H]e

must also learn anew language,learn how to tell stories that he hasnever told in orderto escape the terriblepower they have over him" (285). He must emerge.

Like the intertextualintegration of discursiveand corporeal codes, immersion

and emergence need to be situated within each other before we can embody dis-

course. "It'snot a matter of dying as a poet into politics, or of havingto be rebornas

a poet 'on the other side of politics' (where is that?)but of something else-findingthe relationship,"Rich explains (21). Embodied discourse encompassesthe comingto know contextualizedwithin the being known, immersionwithin emergence, bod-

ies withinwords:"Whatgoes on in the private body,in the innerquarterof the mind,

cannot be fully redeemed, noreven understood without

public acknowledgment,"Griffinargues(175). Acknowledgment or emergence providesa "liberation rom the

imprisonment of an enforced privacy"(Griffin 175). This necessary integration of

immersionwithin emergence canbe seen in whatwe might come to validateas mean-

ingful. In What'sFoundOut There,Rich refers to two kinds of poetic content: that

which evolves from unverifiable fact-dreams, sexuality, and subjectivity-and

that which evolves from documentary fact-history, geographical and geological

details,and so on. She tries, she says, to combine both into a single poem, "not sep-

aratingdream from history-but I do not find it easy,"she admits (21). Embodying

writingrelieson thatsamemeaningfulintegrationof unverifiedanddocumented fact,

of dreamand reality,of corporealand discursivecodes, of fact and fiction. As Miller

argues in "The Nervous System,"writing is a "placeto see and re-see the compo-

nents and possible trajectoriesof one's lived experience and to situate and re-situate

that experience within a world of other thoughts and other embodied reactions"

(285). Writing somaticallydepends on the immersion of being-in-a-material-place

andthe emergence weaving throughout;it depends on the continuous hybridization

of who and what and where we are. I do not find it easy.

Writing somaticallyholds great potential for refiguringwriting, teaching, and

researching in composition studies. Unfortunately, the qualities that highlight the

power of and need for writing somaticallyare the same qualitiesthat reinforce insti-tutionalanddisciplinaryresistanceto writingbodies. If somaticmind teachesus any-







WRITING BODIES 299

thing, it teaches us that the characterof anydiscourse-embodied or disembodied-

is itself the product of a particular ntegration of codes and permeable materiality.

All theory is corporeal: it "is not about matters distant from the lived body....

Theory is anything but disembodied. The fancieststatements about radicaldecon-

textualization... are tropes for the embodiment, the production, the literalization

of experience in that specific mode" (Haraway,"Promise"299). So the kind of dis-

embodied writing privileged by the academy (as well as the process of embodying

writing) arises from and (re)produces ocatedness,a particular iteralizationof expe-rience. In a grotesque kind of way,disembodiedwriting privilegesand arises from a

kind of embodied disembodiment:"The guys may be writing with their pen/penis,but they generally keep it in their pants,"Mairswrylynotes (Waist-High60). How-

ever, because of its own permeable materiality,disembodied writing contains theseeds of its own (dis)position,thus the seeds of its own (re)embodiment.A pen/penis

can, and does, escape from the pants.Let me illustrate the somaticmind immanent

within disembodieddiscourseby examiningthe relationshipsbetween two aspectsof

the academicwritingscene-its theoreticalplacelessnessand its solitaryplacement-and two characteristicsof disembodiedwriting-the detachable writer and the de-

tachablelife. Then I will complete the circle, explaininghow the changing locations

of academicwritingevokethe immersion andemergence of a differentsomaticmind,one that allowsus to conceive and perhaps experiencethe integrativefusion of writ-

ing bodies.Although much has been written in the last decade about the scene of writing,

that scene has been essentiallyrepresentedas placeless,therefore easily replaceable.Linda Brodkey'sessay"Modernismandthe Scene(s)of Writing"illustratessuch dis-

