A No Body Against An Failing Body

N.B.: Cet article ne pouvait être écrit qu’en anglais.

Donald Trump doesn’t have a body.

Of course, this statement needs to be qualified, since we all see (sometimes too much of) his body. What I mean by this – and this is drawn from outside observation and cannot qualify as a formal psychological assessment – is that I think he doesn’t live in his body; or said otherwise, I think he doesn’t have a body that’s subjectively experienced, a body that supplies an inner reference of feelings. You can easily see it when you look for it in his body language: he never refers to himself by touching his own body. His hands are always turned outside, never reach for his heart, his breast, almost never touch each other, always end up in gestures that are abstract. The man might not be able talk from the heart because to do so, you need to feel that you do have one. Which I think he cannot.

That is also why, I think the women he fancies, from Melania, to Ivanka to Stormy Daniels are more like abstract forms of women than ordinary female bodies (and I say that without any judgment about the value of these women; that they choose to embody these forms are their legitimate choices), ordinary female bodies I believe he wouldn’t know how to approach and how to deal with.

Not having that experience of body also means one cannot know shame, because experiencing oneself as a body, fallible, limited, needy, with its inescapable weaknesses and shortcomings, inevitably elicits shame, which we know of since Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. And in turn, shame, a downward emotion, as psychologist Lyn Cowan has brilliantly shown, brings us into our bodies where we can learn humility and compassion. All things we’ve seen from his behavior are foreign to Donald Trump.

No body experience also means no body of experience.

Being a No Body draws other No Bodies to it like iron filings to a magnet. Many of these people, never having invested their bodies, always considering them like some sort of machinery, like working tools to be used and repaired when broken, are drawn to a No Body, as it somehow legitimizes their state, and gives them the illusion of having a body by sharing in a common body, albeit a false one. And since they don’t have an inner reference, they cannot feel the wrongness (not in the moral sense; in a feeling sense) of this commonality. Instead, they think of it as a community they identify with, without the need to feel their own fallible bodies.

On the other hand, Joe Biden not only has a body but also obviously lives in a body, a body that is getting old and less reliable, but a body that’s obviously been tested throughout his life. Hence a capacity to talk and think from the heart, a capacity for inner reference, compassion and humility:  “I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said, addressing the widespread criticism of his June 27^th  performance. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.” writes the Guardian.

His debate performance also brings to life just how we collectively find it difficult to witness aging bodies without depreciating them. Their slowness is often equated with intellectual slowness, stupidity even, whereas it can also signal careful deliberation and wisdom.

This awareness of body and of a failing body is what saves Biden in my eyes, since he must (and can) rely on others’ counsel, energy and working availability. But this being said, it doesn’t erase the fact that Biden’s body is fragile and unsure, not as reliable as we would like to see it, as his performance in the debate has amply shown. Hence the many calls for him to drop out of the Presidential Race. Which may or may not happen. Which also means the American citizens might have to choose between a No Body and an Ailing Body. I’m not entitled to vote. But if I was, I’d definitely prefer the second one over the first.

Coda 

“The black hole is a not a thing. It is nothing” writes Barnard College physics and astronomy professor, Jana_Levin in her book Black_Hole_Survival_Guide.
 “A bare black hole is pure empty spacetime—no atoms, light, strings, or particles of any kind, dark or bright. It’s empty space—or, in physics slang, the vacuum”, she goes writing.

That is one hell of a No Body.

“If you find yourself approaching an utterly dark shadow, visible only in contrast to a
bright background of light, beware. Avoid at all costs. Maintain a safe distance. If you get too close you will need all the fuel in the universe to escape, and that will not be enough.”

Who would, having read this, throw caution to the wind?