Embodiment

A ‘nonplace’, in Marc Augé’s view, may be defined in contrast to what he refers to as anthropological place’. It is spaced that cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity. This article explores the sense of (non)place by answering these questions: if it is true that ‘who’ we are is defined by ‘where’ we are, insinuating that places do have an important role in shaping our identities, then what do these nonplaces tell us about us? In places that lack any defining features and reflect little of the unique local geography in which they are in, can we still develop a sense of place? What is needed now is a shift from the initial prioritizing of ‘cultural contexts’, to the ‘context of the ‘embodied’, emplaced, individual subject, a context that precedes any cognitive framework. Bearing in mind this shift in focus to the body, a phenomenological analysis of nonplaces then becomes necessary. The experiential value of a place must be assessed according to a lived, embodied engagement with it. Rem Koolhas’ view of a ‘generic city’ in which urban dwellers now live has worldwide reverberations. This paper argues that a phenomenological analysis that emphasizes on subjective, embodied, lived experience is a necessary step to make. By focusing on the body, the strict categorisations that have led to negative connotations to nonplaces begin to lose their rigidity.

Keywords: Nonplace, space, identity, urban environment, a sense of place, embodiment, generic city

Throughout recorded human history, experiences and observations of the natural world have inspired the arts. Within the sonic arts, evocations of nature permeate a wide variety of acoustic and electronic composition strategies. These strategies artistically investigate diverse attributes of nature: tranquility, turbulence, abundance, scarcity, complexity, and purity, to name but a few. Within the 20th century, new technologies to understand these attributes, including media recording and scientific analysis, were developed. These technologies allow music composition strategies to go beyond mere evocation and to allow for the construction of musical works that engage explicit models of nature (what has been called ‘biologically inspired music’). This paper explores two such deployments of these ‘natural sound models’ within music and music generation systems created by the authors: an electroacoustic composition using data derived from multi-channel recordings of forest insects (Luna-Mega) and an electronic music generation system that extracts musical events from the different layers of natural soundscapes, in particular oyster reef soundscapes (Stine). Together these works engage a diverse array of extra-musical disciplines: environmental science, acoustic ecology, entomology, and computer science. The works are contextualized with a brief history of natural sound models from pre- antiquity to the present in addition to reflections on the uses of technology within these projects and the potential experiences of audiences listening to these works.

In this paper, I try to show how Japanese practices of self-cultivation found in the so-called “ways” (道 dō, michi) can be interpreted as embodied forms of “caring for oneself ” (epimeleia heautou) and, therefore, as part of a philosophical Lebenskunst or art of living. To this end, I refer to phenomenological accounts of the body as well as to a unique notion of practice found in the writings of Dōgen Kigen, a thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master. Central to this essay is a concern with embodying kata or pre-defined patterns of movement and posture used in nearly all practices of self-cultivation in Japan. To approach this question, I look at the etymological roots of the term kata and its use in the writings of Zeami, the foremost representative of classical Noh theater, both as author and as actor. This is followed by an analysis of certain aspects of the embodiment of kata and the way it is described in Japanese literature.

This paper asks about the ways in which embodimentoriented
cognitive science contributes to our understanding of phenomenal
consciousness. It is first argued that central work in the field
of embodied cognitive science does not solve the hard problem of consciousness
(Chalmers, 1996) head on. It is then argued that an
embodied turn toward neurophenomenology makes no distinctive
headway on the puzzle of consciousness; for neurophenomenology
either concedes dualism in the face of the hard problem or represents
only a slight methodological variation on extant cognitive-scientific
approaches to the easy problems of consciousness. The paper closes
with the positive suggestion that embodied cognitive science supports
a different approach to phenomenal consciousness, according to
which the mind is massively representational (and cognitive processing
teems with body-related representations), cognitive science has no
use for the personal-level posits that tend to drive philosophical theorizing
about consciousness and mind, and the hard problem is
illusory.

