Aesthetic Communication in Infancy: A Layered Aesthetic Self

Abstract

The article discusses communicative exchanges between infants and adults with a view to their performative aesthetic dimensions and implications for self and self–other relationships. It argues that infants are deictic and relational selves, who both respond and initiate aesthetic and performative exchanges with other persons. By recognising that aesthetic communication is operative on two levels, one more basic if also predominantly tacit (sharing), the other explicit and active (exchange), we can better understand the significance of aesthetic communication for selfhood and intersubjectivity in infancy, but also beyond.

1. Introduction

Etymologically, “infant” means unable to speak. But while infants do not master verbal language, they are eager to communicate with other people, and their multimodal, communicative skills develop quickly. If the desire to connect to other people is the driving force of early exchanges, as Colwyn Trevarthen [1] argues, it is channelled multimodally, through vocalisations, gestures, and looks, typically in situations where the infant is in touch with the other party, perhaps held by them. Early spontaneous interactions between infants and caregivers often develop into ritual performances with a given structure and a rich potential for variation and improvisation [2]. Also, action songs are often characterised by a given form with room for variations. Aesthetic capacities, including improvisational skills (such as sensitivity to timing and rhythm), are key in shared situations where communication takes place through both sharing and exchange.

In a landmark book, Stephen Malloch and Colwyn Trevarthen coined the term “communicative musicality” to refer to our innate capacity for non-verbal, vocal and multimodal exchanges [3]. This line of research has since been continued in work that emphasises the role of rhythm and movement in early development, and the explanatory fruitfulness of applying an aesthetic perspective on these phenomena [4,5,6]. Yet within the field of philosophical aesthetics, there is little discussion of childhood and infancy, as if the young human being were not a serious topic. In this article, I understand the aesthetic dimension of life as forming a continuum from pre-reflective, sensuous and expressive structures to imaginative and reflective awareness, encompassing tacit sensations of atmospheres but also transformative experiences of art [7,8,9,10].1 Moreover, while aesthetic often refers only to reception and appreciation, I suggest we understand it more broadly, as comprising creativity. In many instances, including communicative situations, aesthetic agency is a more illuminating term as compared to experience or even engagement, not to speak of appreciation.2 Aesthetic agency, especially in childhood, is typically multimodal, co-creative, and social.3

Now, looking at the infant from the perspective of reciprocal aesthetic communication is interesting from the point of view of early self and self–other relationships, a topic that has been widely discussed in developmental psychology (e.g., [16]). When do infants recognise themselves as different from other people, especially their mother or other intimate caregivers? Rather than attempting an answer to that question, I shall point out how aesthetic communication entails, on the one hand, connection and me–other continuity and, on the other hand, the positioning of self and other as different, most notably in play. I refer to the former as “sharing” and to the latter as “exchange.” Taking a cue from David Bohm, who described dialogue as “making in common” where similarity and difference both play a role [17] (p. 2), I argue that this dual structure is predominant in early aesthetic communication, that it relies on tacitly acquired skills, and enables self–other relationships to evolve and subject positions to be tested in playful and even ironic ways.

I look at communicative exchanges between infants and adults with a view to their performative aesthetic dimension and implications for self and self–other relationships. I suggest the infant is a deictic and relational self, who both initiates and responds to communication in a situation and with another. The aesthetic self which appears through this analysis is, then, a highly sensitive but also performative self.4 By recognising that aesthetic communication is operative on two levels, one more basic if also predominantly tacit, the other explicit and active, we gain a deeper understanding of the significance of aesthetic communication for subjectivity and intersubjectivity in infancy, but also beyond.

Below, I start with some methodological considerations, pointing out that my approach is existential in three ways. First, I approach infancy with a view to “what it is like” to be a baby; second, I emphasise the importance of early aesthetic exchanges for becoming a self with others; third, I suggest aesthetic skills are transcendental conditions for becoming a self with others. In the following section, I turn to the aesthetic dimensions of infancy, pointing to how intrauterine life provides familiarity with aesthetic qualities and atmospheres—an internalised or tacit aesthetic understanding and competence—whereas, after birth, exchanges with others become possible. These two modes, sharing and exchange, are however not alternatives. Genuine exchange, rather, builds upon sharing. Having described the two modes of aesthetic communication, I turn to a discussion of self in aesthetic communication, and its significance for self–other relationships and subject positions.

