Structured Visions

We go back to middle school this week, looking once more at the This American Life episode dedicated to the subject, and taking up once again Levinas's notions of alterity and face. Here's what I said last week about middle school:

Middle school is a social body that has a face. … I want us to be able to look at the face of that social body and see it as something completely other.

I also said this:

If I can interact with middle school face-to-face, then I have the possibility for opening into a world that I don't know about yet.

But how do you look at the face of the social body? How do you find its eyes, ears, nose and mouth? I propose in this episode that grammatical analysis gives us access to the otherness of the social body. In other words, grammatical structure is the face of the social body.

For an example, consider what Ira Glass says in one segment of the middle school episode of This American Life. He's talking about a seventh-grader's experiences in the classroom. I've divided his comments into tone units, and underlined the noun phrases that serve as Themes (in some cases) and Subjects of clauses (in others):

a big problem for him

one reason that he was ostracized

he didn't wash

kids would whisper about it

and when he would get mad

and then arguments would escalate

that is where it would go.

'You're dirty.'

'You smell.'

The kids would say it right to his face.

Where are the grammatical selves in this text? Note that there are two selves here: the unique, individualised, embodied, singular 'he' and the collective, plural, non-embodied 'kids'. 'He' is the one with the 'big problem' – and what is his 'big problem'? His body. It's dirty, it smells, he doesn't wash it. If this non-individualised collective, the 'kids', is the social body here, the social body is doing something we see it do often: it's bullying the individual human body.

What's the possibility for transformation here? Well, seeing the social body configured in this way – that is, divided into the individual embodied self and the collective group self – opens the way for us to imagine a different configuration. What about one in which the collective were instead comprised of multiple unique, individual, embodied selves? And what if these human bodies were not seen as 'problems', but instead as singular, unique sites of new possibilities?

In an episode of This American Life, 14-year-old Annie relates middle school to a 'whitewashed, brick-walled, iron-gated prison' that she finally escapes from. Annie's description gives us a good excuse to revisit the use of prison metaphors to describe oppressive social structures. Foucault's Panopticon will spring to mind for many Structured Visions listeners, but we don't have to rely upon French social theory to find prison imagery applied to the social world.

What Annie doesn't do is compare middle school to a body. Human bodies are mentioned several times in the show – Alex Blumberg, for instance, describes middle schoolers as having to learn 'how their bodies are now working', and other guests describe 'raging hormones'. But middle school as a social body doesn't enter into the repertoire of metaphors. Middle school is understood as a prison or a 'social order', but not as a body.

But you may remember that I've argued that the social body isn't merely a metaphor, it's a real thing. What is reality? we ask each other, trying to remember what we learned in undergraduate philosophy classes. After exploring where there's any ontological basis for the social body, I conclude that we need less ontology and more alterity (otherness) – and we look to Emmanuel Levinas for guidance. If ontological questions are a matter of philosophical debate, alterity – a relationship with the other – is a matter of ethical responsibility. For Levinas, the image of the encounter with the other is the face: when we come into relationship with the face of the other, we have the opportunity to encounter worlds beyond those that we currently have the power to perceive, know or understand.

The reason why I say middle school and other social structures are social bodies is because bodies have faces. Coming face-to-face with the social body of middle school – or any other social structure – makes it possible to for us to enter into new worlds, beyond our current understandings, and to be surprised, challenged and delighted by what we may see there.

More this week on the human body and the social body. What about the self? In this episode I go against the idea that there's a one-to-one correspondence between the self and the human body – that each time we see a human body there's a singular self/mind/consciousness that is attached to/merged with/inhabiting it.

Did you ever read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy? The characters in Pullman's worlds each have a 'daimon' – an animal form that represents the character's 'self'. As fantastical as that idea seems, it reflects back a commonly held understanding of the self: that an integral, intimate part of each human body is a self, which cannot be separated from the body without dire consequences.

The idea I put forward today is that the self attaches/merges with/inhabits/identifies with bodies – but not necessarily with the human body, and certainly not in a sustained, stable way. Instead, the self attaches more frequently to the social body. I explain that looking at conversational data gives me access to the many incipient forms of the social body, and it allows me to see how the grammatically constructed self identifies with it.

Why this particular perspective on selves and bodies? I propose that if we start to see the self as no longer necessarily attached to the human body, we can start to see the human body as something that is in relationship with the human body. We can also recognise those moments – and they're frequent – in which the human body is co-opted for the social body's purposes. Situations in which the human body is simply seen as an instrument to carry out the social body's demands. I compare these types of situations with my experiences of babysitting the grandchildren of a woman who couldn't see me beyond my role as her hired help.

Is the social body treating the human body as 'hired help'? What would it see if it were to enter into a more fulfilling relationship with the human body?

