What makes us whole?

Sophia Wagemann

What makes us whole? Are we as persons actually as enclosed as we may think when encountering other entities, the Other? Are we engaging in relationships to persons and things around us or is it way more, is it a constant exchange, various modes of inseperably enacting one another? Would we be ourselves without constantly interacting one another?

Film „It’s like coffee“ from the summer school visual anthropology projects. (c) Foteine König & Sophia Wagemann

Am I using my contact lenses to counteract my failing eyesight or are they a part of me everyday without which I wouldn’t be myself in the same way?

„[T]his body is not a well defined whole: it is not closed off, but has semi-permeable boundaries“ (Mol & Law 2004, S. 51).

Multiple interconnections are immanent in our own supposed bodily integrity. We cannot doit in another way, we are always at one with our environment, with the other.

Mol, A. & Law, J. (2004). Embodied action, enacted bodies: the example of hypoglycaemia. Body & Society, 10(2-3), 43-62. doi: 10.1177/1357034X04042932.