2. Methodological Considerations: An Existential Approach

The communicative and cognitive capacities of infants are by now well recognised and can be explained from different perspectives. This is legitimate and fruitful. From a perspective of approaching early communication in infancy as aesthetic agency, recognising the infant as an intentionally acting subject is, however, key. To see infants’ actions as part of genuine exchanges rather than attempts to imitate adults’ actions, we must attend to infants as capable of initiative and agency in addition to having the necessary physiological capacities to deal with stimuli.5 Focusing merely on the latter may lead to a neglect of desires, intentions, and values, and of the existential situation of being very young with everything this implies. An existential approach recognises the mind as a different key to human existence, as compared to the brain. The main point is not that the mind is embodied, although this is certainly the case. More importantly, the mind, even a young human mind, is cultural: it is a bearer of meaningful experiences and values rather than just equipment for perceptual and cognitive functions [23].

Here, I shall briefly outline some basic principles of an existential approach, as found in the work of Daniel N. Stern, Colwyn Trevarthen, and Vasudevi Reddy. First, in a way that might be described as phenomenological in bracketing certain dominant theorisations, it approaches the infant with a view to what it is like to be a baby [24]. This means withholding assumptions about what an infant cannot do in terms of intentional action, and instead looking at what they actually do [16]. Being an infant implies a certain life situation as compared to older humans, especially adults: being very young, very small, with few experiences and skills that have not yet developed. For sure, infants are in the process of learning motor and perceptual skills in a new environment, but this does not mean they are born totally unskilled, as I shall argue below. Moreover, while a newborn perceives the world differently from older people, this does not indicate a lack of intentionality, intelligence, desires or values.

As argued by Stern, infant development is best grasped through a layered model, where emerging domains do not replace each other, as in the stage models of Freud or Piaget [25] (pp. xi–xiii). This is the case, he points out, at least regarding intersubjective relationships, while taking hold of the world of objects (i.e., inanimate things) might be different. Now, the aesthetic dimension I discuss is first and foremost manifested in communication and agency with another person. It belongs primarily to the world of intersubjective relationships rather than to the world of things.6 I follow Stern’s model of a layered self, focusing on the aesthetic dimension of the infant self. An upshot is that aesthetic dimensions of communication do not disappear but continue to be part of communication in adult life.

An existential approach to infancy allows for following a line of inquiry where we recognise infants’ communicative intentions. This is important, as the way we theorise infants has consequences for how we interact with them [22,25] (p. 4). Depending on what we assume, and how we act, a different infant appears. There is a rich body of research on how infants communicate, and their intentionality and skills have been recognised. My contribution is to tease out the aesthetic aspects of early communication. In this way, we can better understand the fundamental significance of aesthetic communication in infancy and beyond, perhaps even recognise it as an “existential” in the Heideggerian sense [26] (§ 4), i.e., a transcendental condition for becoming a person.

In the following, I use two personal examples of interactions with an infant. They are not randomly chosen. The first occurred at a time when I had read theories about what has been called the imitation of facial gestures, but which I prefer to call exchanges. Rather intuitively, I grasped the opportunity to test the theory with a newborn in my family. Her initiative to repeat the interaction a few days later, and my understanding of this shared situation from within the situation, led me to question the dominant theory about facial gestures. The second example is slightly different: my insight about what happened in the situation was prompted by two photographs, sent to me the same day, through which I remembered and could reflect on the situation afterwards. The outwardly invisible: the shared rhythms, the slight movements, the way bodies touch and feel and hands move are key for understanding what I refer to as sharing.

Aesthetic communication in infancy takes place from within a shared situation, where two persons interact with each other. Understanding such interactions as intentional action requires first- and second-person perspectives, which is not to say they are all we need. Multimodal communicative interactions are about movement, and the meaning of kinaesthetic, felt movement is “only available through movement itself.” [4]: Section 6.7 In my second example, the felt movement of two bodies against each other is key, whereas in the first example, movement takes place over a short distance but between two bodies that touch each other. A “second-person perspective” is recommended by Reddy, who argues there is no “gap” between two people, because “minds are what bodies do.” [16] (p. 14). Similarly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes the primordial openness in situations of interaction [27] (pp. 406–408).

3. Aesthetics in Infancy: Sharing and Exchange

Communicative musicality, as coined by Malloch and Trevarthen, embraces the innate capacities and evolving skills of newborns to act and react multimodally, with voice, gaze, and gestures, in dyadic situations with a caregiver. They emphasise that infants are active, rather than just reactive in such exchanges due to their innate intersubjective orientation. However, even if the desire to communicate is like our physiological apparatus, innate, the skills of a neonate develop in a context: learning starts already in the womb. Thus, from growing in a particular m/other body, a neonate is familiar with melodies and rhythms of speech used by and around the mother. Although neonates do not understand words, they recognise their mother’s voice, mother tongue, and music they heard while in the womb. [6,28,29] (p. 104) Moreover, they have grown inside the flesh of a body traversed by and mediating biological and cultural rhythms, such as breathing, pulse, digestion, diurnal and weekly rhythms, etc. Infants’ multimodal communicative capacities arise, then, from familiarity with temporally unfolding dynamics of many kinds, as well as from a haptic and kinaesthetic familiarity with their own body, explored before birth in touching and exploring their own body parts.

3.1. Sharing

We might ask whether familiarity with temporal rhythms and spatial forms, matter, colours, taste, kinaesthetic movement and explorative action in the perceptual manifold of the womb is sufficient for meaningful communication after birth. If this manifold is present as mere sensations or perceptions, without meaning or content, how can it function in emotionally charged, meaningful communication with another after birth? In other words, while newborns have explored the forms of their body in the womb through movement and touch and may therefore recognise a similar form cross-modally, as in responding to a facial gesture with a similar gesture, this may not provide a basis for intersubjectively valid expressive meaning of gestures and rhythms. However, such questions arise from considering the elements of pre- and post-birth life as separable from the parties that are involved: the foetus/infant and the m/other. The significance of movements and rhythms is, in other words, a mystery only if we see these as belonging to the world of objects. If we instead consider them as part of an embodied, embedded, and thoroughly relational existence where we are rather than have bodies, they are less mysterious.8

In Forms of Vitality, Daniel Stern returned to a theme he had been concerned with in earlier research, namely “dynamic aspects of experience” [29] (p. 17). The new term, “vitality forms” is a novel take on “vitality affects”, “temporal feeling shapes”, “proto-narrative envelopes” etc. They play a fundamental role in development and life far beyond infancy. Everyone has a characteristic “movement signature” that can be recognised in their actions [29] (p. 13, cf. 88). In the arts, especially arts of performance and cinema, the use of temporal dynamics for expressive ends is refined [29] (Ch. 5). Thus, while vitality forms belong with movement, they are not the same as movement. Instead, the term indicates the quality of movement, its “how”. We can refer to forms of vitality with words such as “exploding”, “drawn out”; “pulsing”, “swelling”, “floating”, “bounding”, and many more; yet words are only approximations as compared to the individuality of the phenomenon, which is beyond language.9 In experience, vitality forms are encountered as “Gestalts” with characteristic “flow patterns” [29] (pp. 8–9). Finally, it is worth emphasising the perceived aliveness of vitality forms; their intentional or gestural quality.10

Movement starts early. Flexions of the spine have been described at 5–6 weeks of gestation. At 10–14 weeks, the foetus exhibits movements which Stern describes as “dance-like”, “like gestures”, and “not stereotypic” but performed with a view to the foetus’s position. [29] (p. 102) At 18 weeks, intentional movement and early forms of vitality seem to appear. However, Stern emphasises that development is gradual: “it is not clear when one can speak of the beginning of vitality forms (and felt aliveness).” [29] (p. 104, cf. 69, 101–105).11 Nonetheless, movement precedes mind: mind grows in and with movement [32].

Stern emphasises that vitality forms “do not belong to any particular content”, such as thought, action, or emotion [29] (p. 8)12, although they play a vital role in communication. But at the same time, in Stern’s account, they certainly seem to bear meaning in a crucial and inextricable way, as compared to mere ornaments. Here, some elaboration of his view is needed. Perhaps we can state that while vitality forms are not symbolic signs that can point to a meaning that exists independently, they embody their meaning and also articulate existence. Moreover, the adverbial how something is performed is more often than not part of our appraisal of what. Vitality forms give character to action, and in communicative gestures, they can be crucial both in the moment and in steering the interaction in a certain way. Yet, how does a neonate cope in communication with other people when they are certainly novices? Is there a ground for meaning rooted in intrauterine life?

