Embodiment in Poor Things

"Poor Things" gets at a famous philosophical problem: Are we our mind or our body? Over the past forty years, many anthropologists have taken up a particular view that rejects the very question itself. Influenced largely by two thinkers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a philosopher, and Pierre Bourdieu, a sociologist, anthropologists have rallied behind the idea that the body, and not the mind, is the existential ground for subjectivity. Put differently, without the body, we do not exist. To illustrate the concept of embodiment, we can look at the characters in the new film "Poor Things," but first, an explanation of what embodiment is is in order.

An Explanation of Embodiment

Embodiment involves two ideas. The first is the idea that perception is indeterminate. This idea contrasts with what is called the constancy hypothesis, which states our perception of the world is essentially a one-to-one mapping. What we see is what there is. In reality, the mind constitutes what we perceive. Early phenomenologists may have supported this idea by arguing our intention in any given situation determines our perception. For example, a boulder becomes an obstacle when our intention is to get past it. More contemporary examples show how, when presented with a novel image of what can be described as a series of blobs, the mind perceives it as such, but after being shown an image with additional data that makes the blobs meaningful, subsequent viewing of the blobs leads to the mind constructing one’s perception in such a way as to reveal the content of the second image.

As a result, anthropologists are interested in the moment that this preobjective indeterminacy transcends into an objective experience. In order to answer how we transcend from the preobjective to the objective, we turn to Pierre Bourdieu to understand the second aspect of embodiment. Given that there are just too many variables at play in any given moment, perception can’t be predetermined by society either; therefore, there must be some generative principle at play. For Bourdieu, persistent social conditioning plus our generative capacity for meaning-making constitutes what he calls habitus. For embodiment, this mechanism allows us to turn our sensations into meaningful objects and reasonable actions. Bourdieu also extends the concept of perception that is important to our discussion by illustrating that we have a sense of things, like a sense of justice, a sense of style, etc. These feelings in their preobjective state must be transcended by habitus.

Taking these two ideas together, the body is seen as the existential ground of subjectivity; only through our senses & habitus can the preobjective world transcend into an objective reality where our actions become meaningful and a sense of subjectivity can be developed. In order to illustrate these ideas, I’ll now turn to the characters in the 2023 film "Poor Things."

Godwin Baxter

Godwin, AKA God, is a highly esteemed surgeon, scientist, and lecturer whose body has been subjected to the domination of the scientific mind. His father, a great scientist, treated him more like a research subject than a son. With a disfigured body, we get the impression that God hasn’t had the most social life, such as when two students cringe as they comment on his appearance, or when at the park, he rushes to leave at the sight of people. His cold, calculating demeanor towards everyone else is contrasted with his warm affection for Bella, who we see him cuddling with at the beginning of the film. As Bella’s desire to see the world grows, God does his best to stop it. At an important turning point, she tells God that she’s going to Lisbon and that if he stops her, she will hate him. Immediately upon hearing her ultimatum, God agrees to let her go. Realizing that she might not come back, he and his assistant, Max, begin a new experiment. As time passes, God finds he has a tumor that has spread throughout his body, making death imminent. He tells Max to find Bella so that he could see her before he dies. By this point in the film, it starts to become clear that Bella isn’t just an experiment to God. Raised without social relationships and indoctrinated into a scientific worldview, God lacked emotional connection. At one point, he says to Max, “We are men of science; this emotionality is unseemly.” The lack of emotional sensation robbed God of the opportunity to become more than what he was. Only near the end of his life, through his relationship with Bella, was God able to become more than a scientific curmudgeon. In his last scene with Bella, we see how God’s body was the existential ground for his transformation from creator into father.

Bella Baxter

“She’s a creature of free will,” says God. Eventually, her own creation, Bella, begins her life as the creation of God. After finding the body of a woman who had committed suicide floating in the river, God retrieved the body and noticed the woman was pregnant. Seizing the opportunity, God transplanted the fetus' mind into the body of the woman. Born again, Bella lacked the social conditioning that would take years to form. Locked away in God's house, Bella was isolated from polite society and, therefore, its social conditioning. As a result, the transcendence from the preobjective to objective is made possible by a habitus that is primarily her own creation. But it is through the sensations she feels that she is able to know herself. Her insatiable curiosity to know the world is simultaneously a desire to know herself. Persuaded to leave her private world, Bella ventures first to Lisbon with Duncan Wedderburn. Once in Lisbon, Bella has a whirlwind of sensuous experiences, finding her own limits and the irrational restrictions of polite society. Taken from Lisbon to Greece, Bella finds herself stuck on a cruise for several days, during which she begins to develop an appetite for knowledge. In one scene, we see in Bella an affinity with Diogenes. When asked by the powerful Duncan Wedderburn what she wants, since he can give her anything, she says, “I want you to get out of my sun,” a reference to the story where Diogenes said the same thing to Alexander the Great. It was during this period that Bella became a thinker, and her pursuit of who she truly was becomes clear. As Bella develops, each new sensuous experience informs her view of the world and adds to her self-awareness. The power of embodiment can be understood by imagining an alternative life for Bella. Had Bella stayed in God's house for the rest of her life, would she have become the same person that she developed into after her adventures? Taken further, would Bella be the same person if she stayed in God's house but read about the world through a book or a screen? From the perspective of embodiment, the answer is no – the body is the existential ground for subjectivity.

