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“So what is Leib?

What is this

concept,

which has not entered our language or thinking?"

(MacDonald 2007: online source).

“The (untranslated) term Leib

opens up a hidden dimension

of the body as individual.

It invites us to keep an awareness of life

in which perceptions, feelings, emotions and

the evolving thoughts and considerations are all

intimately grounded; it is through my Leib³⁶ that I am inserted into this world; I am Leib-in-the-world” (Ots 1994: 117).

A number of scholars have worked on distinguishing between constructions and historical connections of the Leib and/or Körper (Turner 2006, Ots 1994, [51] Schaufler 2002, Alloa et al 2019). When examining the linguistic etymology of the terminology, one can see the relation between Leib and the momentum of life. The word “Leib” can be traced back to the (“middle high”) German word “lip,” which is closely related to the Dutch word “lijt,” the Swedish word “liv,” and the English word “life” (Hauser-Schäublin et.al 2001, Radvila 2000). Leib, therefore, belongs to the semantic field of “life.” In the German language, this meaning is still embedded within the word. As a German midwife I spoke with pointed out to me, the circumference of the female body during pregnancy is called “Leibesumfang,” although the word “Leib” from her perspective is used less and less in prenatal care. The “Leibesumfang” is measured at the area of the female body where new life “is growing” and it is as such subject to processual change.

The word “Körper” is only provable in Germany in the thirteenth century. Its root is the Latin word “corpus,” which meant body, mass or corporate body (Hauser-Schäublin et al. 2001). The German Leib-Philosopher Hermann Schmitz explains Leib and Körper by stating that leiblich is that which locality is absolute, whereas körperlich is that which locality is relative, and mental is that which is unlocatable (Schmitz 1965). Following Schmitz, Merleau-Ponty, points out that one is “its” Leib; the Leib is the viewpoint of the subject (Gesichtspunkt) to the world (Merleau-Ponty 1966). Every apperception moves outwards from a Leib, which is a verleiblichtes subject and, thus, has its own accommodation (Räumlichkeit) (Merleau-Ponty 1966).³⁷ Understanding that body is, according to Hermann Schmitz, what I can experience as my body using my senses (like with other objects), in contrast, Leib is what I can feel about myself without using my senses, one example being pain (Schmitz 1967). Many phenomenological approaches foreground the relation of the self to its Umwelt (Environment). Edmund Husserl, recognized as the founder of phenomenology, summarizes that Körper belongs to a concept of the world (Weltbegriff) that includes the universe as something that can be objectified through science (Husserl 1946, 1998). Körper, thus, constitutes the opposite concept to the Lebenswelt (experienced world of the individual), the core of which is the subjective existential orientation (Befindlichkeit) and the Leiblichkeit (ibid). Thus, Körper can be understood as being part of the world of things, but not of the primary world of experience, which constitutes Leib. As Richard Zaner puts it: “The body-proper³⁸ is the matrix of concrete human existence; it is the ‘center of actions’, that which places me ‘at’ or ‘in’ the midst of things; it is that ‘by means of which’ there is a ‘world’ at all for me; […] as such, my [52] body proper at once exposes me to my Umwelt³⁹ and opens up my Umwelt to me as a complex concatenation (Verkettung) of possible ways of acting, doing and being” (Zaner 2012: 240).

Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin et al. offer a number of perspectives on the relationship between Körper and Leib. Referring to Husserl, Hauser-Schäublin et al. elaborate on Leib, defining it as “Wahrnehmungsorgan des erfahrenden Subjektes” (Hauser-Schäublin et al. 2001: 134). Hauser-Schäublin et. al use a comparison to illustrate Schmitz’s distinction: If one touches a hot stove, the experience of pain is total (i.e. absolute locality); looking at the hand one realizes that it is just the fingertip that was burned (making absolute locality into a relative locality) (Hauser-Schäublin 2001). The differentiation between Leib and Körper, as articulated by Hermann Schmitz, seems especially important in the area of socio-cultural medicine, for example, as a means of understanding the different meanings of illness that connect to the Leiblichkeit, i.e. the subjective feelings, and disease that connect to the diagnosable, the objectively visible. Reflections on the experiential inability to have subjective feelings to be considered by other actors within the limitations of the discursive space in which medical practice is set, were a core topic of the conversations I had with former “infertility patients.” Here, patients referred to the difference but also to the interrelatedness between subjective feelings and diagnosis.

The theologian Christian Schwarke offers an insight into the Christian tradition of understanding Leib and soul as a unity (Schwarke 2006). Modern medicine and technology, which enable and build upon the fragmentation of bodies as a core part of its performance can, following Schwarke, be seen as an opposition to Christian tradition (ibid). The reference to Leiblichkeit in Christian texts is found in the story of Jesus’ resurrection. Leiblichkeit was the guarantor for identity, which Schwarke explains using the example of the apostle Thomas requesting to put his fingers into Jesus’ wounds in order to believe in his resurrection, and hence, confirm his identity as that of Jesus who had lived on earth (ibid: 64). Schwarke, furthermore, points out that the (public) fragmentation of a human body has a solid history in the English early modern age as being a harsher punishment for a person than the death penalty. However, the fragmentation of corpuses, not as a punishment but as a tool to enhance the position of those in political power, has been recognized since the Middle Ages. Here the fragmentation of bodies after death and the burying of body parts in different places was a means of claiming power beyond death (ibid: 66). The fragmentation of a body allows what has not been possible while alive; to be present in different locations at the same time (ibid). Schwarke summarizes: “Das Christentum hat an vielen Stellen die Einheit von Leiblichkeit und Geistigkeit ebenso betont, wie es eine faktische Fragmentierung des Körpers (vielleicht gerade wegen des Vertrauens in die transzendente Einheit [53] von Leib und Seele) befördert hat. In dieser Perspektive muss Identität auch in Bezug auf den Leib stets hergestellt werden. Identität findet man nicht vor”⁴⁰ (ibid: 71).

Why is this historical insight of value for this study? Nothing comes to humanity without historical connections: without being drenched with historicity. Histories are intersectional. They “are mobile” and they are subject to oppression, care, or neglect (Rothberg 2009: 313). Within the cultural and religious context Schwarke’s writing focuses on, the fragmentation of the corpus was historically understood to be the greatest punishment for the individual and its bodily integrity. Today, the death (or brain death)⁴¹ of a person is the prerequisite for a (final) “fragmentation” that, if considered a fragmentation for the good (which could, as described above, even be for use in an art exhibition), seems ethically justifiable. Schwarke’s historical examination provides a background for, for example, asking how one can understand (and question) where (virtual) locations of fragmented and mobilized body parts are: especially locations that “cannot be seen, distinguished or captured in words easily,” such as “the new location” of the lip in the face transplantation example above. It’s the location that is new, not the lip. Asking questions that regard (interpersonal) locality, such as “where?,” “between whom?,” and so on can assist analyzing how the gradual development of “identity” (and imparting of subjectivity) comes into play in the context of RTGs, specifically when examining what the locations are that bodily substances can be “found” in: fridges, Petri dishes, “recipients’ wombs,” and so on. “Fragmenting bodies” and placing bodily substances in such locations does not happen in a social vacuum, or disconnected from cultural values that are tied to ideas about the potential of bodies to be fragmentable, questions of identity and ownership, and generativity. I will address how Leib appears in processes of fragmentation, and how concepts of Leib can foster analyzing the “terror” of fragmentation for example, when looking at the artist’s Orlan’s work later in this book (Wenner 2002).