Morris conceptually demarcates two classes of movement: grasping, whose topology is based in habitual activity, and residing, a movement by posturing and seeing. "Up," he says, "is specified by postures of residing that point back to an underlying topology of residing, and to an emotional register of our postural relation to earth" (Sense, p. 150). Presumably both kinds of movements are chiasmic. "The referent of 'up' is neither in the world nor in the body, but in movement that crosses the two" (p. 139), and, further, he says the referent of up is "postures of residing, postural movements" (p. 140).
Additionally Morris relates "up" to "open," inviting us to explore an ambivalence in the chiasm between movement from the body out into the world and movement from the world into the body. "[T]he closed posture is like the open posture in implying a relation to earth. But the open posture expresses unconcern for the earth, implies earth as a power at one with the body's power of residing. In contrast, the closed posture implies earth as a region of concern, antagonistic to the body's power of residing" (p. 146). Morris takes walking with the head hanging down as an example of the closed posture and associates this posture with shame.
Tilting one's head toward one's body closes one's body in on itself. This closed posture is protective and concernful, it turns one away from moving involvement with the surrounding world, and brings one into a moving relation with one's body and roots in the world/ One looks down at one's feet and there one notices what Neruda calls "the isolated and solitary part of [one's] being." Just as the unconcern of the open posture hides one's concerned relation to the world, the self-involvement of the closed posture hides the fact that one is concerned not just with oneself, but with one's residence on earth. The closed posture, like fainting in Sartre's analysis, is a postural, emotional attitude that affirms contact with the world precisely in turning away from it.
(p. 145)
Having broached the topic of the world of others, Morris then leads the discussion into the phenomenology of the face, using again the example of shame. He says:
[I]n shame, something curious happens. One turns one's face to oneself. But in doing so, one is facing others in face of whom one is ashamed. How? By taking on their point of view in turning in shame toward oneself, as if one were taking on the face of the other and looking at oneself with another's face (the face of genuine contrition, of shame, and so on); but in the very same moment one is facing away from the others, not looking them in the face, and showing that one cannot face oneself as others do (perhaps the face of contrition is a mask). In the hang-dog gesture of shame, one acknowledges the other's position only by showing that one cannot coincide with it, that one faces shame only by not facing it. There is something tremendously complex going on here, and I suspect it indicates something deep about the phenomenology of facing: that facing can never entirely encompass what it faces, that we can never take on the face of the others we face. Facing is thus an index of responsibility and care in the deep grammar of our facing bodies.
(p. 154)
Labels: body, Morris, orientation, posture