Martha Jager: Concerning Verticality

Advisor/tutor: Marina Vishmidt

Arnhem, June 2016


This thesis seeks to defamiliarize the distinctive human vertical stance in an attempt to lay bare its value for our sociality and morality. Standing upright naturally implies being in the world in a specific way, which by our anatomy is one of opposition. By nature we see with our eyes, hear with our ears and are kept at distance from the ground, this is not a choice we get to make. But it is the moral worth of "being upright" connected to our posture, which provides an even greater distance, by separating the self as well as self from other. It holds that there is a right way of being which can be traced back to language in terms such as "stable" "unstable" and even "straight." Then what does being vertical allow for and what does it demand? And if vertical is synonymous with being human then what would it mean if someone would not want to be vertical anymore?