This MSc thesis explores a transmasculine embodiment through bodies, acts, and objects, from a new materialist perspective. The study is situated within the field of transgender studies, and the research question, ‘how can transmasculine embodiment through the materialities of the body and everyday acts and objects be understood through new materialism’, is answered through an autoethnography. Key findings are that a) a trans-becoming emerges through the phenomenon of meeting someone’s eyes, b) through material-discursive practices transmasculine people work with and against the body, and c) onto-epistemologies of race and gender emerge through the interplay of temporal, spatial, and corporeal processes.

In this paper, I discuss how dance can operate as a method in the collaborative performance ethnography to explore the sensory and emo- tional dimensions of the embodiment of young womanhood. Drawing on one dance workshop where we explored material objects symbolic of womanhood, particularly introducing Nitika and her intuitive dance with gendered objects and her bodily ways of knowing and learning about gender, I illustrate how dance enabled exploration of young women’s identity intertwined with objects and their gendered meanings. I argue that creative embodied methods such as dance create space for working with the plurality of fleeting sensory and emotional information, not because it is more important than any other information, but because it is an alternative way of knowing about oneself, others and the world.

What would it mean to take zombies seriously? Cultural savants have noted the rise of the zombie in American popular culture in the twenty-first century. And many scholars have found the zombie useful as a lumbering, empty-headed metaphor that could signify just about anything. The zombie might look like a loved ovne, but their flesh is rotting and their individualism has tragically withered away. Before I came to zombology, I was already fascinated by an American obsession with preventing the decay of the corpse through an exceptional devotion to embalming. I argue that the intersection of the new zombie-ism, the rapid decline of embalming, and the mass trauma of 9/11 is significant. Playing with zombies along a spectrum from fright to humor allows Americans to work through not a crisis of meaning, but a crisis of being. The cult of individualism no longer needs a perfect biological body.

This is the Performing Borders Study Room Guide curated by Alessandra Cianetti and published by the Live Art Development Agency (LADA). It explores physical and conceptual orders through live art. Artists working in this aspect talk about their practice.

The PDF is available on the LADA site http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/resources/catalogue/performing-borders-a-study-room-guide-on-physical-and-conceptual-borders-wi

My section is on pages 92-108. It contains links to relevant resources too.

A growing number of publications have been exploring the possible effects of mindfulness-based interventions on teachers' well-being and their professional lives. Notwithstanding promising results in this domain, this paper identifies some difficulties involved in introducing teachers to mindfulness and proposes that there may be a need to develop alternative routes by which to expose more teachers to experiences of mindfulness. We report on a mixed methods study of a 5-week teacher learning program implemented in an Israeli middle school with 30 teachers, 28 of which were females, with an age range of 29-55. The program was designed to invite teachers into initial experiences with mindfulness without formally engaging in mindfulness practice but rather based on studying education-relevant brain theory through a contemplative pedagogical approach. Outcomes were analyzed quantitatively by comparing collaborative concept maps created by the participants before and after undergoing in the program, and qualitatively by analyzing themes extracted from the participants’ discourse. Findings show that the program: (a) mobilized teachers from fixed to growth mindsets in regards to their role as educators as reflected in a significant increase in teachers’ beliefs that basic brain abilities are malleable (as extracted from the concept maps, p=0.004), (b) offered them initial experiences of mindfulness, and (c) possibly opened them to consider more direct approaches to mindfulness practice that are offered in mindfulness-based interventions.

In this paper I describe an approach to embodied nonduality called the Realization Process.  By embodied, I do not mean just the ability to walk around in our daily life, recognizing nonduality.  I mean the nondual transparency of the body itself.  This is an experience (I will talk more about this word "experience" later in the paper) that we are made of transparent, space-like presence, that this is our basic or true nature, and that everything that we perceive around us is also made of transparent, space-like presence.

