Social relations, which are concrete abstractions, have no real existence save in and through space...
The whole of social space proceeds from the body...
As noted, philosophy stopped dead when it came face to face with the 'subject' and the 'object' and their relationship...
Western philosophy has betrayed the body; it has actively participated in the great process of metaphorization that has abandoned the body...
We are speaking, therefore, of the abolition of Western metaphysics, of a tradition of thought running from Descartes to the present day via Hegel, a tradition that has been successfully incorporated into a society based on raison d'etat, and at the same time into a particular conception of space and a particular reality...
The salvation of knowledge (connaissance) depends entirely upon a methodological re-examination of its established forms (savoir), which congeal it by means of epistemology and seek to institute a supposedly absolute knowledge which in fact is no more than a pale imitation of divine wisdom. The only road for such a re-examination to take is the unification of critical knowledge with the critique of knowledge. The critical dimension of understanding must be brought to the fore. Collusion between 'knowledge' and 'power' must be forcefully exposed, as must the purposes to which bureaucracy bends knowledge's specialization. When institutional (academic) knowledge sets itself up above everyday life, catastrophe is in the offing. Catastrophe is indeed already upon us...
ch.7
