Thinking Through the Body: Essays in SomaestheticsThis book provides a richly rewarding vision of the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. Composed of fourteen wide-ranging but finely integrated essays by Richard Shusterman, the originator of the field, Thinking through the Body explains the philosophical foundations of somaesthetics and applies its insights to central issues in ethics, education, cultural politics, consciousness studies, sexuality, and the arts. Integrating Western philosophy, cognitive science, and somatic methodologies with classical Asian theories of body, mind, and action, these essays probe the nature of somatic existence and the role of body consciousness in knowledge, memory, and behavior. Deploying somaesthetic perspectives to analyze key aesthetic concepts (such as style and the sublime), he offers detailed studies of embodiment in drama, dance, architecture, and photography. The volume also includes somaesthetic exercises for the classroom and explores the ars erotica as an art of living. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Educating for | 25 |
Somaesthetics | 68 |
Muscle Memory and the Somaesthetic Pathologies | 91 |
A Practical | 112 |
Somaesthetics and the Limits of Aesthetics | 125 |
Somaesthetics and Burkes Sublime | 145 |
From Textualism | 166 |
A Critical Option | 219 |
Photography as Performative Process | 239 |
Asian Ars Erotica and the Question of Sexual Aesthetics | 262 |
Everyday | 288 |
Somatic Style | 315 |
| 339 | |
| 355 | |
Somaesthetics | 197 |
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Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics: Essays in Somaesthetics Richard Shusterman No preview available - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
action aesthetic experience affirms analytic Ananga Ranga appreciation architecture argues art’s artistic attention awakening awareness background beauty behavior bodily Body Consciousness body’s breathing Burke Burke’s Cambridge chapter cognitive contrast critical critique cultivation cultural politics defined deploy dimension disciplines distinction eating embodied Emerson erotic arts essentially ethical everyday explicit expression feelings Feldenkrais Method focus focused Foucault Friedrich Nietzsche function habits heightened human idea implicit implicit memory improve insists involves John Dewey limits living Ludwig Wittgenstein means meditation mental mind movement muscle memory nature Nietzsche nondiscursive notion object one’s Oxford pain perception person philosophy Philosophy of Mindfulness photographic pleasure posture practice pragmatism Pragmatist Aesthetics proprioceptive recognize reflection Richard Rorty Richard Shusterman role Rorty Rorty’s self-knowledge sense sexual simply skill social soma somaesthetics somatic disciplines somatic style spontaneous sublime theory thetic thinking Thoreau thought tion tradition trans University Press unreflective visual William James Wittgenstein York Zhuangzi