Body consciousness and performance: Somaesthetics east and west

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 67, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 133-145

  Shusterman, Richard ^a  

^a FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65849172939     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6245.2009.01343.x     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. For initial formulations of this project, see Richard Shusterman, Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (New York: Routledge, 1997);
2. "Somaesthetics: A Disciplinary Proposal," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 (1999): 299-313;
3. Performing Live (Cornell University Press, 2000).
4. For elaborations and critical discussions of somaesthetics, see, for example, Martin Jay, "Somaesthetics and Democracy: Dewey and Contemporary Body Art," Journal of Aesthetic Education 36 (2002): 55-69;
5. Eric Mullis, "Performative Somaesthetics," Journal of Aesthetic Education 40 (2006): 104-117;
6. Shannon Sullivan, "Transactional Somaesthetics," in her Living Across and Through Skins (Indiana University Press, 2001);
7. Cressida Heyes, "Somaesthetics for the Normalized Body," in her Self-Transformations (Oxford University Press, 2007);
8. Wojciech Malecki, "Von nicht diskursiver Erfahrung zur Somästhetik," Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 56 (2008): 677-690.
9. see Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch, "The Neural Correlates of Consciousness: An Update," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1124 (2008): 239-261, citations from p. 243. The range of levels of consciousness is further complicated by the fact that different levels of consciousness can be produced through different degrees of induced anesthesia. These different levels include milder anesthetic states that are more conscious than normal states of sleep but also extend to deeply anesthetic states of extreme unresponsiveness, even to painful stimuli (see pp. 243-244). Different degrees of consciousness could also be distinguished in the levels of wakeful (and nonanesthetized) levels of consciousness I describe here, so my classification of levels here is not meant to be entirely exhaustive but rather to suggest the complexity that tends to get flattened in discussions of consciousness.
10. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1962), pp. xv-xvi, who affirms phenomenology's essential aim as recapturing that unreflective vision. It is "a philosophy for which the world is always 'already there' before reflection begin - as an inalienable presence; and all its efforts are concentrated upon re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world, and endowing that contact with a philosophical status" (pp. vii).
11. For more details on these levels and more generally on somaesthetics, see Richard Shusterman, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
12. I quote from The Complete Works of Plato, ed. John Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), pp. 56-57. Plato offers a much more balanced account in Timaeus and the Laws, where certain forms of somatic cultivation are recommended.
13. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 191.
14. See Immanuel Kant, in Benno Erdmann, eds., Reflexionen Kants zur Kritischen Philosophie (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1992), pp. 68-69 (my translation);
15. The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary Gregor (University of Nebraska Press, 1992), pp. 177-189.
16. William James, "The Gospel of Relaxation," in Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (New York: Dover, 1962), pp. 99, 109.
17. William James, The Principles of Psychology ([1894] Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 1128.
18. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 78, 89; hereafter S.
19. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 90-91.
20. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 148.
21. See especially "Beneath Interpretation," in Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)
22. "Somatic Experience," in Practicing Philosophy.
23. John Dewey, The Middle Works, vol. 11 (Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), p. 352.
24. Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr., trans., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine, 1998), Book 1:4.
25. D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius (London: Penguin, 1970), pp. 154, 155.
26. J. Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 volumes (Stanford University Press, 1988-1994), Vol. 1, pp. 152, 154; hereafter X.
27. For more details on this subject, see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 2 (Cambridge University Press, 1956),
28. R. H. van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
29. Zhuangzi apparently lived in the latter half of the 4th century B.C., and the book bearing his name is usually thought to be at least partly written by him and to date from around that time, though some date it slightly later. The founding text of Daoism, the Laozi or (as it later became more commonly known) the Daodejing, is attributed to Laozi of the 6th century B.C., allegedly an older contemporary of Confucius but now thought by most experts to be an entirely legendary figure. There is considerable controversy about the dating of Daodejing, some putting it in the 6th century, most in the 4th century. For Zhuangzi, I use the translation of Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 133; hereafter this work is designated Z.
