Jacky gives us a startling juxtaposition: "Knowingness is a state of soul which prevents shudders of awe" (Rorty); and "Consciousness without shudder is reified consciousness. The shudder in which subjectivity stirs without yet being subjectivity is the act of being touched by the other." (Adorno). Before the questioner can be summoned into questioning there is the shudder of being touched by the other. Questioning is a possibility of being touched by others, one of its modalities. Knowingness, then, does not belong to the questioner as the questioner operates concretely, shuddering, touched; knowingness rather appears, objectively, as an attribute of reified consciousness, or, perhaps, the state of a damaged soul. Aesthetic comportment, yes, but also the inquisitive comportment is defined by the nourishment of a capacity to shudder. The farther we get from reified consciousness the closer we approach the question in its concrete essence. Obviously? How do we describe the comportments of the body-question open to the shudder, the questioning that draws the body within the question? Do we set out from tropes of balance, knowingly, of balance between request and demand, seeking and finding, addressivity and responsivity, poise and comedy? Whether or not we regard other people as transcendent, can we sketch out a sense in which the question is imminent among others if not to ourselves? Or does the question by nature, as a thing of calls and responses, seek out our transcendence? Could the question seek out our transcendence without causing us to shudder? What is the distance between being capable of transcendence—being capable of receiving the question, perhaps, of heading into it—and living transcendentally? What exactly would dance transcend?
Labels: Adorno, Bowring, dance, questions, reification, Rorty, transcendence