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Download Download Journal of Somaesthetics Bodies of Belief / Bodies of Care Volume 3, Numbers 1 and 2 (2017) somaesthetics.aau.dk The Journal of Somaesthetics Volume 3, Numbers 1 and 2 (2017) Editorial Board Editors Else Marie Bukdahl (Denmark) Falk Heinrich (Denmark) Richard Shusterman (USA) Editorial Board Yanping Gao (China) Mathias Girel (France) Kristina Höök (Sweden) Leszek Koczanowicz (Poland) Fred Maus (USA) Max Ryynnänen (Finland) Dag Svanaes (Norway) Published by Aalborg University Press Journal website somaesthetics.aau.dk Journal design Zane Cerpina With the generous support of The Obel Family Foundation and The Schmidt Family Foundation © The Journal of Somaesthetics (JOS) 2017 © Individual contributors. The moral right of the authors has been asserted. Art & Technology, Aalborg University Rendsburggade 14, 9000 Denmark ISSN: 2246-8498 The authors have attempted to locate all licensees in connection with the illustrations used in this book. Should there be individual instances where this has not been successful, the licensees will be compensated if they contact the publishing house, Aalborg University. Bodies of Belief / Bodies of Care Contents Volume 3, Numbers 1 and 2: Bodies of Belief/Bodies of Care 4 Introduction: Bodies of Belief/Bodies of Care Richard Shusterman Dialogues: ORLAN: 6 Hybridity, Creativity, and Emancipatory Critique in the Somaesthetic Art of ORLAN In dialog with Else Marie Bukdahl Articles: Art and Religious Belief: 25 Lessons for Contemporary Theory from Renaissance and Baroque Painting Else Marie Bukdahl Occupy your Body: Activating 21st-Century Tattoo Culture 44 Karen J. Leader Vulnerable from Within: Autoimmunity and Bodily Boundaries 58 Karmen MacKendrick The Art of Being Elsewhere: Neoliberal Institutions of Care 68 Natasha Lushetich Lygia Clark’s Practices of Care 85 Luciana Mourão Arslan The Painter’s Knife: Representations of Fragmented Bodies in Painting 93 Efrat Biberman As Fragile as Tissue and as Strong: 105 Toward a Lacanian Somaesthetic Literary Theory Diane Richard-Allerdyce Somaesthetic Encounters with Socrates: The Peaceful Warrior as Yogi 117 Vinod Balakrishnan and Swathi Elizabeth Kurian New Art of Bodily Care in the Works of Lope de Vega and López Pinciano 133 Elizabeth M. Cruz Petersen Notes on Contributors 144 Introduction to Volume 3, Numbers 1 and 2 (2017) Bodies of Belief / Bodies of Care This double-issue on Bodies of Belief and Bodies of Care originated in two conferences held at the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture, respectively January 2015 and January 2016. Only a few papers from those conferences, however, have found their way into this volume; the others collected here came from independent submissions to the Journal. We should begin by explaining the underlying logic that motivated the topics of these conferences and the papers of this double issue? With respect to the question of belief, human bodies are shaped not only by their genetic endowment but also by the belief systems of the cultures in which they develop and function. Such belief systems vary from unarticulated background assumptions to ritualized practices and explicit doctrines or even to formulated laws enacted and enforced by social institutions. The beliefs that the human soma embodies and expresses are not confined to established social norms; they also include items of faith and commitment that are individualistic, nonconformist, or even antagonistic to the cultural mainstream. More than a mere instrument of compliance or worship, the soma is also a site and weapon of protest against beliefs we reject and find oppressive. As to the issue of care, bodies are obviously the targets of one’s daily care in terms of personal hygiene, grooming, exercise, and proper nourishment. They are also objects of care in the sense of worry or concern, since we all suffer illness and death through our bodies. However, the sentient, purposive, active body or soma is also a subjectivity that examines and cares for the body as object, whether it be one’s own body or the bodies of others who one wants to help or comfort. We all need such curative help or comfort at some point in our lives; and some people devote their professional and personal lives to giving such care. Bodies need and give care in many ways and for many reasons: to overcome illness and disability, to address and alleviate dependence, to learn new skills and remedy bad habits, to inspire greater confidence for personal flourishing and greater social betterment. Initially, it might seem surprising to group the topics of bodies of belief and care together. However, if we consider the matter more closely, we see a deep and substantive connection between them. In the first place, beliefs are what make care possible. Because beliefs are our essential guides of action, they are therefore indispensable for guiding our actions of caring for ourselves and others. Beliefs about the body – for example, beliefs about what