Knowing

SrnrcR KNuurru-R Sounding Out the Core: The Embodied Self and Wordless

Knowing

This essay outlines the concept of the embodied self as a tentative part in formulating postrational subjectivity. It serves the idea of empathic reading that can resist numbness under the pressure of growing media. Postulating a self which has an embodied core implies a capability of becoming aware and reflecting affectively on the non-verbal exchange of self and other. For this purpose, I investigate the neural basis of this hypothesis in terms of Antonio Damasio, and adapt it to Daniel N. Stern's idea of the present moment as the felt locus of implicit knowing. Moreover, to illuminate the working of the em-

bodied self in reading, I use as an example Friederike Mayröcker's poem "Fotografie." Since the poem sensitively echoes implicit memory in traumatic loss, I explore its figures as multisensory signs which the poet transfers from her emotional memory into language. Especially the metonymies of the poem express the dual affect of sorrow and love when verbally bridging the temporal delay typical of traumatic memory.

I.

Towards Embodied Symbolization

As I read Friederike Mayröcker's poem "Fotografie" for the first time in 2004, its perceptual and emotional power pervaded my reading experience on a multisensory bodily level. Every time since, Mayröcker's lyrical 'l' epitomizes for me a profound sense of dialogical subjectivity with her beloved, Ernst Jandl. When viewing an old photo in 2003, three years after Jandl's death, Mayröcker writes: Photography for Ernst Jandl

with his big left hand he covers my big right hand with his big warm left hand he covers my big cold right hand I have hidden my big right cold hand his big left warm hand rests protectively on my fleeting

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right big cold hand while Stefan Moses is taking our picture in the year'76 each ofus covering up face with the other big hand (as Stefan Moses asks) we hold on to each other in this unprepossessing gesture that in retrospect brings tears to my invisible eye .. your

-

bloodstream spills over into my bloodstream and then in overgrown undying lover

Unavoidably, for me the poem brings about the question of the role of the implicit, emotional memory in the constitution of selftrood.2 But "Fotografie" also incamates in language the photo's double temporal structure of 'this will be' and 'this has been' defined famously by Roland Barthes in his Za chambre

claire (Barthes 1981,96).3 This effect is not provided only with an abstract experience of the fusion of 'now' and 'then'. Rather, in order to be experienced, this dual temporality necessitates a memorized sensation of the sensory qualities of the body such as the touching hands, tears, and pulsating bloodstream. Just as Barthes re-experienced the affect-laden memory of his mother while viewing her photograph, Mayröcker's writing integrates the past and present by simulating the earlier experience of perceptual and emotional sensations that arise from her implicit memory (cf. ibid., 64f .,78f .). This evokes the idea that in order to reach the poem's meaning potential, any reader must have in her or his embodied mind the same capability of simulating the reciprocal touch of the writer and her beloved. Vigorously awakening the sensory perceptions of my experiential self,a "Fotografie" points to the exigency of a revised notion of post-Cartesian sub-

Mayröcker, 2004, 762; translated by Kevin Perryman, Babel XIY original poem with the photo is also found in ibid., 69f.

,

2006,

7,1

. The

The ideas ofmy essay are inspired by the presentations and discussions ofthe Conference "Hello, I Say, Itk Me"- (Re)Constructions of Subjectivity in Contemporary Literature and Culture, held in Dlisseldorf, in April,2008. Especially, the status of the concept of self came clearly visible during the final discussions, which gave me new insights into this fascinating topic.

In his early essays, Barthes outlines the temporal double structure of the photo as a combination of 'being-there' and 'having-been-there.' On this double temporality in relation to affectivity, see Knuuttila, 2008. The term 'experiential self draws from Vittorio Guidano's cognitive theory of mind (Guidano, 1991).

Sounding Out the Core

53

jectivity. It leads me to think anew of the postmodern concept of a fragmented human subject, especially its bodiless, decentered nature. Considered to be constituted by discourses, norTns, and ways of being, the postmodern subject is understood as a process which is continually built and rebuilt in and by prevalent hegemonic narratives (Braidotti, 1991, Somers, 1994, Seigel, 2005, 603650). Such a construction seems to not permit the subject to have any experiential, emotional core or centre. Rather, being figured as a mere textual intersection of cultural discourses which undertake the role of meaning making for any social subject, the postmodern textual subjectivity erases the sociohistorical agency of an individual-in-the-flesh and makes it bloodless, even dispensable.

