Body to Body: Discussion of “’Tis Beauty Kills the Beast” by Susanne Chassay

Abstract

Following upon Chassay's concerns about the viability of sensory communication in claustrum states, I elaborate on her distinction between sensations that serve as fuel for claustrum states and those that serve the meaning-making "containment" function. I suggest that a proto-symbolic registering of incipient meaning may germinate within sense experience itself, prior to the constellation of specific affects and symbolic meaning, as a form of intersomatic subjectivity. I argue that the interpellative aspects of social reality-"the psyche-in-the-body-in-the-social"-create a "somatic delinking" that forecloses this mutually enlivening, aesthetic exchange. endeavored in spasmodic fits and starts to expand and revise my initial response to her paper. 1 Throughout those 20 months, Susanne and I walked together, along with a few other very dear friends, as the news of her illness grew worse. Any respite she would begin to feel, any fresh arrival of hope, was soon slammed down by new symptoms, new levels of pain, and more rounds of difficult treatment. Although this journey through serious illness is such a common one, it has been especially poignant for me as the revisions to this manuscript lay waiting, most often fallow, within me.The few occasions during her illness when I had been able to pick it up and enjoy a rare breath of spaciousness and creativity had been quickly followed by the sad weight of likelihood that she and I would not see this through to completion together. Walking alongside her, holding her physically, emotionally, spiritually, and discovering greater depths of beauty in the unshuttered heart together, has altered what lies within me wanting to be spoken. It has also made more 1 I am very grateful to Stephen Hartman, who generously welcomed us to submit our respective papers to Studies in Gender and Sexuality for possible publication.Correspondence should be sent to Karen Peoples, Ph.D.,