Phenomenology of the body

Body psychotherapy can offer practical clinical tools, as well as theoretical conceptualisations, for working with transitional states of consciousness, both individual and dyadic. This paper examines sleep as a transformative space, which is mostly unchartered territory for the other, and through developing Bion's reverie (and further influenced by Meltzer's and Klein's work), offers ways of joining the other – in our body – into spaces of sleep and awakening. The work on the threshold of conscious and unconscious processes, which is also known as transliminal (Fassler, Knox and Lynn, 2006), is characterised by dreamlike dissociative states of consciousness during awakeness. In addition, the author explores the function of sleep and sleepiness in the formation of mother-baby attachment system, and therefore at the formative stages of psychotherapy, and attempts to translate these understandings into clinical practice. Alongside the theoretical review, the paper presents a clinical vignette from groupwork, to demonstrate the technique of working somatically with states of sleep. A. The clock loses its power In my clinic, I often find myself amidst processes between sleeping and awakening. I find during various therapeutic situations, such as dissociation, where splits occur from the body, the heart (emotional disconnection) the head, or different body organs, it is very difficult to work verbally or interpretatively. We may look at dissociation as an organic state of falling into sleep, in the therapist, client, or both. Sleeping in therapy denotes a sleep, which is qualitatively different to its commonplace occurrence. It is a transitional state between sleep and awakeness – a trasliminal state. While sleep states of the client and therapist have been widely discussed in this paper shall focus on two novel aspects: shared sleep of client and therapist, and techniques for shared-sleeping in treatment as part of a practice of active bodily-reverie. Although drawing from psychoanalytic literature, I focus here on clinical psychotherapeutic applications of shared dreaming. To best understand the ideas

One way to examine the enigmatic meaningfulness of human life is to ask under which conditions persons ask in earnest for assistance to die, either through euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. The counterpart of intolerable suffering must consist in some form of, however minimal, flourishing that makes people want to go on with their lives, disregarding other reasons to reject assisted dying that have more to do with religious prohibitions. To learn more about why persons want to hasten death during the last days, weeks or months of their lives, what kinds of suffering they fear and what they hold to be the main reasons to carry on or not carry on living, the paper offers some examples from a book written by the physician Uwe-Christian Arnold. He has helped hundreds of persons in Germany to die with the aid of sedative drugs the last 25 years, despite the professional societies and codes in Germany that prohibit such actions. The paper discusses various examples from Arnold’s book and makes use of them to better understand not only why people sometimes want to die but what made their lives meaningful before they reached this final decision.

To compare Merleau-Ponty’s and Deleuze’s phenomenal bodies, I first examine how for Merleau-Ponty phenomena appear on the basis of three levels of integration: 1) between the parts of the world, 2) between the parts of the body, and 3) between the body and its world. I contest that Deleuze’s attacks on phenomenology can be seen as constructive critiques rather than as being expressions of an anti-phenomenological position. By building from Deleuze’s definition of the phenomenon and from his more phenomenologically relevant writings, we find that phenomena for him are given to the body under exactly the opposite conditions as for Merleau-Ponty, namely that 1) the world’s differences 2) appear to a disordered body that 3) comes into shocking affective contact with its surroundings. I argue that a Deleuzian theory of bodily-given phenomena is better suited than Merleau-Ponty’s model in the task of accounting for the intensity of phenomenal appearings.

