Dimensiones del desarrollo infantil

We find many implicit understandings of the notion of embodiment and consequently rather an intuitive use of it. Much less frequently do we come across an explicit definition of this term. Allow me therefore to first present a definition, which at this stage will give us a tentative understanding of this phenomenon. For this purpose I have chosen a definition proposed by Thomas J. Csordas, an American ethnologist who employs a phenomenological approach in his exploration of the phenomenon of embodiment. He is the editor of Embodiment and Experience: The

Existential Ground of Culture and Self. In the article ‘Embodiment and Cultural

Phenomenology’ Csordas defines embodiment as ‘an existential condition in which the body is the subjective source or intersubjective ground of experience.’ (Csordas 1999: 143) I believe that the above formulation, despite its conciseness, offers an insight into the nature of this phenomenon. It is adequately precise while, at the same time, keeping open many possible variations of meaning that might be reflected by different disciplinary approaches. In its structure it contains almost every notion that is essential in order to enable a methodical analysis of the conceptual components of embodiment in the existing literature. Accordingly, we are presented with the following notions: ‘existence’; the body as a ‘subjective source’; and the

‘intersubjective ground of experience’. All these terms—either in the form presented above or as derivatives—will serve as possible angles from which to shed light on the notions of embodiment and, subsequently, intercorporeality.

Csordas’s approach to embodiment also marks a series of important methodological questions about investigations within the field. Immediately upon defining embodiment in terms of an existential condition—in which it is the body that is a subjective source, or intersubjective ground of experience—he concludes that, consequently all the studies ‘under the rubric of embodiment are not ‘about’ the body per se.’ (1999: 143) He clarifies that the studies established a field focussing on ‘culture and experience insofar as these can be understood from the standpoint of bodily being-in-the-world.’ (Ibid.) What they need, he postulates, is a ‘cultural phenomenology’—a higher-level reflection; a meta-discipline that would be concerned ‘with synthesizing the immediacy of embodied experience with the multiplicity of cultural meaning in which we are always and inevitably immersed’ (1999: 143). Csordas holds that the notion of the body is a highly unstable one due to its culturally variable interrelation with the mental and spiritual components that together form the subject. As a result, traditional critical theory was faced with two possible ways of understanding the body: the culture nexus, and the nature nexus. In the first—historically earlier—perspective, the body is defined within the framework of biological essentialism wherein it is entirely or at least predominantly determined by the laws of nature. On the other hand, social constructivism perceives the body exclusively—or at least primarily—as a cultural and historical phenomenon. This latter view advances the body as a mind in the past; a tabula rasa upon which culture inscribes its meanings. However, this formulation seems somewhat problematic, and Csordas suggests that a disjunctive and foundational mode of thinking is hardly sustainable, because the body should be regarded as ‘always already cultural as well as biological’ (1999: 144).37 Consequently, a third possibility poses the problem in a different way. It inverts the previous two formulations by suggesting that perhaps

37 _{This recognition, however, is not a recent one, as Toril Moi reminds us in her book What is a}

Woman? (1999). Questions about the body, culture and nature nexus were being posed already in the

late 1940’s, with the publication of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1945) and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949). Both suggested that the body is not a thing and as such cannot be submitted to the reductionist methodology of scientism and positivism. While developing her concept of the body as situation, De Beauvoir writes: ‘As Merleau-Ponty very justly puts it, man is not a natural species; he is a historical idea. […] As viewed in the perspective that I am adopting – that of Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty – […] the body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and a sketch of our projects (De Beauvoir 1945: 73 after Moi 1999: 62).

