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Being-Entirely-Flesh. Taking the Body Beyond its Merleau-Pontian Confines in Educational Theory

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Leib – Leiblichkeit – Embodiment

Part of the book series: Phänomenologische Erziehungswissenschaft ((PHE,volume 8))

Abstract

In this contribution I take issue with the dominant educational discourse on the role and the meaning of the human body for education, and develop an alternative to this discourse. This dominant view is bound up with Merleau-Ponty’s groundbreaking work on the importance of the lived body. Central to this view is the call to see the body as a forgotten resource of meaning constitution. However, this way of rendering corporeity doesn’t take into account that there are dimensions of the body which are “on the other side” of meaning and that have an intrinsical educational relevance. What we need to take into consideration is the body qua body, in its full “bodiliness”, in its entirely being flesh. I show what such a view entails by focusing on the meaning of laughter in classrooms and repetitive exercise in physical education.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is evidenced by the contributions in this volume by Patrizia Breil (Haltung. Ein Entwurf mit Merleau-Ponty), Anna Orlikowski (Leib als Ausdruck oder der performative Charakter der leiblichen Existenz: Merleau-Ponty und Butler), Britta Hoffarth and Veronika Magyar-Haas (Geträumter Leib- Träumender Leib: Zur Unverfügung der Leiblichkeit in phänomenologischen und praxistheoretischen Ansätzen), and Ursula Stenger (Konstruktion/Konstitution des Körpers. (Post)Phänomenologische und poststrukturalistische Perspektiven).

  2. 2.

    See the chapter by Massimiliano Tarozzi and Denis Francesconi (Embodied Education and Education of the Body: The Phenomenological Perspective), which makes the same point.

  3. 3.

    Another example of the instrumentalization of the lived-body is modern medicine, as discussed in some of the contributions in this volume.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Joris Vlieghe

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  1. Joris Vlieghe
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Correspondence to Joris Vlieghe .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Malte Brinkmann

  2. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Johannes Türstig

  3. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Martin Weber-Spanknebel

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Vlieghe, J. (2019). Being-Entirely-Flesh. Taking the Body Beyond its Merleau-Pontian Confines in Educational Theory. In: Brinkmann, M., Türstig, J., Weber-Spanknebel, M. (eds) Leib – Leiblichkeit – Embodiment. Phänomenologische Erziehungswissenschaft, vol 8. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25517-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25517-6_4

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