A tout instant, quoi que nous fassions, nous sommes environnés par des corps qui réduisent l’espace et opposent de la résistance. Que sont ces corps qui saturent notre quotidien et avec lesquels il nous faut constamment négocier l’espace ? Plus radicalement, pourquoi y a-t-il des corps ? Je soutiens dans cet ouvrage que la psychologie et la physique ne disposent plus des moyens de répondre à cette question. La désubstantialisation du réel amorcée par la révolution quantique sape les fondements de l’explication objectiviste de la perception privilégiée par la première, et elle évide de sa portée ontologique le discours de la seconde.
Expliquer pourquoi la réalité se présente sous la forme d’un agencement de corps exige en premier lieu de comprendre le rôle que remplit l’anticipation du possible dans la perception. Dans le toucher comme dans la vision, poser l’existence d’un corps implique d’anticiper les contraintes que ce corps exerce sur notre champ de possibilités pratiques, accréditer de manière présomptive la disponibilité ou l’indisponibilité de certaines possibilités d’action. C’est donc uniquement parce que notre subjectivité donne sens à ce qui est en le référant à ce qui peut être que la réalité macroscopique à laquelle nous introduit la perception consiste en un monde solide.
Pour développer cette idée, l’ouvrage dresse une critique de la conception actualiste du phénomène de corps, qui subordonne celui-ci à l’expérience en acte d’une résistance, et il déconstruit l’approche physicaliste et objectiviste, qui prétend dériver les propriétés des corps que nous percevons des propriétés de structures physiques qui leur seraient antécédentes ontologiquement. Si la sémantique des corps présuppose l’épaisseur du temps humain et une perspective foncièrement pragmatique sur l’environnement, il n’est plus question d’assimiler sans autre forme de procès le corps à une « structure physique », quelle qu’en soit la teneur. Les corps sont un produit de l’activité constructrice de notre subjectivité, et seule une incursion profonde dans les mécanismes et principes qui régissent cette activité pourra permettre d’accéder à leur vérité.

Despite the popularity that the embodied cognition thesis has gained in recent years, explicit memories of events personally experienced are still conceived as disembodied mental representations. It seems that we can consciously remember our personal past through sensory imagery, through concepts, propositions and language, but not through the body. In this article, I defend the idea that the body constitutes a genuine means of representing past personal experiences. For this purpose, I focus on the analysis of bodily movements associated with the retrieval of a personal memory, which have certain features that make them different from procedural memories, pragmatic actions and common gestures, as well as other forms of embodied memories found in recent literature. I refer to these as “kinetic memories” and analyse their representative nature as well as their adaptive functions. Kinetic memories are bodily movements in which some event or action that took place in the past can be seen, because they are an externalisation of the subject’s inner intention of representing a past personal experience. Kinetic memories represent a past experience sometimes by imitation of a past movement, and other times through embodied symbols and metaphors. Furthermore, although sometimes they present direct pragmatic benefits, such as communicative benefits, they seem to enhance the whole reexperience of the past event and memory recall, which I argue is one important adaptive value.

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.

Enclosed is the syllabus and course notes from the upper division course I teach in PostModernism and Post-Marxist Critical Theory. It occurs to me that some of these essays--ranging from Horkheimer and Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault, and the feminist post-modern theorist Donna Haraway may offer some insight and some tools for comprehending the dark times in which we live. While these essays may not be directly aimed at understanding the rise of phenomena like the Alt-Right, toxic masculinity, and particularly violent forms of patriarchy, I think they can show us something about the ideological trends that set us on out current morally troubling path.

Movement and, more particularly, kinesthesia as a modality and as a metaphor has become of interest at the intersection of phenomenology and cognitive science. In this paper I wish to combine three historically related strands, aisthêsis, kinesthesis and aesthetics, to advance an argument concerning the aesthetic value of certain somatic sensations. Firstly, by capitalizing on a recent regard for somatic or inner bodily senses, including kinesthesia, proprioception and the vestibular system by drawing lines of historical continuity from earlier philosophical investigations on bodily background experience, initially from aisthêsis, Aristotle’s concept of the sensory faculty. Secondly, concepts of the sensate body are advanced through discoveries in the nervous system and related discussions of the ‘inner’ senses such as Charles Bell’s ‘muscle sense’ (1826), and what Charles Sherrington later termed ‘proprio-ception’ (1906).  irdly, we consider the possibility of aesthetic status for those inner senses, where recently aesthetic arguments by Montero (2006) and Cole and Montero (2007) seek to determine aesthetic criteria for proprioception, and similarly in dance theory the aesthetic status of kinesthesia has been questioned (e.g. Foster 2011). Finally we consider whether previous exposure to a ‘grammar’ of movement is a factor in determining the relative aesthetic value.