However, after three decades of postmodern irony in literature, anthropology and historiography, the concept of a historically situated subjectivity is revived in a new shape. In the humanities, much as a response to feminist and postcolonial theories, any subject is defined in relation to an 'other,' and characterized by the dimensions of sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, and social class. Furthernore, non-dualistic ideas in the philosophical and psychological theories of mind are encouraged by discoveries made by current neuroimaging techniques and neuropsychological testing. Typical of this double revival is a change in conceptualization when rejecting the notion of a fixed 'identity.' Instead of a fragmented 'subject(ivity),' the debate now circles around a variety of concepts of stratified 'self or 'selfhood' and the relationship between its self-

reflective part and experiential bodily components (Seigel, 2005, 33f.). Two interconnected points stand out in this theoretical shift. First, despite their call for historical positioning, many new approaches repudiate the possibility of a core for (any) concept of self (Martin and Barresi, 2006,297ff.). Just as a decentered postmodern 'subjectivity' was seen as a battlefield of discourses, now the 'self is believed to be disjointed for the benefit of its discursive multiplication.s Second, following this thinking, 'self is not (yet) understood as unified by the human body. That is, even though the unity of the organism as an experienced entity is seen to provide a background for the self, the human body is

s

The theories of self explore extensively the differences compared to other terms such as'identity' and'person(ality)' (see Martin and Barresi, 2006). The'self is held also as fragmented or divided within itself, while the Freudian division of subjectivity into .go, iO, and superego has a number of pertinent alternatives, presented in object relation and attachment theories.

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not yet taken as a social and dialogical entity in itself (ibid.,299,304, Seigel, 2005,652f ).6 But as Solms and Turnbull (2002, 105) state, aside from discursive modes, an emotional awareness of the felt condition of the self is an integral source of individual knowledge, action, and change. Prompted by this thought, my essay argues for the dialogical nature of an embodied, emotional selfhood. As its tentative core, I will examine the psychic correlate of the neural core self outlined by the neurophysiologist Antonio Damasio (2000).7 On the basis of this embodied core self, I propose with Arnold Modell (2003, 33ff.) that human metaphorical activity is regulated in and by an emotional unconscious which pervades all human interaction, and is responsible for the symbolic cooperation of memory and imagination. What is more, in this metaphorical information processing, metonymy acts as an affective marker in the continual recontextualization of an embodied subjectivity (ibid., 102f.). As I will show in the following four parts of this essay, direct embodied experience is constitutive to the notion of self. I start with some remarks on postrational subjectivity and the concept of the embodied mind developed by current cognitive science. Second, I will speciS the concept of an embodied mind by elaborating on Damasio's idea of the core self and his theory of emotion in the formation of an extended consciousness and the autobiographical self. Third, I will enrich the idea of the embodied mind with Stern's theory of wordless cognition which is supposed to be a function of our implicit, bodily memory. I thus argue for an intentional self which is innately constructed to encounter the other in a two-way intersubjective exchange of wordless cognition that organizes any symbolic language with dynamic emotional meanings. Fourth, in the light of these ideas I will analyze the meanings of Mayröcker's "Fotografie" by focusing on those literary devices which mediate an empathic reciprocity between the poet and her beloved. With its bodily metonymies which mediate the affect felt towards the lost other, I wish to show the impor-

As Jerrold Seigel (2005,652) states in the spirit of Max Weber, the problem of how social, bodily, and reflective factors contribute to the formation ofthe selfin cultural relations is a value-loaded issue since it always depends on some partial point of

view.

My approach originates from my studies of trauma narratives, which represent an important case in point in epitomizing the intimate relationship between narrative and embodied memory (Brewin, 2005).


tance

55

of an empathic reading to the practices of literary research, and that of

embodied knowing in the development of our social agency.

II.

In Search ofa Postrational Self

The most inspiring source when reformulating the concept of a 'postrational' subjectivity is the theory of the'embodied mind'developed by the radical constructivist branch of cognitive science (Guidano, 1991, Varela et al., 1993).8 The idea of an embodied mind supposes that the experience of selfhood is rooted in the human brain's innate faculty of self-reflexive referentiality, where emotion and cognition seamlessly interact in constituting the knowledge of the individual self and of the actual world. During the past decade, this idea has gained support from numerous neuropsychological studies of the human brain, carried out originally by Damasio (1996) and Joseph LeDoux (1996). While these studies specify the cooperation of emotional brain structures with the analytical activity of human consciousness, they also suggest a renewed nondualistic theory of mind. Drawing openly on the pragmatic tradition deriving from William James, these studies contribute to resolving the seeming paradox in the fascinating observation voiced by John Locke 'that matter might think' (Martin and Barresi, 2006, 142).e Nevertheless, the embodied mind cannot be reduced to neuroscientific discoveries.l0 Rather, human social agency is gradually constituted by discursive, symbolic representations in a persistent bodily exchange with other people and the human semiotic environment, the Umwelt.