Life before birth may not be devoid of values any more than it is devoid of felt rhythms and other sensations. Research on premature infants has shown their sensitivity to external stimuli and reactions to these [29] (p. 105). Feelings of pleasure and displeasure, shifting states of tension, stress, relaxation, comfort, ease, joy, and anger are part of the foetus-mother complex, where the foetus lives and grows in another body. This environment is traversed by pulses and sounds of heartbeat, breathing, and digestion, originating in both the foetal and the maternal body, with shifting rhythms of movement, light, voices, and other sounds from outside mediated by the tissues of the m/other body. In such an environment, relaxation and stress levels, tensions and rest, and other bodily states, as a substratum of existence, are shared by the mother and foetus. While emotions are experienced differently by the two—the foetus has no access to the reasons for the mother’s anxiety, joy, fear, anger, contentment, or sadness—they share how it is to be in that body. The intrauterine world is not neutral in terms of sensations and emotions but suffused by them. Thus, there can be valences and meaning, although pre-reflectively rather than reflectively experienced.

I have discussed intrauterine life at some length to indicate that newborns are not novices when it comes to aesthetically relevant dimensions of life, such as familiarity with and sensitivity to rhythms, moods and feelings. Nevertheless, the event of being born is revolutionary. It is only after birth that an individual can interact intentionally with other individuals, catching and being caught by another’s attention, gradually modifying atmospheres while attending to self and others. Yet, while the inseparability of the foetus and mother is over with birth, this does not mean the neonate is suddenly an autonomous individual. On the contrary, there is continued intimacy, a preference for being held and holding. Embodiment is a more thorough condition as compared to later in life. Also, what a newborn feels, does and intends is more in the present moment, where there is a lot to take in, as compared to later in life.

I have suggested there may be a fundamental meaningfulness to the vitality forms described by Stern, connected to states of feeling with emotional significance, and that it is sensed pre-reflectively. By using “meaningfulness” instead of “meaning”, I emphasise that what we have here is not symbolic meaning, but rather a sense of familiarity on the part of the infant: recognising, in some sense, where one is, being at home in the world. Following the existential approach, we should keep in mind that infants are born familiar with a dynamic intrauterine world that is animate through and through.

3.2. Exchange

Exchanges of facial gestures with newborns introduce interactions with someone who is seen over a distance (albeit short): a face looking straight at me. This is not to deny that there is typically, at the same time, intimate contact with the other’s body, which typically holds the infant and provides a ground of connection and sharing from which to interact. Yet vision over a distance—from this point in space to that point in space—is a radical novelty as compared to being embraced by warm tissues and fluids from all sides. And so is the recognition of another in front of me.

Exchanges of facial gestures take place in situations of intense attention, eye to eye. Outwardly, they may not manifest apparent aesthetic qualities. Their aesthetic relevance lies in their potential to establish a practice of playing. Let me recount the following experience:

I held a baby who was just under two weeks old and looked at her. She seemed to look back, although due to her dark blue eyes, I could not see exactly where she was focusing. I showed my tongue. After a short while, she showed hers. I put my tongue in one corner of the mouth. She responded with the same gesture, and we went on for a short while. A few days later, as I held her again in a similar situation, she initiated the game by showing her tongue. And I showed mine.13

Interestingly, this infant had no experience of similar activities with her parents or grandparents, but she recognised me as the one with this.

After birth, the tacit aesthetic of familiar rhythms, movements and qualities is complemented with a performative, communicative, and intentional aesthetic dimension, where meaning is created in events that can subsequently be repeated, or taken up again. The tacit and embodied, sensuous, multimodal know-how of the newborn makes possible both sharing and exchanges through vocal and gestural means. Body-to-body, kinaesthetic sensations as well as emotional tones are sensed pre-reflectively in the situation, much like before birth. But on top of that level of embodied sharing and connecting, there is the possibility of vocal and gestural exchanges in being face-to-face with the other, attentively focusing on the jointly created exchange and internalising the event. Afterwards, in initiating a similar event, a newborn, like in my example, can change her role from the one who is addressed to the one who addresses.

