Variations on the Body

by Michel Serres, Randolph Burks (Translator)

World-renowned philosopher, Michel Serres writes a text in praise of the body and movement, in praise of teachers of physical education, coaches, mountain guides, athletes, dancers, mimes, clowns, artisans, and artists. This work describes the variations, the admirable metamorphoses that the body can accomplish. While animals lack such a variety of gestures, postures, and movements, the fluidity of the human body mimics the leisure of living beings and things; what’s more, it creates signs. Already here, within its movements and metamorphoses, the mind is born. The five senses are not the only source of knowledge: it emerges, in large part, from the imitations the plasticity of the body allows. In it, with it, by it knowledge begins.

Genres: Philosophy

152 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Michel Serres was a French philosopher, theorist and author.

Reviews

[benditocastigo · Rating 4 out of 5]

realmente le pondría 3.5⭐.. hay partes que me han gustado mucho mucho mucho y otras que debería haber leído en diagonal... os dejo con mi cita favorita (o al menos en la que más he pensado estos días):

"te amo, a veces, como un perro a su perra, por puro olfato, como un pulpo ondula con los ocho brazos, como un árbol enlaza sus ramas al viento. metamorfosis del cuerpo enamorado: el amor universal pasa por la arena, los juegos florales y las carreras animales; así comienzan los enamorados, por el deseo de las cosas y del mundo, antes de coronarse uno al otro en el éxtasis corporal en Dios. no nos comprendemos a menos que entremos juntos en la ronda o en la danza de todas esas mezclas".

[Andrew Bryson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this wide-ranging essay on the body, Michel Serres finds occasion to weigh in on everything from the evolutionary basis for certain injuries commonly seen in footballers, to the physical deformities which literary tradition has attributed to Aesop, to the sexual implications of standing on two legs instead of four ("In the quadrupedal position, her genitalia are displayed from behind, while that of the male is concealed below his belly; when both stand up, everything is reversed, the male displays what the female hides [...] Going from the position a tergo to an unexpected face-to-face brings about smiling looks, a delightful amiability, new words; the pushing and shoving ends up in the court of love.") It's all very lyrical, quite conjectural, and extremely French.

For the partisans of a certain (primarily Anglo-American) ideal of clarity & rigor in philosophy, it is hard to imagine a more infuriating reading experience. Everything they rail against, Serres has in spades: the dense prose style, the offhand colloquial usage of maddeningly vague terms (spirit, or existence), the arguments from word etymologies, the speculative scientific hypotheses that seem to encroach on specialist territory properly reserved for the experts.

Yet Serres distinguishes himself from many other practitioners of "theory" or "continental philosophy" by his evident respect for the many disciplines in which he dabbles. In a brief aside near the middle of the book, he reveals that he esteems the hard sciences over the human sciences, because only the former can open windows onto a novel reality which breaks with all our preconceptions. At the same time, Serres is careful not to generalize from the narrow findings of particular sciences into outrageously sweeping conclusions about the ultimate nature of reality. And he resists the temptation to cherry-pick a handful of examples which serve to support his position; in fact, unlike so many other interdisciplinary thinkers, he does not seem to have any particular agenda or program to advance.

Only in part 3 ("Knowing") does there occur something like an argument or thesis that can be extracted from its surroundings and presented in isolation. Here, reacting against the Enlightenment commonplace that "there is nothing in the understanding which is not first given to the senses," Serres argues that knowledge properly belongs to the entire body, which begins by imitation (repeating gestures & postures; mirroring facial expressions; reciting words & formulas chalked on the board) and only much later can be said to "know" or to "understand" what it is doing. No really rigorous justification is offered for this epistemological claim, beyond a handful of personal anecdotes and a few suggestive appeals to the science of mirror neurons; nevertheless, I find myself convinced the book itself demonstrates everything Serres sets out to prove.

Earlier, after introducing a mountain-climbing allegory which will be central to part 1 ("Metamorphosis") and recur throughout the book, Serres doubles back on himself, drawing a parallel between his own process of composition and the physical work of climbing he has just been discussing. ("We need, here, technical prowess, doubly assured belays, there, we need grace, lastly, more flexibility and strength, depending on the degree of difficulty or the thinness of the holds: here I am on the rock wall, will I pass the difficult section or won't I? The discontinuous course becomes surprising, beneath an unexpected sky. Thus writing resembles mountain climbing more than level plowing.") Certainly, for this reader, the experience of Variations on the Body was no smooth unbroken path from point A to B; at times, I struggled with the loopy syntax, recognizably French even in translation, and the abundance of technical vocabulary drawn from every conceivable branch of the sciences. But at the best moments, when I was able to slow down, breathe deeply, tune out the objections from voices in my head claiming to "know better" and immerse myself fully in the text before me, I felt the truth of its words to be self-evident, beyond question, like so many rocky handholds that culminate in a breathtaking view from the summit. After I return this book to the library, I plan to purchase a copy for myself, so that I can repeat the journey whenever I need to be inspired, encouraged, and called back to the wonderful mystery of my own flesh.

As another great French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, was fond of repeating: "We don't even know what a body can do." With this book, it seems to me, Serres has gone as far as any living thinker to answer that challenge.

[CL Chu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grandpa talking about the good old days when people walked, climbed, and read hard philosophy books.