MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 23:22:37 -0500
Sender: Philosophy and Psychology of Cyberspace
<[email protected]>
From: Alan Jen Sondheim <[email protected]>
Subject: Phenomenology of the Back
Comments: To: Fop <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

1.01


Phenomenology of the Back


The back, reverse of the body, invisible plateau, formationaless mani-
fold, wary of pleasure and pain - the back characterizes, more than sex-
ual and other desire, the reversion from culture, from the symbolic.

It's the back whose glossed and exposed skin evaporates, with the sheen of
planar muscles; it's the back whose blankness begins the surface inscribed
with the pain of maturity.

The back is a transitional object between oneself and the world. To talk
behind someone's back, is to talk in front of them, invisibly, surrepti-
tiously. The back is simultaneous object and blankness. It's unthought
of, unheard-of, just like perversion. It's there, carried by the necessi-
ty of Euclidean volume; the surface is inclusive, a jordan curve of separ-
ation, holes and tubes notwithstanding.

So it's present and absent, shimmers unknowingly, an object-body dropped
into the world of the body, just as the body is dropped into the world.
The body claws to get back; it claws to cower-cover. It's a touch on the
womb-blanket; the superstructural autonomic aspects of the mind refuse its
characterization as object. The mirror stage comes into play; with the
mirror, the back appears, momentarily. The back remains a memory. It's
there that the cord holds, snaps.

The power of cyberspace, the old wysiwyg or gigo, is the power of control
but there's an inverse at work as well - the womb-blanket of control, the
release and safety-valve in warmed masochism, the body with the open
mouth. The back is what's thrown out; the back gives no quarter. Look to
your back; it's an impossibility - it's the first section to slither into
virtuality. (It's the disappearance of the snake, and it takes the pre-
sence of the other, the light touch on the spine, between the shoulders,
to grant it topography, to restore it.)

The behind of the back separates the body from cyberspace; it won't go
any farther, no matter what - it won't go through.

(It's cold in the loft; my cat crawls beneath the covers. The slightest
sound in the space brings her to attention; everything is either food or
threat. Cruel weather. She doesn't know her parents. Her lineage is al-
ready lost, untraceable. She's gone without the symbolic. She lies wary
with her back to me, alpha-beta. Stationary, almost thoughtless, and my
hand is on it. Which brought her back to mind. I wrote her into this -
it's me.)

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