nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

scientifically proven fact today, may be in doubt tomorrow, but this doesn’tmatter to the consumers of therapy. They carry on believing in the authorityof the therapist with scientific knowledge, which is another product of theneurosis of capitalism.Anarchism is an important collective practice if we want to break downthe colonising and reductive power of Science. Experiments are not the exclusiveright of those who can control variables. Giving up the pretension ofprescription, of establishing a general formula to be applied across the board,concepts and practices around laboratory, experiment and sciences can gainother meanings and follow other paths.If in the modern laboratory theories sustain hypotheses, in an anarchistexperiment theories are indications about how to find paths, avoid abysses,take short cuts, how to stop and enjoy the view. In a Soma workshop, we takethe risks of missing the point. An experiment can be a life changing experiencewhen it creates new possibilities: one more step, and we are not in thesame place any more. It means looking more to the process than to the results,how it feels in the body, than what comes to the mind.A body is an interface that becomes more and more describable when itlearns to be affected by differences. 9 A body is not a provisional residence ofsomething superior, but what leaves a dynamic trajectory by which we learnto register and become sensitive to what the world is made of. To have a bodyis to learn to be affected, to learn how to make more ‘articulations’.The body is the inevitability of human beings; it is built, but not justby determination and definition. It has biological influences, but not like agene holding its destiny; it receives cultural education, but not like a moralstandard frozen in time and space. When the body is in articulation, it is intransformation. The more articulations we make, the more we are affected,the more we become sensitive to difference, and the more we can refine oursenses to perceive, opening possibilities of new engagements, affects andeffects. And when we perceive more contrasts, we make more mediation, andmore articulations, 10 Soma gives voice to the body to express doubts, to askquestions, where often we pray for certainty. It doesn’t try to define our body,but as process it attempts to keep our soma moving.A Soma group is a space for experiences of what was previously only potentiality,where physical games create an environment that affords the developmentof relational skills. 11 Skills only exist and appear in relationship witheither something or someone, in our multiple interactions and possibilitieswithin in an environment. This relational approach breaks with the idea thatskills are something one owns, confined within oneself, and isolated from lifeexperience.101