Being-Entirely-Flesh

taking the body beyond its Merleau-Pontian confines in educational theory

Joris Vlieghe

pp. 57-75

in: Malte Brinkmann, Johannes Türstig, Martin Weber-Spanknebel (eds), Leib – Leiblichkeit – Embodiment, Berlin, Springer, 2019

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.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice