Borne from Difference – Carriance in Co-Respond-Dance

Abstract

In this article, I analyse the event of bodies moving and feeling together in the act of carrying/taking care. Via this analysis, I argue for the necessity of models of subjectivity that do not frame subjectivisation in separation and individuation alone, but respect the severalty of the birthing event and the intimate relationality shared with a maternal figure. I explore this reasoning in the case study of ‘blind walking’ -- a co-creative exercise from a type of (post-)Butoh pedagogy called ‘Body Weather Laboratory’.My core concept is Bracha L. Ettinger’s recent carriance from her Matrixial Theory. Carriance draws together carrying and caring to describe an aesth-ethic relation that is born(e) from originary difference. We all necessarily co-emerge as human subjects by being carried inside and outside maternal bodies, engaging in affective transmissions at a partial, trans-subjective level from the very beginning. Carriance is the event by which we co-/re-compose sub-subjective elements to inspire subjective formation over and over, which resonates with Butoh’s dynamic of perpetual rebirth.In blind walking, a leader carries or guides a blindfolded follower’s motions and sensations to explore the environment kinaesthetically. I claim that these distinctly enacted roles of activity/passivity are continuously traversed by the absorption of carriance-affects in a refrain or feedback loop: moving-feeling becomes informed by a relational, trans-subjective sphere and body-body/body-world compositions are transformed. Following/leading becomes a matter of conductivity and kinaesthesia is borne from com-prehension. Co-respond-dance is the incipient relational event from which bodies, movements and feelings may be actualised and it involves complex co-/re-attunements before any possible relationship of empathic correspondence. I locate co-respond-dance in blind walking to propose its act of carrying as a mutual striving and caring/trusting as a joint endeavour. Carriance emerges via co-respond-dance.