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“The flesh is not something one has, but,

rather the web in which one lives;

it is not simply what I touch of the other, or of myself, but

the condition of possibility of touch […]”

(Butler 2015: 36).

“[…] flesh is not a contingency,

chaos, but a texture that returns to

itself,

and conforms to itself”

(Merleau-Ponty 1968: 146).

Duden comprehends the term “Körper” as being used in an inflationary manner (e.g. in contemporary medical discourses) and offering almost no relationality to the (individually) experienced Fleisch (flesh)⁴⁷, but rather to fleischige Materialität (meaty materiality) (Duden 1993, Duden 2002a and 2002b). In German, [57] the term “fleischige” establishes both a connection to the experiencing subject through notions as they relate to “flesh”⁴⁸ and a connection to minced meat; the type of meat that does not allow any clear connection to the body from which it originates. If in Duden’s account the term “body” (as in Körper) refers to what can be translated as meaty materiality, working between German and English one has to distinguish between flesh and meat. When looking at the materiality of bodies, then one possible understanding of “meaty materiality” as characteristically of postmodern understandings of bodies in medical spaces is to read the “image” of meat that Duden offers in her metaphor as referring to the body as being “robbed” of any marker that would allow identification to a/for a living being, either self-identification or identification for others. Yet, self-identification and experience are the markers of the Leib.

The term flesh, conversely, can (in a first understanding) be assumed to refer to lebendiges (alive) Fleisch, which is ever changeable due to its deep relation to life as subject to process. “Das “Fleisch” (chair) ist hier weder mit dem Leib, noch mit bloßer Materialität zu verwechseln. Es ist vielmehr gelebte, gespürte, phänomenal erfahrene Materialität. Das “Fleisch” ist damit genau der Punkt, an dem sich Leib und Welt treffen”⁴⁹ (Kuhn 2016). Flesh in this sense is clearly distinguishable from any objectifiable notion of meat, with the term or notion “flesh” offering a source for identification. The momentum of life refers to the Inwendigkeit (the being from the inside – inner) and thus to (an individual) life, in contrast to minced meat, which has no inside; it has been turned to the outside⁵⁰

Interestingly enough, in Merleau-Ponty’s posthumously published The Visible and the Invisible he reviews his distinction between consciousness and the object as it was key to “the Phenomenology of Perception” and considers both the perceiving subject and the perceivable object to reside in a (reciprocal) perceptual field. “Flesh” becomes a key term in Merleau- Ponty’s later work as he writes: “[…] die gesehene Welt ist nicht 'in' meinem Leib, und mein Leib ist letztlich nicht 'in' der sichtbaren Welt: als Fleisch, das es mit einem Fleisch zu tun hat, umgibt ihn weder die Welt, noch ist sie von ihm umgeben. […] Es gibt ein wechselseitiges Eingelassensein und Verflochtensein des einen ins andere”⁵¹ (Merleau-Ponty 1986: 182). The structure that is within the fabric of [58] the subject-object relation is flesh (Landes 2013). “Living flesh,” so Cathryn Vasseleu with reference to Merleau-Ponty’s later work “is the modality of the body inscribed within sensibility” (Vasseleu 1998: 27).

The term flesh “transports” various notions and occupies different meanings and although not making use of the concept frequently, this study will navigate this circumstance in awareness. What is interesting from my point of view is that, in various ways, the term flesh allows for philosophical investigations into being as it is the basis to/for existence or as Merleau-Ponty puts it, “The flesh is at the heart of the world” (Merleau-Ponty 1968). In this image, flesh ages, breathes, beats, is webbed and flushed; it is all and yet nothing without the connection to what it contains within and as itself. Butler summarizes her reading of Merleau-Ponty’s “flesh” stating that “for Merleau-Ponty, the embodied status of the “I” is precisely what implicates the “I” in a fleshy world outside of itself, that is, in a world in which the “I” is no longer its own center or ground” (Butler 2015: 162). Merleau-Ponty’s later work can thus be read as crucial contributing to “a more embodied “I” […]” (ibid). In this sense Merleau-Ponty’s flesh provides a crucial notion to this study as it is in my reading of it, concerned both with being and with embodiment, although not in a restricted philosophical sense.

To return to Duden’s thoughts, as these were introduced at the beginning of this section, I understand her analysis of the body (as it refers to contemporary social scientific work) to point to the need for “new” methodological tools for empirical research in the field. I furthermore read her work as call to carefully consider the usage and “meaningful occupation(s)” of the terms, “body” or “Körper.” This is in awareness of the previously addressed inflationary use of this term. Yet, do we know what we talk about when talking about body or Körper or Leib? And, if not, how could those terms then be used in an analytic investigation that additionally must bridge questions that arise in bilingual and interdisciplinary work? Responding to Duden’s statement that Körper is used in an inflationary manner, what is important to me in this study is to address the experiential level (when focusing on bodies). Following Duden, it is imperative not to assume a shared understanding of body/Körper. I find it additionally necessary to allow for communication about the effects of normative understandings or awareness that arise in the light of realization that definitions of body/Körper are not shared. Considering the work of other scholars who are working at the intersections of Leib and body/Körper, in the following pages I explore what this study can learn from their approaches.