altercation altercation. that's not how he would put it. often it would come out different. a little quieter and definitely shorter. shit. it would have been a misunderstanding, but violence was involved. that's how it turned nasty. then all of this had to be brung into it. the police. the law. it's not always in our lives you know. it just perches above our heads and a couple of words bring it into our lives. words like altercation.

altercation. that's not how he would put it.

he just got out of the car and started swinging. it wasn't a fight it was a fishing contest. they were on either side of the car casting out their hooks. just when one of them snagged, that's when shit hit solid ground. a window was smashed. and a mirror. we couldn't have that. so for immediate payment two broken fingers, with the expectation of cash transfer the very next day. or another finger. accelerated away throwing gravel in his face. his face was fixed on the two fingers that were somewhat out of shape.

not that the previous account isn't accurate. it is. it's just that i would refer to it as an altercation. he wouldn't.  ¶ 11:57 pm 0 Comments

  out of the car heart arrest
he who knows better best  ¶ 3:36 pm 0 Comments

  PHIL2509 - Second Essay This essay will examine Foucault’s criticism of the philosophical study of law in the area of power. In particular I will focus on the published lectures entitled Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, primarily lectures two and three where he raises the issue of sovereignty in relation to the study of power. Foucault holds the position that power exists in numerous forms and in modern times both disciplinary power and legal power function. Foucault argues that the theory of sovereignty does not capture the relations of disciplinary power because they each have fundamentally different modes of relation to the subject.

Let me first explain how Foucault understands the theory of sovereignty (as he sets it out in “Lecture Three”). Foucault defines the theory of sovereignty by identifying three key characteristics, which I will now illustrate in order to show that the paradigm of sovereignty establishes a top-down study of power. Foucault claims that the theory of sovereignty establishes a subject-to-subject cycle. This position regarding the nature of sovereignty, has three main claims; that there is an individual person ready to become a subject of a yet more powerful subject; that such an individual is endowed with humanist qualities such as rights and that the legitimacy of these rights are naturally given; and that such an individual has a productive relationship with the property. Secondly Foucault attributes to the theory of sovereignty a need for unity in order to use an assumed multiplicity of capacities to political ends. Foucault recognises that the theory of sovereignty invokes necessarily a system, the exact form is irrelevant, that unifies the disparate and varied capacities that subjects have, in order to politicise such capacities. What he means by politicise in this context is that the capacities are put toward a common goal. The function of the unified system is to make this goal appear common - whether it actually is or not is irrelevant. Thirdly the theory of sovereignty, for Foucault, seeks to illustrate the legitimacy of power and to explain the source of legitimacy. The legitimacy of the sovereign is the foundation for the law and the legal system. Foucault summarises a description of the theory of sovereignty thus;

The theory of sovereignty presupposes the subject; its goal is to establish the essential unity of power, and it is always deployed within the pre-existing element of the law.

Foucault argues that the three characterisitics of the theory of sovereignty, discussed above, are “primitive” and as such the theory of sovereignty attempts to provide an examination of modern power using outdated and inadequate assumptions. To illustrate his argument, Foucault undertakes a “genealogy” of power. His analysis is wide-ranging. However, within the confines of this essay I will focus on his study of ‘legal power’ and the emergence of ‘disciplinary power’ that Foucault presents in “Lecture Two”.

An explanation of legal power, and how the theory of sovereignty is applied to legal power will give a context in which to understand the theory of sovereignty. This context will provide a background that will allow us to understand the issues that Foucault identifies with the theory of sovereignty as a theory of modern power. The genealogy of power that Foucault provides begins with an examination of legal power in which he accounts for the rise of the theory of sovereignty. From his examination of legal power Foucault argues that the theory of sovereignty masks relations of domination by forming legality and legitimacy. Foucault argues that the theory of sovereignty examines power in terms of the entire social body and politic. The theory worked as such because of its inextricable link to the feudal monarchy as a legitimation and legal tool. The practice of legal power by the feudal monarchy was, in short, instigated in order to stop insubordination – any action that would undermine the position of the monarchy. The feudal monarchies were more interested in the retention of power than production, or the development of their subjects. The mechanics of legal power relied on physical, monetary, and exile based punishments. The consequences of insubordination were demonstrated by a theatre of punishment. The use of legal power was inconsistent and on the whim of the sovereign, either to collect a need, i.e. taxes, or to punish the insubordinate. The aim of the punishment is to stop insubordination by the criminal, and by public spectacle to deter others from such insubordination. The retention of power relied on the legitimacy of that power. Divine right provided the feudal monarchies legitimacy and the grounds for exercising dutiful power. The theory of sovereignty encapsulated the legitimacy from the divine as a mechanism of power. The theory of sovereignty expounded the king, head of State, as a legitimate sovereign power who aligned with the divine right and therefore any exercise of power by the sovereign was right, or any action that maintained the exercise of power to a legal framework determined by the sovereign. The concept of sovereignty explained a centralised power handed down by divine right, in which the position was absolute and the exercise of power over subjects was justified.

Theorising power in such a way is a top-down approach to understanding power. The theory of sovereignty leads to an examination of power that begins from an assumption that an elite few have power, and that it emanates down from them. . There is no examination of how power works; the mechanisms of the feudal monarchy are taken as given, and give rise to a theory that legitimates and legalises them. And as thus, the theory of sovereignty was used as a tool to legitimise both the monarchical and anti-monarchical positions until the advent of parliamentary democracies. Even now the theory of sovereignty is used to legitimate the position of parliament via the sovereignty of the people.

