Thermal Sensations—Burning the Flesh of the World

Abstract

Heat is an inescapable cosmological force. This thought experiment radiates around thinking thermal sensations as elemental intensities, “beings” in themselves, always moving through bodies, objects, and things, perpetually affecting and producing effects. Using infrared thermography and embracing a critical-aesthetics approach, we ignite thermal sensations, moving through the infernal city of Phoenix and the Arizona–Sonora borderlands. Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze are primary interlocutors in a sci-phi experiment that unfolds across two thermal imaginaries as movements in thought: (1) stranger things, and (2) desert of the real. This is our necessary passage from mysterious enchantments and curiosities felt in the thermal flesh of the world, stranger things, to the violence of thermal sensations in the desert of the real—human remains, migrant bodies, and the marginalized bearing traces of injury and injustice in the inferno where we live every day. Burning the flesh of the world helps render visible (sensate) the catastrophe of the present. There can be no resistance, no counteractualizations, and no sci-phi imaginaries of peoples and worlds to come, in the absence of thermal sensations touching, affecting, and moving all bodies of this earth.

热是一种无法避免的宇宙动力。此一思想实验，围绕着思考热感觉作为元素强度、位于自身的“存在”，并且总是透过身体、物体和东西移动，不断地影响并产生作用。我们运用红外线热能，并拥抱批判美学方法来点燃热感觉，通过凤凰城地狱般的城市和亚利桑那—索诺拉的边境土地移动。莫里斯．梅洛—庞蒂和吉尔．德勒兹，是在通过下列将热视为思想中的运动之两大热想像而展开的科幻实验中的对话者：（1）更陌生的事物，以及（2）现实的荒芜。这是我们从世界的热身体中感受到的谜一般的着魔与好奇，转化至现实的荒芜中的热感觉之暴力的必要路径——人类遗骸、迁徙的身体，以及承受我们每日生活的地狱中的伤痛与不公平痕迹的边缘者。燃烧世界的肉身，有助于将可见（可感觉）的事物，呈现作为当前的灾难。在缺乏触摸、影响并移动地球上所有的躯体的热感觉之下，抵抗、反对实践，以及对于即将到来的人类与世界的科幻想像将不復存在

El calor es una fuerza cosmológica insoslayable. Este experimento del pensamiento irradia por doquier el pensar sensaciones térmicas como intensidades elementales, “seres” en sí mismos, moviéndose siempre entre los cuerpos, objetos y cosas, afectando a perpetuidad y produciendo efectos. Mediante el uso de termografía infrarroja y adoptando un enfoque crítico-estético, encendemos las sensaciones térmicas, moviéndonos a través de la infernal ciudad de Phoenix y la zona fronteriza de Arizona–Sonora. Maurice Merleau-Ponty y Giles Deleuze son los interlocutores primarios en un experimento de ciencia ficción que se desenvuelve a través de dos imaginarios térmicos como movimientos del pensamiento: (1) cosas extrañas y (2) desierto de lo real. Este es nuestro tránsito necesario desde los misteriosos encantamientos y curiosidades sentidas en la carne térmica del mundo, extrañas cosas, a la violencia de las sensaciones térmicas en el desierto de lo real ––restos humanos, cuerpos migrantes y las huellas del rumbo marginadas de la injuria y la injusticia en el infierno donde habitamos cada día. Quemar la carne del mundo ayuda a hacer visible (sensible) la catástrofe del presente. No cabe resistencia alguna, ni contra-actualizaciones, y tampoco imaginarios de ciencia ficción de los pueblos y mundos por venir, en la ausencia de las sensaciones térmicas de tocar, afectar y mover todos los cuerpos de esta tierra.

Key Words:

• Deleuze
• Merleau-Ponty
• ontology of the flesh
• post-phenomenology
• thermal sensations

• 德勒兹
• 梅洛庞蒂
• 肉身本体论
• 后现象学
• 热感觉

• Deleuze
• Merleau-Ponti
• ontología de la carne
• pos-fenomenología
• sensaciones térmicas

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We extend special thanks to photographer Jason Roehner whose talents enhanced our project in thermal sensations, and to geographer extraordinaire Scott Warren who introduced us to the Arizona–Sonora borderlands. Deborah Dixon and an anonymous reviewer provided thoughtful comments. Cartographer Barbara Trapido-Lurie and her assistant, Saejin Francis, helped prepare the figures for publication.

Notes

1. The figure title, “Touching Moments—When Species Meet,” is homage to Haraway’s (2008) book, When Species Meet.

2. This is Deleuze and Guattari’s ([1991] 1994, 149–66) body without organs (BwO). The BwO is the idea of a body not predetermined by an imposed organization and societal codes. Nonorganismic, destratified, and dehabituated, the BwO is a field of intensive forces, making possible new connections, creative “becomings” (Bonta and Protevi 2004, 62–64). The BwO is an open, indeterminate “life” subsisting before “incarnation in fixed and organized forms” (Voss 2013, 115).

3. In an interview, Bacon stated, “I do believe that, today, modern man [sic] wants a sensation without the boredom of the conveyance, a cut down conveyance as far as possible so you just give over to sensation” (reported in https://essaysamurai.co.uk/francis-bacon-and-brett-whitely, accessed 31 July 2017).

4. Our guide is Scott Warren, Ajo resident and geographer. Scott completed a doctoral dissertation at Arizona State University on the Sonoran borderlands, Across Papagueria: Copper, Conservation, and the Border Security Frontier in the Arizona–Mexico Borderlands. He is active in border humanitarian aid organizations and civic groups in Ajo and Pima County, and is on the faculty of Arizona State University, Tempe, where he teaches courses in cultural and environmental geographies.

5. Scott Warren has been engaged in a project collecting, documenting, and photographing objects discarded by migrants crossers. See Warren, McHugh, and Roehner (2015).

6. Photographer David Cook has imaged many of the Border Patrol rescue towers in the deserts of southern Arizona. Rescue Tower No. 5, most interestingly, has an Astroturf base with hidden sensors. Will making contact with the Astroturf step transmit a radio signal to the Border Patrol? David did not test the hidden sensors, nor push the red button.

7. For an account of the antics and the performative media practices of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and expressions of resistance, see Lukinbeal and Sharp (2015).

8. We borrow the phrase, welcome to the desert of the real, from Žižek (2002). Žižek drew on the Lacanian Real in this critique of post–11 September U.S. paranoiac fantasy. Our use of the phrase in expressing thermal sensations has a Deleuzian cast, as articulated in this article.

9. The elemental thinking and carnal phenomenologies of Levinas ([1961] 1969, [1978] 2001) and Lingis (1994, 1996, 1998) hold potential in feeling-thinking sensation. This is beyond the scope of this article, which develops an arc from Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh to Deleuze’s logic of sensation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin McHugh

KEVIN McHUGH is Associate Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287–5302. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests are in geophilosophy, post-phenomenology, and critical-aesthetic experiments exploring elemental geographies.

Jennifer Kitson

JENNIFER KITSON is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Planning & Sustainability, School of Earth and Environment, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ 08028. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research centers on senses and the city with current work in geoaesthetic experiments exploring geographies in olfaction.