Notes on the Struggle for Space in Bronze Age Mindset
In the concluding remarks of my post on identity and the body in Bronze Age Mindset, I pointed to complications latent in BAP’s claim that “you’re your body.” In this post, I want to further consider some of the implications this statement has for one of the primary themes in Bronze Age Mindset: the domination of space. One of BAP’s central arguments in Bronze Age Mindset is that humans are driven by the will to dominate space. “Life,” BAP writes, “is at most basic struggle for ownership of space” (25; emphasis in original). Building from the position that life is first and foremost a struggle for the ownership of space, BAP proceeds to diagnose our contemporary moment as suffering from a lack of struggle for space. Broadly speaking, what can be called the “Bronze Age Project” consists of an exhortation for a return to a struggle for space.
However, in light of the tension I’ve been tracing in my previous posts, this “Bronze Age Project” raises certain questions. When speaking of a struggle for space, for instance, an issue that must be addressed is: “Who” is struggling for space? What is the nature of those engaged in the struggle for space? How are these strugglers delimited (if, in fact, they can be)? What constitutes those engaged in the struggle for space? At what points do we locate who is struggling? Who are the “who’s” who are struggling? What I’m trying to get at with these questions is that how the body and identity are understood has consequences for how (the) space (that’s struggled for) and as well as “ownership” is understood.
With BAP’s claim that “you’re your body,” the conflict seems to be framed as taking place between two or more fully constituted individuals. If you’re (just) your body, perhaps it would be possible to be driven by a will to dominate space. However, as I elaborated in my earlier post, the idea that “you” are (just) your body doesn’t seem tenable to me. Acknowledging, as I did in my earlier post, that there is no “you” without your body, I am inclined to say something like: “you” aren’t quite your body, and your body isn’t quite “you.” In other words, there’s a disjunction between “you” and your body, and I tend to believe that what’s uniquely human exists as the difference between “you” and your body. As I put it earlier, there can be no “you” without your body, but your body can survive without “you.” Simply put, a body is a necessary but not sufficient condition for human existence as such.
So when talking about the struggle for space, I believe it’s important to begin with the question of “who” it is that’s struggling. Perhaps a way of formulating this would be to say that to be someone is to be somewhere. Discussions of space, place, and identity are all intertwined. Given the disjunction I outlined earlier between “you” and your body, one question that could arise in light of the claim that life is a struggle for space is whether it’s “you” or your body that struggles for space. I’m inclined to say that it’s neither “you” nor your body that struggles for space because I’m persuaded that one is precisely the difference between the “you” and your body. As a consequence of this disjunction, one’s will is not straightforwardly one’s own; one is principally constituted by a conflict with oneself, and this conflict with oneself is prior to any conflict with others. If we, as humans, come to exist only through this “internal” conflict (I place internal in quotation marks here because at stake in this line of inquiry is precisely the boundary—and its permeability—between inside and outside), the notion of an outright conflict over space—of a battle between two or more fully constituted wills to dominate space—is more complicated than it might initially seem.
Along these lines, another doubt I have regarding BAP’s treatment with the struggle for space is that, in certain ways, it tends towards a conception of space as something objective through which we move ourselves point by point. Such a conception of space is something like an empty container in which we move about as if in the world of Minecraft (the video game). This “Minecraft conception of space” suggests that we struggle with others as we try to take up as much of the container as possible. I think this “container world view” can be arrived at from two directions: On the one hand, the container world view could be arrived at through an understanding of the human as an aggregate of receptors that receive what’s already out there in the world (this is the position I read BAP as tending towards); and on the other hand, the container world view could also be arrived at by a conception of humans as possessing a fixed structure and character of the world prior to all experience (this is a position that I see BAP as being critical of, which is represented for him by the transgender conception of identity). (Those familiar with the ideas I’m drawing upon here are aware that the “body” could also be approached by way of this line of thought: is the body an object an object like others out there in “objective” space? Is the body a collection of points? An aggregate of parts? Etc.)
Yet both of these conceptions (BAP’s and the “transgender” conception of identity) miss how we engage objects and our surroundings not as something already determinate, but rather as things in which we are looking for meaning and to which we bring meaning. In other words, we don’t simply uncover what’s already “out there” (which is, again, the position I read BAP as tending towards) nor do we bring to what’s “out there” a firmly fixed form (which is the position BAP criticizes as the transgender notion of identity). Instead, we are constantly engaged in composing a meaning for things and our surroundings. Our compositing comes from an indeterminate, limitless horizon of possibilities. These meanings that we compose, in turn, change and build upon each other, thereby producing a history of meaning for each object and the world as a whole history, which is rooted in a ceaselessly transforming/transformative consciousness. In sum, there’s an active relationship between the perceiver and the perceived, and conceiving of the world as either set against us or within us as determinately objective neglects this active relationship.
I think that one way of getting at this active relationship of composition between the perceiver and the perceived is by way of the difference between “you” and your body. The way that “you” isn’t reducible to your body and the way that “you” is never fully in your own hands discloses this ongoing process of composition. The conflict with oneself, which is constitutive of oneself, is another way of describing this active relationship between the perceiver and the perceived. To say that, in a fundamental sense, we are at odds with ourselves is to say that we aren’t self-enclosed billiard balls knocking into each other, rolling around a container.
I would add that, at some level, I think that BAP can be read as recognizing this, which is why he writes an exhortation. An exhortation is meant to have an effect in as much as it is written to motivate and inspire people, and in this sense committing to an exhortation seems to entail a (perhaps tacit) recognition of the work of composition I noted above. Similar to the way that BAP’s choice to write an exhortation gives lie to the social component of identity (the exhortation’s effort to effect a change indicates that identity is more complex than this—why bother exhorting if you’re your body?), this exhortation itself may also indicate an understanding of space that isn’t always entirely geometrical/objective, though I find that this is a reading of BAP that’s more difficult to ground in Bronze Age Mindset.