Young: Modalities of Feminine Motility Flashcards
what are the three modalities?
ambiguous transcendence
inhibited intentionality
a discontinuous unity with itself and surroundings
what are the modalities derived from?
from the woman’s experience of her body as a thing at the same time as a capacity
compared to men who can experience their body as solely a capacity
in this essay I will..
s1: explain the three modalities
s2: usefulness of account
s3: issues
ambiguous transcendence: the feminine bodily experience involves a _______________ to the world and _________, but is laden with ___________, making it an ambiguous transcendence
transcendence (openness)
to possible action
immanence
ambiguous transcendence: what is immanence?
the possibility to be acted upon
ambiguous transcendence: explain immanence (moving to transcendence)
all bodies begin in immanence, but moves towards transcendence when performing an action – feminine bodies remain partly rooted in the immanence, so only half move towards a task
‘only a part of the body, that is, moves out toward a task while the rest remains rooted in immanence’
how does ambiguous transcendence explain observation of females refraining from putting whole body into action?
they concentrate the motion in only one part of the body, the rest remaining still, because not all of the body moves towards transcendence, some remains rooted in immanence
inhibited intentionality is a limitation on the body’s movement due to the _____-___________ involved in feminine bodily existence
self-underestimation
inhibited intentionality: Merleau-Ponty suggests there is intention in motility - explain
possibilities we are open to depend on the ‘mode and limits of the bodily ‘I can’
inhibited intentionality: explain how women move in contradictory way (reference to ‘I can’/’I cannot’)
the feminine body tends not to go towards its surrounds with a confident ‘I can’ – instead, it ‘underuses its real capacity’
simultaneously reaches toward a projected end with an ‘I can’ and withholds full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed ‘I cannot’
project an aim but stiffen against its performance
the intentionality of ‘I can’ is inhibited by the self-underestimating ‘I cannot’, leading the body to _______________________________
the ‘I can’ a woman projects when entering a task with inhibited intentionality is more of a ‘__________ ___’, resulting in an ‘I cannot’
withhold its own motile energy
‘someone can’
explain feminine body’s discontinuous unity with surroundings
women don’t fully take up the space around them the way men do
e.g. when a ball is thrown towards them, women have a tendency to stay still and wait to catch it; men move towards the ball to meet it and catch it in motion
explain feminine body’s discontinuous unity with itself
the part of the body that is transcending towards an aim is discontinuous with the parts of the body that remain immobile (when a women isolates her movement to one part of the body)
Merleau-Ponty on discontinuous unity + existing as an object
for the body to exist as a transcendent presence to the world and enactment of intentions, it cannot exist as an object
BUT for feminine existence, the body is often both subject and object for itself within the same act
ways that feminine bodily existence is self-referred (4)
- woman takes herself to be the object of the motion, rather than its originator
- in the woman’s uncertainty of her body’s capacities
- woman doesn’t feel her motion is entirely under her control
- she is conscious of how the action is looked upon
