this vulnerability and how it wraps back into mind-reading. The primary role in
the theorization of embodiment across a number of theoretical perspectives is
still played by intentional or auto-affective action. Vulnerability remains not only
unthought-of but potentially un-thinkable within much current work on the
body within Anglo-American social science. But much corporeal experience is
based on bodily states that underline corporeal vulnerability, such as fatigue and
exhaustion or pain and suffering or exposure to extreme cold or heat or lack of
sleep (Wilkinson 2005). In other words, corporeal life is inherently susceptible,
receptive, exposed; open beyond its capacities to comprehend and absorb. One
should not overdo this condition of vulnerability, of course (for example, for some,
fatigue, weariness and general inaction can involve considerable psychic invest-
ments from hypervigilance to a certain kind of somatic self-regard and have
themselves been the subject of affective firestorms (cf. Nunn 2005), but neither
should one underplay it.
Then, it is also crucial to underline the role of things. Of late, the prosthetic
impulse provided by the role of things has become a key theme in social sciences
(Smith and Morra 2006) but, because of the social sciences’ roots in interpretation,
the emphasis still tends to fall on objects’ meaning, on objects as cultural inscrip-
tions. However objects do far more than represent. In terms of the argument of
this chapter it is crucial to underline their other roles; ‘the prosthesis is not a mere
extension of the human body; it is the constitution of this body qua “human”’
(Stiegler 1998: 152–153). In particular, objects form shields to human vulner-
ability by extending the body’s circumference. They provide mental and physical
resources to allow the body to be in the world, they add to what and how the
body can experience, and they have their own agency, an ability to move bodies
in particular ways. Thus clothes are not just ornamentation and display, they
protect from the weather, provide resources for all kinds of specialist situations,
and they produce particular corporeal stances. Similarly, houses provide a safe
environment which wraps the comforting aura of familiarity around bodies. Thus,
things redefine what counts as vulnerable. One of the key moments of affect is
therefore an ability to produce affectively controllable worlds. That is difficult to
do and often things substitute for bodies in such cases. Thus the popularity
of robots in Japan seems, at least in part, to be a function of the complexity and
correspondingly rich affective load of social life in Japan where there is no singular,
internalized mental system of the kind regarded as normal in the West but rather
a series of relays each of which must be performed correctly: robots are predictable
partners in such interaction and therefore act as less stressful affective presences
(The Economist2005a).
Last of all, I want to stress – once again – the involuntary and precognitive nature
of much of what is being described here. So, for example, feelings of vulnerability
may not necessarily be expressly articulated though they may well be expressed in
other ways, for example through bodily stances.^29 Thus we arrive again at the
subject of automatism. Generally speaking, affect is a semiconscious phenomenon,
consisting of a series of automatisms, many of them inscribed in childhood, which
dictate bodily movement, which arise from suggestion, and which are not easily
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