Oh, and I look at this transcript again (first seen in Episode 44):

Today I explore in a bit more detail these two potentially provocative premises: that the social body is real, and that it hasn't yet been formed. Let's take them each in turn:

• The social body is real.

We can spend all day under the influence of our favourite substances (beer, wine, Haribo sweets) what it means for something to be 'real', but for my purposes 'real' is useful. If I decide the social body is something that's real, that I don't know much about yet, then I get to do research about it with a spirit of curiosity and discovery. Curiosity and discovery are more fun for me than argumentation and debate – though there's plenty of room for argumentation and debate as well (preferably under the influence of our favourite substances).

• The social body has not yet formed.

I'm saying here that no one person will be able to describe the social body, because it is still in an incipient state. It's emerging, it's full of possibilities, and none of them have fully concretised yet. So the best we can do is to look at the many prototypes of the social body that are in the process of emerging. For me, that means I'm looking through a microscope at seemingly insignificant bits of language use, like snippets of conversation. This conversation between Maryam, Beth, Andrew and me is one example.

My claim is that the grammatical constructions in this conversation reveal an emergent social body. The body has unique, differentiated constituents – individuals – who are in relation to each other and in relation to the social body. In addition, we can see the social body being wounded here, and we can track how it organises its constituents in order to bring about healing.

Read my forthcoming book with Palgrave to learn more about what I've taken from Discipline and Punish: Selves, Bodies and the Grammar of Social Worlds.

There's a new binary opposition in town! Instead of thinking, as we have been in Structured Visions, about the individual in relation to society, I've proposed we begin to think in terms of two types of body. The human body and the social body. The self, as I said in Episode 42, attaches to one or the other of these bodies. More often than not, in my experience analysing conversational data, it attaches to the social body, and the human body ends up oppressed.

Hold on! I can hear you saying. Can we really assume those terms have the same conceptual status? I mean, the human body is a real thing. The social body's just a metaphor.

To which I reply, fair enough. Let's play with the idea that they're both metaphors.

To which you might say, how can the human body be a metaphor?

Good question. I take you back to a time in my personal memory when I didn't have access to the concept 'body'. And then to a time when I was imagining bodies lying over the ocean. When the idea of the body for me was similar to Yeats's idea of 'an aged man … A tattered coat upon a stick'.

But it might be even more fun to play with the idea that both the human body and the social body are real.

But Jodie, how can the social body be anything but a metaphor? How can the social body be real? I can't touch it, like I can the human body.

To which I reply, let's stop associating 'real' things with things you can touch. Let's think in terms of images and prototypes. Let's think about Beethoven composing when he can't hear the music he's writing, and three-year-old Aaron picturing a tree. These aren't metaphors: they're images of things that haven't yet emerged into the world.

Let's think of the social body as an image of society that hasn't yet emerged into the world. This way of thinking makes it possible to identify many social bodies, many of them still at the prototype stage – some of them not oppressive. Some of them not bullies. Some of them in a mutually beneficial relationship with the human body.

Be prepared in this episode for a bit of dramatic irony – a term I learned when I read Shirley Jackson's short story 'Charles'. A little boy, Laurie, comes home every day from kindergarten with stories about a classroom bully named Charles. At the end of the book the parents find out that it's Laurie who's the bully; there's no child named 'Charles' in the class.

Another way of putting it is to say that Laurie has attached his 'self' to a bullying character called 'Charles'.

Hold that thought.

Now back to Foucault's Discipline and Punish. What this book does for me is make it possible to imagine a different dichotomy to one we've been exploring up to this point. Before we spoke of the individual and society. Now we get to think in terms of the social body and the human body and how they relate to each other. For Foucault the social body is the bully, the human body the victim.

In this episode I invite listeners to attach a self to one or the other of these types of bodies. Would you attach the self to the human body, or the social body?

My research involves poring over everyday conversational data, locating the way the self shows up in all its many grammatical forms. Focusing on grammatical construals of the self makes it easier for me to avoid the assumption that the self necessarily coincides with the human body.

In fact, in many instances, the self that shows up through grammatical analysis coincides with the social body. An oppressive social body, at that. One that bullies the human body. Remember 'you just don't do that at training'? The self we've been trying to protect from the kindergarten bully turns out to be the bully.

So what do we do? Try to get the self to stop bullying the human body? Tell it to detach itself from the social body? I propose instead that we research the possibilities that show up in everyday texts. Lots of social bodies show up when I do grammatical analysis of everyday conversations – a whole range of possibilities, and not all of them are oppressive. Let's start putting our attention to these non-oppressive social bodies. Another possibility: let's look at some of those instances in which the self attaches to the human body. My research shows that in these instances it's less of an identification (I am my body) and more a co-creation, an integration that ends up being transformative.