30. Dōgen's Manuals of Zen Meditation, trans. Carl Bielefeldt (University of California Press, 1988), p. 181.
31. The Book of Lieh-tzu, trans. A. C. Graham (Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 32; hereafter L. As Graham notes (L, p. 1), the book bears the name of a famous Daoist sage mentioned by Zhuangzi but whose "historicity is doubtful" and whose alleged dates of existence are also very unclear, "some indications pointing to 600, others to 400 B.C." Graham (L, p. xiii) dates the book "not much earlier than its commentary by Chang Chan (c. A.D. 370)."
32. See, for example, the self-monitoring implied in the following questions of chapter 10: "In carrying about your more spiritual and more physical aspects and embracing their oneness,/ Are you able to keep them from separating?/ In concentrating your qi and making it pliant,/ Are you able to become the newborn babe?/ In scrubbing and cleansing your profound mirror [i.e., the mind],/ Are you able to rid it of all imperfections?" I here use the translation of Roger Ames and David Hall, Daodejing: "Making This Life Significant": A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), p. 90.
33. The concept of wuwei does not imply mere passive quiescence or inaction, but rather a mode of action that is not forced, willful, or burdened with effortful striving. I use the translation of the "Neiye" by Harold Roth, in his Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 7. The translated passages I cite are from pp. 54 and 82.
34. See Merleau-Ponty, Signs, pp. 65-66, and my more detailed account of his view in Body Consciousness, chap. 2.
35. On such matters of learning-based brain plasticity, which is now widely recognized to occur in the fully adult brain (rather than only in earlier stages of development), see B. Draganski and A. May, "Training-Induced Structural Changes in the Adult Human Brain," Behavioural Brain Research 192 (2008): 137-142;
36. Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself (New York: Viking, 2007).
37. Numerous studies have demonstrated that mental practice through explicitly imagining, visualizing, or mentally rehearsing the activity or steps of performing an action has a significant positive effect on performance and improves the learning process. See, for example, Stefan Vogt, "On Relations between Perceiving, Imagining, and Performing in the Learning of Cyclical Movement Sequences," British Journal of Psychology 86 (1995): 191-216;
38. A. Pascual-Leone et al., "Modulation of Motor Responses Evoked by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation During the Acquisition of Fine Motor Skills," Journal of Neurophysiology 74 (1995): 1037-1045;
39. I Driskell et al., "Does Mental Practice Enhance Performance?" Journal of Applied Psychology 79 (1974): 481-489. Explicit mental representation of motor activity can even lead to an increase in muscle strength for performing the action.
40. See G. Yue and K. J. Cole, "Strength Increases from the Motor Program: Comparison of Training With Maximal Voluntary and Imagined Muscle Contractions," Journal of Neurophysiology 67 (1992): 1114 - 1123.
41. Zeami, "A Mirror Held to the Flower (Kakyō)," in On the Art of the Nō Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami, trans. J. T. Rimer and Y Masakazu (Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 79; hereafter Ze.
42. For insightful discussion of the aesthetic and affective dimensions of proprioception, see Barbara Montero, "Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 230-242;
43. Jonathan Cole and Barbara Montero, "Affective Proprioception," Janus Head 9 (2007): 299-317.
44. Moreover, as vision is affected by vestibular stimulation (for example, through rotation or shaking of the head), so vestibular neurons respond to proprioceptive and optokinetic stimuli. People with problems of the vestibular organs of the inner ear can use visual information to help maintain their balance, while, conversely, in conditions where normal visual information and vestibular information are denied, other proprioceptive or tactile input can help determine one's sense of posture. For more on the intermodal linkage of the visual and proprioceptive system, see J. R. Lackner and P. Zio, "Aspects of Body Self-Calibration," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (2000): 279-282;
45. "Vestibular, Proprioceptive, and Haptic Contributions to Spatial Organization," Annual Review of Psychology 56 (2005): 115-147;
46. Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford University Press, 2005).
47. See, for example, G. Rizzolati and L. Craighero, "The Mirror Neuron System," Annual Review of Neuroscience 27 (2004): 169-192;
48. V. Gallese et al., "Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex," Brain 119 (1996): 593-609.
49. See Alain Berthoz, The Brain's Sense of Movement (Harvard University Press, 2000);
50. see also G Yue and K, J. Cole, "Strength Increases from the Motor Program: Comparison of Training with Maximal Voluntary and Imagined Muscle Contractions."
51. See Vogt, "On Relations between Perceiving, Imagining, and Performing in the Learning of Cyclical Movement Cycles," pp. 209-213.
52. E-mail message from V Gallese, May 29, 2008. Tire article is S. J. H. Ebisch et al., "The Sense of Touch: Embodied Simulation in a Visuotactile Mirroring Mechanism for Observed Animate or Inanimate Touch," Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20 (2008): 1-13.