‘culture and history are bodily phenomena as well as the product of ideas, symbols and material conditions.’ (1999: 144) This approach takes its point of departure from the body itself and bestows upon it a constitutive meaning in relation to the earlier determining conditions. Yet, as Csordas says, a methodological distinction between the body and embodiment is necessary for a productive examination of this possibility. Examination in terms of embodiment asks about the manner in which ‘the body is an existential condition of life.’ This reveals the modes of many possible styles of embodiment and methods of objectification that are critical to the understanding of culture. Hence, the second possibility critically distinguishes between them while maintaining their mutual interdependence: ‘the body as a biological, material entity and embodiment as an indeterminate methodological field defined by perceptual experience and mode of presence and engagement in the world.’ (1999: 145) Furthermore, Csordas makes a crucial point in the context of current critical theory, operating within the parallel field of textuality. Recalling Barthes’s distinction between the work as a material object and the text as a result of interpretation or discourse—later renamed in terms of a distinction between text and textuality—he juxtaposes it with the aforementioned distinction between the body and embodiment. (1986: 57–68) He goes on to underline the awareness of those distinct, although co-existing and intertwined, orders. He reminds us that the radical epistemological move that ultimately privileges discourse and representation ruled out the notion of ‘experience’ altogether from critical theory. This linguistic turn, despite its usefulness for a deep critique of specific representations, creates a dangerous methodological monism. It does this in two respects. Regarding our field of investigation, it renders a dimension of bodily experience inaccessible. As Csordas puts it, it ‘makes difficult the posing of questions about the limits of representation, or whether there is anything beyond or outside of representations.’ (1999: 146) The consequences for our exploration of the body and intercorporeality are significant. Adjusting our purpose to Csordas’s example makes a difference, whether one is dealing with the cultural meaning of the white-painted, naked body of the Butoh dancer or the bodily experience of wearing particles of soil on one’s own, almost naked body.38

38 _{And yet both of these aspects belong intrinsically to the phenomenon of Butoh dance, construing a}

specific dimension of intercorporeal interaction between the dancers and the spectator. On the one hand Butoh may lend itself to postcolonial questioning, born within the spectator’s perspective, of the

Consequently, Csordas postulates that there must be an alternative that can take these differences into account and allow them to work productively alongside one another. He finds that, in the phenomenological tradition, this is expressed by Heidegger’s claim that language is capable of disclosing experience. This was also implicit in the entire Husserlian project. At this point Csordas indicates the notion of being-in-the-world as taking place alongside representation. In order to be faithful to Csordas’s view, it must be stated that he underlines the word ‘alongside’ in his effort to pose these modes of description as complementary rather than as mutually exclusive. This crucial emphasis also brings a methodological awareness to my own exploration of the phenomena of embodiment: the body and intercorporeality.

However, what is particularly important to my endeavour here is the term ‘being-in-the-world’—as propounded in Heidegger’s Being and Time—as this defines the perspective of studying in terms of embodiment. Significantly, it also strikes a chord with the phenomenological approach of Merleau-Ponty, where the body is both subject and object and where our embodiment is, consequently, a portal through which the world is given to us.

Csordas defines the concept of somatic modes of attention (1993; 1994) as ‘culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s own body in surroundings that include the embodied presence of others.’ (1999: 151) An example of an approach from the standpoint of embodiment is, according to Csordas ‘the engagement of sensory modalities in these phenomena, an engagement that defines a mode of intersubjective perception and attention to the distress of another.’ (1999: 152) The concept then provides a distinct methodological tool, which is not only directed towards the investigation of embodiment but which also has its source in the body. It contributes in bringing together theoretical investigations and practical modes of study that concentrate on different aspects of embodiment. As such it resonates with phenomenologies of dance presented later in this chapter, as well as with phenomenologies of the sensuous as advanced by David Abram and Alphonso Lingis.

significance of the whiteness as an emblem of distinctiveness, and as a means of conveying the significance of the dancing body. On the other hand it might open the dimension of a regionally specific narrative about the intertwinement of life and death, symbolised by the white colour of the rice powder, referring simultaneously to death and the fertility of the soil. In yet another instance, it can induce in the dancer the embodiment of these diverse experiences.