placement. Brodkeypersuasivelyunpacksthe implicationsof the Romantic image of

an artistlaboring alone in a solitaryattic room, forcing us to (re)see the tyrannyof

that garret-imageandacknowledgethe collaborativebasisof anywritingact. But the

physicality of the writing scene as part of the context that constitutes the writer'smaterial and rhetorical identity at any one instant is outside the scope of the essay.For Brodkeywhether we write in a

garret,a

study,or a kitchen is

peripheralto the

tyrannyof the image we carrywith us to that scene. Physical placementis secondaryto ideological hegemony. As a result of this positioning, the writing scene as a mate-

rial place is rendered "increasinglyplaceless,a matter of sites insteadof lived places,of sudden displacementsrather than of perduringimplacements"(Casey,referringto the modem world, xv).

This theoreticaldisplacementis furtherreinforced, if not given its birth,by the

high priorityBrodkeygives solitude in an essayunderliningthe collaborativenature

of writing. Although Brodkeywishes to illustrate the ways in which solitaryspace is

actually public, her examples also illustrate a writer'scontrol of and need for that

solitary space. In her discussion of the mental collaboration that permeates Susan

Sontag'ssolitude, Brodkeystates that "the image of the garretinsures us that she is







300 COLLEGE ENGLISH

a serious writer"(402) becausea serious writerpursuesher craftin a cloisteredplace,even if that place is mentally peopled with collaborators. Without solitude, a writer

cannot be serious. Even in the anecdotes tracingthe extensivecollaboration(men-tal and physical)in her personalwriting practices, Brodkeyremainsin chargeof her

own seclusion. She decides when to lift the phone and call a friendto discussanidea;she preparesa draft and decideswhen to share it with friends. The eruptionsof "life"

outside rhetorical textuality must be controllable or else the writer sacrifices the

"solitudenecessaryfor writing"(398).The belief in the need for privacy,for controlling the eruptions of life outside

of the rhetoricalenterprise, governs the allocation of physical spacewithin the acad-

emy. A mark of prestige is possession of a privateoffice, one with walls instead of

partitions,one with a door that can close. In fact, such a privilegedspace (especiallyif it possesses a window through which to look out at life) may be used as a lever in

negotiating contracts.According to the ruling ideology of the academy,a scholar,when possessed of (by) this place, can (andshould) shut the door and guardthe bor-

ders of solitude. He or she is "not at home in spite of the sound of typing"(a sign a

colleague of mine posted on his door,which was alwaysclosed) because an office is a

place where scholarswrite, not live. But this solitude is also displaceable,separatefrom location (academicscan change offices easily). Only the ability to create and

protect solitude matters;the state is the thing, not the site. Thus, academics don

housing like apparel;they dress rather than place themselves. With the acquisitionof solitary placelessness, a scholar gains the space necessaryto write the discourse

(producethe knowledge) that is accordedspacewithin the academy.Conversely, the

failure to acquire solitude disenfranchises those who lack displaceable cloistered

space, and the discourse (andknowledge) that evolves when scholars write standingin their kitchens or sitting by the kitty litter (Sommers;Bloom) is devalued.

Because"ourliving-moving bodies serve to structure and to configurateentire

scenarios of place" (Casey 48) and entire scenarios of identity, the physical dis-

placementprivilegedby the academyevolves with and(re)createsthe discursivedis-

placement of disembodied writing. From the perspective of somatic mind, placeinfluences what we perceive and what we expect. So displacementwithin a private

space affectsthe natureof the materialand rhetorical"I"arisingwithin the confines

of thatplacelessness.The more a discipline(orawriter)believes andwrites in amov-

able or detachable writing scene, the more firmly it clings to a parallel belief in a

movable or detachable embodiment. It embodies disembodiment. To illustrate, a

popularmove in current composition theory and pedagogy is the bifurcationof the

embodied writer from the textuallyevoked writer as a means to focus on the con-

structednessof rhetorical subjectivityand to prevent nafve (auto)biography.David

Bartholomae argues for the theoretical and pedagogicalnecessity of separatingthe

textuallyrealized persona (the writing figure based on the as if logic of discursivecodes) from the enfleshedwriter (the figurewritingbased on the is logic of corporeal







WRITING BODIES 301

codes), assertingthat we need to dismiss the embodied writer as a means of focus-

ing on the textualwriter.But a field can only believe in its abilityto dismissbody and

place if it has accorded both body andplacea replaceablemateriality,a displacement,a theoretical move that is itself an outgrowth of its own displacement.

