Just a small side post to Muhammad's important post just below, this one serving as the other pole of the cuff.
I was sort of already thinking about the cuff as an envelopment or an embrace before. I think the embrace is a beautiful way to further think the mode of the cuff that can be supportive, one that allows us to think the cuff in terms of care.
In a way the embrace is not to hold, as in to own it (though it can become this, and then it would become more like the cuff Muhammad pointed at,) but to support: so a hold that is not to keep in the sense of ownership, but to keep in terms of consistency, to sustain the other.
Of course the physical act of embracing is a great, probably the best, example of this: you do not embrace someone to keep her or him, but to support. That is, there is a sort of care in the embrace.
Is there a way we think about these terms also for other sorts of cuffs? What about the clothing cuffs? Can we think of the cuff at the end of a sleeve or at the collar of a shirt as an embrace in the sense that it holds but does not keep? Does it support the form of which it is the end but not determine it?
In terms of care, I think the cuff is incredibly powerful, as it can put forward a double movement that defies an either/or logic. I'm thinking about how the embrace, the support of the cuff, is one wherein there is a constant possibility for a new relation to emerge, one that carries on into the future. But this requires an incredible and constant amount of effort to keep the cuff in that mode, to keep it supporting, to sustain it in the cusp, otherwise it might fall back onto itself or close in on that which it holds.
I loved this image. Care and embrace as a cuff. It makes a lot of sense for me since when we read that the cuff is, beyond garment and form, a protection to clothing. Why not a protection to the wristle. So even more, why not a care cuff to body... This calls me Daniel Stern with his concepts of empathy and tunning.. so powerfull concepts that might gives us consistency to support.. also a cuff suplement to support not supporting.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful.
Yes, 'tuning,' exactly that, a matter of constantly tuning!
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ReplyDeleteReally lovely, Halbe. I especially liked this: "Does it support the form of which it is the end but not determine it?" When I think of a cuff on a piece of clothing I note the way it orients vision (a cuff on a sleeve orients vision to itself, structuring what is otherwise far less structured). And so the cuff in a sense gives the form. But you say supports, which is also really interesting as it suggests that the cuff nudges the form-like into form. Does a cuff orient toward form? If a balcony is a cuff, we might say the same about the apartment - that it comes to form. A facade without a balcony tends to background itself (perhaps becoming visible through its siding, or through the windows). A balcony emphasizes this. So there is perhaps something about the cuff and structure (linking again to Mohammed's post below), about orienting and making visible. And of course also the edging into caress you foreground above.
ReplyDeleteNudging, yes that is precisely the word here -- very interesting how the cuff in this manner moves into the power discourse that Muhammad pointed at in a very particular manner! As the steering, nudging or in-forming of matter.
ReplyDeleteIf, like you said in Muhammad's post, the cuff indeed emphasises the edges, or hard edges even, is it then possible to think of the cuff as the opening, border or edge of a pocket, where the folds then take place both upon as well as in?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Jeans_pocket_front.jpg
I really like the idea of the possible duality of the Cuff ! Read as embrace and care at one end, while the same gesture- if taken into a different dynamic or space, can carry the possibility of a possessiveness or power. Maybe not all Cuffs are the same, maybe the same Cuff can change meaning from one person to the next. I think immediately of a cuff on a police uniform.
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting!
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about cuffs and relationships (or cuffs in relationships), I'm drawn towards thinking about how these relationships have a temporal dimension.
At the moment I find tempting the idea of repeated encounters over time forming layers similar to those of a folded cuff (or even a cuff on a dress shirt, usually containing an extra sewn layer). Often it's the way such encounters combine that contribute to a sense of a relationship, or at least that their accumulation change a relationship's shape or presence: here I have in mind the difference between a recent acquaintance and a long lasting friendship, but many others, not only interpersonal, could perhaps be described in a similar manner (parent-child, person-pet, person-institutional administration, inhabitant-environment, etc.)