Conference - Body Image(s): what challenges from anthropo-technics?
24 - 25 January 2020, University of Konstanz, room F 423
Description of the conference
During the past century the concept of “body image” has been constantly the epistemological target of various disciplines such as psychology, sociology, philosophy or anthropology. Recently, achievements in neurosciences and engineering sciences brought further essential knowledge on the ways body image functions. These multiple perspectives led on the one hand to reciprocal clarifications, yet on the other hand, they also gave rise to further conceptual challenges. One of the definitions of the body image is popular for instance due to the phenomenological paradigm in philosophy (Merleau-Ponty [2012] 1945). From this perspective, it was recently argued that “a body image is composed of a system of experiences, attitudes, and beliefs where the object of such intentional states is one’s own body” (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008: 146). Such a definition presupposes a dimension, which could be related to the emergence of a social phenomenon named “reflexive embodiment”. According to the sociologist Nick Crossley, this concept describes “the capacity and tendency to perceive, emote about, reflect and act upon one’s own body; to practices of body modification and maintenance; and to ‘body image’. Reflexivity entails that the object and subject of a perception, thought, feeling, desire or action are the same” (2006: 1).
The ways in which the body image is constructed have much to do with the production of this reflexivity. One of its resources rests upon various body techniques that characterize our concrete interactions as well as the presentation of ourselves in everyday lives (Goffman 1959). The reflexive potential is also generated by concrete material transformations, which gain more and more visibility at present and which may be subsumed under the category of anthropo-technics. The aim of the conference is to explore the various transitions and processes which lead to the production of contemporary body images due to various anthropo-technics.
Whereas lately the concept “anthropotechnics” is associated with scientific technological modifications of the body (Sloterdijk 2001; Goffette 2007; Andrieu 2007), in the context of the present event this concept shall be conceived as “anthropo-technics”. More precisely, “anthropo-technics” shall be understood as a technology of producing corporeality in a wider sense. This includes for instance not only such phenomena as rehabilitation by means of technologies when faced with disability cases, but also bodily changes induced by such practices as tattoos, piercing (Liotard 2016), fashion or by extreme technologies of the body image such as anorexia (Briend & Legrand 2015).
Given that body image can be both understood as self-image (Selbstbild) (Gugutzer 2002: 196) and as an intersubjective or social product, the centrality of the body qua producer and product of various symbolic and anthropo-technical areas shall be particularly emphasized. Since, as Anthony Synnott notes, “our bodies and body parts are loaded with cultural symbolism, public and private, positive and negative, political and economic, sexual, moral and often controversial; and so are the attributes, functions and states of the body, and the senses” (1993: 1).
These aspects cross a plethora of research topics that can be grouped by three central issues which shall be addressed at the conference. The first corresponding session focuses on technological reinvestments of the body image. It sheds light, for example on how persons having experienced impairments react to technological addenda to their bodies. Some of the discussed examples include implants for tetraplegics or exo-suits. Contributions in the second session inquire on various experiences of body image and self-modification from a socio-anthropological perspective. The third session explores theoretical challenges related to the lived body. It considers changes of the self in relation to forms of pathology and vulnerability and questions experiential levels that result due to these experiences.
Quoted references:
Andrieu B. (2007): Contre la désincarnation technique: un corps hybride? Actuel Marx 1 n°41 : 28-39. Doi : 10.3917/amx. 041.0028.
Gallager S. & Zahavi D. (2008): The Phenomenological Mind. London& New York: Routledge.
Goffette J. (2007): Naissance de l’anthropotechnie. Paris : Vrin.
Goffman E. (1959): The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor.
Gugutzer R. (2002): Leib, Körper und Identität. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Briend F. & Legrand D. (2015): Anorexia and Bodily Intersubjectivity. European Psychologist. Special Issue: Body Image, 20-1, 52-61.
Liotard P. (2016): Verna’s starred body. Notes on the utopian body of the artist as work site. In Vous n’êtes pas un peu beaucoup maquillé ? Non, Jean-Luc Verna ed. 154–155. Vitry-sur-Seine: MacVal.
Merleau-Ponty M. ([1945] 2012) Phenomenology of Perception. New York & London : Routledge.
Svenaeus, F. (2015) The lived body and personal identity: The ontology of exiled body parts, In: Bodily Exchanges, Bioethics and Border Crossing: Perspectives on Giving, Selling and Sharing Bodies. Erik Malmqvist and Kristin Zeiler (Eds.), Abingdon: Routledge, 19-34.
Shilling C. (1993). The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage.
Sloterdjik P. (2001): Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger. Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp.
Synnott A. (1993): The Body Social. London & New York: Routledge.
Language of the conference: English
No conference fee shall be required.