CASCAIUAES2017 panel: The Cultural Phenomenology of Movement

Title: The Cultural Phenomenology of Movement

Conveners: Bernhard Leistle (Carleton University) and Julie Laplante
(University of Ottawa)

The phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty has referred to the
experience of movement as a "praktognosia", an original way of knowing
the world. Phenomenology has shown, moreover, that movement and
perception are inextricably intertwined with each other: every
appearance of the world suggests a way of moving one's body, and every
bodily movement immediately translates into a changed perception of
the world. It is from the incessant interplay between these aspects
that experiential reality arises, over time producing the structures
of meaningful experience that anthropologists call "culture".
When anthropologists study corporeal movement, however, they tend to
focus on the ways in which gestures, practices and habits express
existing, historically grown systems of cultural meanings and social
contexts. Relatively rarely are they concerned with the question how
lived experiences of movement are also constitutive of the meanings
they express.
For our panel we invite papers which aspire to do just that, to
connect corporeal movement as a mode of experience to the emergence,
transformation, construction and, possibly, destruction of
socio-cultural worlds. Papers can approach the topic empirically or
theoretically; they can focus on the experience of one's own movements
or of others, including non-human entities and agents. As for
theoretical perspective, we welcome papers in the area of
phenomenology broadly conceived, that is including other approaches
concerned with experience, e.g. performative anthropology,
psychoanalysis, neuropsychology, semiotics. Empirical topics are open,
but we regard the areas of ritual, politics, arts and sports as
particularly fertile for demonstrating the phenomenological
interrelationship between motility and culture.

More information:

http://www.nomadit.co.uk/cascaiuaes2017/suite/panels.php5?PanelID=5400