In this chapter, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to explore environmental embodiment—the various lived ways, sensorily and motility-wise, that the body in its pre-reflective perceptual presence engages and synchronizes with the world at hand, especially its architectural and environmental aspects. First, I consider Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of perception, giving particular attention to his claim that perception involves a lived dynamic between perceptual body and world such that aspects of the world—for example, the heavy hardness of a granite block or the cool smoothness of a chrome railing—are known because they immediately evoke in the lived body their experienced qualities.

Second, I consider the architectural and environmental significance of what Merleau-Ponty calls body-subject—pre-reflective corporeal awareness expressed through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds. I focus on the taken-for-granted sensibility of body-subject to manifest in extended ways over time and space. I ask how routine actions and behaviors of individuals coming together regularly in an environment can transform that environment into a place with a unique dynamic and character—a lived situation I term place ballet. For both perception and body-subject, I consider how qualities of the physical and designable world—for example, materiality, form, and spatiality—contribute to the lived body’s engagement with and actions in the world.

Note: This chapter was written in 2014 for a proposed edited collection on Merleau-Ponty and architecture. Unfortunately, the editors did not find a publisher(though I was never officially informed of this fact). The chapter has been rewritten, revised, and updated; see the above entry: "Merleau-Ponty, Environmental Embodiment, and Place" (2022)
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From his initial writings on imagination and memory, to his recent studies of the glance and the edge, the work of American philosopher Edward S. Casey continues to shape 20th-century philosophy. In this first study dedicated to his rich body of work, distinguished scholars from philosophy, urban studies and architecture as well as artists engage with Casey's research and ideas to explore the key themes and variations of his contribution to the humanities.

Structured into three major parts, the volume reflects the central concerns of Casey's writings: an evolving phenomenology of imagination, memory, and place; representation and landscape painting and art; and edges, glances, and voice. Each part begins with an extended interview that defines and explains the topics, concepts, and stakes of each of area of research. Readers are thus offered an introduction to Casey’s fascinating body of work, and will gain a new insight into particular aspects and applications of Casey's research.

With a complete bibliography and an introduction that at once stresses each of Casey’s areas of research while putting into perspective their overarching themes, this authoritative volume identifies the overall coherence and interconnections of Edward S. Casey's work and his impact in contemporary thought.

Here are the preliminary materials and first two chapters from my most recent book: Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience.

All chapters of the final published manuscript are freely available via MIT Press Direct:

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5524/Grief-WorldsA-Study-of-Emotional-Experience

As you will see from other entries in this section, Oxford University Press and Palgrave/Springer now charge extortionate prices for books that I have published with them. (In all instances, I am happy to send you a PDF if you want to read them.)

In contrast, MIT Press made *Grief Worlds* freely available to all as a single PDF, without charging an open access fee. Hence, I am delighted to have published this book with them and would encourage others to consider doing the same.

Tattooing was practised by many ancient societies, including the ancient Egyptians and Nubians. Egypt, for example, boasts iconographic and physical evidence for tattooing for a period spanning at least 4000 years - the longest known history of tattooing in the world. The second oldest physical evidence for tattooing world-wide was recovered from Middle Kingdom contexts in Egypt and C-Group contexts in Nubia (Hanslabjoch ice man being the oldest). It has been suggested that tattooing was also practised in the Predynastic Period as evidenced by figurines with geometric designs, however, no physical evidence has yet been found at this early period. Strangely there is almost no mention of tattooing in the ancient Egyptian written records. Historical and ethnographic records indicate that tattooing was also practised much more recently in the Coptic, Islamic and modern eras. Unlike many past societies tattooing in Egypt appears to have been a custom practised almost exclusively on women. Tattooing tools have not yet been convincingly identified from ancient Egypt. Ethnographic sources suggest that bundles of metal rods were used in Egypt’s younger history. This paper discusses physical and iconographic evidence for tattooing in ancient Egypt and investigates if five copper rods found at Kafr Hassan Dawood, a Predynastic to Early Dynastic site in the East Delta could be physical evidence for tattooing during this early period.

