What Phenomenal Contrast for Bodily Ownership?

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-137
Author(s):  
FRÉDÉRIQUE DE VIGNEMONT
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Affective Awareness

AbstractIn a 1962 article, ‘On Sensations of Position’, G. E. M. Anscombe claimed that we do not feel our legs crossed; we simply know that they are that way. What about the sense of bodily ownership? Do we directly know that this body is our own, or do we know it because we feel this body that way? One may claim, for instance, that we are we aware that this is our own body thanks to our bodily experiences that ascribe the property of myness to the body that they represent. Here I approach this issue from the perspective of the debate on the admissible content of perception, appealing to the method of phenomenal contrast. After rejecting the myness hypothesis, I criticize alternative accounts of the contrast in somatosensory, cognitive, and agentive terms. I conclude that the phenomenology of ownership consists in the affective awareness of the unique significance of the body for survival.

scholarly journals What does it Mean to be a Man? Trans Masculinities, Bodily Practices, and Reflexive Embodiment

2021 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2110085
Author(s):  
Sofia Aboim ◽  
Pedro Vasconcelos
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
To Come

Confronted with the centrality of the body for trans-masculine individuals interviewed in the United Kingdom and Portugal, we explore how bodily-reflexive practices are central for doing masculinity. Following Connell’s early insight that bodies needed to come back to the political and sociological agendas, we propose that bodily-reflexive practice is a concept suited to account for the production of trans-masculinities. Although multiple, the journeys of trans-masculine individuals demonstrate how bodily experiences shape and redefine masculinities in ways that illuminate the nexus between bodies, embodiments, and discursive enactments of masculinity. Rather than oppositions between bodily conformity to and transgression of the norms of hegemonic masculinity, often encountered in idealizations of the medicalized transsexual against the genderqueer rebel, lived bodily experiences shape masculinities beyond linear oppositions. Tensions between natural and technological, material and discursive, or feminine and masculine were keys for understanding trans-masculine narratives about the body, embodiment, and identity.

‘The sickness stands at your shoulder …’: Embodiment and cognitive metaphor in Hornbacher’sWasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Senkbeil ◽  
Nicola Hoppe
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Eating Disorders ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Marya Hornbacher ◽  
Linguistic Approaches

This paper applies cognitive linguistic approaches, particularly conceptual metaphor theory, to the study of literature, and analyses how Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (1998) by Marya Hornbacher communicates embodied experiences such as sickness, hunger, and (self-)loathing with the help of conceptual metaphors. It explores how the author renegotiates and partly recontextualizes highly conventionalized metaphors around eating disorders, mental illness, and identity to create new meaning, and how this strategy helped explain the mindset of a person with anorexia and bulimia to a broad critical readership in the late 1990s. This paper hence hypothesizes that the book’s emphasis on metaphors as a means to articulate bodily experiences surrounding a mental disorder may hint towards larger trends concerning the representation of the body–mind relationship in literature and culture in the last two decades.

scholarly journals Perception of visual-tactile asynchrony, bodily perceptual aberrations, and bodily illusions in schizophrenia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regine Zopf
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Detection Sensitivity ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Body Perception ◽  
Rubber Hand ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Asynchrony Detection ◽  
Body Perceptions ◽  
Proprioceptive Drift ◽  
Insight Into

Body perception can be dramatically altered in individuals with schizophrenia resulting in experiences of undefined bodily boundaries, loss of body ownership, and size changes for parts of the body. These individuals may also be more susceptible to the rubber hand illusion (RHI: an illusion of body perception that can also be induced in neurotypical populations), but the findings are mixed. Furthermore, the perception of timing information about multisensory stimuli, which is thought to be fundamental for body perception, has been reported to be altered in schizophrenia. We tested here whether altered perception of the temporal relationship between visual and tactile signals in schizophrenia can predict self-reported perceptual aberrations and RHI susceptibility (indexed by both illusion self-ratings and a more objective proprioceptive-drift measure). We found that the sensitivity to detect temporal asynchronies is reduced in schizophrenia and this predicts bodily perceptual symptoms. In contrast, we found no evidence for a direct relationship between asynchrony detection sensitivity and RHI susceptibility. Instead, our findings suggest that experiencing more bodily perceptual symptoms increases the likelihood of endorsing unusual bodily experiences, resulting in higher RHI self-ratings but not higher proprioceptive-drift scores. Overall, our findings provide evidence for both direct and indirect links between temporal and body perception and thus new insight into the mechanisms that may underlie unusual body perceptions in schizophrenia.

