The Dough That Kneads the Kneader: an Exploration of the Self and the Viscous
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2022
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Haverford College. Department of Philosophy
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
The viscous, when it has been discussed at all, has been under the guise of disgust, abjection, or fear. But what if that conversation obscures a more fundamental movement to separate the viscous and self? Drawing on work by Jean-Paul Sartre, Mary Douglas, Gaston Bachelard, Elizabeth Grosz, and Sara Ahmed, I will argue against the traditional viewpoint on viscosity to show that we are essentially viscous beings. We are soft and gelatinous. We sink into the world and the world creeps up into us. I will begin with a taxonomy of the slimy, sticky and the viscous which will lay out the (non)-differences between the three categories. I will argue that Sartre sees the viscous as horrible in and of itself because he sees it as fundamentally denying the project of self-determinacy. In this I will then move into a discussion of labor, showing how Bachelard words against Sartre to argue that we can control the viscous. I will also offer an overview of the relation of the body to the viscous, drawing on Grosz. Finally, I will argue that our relationality with the world can be thought of through stickiness. I will argue we are in part constituted as subjects through viscosity. And, importantly, that using the framework of viscosity allows for a conception of the self that is, like viscosity itself, a kind of process without end.