FORUM

Subject, Body, Place

E
dward Casey’s essay stands in a long and distin- third term. The following section examines Casey’s con-
guished line of phenomenological analyses of hu- ception of the self. For purposes of the present discussion,
man spatiality. Other contributors include Hus- assume that the self is an actor-experiencer who is some-
serl (1970, 1997), Heidegger ([1952] 1971, [1927] 1978), one particular.
Dürckheim (1932), Lassen (1939), Merleau-Ponty ([1945] According to Casey, what mediates a self and the
1962), Bollnow (1963), Gölz (1970), Kruse (1974), Wal- places she acts in and experiences is Bourdieu’s habitus
denfels (1985), Casey himself (1993) and, from just out- (sets of bodily dispositions). The details of Bourdieu’s no-
side phenomenology proper, Strauss (1930), Binswanger tion are not of concern here. More pressing is Casey’s
(1933), Bachelard ([1958] 1964), and Buttimer (1976). contention that it is bodily dispositions—more generally,
Linking most of these analyses are a cluster of theses, something about the body—that mediates a person’s re-
most notably: that self and place are interrelated; that lation to the places in which she is situated. I should pref-
the living-lived body is the central mediating phenome- ace my remarks by indicating that, in my opinion, Bour-
non between them, and that place and the living-lived dieu’s concept of habitus is of considerable import for
body are distinct from space and the physical body. The contemporary social thought. My questions are whether
idea that self and place are mutually constituting is also Casey says anything that would convince an analyst of
not foreign to most of these thinkers. In the present es- human life to accept Bourdieu’s habitus as the mediating
say, Casey extends the phenomenological legacy, first, third term, and, more broadly, whether he says anything
by harnessing Bourdieu’s ([1980] 1990) notion of habi- that would convince a doubter that something bodily
tus to theorize the body as mediator and, second, by con- mediates self and place.
necting the phenomenological conception of horizon to As far as I can see, Casey mentions only one condition
the geographical notion of landscape. These are valuable something must satisfy (beyond being common to self
additaments that enrich the overall phenomenological and place) in order to qualify as the third term. At least,
approach. he mentions only one advantage that treating habitus as
The following comments address three aspects of Casey’s this term provides. Whatever mediates self and place
presentation: the conditions that something must fulfill must be an acquired factor that (1) is sensitive to the
in order to mediate self and place; the issues that arise places in which it is formed and to the temporality of
when “the body” is cited as the vehicle of mediation; and the acquisition process and (2) gives rise to activity that
contemporary transformations in the character of place. is keyed to both the places in which it transpires and its
I emphasize that my comments are keyed to the present location in the temporality of the agent’s existence: “The
essay alone and do not attempt to engage his other generativity of habitudinal schemes is at once placial and
(1987, 1993, 1997) considerable and admirable discus- temporal” (Casey 2001, 686). Bourdieu’s habitus satisfies
sions of these topics. this condition because (1) the “contents” of these dispo-
sitions are at once keyed to the structure of the settings
and affected by the temporal order of experience in
Mediating Self and Place which they are acquired, and (2) the habitus generates
actions that are appropriate given the demands of the
Casey claims that geographical self and lived place are current situation and a person’s past activity.
coconstituting and that this mutual constitution suggests However, many phenomena that one or another the-
that self and place are mediated by a third term common orist might nominate as the third term mediating self and
to both. The present section considers his account of this place likewise satisfy this condition. To begin with, any
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91(4), 2001, pp. 698–702
© 2001 by Association of American Geographers
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.
