Gestures

The Gesture of Shaving

105 the Gesture of shaving A barber’s tools are gardener’s tools in miniature, and so a barber’s gestures can be compared with those of a gardener. When you do this, certain questions arise that could, under close examination, press deeply into the existential problems of the present time. For example, is gardening a type of cosmetic care, a beautification of an extended human skin, or is it the other way around—are cosmetics a kind of gardening, an artistry applied to human beings’ natural environment? In other words, is grass a kind of beard or a beard a kind of grass (in the understanding that it would be perfectly possible to give a positive answer to both questions)? Another example: is the gesture of gardening with respect to the grass a gesture that alters nature (i.e., is the grass the same for the gardener as the client is for the barber?), or is it the opposite, that the barber’s gesture with respect to the beard is a rectifying gesture (i.e., is the client the same for the barber as grass is for the gardener?)? Last example: because both gestures are subject to the extremely problematical phenomenon of fashion, can cosmetic fashions (e.g., the length of hair or beard) derive from urbanizing tendencies (e.g., from those toward suburbanization and second homes), or the reverse, that is, do urban fashions follow those of cosmetics? Or should one look for some tertium comparationis, for example, a “zeitgeist” or a “materialist dialectic”? This kind of question, which arises in light of the similarity between electric razors and lawnmowers, or between the gestures of propping up beards and bushes (and a whole range of such questions can be formulated), comes down to the questionable concept of the skin, that indefinite no-man’s-land that is used to mark out a zone between a person and the world. The fact that shaving and gardening can 106 the GestUre of shavinG be understood as dermatological gestures shows how permeable the skin is from both sides and how, despite its permeability, it represents an obstacle between man and world. One can hardly stave off ontological reflections at the sight of beard hairs, as they are caught in the apparatus after shaving. During the gesture of shaving, beard hairs change their ontological location; they were part of my body before, now they are part of my apparatus. Now changing ontological location is characteristic of a gesture of work. “Work” means to make something out of something else, for example, to make something artificial out of something natural. Accordingly, the gesture of shaving would be a gesture of work. But the gesture is related not to a thing but to the one gesturing—so it must be designated work on oneself. But once that’s done, it becomes clear that we have missed the essential thing about the gesture. On one hand, any gesture of work could be said to change the one gesticulating, for example, the gesture of the shoemaker makes the gesticulator into a shoemaker. But the gesture of shaving is not concerned with this type of self-alteration. On the other hand, there are gestures that seek to change those making them, for example, the gesture of reading or of travel. But the gesture of shaving is neither about changing a thing in the world nor about changing the one who is gesticulating; rather, it is about a change in the skin between the one gesticulating and his world. So it is neither a gesture of work in the narrow sense nor a ritual gesture. It could be called the dermatological gesture—or a cosmetic gesture, should the root cosmos still be discernible in this word. In shaving, beard hair that was formerly part of my body has become part of my shaving apparatus. But because this is a dermatological gesture, that is, one that occurs in the no-man’s-land between man and world, the ontological change of the beard hairs by shaving becomes problematic. On one hand, it is open to question whether the beard hairs actually ever were part of my body or whether they weren’t expelled from the body without having fallen off, and that shaving isn’t aimed directly at completing the separation. On the other hand, the shaver could be understood as an extension of the body (defining tools as artificial body organs). From this standpoint, the beard hairs’ ontological...