My term 'postrational' originates also from Guidano. ln The Self in Process (1991), he lays a fruitful basis for the concept ofprocessual selfdeveloping in a mutual affective and embodied connection with the m/other. Guidano's and Gianni Liotti's radical constructivism is based on Francisco Varela's and Humberto Mafurana's cowork in the 1970s, which created the concept of the'embodied mind'two decades later (Varela et a1.,1993). Yet, the idea of emotion as an epistemological vehicle is still underdeveloped in cognitive science. In Locke's An Essay Concerning Human (Jnderstanding (1690-1694), Peter H. Nidditch (ed.), (Oxford, 1979), 4.3 .6: 540f. (Martin and Barresi, 2006, 143, 327). Erich Kandel (2006,381) states: "What science lacks are rules for explaining how subjective properties (consciousness) arise from the properties of objects (interconnected nerve cells)." That is, one can never equate neurobiological functioning with that of psyche, for these systems are never compatible. As Damasio also states: "the incompatibility and incommensurability of these two disparate representative systems is doomed to remain etemal" (Damasio, 2000, 83).

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Today it is already possible to itemize the four central aspects of the embodied mind, all being innovations that promote the reorganization of the notion of fragmented selfhood. The first is Damasio's formulation of a dialogical core self around which an autobiographical self is narratively constituted during life (Damasio, 2000, 175,199). Damasio postulates the idea of core consciousness in order to explain the human brain's innate self-reflexive function (ibid., 169). Second, according to Damasio, emotion in human consciousness is typically ubiquitous and interactive in all cognitive activity.rr Motivating and regulating the choices and reasoning of the subject, emotion establishes the basis of our social capacity (Damasio, 200D.t2 A promising specification of this thesis is the discovery of the mirror neuron system that directly and immediately simulates the intentions, emotions, and actions ofthe other person on a neural level (Rizzolatti et al., 2001, Iacoboni, 2005).r3 The mirroring mode of anticipation is the foundation of our social faculty which enables interaction and communal living (Modell,2003, l85ff.). Third, in contrast to the postmodern linguistically oriented thinking, the visual, embodied way of processing knowledge is located on a hierarchical level above language within the functional structure of human consciousness (Damasio,2000, 108).'4 And finally, according to the famous studies of Eric Kandel, the human brain is continually modified due to

'gene expression,' which gives it an exceptional plasticity throughout life (Kandel, 1998, 457 -469).ts In what ways do these innovations, then, respond to humanist inquiries about the selfl How do they change our understanding of human conscious-

rr

Regarding emotion in literary reading, see Robinson,2005, l05ff., on emotion in literary semiotics, see Knuuttila, 2009. 12 The theory of emotion reformulated by LeDoux and Damasio is under active refinement by cognitive neuroscientists. Despite doubts concerning the relevance of neuroscience to Freudian psychoanalyical practice, its renewal is an ongoing process. One qualified reinterpretation is made by Modell, 2003. 13

tt

The neural correlate of mirroring the other person's intentions, feelings, and motivations is a complex mirror neuron system, discovered originally by Giacomo Rizzolatti, and tested first with humans by Marco Iacoboni (see Modell, 2003, l82f')'

This wordless knowing is a visuo-spatial, multisensory mode of processing knowledge (Damasio, 2000, 169). Being fundamentally metaphorical, this activity functions apart form language (Modell, 2003,29).

rs Kandel's Nobel prize-winning discovery of the 'gene expression' does not refer to genetic transformation, but to the manner in which genes manifest themselves during individual life, thereby directing our social impressions (Majava, 2005, 108).


ness articulated in literary presentations of selfhood? At the end of his major work on the history of the self, Jerrold Seigel (2005) ponders the unifying role

ofcorporealify for our existence

as unique

cultural beings:

To say that the self is bodily, relational, and reflective is not to say very much. The reason is that so much depends on how we understand each element. lust what is it thal our corporeality means for our ways of being the persons we are? How and how far does inherence in shared societies and cultures determine our individuality? (652, my emphasis)

Similarly to Seigel, Raymond Martin and John Barresi (2006) come up with musings about the relation of the experiential body and culture. They present their opinion as follows: [E]ach of us seems to have a kind of direct, experiential access to him- or herself that makes the development oftheories ofthe selfand personal identity, however interesting, seem somewhat beside the point [...] In sum, 1...) if there is unity in sight, it is the unity of an organism, not of the self or of theories about the self' [...] Ult is clear, just as it always was, that each of us humans is indeed fairly unified, just as we always thought that we were. But we are not unified by the soul or the self. l/e are unified by our bodies. Some day we may understand how. (302, 304, my emphasis)

These conjectures turn the focus onto the non-possessive way of seeing the other(s) as complementary and relational to the self in contrast to the iconizing, objecti$ing way of seeing.16 For this reason, Damasio's theory of mind is refreshing, as it does not underrate the body's share and supposes that the self is assembled by the embodied, dialogical mind whose unifying role is based on the innate properties of the human brain. Yet, to avoid the sociobiological error that mental functioning could be reduced causally to that of the brain itself, Damasio emphasizes that as cultural beings our social selves are continually constructed and reconstructed in human relationships, historical contexts and cultural discourses. As a result, while it does not deny the value of discursive subject-formation, the hypothesis of the neural core self represents a paradig-

'u

See more in Knuuttila, 2009. There I characterize the embodied way of seeing as 'indexical' in contrast to an iconizing seeing in terms of the semiotics of Ch. S. Peirce. Iconization possession and objectification is typical ofa xenophobic, sexist, or ageist way of seeing which relies on the mere outer appearance of the other, whereas indexical seeing reads and values the cultural specific, contextual nonverbal signs which foretell the other's emotions and intentions.