 Schatzki: Subject, Body, Place 699

of the conceptions of practical understanding that con- notion of habitation (Casey 2001, 688). One wonders,
temporary practice theorists advocate fit the bill. Exam- consequently, whether Casey’s reasons for favoring habi-
ples include Giddens’ (1984, ch. 1) practical conscious- tus have anything to do with place.1
ness, Dreyfus’s (1979) skills, and Wittgensteinian (1958)
know-how. Admittedly, such practical understandings
are close kin to Bourdieu’s habitus—but significant dif- My Body Is My Vehicle
ferences do exist between them, and Casey offers no rea-
son to favor Bourdieu’s version over the others. The lat- Casey (2001, 687) also argues that the living-lived
ter mediate self and place just as plausibly as habitus body is the “enactive vehicle” of the “mediatrix between
does. place and self.” As suggested at the start, practically all
A phenomenon Casey explicitly mentions, Heideg- post-Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenologists would
ger’s referential totality, similarly fits the bill. A referen- affirm this thesis—more specifically, the thesis that the
tial totality is a lattice of possible teleological orienta- self experiences and actively engages places (and vice
tions within which it makes sense to someone who is versa) by way of the body. It is important for the present
pursuing particular ends to perform particular actions at remarks, however, that most Cartesian philosophers
particular times and places. Heidegger speaks of a person would uphold a parallel, though strictly different, thesis.
being immersed (sich aufhalten in) in such totalities in the For instance, Descartes clearly did (even though in many
course of moment-to-moment activity. He also indicates regards he did not fit what today is labeled “Cartesian”).
that the character of the locales in which a person lives The thinking subject with ends, emotions, and percep-
depends on the referential relations in which she is im- tions realizes its intentions, and receives sensations, by
mersed; that is to say, the array of places she encounters way of the body, which is connected with the mind
in a given locale rests on her teleological orientations through the pineal gland. Sans the body (now construed
toward both that locale and, more broadly, the world. as a physical thing), neither action nor perception can
Moreover, referential relations are acquired phenomena occur, and no mediatrix linking self and place (now con-
whose acquisition is just as dependent on acquisitional strued as space) can exist.
time and place as their actualization is tied to the history This parallel between phenomenology and Cartesian-
of actualization and aspects of the hic and nunc situation. ism is not accidental. Phenomenologists have forsaken
In short, immersion in such totalities mediates self and the Cartesian ideas that mind is a substance and that a
world. And Heidegger—notoriously—discusses these metaphysical gap looms between it and the physical
lattices without mentioning the body. world. Phenomenological accounts of lived experience
Casey’s condition, or advantage, does not even ex- are proffered, however, from a contemplative standpoint
clude mental states such as beliefs, attitudes, and desires that is achieved through disengagement with, and a re-
as the mediating phenomenon. Theorists who explain flective stepping back from, that experience of the world.
human behavior by reference to such states might con- This disengaging retreat institutes a distantiation that
tend that how a person deals with the people and things approximates that of the holding at bay that Descartes
in place about her depends on her desires, attitudes, and achieved in his skeptical meditations (given which, the
beliefs about (among other things) the people, things, claim that the subject is a separate substance gains plau-
and places involved. What is more, the identities of par- sibility). In other words, this reflective stepping back cre-
ticular places, it will be said, either depend on her beliefs ates a gap between I-here and experience/experienced
or attitudes about these places or devolve from the ends world-there, the overcoming of which becomes an issue
and projects she intends and desires and from how people, for any thinker who performs this maneuver. The idea of
things, and places fit into these. In addition, the acquisi- internal disengagement is, thus, a legacy of Descartes’
tion of many mental states is clearly just as time- and modus operandi. And the idea of a gap that the body
place-dependent as is their expression in action. So mind, might fill—whether the physical body, as in Descartes, or
too, qualifies as the third term mediating self and place. the living-lived body, as in late Husserlian and post-
And, like referential totalities, mind might or might not Heideggerian phenomenology—is, ultimately, a Carte-
be a “bodily” phenomenon. sian intuition (even if a given thinker rejects Descartes’
In sum, claiming of almost any phenomenon alleged conception of the self as substance).