Duncan Wedderburn

Hired to create an unusual marital contract, Duncan Wedderburn is part attorney part playboy. Fantasizing about the woman, Bella Baxter, of said contract, he sneaks into her room where he falls in lust. The two flee to Lisbon where they eat oysters, drink champagne, and have a lot of furious jumping. Duncan’s self identifies as a womanizer bored with and unlike the members of polite society that he happens to be a part of. Throughout his time with Bella, Duncan’s identity is revealed to be more of a facade. Shortly after having sex in their hotel room, Bella lets Duncan know shes ready to go again. Visibly stunned by the suggestion, Duncan claims to be physically incapable which seems dubious given a previous remark about limiting the consumption of pasteis de nata. As Duncan falls asleep Bella ventures out into the world. When she returns in the evening Duncan feigns indifference though we are shown him waiting impatiently for her to return. Frustrated by her lack of conformity with polite society Duncan lets it slide. At dinner Bella spits out her food, says shell punch a baby, and talks about sex with the guests at dinner. Duncan pulls her aside and attempts to correct her behavior, only to later be frustrated at his inability to tame her. The blasé playboy eventually loses it when Bella informs him she slept with someone, throwing him into a state of rage and self-inflicted pain. Although Duncan sees himself as a libertine, his habitus prevents him from perceiving the world the way Bella does. Although he might feel a desire to be free, his restraint reveals to us his lack of freedom. Unable to escape the cultural constraints of his habitus, Duncan is driven to insanity, transforming into a madman.

Martha and Harry

On her first night of the cruise, Bella approaches two philosophers, Martha and Harry. Petting Martha’s hair, Bella talks to the two of them about her views on the world. In one scene, Bella says to them, "It is the goal of all to improve, advance, progress, grow. I know this in me, and I am sure I am indicative of all.” Harry, a cynic, informs Bella her views are wrong and that the world is a cruel place. Unconvinced by Harry’s cynicism, Bella takes Martha’s suggestion to develop herself by reading philosophy. On one of their last nights together, Harry shows Bella a view of the world unlike the one on the cruise ship. From a balcony, Bella witnesses a group of people living in squalor and conditions unlike those she is familiar with. With a desire to know the world and herself more, it wasn’t philosophy but Harry’s attempt to shatter Bella’s view of the world by moving her eyes from the pages of philosophy books to the concrete world that enabled her to transform her sense of self. No longer guided only by a pursuit of pleasure, Bella dedicates her life to making the world a happier place for all.

Madame Swiney

As the head of a brothel, Madame Swiney employs Bella. One day after work as Bella lies in bed, dejected, Swiney tells her that the pain she's feeling isn’t permanent and that, in order to see its value, Bella has to keep going. This moment reveals the indeterminacy of perception. The feeling is not predetermined but is constituted by the mind’s generative capacity. The passing of time reconstitutes our perception of something into another object.

Toinette

Arguably Bella’s first friend, Toinette and Bella meet each other while working in Paris at Madame Swiney’s brothel. Without a desire to control Bella or a predisposition to judge her, the two develop a friendship that knows no boundaries. After what we might assume is Bella’s first experience with a woman, Toinette, looking at Bella’s C-section scar, asks Bella about her child. After Bella claims to have never had one, Toinette asks, "Why lie?" On her perpetual quest to discover who she is, the key to Bella’s genesis lies in the scar on her body. Eventually returning to London to visit God before he dies, Bella learns about her suicide, her baby, and how she came to be. In the most literal way possible, Bella’s scar shows the body as the existential ground of subjectivity.

General Alfie Blessington

At the altar, moments before marrying Max McCandles, a voice interrupts the wedding, asking if he is too late. The man is General Alfie Blessington, Bella’s previous husband. Asked to come with him and presented with another opportunity to know herself more than she thought was possible, Bella leaves the church to return to her life with Alfie. But once back at their estate, Alfie learns of Bella’s work as a prostitute and informs her that until she returns to her old self, she will be more or less his prisoner. The next day, while standing outside of a room, Bella overhears a doctor telling Alfie that the solution to Bella’s promiscuity can be solved by female circumcision. With a solution found, Alfie informs the doctor he will drug Bella and bring her to him in the afternoon. As Alfie attempts to incapacitate Bella, his plan backfires, culminating in poetic justice. A man of war, Alfie’s habitus viewed everything as a territory to be conquered. Instrumentalizing the irrationality of science, Alfie’s attempt to isolate Bella from the world and mutilate her was an effort to diminish her sensuous capacity and destroy her sense of subjectivity.

Conclusion

Embodiment not only challenges many widely held notions, but it also flips many of them on their head. Perception is not a one-to-one mapping of object and representation; it is a creative process that is constituted by our place in the world and the habitus, whose generative capacity frees us from a predetermined social construct, thereby accounting for the diversity of subjectivity. Such a view challenges popular notions that the seat of subjectivity is consciousness by collapsing the mind-body dichotomy and recognizes that the body, in its entirety, is the existential ground of subjectivity. As a result, the child of a mad scientist, whose body is experimented on, becomes a man of science isolated in his lab. A member of polite society becomes an indulgent consumer, constrained by self-imposed limits. A military general becomes someone who views other people as something to be conquered. And a woman, whose mind has been freed of social conditioning and isolated from polite society for most of her life, develops a sense of freedom that cannot be dulled.