Phenomenology of the body

This chapter explores the convergence of embodiment, tourism and mobile technologies in a globally networked context. The proliferation of media in the twenty-first century corresponds to a qualitative and quantitative increase in virtual, imaginary and corporeal mobilities (Urry 2007, Howard 2012, Germann Molz and Paris 2013, Hannam et al. 2014). In a world of accelerated and overlapping mobilities, possibilities for moving and dwelling in multiple realities have expanded and intensified, facilitating what Germann Molz (2012) calls ‘interactive travel’. Living in a world that is increasingly ‘on the move’ points to a situation in which mobile devices, social media and networking technologies facilitate a ‘coordinated togetherness’ on a planetary scale. By reconfiguring spatial and social relations, interactive travel problematises long-standing tourism concepts such as home and away, the ritual process and the tourist gaze. It also opens new lines of inquiry for a less developed but central aspect of tourism: embodiment. We aim to address this gap here, taking a particular methodological focus on the phenomenological concept of responsivity in the context of interactive travel.

This paper locates the main challenge for education in cosmopolitanism within the nature of education when interpreted as a 'mind-making process'. Based on this interpretation, education is a process that shapes non-cosmopolitan minds, for the practices generally associated with it, habituate the human mind to see 'reality' through contingent social narratives. The aspiration of education in cosmopolitanism to cultivate 'a sense of feeling at home and caring for the world', requires practices that also liberate the mind from the contingencies of the social narratives into which it happens to be born. For such purpose, education requires an ethical meta-narrative, which applies to all human beings and appeals to a mutual human language. Following calls for embracing a pluralistic epistemology in policy making, the paper proposes the interdisciplinary field of contemplative studies that focuses on the understanding of the embodied mind, as a point of origin for considering education as such and education in cosmopolitanism in particular. Mindfulness is then interpreted as a practical pedagogy through which we can practice detachment from the contingency of social narratives by cultivating grounded-ness in the non-contingency of pre-conceptual embodied first-person experience.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate how gender norms enter human bodily experience. My focus is not on the explicit ways in which social norms affect and constitute our relation to knowledge and the world but how these epistèmes become embodied, that is, become an assimilated part of our bodily experience. Gender, as a specific social norm, is of particular interest for a number of reasons. First, gender structures all domains of human social life: From matters of family, education, profes- sion, and public life. Second, gender is a norm that structures life not only in explicit ways (e.g., when one is directly addressed as or identifies oneself assertively as female, male, or other) but also in implicit ways and thereby operatively defines our sense of normality. Third, gender norms typically mirror existing power relations insofar as they represent forms of socio-political organization. Gender is not a norm that we are necessarily forced to obey or even naturally identify with, but it remains incorporated and acquired within concrete and repeated bodily experi- ences and practices.
In this way, the following analysis is inspired by Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. While Butler is well-known for her analysis of the discursive, I will probe the phenomenological potential of performativity by applying the analy-sis to the human body. Butler’s theory of gender performativity opens up the picture of social norms as a two-way street – not only do norms effect our language and discursive behaviors, but language must also enact (take up or appropriate) norms in order for them to be effective. This applies, as I will argue, also in the case of the human body. As material and lived bodies, we are situated in a historically and culturally- informed world, wherein norms manifest as well-ordered and typified social practices according to which we live. Yet, at the same time, we are practical agents insofar as we must bodily enact certain norms for them to be effective.

Phenomenology is the study of subjectivity, consciousness, lived experience, or, more broadly, our relation to the world as sensing, feeling, thinking beings. Phenomenology arises in the history of philosophy in response to the problem of subjective experience and our relation to the world. We will begin our exploration of experience by tracing the roots of phenomenology's concern with experience to Descartes' skepticism, which introduces the idea that philosophy must begin with subjective, first-person experience (the ego, or "I") at the same time that it introduces the ego-centric dilemma, or the problem of the external world, and the mind body problem. We will spend the first part of the semester exploring how we experience the world and come to understand it through the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, who played a founding role in defining phenomenological method. In particular, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty transform Husserl's approach to phenomenology through art, which plays a special role in thinking about the nature of truth in relation to sensory experience. We will then turn to more contemporary approaches that reexamine phenomenological conceptions of embodied experience along the lines of gender, race, ethnicity, and ability. Lastly, we will explore consciousness and lived experience in relation to animal minds and the natural world. The guiding questions of this course are…