Foucault argues that discipline and sovereignty are fundamentally different paradigms. The rise of industry, and thus the increased prominence of the bourgeois, saw the invention of a new mechanism of power that sought time and labour from the body in order to fuel production. Foucault terms this power, that consists of constant surveillance and vast real coercions, disciplinary power. For Foucault, the theory of sovereignty cannot account in any way for the effects disciplinary power has on society, nor on how it works, or if it is good or bad, or more importantly if power is dominating or subjugating. Furthermore, it cannot account for disciplinary power because, Foucault argues, the legal power from which the theory of sovereignty originates is at the opposite pole to disciplinary power. Legal power sought to stop prescribed action, was concerned with property ownership, and the movement of object goods, whereas disciplinary power seeks to develop a body to increase its productivity, and so its concerns lie in time and labour. Legal power is founded on the legitimacy of the absolute power of the sovereign and proposes a single unified structure of power, as opposed to disciplinary power which relies on constant surveillance and normalisation that are multiplicitous and multifarious.

To further highlight the differences between legal power and disciplinary power I will look at the techniques of disciplinary power. As a technique, in all its procedural forms, discipline remains highly flexible and adaptable, being able to be wholly taken on or only partially for very specific purposes. Without being simplified to any one procedure, it works to increase efficiency and is concerned primarily with the body. The disciplinary technique may be examined in four aspects of control over the body; physicality; identity; spatiality; and temporality. The control of physicality is the continual repetitive exercise of physical movement, the aim of which is to maximise the efficiency of the particularly desired action. This is best achieved by focusing on the body in its parts, so that the individual trains an aspect (i.e. limb, mind etc) on a particular task. The result is a body that is efficient at the task and can carry out that task without thought. The control of identity is the complete abolishment of any singularly identifying characteristics with the aim of creating objects of people. The purpose of objectification is to empty the individual of any recourse to self-identity or objectives of their own to fulfil, so that in such a void the individual is represented by the norms in which they are being trained. This aspect particularly ensures that the individual will be self monitoring in the physical absence of authority. The control of spatiality is a core requirement of organisation and classification of bodies in large numbers. A properly managed space allows for continual observation of every individual, the ability to locate the absence of a body or the presence of a foreign body, and can also serve as an indicator of performance in relation to peers. The organisation of space plays an integral role in the implementation of the other controls, while also permeating the notion of the controls without their actual presence. The control of temporality breaks the bodily relation to fatigue into regime, which assists in the suppression of challenges to authority. The dimension of time allows for technical measurement and comparative studies that allows for feedback in efficiency. Such feedback can have positive effects to the psychology of the individual, so the individual can see a self improvement. Coupled with the prior knowledge that activities will cease at a time, and the allotment of rest periods, the feedback device increases the individuals passivity to the domination acted upon them. The continual use and application of these controls over the individual as disciplinary technique is in stark difference to the inconsistent use of force and public spectacle that defines legal power. From an analysis of these differences it is possible to identify how a theory of sovereignty applies (inadequately) to modern disciplinary power.

Foucault presents two reasons as to why the theory of sovereignty continued to exist in a society with disciplinary power. The first is that the theory of sovereignty was “a permanent critical instrument to be used against the monarchy and all obstacles that stood in the way of the development of the disciplinary society.” As was mentioned earlier the theory of sovereignty had become a political tool in legitimation and could be just as easily used as a tool for delegitimation. As such was the case, the theory of sovereignty was used to deligitimate any sovereign power that reappeared after the birth of the parliamentary democracy. Parliamentary democracy had found a way to posit sovereignty upon the public thereby limiting the avenues for any legal power that may challenge discipline. For Foucault, the dispersion of sovereign power into the public realm coupled with the legitimation of the judiciary by parliament, “made it possible to superimpose on the mechanisms of discipline a system of right that concealed its mechanisms and erased the element of domination and the techniques.”

Disciplinary power does not reinstall the same political order nor is its effects for political gain, thus disciplinary power is apolitical. Rather the effects of disciplinary power are ‘normalising’ , where the techniques are applied to each individual body in the aim of maximising their useful capacities. The techniques of disciplinary power are best demonstrated by institutions that are informed by the social sciences to produce the best citizen, such as schools, prisons and the military. Foucault illustrates the techniques and mechanisms of disciplinary power with the example of Bentham’s “Panopticon”. For Foucault the architectural design of the “Panopticon” not only controls the bodies that are enmeshed in the system but also transforms them by incorporating the four key aspects of discipline; knowledge, time, the body, and space. The technique can be prescribed to any institution or social faculty, and remains flexible to the needs that arise in each particularity. The mechanics of discipline work primarily in an exacting fashion on individual bodies as objects and tools. The transformation that takes place within the individual being affected upon (by the disciplinary technique) is not a political transformation, rather is a transformation of capacities, where the capacities of the individual are normalised to a point where they function within society free of direct coercion.

In order that we may see the processes of disciplinary power, and come to an understanding of how it works Foucault proposes three tasks. The first of these tasks is the locating and examining of those who use disciplinary techniques to normalise subjects. Foucault puts the first task as such:

Rather than deriving powers from sovereignty, we should be extracting operators of domination from relations of power, both historically and empirically.

Foucault demonstrates the need to locate the operators of techniques of disciplinary power. They are particularly numerous and potentially disparate as opposed to a singular and unified source. In effect Foucault’s first task is to trace the flow of power from the grounds of use, from institutions and social systems, the very point at which people are most effected by the use of disciplinary techniques and are thereby being the most driven toward a category of ‘normal’. It is here Foucault argues that not only the effects of normalisation can be seen but also what normalisation is and how it is operating within society. Tracing the greatest positive benefits of such functioning normalisation and the relations of power formed by this normalisation, brings the analysis closer still to the operators of disciplinary power. Foucault presents a method of examining power that is an inversion of the top-down approach of the theory of sovereignty. Rather than legitimising a central body of power and examining how power may be dispersed from this central body, Foucault is examining the on the ground effects of power and tracing it backward up through its relations to those instigating the techniques used to dominate. Which leads onto the second task, which is to differentiate and expose the relations of power that are domination and subjugation.

