nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

Soma games ask a group to interact physically, most of the time withoutany verbal communication, to create its own way to deal with impassesand differences. These games afford an environment wherein one canmore intensively and clearly perceive physical reactions in usual situationsof human relationships, conflicts, making choices, taking risks. They raisedifferent responses that open onto observations of how we respond tosituations involving trust, responsibility, sharing, collaboration, confidence,conflict, care, etc.After they have played together, participants sit in a circle to talk abouttheir feelings, emotions and perceptions. The talking part is as important asthe games. It’s when the paradox between therapy and anarchism creates asingular group dynamic. The aim is to observe how the body is related toemotions and how this experience can avoid generalisation and find itssingularity – each one is one of a kind. To do that, it’s necessary to leave behindtwo fundamental stones of psychological science and of all hierarchicalrelationships: interpretation and judgement. It’s like re-learning how to listento others.Interpretation is when someone, usually an expert in something, can revealwhat is unclear for other people. It’s based in the power of knowledge,a cause explaining all the consequences, usually a ready-answer disenfranchisedof human singularity. While facilitating Soma groups, people withprevious therapeutic experience would look at me and wait for a ‘scientificexplanation’ for what they said about their life/behaviour. I would come witha joke: ‘Which kind of explanation do you want? One based on psychoanalysis?A cognitive-behavioural approach? I can also provide a body-emotiontheory.’At Soma sessions, an interpretation can close down what could be widenedor uncovered, and lead to judgement and blaming of something orsomeone. Right and wrong, in terms of behaviour, are based in the idea ofnormality. It is not by chance that the first anarchists, a long time ago, puttogether the Trial and the Law as their main targets. There, above the materialityof the State and Property, is where the engine of social control operates.Listening to judgement-making immobilises the possibility to create, freezingin space and time ‘reality’ and its meanings.But if we get rid of the capacity or authority to interpret and judge, howcan we make use of psychology when listening to other people? I learned tothink that we can keep asking interesting questions, opening different windows,offering different point of views. The big trap in modern science isreductionism: rational explanations that always leave out something of theprocess. What would happen if we dare to stop looking for definitive answers?99