This chapter examines the cultural history of Naga tattoo through the voices of Naga elders, a contemporary Naga tattoo artist, Naga writers, among others. One hundred years ago, tattoo was considered everyday wear with a precise and detailed system of codes and socio- religious meanings attached to it. Post-missionization the Naga tattoo was demonized, condemned, and gradually abandoned until the last decade with the re-emergence of an ethnic fashion and cultural revival movement that includes the neo-Naga tattoo. I argue here that Naga artists and writers are actively reshaping the future of the Naga tattoo through art, design, and innovative publications. They give new expression to an inerasable and unquestionable mark of ethnic identity, and in the process may revive the Naga tattoo from the brink of extinction.

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.

The aim of this paper is to develop a phenomenological analysis of those psychopathologies which involve an intersubjective disruption, such as schizophrenia or autistic spectrum disorder. After briefly summarizing the contemporary debate about intersubjectivity, I will emphasize the importance of the living body in the development of our understanding of otherness, and I will show two qualitative tools I have personally developed: a " phenomenological test " that takes into account specific phenomenological notions and is aimed at the analysis of the so-called existentialia (self, other, time, space, body); and a form of therapy focused on the fortification of intercorporeality and of bodily awareness.

It is sometimes argued that the non-therapeutic, non-consensual alteration of children’s genitals should be discussed in two separate ethical discourses: one for girls (in which such alterations should be termed ‘female genital mutilation’ or FGM), and one for boys (in which such alterations should be termed ‘male circumcision’). In this article, I call into question the moral and empirical basis for such a distinction, and argue that all children—whether female, male, or intersex—should be free from having parts of their genitals removed unless there is a pressing medical indication.

Forthcoming in a volume edited by Haraldur Bernhardsson. This article examines Landnámabók utilizing the anthropological distinction between place and space, defined within an understanding of phenomenology and emplaced paractice centered around the body. Based on a close analysis of several passages in Landnámabók, it argues that although there are some abstract spatial references in Landnámabók, the text shows a persistant concern with place rather than space. This manifests itself primarily in an interest in clockwise circumlocution which creates an empathetic familiarity with the landscape, an embodied map of the island. The implications of this finding are then explored in three ways: what it might suggest for other medieval texts that have been thought to demonstrate a greater interest in spatial categories but whose emplacement may be overlooked; how such emplacement could reflect a historical tradition tied to the act of enculturating an unknown land through a semi-ritualized and sacred act; and how appreciating the emplacement of the text and its emphasis on bodily interaction wth the landscape helps modern scholars situate the Old Norse corpus within the history of Western European thought about land and landscape. Our modern habitus and cultural preferences for space has, it is argued, caused Old Norse scholars to overlook or misunderstand the preponderence of evidence of an emplaced, pre-Cartesian world view permeating medieval manuscript pages. Landnámabók is presented as extreme in its dependence on knowledge of place for textual cohesion, but not unique within a textual tradition that is co-constituted with the landscape. The ubiquity of this close relationship between the body, the landscape, and the text suggests a culturally engrained attitude that would have had long-term efficacy outside of the texual tradition.