Our second task should be to reveal relations of domination, and to allow them to assert themselves in their multiplicity, their differences, their specificity, or their reversibility.

Here Foucault makes it clear that domination is the primary mode of relation that should be investigated. It is by dominating relations of power that power is exercised over people in order to influence and control their behaviour. Power exists in every relation but it is only in relations of domination in which the exercise of power is the means for manipulation. Power relations of domination are used in disciplinary technology, as previously discussed with the “Panopticon”, in which the behaviour of the individual may be shaped to a set of norms. Foucault equally stresses that such an investigation should not restrict the various forms in which relations of domination may be present, and the forms in which it may arise. The second task insists that no schematic nor framework be used because such tools (Foucault argues the theory of sovereignty is one such tool) only assists in the concealment of power relations. Once the relations of domination are shown in all their forms, without schematisation, without narrative, then the third task that Foucault sets out becomes apparent;

We have to try to identify the technical instruments that guarantee that they [relations of domination] function.

The structures that exist within society that perpetuate and install the relations of domination are at the core of understanding power. For Foucault, all power relations meet resistance, but it is the structures of knowledge that require change in order to alter power. This is what the third task presents to us, the recognition of the structures of knowledge that are the basis for power relations. It is the connection between knowledge and power that Foucault illustrates in History of Sexuality Vol. 1 and it forms the foundation for the problem of sovereignty in Society Must Be Defended. Thinking about power in terms of sovereignty disallows access to understanding disciplinary power that dominates modern society.

I have sketched Foucault’s understanding of sovereignty and disciplinary power. They are fundamentally different paradigms in that sovereignty is a means by which to theorise power that is centralised and disciplinary power is such that it is decentralised and intrinsically mutliplicitous. It is therefore Foucault’s argument that a theory of sovereignty is not an appropriate methodology for the study of modern power. He does not replace the theory of sovereignty with another theory, because power exists in numerous forms that cannot be captured by a single theory. Instead Foucault presses the need to study power in the places where it has a direct effect upon people and the relationships that it creates between people and structures of knowledge.

Bibliography



Dreyfus, H. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982


Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004


Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Allen Lane, 1977


Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality Vol. 1, London: Penguin, 1990


Ivison, D. “The Disciplinary Moment: Foucault, Law and the Reinscription of Rights” in The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy, Moss, J. (Ed.), London: Sage Publications, 1998


Neal, A. Cutting off the King’s Head: Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended and the Problem of Sovereignty, UK: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004


Patton, P. “Foucault’s Subject of Power” in The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy, Moss, J. (Ed.), London: Sage Publications, 1998


Ransom, J. Foucault’s Discipline, London: Duke University Press, 1997


Rouse, J. “Power/Knowledge” in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Gutting, G. (Ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994

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End Notes

Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg. 43
Rouse, J. “Power/Knowledge” in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Gutting, G. (Ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pg 101
Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg. 43-4
Ibid. Pg. 44
Ibid. Pg. 44
Ibid. Pg. 44
Ibid. Pg. 44
The term legal power is not used specifically by Foucault. I am using this term in reference to the lectures given by Daniel McLoughlin as a term he uses to encapture what Foucault refers to as ‘royal power’, ‘system of right’, ‘monarchical power’, et al. Foucault uses a range of terms to refer to and describe the sovereign power that predated the Enlightenment, and what he terms the advent of disciplinary power.
I will discuss this term later in the paper. Briefly now it is to be understood as the form of power Foucault argues was developed after the Enlightenment, which seeks to create specific subjects by normalisation.
Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg. 26
Ibid. Pg. 35
Rouse, J. “Power/Knowledge” in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Gutting, G. (Ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pg 100
Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg. 26
Ibid. 34
Ibid. Pg. 26
Ibid. Pg. 26
Rouse, J. “Power/Knowledge” in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Gutting, G. (Ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pg 100
Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg. 35
Ibid. Pg. 35
Ibid. Pg. 36
Ivison, D. “The Disciplinary Moment: Foucault, Law and the Reinscription of Rights” in The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy, Moss, J. (Ed.), London: Sage Publications, 1998. Pg 135
Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg. 36
Ibid. Pg. 36
Ibid. Pg. 36
Dreyfus, H. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982. Pg 153
Dreyfus, H. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982. Pg 153
Ibid. Pg 153-5
Ibid. Pg 153
Ibid. Pg 154
Ibid. Pg 154
Ibid. Pg 154
Ibid. Pg 154
Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg. 37
Ibid. Pg. 37
Ransom, J. Foucault’s Discipline, London: Duke University Press, 1997. Pg 80
The term norm is frequently used by Foucault in his discussion on disciplinary power. In contrast to laws or rules, the norm is the functional medium point for a body. That is to say that when a body is operating its capacities in a self sufficient and productive manner it is operating ‘normally’. Foucault says that norms form a particular social set, and are changed with the needs of society. I will particularly talk later in the essay about norms as they are used in disciplinary mechanics to effect bodily outcomes on individuals.
Dreyfus, H. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982. Pg 156
Foucalt, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Allen Lane, 1977. Pg 205
Dreyfus, H. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982. Pg 189
Ibid. Pg 188
Foucalt, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Allen Lane, 1977. Pg 170
Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg 45
Ibid. Pg 45
Foucalt, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Allen Lane, 1977. Pg 204
Patton, P. “Foucault’s Subject of Power” in The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy, Moss, J. (Ed.), London: Sage Publications, 1998. Pg 68
Ibid. Pg 68
Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College of France, 1975-76, London: Penguin, 2004. Pg 46
Foucalt, M. The History of Sexuality Vol. 1, London: Penguin, 1990. Pg 95

