Turn or Else

Abstract

Centuries have already passed since Baruch Spinoza presented geometrically that so long as we imagine ourselves to be incapable of doing something, we really cannot do that which we conceive that we cannot do; we cannot do what we imagine as impossible. And then it took centuries for the environment to confront us with the list of impossibilities. But even if we don't know how to do something with imagination, maybe we know how to perform something with the body. Maybe we can start from our body’s gifts, from its performative capacities of breathing. Although we cannot know what the body itself can do, we surely know how to do something with the body; we know how to do a turn, for example. When we make a bad turn, we don't move from the place we occupy, instead everything spins around us. When the turn is good, it makes others dizzy. If, following the body, we make a turn in our imagination, we may see that we cannot do anything that we cannot imagine that we can do. So, let's do a few more turns. Maybe we get dizzy, and maybe we can imagine that we can do what we cannot even imagine. Because if we can imagine it, we might be able to do something.