This article argues for a more rigorous distinction between body extensions on the one hand and incorporation of non-bodily objects into the body on the other hand. Real re-embodiment would be a matter of taking things (most often technologies) into the body, i.e. of incorporation of non-bodily items into the body. This, however, is a difficult process often limited by a number of conditions of possibility that are absent in the case of 'mere' body extensions. Three categories are discussed: limb extensions/prostheses, perceptual extensions/prostheses and cognitive extensions/prostheses. For each category, a distinction between extensions and incorporations is proposed, and the conditions of possibility for real incorporation are discussed. These conditions of possibility differ in each category, but in general they ask for radical or fundamental alterations not only in the motor and/or sensory or cognitive constitution of a human subject, but also in his or her subjective experience.

Just as a child’s neurodevelopment becomes more sophisticated with life experience, somatic psychotherapy and dance/movement therapy, now in their eighth decade, are approaching a more intricate stage of growth. As each discipline grows in complexity, conflicts have risen regarding the concept of identity. The recent debate of whether dance/movement therapy is one of the somatic psychotherapies or its own discipline is a necessary and exciting “growing pain” in the evolution of embodied psychotherapy practices. This paper provides a historic overview and uses a systems theory framework to compare the disciplines with data derived from original and recent literature. Practices, education, and governance of each discipline are presented as they exist in the United States. Findings illustrate the comparison and offer clarity on the current trend toward integration. Suggestions are made for further critical thinking to develop awareness toward an evolved perspective of embodied psychotherapy practices.

Il tema della libertà costituisce nel pensiero ricoeuriano un elemento sorgivo della sua riflessione, che progressivamente diventa un fiume carsico: un che di sommerso che tuttavia riemerge di tanto in tanto nella sua scrittura. Alla luce di questa idea il presente saggio intende sondare la presenza di un pensiero della libertà nell’ampio orizzonte dell’opera ricoeuriana, al fine di evidenziare alcune dinamiche proprie del pensatore francese nell’orizzonte di una riflessione sempre unitaria, anche se mai totalizzante. Il tema della libertà nella sua realizzazione personale diviene così il centro dell’argomentazione a partire dal quale si irradiano le tematiche più care a Ricoeur: dal tema del linguaggio e della metafora, a quello del tempo e della narrazione, fino a giungere alla dimensione etica, legata al tema della volontà e del male e da ultimo sfociante nella questione del riconoscimento, tra giustizia e amore. Il tentativo di questo lavoro è propriamente quello di ricercare nella dimensione della libertà quella tessitura profonda e costante che tiene insieme il vasto orizzonte delle ricerche ricoeuriane.

This article paints a partial portrait of a White, antiracist, university based teacher educator in the United States, and provides a snapshot of her antiracist pedagogy in practice. This snapshot is juxtaposed against (her own and others’) theorising of antiracist pedagogy. Using reflexivity as methodology, I pay attention to my noticings of my participant’s antiracist pedagogy as evidenced through her navigation of a racialised, affectively charged classroom encounter involving the teacher educator, a Black student, and me, a Black researcher. I analyze the embodied and affective aspects of that experience through a racialised lens and find that the teacher educator’s (re)actions represent an enactment of Whiteness. The enactment relates to the enfleshed material body. Thus, I contend that the development of an antiracist pedagogy that moves beyond rhetoric in resisting rather than reinforcing Whiteness – and therefore, that contributes meaningfully to racial justice – requires attunement to affects produced via interembodiment, in theory and practice.

