Cultural Geography

concerned with what he called the ‘body-subject’.

The work of Brentano and Husserl had led to the

key idea that consciousness is always conscious-

ness of something; in other words, there is a

directedness to consciousness. The focus of

intentionality, post-Husserl, had been the mind.

Merleau-Ponty, in his conception of the ‘body-

subject’, wanted to redirect intentionality to the

body. Merleau-Ponty argues that ‘being in the

world’ is a bodily thing (rather than mental), a

pre-objective view. The fundamental relationship

between subject and object exists at a bodily

level that pre-exists congnition. In Merleau-

Ponty’s words:

The plunge into action is, from the subject’s point of

view, an original way of relating himself to the object,

and is on the same footing as perception. (1962: 110–11)

Bodily practice, then, is the most basic form of

intentionality: ‘Consciousness is in the first place

not a matter of “I think that” but of “I can”’

(1962: 137). This phenomenological considera-

tion of the body’s movements makes a clear dis-

tinction between the world of embodied

movement (motility) and objectivity and repre-

sentation. Basic bodily movement is not ‘thought

about movement’ (1962: 137) but embodied

movement that take place in the world of the phe-

nomenal. As examples, Merleau-Ponty points

towards fairly complicated sets of bodily prac-

tices such as using a needle and thread, or typing

on a typewriter. He notes how these operations

are not thought about once they are learned. We

do not calculate the positions of our hands in

space and work out abstractly where they should

go next. Rather, our hands act out of habit in a

form of bodily consciousness.

Consciousness is being towards the thing through the

intermediary of the body. A movement is learned when

the body has understood it, that is, when it has incorpo-

rated it into its ‘world’, and to move one’s body is to

aim at things through it; it is to allow oneself to respond

to their call, which is made upon it independently of any

representation. (1962: 138–9)

Independence from representation is the key

point here. Merleau-Ponty wants to make sure

that we understand that movement is not secondary

to consciousness but a more primary form of

consciousness.

Merleau-Ponty also considers the relationship

between the movement of the body-subject and

the world of space and time. His argument is that

space and time are not mere backdrops to our

movement but are ‘inhabited’ by movement – that

there is a continuum between space/time and

the body.

[It] is clearly in action that the spatiality of our body is

brought into being, and an analysis of one’s own move-

ment should enable us to arrive at a better understand-

ing of it. By considering the body in movement, we can

see better how it inhabits space (and, moreover, time)

because movement is not limited to submitting pas-

sively to space and time, it actively assumes them, it

takes them up in their basic significance which is

obscured in the commonplaceness of established situa-

tions. (1962: 102)

The body inhabits space and time through

motion. ‘I am not in space and time,’ writes

Merleau-Ponty, ‘nor do I concieve space and

time; I belong to them, my body combines with

them and includes them’ (1962: 140).

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of bodily

movement was taken up by David Seamon in the

1970s. Geographers such as Seamon were keen to

arrive, through phenomenological enquiry, at the

essence of geographical phenomena. Place was

the central concept but, in Seamon’s case, bodily

mobility was a key component of the understand-

ing of place. Like Merleau-Ponty, Seamon fixed

on the ‘everyday movement in space’ – ‘any spa-

tial displacement of the body or bodily part initi-

ated by the person himself. Walking to the mailbox,

driving home, going from house to garage, reaching

for scissors in a drawer – all these behaviours are

examples of movement’ (1980: 148).

Through research groups Seamon came to the

conclusion, in line with Merleau-Ponty, that

most everyday mobile practices take the form of

habit. People drive the same route to work and

back every day without thinking about it. People

who have moved house find themselves going to

their old house and only realize it when they

arrive at the door. People reach for scissors in the

drawer while engaging in conversation. Such

practices appear to be below the level of conscious

scrutiny. The body-subject knows what it is

doing: there is an

inherent capacity of the body to direct behaviors of the

person intelligently, and thus function as a special kind

of subject which expresses itself in a preconscious way

usually described by such words as ‘automatic’, ‘habit-

ual’, ‘involuntary’, and ‘mechanical’. (1980: 155)

Seamon invokes the metaphor of dance (ballet to

be specific), in order to describe the sequence of

preconscious actions used to complete a particu-

lar task such as washing the dishes. He calls such

a sequence a body-ballet. When such movements

are sustained through a considerable length of

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