Sirkka Knuuttila

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matic change to a decentered theory of the self as it gives the human body unifuing role in the selfs cultural multiplicity.

III.

Does the Core Self Reside in

a

Implicit Memory?

In broad terms, Damasio's theory of the self as a multilayered, hierarchical process is as follows. The precondition of the whole process is a 'proto-self, which is a temporally coherent, non-conscious collection of neural patterns that represent the biological state of an organism (Damasio, 2000, 174, 199). Whenever an object modifies this unconscious proto-self by triggering a sensory change in its condition, the 'core self emerges as a transient and immediate mapping of the change of the neural balance of the organism. Since provoking objects are permanently available, the core self is constantly generated by them, whereby it appears continuous in time (ibid.). This neural core innately stores implicit memory which is in turn modified by the persistent flow of environmental impulses. The approximate mental correlate of this neural core is a psycho-social core self, around which a discursively modifiable narrative self is gradually formed. Thus the embodied self develops into an extremely flexible cultural instrument of living. In this Damasian vein, an integral part of the dialogical interaction between the world and this core self is the feeling of emotion, which gives a continual affective charge to its memory material. Proceeding gradually, an emotional excitation begins with a feeling of a somatic change in the organism, traditionally termed as 'affect' in emotion theories. But crucially for Damasio, aside from monitoring the change of this periphery, the human brain is innately capable of observing its own changing. The result is that, echoing simultaneously the endocrinal, visceral, and musculosceletal reactions in and of the "bodily theatre," and ils own changing, the brain eventually believes it is "feeling the feeling of emotion" (ibid., 8, 50ff., 55, 68f.). Only after this recognition does the cultural naming of the emotion become possible.rT The embodied events displayed at the level of the core self precondition the emergence of an extended consciousness. Based on the brain's innate self-reflexive propensity, the extended consciousness enables the formation of an autobiographical self, r7 Regarding Damasio's division of primary or universal, secondary or social and background emotions, see Damasio,2000,5lff. On the semiotics of emotions thus defined in literature, see Knuuttila, 2009.


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which is constructed as ever-reforrnulable narratives in an implicit dialogue between the embodied core self and its environment. In this temporal process, the experiential basis that underlies the refashioning pressure of cultural discourses gives the self the feeling of a unified whole (ibid., 173f.). Effectively, the Damasian autobiographical self seems to be compatible

with the principle of radical constructivism, which supposes narrativity to

be

an ontological property of human subjectivity, and not a mere method of representation (Somers, 1994, 607). But in postulating a permanent core prior to a narrative identity, Damasian selfhood leans on a biology-based historical reference, whereupon subjectivity can no longer be taken as a mere textual entity. Rather, whereas the non-verbal sensing ofthe corporeal core accumulates from moment to moment, the continuity of the narrative self is built upon the traces left in the implicit, bodily memory.'t To quote Damasio, as "objects of our personal past," these memory traces "substantiate our identity, moment by moment, and our personhood" (Damasio, 2000, 196).le As the implicit memory tacitly carries the emotions and sensations of the lived exchange with the world, the explicit memory in furn is faced with the task of rendering facts and events in verbal shape.2o

However, the alleged visual quality of the embodied cognition of the core self needs specification. As a clear contrast to the postmodern linguistic stance, the theory of the embodied mind emphasizes the primacy of mental images in human development. Preceding language, the nonverbal mental image is understood to reside in the implicit memory as a relational disposition that is organized by each of the sensory modalities (ibid., 169,318). That is, the mental I8

This accords with Guidano's processual model which shows the self as a continual dialogue with the surrounding world. It is a self-organizing, self-referential system of subjectivity, which continuously reorders an immediately experiencing 'l' into a conscious and continuous sense of self and the world,'Me.' Rationality is an intrinsically relativistic property ofsuch a subjectivity (Guidano, 1991,26f.,95t.). In Guidano's cognitive terms, the immediately lived material of the experiential 'I' is symbolized by the continuously self-reflexive'Me'to be integrated at the level of the autobiographical self (Guidano, 1991, 26f.). Concerning the model of an interactive, relational self in feminist literary research, see Schapiro, 1994, for narrative identity in social sciences, see Somers, 1994. Regarding the division of long-term memory into explicit and implicit memory, see LeDoux, 2002, 102. Whereas the explicit (declarative) memory consists of verbalizable facts and events, the implicit (non-declarative) memory is comprised of emotional and sensorimotoric (procedural) memory as well as conditional reflexes.