But even when a relationshipmanifests itself in disembodiment,the nonlinear

dialectalismof immersion with(in) emergence underscores the inseparabilityof the

discursiveor rhetorical "I"from the material- r corporeal"I."From the perspectiveof somatic mind, the writing figure cannotbe separatedfrom the figure writing be-

cause,as being-in-a-material-place,both areimmanent in the other.Neither rhetor-

ical nor materialidentities are substances; hey aresystems,resultingfrom pathwaysof intertextualities nside and outside the skin.Therefore, each element resultsfrom

an undulationof immersion and emergence and reflects at variousmoments both asif and is logic. The (dis)embodiedfirstperson is always mmanentin the emergenceof the discursive first person, but that rhetoricalmaterialization eeds backinto the

system,becoming immanentin anewly emerging(dis)embodiedfirstperson.No text

exists without a body's mmersion in and emergence from it; no body exists without

immersion in and emergence from (and back into) its own intertextuality.Text and

body existbecause f thatparticipation.Somatically, he (dis)embodiedwriterexpandsto include the context, of which that emerging textworld and rhetoricalidentity are

components, explodingthe polite, professionalfiction that the writeroutside the text

(enfleshedwriter)can be separatedfrom the writer inside the text (textuallyrealizedpersona).So in a grotesquekind of prestidigitation, he pedagogicalmove to dismissal

is itself a (dis)embodimentof the traditionalscholar'splacelessness.Scholarswrite as

talkingheadsbecausethey exist at the moment of writing as talkingheads,displaced

environmentally,corporeally,and rhetorically.

Similarly,he institutionalseparationof personalfrompublicdiscourse(reflectedin the rigid genre boundaries of our professionalwriting) and its denigrationof the

personal has roots in the same displaced private space and embodied disembodi-

ment. "Place,"Casey writes, "itself is concrete and at one with action and thought"

(xiii). Therefore, an academic'sability to close a door, unhook aphone,

and block

out the eruptionsof the personal into the professionalcontributes to the belief that

professionallife (and writing) should lack proprioception;the writer (and the text)should be disembodied.The need to control the degree of disruptionin a physical

writing scene evolveswith the belief that an academicmust shut out life, must sepa-rate the life of the work fromthe life lived,the body fromthe mind.The priceof such

disembodiment,however, is the privilegingof discoursesthat cannot talk in any ef-

fectiveway about genocide, sexualviolence, andracism. To become a means of indi-

vidualor culturalchange, discourses must have a materialeffect on the way we live.

But if discoursesare severed from the lives we lead, how can they have any impact

on those lives?Perhapsthis institutionalizeddisembodiment,this separationof aca-demic discourse from the lives lived by academics,can help us understandthe many







302 COLLEGE ENGLISH

disjuncturesbetween theory and praxisevident in the academy, or instance,Haber-

mas'srefusalto join German studentsin their effortsthrough democraticcommuni-

cation to revampthe German universitysystem (Foss, Foss, andTrapp);Althusser'smurder of his wife (Finn); Foucault's sexual behavior (including his alleged sado-

masochism), especially following his AIDS diagnosis (James Miller); and de Man's

anti-Semitismin his early writing for La Soir as well as his deliberatesilence on that

writing (Hartman).Traditionally,academics have physically positioned themselves

to fortifythese rifts between the publicandthe private,between the abstractand the