The active contributions of a newborn, even premature babies, in vocal exchanges with a caregiver have been amply documented in research. Recordings of these “proto-conversations” or “musical narratives” show that infants are highly skilled in timing: their cooing contributes creatively to jointly authored musical narratives [2]. Importantly, the infant’s contribution is not merely a reactive response; it shows an active desire to interact. Vocal and multimodal exchanges in infancy lack symbolic meaning or “content”, particularly for the infant.14 Yet, they are all but insignificant. However, their significance is embodied and inextricable from the interaction. It is also embodied in the sense of being performatively created, spontaneously and on the spot.

Interactions become memorable and repeatable through a combination of multimodal, gesturally articulated forms, and the emotional investment involved in sharing and creating with another person in a situation where the roles shift between addressed and addressing. Vitality forms gain social and cultural meaning from such situations, and the shared pleasure, including enjoyment of growing skills, is a reason for wanting to repeat the performances. Repetition does not mean slavish copying but rather performing “the same” with variations born in the moment. Exchanges in infancy do not just happen in the moment but build upon earlier skills and competencies, both receptive/perceptual and agentic/creative. As Alessandro Bertinetto points out, improvisation involves the internalisation of structures, which makes us expect it at a certain point. The paradox of improvisation is, then, that it is both expected and surprising [13].

In exchanges with infants, the activity is autotelic, i.e., an end in itself and has intrinsic value. The pleasure it provides stems from the very activity, rather than from attaining any extrinsic goals. Thus, exchanges with infants fulfil several criteria for distinguishing aesthetics from other phenomena, such as being sensuously rich, formally articulated, expressive, and addressing the imagination. On the other hand, while valued in themselves, they also have several beneficial effects in other respects, providing temporal, spatial, and social structure to life and supporting the infant’s social and cultural agency. When regularly repeated exchanges evolve into rituals that accompany certain moments, such as waking up or getting dressed, they provide functional, temporal and social structure to life. Importantly, exchanges with infants modulate human relationships through ways of being together [25] (p. xv)15: internalised styles of interaction with aesthetic-social repertoires, which are more firmly established as they have been co-produced and learnt with rather than just learnt from another person. However, having intrinsic and instrumental values does not cancel each other in this context any more than it does in art. We may not engage with art in order to be emotionally and intellectually nurtured—still art can have these and many more positive effects without its intrinsic value being diminished.

The existential, intrinsic significance of these exchanges is, however, closely related to how their proper structure nurtures creative, aesthetic agency through supporting memory, narrative, and imagination. By referring to the jointly created vocal exchanges between infants and parents as musical narratives, Malloch and Trevarthen implicitly point to their articulation of temporal and spatial structures.16 Like imagination, and Stern’s vitality forms, narrative implies a forward movement, a direction. As heard or performed, a tune or melody is not a static, life-less object but animate and going somewhere. Repeated performances with un/expected improvisations support both memory and imagination, building on earlier experiences and creating something novel. The performance we can revisit and renew is also a “work”; moreover, with its narrative structure and shifting roles it can constitute a fictional world—one where infant and adult are different and more equal as compared to their everyday roles.

In this section, I have distinguished two levels of aesthetic communication in infancy: sharing and exchange. Sharing refers to the tacit, pre-reflective sensing of multimodal rhythms and movements, where we participate rather than observe and act independently. Ontogenetically, it starts in intrauterine life, where foetuses participate in a situation characterised by a rich variety of multimodal sensations: shifting rhythms, intensities, tensions, patterns of sound, shifting colour and light, taste, as well as kinaesthetic and proprioceptive sensations of their own body. Action is taken from within a participatory position: when foetuses explore their foot or nose with their hand, there is an underlying continuity of hand and body, and continuity with the m/other body as well. In pre- and post-birth life, rhythms structure life temporally, while movement provides both spatial and temporal structure.

Overall, sharing is not mere passivity; instead, the key issue is participation. From that position, each participant has some share in influencing the overall situation. In exchanges, which become possible after birth, the situation is different. There are now two (or more) participants who act from independent positions and can surprise each other. Yet, sharing does not disappear. As if beneath the exchanges, there is an underlying level of sharing, a tacit aesthetics of being in tune and in touch through multimodal, polyrhythmic aspects of the interaction, including balance, touch, and involuntary gestures. These are tacitly registered rather than focally attended to. The strong engagement17 and presence of the participants in the exchanges, together with their articulated structure, make them memorable and establish a series of repetitions and variations on a theme, “scripted plays” with room for improvisation. In addition to being intrinsically valuable for the participants, these structure the infant’s life temporally, spatially, and socially.