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image emerges as visuo-spatial, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and somatosensory sensations as well as those of touch, pain, temperature and balance.2l And as this multimodal process is an intrinsic mode of unconscious metaphor for-

mation, the question here

is how this implicit metaphorical knowledge -

- of the self is conveyed in verbal metaphors (Modell, For it is these inner multisensory 2003,32,180f.). and metonymies Stern's 'protonarrative envelope'

'images' that offer historical and cumulative material for an individual prefiguration of life, thereby making the formation of one's selftrood dependent on actual historical context and genetic heritage.

Ultimately, the preverbal metaphors of the lived material search their way out as to give human experience social and political meaning in public. A further problem then arises: To which extent are embodied mental images constructed by discourses? Can they ever be taken as pristine at all? Adapting Margaret Somers's statement that "struggles over narratives are [...] struggles over identities," we can undoubtedly say that struggles over embodied images are struggles over selves (cf. Somers, 1994, 631). Hence, if literary texts are to reveal uncharted realms of the human self, this necessitates finding poetic parallels to embodied metaphors felt in and by implicit knowing. Most importantly, this is a matter of transmuting into literary configurations the experiences of marginalized or otherwise ignored individuals and groups, which may resist the uniffing power of "everyman stories" regulated by dominant narratives (cf. ibid.,63 l). This leads me next to explore the awareness of the present moment as a pathway to embodied cognition which tacitly and metaphorically processes the "mass of the lived" for verbalization.22

2t

'Somatosensory' refers to visceral ('gut') reactions as well as the sense of balance in space and time. All these sensations together designate kinesthetic and proxemic qualities, that is, moving and taking one's place in space in relation to other people or objects.

With the "mass of the lived" ("cette masse du vöcu, non inventoride, non rationalisöe") I refer to Marguerite Duras's expression for her undifferentiated source of experience (in an interview with Jean Schuster, quoted in Armel, 1994, l5). Alessandro Baricco expresses the same thought: "Ideas are galaxies of little intuitions, a confused thing [...] in their pure state they are a marvelous mess [...] if you have a clear idea it is not an idea" (quoted in Stem, 2004,llTf .).


IV.

61

From Mirroring to Language: The Virtue of 'Now'

If

we conceive of the core self as primarily multisensory and emotional, we must ask ourselves how the felt image is translated into language. This is made clearer by Daniel Stern who explores how the originally lived implicit experience is conveyed in language in retrospect (Stem, 2004, 8f.). Stern tackles the problem by conceptualizing the embodied mind as a site of an adaptive evolutionary non-conscious where implicit knowledge is processed outside of words but can easily be made conscious.t' He pays special attention to the temporal structure of the subjective phenomenal 'now' - the kairos - thus mapping at a micro-level a phenomenal domain which Freud left outside his concept of fragmented psychic time (ibid., 4ff).24 As an outcome of his studies of a fleeting present moment, Stern outlines a model of a non-conscious'intersubjective matrix,' where much of our reciprocal exchange of knowledge occurs. And indeed, by directing awareness to this huge epistemological resource, the implicit experience of the self can easily be brought to the reach of linguistic expression. This faculty emphasizes the selfas a continuously regenerating social entity.

To uncover the authentic experience of the present moment, Stern writes down thick descriptions of the recollected moments of awareness lived by a number of test subjects (ibid., 15-22). In doing so, he wants to evidence the "unreachable experiential referent that language builds upon" (ibid., 9). According to Stern's research, the present moment appears to be lived in the embodied mind as a drama of short episodes of multisensory images each lasting 3 to 7 seconds. These moments of micro-kairos unroll discontinuously, separated from each other by small blackouts of unawareness. Felt as experiential wholes, the episodes consist of unfolding emotions, perceptions, and sensaBelonging to our evolutionary mode of social survival, adaptive non-conscious is complementary to the Freudian unconscious whose material, being held behind repression or denial, cannot be made conscious, but is rather manifested through dreams, hypnosis, puns, and lapses (Stem, 2004, I l9). Also much of implicit knowing cannot be put into words (ibid., 117). Stern defines the Greek term kairos as a passing moment in which a new state of things comes into being as time unfolds, while the new event appears to consciousness in a moment ofawareness. It is a "subjective parenthesis set offfrom chronos," linear, measurable time (Stern, 2004, 7). Similarly, Barthes in his 1979 lecture at the Collöge de France as well dealt with kairos when trying to experience the affects when viewing a photograph (specified in Knuuttila, 2008).