Labels: Foucault, law, patton, philosophy, power, sovereignty

  ¶ 10:47 pm 0 Comments

  PHIL3419 - Second Essay This essay will analyse Levinas’ critique of Merleau-Ponty’s account of intersubjectivity. In particular, it will concentrate on Levinas’ essays “On Subjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” and “Meaning and Sense” and their critical stance on Merlau-Ponty’s paper “The Philosopher and His Shadow”. I will firstly lay out a detailed textual analysis of Levinas’ position on Merleau-Ponty and follow with an interpretation of his ‘ethical relation’ . Throughout this analysis I will make reference to the sections of Merleau-Ponty that Levinas is critiquing. From this textual analysis I aim to show that Levinas’ critique is weak and his account of intersubjectivity is apparent in Merleau-Ponty. I achieve this by showing the ethical relation within Merlau-Ponty’s work.

In the paper “The Philosopher and His Shadow” Merleau-Ponty examines the phenomenological reduction of Husserl and in doing so he puts forward the foundations of his own account of intersubjectivity, which is later expounded in his major work Phenomenology of Perception. Firstly, Levinas argues in “Meaning and Sense” that Merleau-Ponty’s account of intersubjectivity is problematic, in that Merleau-Ponty’s subject subsumes the other’s alterity, and so Merleau-Ponty’s subject is sovereign . I will explain why Levinas uses his own interpretation, that Merleau-Ponty’s subject’s own subjectivity is imposed over mutual knowledge, as a wedge with which to critique Merleau-Ponty. Secondly Levinas claims that Merleau-Ponty’s ontological account does not explain the subject’s initial orientation toward the other, and that this is problematic because it implies that there is an initiator of relations that leaves Merleau-Ponty’s account incomplete. Levinas proposes in its place an account of intersubjectivity that does not rely on mutual knowledge by expounding the ethical relation – an account of the orientation of the subject toward the other, prior to knowledge.

In this essay, I will attempt to show that Merleau-Ponty already essentially contains the ethical relation as understood by Levinas, in that he presents intersubjectivity as an ambiguity that is both ethical and cultural. Here I will begin with an analysis of why Levinas breaks away from the ontological tradition. Examining in some detail three focuses of Levinas’ critique; the body, the sovereign subject, and ‘sedimentation’ .

Phenomenology has traditionally been studied in an ontological form, from Husserl through to Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. It is this form of the ontological that Levinas attempts to break from, and in so doing create a new vocabulary for phenomenology. Levinas is critical of (the traditional phenomenological form of) ontological study because of its reliance on the assumption that categories of knowledge exist previous to and inform relations with others. For Levinas, this is unacceptable; thus, he gives up the ontological approach to phenomenology in favour of his own claim, that the relation between the subject and other exists prior to knowledge. This is the crux of Levinas’ objection to Merleau-Ponty – that his ontologically founded approach destroys the alterity of the other because it forgets or covers over the fact that the other cannot be reduced to the same.

I will firstly begin with the critique of the body that Levinas puts forward, and how he finds Merleau-Ponty’s definition of the body unsuitable for his project. For Merleau-Ponty begins with the body; the body is the subject. The first problem for Levinas then is to determine the manner in which Merleau-Ponty constructs the body as subject. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is already constituted with a structure of understanding of what is being experienced; the body as a home for perception is perceiving in categories of knowledge. He points out that the body is “meshed into the visible world” and is yet aware of its reference to those things in the world. Levinas remarks that Merleau-Ponty only mentions an in-between (the subject and the world) which is not constructed from categories of knowledge, this is where Levinas intends to begin. The body that Merleau-Ponty constructs is not reduced to a condition that Levinas is satisfied to begin his project with. Levinas does not want this body that is already filled with understanding, and a frame of reference on the world, because such a body would, according to Levinas, seek to understand the other - and to do so would be to limit and destroy the other’s alterity. For understanding is a process in which the foreign is made the same in the subject’s totality. Levinas wants to avoid the Hegelian dialectic of subsumation of the other by the subject because, as he claims, the uniqueness of the other would be lost. But Merleau-Ponty does not restate such a dialectic, contrary to Levinas’ claims; rather he pursues an understanding of space through the motility (and intentionality) of the body. Merleau-Ponty prescribes signification on the interaction between the body and the world, whereby meaning is induced by how the subject uses the world and is affected in turn by the world. It is through this motility that Merleau-Ponty makes the connection between interiority and exteriority and ascertains that the other is in the world of the subject. Levinas is critical of Merleau-Ponty grounding the relationship between subject and other in the same world. He insists that Merleau-Ponty does rely on shared knowledge, which is actually a construct of the subject. So Levinas is critical of the body that Merleau-Ponty proposes because of its built-in functions of understanding that allow it a dominating role in the relationship it has with the other. Levinas focuses his account of subjectivity on the space between the subject and the world, and this is where he posits his subject, void of any framework of understanding.