The senses of heat have to date been under-examined, including in the sociology of sport and physical cultures. Drawing on theorizations of the senses and ‘sensory work’, the purpose of this article is to investigate via phenomenological sociology the under-researched lived sense of temperature. Based on ethnographic and autoethnographic data emanating from our physical culture of distance running in the United Kingdom, here we examine the lived experiences of thermoception, thermoregulation and the ways in which ‘temperature work’ constitutes an axiomatic part of the craft practice of this particular sporting subculture. Key findings are structured into three thermal themes: (1) the salience of temperature work and temperature learning for runners as thermal objects; (2) thermal attunement and intercorporeality between runners; (3) thermoceptive ‘collective resonance’ (Ingold, 1993) of running groups. We highlight the insights available to sociologists of sport and physical cultures in engaging with these three mutually influencing levels of analysis, which enable the development of the social-scientific study of temperature.

Alva Noë's strategy to solve the puzzle of perceptual presence entirely relies on the principle of presence as access. Unaccessed or unattended parts or details of objects are perceptually present insofar as they are accessible, and they are accessible insofar as one possesses sensorimotor skills that can secure their access. In this paper, I consider several arguments that can be opposed to this claim and that are chiefly related to the modal status of action, i.e. the fact that the action that would secure access to the absent aspects is a possibility, something that can (or maybe could) be done. The main difficulty Noë's account must face is-as several situations demonstrate-that the action that should be performed for the absent aspects to be actually accessed does not have to be itself available for these aspects to be perceptually present. What matters for the absent aspects to be present is not their de facto (i.e. effective) accessibility, but their de jure accessibility. To overcome those difficulties, I propose to rely on a ternary model of the role of action possibilities in perceptual awareness. This model builds on Husserl's analysis of the role of perceptual circumstances in perception and connection between sense (Sinn) registering and horizontal intentionality.

In my workshop, I will develop with the phenomenological help of Gaston Bachelard, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, David Michael Levin and Paul Claudel different possibilities of listening with one’s lived body. We will be especially exploring experientially, that is, phenomenologically the important and often hidden somatic connection between listening and breathing. We will ponder in theory and in praxis two questions: 1) How to become a great listener?” and 2) “How to become a great breather?” According to Bachelard, Levin and Claudel these two questions are intertwined. A great listener, in Bachelard’s and Claudel’s view, is capable to listen, in the first place, not the sounds, but the primordial silence of the world. Bachelard and Claudel connect this primordial silence with breathing. A great breather, in Bachelard’s view, is the one who is capable to breathe cosmically with one’s whole body. Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Levin think that listening is not only a capacity of our ears, but actually of our whole body. In relation to this, Claudel has suggested that our respiratory apparatus (like our lungs) have the potential capacity to hearken the primordially mysterious and atmospheric silence of the world. This potentiality often remains unrealized and undeveloped in our lives. In my workshop, we will be awakening within ourselves various hidden somatic ways of listening and breathing that will include experiential and mostly uncharted dimensions like 1) listening with one’s breath, 2) listening with one’s lungs, 3) listening with one’s breathing belly, 4) breathing with one’s ears, 5) listening and breathing with one’s spine, and 6) listening with one’s hands and feet in the atmosphere of breath. Through these various mysterious ways of listening and breathing we will experientially explore how we are given access to the sonorous and mute, spatial and temporal, private/hidden and social somatic dimensions of our lived bodies and the atmospheres surrounding them. This means that we will, for example, investigate how listening with one’s breath opens our inner somatic space of expansion and rhythmic time and what kind of intertwining of silence and sound we are given access to through the kinetic experience of spine. My workshop will give methods and practices for self-development and paths to travel toward becoming a “great listener” and a “great breather”.

