Abstract
Although scars never disappear completely, in time most people will basically get used to them. In this paper I explore what it means to habituate to scars against the background of the phenomenological concept of incorporation. In phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty) the body as Leib or corps vecu (lived body) functions as a transcendental condition for world disclosure. Because of this transcendental reasoning, phenomenology prioritizes a form of embodied subjectivity that is virtually dis-embodied. Endowing meaning to one’s world through getting engaged in actions and projects is most successful indeed when one’s body is “absent,” “transparent,” or, at least, if it is not in the center of one’s attention. This taken-for-granted nature can be disturbed by discomfort, disability, and disfigurement. Incorporation, so I explain, aims at maintaining or restoring the body’s taken-for-grantedness. My analysis of the case of a woman who successfully habituated to her mastectomy scar demonstrates, however, that habituation to a perceptible scar can only be understood partly in terms of incorporation. Next to a decrease of explicit attention for the scar and the discomfort it produces (i.e., incorporation), the scar should also stop being a sign that refers to something else than itself. This is only possible, I argue, by taking the body’s materiality seriously, rather than it being wiped out as a result of transcendental reasoning.
Highlights
Reflecting on his own marked and aged body, the novelist Auster writes that scars are ‘‘letters from the secret alphabet that tells the story of who you are’’ (2012: 5)
Because I am primarily interested in lived experiences of being scarred I will tackle this issue from a phenomenological angle, and will bracket the question of which actions and behavior may facilitate ‘‘passing as normal,’’ and which may not
I will start from the case of a woman who holds that she succeeded in habituating to her scar, and explore how to interpret and conceptualize the phenomenon of habituation
Summary
Reflecting on his own marked and aged body, the novelist Auster writes that scars are ‘‘letters from the secret alphabet that tells the story of who you are’’ (2012: 5). Aside from being a reference to what happened to one’s body, these kinds of scars involve a clearly perceptible physical change In that sense, they may give rise to stigmatization and may necessitate some sort of ‘‘stigma management’’ (Goffman 1963), such as concealing scars by clothes, make-up, or a cosmetic device. Because it is hardly a self-evident matter that women with a mastectomy scar grow accustomed to such a disruption of meaning, they are advised (and sometimes urged) to take measures in order to conceal the scar, such as using an external prosthesis or having a surgical reconstruction Whether these kinds of concealment practices always contribute to the habituation process is a contested issue. I will start from the case of a woman who holds that she succeeded in habituating to her scar, and explore how to interpret and conceptualize the phenomenon of habituation
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