4. Self in Aesthetic Communication

Having distinguished the two layers of aesthetic communication, sharing and exchange, I now turn to what these mean for self and self–other relationships in infancy. My focus is on the infant self, but not exclusively, as I believe the aesthetic skills and competencies the infant uses are shared by the adult, although they may not be actively cultivated. Yet in interacting with infants, a non-verbal aesthetic adult steps forward.18 The infant, however, differs from the adult in having to rely much more on aesthetic resources, as there is not yet a full narrative self, with memories, values, plans, acquired patterns of behaviour and expectations, i.e., the sort of things older people have. In the following, I am not going to engage systematically with existing theories of infant subjectivity. I would rather bracket them to focus on how the infant self appears when looked through the lens of aesthetic communication, and how aesthetic communication functions in positioning the self in relation to the social world in infancy and early childhood.

I start with an example. A friend came to see me, bringing her 3 ½ month-old baby boy, whom I had not met before. She handed over her son to me while unpacking some items in the hall, and I went to sit down on a couch with him. I talked quietly to him about mummy being present, although not in the same room, and enjoyed his warm presence and baby smell. There was a little hesitation around us, but I enjoyed the situation while recognising that he might start crying or wanting to get away from my lap to his mother. Thus, there was no apparent stiffness or nervosity in the situation, and he could hear his mother’s movements while she was not in sight. Then, she came into the room, sat down and suggested a picture of us.19

In the picture, my right leg is crossed over my left leg, and I have placed the boy sideways, with the left side of his body against my torso. My right arm embraces him from behind, with the palm of my right hand around his right knee, and my fingers lay still along his leg, while my left arm lies diagonally over his stomach and breast, with my left hand lightly touching his armpit. He touches my left arm with both hands, the left hand on my forearm and the right hand, palm closed, at my right hand. In fact, the position of his hands is similar to playing the guitar, one hand at the fingerboard, the other at the body of the instrument. I have bent my head toward him, touching his head with my cheek and smiling, although we did not see each other’s faces. The expression on his face is inward: one of listening and sensing, with open, unfocused eyes and a closed mouth—an expression of thoughtfulness.

While there is no outward or specific action in the situation, much is going on. We are tuning in toward each other, being in touch but without intrusion, in a listening mode that is open and sensitive, but without any special aims. However, my aim is to provide a safe situation, and to communicate that he can be at ease with me. At the same time, I enjoy his company and am flattered he accepts me. The tuning in takes place through feeling our bodies together, in a multimodal perceptual mode where my body provides space for his and I am willing to adjust to his felt intentions, e.g., if he would signal anxiety.

This is an example of aesthetic communication as sharing, building on sensitivities rooted in intrauterine life that stay with us throughout life. But in what sense are they aesthetic? First, they build upon perception, including vitality forms and the emotional tones of a situation. This is not only receptive, but also creative, with contributions from both parties who together produce the situation. Not all babies may have been this confident, depending on their earlier experiences and personality. Aesthetic communication as sharing is, then, not just about being in a situation but also about co-producing an atmosphere.20 This is typically performed pre-reflectively rather than consciously.

How can we understand the pre-reflective contributions? First, following Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed the idea of an “esthesiological” level of perception, a “logos of the aesthetic world” [27,35], more fundamental and global but also less apparent than, e.g., changes in taste or artistic styles. In his work from the 1950s, he argues that perception is always already expressive, for what we perceive never shows itself completely and, therefore, demands a contribution from us. [36,37] (e.g., 50). However, this contribution takes place pre-reflectively. On this level, self and world as well as subject and object are dynamically connected, and the object speaks to us because we have (co-)created it. Another phenomenological take on pre-reflective communication is Edmund Husserl’s idea of “passive synthesis”, used by Simon Höffding and Tone Roald to highlight moments when interviewees (musicians and art audiences) report being subject to a work of music or visual art [38]. These experiences are explained as manifesting pre-reflective, non-egoic consciousness and agency, a “meaning-making substratum” where the “boundary between self and other seemingly becomes more porous.” [38] (p. 7). It entails a more open and relational form of agency, leaving the “me” of personal taste and choices behind [38] (p. 9). In these situations, what happens does not originate in a conscious ego. Infants do not come from nowhere, but from a world traversed and structured by multimodal rhythms and intensities, which they participate in and to some extent contribute to. The idea of generative passivity as non-egoic, unfocused openness to the environment therefore seems applicable.