This article examines the conception of the everyday city as presented in the work of architect Christopher Alexander and architectural theorist Bill Hillier: Both thinkers suggest that, in the past, lively urban places arose unself-consciousty through the routine daily behaviors of many individual users coming together in supportive space and place. In different ways. both thinkers ask whether, today, a similar manner of vital urban district can be made to happen self-conscioustv through explicit understanding transformed into design and policy principles. The aim for both Alexander and Hillier is place-based urban communities marked by lively streets, serendipitous public encounters, and informal sociability. The article begins by examining commonalities and differences in Alexander and Hillier's conceptions of environmental wholeness and urban place. Next. the article considers implications for urban design and, last, indicates the considerable value that the two thinkers' ideas offer environmental philosophy, particularly for understanding environmental wholes.

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.

This is the brochure for the April 2018 conference “Corporeal Restrictions, Embodied Freedoms: Italian Interventions on the Body” organized by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, City University of New York.  The final program will be posted closer to the conference date.

The 'Past Sense' Project (PSP) brings together contemporary and historical archaeology, and psychotherapy, to consider the significance of material culture within contexts of domestic and sexual abuse, past and present. PSP will pilot a range of approaches to explore how collaborative community encounters with historic landscapes and buildings, artefacts, and other historical sources might enhance the process of identity (re-)construction and trauma management, for survivors of childhood and adulthood violence and abuse.
Methods include experimental auto- and co-archaeologies that integrate personal narratives and reflections within analyses of data obtained from archaeological surface- and building surveys, and auto-archive material. This will involve considering the (re)construction of meanings for material culture in relation to memory and identity, through studies of artefact biographies, and attending to the production and appropriation of transitional objects, through autobiographical studies.
We will also test the incorporation of recording, analysis, and interpretation of archaeological and other historical material (including written evidence, oral histories, photography, and artistic images) from earlier periods (particularly the 19th - mid 20th centuries) within community work – potentially involving creative elements (such as storytelling and artwork). In doing so, we will explore how engagement with material relating to domestic life in the more distant past (where appropriate, integrating historical material relating to domestic and sexual violence) might enable traumatised individuals and groups to confront experiences of violence in the more recent past. By examining diachronically continuous and changing abusive practices, and socio-political responses to abuse, we aim to foster recognition of dominant ideologies, and the practical, detrimental, effects of structural gender inequality. Emphasising acts of resistance to violence in and around the home, we endeavour to highlight personal and collective achievements that might reinforce and augment both a sense of self, and of community, for survivors of abuse.

Looking at the finding of several archeoastronomers, who
examine the relationship of built cultures to celestial bodies, this essay speculates on the unique relationship of the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico to the earth and sky. The Anasazi who populated this region suddenly disappeared around 1000 A.D. and little is known about their culture, religion, and world except by studying the structures
they left behind. Th is essay looks at their kivas, dwellings, the puzzling “Sun dagger” monument, and the petroglyphs throughout the canyon to understand the many ways that each structure through use of light and space marked the occurrence of a surprising number of celestial events. There is good evidence that the Anasazi dwelled within the sky and felt a
continuity between earth and sky in a way to which postmodern cultures have little access. The unity of body and surround, especially as ascending into the sky from the earth, is linked to a spirituality at odds with the legacy of Plato and others, who oppose the celestial to the earthly, as aninferior realm.

Der Begriff des Interface kategorisiert die Ausprägungsstufen einer kommunikationsstabilisierenden Schnittstelle als Interaktionsmechanismus, wobei die Interaktion von maschinellen Komponenten (Hardware, Software) sowie die vielfältigen Interaktionen zwischen UserIn und Maschine zur Geltung gebracht werden.

L’accident provoque un changement corporel brutal, qui rompt avec la transformation corporelle ordinaire, toute en continuité et en fluidité. Le corps est soudainement vulnérable, ébranlé par une transformation radicale, à savoir : l’avènement d’un nouveau potentiel corporel.
Ce « nouveau » corps ne se résume pas à un donné biologique naturel et premier, complet et définitif, et dans ce cas irrémédiable. Il va s’agir de le rééduquer. Ainsi, ce potentiel corporel va être l’objet d’un formatage dans le cadre de soins et d’une vie en collectivité, d’une transmission de techniques du corps par les soignants et les rééducateurs, d’une conformation sous l’influence des pairs, d’une sémantisation collective et progressive.
L’expérience corporelle de l’homme blessé se développe en interaction avec son environnement humain, matériel, technologique, social et culturel. Le changement corporel ne trouve pas immédiatement sens au sortir du coma : le réseau sémantique qui permettait jusqu’alors l’interprétation des signaux corporels se révèle progressivement caduque.

