On sliminess

At this instant I suddenly understand the snare of the slimy: it is a fluidity which holds me and which comprises me; I can not slide on this slime, all its suction cups hold me back; it can not slide over me, it clings to me like a leech. The sliding however is not simply denied as in the case of the solid; it is degraded. The slimy seems to lend itself to me, it invites me, for a body of slime at rest it is not noticeably distinct from a body of very dense liquid. But it is a trap. The sliding is sucked in by the sliding substance, and it leaves its traces upon me. The slime is like a liquid seen in a nightmare, where all its properties are animated by a sort of life and turn back against me. Slime is the revenge In-itself. A sickly-sweet, feminine revenge which will be symbolized on another level by the quality “sugary.” This is why the sugar-like sweetness to the taste — its indelible sweetness, which remains indefinitely in the mouth even after swallowing — perfectly completes the essence of the slimy. 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 ismyself, 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. And again the hysteresis which I establish in the fusion of the ends of these strings with the larger body symbolizes the resistance of my being to absorption into the In-itself. If I dive into the water, if I plunge into it, if I let myself sink into it, I experience no discomfort, for I do not have any fear whatsoever that I may dissolve in it; I remain solid in its liquidity. If I sink in the slimy, I feel that I am going to be lost in it; that is, I may dissolve the slime precisely because the slimy is in process of solidification. The sticky would present the same aspect as the slimy from this point of view, but it does not have the same fascination, it does not compromise because it is inert. In the very apprehension of the slimy there is a gluey substance, comprising and without equilibrium, like the haunting memory of a metamorphosis.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness