The Way of Love is Not a Path(1)

We are reading Irigaray through the sensation of the movement of the breath as it comes and goes on its own. Meaning is arising out of the breath encounter. The touch of breath resounds through and between visceral surfaces. Resonance and receptivity become experiences of dimensionality. The ‘way’ of love is not a path, nor is it a method. The way is ‘made’ in the breath meeting, in the encounter enunciating sensation, as it is perceived within, without and between. Being is becoming through breath. The movement of breath is in dialogue with the other and the other and the other(2).

Margaret: Our dialogue is punctuated by long pauses as words wrap themselves around sensation, sensation that would be thought, that would be language. The silences listen. We listen…to some thing that it might rise like fishes from the water to be caught in the net of a gesture, or a word.

Helen: Endless permutations of breath sensation in different areas, depths, densities, surfaces, textures shift my bearing in the world, my subjectivity, The concept of the dimensionality of language is a way of speaking from  different surfaces, linguistic, breath, imagery but more importantly the breath play between them–a perceptual polyphony. Perceptuality as materiality in motion. This plays out through the surfaces and refolding of language in reflection and resonating.

Margaret: We are listening to each other as intently as we might listen to the emerging of a new being… taut and attending… listening … with a light touch as one might trace a lovers’ body to arrive at the mouth of it.

Helen: The breath brings me in touch with my tactile embodiment and simultaneously extends my being in the world beyond the physical boundaries of my body. Breath, the touch of existence.

In dialogue today, we are making philosophical connections with Irigaray through ‘the autonomous breath’. Here we meet the return of the exhale, the other and the sense of self as a breath rhythm.

Laid out flat The Way of Love by Luce Irigaray paradoxically proposes the dimensionality of the text. You are invited to draw on this text in any way you like participating in dialogue. You are invited to enter the room from 4pm and begin reading, writing, colouring and drawing on the text.

Margaret Cameron and Helen Sharp

mcameron@labyrinth.net.au   hsharp@alphalink.com.au

(1) Listening with Irigaray: the sound of the live co-led by Margaret Cameron and Helen Sharp, curated by Sally Gardner and Elizabeth Dempster. Post Colonial Institute, Nth Melbourne, October 24, 2009.

(2) Here we are drawing upon Helen’s PhD project Breathing Philosophy: embodiment, encounter, ethics, and her honours thesis Encounter with the breath: nine introductions.