spirits but material orientations. And the other is to understand that this little space
of time is a vast biopolitical domain, that blink between action and performance
in which the world is pre-set by biological and cultural instincts which bear both
extraordinary genealogical freight – and a potential for potentiality.
How might we begin to understand the structure of this domain of flourishing?
One manageable and useable account has been offered by Gil (1998). Gil argues,
as I would (see Thrift 1996, 199 7 , 1998, 2000a), that we need to escape the con-
structionist notion of the body as simply an inscribed surface, in which the body
is reduced to what Gil (1998) calls a ‘body image’, an individual unitary, organ-
ismic body which can act as a surface upon which society can construct itself. This
interpretation is mistaken in at least three ways. First, the body becomes a static
signified to be filled with signs of society. Second, the body is divorced from other
things, from the object world. Third, the body is located in space, it does not
produce space. But, there is another, non-representational view (Thrift 199 7 ,
2000a). In this view, the body is ‘not about signs and meanings but about a
mechanics of space’ (Gil 1998: 126) brought about by the relation between bodies
and things. Thus:
the space of the body has limits that are not those of the body image, if we
understand by that the limits of the body lived in a unitary fashion. The limits
of the space of the body are in things. In movement, for example, the body
places changing limits on these things. To the extent that they are ‘subjective’,
these limits constitute the end result of the integration into the body of the
relations (of distance, form, and so on) that it holds with things in objective
space. To the extent that they can be pinned down topologically, these limits
are no longer ‘lived’ but are properties of space itself.
(Gil 1998: 125)In turn, and following a Deleuzian interpretation:
the body ‘lives’ in space, but not like a sphere with a closed continuous surface.
On the contrary, its movements, limbs and organs determine that it has regular
relations with things in space, relations that are individually integrated for
the decoder. These relations imply exfoliations of the space of the body that
can be treated separately. Relations to a tree, a prey, a star, an enemy, a loved
object or desired nourishment set into motion certain privileged organs
including precise spaces of the body. Exfoliation is the essential way the body
‘turns on to’ things, onto objective space, onto living things. Here there is a
type of communication that is always present, but only makes itself really
visible in pathological or marginal experiences. Nevertheless the ordinary
experience of relations to things also implies this mode of communication.
Being in space means to establish diverse relationships with the things that
surround our bodies. Each set of relations is determined by the action of the
body that accompanies an investment of desire in a particular being or
particular object. Between the body (and the organs in use) and the things isStill life in nearly present time 61