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tions which surface in awareness, alternating between memories and expectations in turn. Stern calls these fluctuating events'vitality affects'and outlines a temporal contour for their dramatic tension by describing their feeling qualities with kinetic terms, such as acceleration or deceleration, crescendo, climaxing, or fading away (ibid., 62ff.). Eloquently, he writes: Vitality affects, like musical phrases, carry the feeling ofleaning forward across the present moment. [...] In sum, vitality affects acting with the intentional-feeling-flow

provide a line ofdramatic tension that gives a feeling-coherence to the unfolding of the present moment. The vitality affects act like a temporal backbone on which the plot is hung. They also help the chunking process by containing the phrase within one envelope. They give the present moment the dramatic feel of a lived story. (ibid., 70)

Stern's experiment enriches our understanding of those epistemological processes that occur in and about the self in our implicit memory. Importantly, an integration of cognition and emotion can appear in the embodied mind only when not verbalized during the lived presence. Any linguistic performance would disturb this process by diverting awareness from the person's spontaneous inner activity, whereupon the experience of the present moment as implicit knowing gets lost (ibid., 137, l40ff.).2s But when some silent time is granted for wordless processing, the implicit form of cognition enhances the experience of the living (core) self in the world, and gives it a feeling of integrity (ibid., 75ff., l12ff.). At its best, the experiential material thus created paves the way to a displacement of meaning which tends to push forward individual change and increase social agency. Furthermore, the implicit way of knowing is extended by the non-verbal exchange lived in and by two persons, which gives them a sense of a relational

moving along in the present as social selves (ibid., 149-186). This exchange occurs as an immediate non-verbal mirroring of the other through visual bodily signs - Damasian "somatic markers" - which indicate the ongoing tacit processing of emotional knowledge between the parties (Damasio, 1996, l73ff., Stern, 2004, g, 77).26 Recorded by new neuroimaging techniques, the mind 25

Stem uses the dynamic term of 'knowing' instead of 'knowledge' to emphasize the constructive openness of the implicit process as opposed to fixed knowledge (Stem, 2004, 116). He also criticizes psychoanalytic practice for its language-centered nature.

According to Damasio's "somatic marker hypothesis," the sensory system detects peripheral changes in the heart, circulatory system, skin, and muscles that are com-


63

reading the other's intentions and emotions is currently understood to be the innate basis of our faculty to cooperate with other people.27 Occurring on an embodied level, this implies an empathic connection between individual core selves as a tacit recording of each other's emotions, as if their physiologies were simulating each other (Keen, 2006,207, Gallese, 2005). Today a significant number of researchers agree that we are born with minds that are especially attuned to other minds, which is manifested from birth by the intersubjective behavior between a mother and infant (Stern, 2004, 85f.).28 This completes the picture of the core self as a dialogical entity, reflected in Stern's term 'interpersonal matrix' which he characterizes as the embodied mind's "continuous co-creative dialogue with other minds" (ibid.,77). For literary research, it is important to note that the mirroring system is triggered not only by the signs of the other's body but also by a linguistic narrative of such signs (Keen,2006,207, Tettamanti,2005,273). This discovery turns the focus to a question posed above and articulated in linguistics and semiotics: How does corporeality affect semantics? (Ruthrof, 1997, 4D2e It suggests a linguistic practice that takes presymbolic images as our primary form of processing information, and supposes that these directly felt micro-narratives are translated and made explicit in linguistic metaphors. Likewise, recent empirical reading studies show how foregrounded literary episodes can elicit vivid multisensory memories in a sensing reader, and bring about emotional transitions in their imaginative reprocessing (Kuiken et a1.,2004,269,281ff.). A case in point which demonstrates the close link between image and language is the narrativization of trauma such as bereavement. During the shock following traumatic loss, the cooperation between narrative and embodied

manded by emotions in the brain and interprets these changes as feelings (Damasio,

1996, r73ff.). 2'1

The mutual exchange of emotion is a much explored psychological phenomenon in cognitive theory. What is new today is the neurophysiological verification of this implicit mode of interactive simulation called the mirror neuron system (see Modell,

2003,1840. For these stances in relation to Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror phase, see Stern, 2004, 83-89. In his "heterosemiotics," Horst Ruthrof wants to incorporate non-verbal signification into semantics, and sees multisensory signs activating linguistic expressions. He takes multisensory perception as a necessary part of the "natural presence" of language and writing (Ruthrof 1997, xiif.,4f ., 144ff.).

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memory is disengaged, whereupon the narrative envelope of the self is broken down (Brewin,2005, 139). This produces a radical rupture in personal autobiography, since the crystal-cold image of trauma is detached from the linguistic faculty and the overwhelming affect of horror (van der Kolk and van der Hart, 1995, 163f., l72ff).30 Ordinarily, the traumatic image is not subject to Freudian repression but can appear either spontaneously or as triggered by casual signs suggesting the traumatic event. But without affective symbolization during mourning this embodied image of trauma is not emotionally lived through, whereupon the survivor rather tends to enact the event in a world of painfully recurring flashbacks and dreams.3l Therefore, to be liberated from the grip of horror, the implicit image must find satisfactory verbal expressions as to integrate emotion and cognition within the autobiographical self. From this perspective, I now furn to interpret Mayröcker's poem "Fotografie" as an artistic working through loss, which converts the implicit mirroring of the beloved into effective metonymies of sorrow and timeless love.

V.