The discussion of the Theory of EVERYTHING has been continued with a concerted interest on physicality, and in particular, the concept of Dark Matter and consciousness embodiment, making a reference to the advent of Core Manifestation Body Template or concept of Morphogenetic Field. It is elucidated that contrary to the erroneous conjecture of the mainstream science, Dark Matter is not just something that is only simply responsible for gravity. Indeed, it is true that Dark Matter epitomizes what ‘holds’ everything together in physicality. Yet, Dark Matter is not just regular matter that is only indigenous to 3D physicality, nor is “dark” by any means, both in terms of its Light quotient and frequency of vibration. Dark Matter manifests itself as plasma waves that has a spectral density that begins from highly comparatively lower constitution, and thus, high Light quotient and frequency of particulate (as well anti-particulate) vibration, all the way making the fabric of the to the 81st space-time dimension, to that of our Harmonic Universes, as well as forming our consciousness embodiment. Indeed, it is better to altogether dispense with the terminology of “Dark” and replace it with “Stealth” matter. In fact, Dark Matter is the essence or the substance of what emerges from the eternal spirit of the God-SOURCE. And, Dark Matter epitomizes what constitutes and builds the layers of our Lightbody that, in turn, give rise to the formation of our material atomic body. Thus, the Dark Matter body may be viewed as the connection link that exists between the eternal spiritual Light SOURCE body of the Prime Creator and the finite level of our Light source body. The Core Manifestation Body is governed by the Dark Matter Template, the blueprint or the instruction sets that our Eternal Source Particle Atoms and Molecules are built in order to generate the layers of our Eternal Light Body determining our bioenergetics, in turn, giving rise to our morphogenetic field that forms the DNA and RNA structure of our genetics. And, all this entails is the conversion of energy into matter. Dark Matter Template holds a cell that has the instruction set for the Elemental Body that is specific to the matter substance that is connected to a specific Harmonic Universe (e.g., HU1, HU2, HU3, and even HU4), and thus, provides the very means for our very consciousness embodiment. Note that quantum field affects the organization of the
Space-time or ‘dimensions,’ which in turn, determines the structure of the timelines that forms the Nebadon Time Matrix that defines our 4 holographic Harmonic Universes. This is what is commonly referred to as the 12D Grid or Tree of Life, the blueprint matrices of the Time Matrix that make up the layers of the Morphogenetic Fields of the Earth, as a macrocosm, and in turn, us, as the microcosm that determine our Consciousness reality and evolution. This establishes a system of communication that connects and realigns Earth and its planetary Light body structure via certain portals and stargates to the rest of the Cosmos, something that may be described as ‘holographic geography,’ the geometric intelligence that connects all the star systems in our local universe to the surface grid of our planet. Note that any changes in the Dark Matter Template Body (the ‘Rasha Body’), signifies a shift occurring in our physical body and physicality. And, in turn, any change in our orientation in matter, signifies a change in the fabric of space-time dimension to which our consciousness is anchored. Accordingly, a review of our quantum consciousness embodiment structure within the Nebadon Universe that may be classified under the concepts of ‘Soul Aspects,’ ‘Soul Expression,’ ‘Oversoul,’ and ‘Avatar’ matrix that was initially depicted by the ‘Carousel-Wheel of Consciousness’ by the author, is re-articulated, herein. Finally, a brief discussion of the relevance of magnetic energies discharge to the Planetary Dark Matter Body Template and the nature of the subtle energies, as well as Gravity, Black-White Holes, and Wormholes has been presented.

This paper explores the importance of Kendrick Lamar in the entertainment industry, in hip-hop and in American History. The essence of this paper explores his celebrity black body in relation to history, identity and his contribution to rich black historical archives on the black experience. At large, this paper examines his performance in his DNA music video, to see how his lived body, equipped with its historical DNA, informs our modern perception of the black body.

This paper, written from a feminist perspective, seeks to understand the oppressed black body in popular culture to see how public figures like Kendrick Lamar are reclaiming their history. By creating a rich archive of soulful music and meaningful videos, Kendrick is mainstreaming the black reality in a time where the African-American body is at a political crossroads.

Kendrick Lamar is writing history with his embodied performances and his profound written reflections and ensuring that future generations have a reference point in understanding, participating with and learning from their collective history.