Au fil de l’analyse sociologique, le handicap se révèlera le fruit d’apprentissages, le produit d’une socialisation. Et si la chair impose ses contraintes objectives, les significations intériorisées et mises en acte par l’individu, ses pairs et les professionnels de santé soumettent en retour la matière corporelle à leur dictat. Au fur et à mesure de la sémantisation de l’expérience du corps blessé, la matière organique se transforme, et le blessé, d’accidenté devient handicapé.

This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article 'Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport'. The strength of their 'phenomenological' account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if it is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability.

Tutto imprescindibilmente parte dal corpo, il nostro e dell’Altro, entrambi portatori di segni. Il corpo si fa corpus nel processo di signifi- cazione e di ibridazione. Quando scopriamo che il sé subisce un processo di omologazione, il sé diviene anch’esso globale, dimenticando la differen- ziazione e il riconoscimento dell’Altro come tensione creativa. In qualche modo, più vediamo il mondo uniformarsi, più ci rendiamo conto. Ma chi è veramente l’Altro? Può davvero la bellezza salvarci? Può l’arte avere la consapevolezza di essere politica? Attraverso alcune pratiche estetiche si “narra” il fenomeno complesso delle migrazioni e l’avanzare delle estreme destre nel mondo. Attraverso ciò che chiamiamo arte traduciamo questo fenomeno complesso.

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Everything inevitably starts from the body, our body and that of the Other, both bearing signs. The body becomes corpus in the process of signification and hybridization. When we discover that the self enjoys a process of homologation, the self also becomes global, forgetting the differentiation and recognition of the Other as a creative tension. Somehow, the more we see the world conform, the more we realize. But who is really the Other? Beauty will save the world? Can art have the awareness of being political? Through some aesthetic practices we “narrate” the complex phenomenon of migrations and the rise of the Right-Wing Populism in the World. Through the art we translate this complex phenomenon.

Focusing on The Second Sex, this essay examines concerns about the divisions of gender and race in Beauvoir's work and provides an intersectional reading of the role of physical violence in the gendering and racing of young girls in " The Girls " chapter of the book. The essay then highlights the role of biology in the existential infrastructure provided in the first three chapters of The Second Sex to argue that Beauvoir can be viewed as a forerunner of contemporary critical understandings of how race becomes biologically real.

In this paper I develop a phenomenology of falling ill by presenting, interpreting and developing the basic model we find in Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1956). The three steps identified by Sartre in this process are analysed, developed further and brought to a five-step model: (1) pre-reflective experience of discomfort, (2) lived, bodily discomfort, (3) suffered illness, (4) disease pondering, and (5) disease state. To fall ill is to fall victim to a gradual process of alienation, and with each step this alienating process is taken to a new qualitative level. Consequently, the five steps of falling ill have not only a contingent chronological order but also a kind of logical order, in that they typically presuppose each other. I adopt Sartre's focus on embodiment as the core ground of the alienation process, but point out that the alienation of the body in illness is not only the experience of a psychic object, but an experience of the independent life of one's own body. This facticity of the body is the result neither of the gaze of the other person, nor of a reflection adopting the outer perspective of the other in an indirect way, but is a result of the very otherness of one's own body, which addresses and plagues us when we fall ill. I use examples of falling ill and being a patient to show how a phenomenology of falling ill can be helpful in educating health-care personnel (and perhaps also patients) about the ways of the lived body.