Now I turn to the problem of the sovereign subject that Levinas raises in Merleau-Ponty’s intentionality. The intentionality that is bound to the subject’s motility is not subjectivity but, Merleau-Ponty claims, is affected by the world. Despite this Levinas argues that such intentionality creates a sway of sovereign power held by the subject over the other. Although shaped by the world, of which the other is a part, intentionality forms a framework for motility and is thus thrown back onto the world (and so onto the other, who is in the world). Levinas contends that via motility the subject presupposes the condition and prepares itself to meet the other by creating an alter-ego – hypothetical other – based on subjectivity. The alter-ego is a structure that allows the subject to relate to the other via similarities. The other will either live up to or disappoint these similarities. Regardless the subject is sovereign in the sense that the process of relation had been chosen by the subject. Whatever is in the world to be perceived must conform to the process of relation by the subject in order to be interpreted. The key point for Levinas is that the alterity of the other, the essential disruption, cannot be accounted for in any structure unless it has already been perceived. In which case the subject’s motility is not the first orientation to the other. Yet Merleau-Ponty presents the affectation of the world upon the subject as an opening up of the body and argues that the other is also met in these terms. If the alterity of the other is genuinely met in this opening of the body to the world, and the world to the body, then it should be reflected in the subject’s motility. Setting up the other between the world and the subject allows Levinas to avoid having motility reflect the alterity of the other. Alternatively Levinas does not require motility to explain the relationship to the other because the relationship is not occurring meshed in the world.

Finally, before turning directly to Merleau-Ponty, an examination of sedimentation will strengthen Levinas. Merleau-Ponty’s construction of meaning between the body and the world is derived from the lateral differences between them. The motility of the body opens it to being affected by the world, and the body has intentionality that effects the world. Merleau-Ponty calls the building up of meaning, via signification, sedimentation. The subject casts an intention over a object in the world by acting on it, and the action itself is shaped by the physicality of the object; signification takes the form of Culture, the world takes on the signification of motility and reciprocates. Having established this reciprocity Merleau-Ponty seeks to replicate a similar reciprocity between the body of the subject and the body of the other. Both bodies are affecting and effecting sedimentation and they share the same perceptual field as a background for the objects they perceive in the world. Perception is ambiguous, according to Merleau-Ponty, and in order to distinguish between things being perceived they need to stand out from something. The sedimentation of the subject serves as the background of the world from which perception is able to take place; sedimentation creates the context and contrast from which objects in the world can be foregrounded and illuminated from the rest of the world. Levinas finds fault in the signification the subject applies to the perceived world. Levinas argues that sedimentation cannot be the first relation because the subject signifies over and above the perceived world. The significations of the subject become more meaningful than mere perception, and of another order than that which is perceived. What Levinas is pointing to is that the alterity that the other is giving over is not of the same origin as sedimentation.

Using Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeality I will argue that Merleau-Ponty successfully posits perception as ambiguous despite Levinas criticisms. Intercorporeality, the subject and other belonging to the same meta-body, is Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to show the origins of cultural signification as the same as the gift of the other. The issue of intercorporeality, and especially Merleau-Ponty’s example of hands touching, is complex and warrants a hefty examination, yet for the sake of space I will use it only to illustrate the point of ambiguity. Merleau-Ponty is able to establish the perception as blurred between, the body as an object (that is perceived), and the body as a subject (that perceives). The distinction between what is touching and what is being touched does not exist; this is what the double touching demonstrates. The subject touches the left hand with the right, and in doing so feels the touch and the touching the left hand, and vice versa - a bodily reflection. The reflection results in confusion between the touched and the touching. So, in this case, Merleau-Ponty destroys the distinction between subject and object.

If the distinction between subject and object is blurred in my body, it is also blurred in the thing, which is the pole of my body’s operations, the terminus its exploration ends up in, and which is thus woven into the same intentional fabric as my body.

The lack of distinction implies for Merleau-Ponty the sameness of “fabric”, which draws out the metaphor that the subject and other belong to a similar body, an intercorporeality, like two hands. Levinas points out that the difficulty of intercorporeality lies in the fact that it is an affirmation of a shared knowledge of things in the world. Merleau-Ponty’s metaphor of the subject and other as two hands implies that each has knowledge of their part in the whole, and receives direction from that whole. What Levinas is highlighting is that Merleau-Ponty’s subject dominates shared knowledge, and so it is always the subject that ultimately totalises the difference of the other within understanding. For example Levinas claims that Merleau-Ponty’s account of sentiment remains based in knowledge because it relies on a system of values in order to be interpreted. For Levinas, a system of values must be understood by the subject previous to a relationship with the other. The values are possessed by the subject, perceived and understood by the subject alone and are not transferable to the other. Levinas claims that the handshake is not a vehicle for sentiment, but is sentiment itself. In doing so he removes any need for a system of values in order to interpret the sentiment that is being passed between the subject and the other. The sentiment is not being passed in the motility of the handshake, instead the sentiment is being actualised in motility and does not need to be mediated nor categorised.

Levinas is drawing out a different mode of relation to that of Merleau-Ponty. Instead of drawing a bodily connection in the touching Levinas argues that the relation is made by a ‘radical separation’ between the two bodies. So for Levinas there is no mediating intercorporeal connection between the two bodies and no system of mutual knowledge. What is left are two unmediated bodies, constructed without understanding of the world they perceive, and without intercorporeality. From here, Levinas proposes a starting point outside of history, because history implies that the other is already a part of the same. He develops the subject’s relation toward an absolute and unknowable infinity that is ethical, because ethics is aside and apart from history. The relationship between the subject and other is now an ethical relation - an insatiatable desire to experience the other’s unknown alterity in a way that is unmediated and hospitable, completely without the totalising effects of understanding nor the assumptions of mutual knowledge.

The ethical relation allows Levinas to construct an account of intersubjectivity without ontology. In doing so he incorporates the subject’s orientation toward the other as a desire not to own the alterity of the other but to experience this foreign alterity. For the ethical relation insists that morality, not history, is the first signification. The ethical relation is primordial but continually refreshed and recurring throughout relations with the other, existing previous to thought, decision making, and knowledge. The desire to experience the alterity (otherness) of the other without understanding it, avoids the destruction of the alterity that Levinas argues is present in Merleau-Ponty’s intercorporeality. Desire can be understood in terms of opposition to need, where need is the consumption of something other than self for enjoyment resulting in fulfilment (e.g. eating) which can be satiated. Whereas desire is insatiatable and is not for the consumption of the something other but to be in the presence of the other’s alterity. The orientation of the subject to the other, for Levinas, is ethical in the responsibility the subject feels for the preservation of the alterity that the subject desires.

