In the interest of being repetitive, as if at this point we could actually seize upon a new idea, we will begin our discussion of the process of assimilation in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature as we have begun the others, firmly in the grip of the Concept. The difference is that here, in the examination of the animal organism, the grip and the bite are quite literal and lethal: "The process begins with the mechanical seizure of the external object; assimilation itself is the conversion of the externality into the self-like unity."[NOTE 21] Hegel's account of assimilation begins with grasping, seizing, apprehending. It is precisely as mechanical as it is metaphorical -- this literal grasping of food is also the mechanical operation of language "seizing" its object and identical to "fassen, begreifen" used as an example of metaphorical language in the Aesthetics. We will concern ourselves only with a small part of the middle section of Hegel's tripartite division of his treatment of the animal organism in which it is to be considered "as idea which enters into relationship with its other, its non-organic nature, and posits this inwardly as ideal -- Assimilation" (PON §352). The notion of assimilation, in terms of this paper, cuts across a majority of the arguments and will be dealt with in its other aspects as the specific situations arise. The point is that just as I have suggested that the notion of the "body" persistently arises in places where one would least expect to find it in the Aesthetics and the Phenomenology, when Hegel is explicitly concerned with the body, or the organism per se, in the Philosophy of Nature, other, more "spiritual" elements infiltrate his discourse. Here, I simply want to note that use of the word "infection" is not fortuitous, but intentionally virulent as if through the sheer force of its meaning it could spread out beyond its borders to "infect" the other areas of his system.[NOTE 22]
Because the living being is the universal power over its outer [non-organic] nature which is opposed to it, assimilation is, first, the immediate fusion of the ingested material with animality, an infection with the latter and simple transformation. Secondly, as mediation, assimilation is digestion -- opposition of the subject to the outer world, and, as further differentiated, the process of animal water (of the gastric and pancreatic juices, animal lymph as such) and of animal fire (of the gall, in which the accomplished return of the organism into itself from its concentration in the spleen is determined as being-for-self and as active consuming): processes which are, all the same, particularized infections. (PON ¶364)
Assimilation as "mediation" and as a process of conversion aligns itself with other concepts I have been using under the general category of shifters. Thus, it can be seen not only as the literal process of digestion but as a metaphor of reading; a metaphor for the "processing" of language. In David Farrell Krell's book Contagion, a study of the philosophies of nature of Novalis, Schelling and Hegel, we can see how these reciprocal relations between subjectivity ('I') and language get played out in this infectious domain of assimilation:
Part of that complexity is the reversibility of all assimilation, whereby one becomes what one eats, poisoning the other but taking it in for the good health of the self. For the ingestion of otherness infects the being that is in-and-for-itself. The living being lets the other in, and so lets itself in for otherness and exteriority. The sucking alien, as horrendous and as invulnerable as it may appear, is always sucking in its death along with its life. To let the other in, to let oneself in for the other, is the negativity of subjectivity as organism (Krell 148).
The idea of "reversibility" is constitutive of the concept of in-betweenness that I have been examining. Here this biological assimilation of otherness into the self necessarily affects and effectively transforms the self, just as, analogously, the self externalizing itself in language is in turn subject to the internalization of the infection of language. For Hegel, there is always a relationship between linguistic expression, externalization, alienation and infection. That is, all of these concepts come into play whenever there is a question of the assimilation of foreign matter. As a metaphor, infection bleeds into other areas of Hegel's system and when it is used literally, as for example, when it concerns vegetable assimilation, Hegel calls it "immediate infection" (PON ¶346). When "infection" comes up in the Phenomenology,[NOTE 23] Hegel uses Ansteckung rather than Infektion.[NOTE 24] Language as infection is a shifter.