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phantom limb Grosz

(Nietzsche: entire evolution of) spirit = a question of the body (developement of a higher body) --> *the organic rising to yet higher levels*

body image:
(psychoanalytic conception of subjectivity -->) ‘mind’ & ‘body’ & ‘body image’
--> physical systems to the subject's access to bodily mobility
•cortical homunculus --> Freud
•imaginary anatomy --> Lacan
}--> genesis and functioning of the ego
[are my image assemblages about changing the body image?]

==> biology and neurophysiology are dependent on *physical processes* of transcription and signification

Grosz on the status of the body as a problematic and uncontainable term in biology and psychology

•(Egyptian) “ka" = soul: a copy of the human body (that is more ethereal and less dense than the physical body)
•Cartesian notion of soul (or mind): a ghostlike icon of the subject
•Aristotle's pneuma: finer or more subtle body than the coarsely material/materialistic body
•Christian notion of soul: the possibility of resurrection ==> privileged and formative link between *morphology of the soul* & *morphology of the body*


(Ambroise Pare:) mortification: ***continuity and consentiment of the dead parts with the living ones*** ==> phantasm limb

[*]body image: the absence of the knowledge of the position of limbs when the patient's eyes are closed (Weir Mitchell) --> faculty of language localized in the whole body (and not in the left hemisphere)
= *spatiotemporally structured and structuring model of the subject*, a “schema” that mediates between the subject's position and its behavior, synesthetically (visual or tactile) organized and represented


postural schema وضعى

postural model (of the body): a three-dimensional image that both registers and organizes the information provided by the senses regarding:
•the subject's body
•the subject's location in space (~ its posture)
•the subject's relation to other objects
--> body image registers *current* sensation also preserves a *record of past* impressions

the *body schema* is plastic, kinesthetically and synergetically organized sensations
= physiological dispositions + physiological processes


Schilder's model of body image
social and interpersonal attachments and investments, as well as libidinal energy, from a major part of one's self-image and conception of the body (--Grosz--> more amenable to the kind of sociohistorical and cultural analysis of the body feminists are interested in)
*body schema: experience of the “unity of the body” (self-appearance of the body), an anticipatory plan of (future) action in which a knowledge of the body's current position and capacities for action must be registered, perception + mental pictures + representations
*image of the human body = the picture of our own body which we form in our mind
--Freud--> somatic compliance: the organic body's amenability تمايل to psychical takeover, (impelled by the organic disturbance) psychological processes take over and *adopt the biological disturbance as their own and utilize it to epress psychical whishes and significances* (both conscious and unconscious)

whenever difficulty occurs regarding the recognition of different parts of the body (or the position of the body) it occurs not only in the subject's self-perception but also always in the perception of other's bodies as well (<-- is that why i perceive other bodies in the street like i do? my relation with fashion, blondies)


amputation of moveable functional extremities (almost every part of the body) ==> phantom limb (<-- Weir Mitchell)

{the greater the passage of time since the amputation, the more distorted and phantomlike the sensations become:}
loss of the eye ==> ?
loss of the rectum==> ?
loss of parts of the face ==> ?
loss of the penic ==> phantom errection --> phantom orgasm

case of medical clitoridectomies (to cure “chronic masturbation” in women) in the 19th century (and still today) --> the psychoanalytic understanding of female sexuality as castrated ==> surgical removal of an organ already designated as lacking is not registered? --> the nigmatic paradoxical status of the female body : (vagina, cervix, clitoris, and other) female sexual organs already **codified paradoxically as “missing” organs**

body phantom --> *distorted* (=/= an image of the limb which is now *absent*)

the phantom moves spontaneously in accordance with the movement of the rest of the body and is sometimes amenable to voluntary movement
*phantom limb ==> artificial limb --> prosthesis* (it is only through the controlled use of the phantom that the artificial limb can gradually take the place of the lost limb)

various psychical mechanism:
•a displacement of sensory experience from the limb (now missing)
•the phantom
•the denial that the amputation has taken place
•process of disavowal
•

phantom limb:
•is felt to be a living, moving organic part of the body in coordination with the rest of the body
•behaves as if it were autonomous, with qualities and requirements of its own
{reality of the phantom limb =/= perceptual reality}==> (patient's) ambivalent contradictory experience

...it is the object of sensory, tactile, optical attention

*artist = amputee avows two realities:
1. the reality of a living limb
2. the reality of its destruction
}--> these two “limbs” occupy the same space and time --> **one the ghostly double of the other's absence** [~ condition of the art] @Mohaghegh


****the phantom: expression of nostalgia for the unity and wholeness of the body (its completion)**** = a psychical delegate ==> physical + psychical wound and scar in the amputation or surgical intervension into any part of the body
[*]phantom: narcissistic reassertion of the limb's presence in the face of its manifest biological loss --> (an attempt to preserve) the subject's narcissistic sense of bodily wholeness [--Lacan--> an images developed through the mirror stage]
--> artist's dream and relation to the wound(= cumbersome narcissistic compensation for the broken unity of the biological body) @Elen
#archive: a psychical attempt to reactivate a past body image in place of the present reality [--> how can we accept the reality? @Pierre, Sina, Hoda,]

(Grosz raising the general question of:) the status of the *body image of woman*--insofar as women are considered and consider themselves to have suffered an amputation (implied by castration) more debilitating than most --> *do women have a phantom phallus?* what is the women's status of a fantasized amputation?

Grosz: “amputee's relations to the phantom limb =?! woman's mourning for what has been lost (the freedom, self-determination, autonomy accorded to the male body, etc. #harem)”
--> ***until female genitals (women's bodies) are inscribed and lived (by the subject and by others) as a positivity, there will always remain paradoxes and upsetting implication for any notion of femininity***



infant's body not yet a self-contained entity, not yet distinct and separate from the world --> child: a body and its various sensations are projected onto the world, and conversly the world and its vicissitudes are introjected into the body of the subject-to-be ==> child: slowly and gradually the body image IS constructed and invested in stages of libidinal developement:
•oral stage ==> mouth
•anal stage ==> anus
•
each stage augmenting and reorienting the preceding stages: anal take over the intensity of the oral, but the mouth remains significant even it no longer dominates the child's sensations ==> each stage participants in the production and differentiation of the body image)

libidinalization of bodily zones, organs, and functions ==builds==> body image particular form

child's body, an already sexually designated body (which culture's desires, wishes, fears, hopes are projected and internalized, mother/nurturer's successes and failures, ambitions and disappointments are most readily projected and played out = sources for self-worth and sexual value)

[*]puberty: greatest discord between the body image (psychical idealized self-image) and the lived body (bodily changes) --> the adolescent body is commonly experienced as awkward, aliena[...]