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From: Unleesh@xxxxxxx
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To: Unleesh@xxxxxxx
Subject: BwO
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 07:00:53 EDT
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The "body without organs" has two possible models as starting points for lines
of departure and connection:
1) The zygote prior to its cellular differentiation into organ systems. This
is a body literally without the organs medical science catalogued in anatomy.
This is a body as a developing system that has not yet made decisions or
critical bifurcations regarding what will do what when and where. It is highly
volatile, however, as even the oocyte (the egg) has differing polarities or
zones that may become the tendings of organ-systems. Embryologists refer to an
"embryological field" that is supplementary to the matter of the flesh and
which helps organize the field, an emergent "whole" (or rather moment by
moment synthesis) prior to its parts. Desire is an organizing process that
differentiates but wishes to remain in process and not colonized by its
differentiating mechanisms. (As when D&G refer to the body without organs
throwing off the desiring-machines that populate them). The system has a
tendency to recapitulate its bifurcations in attempts to explore other
developmental possibilities. It thus has an inherent "desire" for exploration,
which is why the BwO is so connected to desire.
2) The "body without organs" refers to the process of coordinating and
associating cognitive-motor events. The newborn baby, already having developed
physical organs, still has a nervous system that is highly open and volatile,
just as the oocyte was, and has to construct a neural organization of the
body. This neural organization of the body, of its capacities for movement and
coordination, is what is addressed in Feldenkrais and Alexander training,
where awareness is brought to habitual unconscious movements to return them to
their bifurcation points where they could have become other qualities of
movement. The baby learns its body. It organizes an ocean of sensations into
islands of consistency that converge and coordinate, producing the body.
Technically, before this point, phenomenologically, there is no "body". As
these islands solidify, these functional centers merge and crystallize into a
habitual experience of the body. The body without organs, then, in this sense
is the sensation-al open system of the nervous system, the loose, open "body-
ing" without exclusion to functional zones.
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From: Unleesh@xxxxxxx
Return-path: <Unleesh@xxxxxxx>
To: Unleesh@xxxxxxx
Subject: BwO
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 07:00:53 EDT
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
The "body without organs" has two possible models as starting points for lines
of departure and connection:
1) The zygote prior to its cellular differentiation into organ systems. This
is a body literally without the organs medical science catalogued in anatomy.
This is a body as a developing system that has not yet made decisions or
critical bifurcations regarding what will do what when and where. It is highly
volatile, however, as even the oocyte (the egg) has differing polarities or
zones that may become the tendings of organ-systems. Embryologists refer to an
"embryological field" that is supplementary to the matter of the flesh and
which helps organize the field, an emergent "whole" (or rather moment by
moment synthesis) prior to its parts. Desire is an organizing process that
differentiates but wishes to remain in process and not colonized by its
differentiating mechanisms. (As when D&G refer to the body without organs
throwing off the desiring-machines that populate them). The system has a
tendency to recapitulate its bifurcations in attempts to explore other
developmental possibilities. It thus has an inherent "desire" for exploration,
which is why the BwO is so connected to desire.
2) The "body without organs" refers to the process of coordinating and
associating cognitive-motor events. The newborn baby, already having developed
physical organs, still has a nervous system that is highly open and volatile,
just as the oocyte was, and has to construct a neural organization of the
body. This neural organization of the body, of its capacities for movement and
coordination, is what is addressed in Feldenkrais and Alexander training,
where awareness is brought to habitual unconscious movements to return them to
their bifurcation points where they could have become other qualities of
movement. The baby learns its body. It organizes an ocean of sensations into
islands of consistency that converge and coordinate, producing the body.
Technically, before this point, phenomenologically, there is no "body". As
these islands solidify, these functional centers merge and crystallize into a
habitual experience of the body. The body without organs, then, in this sense
is the sensation-al open system of the nervous system, the loose, open "body-
ing" without exclusion to functional zones.
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