Resumen: La nueva estética digital interactiva ha reemplazado la tradicional relación < <públ ico-obra>, por una nueva visión conceptual «usuario-obra» donde la participación de este último se vuel ve importante. La presencia de la luz como recurso estético configura espacios híbridos, perfonnativos, participativo..,, des-temporalizados y disruptivos que requieren de una reflexión profunda como objeto de estudio a la hora de plantear un prototipo alternativo de catalogación mediante RV Palabras cla,•e: Realidad Virtual. Museografia de Vanguardia. Instalación Artística de luz, catálogo, faté-tica Contemporánea Abstract: Thc new interactive digital aesthetic has n:placed the traditional "public-piece" relationshi p with a ncw conceptual vision "user-piece" where the participation of this diffuses the hierarchical limits between artist. medium and spectator. The light as an aesthetic resource configures hybrid, performative, participa-tory, de-temporalized and disruptive spaces which requires deep reflection like an obj ect of study to carry out the approach of an altemative prototype of cataloging with RV l. HIPÓTESIS Es interesante como la luz es capaz de construir entornos tridimensionales comportándose como un agente activo en las experimentaciones estético-plásticas y, como esta, mediante su cualidad inmateria l e incorpórea. tiene la capacidad de estimular a un espectador que se sitúa simultáneamente sobre la obra que ella misma configura de manera fenomenológica. Un material plástico con gran significación cuyos efectos permiten al sujeto involucrado acceder a una esfera de comunicación a través de la acción corporal y de fa atracción intelectual, donde el concepto significante se revela desmaterializado y verificado en tiempo como acontecimiento. Ese umbral conceptual donde se pierde el interés por la fisicidad del objeto, es la base de las experiencias sensoriales que permiten una conexión obra-espectador y un cambio de roles, donde este últi-mo. deja de ser un elemento pasivo en la relación con el hecho artístico para configurarse como ca-creador de la obra en cuestión. La luz ha sido objeto de uso estético en diversos periodos de la Historia del Arte a la hora de crear es-pacios experimentables por parte del sujeto espectador. Estas configuraciones plásticas han planteado retos arquitectónicos que han modificado la fisicidad espacial supeditando todo dispositivo estructural al fom ento 1 Este texto forma parte Je los rt.-sultados de inves11gac1on del proyecto del Plan Naciona l Catálogos arti~uco,: Gno,-cología, cpi~iemo lugía,) rede, Je comicarn,ento. Análisis crit1co y cornputac1onal: HA R2ú 14-5 19 15-P en d cual, se enmarca c~ta Tes,, Doctoral.

Resumen : Las instalaciones artísticas de luz actuales se haya en un momento de profundas transformacio-nes en cuanto a procedimientos y herramientas, pudiéndose hablar de nuevas configuraciones espaciales, temporales, conceptuales y tecnológicas que superan los límites formales de las prácticas artísticas. Esto influye de manera importante en el nuevo concepto de musco, donde la Realidad Virtual como herramienta, nos puede presentar retos de simulación estética. Abstract: The current artistic lights instillations have been in a moment of deep transformations in terms of procedures and too Is, being able to speak of new spatial, temporal, conceptual and technological configurations that exceed the formal limits of artistic practices. This has an important influence on the new concept of museum, a space that stands as a scenary of connectivity and experimentation of pleasure and joy in the face of artistic action, where the Keywords: Virtual Reality; New Technologies: Vanguard Museography; Environments; Aesthetic Simulation l. INTRODUCCIÓN Es interesante atender al impacto que causan las nuevas tecnologías, desde los afios 60-70 del siglo XX hasta la actualidad, en la construcción de espacios visuales, polisensoriales y estéticos que pueden ser experimentados por el espectador desde un punto de vista experiencia! y cognitivo. En este ámbito se produce una nueva relación de intercambio en torno a la espacialidad de la propia obra donde éste modifica su rol pasivo tradicional para convertirse en sujeto activo co-creador del hecho artístico 2. Las imágenes penniten que construyamos el mundo y la realidad a través de la memoria y compren-damos mediante la conciencia, el fenómeno visual de la cultura. Gracias a las tecnologías digitales, estas imáge~es entran a fonnar parte de nuestro repertorio experiencia! permitiendo no sólo que contemplemos una imagen, sino que formemos parte de ella a través de la acción. Este hecho se adapta muy bien a algunas 1 Este texto forma parte de los resultados de investigación dd proyecto del Plan Nacional Catálogos artístico,: Gnoseología. epístcmologias : redes de conocimiento. Aná lisis crítico y computacional: !-IAR20 14-5 19 15-P en el cual, se enmarca la Tesis Doctoral Uso r pn•spnrn 1 ,.¡., la 111-en /vs pnice.rn.,· de 1'l!ct!pciú11 estética cnntl'mporánea Aunque no dellcmos de olvidar los antecedentes del planteamiento de la participación del espectador de la obra y la pérdida de objctuahdad que veremos después y situarlos en Marccl Duchamp con sus ReaJy-Made. Yvcs Klein o Joseph Beuy~.