There is a second picture of me and the 3 ½ month-old boy, taken just after the first. We have now turned toward the camera, and we both smile, he with shining enthusiasm. His hands touch each other, and mine have also moved closer to each other. We smile at his mother, and she smiles and talks encouragingly to us. In the picture, there is an emotional bond from us to her (the camera), performed at the moment but based on firmly established relationships. We (the baby and I) act from a shared situation towards another person in a gesture that affirms and strengthens the bond with her.

Newborns who respond to vocalisations or facial gestures (and initiate them) and are co-creators of communicative events are agents of some kind. They act, but what kind of self are they? Stern emphasises that infants “never experience a period of total self/other undifferentiation” [29] (p. 10). Likewise, in discussing the earliest “emergent” sense of self, he emphasises that infants only experience the emergence of organisation, whereas “undifferentiation” is never experienced by infants, only projected on them by adults from a third-person perspective [29] (pp. 45–46). Focusing on how newborns manifest personal agency, responding and initiating communication, we might characterise their self as deictic and relational.21 In contributing to gestural or vocal exchanges the newborn “comes out” from its position and establishes a relationship to the other part. Deictic and relational imply each other: the point where I am is defined in relation to you.

The social dimension of human existence is fundamental [27] (pp. II:IV). Early communicative interactions acquire meaning in the situation, from shared vital investment and mutual action. In these situations, as Vasudevi Reddy points out in describing the “two-person perspective” on understanding other persons, there is no gap between self and other precisely because “mind” is in the action. “If minds are what bodies do, they are public, not private.” [16] (p. 14). The sense of self (and others) arises deictically from initiatives and responses in situations of interaction, where the embodied connection (sharing) provides a dynamic ground. As a term, deictic highlights the importance of the present situation, the here and now, in infancy. Compared to an adult’s situation, the infant’s is more confined, with less lived life and former experiences, habits and expectations. As mentioned, relationality follows from the deictic but, in addition, it points to the perceptual sensitivity of infants. Compared to an adult, the infant self is more of a node in a network of relations, where the self emerges both in terms of its own organisation, as Stern points out, and in terms of becoming someone in the social world. In that world, the self emerges through performing with others.

Focusing on aesthetic, communicative exchanges gives some clues to the emergence of an individual and social self: a self-with-others, a self-with-world. I shall now briefly discuss some performative structures and point to their relevance for the emerging self. While the focus will be on exchanges, this does not mean sharing is irrelevant. Aesthetic life in infancy is characterised by shifting proportions and intensities of sharing and exchange.

As noted above, interactions between infants and caregivers often spontaneously evolve into rituals or performances that can be repeated daily and even remind of scripted plays. As we have seen, even neonates enjoy such exchanges, remember them and initiate them. With slightly older children, the request “again!” is probably familiar to many people. The shared performance of producing something special yet familiar provides temporal and intersubjective structure to infant life. The special moment, with intense engagement and personal investment (affective and cognitive), is cherished and remembered. Doing it again is possible due to a rhythmically articulated structure with distinct elements. Repeated performances enable an affirmation of self-with-other, a revisitation of emotional and cognitive states, and a renewed enjoyment of aesthetic agency. They anchor the participants in a world that is shared and co-created.22 Repeated performances structure infant life temporally and provide holds for memory and self. Performative awareness, moreover, is a form of (aesthetic) reflexivity: knowing that I am doing this here with this particular other.