Love and Death in One Image

As a transformation from a mental image to poetry, Mayröcker's "Fotografie" marks the healing power of working through loss as triggered by a personal historical document. As the text imitates viewing a photo, it represents an ekphrasis in the meaning of a "verbal representation of visual representation" (Mitchell 1994: l5lf.)." What the lyrical'I'sees in the picture evokes the feelings of an embodied memory, which anchors the lived experience in the double time and place of the photo (Barthes, 1981,82ff.,97). The memory charges the poem with a tension of then and now, presence and absence, connection and separation. But as the metonymies of the text simulate the sensations elicited by the physical connection with the beloved, they do not produce a fragmentation of the body (cf. Emig, 1995, 155). Rather, organized according to the logics of the loving bond between the writer and her beloved, a chain of 30 There is an increasing amount ofneuroscientific evidence showing that in shock the neural connections between the cognitive visual and verbal cortex and the emotional middle brain structures are somehow blocked.

3t On Pierre Janet's classical and extensive studies of the dramatic enactment of trauma, see van der Kolk and van der Hart 1995, l60ff. 32 The persons'postures in the photo are exceptional as they accentuate their historical co-posing. See Babel XIV,2006,69.


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bodily signs creates an 'I' whose existence is inextricably connected to the other person through mirroring him at an embodied level of the core self. This figure guides the reader from the presence of self/other through a decisive transition towards a universal feeling oftransgressive love. Structurally, the poem consists of three different parts between which temporal displacements occur during reading. The first half- seven lines repeating the touch of the hands - embodies the present moment of the viewer-writer by expressing her implicit memory of a past moment in rhythmically accelerating parallelisms that portray touching hands. Then, forming a transition point, the middle part reveals the historical moment of posing, and identifies the photographer's role in the production of this specific image. In doing so, the text reminds one of its title, whereby it temporally moves one beyond the presence of seeing by opening up the double time structure of the photo: 'this has been' and 'this is.'33 This dual temporality tends to elicit an existential experience which finally paves the way for the timeless metaphorical climax of the poem. In the first seven lines, the loving body is reduced into one dual metonymy, the 'hands' of the writer and her beloved. While the image of the touching hands acts as a metaphor for love, it unveils the personal relationship of the lovers with the contrasting metonymies of warmth versus cold, and protection/holding versus hiding/fleeing. Through the crescendo of the hands the embodied presence dominates the verbal scene. Repeated seven times, the reciprocally feeling hands of the experiencing 'I' and 'he' maintain the embodied presence of 'this is' evoked by the photo, which seems to entirely erase the absence of the beloved and the fact of loss, 'this has been.' In this universe, tellingly, the (lost) beloved plays the warm and strong part, while the living and memorizing 'I' hides her cold self under his (lost) protection. Despite these signs of longing - or perhaps because of them - the intimacy of sensing and feeling expresses persistent connection, caring and safety. As a result, in the implicit memory of the 'l', the presence of the viewing is ambiguously fused with the absent presence of the past by the sensory qualities of the touch felt in the emotional core self. To sum up the first part in semiotic terms, the iconicity of the photograph attains indexical power from the embodied signs felt in the core self, which carry the referential presence of the lost to the present moment.

3l Notably, for

Barthes ( I 9S 1 , 96), the revelatory core of the photo is the simultaneous knowing of two facts: "that is going to die" and "that is dead."

Sirkka Knuuttila

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Thus, when the poem makes palpable the corporeality of the beloved in repetitive parallelisms, it acts as an integrative vehicle of active mourning leading to an acceptance of loss.3a As Roman Jakobson (1988, 60) famously claims, metonymy co-functions always with metaphor in all literature.3s Due to its representation of a part for the lost whole, metonymy, or synecdoche is central in the symbolization of trauma. On the basis of contiguity, Mayröcker's metonymy of 'hand' makes the past effectively return in emotional and sensory feelings between the loving couple's bodies. As Eelco Runia interestingly proposes, as a trope of "presence in absence," metonymy brings about a transfer of presence by carrying the past into the present as a "stowaway" (Runia, 2006, 6). He also metaphorically describes common metonymies as "temporal fistulae" through which the past "leaks" into the present (ibid., 16).36 Adapting this idea to that of the embodied core self, the individual past is carried into the present through the temporal fistula of implicit knowing in a feeling human body. Thus, in "Fotografie," the embodied immersion in the absent presence of the past is guided by the 'hand', which as a metonymy plays a crucial part in working through loss with poetic expressions.

Rainer Emig also emphasizes the fundamental cooperation of metaphor and metonymy in all literature in Jakobson's vein.37 But as he (1995, 155) notes,

Such an interpretation demands autobiographical knowledge. That is, one must be aware that the poem is written and dedicated to the beloved, Jandl, who died three years earlier, in 2000. Jakobson (1988, 60) writes: "A competition between both devices, metonymic and metaphoric, is manifest in any symbolic process, be it intrapersonal or social." Referring to our defective sense ofthe poetic function oflanguage, he concludes: "The actual bipolarity has been artificially replaced in [the study ofpoetical tropes] by an amputated unipolar scheme which strikingly enough coincides with one of the two aphasic patterns, namely with the contiguity disorder" (ibid., 61' my emphasis). Runia (2006, l) defines'presence'as "the unrepresented way the past is in the present." He demands that historiography should pay more attention to a lived 'presence'instead ofmetaphorically produced meaning, and finds this'presence'as hidden in common metonymies. However, he does not consider the working of the implicit memory in metonymies. In his psychoanalytic interpretation of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land'Emig (1995, 78) writes "The llaste Land combines the metaphoric approach [...] with the metonymic and creates its discursive strategy out oftheir interactions and the tensions between them."