to govern human activity that it is the third term medi- To say the least, not all theories of human life perform
ating self and place shares the virtue that Casey extols for this retreat and are confronted with a gap between self
treating habitus thus. Moreover, most such phenomena and experience/world. For the moment, however, grant
are “common” to self and lived place and underwrite a the cogency of this reflective step back. Because phe-
700 Forum: Reflections on Place, Space, Self, and Body

nomenologists agree that the body fills the resulting gap, tality can also be understood as what is expressed by the
the real questions that arise in the present context are: body. In any event, “somatizing” such prima facie psychic
Just how is the body a vehicle of mediation? What is the phenomena as the presence of past places in us raises a
criterion of bodilyness (something’s being bodily)? And bevy of difficult issues, and this in turn diminishes the
what is the rhetorical and strategic value of invoking the value of simply invoking the body as the enactive vehicle
body as the enactive vehicle? of the self-place mediatrix. Reading Casey’s essay makes
There is no space to address these issues squarely. I clear that a coherent and plausible position on the rela-
suggest, simply, that Casey leaves them hanging in this tion(s) of mentality to body is required in order for this
essay. Consider the phenomenon he (2001, 688; empha- thesis to be useful and insightful.
sis in original) calls “tenacity”: The issue comes to a head when Casey (2001, 689)
declares that “the lived body [is] the proper subject of
[O]nce having been in a particular place for any consider- place. Only such a subject can be subject to place in its
able time . . . we are forever marked by that place, which idiosyncrasy; this subject alone can carry the peculiari-
lingers in us indefinitely and in a thousand ways . . . the ties of place in its very flesh . . .” My concern is with the
whole brute presence of the place. What lingers most pow-
claim to exclusivity. Descartes could have insisted, plau-
erfully is this presence and, more particularly, how it felt to be
in this presence: how it felt to be in the Crazy Mountains that
sibly, that mental substance is subject to the particulars
summer . . . of the places it confronts: it incorporates them in percep-
tions, beliefs, memories, and so on. A desubstantialized,
For sure. Why, however, does the presence of a place “re- post-Cartesian conception of “mind” can likewise main-
main lodged in our body,” as Casey (688) goes on to tain that mental phenomena mark, hold, and subject
write? The “impressionism of place” (688; emphasis in (the self) to the peculiarities of place—again, in beliefs,
original) is a phenomenon of memory. Of course, as Casey memories, desires, and so on. Why, then, must the sub-
(1987) has emphasized as well as anyone, memory is not ject of place be the body? What is the strategic value of
just a “mental” phenomenon. “The body” remembers var- this thesis? If mental phenomena of the just-cited sorts
ious things (such as how to ski and how to handle an LP), are bodily in character, what are the criteria for some-
and certain memories contain a felt bodily component thing being bodily? In his essay, Casey (689) mentions
(as when one remembers another person’s loving touch). “three basic modalities” of the body, although they seem
But in what sense can memory generally be “lodged in to reduce to two: the bodily character of Bourdieu’s habi-
the body”? (See Casey’s [690] reference to body memo- tus and some unspecified “somatization” of the particu-
ries.) What is the criterion of bodilyness? Similar queries lars of place. It is not obvious, however, that body so con-
apply to the claim that the places to which “we” have strued can accommodate mind.
been subject in the past remain in/as us via “somatiza- As the above quotation indicates, Casey identifies the
tion” (688). geographical subject as the body. He (2001, 689) con-
Perhaps Casey insinuates that memories are lodged in tends that the self is a body/self and that “there is no im-
the body because, like phenomenologists generally, he placed self except as a body/self.” These claims entangle
declines Descartes’ intuition of a separate mental realm Casey in the elusive and obscure topic(s) of subjecthood
and concludes that there is nowhere else for them to re- and selfhood.
side other than the body. On this reasoning, everything Consider first the claim that self and place are medi-
that pertains to the conduct of life and to the character ated by a third term. What sort of self does this conten-
of experience is in the body. Of course, phenomenolo- tion seem to implicate? As discussed, Casey identifies
gists do not abandon the psyche or the idea that non- habitus as the third term. It follows that the self, whose
physical matters govern action. Perhaps, consequently, relation to place the body mediates, is something that is
Casey thinks that mental phenomena (and principles) disposed (habitus-ed) to do such and such. The self can-
are likewise “lodged” in the body. Theses such as this not be identified straight off with habitus, since, if it
both coordinate with the transformation of the body were, habitus could not be a third term. Notice the formal
from a physical thing into a living-lived one and seek to convergence between the self as something that is habitus-
assure mind—that is, mental phenomena—secure onto- ed and Kant’s conception of the subject as that which syn-
logical mooring. However, working out how mind is thesizes (and experiences). This convergence suggests
lodged in the body is notably difficult, and not all post- that self and subject are the same. Indeed, Casey (2001,
Cartesian conceptions of mental phenomena endorse 683) writes that “I shall call this subject ‘the geographi-
the idea. Indeed, mind-body relations are conceptualized cal self,’” though on the same page he also writes that
in many different ways today. To mention just one, men- “the self has to do with the agency and identity of the . . .