Levinas uses the metaphor of the face – le visage – in order to explain the nature of the ethical relation. The face is an appearance of the other that signifies without context and perfectly, but is also the single reason for the expression of the subject. The signification of the other stands alone, it has no schema attached to it and is not related to any body of knowledge. For the other does not occupy the world, its infinity breaks the ego of the subject in an unrelenting movement toward the subject. The face is an overwhelming apparition that completely smothers the totality of self held by the subject, but it does not destroy that totality; rather it speaks, and it is the act of speech that makes the subject question itself. This is the first signification that Levinas puts forward in contrast to the cultural signification he critiques in Merleau-Ponty. There exists no measures of judgment because a sense of morality is required in order to make judgement. The other is the first gesture of morality and in the very face of the other is an infinity, a nothing. There is nothing that can say more, that can express an infinity larger, than the one expressed by the face; the face gives more than it ever receives. The infinity presented to the subject places a responsibility upon the subject to respond. In the subject’s questioning of its own ego it is made aware of this responsibility. It is the subject’s arrival to its own sense of responsibility that makes this relationship inherently moral. There is not a set of processes or announcements in orientation, rather the orientation is the first moment of urgent self-questioning. There is a sense in Being brought up by the force of speech flowing only to the subject from the other. The flow coming from the other cannot be constrained with knowledge or culture as it is with Merleau-Ponty, nor can it be linear, for the saying is direct and contentless, it is epiphany alone. The ethical relation precedes all cultural relations and allows Levinas to explain why in the first instance the subject is oriented toward the other; why the relationship exists at all.

Let me now argue that in two separate modes Merleau-Ponty incorporates the ethical relation into intercorporeality. Firstly as the body of the subject that exists for the other and not for the self. This is the extroceptive body that is examined in “The Child’s Relations with Others” – the body of the subject exists for-others before the subject is knowledgeable of their own body. It cannot be wholly perceived by the subject at any stage; like a camera lens it cannot capture itself. Merleau-Ponty argues that the existence of the body as a perceivable object in the world is a primordial orientation toward others and that without a concrete perception of one’s own body there can be no clear separation between the subject and the other. Furthermore the mirror phase never completes a concrete perception of the subject’s body for-others. A specular image is created whereby the subject comes to recognise that their body exists for-others, one that has been and continues to be an expression for-others. The specular image represents the subject’s own infinity back toward them and as such creates an alienation. The subject lives with this alienation by idealising the specular image in the mirror in vanity, for there is no constant nor overbearing control that the subject’s consciousness may have over the body-for-others. Here Merleau-Ponty has a relationship with others that is not consciousness nor sedimentation. The alienation Merleau-Ponty describes with the specular image is a representation of the (greater) alienation that occurs with the other. The alienation experienced by the subject in relation to the other is similar to the radical separation that Levinas uses as a basis for the ethical relation. Consequently in the mirror phase Merleau-Ponty examines the alterity of the other and its effect on the subject via the subject’s reflexive grasping of the image of its own alterity. The specular image does not destroy the subject as the felt but throws the formation of self as feeling into question. Prior to the specular image the child’s sense is not limited to the body but feels for-others; the specular image throws a singularity, the body, into the feeling for-others. So Merleau-Ponty accounts for the subject/other relationship on both cultural and ethical grounds. There exists for Merleau-Ponty no processes in the sense that there is not a lineation of one event after another and so there is no precultural account.

Secondly Merleau-Ponty argues that the subject/other relation is fundamentally ambiguous and blurred. That the relation is simultaneously oriented ethically and culturally, so that the subject relates with the other in both modes. In Merleau-Ponty’s examination of ‘psychological rigidity’ he develops an ethics from the subject’s choice of self value in the body for-itself over the in-itself. There exists both a relation to the other that is ethical and a relation that is cultural. The two relations are to be understood as inseparable and working as perception simultaneously, in complete delineation. Merleau-Ponty stresses the point of understanding these two relations together.

What must be understood, moreover, is that the question of a causal sequence of the two phenomena is meaningless. For it to be meaningful would require that the two phenomena be capable of standing in isolation. But this is never the case.

Perception is ambiguous at its very first in the body’s orientation. At once it views the other in the world, culturally enmeshed, while also viewing the other in-between the subject and the world, appearing alone as an alterity that alienates. Speech highlights the ambiguity of perception in its two fundamental presuppositions, which are firstly, that speech requires shared gestures to form a background to communication, that it is built up by sedimentation and secondly, that speech is fundamentally animated outside of culture by the disorientation, the will to communicate, that is caused by the alterity of the other. There are subjects who are in denial of perceptual ambiguity and thus rely on an ambivalence of attitude. However, underneath an ambivalent attitude (which Merleau-Ponty calls a mask) perception is still ambiguous - as such the denial of the ambiguity of perception is a denial of how the world affects the subject and how the alterity of the other affects the subject , and both are indifferences to difference. Merleau-Ponty outlines the concept of ‘rigid liberalism’ (a unique sub-type of psychological rigidity) which he uses to explain the importance of difference, a point that Levinas raises as the non-indifference to difference. The subjects that Merleau-Ponty are concerned with here are ones that cannot recognise the difference between individuals within community. These subjects use the identity of the individual to shut down their perception of cultural differences. Levinas builds Merleau-Ponty’s account only from sedimentation and thus accuses Merleau-Ponty of being indifferent to difference. Yet Levinas, in his own argument, is forced to lean upon the cultural when he explicates the generosity of ethics toward the other as a Western development. The affect of sedimentation is at play in the birth of the ethic that favours the alterity of the other. Levinas uses the relationship of Western culture, which he favours because it has an ethical relation, toward other cultures as an example of the ethical direction.

