Posthegemonic Comments
Spinoza is quite right. A human body + bicycle = the cyclist as a single/multiple body.
My thoughts from this quote bring me into politics. Does this mean that states, or cities, which form a rhythm, or habit, become a body, where all the 'individual' movements create a new united body, and hence a new individual. However, it could also mean an ecosystem becomes a body as the part united to create a whole.
The last point, of course, would be to state that the body created is not a total body, as the body is open to new transformations and alternations.
OMG, is it just me, or does the Spinoza quote sound like erotica? If i had only known he wrote stuff this hot i would have studied more in school.
Mark, absolutely. And indeed, the body has to be open to new transformations and alter(n)ations, the political body above all.
Incidentally, though, I'm thinking nowadays that Hardt and Negri rather confuse Spinoza's conception of the multitude with Spinoza's conception of the body. Of course, the multitude is a body, but for Spinoza I reckon it's a rather particular one; and he wouldn't agree that the body is a multitude. (NB that he never mentions the multitude in the Ethics itself.) On the other hand, I think that in most ways this is a rather productive confusion.
And dollycake, erotica indeed. A social erotics, if you like.
Commenting by HaloScan
