ech act is that we must all “tighten our belts.” Of course the ones who make the command are probably not themselves tightening their belts. But those who resist the command, who call into question the right of or in the command, are deemed as self-willed, or even as selfish, as putting themselves (or perhaps even their own stomachs) over and above the general interest, as compromising the very capacity of the nation to survive, or flourish. We might assume that in the current financial climate, the bankers would be judged as willful, as putting themselves (and their own stomachs) before the general interest. But even if this judgment is made (by some, certainly not by all) that judgment is rarely expressed in action: after all, the bankers have kept their bonuses. Why can ask why even if we know why. Capitalism is understood as “the whole body,” as what parts must be willing to reproduce. And capital is identified as the life-blood of this body: as what must be kept in circulation no matter what (or who), as if without capital or blood being pumped through, the whole body would not flourish. The function of the banks as willing parts (as accomplishing in their “own good” the good of the whole body) is what stops any judgment of willfulness from being followed through. Perhaps the judgment is the follow through.
The part/whole distinction thus becomes a willing distinction: not simply a distinction between the part and whole, but between parts, between those who are willing and those who are not. This is why we cannot have a general logic of the part.
Understanding the part/whole distinction allows us to recognise not only how the will becomes duty, but how the duty becomes a particular as well as general duty. Given the social is imagined as a body with parts, some bodies more than others will be thought of as the limbs of the social body. To become a limb of the social body is to acquire a duty to provide it with support.
Henri Bergson in “Frenzy, Mechanism and Mysticism” reflects on the relationship between bodily organs and technology: “If our organs are natural instruments, our instruments must be artificial organs: the workman’s tool is a continuation of his arm, the tool-equipment of humanity is therefore a continuation of its body” ( 2002: 339, emphasis added). If the arm is continued by a tool, the arm is also a working tool. If the tool continues the arm, the tool is also a living arm. The worker can diminished by this continuation, which might how the specific story of the workman does not simply fold back into a general story of the human. Or the story of the workman’s arm might be another way of telling the story of the human. Arlie Hochschild describes how: “The factory boy’s arm functioned like a piece of machinery used to produce wallpaper. His employer, regarded that arm as an instrument, claimed control over its speed and motions. In this situation, what was the relation between the boy’s arm and his mind? Was his arm in any meaningful sense his own?” ( 2003: 7, emphasis in original). We need to tell these (unfinished) histories of lost arms, of how workers lose their arms, as the loss of a relation of ownness, when arms become tools in the creation of wealth. The loss of the worker’s arms in becoming tool is also the acquisition of arms by others.
When some bodies provide the “whole social body” with arms, other bodies are freed from the necessity of this becoming. The freedom not to be supportive is the freedom not to become the arms: by employing others to be the arms. We can consider how a wide range of power relations can be understood in terms of some becoming the limbs to support others. We can simplify this formulation: some bodies become supporting limbs. The “servant class” could be one way of thinking how some individuals become the “hands” that exist only to support others. The female servant is a handmaid. Bruce Robbins shows how servants as represented as and through hands in nineteenth century British fiction as “parts without a whole” (1993: ix-x). Perhaps the hand is cut off from the wo