 Schatzki: Subject, Body, Place 701

subject” (thus seeming to distinguish them). One won- lic matters—for example, the practices of acting toward,
ders whether the mediation of subject and place, and not addressing, and attributing mental and bodily matters to
of self and place, is the essay’s real concern. people (including oneself). According to these thinkers,
In any event, although the claim that the habitus is the above conceptions are mostly mistaken. There is no
the third term seems to imply a difference between it and subject, for example, that is in place via a third term—
the self, Casey (2001, 686) writes that the self is consti- there are, simply and paradigmatically, functional hu-
tuted by habitus. So, habitus is both that which mediates man beings who act in a place-world they experience.
self and place and that which constitutes the self. If What is more, it is not the case that the person-selves
“constitution” is synonymous with “is,” the double role these human beings are are bodies. These persons do, of
of the habitus carries a whiff of paradox (and how the course, have bodies, but only in the senses, for example,
third term constitutes the self [is] differs from how it that we attribute weight to persons and tend to their
constitutes place [determines]). If, however, “constitutes” bodies if they are bleeding.
means “determines,” habitus determines the self, that is,
the agency and identity of the subject, and is not the
same as it. (Maybe Casey should have written “partially Postmodern Places
constituted.”)
Parallel considerations bear upon Casey’s identifica- I conclude with perfunctory comments about the con-
tion of the subject as the body. The body is thereby iden- temporary world. Casey makes scattered remarks about
tified both as the enactive vehicle of the mediatrix be- what might be called “postmodern places”: that is, the
tween self and place and as the self (subject?) that is condition of places in the postmodern era. He (2001,
enactively mediated. This double role is, in fact, implicit 684) writes that such places are “thinned-out,” “disar-
in the earlier thesis that the habitus is the mediatrix, ray[ed],” and “indifferent” in comparison with earlier
since habitus, according to Bourdieu, is inherently bodily. ones. To clarify these adjectives, he points to places that
Casey does not indicate how he sorts these matters contain a television or a computer monitor (attached to
out. Consequently, I offer an observation. According to the Web). In such places, he remarks, the dense referen-
Helmut Plessner ([1961] 1970), the anthropological phe- tial totalities of which Heidegger speaks (and that are
nomenologist, two principle relations join subject and present in the proverbial workshop) are missing. These
body: I am my body and I have my body. Casey’s concep- places neither “contain” nor “hold” a person’s activity:
tion of the twofold role of the body parallels this thesis. they are “unable to engage our concernful absorption”
His idea that the self is a body-self coincides with the (685). One interpretation of these remarks is that the
idea that I am my body. His idea that the body mediates referential totalities through which people engage places
self and place converges with the idea that I have my have become thinner. Another, which I take to be the
body, since both thoughts present the self (or subject) correct one, is that places themselves no longer deter-
and body as distinct but uniquely intimately related enti- mine what people do when acting in them. Casey (684,
ties. Moreover, both Casey and Plessner elaborate their 685) writes, for instance, that places are no longer “de-
ideas in response to the question of what is the subject/ terminately structured,” and that “habitual patterns of
self, itself informed by a distantiating retreat from lived relating” to them have disappeared. What people do to-
experience. For phenomenologists such as Casey, who day depends much more on themselves, and places, as a
decline Cartesian mental substance and still attempt, result, increasingly approximate isotropic space. More-
after performing the retreat, to capture lived experience in over, connected with and possibly lying behind this
thought, the pull to identify the self of that experience transformation are the phenomena of increasing unifor-
as the living-lived body that stands at the center of that mity of and connectedness, as well as mobility, among
experience is overpowering. However, it is only because places.