Following the neoliberal restructuration of the Turkish welfare and banking systems in the 2000s, many veterans of Turkey’s Kurdish war faced debt enforcement due to failed payments for prosthetic limbs. Veterans responded to debt collection by turning their own bodies into spectacles of debt and sacrifice by publicly removing and showcasing their debt-ridden prostheses. The media interest in these prosthetic spectacles further amplified the visceral threat of dismemberment evoked by veterans’ embodied performances. The public debates surrounding “prosthesis repossession” cases extended well beyond veteran welfare issues, inscribing all sorts of social and political anxieties on the amputee veteran body, such as anxieties around the incommensurability between the value regimes of nationalism and neoliberalism or around the Syrian refugees. Providing a window into larger questions about the interconnections between disability, gender, nationalism, and neoliberal capitalism, prosthesis repossession cases show us how debt and disability coproduce each other at the nexus of consumer debt and nationalist welfare in Turkey. By homing in on the prosthetic re-membering and dismembering of veteran bodies in a rapidly changing health milieu, we see how the political economy of violence and the violence of political economy become complicit in the production of debt, dismemberment, and prosthetic rehabilitation.

The essay seeks to explore body-focused phenomenological writing in disability studies and film theory throughout publically shared anecdotes, coming-out narratives, and embodied autoethnographies. Through the author’s own bodily experiences in academia, particularly writing, attending conferences, and teaching, Greenberg bridges the gaps between the disciplines through an embodied autoethnographic phenomenological methodology inspired by film scholar Vivian Sobchack.

In light of cultural discourses that position femininity at odds with technology, I was inspired by the work of
Donna Haraway to examine how women amputees experience and negotiate feminine embodiment with
prosthetic limbs. In her germinal Manifesto for Cyborgs, Haraway theorised the cyborg as a feminist symbol of a
utopian “post-gendered world,” asserting that techno-hybridity has the potential to destabilise embodied gendered
subjectivity—prompting a rethinking of sex, bodies, gender and humanity. In this paper, following a critical
discussion of Haraway’s work, I argue that the cyborg continues to be a provocative concept in feminist sociologies
of the body, enabling us to explore the complex new subjectivities that are made possible through feminine
techno-embodiment. Trough an empirical exploration of women amputees’ experiences of living with prosthetic
limbs, I found that women can embody and incorporate prosthetic technologies into their feminine selves in
multiple, complex, gendered ways. My fndings indicate that cyborgian hybridity may have the potential to
destabilise some aspects of gendered embodiment and performance for women with prosthetic limbs, which can
be experienced as both limiting and liberating.

This paper is a lyrical-philosophical exploration of becoming a body of water.

Undutiful Daughters (Table of Contents)

Preface: The Society of Undutiful Daughters
Rosi Braidotti

I. NEW CONCEPTS

Introduction: A Politics of Polyphony
Fanny Söderbäck

1. The Future of Feminist Theory: Dreams for New Knowledges
Elizabeth Grosz

2. The Need for the New in Feminist Activist Discourse: Notes Towards
a Scene of Anachronism
Red Chidgey

3. The Interruptive Feminine: Aleatory Time and Feminist Politics
Emanuela Bianchi

4. Écriture Futuriste
M. F. Simone Roberts


II. NEW BODIES AND ETHICS

Introduction: A Politics of Displeasure
Chrysanthi Nigianni

5. Feminist Extinction
Claire Colebrook

6. Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water
Astrida Neimanis

7. The Breathing Body in Movement
Davina Quinlivan

8. Incubators, Pumps, and Other Hard-Breasted Bodies
Katie Lloyd Thomas


III. NEW SUBJECTIVITIES

Introduction: A Politics of Visibility
Henriette Gunkel

9. Rethinking Sexual Difference and Kinship in Juliet Mitchell’s
Psychoanalysis and Feminism
Judith Butler

10. Transgenres and the Plane of Gender Imperceptibility
Jami Weinstein

11. Primal Scenes, Forbidden Words, and Reclaimed Spaces:
Voice, Body and Poetic Form in Recent South African Writing
Gabeba Baderoon

