established a connection that immediately affects the form and space of the
body; between the one and the other a privileged spatial relation emerges
that defines the space uniting them as ‘near’ or ‘far’, resistant, thick, wavy,
vertiginous, smooth, prickly.
(Gil 1998: l2 7 )^4In other words, the space of the body consists of a series of ‘leaves’, each of which
‘contains’ the relations of the body to things and each of which is more or less
related to other spaces. Correspondences are not, at least initially, conceptual but
result ‘from the work done by the body spatialising space’ (Gil 1998: 130). Thus:
Analogy, similitude, opposition, and dissimilitude are given in the forms
of the space of the body before being thought of as concepts. In the same
ways as the ‘concrete science’ which establishes classification on the basis
of sensorial differences found in ‘primitive thought’, the recording-body
gathers up, brings together, unites, dislocates, spreads, and separates things
to the spatial forms that contain in themselves (because they bring them
about) the properties of unification and division.
(Gil 1998: 130)It follows that in what follows body practices are not to be thought of, at least in
the first instance, as cognitive. This would be a first-order mistake. For, to reiterate,
we know that ‘consciousness is a measure of but a very small part of what our
senses perceive’ (Norretranders 1998: 12 7 ).
Conscious thought is the tip of an enormous iceberg. It is the rule of thumb
among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 per cent of all
thought – and that may be a serious underestimate. Moreover the 95 per cent
below the surface of conscious awareness shapes and structures all conscious
thought. If the cognitive unconscious were not doing this shaping, there could
be no conscious thought.
The cognitive unconscious is vast and intricately structured. It includes not
only all our automatic cognitive operations, but also all our implicit know-
ledge. All of our knowledge and beliefs are formed in terms of a conceptual
system that resides mostly in the cognitive unconscious.
Our unconscious cognitive system functions like ‘a hidden hand’ that shapes
how we conceptualize all aspects of our experience. This hidden hand gives
form to the metamorphosis that is built into our ordinary conceptual system.
It creates the entities that inhabit the cognitive unconscious – abstract entities
like friendships, bargains, failures and lies – that we use in ordinary uncons-
cious reasoning. It thus shapes how we automatically and unconsciously
comprehend what we experience. It constitutes our unreflective common
sense.
(Lakoff and Johnson 1998: 13)62 Part I