The For-Itself is suddenly
compromised. I open my hands, I want to let go of the slimy, and it sticks to
me, it draws me, it sucks at me. Its mode of being is neither the reassuring
inertia of the solid nor a dynamism like that in water which is exhausted in
fleeing from me. It is a soft, yielding action, a moist and feminine sucking….
Slime is the revenge of the in-itself. A sickly-sweet, feminine revenge which
will be symbolized on another level by the quality “sugary.” … A
sugary-sliminess is the ideal of the slimy; it symbolizes the sugary death of
the For-itself (like that of the wasp which sinks into the jam and drowns in
it)… But at the same time the slimy is myself, by the very fact
that I outline an appropriation of the slimy substance. That sucking of the
slimy which I feel on my hands outlines a kind of continuity of the slimy
substance in myself. These long, soft strings of substance which fall from me
to the slimy body (when, for example, I plunge my hand into it and then pull it
out again) symbolize a rolling off of myself in the slime… [Slime] transcends
all distincions betwen psychic and physical, between the brute existent and the
meanings of the world; it is a possible meaning of being. The first experience
which the infant can have with the slimy enriches him psychologically and
morally; he will not need to reach adulthood to discover the kind of sticky
baseness which we figuratively name “slimy”; it is there near him in the very
sliminess of honey or of glue.
Jean-Paul
Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London:
Routledge, 1969), pp. 610-12.
The book was popular among British students in the 1960s, but it has been suggested that it usually went unread by them. Sartre's reflections on slime (le visqueux) have been described as celebrated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness#Special_terminology_used_by_Sartre
太有趣了 七等生也見過那隻蠕蟲 我現在就是那隻蠕蟲
夏季過去之後，冬天來了；然後冬天過去之後，春天來
了。我像平常一樣的工作、遊玩和消遣，沒有任何驚奇
的事發生。我在潮濕的斗室裡像一條蠕蟲。
但是突然我意外地發覺我能思想，那是三月，我能知道
我長期的禁錮和憂鬱，我像有另一對眼睛看到我過去的
形體，它在時間的流動裡行走，我清楚地窺見到那行走
的陰沉姿態；然後我又驚奇地發覺我能夠說出與別人不
同意思的語言，也許我一直就如此，在這之前，我沒有
知覺我能語言，但現在我十分驚喜地聽到我自己的聲音。
(《散步去黑橋》〈我年輕的時候〉頁144）
