Self awareness and the vehicle air

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Notes

In Jean-Luc Nancy's Being Singular Plural (2000: 4, 194), the expression right at is used as the English translation for the French à même. The translator's note concerning this expression, clarifies the relation I would like to take here as reference: ‘an undershirt is worn à même the skin; something sleeping outdoors might sleep à même the ground. Nancy himself has written about a heart his body received in a transplant operation, but later rejected, as being à même his body. The relation is one of being right next to, right at, or even in, without being wholly a part of.’ (my underlining).

In portuguese, the verb ‘assistir’ is to observe, to be the witness of something (while it also means to help somebody with something, as in English). I can say that I ‘assisted’ a performance, meaning that I was in the audience, watching it. The fact that as an audience member I can define my observational act with a word that also suggests a helpful and collaborative activity (as opposed to passivity) supports the concept of touch that I am embracing here.

The specific concept I have of myself has been developed through my acknowledging the other. This idea has been delveloped Tomasello (1993: 174–84), when describing how the perception of the self from the inside is completed by the perception of the self from the outside–the eyes of the other are a vehicle for the creation of my notion of my self. First-person perspective (broadly discussed in terms of being some form of privileged access) emerges, then, with the second-person perspective. In order for me to refere to myself, I need to be a she or a you to someone else. I attain my individuality through the other.

Parrhesia is a classical term, used in Greek literature around the fifth century BC, to refer to truthful and free speech. Foucault (1983) writes about this term, highlighting notions such as belief, truth, justice, transparency, courage, freedom and ‘the care of the self’. The search for what one‘s relation to truth is becomes a quest for self-knowledge. Examination and mastery are to be applied to oneself by oneself, with a sense of the ‘self’ in evolution–connected to a continual recycling of human behaviour. This embraces a concern for purity, which approaches a form of spirituality.