12. Going Gaga: Dissent, Refusal, and Feminism
Jack Halberstam

13. (Un)naming the Third Sex After Beauvoir: Towards a Third
Dimensional Feminism
Kyoo Lee

In phenomenology, normality is neither an objectively measurable average nor a mere historical or social construct. Rather than being understood from without, looked at from the outside of lived experiences, normality is approached from within as a condition and mode of lived experience. In the first part of the paper, I will show why it is relevant to turn to a phenomenological investigation of normality if one is interested in normativity. This perspective, so I will argue, is needed if one wants to understand not only how external norms actually become part of subjective experience but also how norms develop in the first place through repeated practices. As such, the experience of normality, understood here as consisting of selfevident feelings of orientation and familiarity, can be interpreted as the result of an operative normativity. In the second part, I will present Husserl's theory of normality in more detail in order to demonstrate how it could be applied to a more systematic investigation of normality and norms on different genetic levels. Lived normality is seen here as a dynamic and fragile system of balances; a constant attempt to achieve an equilibrium with one's environment and fellow subjects. (Re)turning to normality allows us to see normativity at work, embedded in the need for constant development, appropriation, and transformations of regular structures in experience.

The social model of disability has demonstrated political success for disabled people in society. At the same time, it has been labelled an outdated ideology in need of further development. While the social model of disability has been used successfully for political activism, it has simultaneously created conflict and tensions in disability studies, sociology and the sociology of the body. This article sheds light on the confusion surrounding the social model of disability by discussing the historical emergence of its different forms. It then proceeds to analyse and evaluate key criticisms of the social model of disability. The article then goes on to explore the relevance of different forms of power to the current discourse on disability before proceeding to explore in depth what might be gained from the approach of one particular theorist on power; Hannah Arendt. It suggests that there may be merit in drawing on Arendt and illustrates some of the benefits of a more nuanced idea o...

This review essay of two edited volumes sketches how STS scholars have analyzed scientific representation and visualization in recent work. Several key foci have emerged, among them attending closely to materiality, engaging the digital through embodied action, turning to ontology, as well as benefitting from artistic practice and critique. In diverse ways these choices are informed by a discontentment with the Cartesian split of mind and body as well as the picture theory of language. Yet, naturalism endures as a template, an expectation, and sometimes a specter with and against which much representational work in science is done. What STS scholars have learnt about representation in laboratory and expert settings still awaits being employed more comprehensively for making sense of practices beyond the lab, especially in contested political, social and ecological environments. In setting out to do so, they ought to reflect on the kinds of logic that their practices of representing representation enact.

Cross-border solidarity has captured the interest and imagination of scholars, activists and a range of political actors in such contested areas as the US-Mexico border and Guantanamo Bay. Chandra Russo examines how justice-seeking solidarity drives activist communities contesting US torture, militarism and immigration policies. Through compelling and fresh ethnographic accounts, Russo follows these activists as they engage in unusual and high risk forms of activism (fasting, pilgrimage, civil disobedience). She explores their ideas of solidarity and witnessing, which are central to how the activists explain their activities. This book adds to our understanding of solidarity activism under new global arrangements, and illuminates the features of movement activity that deepen activists' commitment by helping their lives feel more humane, just and meaningful. Based on participant observation, interviews, surveys and hundreds of courtroom statements, Russo develops a new theorization of solidarity that will take a central place in social movement studies.

The fitness industry has undergone an explosive growth in recent decades. Some reasons for this are related to the increase in leisure time in the developed world and the importance attached nowadays to having a young-looking fat-free body. This article, based on ethnographic data from Santiago, Chile and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, seeks to add nuanced and complementary explanations to those reasons already mentioned. For example, the importance of moral, personal, social and identity significances that have also contributed to this rise are explained. I complement this with comparative information that emphasizes and clarifies the cultural factors influencing the culture of gyms.