Sentient Body. Re-liberation of Dissident Subjectivity Through Skinship
Sentient Body. Re-liberation of Dissident Subjectivity Through Skinship

Summary/Abstract: By addressing the practice of contemporary scientific fieldwork through rereading Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, this essay investigates the ethical agency of skinship. It explores haptic experiences accompanying oceanographic research as a mode of cognition that addresses faults of distant observation mediated by vision machines (remotely operated deep-sea probes, animal-machine cyborgs, and sensors’ networks). In Lem’s novel, we find the situation of scientific failure that potentiates learning from undesired outcome through seeing and thinking with touch. This paper looks at Lem’s intention to emphasise the importance of subjective experiences through Guattari’s critique of “mythical scientific objectivity.” In Chaosmosis, Guattari depicts the latter as a miasma, spreading the disease of subjectivity repression among thinkers. The Solarian ocean constitutes a cure to it in the form of “pathogenic psychic disturbance,” reversing the separation of reason from the living body. More-than-human body-intelligence, which is unexploitable and unable to participate in the labour of “civilized” communication, forces Lem’s protagonist to proceed beyond the inherently exploitative research procedures of natural sciences. In Solaris, the situated and reversible experience of extreme proximity to nonhuman others appears crucial for the adequate interpretation of data and ensuring ethical use of scientific discoveries. Haptic contact opens up a surface of the scientist’s body as a vulnerable meat–canvas–sensual flesh and inspires an appetite for connectedness with non-monetisable others. This story invites us to rethink immersive fieldwork practices traditionally aimed at extracting data to enable industrial progress. The paper looks at the subjective sensations, often undervalued by scientists, as the outcomes of liminal experience of skinship, which invokes empathy, and therefore, an ethical perspective.

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