An essential characteristic of life as such is to create norms. To live means to the living being to normalize its relationship towards environment and itself. In the core of our presentation stands the thesis that normativity is a key factor to understand the essence of life and consciousness (conscious experience).
Through a phenomenological inquiry concerning normativity, I try to shed light on to the origins of conscious experience and immanent life of a living being. On the lower levels of life, on the level of animality, normativity means to choose and exclude, it is a question of life and death (often in a very literal sense). In a more general sense of the term: normativity means normalization of life; to articulate normal and abnormal ways of relationship of the living being towards itself and its environment. In this presentation I offer a comparative study of normativity of animal and human experience (and mind). In strong relationship with this, I attempt to explain one with the other, in order to highlight their fundamental differences and peculiarities. I would like to demarcate the essential levels of normativity (biological life without consciousness, animal beings with consciousness, human beings with self-consciousness), and set forth their basic structure. I’d like to approach lower levels of consciousness and normativity through a dismantling description of human mind, and – at the same time – relying on the phenomenologically reflected results of related researches of natural sciences.
In this comparative analysis of normativity (in experience) we have especially in mind two authors: Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The common point between these two philosophers (amongst others): the bodily, incarnated nature of subjectivity; the idea of bodily intentionality. The abstract relationship between consciousness and its object appears on a higher level in the more concrete form of the correlation of bodily subjectivity and its environment. It is the case in Husserl, and it is Merleau-Ponty’s point of departure. In Husserl which is particularly important for us is his account of instinctive intentionality and intersubjectivity.  According to Husserl, there are several levels of instinctive intentionality, and all of them are determined by the bodily and intersubjective nature of subjectivity. In his view the fundamental form of instinctive intentionality is instinct toward self-preservation – but there are several levels of self-preservation too. On the level of animality it is directed towards the preservation of physical self-objectivation of consciousness, on the level of humanity towards the preservation of cultural identity. In Merleau-Ponty which is especially important for us is his idea of the contextual character of bodily intentionality, that network of elements of the subjective and objective side of correlation mutually determines and interpenetrates each other. Furthermore, we will have in mind his late investigations concerning the phenomenon of entanglement – the intertwined nature of subjective and objective aspects of reality.
In my paper I would like to show how different levels of normativity emerge, and how do they interact with each other – on the basis of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but with a special regard to contemporary scientific researches.

This Poster was presented at the 15th ECArTE-Conference (http://www.ecarte.info/), September 14th, 2019 in Alcalá de Henares, Spain.

The conference theme was “Imagining windmills” – trust, truth and the unknown in Arts Therapies, inspired by Cervantes Don Quixote.
As some giants are in fact windmills, Likewise some devils are only old men which have lost all of their powers. To discover a deeper truth behind a long-standing, embodied delusion was the very core and background of this poster presentation. The poster-presentation intertwined phenomenological and aesthetic to reflect the case of the sexual traumatized Mrs. K.

After inviting Mrs. K. to treat me as her student and show me her being-in-world, the patient painted the architecture of hell and was looking for the devil in her artwork. Like an artistic archaeologist, Mrs. K. exhumed an embodied demon and demystified him. For her it wasn’t an intellectual search or a consciously done act of symbolization, but the expression of her pathic body. This certain embodied internal constitution, which was more than just feeling uncomfortable, called here prelude to a research-like artistic confrontation with the ghost of eerie. In the German translation eerie (unheimlich) means not belonging to our own home and yet Mrs. K. felt this alien part in her blood and flesh. For a very long time she didn’t knew why she had this feeling.
Using the source of her bodied perception and attunement, she worked it out in an artistic way. She created something what was longing to be expressed and discovered. By doing so each picture brought her closer to the biblical figure; each picture showed her more about the very intimate relationship she had to this “great divider”, in whom she doesn’t believe in at all. By doing so she over-bridged her dissociations and came more in contact with herself.

In my poster-presentation walked through the art and case of Mrs. K. to highlight the reflection of the phenomenological  “bodily-self”, what it meant for our Art Therapy sessions and therapeutic integration achievements.

The poster-design highlights more a collage of the patients art work than focusing on the text, to give the beholders of the poster the opportunity to inhabit the image themselves.