Page 28 - Amechanon_vol1_2016-18

Amechanon, Vol. I / 2016-2018, ISSN: 2459-2846

que faut-il enseigner? Mais: que peux-tu, dans ton rapport à ce langage qu’est l’écriture? Un rapport
dès lors socialisé, et même coopérativement socialisé, de sorte qu’écrire se manifeste comme affect
d’écriture. Ceci suppose une pratique de l’écriture libre, dans la longue durée et la reconnaissance

sociale, afin qu’écrire devienne un «exercice spirituel», comme disait Pierre Hadot (Exercices
spirituels et philosophie antique), non pas une activité de normalisation institutionnelle, mais un acte
philosophique, ou existentiel. Non pas une activité scolaire (ou scolastique) mais de transformation
de soi. L’étude devient une expérimentation sociale, où chacun explore et élargit ce dont il est

capable selon deux principes: affirmation de l’égalité (Rancière) et pratique de la joie.

Mots-clès: «que peut le corps?», expérience, écrire, affirmation de l’égalité, pratique de la joie.

The body is often confined in its natural dimension if not in its physiological one. And it doesn’t find
its place in a frame of study generally dedicated to cognitive activity. Or even, in France, a place is

reserved exclusively for it in the case of «Athletic and Physical Activities» (APS). What follows is the
old division of the body and spirit, that recurs incessantly in the framework of an uneven hierarchy
in the very function of the institutions. I would like to support here that the problem is not to provide

behind the body the position it deserves (how then, could we after all determine that position?)
however to suggest a reevaluation of it. Nothing anyway is less certain, than the idea that we have
that this division corresponds to something different than a social and historic construction of
opinion. We refer for instance the work of Galen of Pergamon, who in the second century, didn’t

consider that we can separate the soul from the body, connecting in this way all kind of illnesses of
the body and soul with a bad idiosyncrasy of the body, in which they would have an effect upon. His
treatise that the excellent doctor is also a philosopher provides for this a characteristic experience.

In the same period, the Pyrrhonian impressions of Sextus Empiricus, develop a noteworthy
presentation of the meaning that could be attributed to emotions (therefore to the body) in the
framework of the cognitive activity, suggesting at the same time a philosophy as a way of life
(education) and a premature ethology. As far as Spinoza is concerned there is no doubt: «The spirit

and the body is one in itself» Ethics, ΙΙΙ, 2nd sent.), he confirms clarifying in the following: «No one
until now has determined what the body can do». Deleuze from his side, stressed this point (for
example in his the book about Spinoza, Practical Philosophy), which I would like to read ab initio in

the framework of education. Not what I can teach? Rather what can the body do? It is a radical
acknowledgement of the presupposition. Beginning not just from the transcendental
recommendations of the institution of the state, but rather from the innate results of the
experience. We don’t know what the body can do (its power to endure and act), and more generally

what can the bodies do (in their crossing with one another) - therefore we must experiment. Does
this mean to learn to write? The question is it not: what shall I teach? Rather: what can I do inside
the relationship with this «language» which is the writing. A relationship henceforth «socialized», in

28