Disclaimer the photo below shows a severely emaciated body which some may find distressing.

 

(The Guardian, 2019)

This story, which made headline news back in February, caused a national outcry against the Department for Work & Pensions. People were (rightly) appalled at the decision made to refuse Stephen Smith further benefits for being unfit to work. He has a host of debilitating illnesses that make him unable to stand up, let alone work. His body is highly dependent, and the idea that the DWP could find him ‘fit for work’ shows how poorly his case was handled.

It is taken for granted that in the UK a person will be given state support in the case that their bodily (dis)abilities prevent them from working. I venture that what we take for granted in the welfare system is part of a deeper understanding that the body is interdependent. Reliance of the body on outside support systems is fully expected. In this blog post, I would like to talk about the vulnerable body, focussing on the natural deterioration of the ageing body. How do we conceptualise of the body when external support is required to keep it alive?

An interdependent body is the idea that the body relies on external support, and, in turn, is relied upon to survive. The reciprocal nature of the body can be understood within a cyclical life history, illustrated by Sarah Lamb in her ethnography of ageing in West Bengal (2000). She found that conceptions of familial relations were based on a system of moral indebtedness, instilled at conception. Parents give their bodies in order to look after their children; mothers with a reproductive organs and breast milk, fathers with semen. Parents also provide services to the child, cleaning up bodily fluids and feeding them. This repaying of debts is then deferred until the parent is unable to feed themselves, and may require daily care (Lamb, 2000:49). Mary Douglas’ theory that body fluids are intertwined with moral values can be applied here. The body and the body’s elements are a reflection of society, and in the case of family relations in Mangaldihi (a rural village in Bengal), it is the maintenance and care of these elements that reveals the cyclical nature of care and interdependence of people in this social group.

The body becomes vulnerable and there is an ethical imperative to care.

I would now like to explore the role of the carer, as the person prolonging the life of another, especially in the instance where the person being cared for is completely dependent. I have discussed in previous posts the idea of ‘permanent personhood’ (Lamb, 2017). The successful ageing narrative aims to prolong the ‘self of one’s early years’, (that is: individual, independent, agentive), into old-age. Something I did not discuss was the idea of personhood in the event that the body is no longer independent. Is bodily autonomy central to the idea of personhood? Foucault’s techniques of the self would have us believe so; the body is worked upon by the individual to actualise our internal self. We can see both bodily and intellectual autonomy decreasing when a person gets older. They may be put into a care-home, and they can choose to make a power of attorney so that decisions concerning their welfare can be made by a chosen attorney (usually a relative).

I think that the ‘successful ageing narrative’ (ibid) would also agree that bodily autonomy is central to personhood. Maintaining independence is a central focus of successful ageing, as though being dependent is somehow a ‘failure’. However, how do we define bodily autonomy? Many bodies, seemingly independent and functioning without external support are kept healthy by a range of drugs. Most bodies in the West have been aided in some way by medicine; antibiotics; vaccinations; painkillers; the contraceptive pill. Of course, some bodies are more medicalised than others, but the idea of bodily autonomy is certainly problematised by considering drugs as external support.

Moreover, the presence of carers complicates this theory. When the body is being cared for it is possible that personhood is in some way split between the carer and the cared-for, since the care is central to the cared-for remaining alive (Leibing, 2017). Is it possible, in this instance, for personhood to be split across two bodies? Jason Danely, whose comparative ethnographic work was based in Japan and the UK, argues that the fatigue experienced by carers goes beyond corporeal exhaustion. The fatigue they experience is a result of their subjectivity being pulled by the moral imperatives of caring for the Other (Danely, 2017). The temporal dimension of caring seems endless, as the carer is subsumed into the vulnerable person’s world of suffering. Caring in this way goes beyond the occasional support one might provide to family members when ill. Full-time carers become responsible for the vulnerable person’s life, a responsibility that requires the immersion into the subjectivities of the cared-for. Furthermore, the act of caring goes beyond being compassionate, it involves becoming an extension of the other person so that they can stay alive and maintain a quality of life.

It is evident that a vulnerable body elicits an ethical imperative to care. In the case of familial relations, these responses can be seen as a way of fulfilling the moral indebtedness instilled in us at a young age. For carers who are not related to the person that they care for, the relationship between the cared-for and carer becomes symbiotic, with the personhood of each becoming intertwined and interdependent. As a final note I would add that all bodies are vulnerable, all the time. We are constantly engaging in inter-bodily practices to care for each other, and interacting in physical, intellectual and spiritual realms with other bodies. Personhood exists in the body precisely because the body is an interdependent entity. To defy Descartes’ mind-body dualism, I pose that the body is a social entity, with which we live socially and interdependently.

Bibliography

Danely, Jason (2017) Carer narratives of fatigue and endurance in Japan and England. Subjectivity 10(4), 411-426

Lamb, Sarah. (2000) White saris and sweet mangoes: Ageing, gender and the body in Northern India. University of California Press.

Leibing, Annette. (2017) Successful Selves? Heroic Tales of Alzheimer’s Disease and Personhood in Brazil. in Lamb, Sarah Successful Ageing as a Contemporary Obsession. Rutgers University Press.