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in modernist poetry compulsively bring back the dismembered object as a "re-enactment of its mutilation." In contrast, in the framework of the implicit knowing of the other, Mayröcker's metonymy of hands does not act as a disconnecting sign of reification, but rather as a dialogue with the metonymies

other's embodied mind. Hence the cooperation of the two hands expresses the non-verbal parole of the core self which the writer imitates in poetic language

erupting from her innate faculty

of

empathy. For this reason,

I

find

Mayröcker's poetry stretching out for a wholeness of the human self instead of perpetuating the post-modernist fragmentation of the body. And as the relation to the other's feeling body is brought to the centre ofthe aesthetic experience, such poetry represents a form of embodied mimesis which is not objectifuing but rather signifies compassion and care. The transition in the middle part of "Fotografie" reveals the historical situation through the words "while Stefan Moses is taking our picture in the year '76." The identification of the historical moment changes the temporality of the poem when the experiential presence of the scene suddenly draws into itself a defined place and time. Yet the foregrounded role of implicit knowing as an existential bridge between the past and the present dominates the photo's dual

temporality. This is due to the significant detail that both persons hide their faces with their other hand according to the photographer's demand. While this gesture marks an ambiguous autocommentary on ordinary posing, it enhances the role of the intrinsic feeling of the touching hand in the memorizing process. At the same time, it may facilitate an active loss by filling the sense of touch with the emotion of physical longing which is simultaneously pleasurable and

painful. By using Michael Rothberg's (2000, 104) terms, the "traumatic index" of the hand integrates the bodily memory with the double emotion of bereavement: the horror of death and the horror of life.38 That is, it denotes at the same time the unavoidable death of the loved person and that of oneself, and the existential horror of still being alive oneself (Caruth, 1996, 58,62ff .). Finally, the end of the poem shows still one transition, that from the presence of the past into a timeless feeling of an unending, passionate love. By saying "we hold on to each other in this unprepossessing gesture" (originally, "wir halten uns umklammert so in dieser unscheinbaren Geste"), the writer 18 Rothberg's "traumatic index" is a modified version of the Peircean indexical sign in that it points to the foundational absence - and not the presence - of trauma from historical representation (Rothberg, 2000, 1 04).

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Sirkka Knuuttila

seems to cling to the beloved with an eternal mental grip. However, the solvent

liquids of the body, the tears and the blood, soften this effort in turn as if expressing a progress of liberation. The tear which is pressed from the viewer's covered and thus invisible (and intrinsic) eye, heralds with its tiny size the coming avalanche of an overwhelming feeling of love. When the tear as a sign of a present sorrow merges with the emotion of the past, it may also profess happiness of the lived communality so palpable in the old photo/memory. The pause marked by the following two dots then gives way to the last implicit move towards a climax: dwelling in the wildly running ("verwildert") affect of timeless, undying love. But this overwhelming emotion while facing death cannot be expressed directly, either. lt is enabled only by an outstanding existential image: that of the bloodstream of the beloved spilling over into the bloodstream of the bereaved through the act of mutual touch. As an ultimate outcome, the figure of the unified bloodstream forms an eternal bridge that overcomes death in the inner space of an embodied self.

VI.

Conclusion

Two ideas of this essay suggest future research interest. First, it is important to look further at the self-reflexive faculty of an embodied self which is fundamentally based on an implicit affective exchange with other people. Second, this evokes a renewed concept of language which has a dynamic dimension based on physical contiguity with the embodied resources of a sentient reader. If the concepts of the core self and embodied mind together account for how the embodied self works, they embrace the role of the body in the formation of a contextually changing, relational human agent. Moreover, the embodied self

consists of a unique disposition of potential knowledge: a timeless collection of sensory traces left by historical events. The principal dynamic dimension of this resource is emotional: to mirror the other person in a continual non-verbal dialogue. This tums the focus onto the schematic ways of translating implicit knowing into literary figures, an aspect that has an important implication concerning radical constructivism. Further questions then arise. When the mirroring faculty is constructed only in human relationships, how and to what extent is it regulated by cultural discourses? And if one's implicit knowing is constituted by the historical context one lives in, should we rather explore dominant emotional and cognitive schemes underpinning the formation of our cultural memory? For if the non-conscious implicit memory organizes the core self


with its sensory and emotional material, it is one of the central factors regulating the metaphorical language through which we mediate ourselves and shape human life.