We cannot read [bodies'] postures, gestures, and countenances as indications of inner emotional states. We are made oppressively aware that corporeal appearance and behavior in fact precede identity, that they are the 'quasi-causes' of which identity is a transitory effect...
- Steven Shaviro
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| from a collaboration with Brittany Havican |
In other words, we're attempting to over-sweeten personality-action in order to heighten gesture-action.
1 comment:
Mr. Shaviro is clearly wrong about us being unable to "read postures, gestures, and countenances" as indications of inner emotional states. He shifts from "inner emotional states" to "identity", which is of course not the same thing. Actually, what is debatable is his abstract, culturally-bound metaphor of "inner". The word "emotion" accurately includes "motion", the embodiment, that is to say, of the natural translation of desire into muscle action. I suspect that Shaviro is surrounded by people whose desires are suppressed, with inhibited movement a natural consequence; his formulation is the typical formulation of one who is more aware of the tragic stasis of inhibition than of the facts of his desires and their suppressed expression in movement.
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