A reading of Levinas forces us to return to Merleau-Ponty in a new light, and what we find upon the return is a complete account of ethics and culture. Rereading Merleau-Ponty, one recognises similar key phrases and language present in Levinas. So we find the very argument of Levinas’ critique already present in Merleau-Ponty. Ultimately what makes Levinas’ critique a failed critique is his interpretation of Merleau-Ponty in a temporal sense, that he interprets Merleau-Ponty as putting the subject first and the other as always in-the-world.
Bibliography


Bernasconi, R. “One Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonisation and its Ethics” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Johnson, G.A. & Smith, M.B. (Eds), Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1990

Davis, C. Levinas: An Introduction, Polity, 1996

Diprose, R. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002

Levin, David M. “Tracework: Myself and Others in the Moral Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 6, 1997, pp. 345-92

Levinas, E. “Meaning and Sense” in Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis (trans). Drodecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987

Levinas, E. “The Face” in Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Phillippe Nemo, Richard A. Cohen (trans), Pittsburgh: Duquense University Press, 1985, pp 85-92

Levinas, E. “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” in Outside the Subject, Micheal B. Smith (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994

Levinas, E. “Sensibility” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Johnson, G.A. & Smith, M.B. (Eds), Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1990

Levinas, E. “Preface” in Totality and Infinity: An Essay On Exteriority, A. Lingus (trans), Pittsburgh: Duquense University Press, 1969

Merleau-Ponty, M. “Dialogue and Perception of the Other” in Prose of the World, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973

Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Child’s Relation with Others”, in The Primacy of Perception, William Cobb (trans), James Edie (ed), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964

Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Intertwining – The Chiasm” in The Visible and the Invisible, A. Lingis (trans), Northwestern University Press, 1968

Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Philosopher and His Shadow” in Signs, Northwestern University Press, 1964

Sanders, M. “From Time to the Flesh: Levinas and Merleau-Ponty”, Philosophy Today, 43, 1999, pp 146-53

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End Notes

The ‘ethical relation’ is the phrase used by Levinas to describe the precultural relationship the subject has with the other. I will detail what this phrase means and its relationship to intersubjectivity later in the essay, but for now it is to be understood as Levinas’ account of the subject/other relation.
The phenomenological reduction that Merleau-Ponty examines in “The Philosopher and His Shadow” is that of Nature and Mind. Merleau-Ponty credits Husserl’s paper “Ideen II” with the opening up of a phenomenological project beginning with the hypothetical reduction to the ‘solipsist’ position and a relationship to the sensible. The reduction moves to one side and out of concern all empirical data, which results for Husserl in being left with a transcendental Ego from which he begins a phenomenological project.
The sovereign subject is a subject that imposes their own subjectivity onto the realm of mutual knowledge. What I will try to show is that Levinas is making the point that mutual knowledge cannot be the starting point for intersubjective relations because each subject has to at first acknowledge that mutual knowledge through their own subjectivity. This drives Levinas into abandoning knowledge altogether as a starting point and proposes ethics.
I will explain Merleau-Ponty’s term sedimentation later in the essay.
Levinas, E. “Meaning and Sense” in Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis (trans). Drodecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987
Levinas, E. “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” in Outside the Subject, Micheal B. Smith (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Pg 101-3. Levinas begins to explain the ‘ethical relation’ and his project of showing the basis of human relation is not knowledge but has its first movement beyond the world.
Ibid.
Levinas, E. “Preface” & “Dwelling” in Totality and Infinity: An Essay On Exteriority, A. Lingus (trans), Pittsburgh: Duquense University Press, 1969
Levinas, E. “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” in Outside the Subject, Micheal B. Smith (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Pg 98
Ibid.
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Philosopher and His Shadow” in Signs, Northwestern University Press, 1964 pg. 166
Levinas, E. “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” in Outside the Subject, Micheal B. Smith (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Pg 98
Levinas, E. “Sensibility” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Johnson, G.A. & Smith, M.B. (Eds), Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1990. Pg 63
The movement of the body through the world, and how the world responds to such movement.
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Philosopher and His Shadow” in Signs, Northwestern University Press, 1964 pg. 168
Diprose, R. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002
Levinas, E. “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” in Outside the Subject, Micheal B. Smith (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Pg 99
Levinas, E. “Sensibility” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Johnson, G.A. & Smith, M.B. (Eds), Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1990. Pg 62
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Philosopher and His Shadow” in Signs, Northwestern University Press, 1964 pg. 167
Levinas, E. “Meaning and Sense” in Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis (trans). Drodecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. Pg 88
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Philosopher and His Shadow” in Signs, Northwestern University Press, 1964 pg. 167
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Philosopher and His Shadow” in Signs, Northwestern University Press, 1964 pg. 167
Ibid. 168
Levinas, E. “Meaning and Sense” in Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis (trans). Drodecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. Pg 81-3
Ibid. 83
Intercorporeality is foremost a dominant feature of Merleau-Ponty’s account of intersubjectivity. It is consistently covered by Merleau-Ponty from “The Philosopher and His Shadow” right through to his last work “The Visible and Invisible”. It is a key feature of how he explains the relationship to the other and how the subject is situated in the world. Very much has been written on this issue, and I cannot do it complete justice in this essay alone and answer the question presented for this essay. So for my purposes I will present here in so far as it is integral for my argument that Merleau-Ponty substantiates a perception that is ambiguous and is held both culturally and ethically.
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Philosopher and His Shadow” in Signs, Northwestern University Press, 1964 pg. 166
Ibid.
Ibid. pg 167
Levinas, E. “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” in Outside the Subject, Micheal B. Smith (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Pg 101
Ibid.
Levinas, E. “Sensibility” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Johnson, G.A. & Smith, M.B. (Eds), Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1990. Pg 64
Levinas, E. “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” in Outside the Subject, Micheal B. Smith (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Pg 101-2
Levinas uses this phrase in his paper “On Subjectivity” on page 102. It is his first indirect reference in this paper to what he refers to commonly as the infinity of the other. Levinas italicises the term as such; radical separation.
Levinas, E. “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty” in Outside the Subject, Micheal B. Smith (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Pg 101-2
Levinas, E. “Meaning and Sense” in Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis (trans). Drodecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. Pg 91
Levinas, E. “Preface” in Totality and Infinity: An Essay On Exteriority, A. Lingus (trans), Pittsburgh: Duquense University Press, 1969. Pg 26-7
Bernasconi, R. “One Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonisation and its Ethics” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Johnson, G.A. & Smith, M.B. (Eds), Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1990. Pg 72
Levinas, E. “Meaning and Sense” in Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis (trans). Drodecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. Pg 102-4
Ibid. pg 107
Levinas, E. “Meaning and Sense” in Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis (trans). Drodecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. Pg 95
Ibid.
Ibid. pg 98
Ibid. pg 96
Ibid. pg 97
Ibid.
Ibid. pg 98
Bernasconi, R. “One Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonisation and its Ethics” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Johnson, G.A. & Smith, M.B. (Eds), Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1990. Pg 75
Levinas, E. “Meaning and Sense” in Collected Philosophical Papers, A. Lingis (trans). Drodecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. Pg 98
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Child’s Relation with Others”, in The Primacy of Perception, William Cobb (trans), James Edie (ed), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Pg 135
Ibid.
Ibid. pg 136
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. pg 137
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Child’s Relation with Others”, in The Primacy of Perception, William Cobb (trans), James Edie (ed), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. pg 106
Psychological Rigidity is a term used by Merleau-Ponty to describe subjects that deny the ambiguity of perception in the psychological realm by relying on ambivalence. Such subjects form dichotomies of understanding and do not correlate conflicting statements or sentiment upon the same object. Merleau-Ponty looks closely at these subjects as a means to examine the nature of perception, which he argues as profoundly and primordially ambiguous, and when even denied as such continues to drive the subject's perception.
Ibid. pg 100-8
Ibid. pg 107-8
Diprose, R. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pg 182
Ibid.
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Child’s Relation with Others”, in The Primacy of Perception, William Cobb (trans), James Edie (ed), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. pg 101
Ibid.
Diprose, R. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pg 176
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Child’s Relation with Others”, in The Primacy of Perception, William Cobb (trans), James Edie (ed), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. pg 106
Merleau-Ponty, M. “The Child’s Relation with Others”, in The Primacy of Perception, William Cobb (trans), James Edie (ed), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. pg 106
Ibid.
Bernasconi, R. “One Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonisation and its Ethics” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Johnson, G.A. & Smith, M.B. (Eds), Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1990. Pg 78-9
Ibid.