foods, medicines, habits, exercises, etc. promote somatic health, well-being, and pleasure -- thus govern our practices of care for the body. Issues of belief and care are also linked in the reverse direction. The fact that we care for our bodies, both in the sense of practically acting to care for them and in the sense of worrying about how to care for them, prompts us to search for the best beliefs to guide such care. As the pragmatist C.S. Peirce argued, inquiry is inspired by the irritation of doubt, and it seeks to remove such doubt by establishing beliefs that resolve the particular doubt in question. Our doubts and worries about somatic health and various problems in the functioning and appearances of our bodies promote countless inquiries to attain beliefs that will guide practices to remove or at least mitigate those worries. The things that we care for thus The Journal of Somaesthetics Volume 3, Numbers 1 and 2 (2017) 4 Introduction to Volume 3, Numbers 1 and 2 (2017) Introduction to Volume 3, Numbers 1 and 2 (2017) inspire more attention and efforts to acquire correct and helpful beliefs. Although most of our beliefs are items that we simply take for granted and that guide our actions without our giving explicit focused attention to these beliefs, we tend to give more explicit attention to beliefs about things we care about most. Our bodily condition – how we feel, look, and function somatically – is an abiding center of care and concern and thus forms the focus of some of our most explicit and critically examined beliefs. The following papers examine diverse issues of bodily belief and care from different perspectives. Topics range from autoimmunity and psychological therapy to religious belief, tattoos, and neoliberal institutions of health care. Most of the papers adopt an artistic somaesthetic perspective, examining their topics through the methods of literary theory, art history, and theatre studies. The present issue continues the Journal’s tradition of including an interview with a distinguished specialist whose expertise relates to the issue’s topic. On this occasion we are very happy to include an interview with ORLAN, specially commissioned for this issue and introduced by Else Marie Bukdahl. The interview was conducted in French, and we provide an English translation along with the original French. Richard Shusterman 5 Bodies of Belief / Bodies of Care Else Marie Bukdahl Else Marie Bukdahl Page 6-24 ORLAN Hybridity, Creativity, and Emancipatory Critique in the Somaesthetic Art of ORLAN In dialog with Else Marie Bukdahl “Invention is the only true intellectual act, the only action of intelligence. Only invention proves that we can really think.”1 Introduction ORLAN is renowned world wide for her astonishing original ways of developing new genres, projects and performances. They have been presented–often with her body as the privileged instrument–in countless museums, galleries, universities and other places both in the West and the East. From the early sixties to the present day impressive new interpretations of the body’s relation between the Self, the Other and the society have appeared in different shapes in her artistic universe: Real body and imaginary body, lived body and emotional body, mystic body and social body, diffuse body and hybrid body, all merge together in the ceaseless flow of references in ORLAN’s work. 2 Since 1965 she has been active in photography, video, sculpture, installation and performance. She has created the so-called Carnal Art, and was the first artist to use plastic surgery as an art form to explore new aspects of the fields of art and science, engaging the viewer in unexpected ways. She used surgery-performance from 1990 to 1993. In Manifesto of Carnal Art (1989), she emphasised that her uncovering of hidden and often grotesque aspects of our world is related to the Baroque’s artistic renewals. Carnal Art “swings from “defiguration” to “refiguration,” and its inscription in the flesh calls on our age,” and this art “loves parody and the baroque, the grotesque and disconsidered styles.” It also “opposes the conventions that put pressure on the human body and the appearance of the work of art. Carnal art is anti-formalist and anti-conformist.”3 ORLAN has many times stressed that she always has created her works “at the crossroads of two stories: my personal story, my private novel, and another history that of western or non-western art.” And in relation to this statement she quotes the following sentence by Walter Benjamin: “The actualization of former contexts puts the truth of all present action to test.”4 This statement 1 This quotation was etched on the walls of the library of the Ecole Centrale in Lyon by Michel Serres in 2006. 2 Eugenio Viola, “The Narrative” in Orlan. Le récit. The narrative. This book was published in connection with the exhibition of the same name in Musée d’art moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole, May 29 – August 2007, p.
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