This paper discusses the discursive significance of the body in Dalton Trumbo’s classic anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun. With its political rants, depictions of working-class life, symbolic imagery, and vivid descriptions of the dismembered torso of its protagonist, Johnny invokes many questions concerning the role that historical forces play in influencing the way we conceptualize the body, as well as how one might use the image of the body to subvert oppressive hierarchies of power.
    The novel, which is said to have been based on the true story of a World War I amputee, tells the story of Joe Bonham, a working-class soldier who survives an explosion that costs him his arms, legs and face; as well as his ability to see, speak, hear, eat and breath for himself. As Joe struggles to regain a sense of agency and autonomy in the world, he begins identifying himself as part of a long tradition of “little guys” who are exploited and silenced by those in power. Through a series of stream of consciousness rants, hallucinations and flashbacks, the human body emerges as our primary vehicle for being-in-the-world, as well as the figurative weight that grounds us in it. Following this logic, human freedom and autonomy appear to be curtailed by our own corporeal limitations, coupled with our involvement in a world of oppressive hierarchal systems and reified social relations.
    Building on the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Mikhail Bakhtin, Georg Lukacs and others, this paper will reveal a dialectic at work within Johnny between what can best be described as the phenomenal, reified, and grotesque bodies. While the phenomenal (or lived) body of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy emphasizes relative autonomy and embodied subjectivity, the reified body represents humankind in a completely objectified state. My analysis will illustrate how Johnny Got His Gun creates a tension between these two conceptions of corporeity, while employing grotesque realism—a subversive literary mode utilizing the degraded image of the body—to inspire change in the real world. In doing so, I hope to emphasize how Joe Bonham’s final wish—to use his war ravaged flesh as a subversive tool, thus becoming “the new messiah of the battlefields”— is fulfilled as the text enters the social sphere.

This book explores how digital technology is altering the relationships between people and how the very nature of interface itself needs to be reconsidered to reflect this – how
we can make sense of each other, handle ambiguities, negotiate differences, empathise and collectively make skilled judgments in our modern society. The author presents new directions for research at the relational-transactional intersection of contrasting disciplines of arts, science and technology,and in so doing, presents philosophical and artistic questions for future research on human connectivity in our digital age.

▶ Introduces the relational interface, which questions the historical idea of the interface as a conduit of the transactional and addresses an aesthetic and ethical balance
▶ Formulates tacit engagement as an emerging concept for the study of human relations
▶ Proposes a fundamental framework of mediation for expertise and decision making in complex human systems
▶ Critiques the concept of data and what makes for the success of knowledge transfer

This article offers some in-depth reflections on the body in Buddhism, and particularly the concept of ‘impermanence’ and ‘mindfulness of body’. I explore here, how the body is classified and intellectualized in Buddhist culture and tradition, with a focus on definitions and practices of Buddhist Theravada, including: Satipatthana, Vipassana Meditation, Nama-Rupa and Kayagatasati. I offer further reflections on my own work as a performer and choreographer, and the experience of applying, experiencing and reflecting on the Buddhist body in performance. From these in-depth observations that are derived from my deep immersion in Buddhist culture, my work as a performer/lecturer, and my doctorate, I focus specifically on the practice of ‘mindfulness’ and movement, which offers an experiential access route to a ‘direct experience’ of being; a state beyond attachments to body and notions of self. Notably, I am an insider cultured in Thai Buddhist traditions and culture – and from this standpoint, I both reflect on, and engage in, an intellectually rich, and complex spiritual traditional that ironically holds at its core the lesson to pursue non-self, and hence resists analysis and intellectualism.

As many research works are going on in the field of wastewater treatment, a newly developed wastewater treatment by algae and saline water is gaining much importance. Various parameters like Biological oxygen demand (BOD), Chemical oxygen demand (COD), and Chloride were observed after the treatment. Percentage reduction rate of 78.62(BOD), 54.12 (COD) were observed. This is an environmentally safe alternative for treating wastewater.