We'll explore all of this and more in upcoming episodes.

Read my forthcoming book with Palgrave to learn more about what I've taken from Discipline and Punish: Selves, Bodies and the Grammar of Social Worlds.

We're still on Michel Foucault's book, Discipline and Punish: what kinds of punitive techniques are needed to keep in place different social structures? I use the Penelope Soto story to illustrate Foucault's comments about punishment under a feudal system. And reflections on Wal-Mart and shoplifting give us insights about punishment under a capitalist system. The image we're working with is of a social body that bullies human bodies in order to keep threats at bay. In a feudal system, a big threat is the loss of authority. In a capitalist system, the biggest threat is the loss of money and/or exchangeable goods.

Read my forthcoming book with Palgrave to learn more about what I've taken from Discipline and Punish: Selves, Bodies and the Grammar of Social Worlds.

The first few pages of Michel Foucault's book, Discipline and Punish, describe (in gory detail) a ritual execution from pre-Revolutionary France. I tend to be very squeamish about these things, so it's a miracle I kept reading. Somehow I did, and in this episode I describe what it is in this book that inspires me. It's not just that Foucault uses what has become my favourite metaphor – the image of social structure as a body – but also that he makes it possible to conceive of the social body as in relationship with human bodies. This image has been a springboard for my own ideas – a jumping off place where I can start imagining new social structures – more open, inviting, welcoming ones.

That said, there's an important difference between Foucault's views and mine. Foucault's image of the social body shows it as antagonistic toward the human body. The social body is always the bully, scaring the lights out of the human body in the same way that Tiffany Wood terrified me when I was five. In pre-Revolutionary France, for instance, the social body took the form of the reigning monarch, and it displayed its power over human bodies through ritual torture and execution.

Luckily, Tiffany never went to those kinds of extremes.

It's hard to disagree with the idea that the social body bullies the human body. If you've ever felt guilty about something you should be doing, you have a good idea of one way that type of bullying operates – it's an example of what Foucault calls 'disciplinary techniques' of power.

However, I have a new way of thinking about the relationship between the social body and the human body. I propose that the human body has the power to transform the social body. Yes, the social body might understand the human body as a threat. But the human body only need be a threat if the social body is averse to transformation. My idea it that if the social body were ready to change, the human body has the power to transform it.

Anybody wanna play with that idea for a while?

Read my forthcoming book with Palgrave to learn more about what I've taken from Discipline and Punish: Selves, Bodies and the Grammar of Social Worlds.

Tumble dryers, the musical beat, computers, bodies, black holes, hairy black holes, information, desire, French laundromats, homeless soothsayers and Maya Angelou. Welcoming, adapting, embodied social structures. What more could you want from a Structured Visions podcast?

Picture the scene: my nephew, Lane, at four years old, at Christmas, playing with his new racetrack, shouting 'You're outta the game!' to anyone whose car comes off the track. Now let's imagine that Lane is the personification of a social structure. He is, in fact, doing what social structures seem to do – classifying (by setting up a binary opposition between in the game and out of the game) and inclusion/exclusion (by determining which constituents are in and which are out).

Now let's take this personification and turn it into metaphor. First let's use the metaphor I've been drawing upon in several past episodes: social structure as computer programme. The computer programme that is my nephew is setting up the IF-THEN statements that serve as parameters for inclusion: to be in the game, a constituent must (a) play by certain rules and (b) achieve certain demonstrable outcomes. Failure to fit within these criteria results in expulsion from the game. Nothing personal. (Or, as my nephew would say, 'No offense'.)

But I promised that for this week's podcast I'd try out a new metaphor. So this time let's not see Lane, the Social Structure, as a computer, but as a squirming, four-year-old body. Here are some of the ways bodies aren't like computer programmes:

• They're not rational
• They have energy
• They have power
• They come into contact with other bodies
• They have emotions
• They have desires
• They're unpredictable.

I could go on, but Social Structure – this time personified as my latte-drinking buddy, no longer as my nephew, tells me it's not particularly comfortable with the new metaphor. It doesn't want to be a smelly, farting, yawning body. It wants to keep on being those cool characters from The Matrix.

But seeing social structure as a body has its benefits, as I try to explain through the grammatical analysis of an another account of exclusion, shown in the transcript below. Here Chrissy's explaining the difference between inexperienced and experienced field hockey players:

Close attention to how the selves are construed in this transcript – particularly the two different roles played by the generic second-person (you) – shows social structure becoming embodied. In fact, it seems to take on a body that is remarkably similar in shape to Foucault's Panopticon.

My analysis of this extract comes from my forthcoming book with Palgrave: Selves, Bodies and the Grammar of Social Worlds.