Chapter 2 Nancy, Descartes, the Exposition of Bodies and the Extension of the Soul

This chapter turns to Nancy’s own reading of Descartes, which also focuses on the problematic relation between the union of the soul and the body on the one hand and the cogito on the other. Against Heidegger, who interprets the Cartesian cogito as the self-positing of the subject of thought and knowledge, Nancy focuses on the performative utterance of the cogito in order to show how this utterance consists in a double movement of withdrawal and exposition. Such movement is only possible because what utters or opens itself in the cogito is not a substance but a body. The reading of Descartes proposed here allows for a more careful interpretation of the notion of body in Nancy, one that does not merely focus on the spacing between bodies and their exposure to one another through the touch of the skin, but also emphasises the spacing or differance of the body to itself.