Labels: essay, intersubjectivity, levinas, merleau-ponty, philosophy, ros

  ¶ 10:45 pm 0 Comments

  train trip come over here. come on. he makes some little tetchy noise. like you want to write pft, but that would just give some arrogance. no. what he wanted was an expression of air that cover 'what' 'why not' and 'when' all at one and 'immediately'. so i shifted my scene and went straight in for the kiss and lied next to him. he felt really good and let his mind go for a wander on the extension leash. the long one with an elastic rope. watched a small dog curdle out into the road while crossing and routinely yanked into a zone of respective safety. like the sheer jerk would remove a limb or two. yet better than flat rat. a squished dog under wheel or heel is not a pretty thing. still not yet an improvement on the original. but getting close. watched a little trooper no leash no coil. with some tall middle aged thing in a sweater and jeans. why that little bitch stopped, crawled and ran at his very command. such fidelity enrages me. get my hurling breasts out and conquer i say. lay their minds beset in the mountains. just go out and about, set upon reaping what you have for so long sewn. this community based between your legs, my legs, our legs. given birth to our fraternal son, turn patron. in the ass.

jumped on this train and started talking. started thinking. about the time i jumped on this train and started talking. started wincing. don't know whatever about, but it was a jolly good laugh., had the darndest feeling of just getting to know someone. that very instant where someone is forever entertaining because you know absolutely nothing about them. but they soon change and grow thin. yet on that very occasion that very outing we found so much together, found so much to hate together. obstacles and aggressive paths found their way to us and now it was a facing of together and no longer alone. it was refreshing. perhaps not easier but different. not just guessing the particular moves of the enemy, which were often similar and most always rugged and ill thought. now another layer, another dimension. working in cahoots. watching another's defensive dance and dancer with. learning and teaching. looking to improve and work with a new found alliance. to best anticipate and maximize effectiveness. but it's not like that know, and can tell the learning has been done. can just as good if not better work just as one. alone again. but now forever in the possible grasp of yet another, unknown, to partner up and learn new tricks, so what is worth discovering.

and that's when we talked in the train. of yet another yardstick of human measure. human worth, like some great plato dialogue, underlying tones of rhythm and rhyme. speaking in the couplet. forcing and forcing still. it has been running around my head so it's most definitely short of breathe. we were talking about me this time. i did, have done a great good job of circles, but still i haven't said fuck once.

better get some fuckin sleep.

met a girl called tetchie. love to fuck her. auf wiedersing.  ¶ 10:44 pm 0 Comments