corporeal, between authorwriting and authorwritten, between autobiographerand

academic. Such positionalityis possible in largepartbecause the physicalplacementwithin the academyand the discoursepracticeswhich conserve it have been created

predominantly by men who (becauseof female support systems) have had both theoffice and the luxuryof closing a door on the personal.That detachable(even if col-

laborative)writing figure,reinforced by (andreinforcing) the rigid genre boundaries

that separateand ostracize the personal,remainsthe dominantideology in the acad-

emy. Thus, Michael Berube can sever a writer'spolitics from the significanceof his

or her academicwork and contend that "a scholar's ife is not the key to his or her

work, nor is the work the key to the life"(1067). The abilityand the right to close a

door and the dominance of a detachablewriting figure/detachablelife aremutually

(re)constitutive.

However, position holds the seeds to its own (dis)position.Traditionalacademicwriting and discursive dentities are under siege partiallybecausethey areimmanent

in materialplaces other than a scholar'scloisteredstudy.The emergence of material

rhetorics arises n partfromtheirimmersionin nontraditionalwritingscenes,in writ-

ing scenes that are neither solitarynor disembodied.For instance,what becomes of

the detachablewriting figurewhen the figurewriting strugglesto writewhile simul-

taneously caring for small childrenin the sameroom?The pathwaysof information

necessarilyexpandto include the two-year-old sleeping on her lap or the three-year-old nagging for attention at his elbow. Being-in-a-material-placedictatesthat when

we change the venue, when we shift the writing scene from the office with a closed

door to one that precludesthat solitude, a different somaticmind is evoked, one that

acknowledges the sources of its birth in the corporeality of our bodies and one

that creeps into the discoursescreated in that space. Academicvenues are currently

evolving, shifting into nontraditionalshapesand placesmore conducive than place-

less seclusion to embodiment. More men in the academy are sharing caretaking

responsibilities, populating their scholarly space with private lives. More women,

alreadyculturallypredisposedto carrywith them their peopled space, hold tenure-

track positions in English departments.As a result, traditionalsolitary places are

being permeatedwith the pulse andbeat of family,of bodies. Private offices arecom-

ing to resemble the eighteenth centuryfamilyparlorwhereJaneAustenwrote:placescharacterizedby the dominance of the personallife within the professional.In addi-

tion, the increased number of faculty members (both tenure track and temporary)







WRITING BODIES 303

sharingspacebecause of budget and space constraints s changingthe solitarygeog-

raphyof academicterritory.Privacy,althoughstillvalued,is less cloistered,less avail-

able, and less disembodied.

This physical space, saturatedby the algorithms of the heart, manifests and

attends to the immersion and emergence characteristicof writing with the somatic

mind. The liquid movement of placed and peopled writing scenes evokes similar

shifts in the contours of rhetoricalsubjectivityand genre. Recent discussionsof the

unavoidabilityof the personal in literarystudies (Forum;"Guest Column") and in

composition studies(Miller; Sommers)reflect such shifts. Calls by manyfeministsto

dissolve the rigid restrictions separating genres (Joeres and Mittman; Bridwell-

Bowles) andpermeatingresearchmethodology (Kirschand Ritchie) also suggest the

realizationof immersion within emergence. Scenicchangewithin the academymarksa reconfigurationof the ideology of the detachablewriting figureand detachable ife.

We are always placed;yet we are alwayson the verge of new placements that

disrupt and reconfigure materialityand discourse. Somatic mind underscores that

we all live and write in the gaps, a product of constantly evolving relationshipsbe-

tween professionaland private,between writing figure and figurewriting, between

body and text. Without immersion within and emergence from (and into) perme-able materiality,we reduce ourselves to mouths without voices. Identity-culturaland personal-is alwayssubjectto the contractions and relaxations of its blood and

tissue boundaries, boundaries that evanesce and coalesce in response to and inrhythmwith invisible intertextualmessages.We exist as somatic minds;we need to

write, teach, and live within that realization.

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