this retreat separates I-here and experience/experienced According to my understanding of contemporary de-
world-there that Casey’s and Plessner’s particular con- velopments, there are two suspicious things about this
ceptions of a twofold role of the body and of the twofold picture. First, it is not obvious that Westerners today are
relation of the I to the body can be articulated. that much more surrounded by thinned-out places than
Some philosophers (e.g., Wittgenstein and Rorty) their forebears were. I do not see how sitting before a TV
think that phenomenological exploration of lived expe- or a computer monitor and following a procession of im-
rience is, in many or most regards, an intellectual optical ages is experiencing a place that is thinner (or requires
illusion. The accounts of selfhood some such thinkers less “full engagement” [Casey 2001, 685]) than past ones
propound instead primarily result from reflection on pub- where spectacles occurred. Places containing TVs and
702 Forum: Reflections on Place, Space, Self, and Body

computers are not even obviously thinner than Heideg- Casey, E. 1987. Remembering: A phenomenological study. Bloom-
ger’s workshop, since elaborate rituals and rich interac- ington: Indiana University Press.
———. 1993. Getting back into place: Toward a renewed under-
tion structures have coalesced around TVs and are be- standing of the place-world. Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
ginning to do so around computers. Better examples of sity Press.
thinned-out places in Casey’s sense might be airport ———. 1997. The fate of place: A philosophical history. Berkeley:
waiting halls or public squares. I wonder, however, to University of California Press.
what extent thin places such as these can be found ———. 2001. Between geography and philosophy: What does it
mean to be in the place-world? Annals of the Association of
throughout history. In addition, it may well be the case American Geographers 91 (4): 683–93.
both that contemporary places vary less in content over Dreyfus, H. 1979. What computers (still) can’t do. Revised ed.
geographical distance and that greater mobility exists New York: Harper and Row.
among them in comparison to earlier places and times. Dürckheim, K. von. 1932. Untersuchungen zum gelebten Raum
However, it is not obvious that these differences trans- (Investigations of lived space). Neue Psychologische Studien
6:n/a.
late into a less determinate placial structuring of human Giddens, A. 1984. The constitution of society. Berkeley: Univer-
activity. sity of California Press.
Second, Casey’s description omits a significant change Gölz, W. 1970. Dasein und Raum (Dasein and space). Tübingen:
in being-in-place: a decrease in the prevalence of places M. Niemeyer.
Heidegger, M. [1952] 1971. Building dwelling thinking. In Po-
to which people feel a special attachment, of places that etry, language, thought. Translated by A. Hofstadter. New
people identify themselves as coming from or belonging York: Harper & Row.
to. This attenuation is a product, of course, of the connect- ———. [1927] 1978. Being and time. Translated by J. Macquarrie
edness, mobility, and uniformity Casey notes. It also seems and E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell.
to be a more prevalent and noteworthy change than the di- Husserl, Edmund. [1954] 1970. The crisis of European philosophy
and transcendental phenomenology. Translated by D. Carr.
lution of the hold of contemporary places upon activity— Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
though it, too, can be, and often is, overexaggerated. ———. 1997. Thing and space: Lectures of 1907. Translated by
R. Rojcewicz. Boston: Kluwer.
Kruse, L. 1974. Räumliche Umwelt (Spatial environment). Ber-
Note lin: Walter de Gruyter.
Lassen, H. 1939. Beiträge zu einer Phänomenologie und Psychologie
1. For a discussion of grave difficulties that face Bourdieu’s no- der Anschauung (Contributions to a phenomenology and
tion independently of the issues discussed here, see Schatzki psychology of intuition). Würzburg.
(1997). Merleau-Ponty, M. [1945] 1962. The phenomenology of percep-
tion. Translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge.
Plessner, H. [1961] 1970. Laughing and crying. Translated by J. S.
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Correspondence: Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, e-mail: [email protected].