Repetition implies variation, improvisation, and surprise. Action songs often include “surprise” elements, which are expected rather than actual surprises. Yet their inclusion in the script introduces a breach in the narrative, which becomes multileveled, with a view from “elsewhere” as the narrative does not proceed as expected. Significantly, children’s rhymes are replete with nonsense. The improvised aesthetic exchanges between infants and adults, using multimodal gestures and vocalisations, are characterised by a high level of improvisation. Acting playfully with and against the other, producing surprises, and expecting and enjoying them are typically part of the rules of the game. This provides shifting subject positions in terms of control and loss of control, and a relationship which is more equal than the everyday one of caring and being cared for, respectively. Moreover, responding to a gesture with a similar gesture can be a sign of recognition. Both doing something similar and perceiving the other doing what I just did might, as Reddy suggests, strengthen a sense of mutuality [16] (pp. 43–65).

Finally, I would like to mention an example that suggests social awareness beyond the dyadic relationship. In an example reported by Trevarthen, a Japanese 10-month-old boy follows his mother leading a choreographed action song. As the boy suddenly utters a cunning “hah-hah”, Trevarthen observes, “This is an ironic laugh”.23 Now irony is to say one thing while making the audience aware that the meaning might be the opposite. The point is not to claim one or the other but to let the audience judge for themselves. Irony also signals looking at the situation from outside while at the same time participating in it. The Japanese infant produces a distancing effect akin to the one described by Bertolt Brecht, where an actor steps out from the represented world on stage and turns directly to the audience. The Japanese infant signals awareness that the narrative might be viewed differently.

5. Conclusions

Extending the scope of aesthetic subjects to infants may seem radical, yet there is a rich body of empirical research indicating how human beings participate actively in multimodal exchanges with others from birth. In this article, I have looked upon those forms of agency from a declared existential position, considering the life situation of infants rather than assuming their inferiority. Infants lack experience, but not motivation for intersubjective relationships, and while they do not know words, they are willing and able to communicate in many ways. Reflecting on how early communication is possible led me to reflect on the aesthetic conditions of intrauterine life, where the foetus is inseparable from the m/other body. I suggest that the familiarity with this rhythmically structured, multimodal environment is a tacitly acquired condition for the sharing of emotional states and the sensing of atmospheres after birth. On the other hand, soon after birth infants are willing to interact in other ways and are positioned as separate from the other person. This is the beginning of personhood, of a social self, a self among other persons. Communication in this mode takes place as exchanges, of playing with another person, initially without any other aim than enjoying the exchange. The scope of the aesthetic in infancy is broad, ranging from reception to production and combining these in aesthetic agency. While infancy aesthetics is embodied and performative, it also creates works and worlds that can be revisited and reproduced in new versions.

The importance of the aesthetic for self and intersubjectivity is intrinsic to the aesthetic modes of communication. However, sharing and exchange also point to two different dimensions of aesthetic relevance. Following Daniel Stern, who chose to describe the development of selfhood in infancy as layers that do not replace each other, I suggest the aesthetic self is also layered. In interactions, the infant is, on the one hand, connected, body to body, with an adult. On this level, they share and communicate tacitly, sensing how the other feels rather than articulating it consciously. On the other hand, infants and adults also interact with each other through intentional, manifest actions, such as gestures and vocalisations.

The idea of a layered aesthetic self is not meant to suggest there would be two aesthetic selves, any more than the aesthetic self is an addition to some other self. Rather, the aesthetic is an essential part of the human self, one we can either nurture or neglect but not do away with. While aesthetic communication is the predominant form of interaction in infancy, it continues to exist in adult life. Sharing is, I believe, part of communication with other creatures even beyond humans; sharing and exchanging are ingredients of enjoyable conversations, and this is highlighted in the performing arts. Until recently, there has been less discussion of the tacit aesthetic dimension, here referred to as sharing, but recent work on atmosphere has started to correct this.

This article may have opened more questions than it can answer. To open some new perspectives has also been my intention. It is my belief that by including early exchanges in an understanding of the role of aesthetics in human life, we can create a better understanding of the role and functioning of aesthetic capacities and how they evolve. Moreover, through applying conceptual resources from aesthetics in analysing infancy and childhood, we can illuminate how the self grows in social and aesthetic practices, providing room for reflexivity, freedom, and positionings of self with others. This contributes to understanding the aesthetic self—in both infancy and adulthood—as a creative rather than a just receptive self. Furthermore, it might contribute to developing existential aesthetics [40]24, complementing a current emphasis on transformative effects of art experiences with insights about the role of aesthetic agency in infancy and childhood for becoming and being a self-with-others.