Body Talk

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
William G. Pooley
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Body Talk

This chapter uses Félix Arnaudin’s notes towards a dictionary of the Gascon dialect of the Landes de Gascogne to explore everyday speech about the body. The dialect notes that Arnaudin carefully recorded in quotidian situations draw attention to a body focused on the legs and buttocks, discussed in terms of constant concern about stooping and bending. The language of the body was often violent and obscene, but could also be delicate and specific. Rich metaphors for body parts drew parallels between human exploitation and forestation. This was not a static folk language of the body, swept away by ‘modern’ ideas of the body, but an evolving way of talking about bodily experiences.

scholarly journals Narrative Reflections on Masculinity and Fatherhood during Covid-19 Confinement in Spain

Societies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Gustavo González-Calvo
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Process ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
World Crisis ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Change Of Life ◽  
Advance Knowledge

This article explores the intersectionalities of masculinity, corporal identity, fatherhood, relationships, and bodily experiences in relation to a person who is living in a period of home confinement. In so doing, I draw on autobiographical narratives to delve into how embodied subjectivities are constructed to advance knowledge on an embodied way of being a man in the context of a health world crisis. In the telling, I attempt to engage the reader by communicating the subjectivity of different moments in a provocative, fragmented, physical, and emotional manner. The results suggest that narratives, such as those presented in this article, contribute to understanding the continuous process of change of life and body projects due to the health crisis pandemic, and serve as a corporeal resource to challenge some of the (self-)imposed tyrannies around the body.

Embodied Masculinity: Sex and Sport in a (Post) Colonial Chinese City

2007 ◽  
Vol 190 ◽  
pp. 432-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiantian Zheng
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
Japanese Colonialism ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Chinese City ◽  
North East ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

AbstractThis article examines the historical formation of local masculine identity in the city of Dalian in north-east China. I argue that the experiences of Dalian-Chinese men under Japanese colonialism (1905–45) established a model of masculine identity based on bodily resistance. The article explores Dalian men's encounter with colonialism by comparing two different forms of bodily experience: military calisthenics in Japanese-run schools for Chinese boys and street soccer. On the one hand, military calisthenics impressed Chinese schoolboys with a sense of subjugation focused on the body. Bodily movements were performed under the strict scrutiny of Japanese drill masters and formed an integral part of everyday rituals of obedience. On the other hand, street soccer emerged as a popular and potentially creative activity among Chinese schoolboys. In contrast with the controlled motions of military calisthenics, soccer offered a sense of freedom in its unrestricted and improvised movements. Matches against Japanese teams even more explicitly infused soccer with a spirit of nationalistic resistance. In conclusion, I argue that these bodily experiences are crucial to understanding the historical reformations of Dalian male gender identity.

scholarly journals Testing the exteroceptive function of nociception: the role of visual experience in shaping the spatial representations of nociceptive inputs

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camille Vanderclausen ◽  
Marion Bourgois ◽  
Anne De Volder ◽  
Valéry Legrain
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Temporal Order Judgment ◽  
Skin Surface ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Physical Damage ◽  
External Space ◽  
Crossmodal Interactions ◽  
Bodily Experiences

AbstractAdequately localizing pain is crucial to protect the body against physical damage and react to the stimulus in external space having caused such damage. Accordingly, it is hypothesized that nociceptive inputs are remapped from a somatotopic reference frame, representing the skin surface, towards a spatiotopic frame, representing the body parts in external space. This ability is thought to be developed and shaped by early visual experience. To test this hypothesis, normally sighted and early blind participants performed temporal order judgment tasks during which they judged which of two nociceptive stimuli applied on each hand’s dorsum was perceived as first delivered. Crucially, tasks were performed with the hands either in an uncrossed posture or crossed over body midline. While early blinds were not affected by the posture, performances of the normally sighted participants decreased in the crossed condition relative to the uncrossed condition. This indicates that nociceptive stimuli were automatically remapped into a spatiotopic representation that interfered with somatotopy in normally sighted individuals, whereas early blinds seemed to mostly rely on a somatotopic representation to localize nociceptive inputs. Accordingly, the plasticity of the nociceptive system would not purely depend on bodily experiences but also on crossmodal interactions between nociception and vision during early sensory experience.

scholarly journals Karate, capoeira and MMA: a phenomenological approach to the process of starting a fight

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thabata Castelo Branco Telles ◽  
Anu Maarit Vaittinen ◽  
Cristiano Roque Antunes Barreira
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Combat Sports ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Phenomenological Studies ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
The World ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective

<p>In sports studies, the body of research focussing on combat sports has developed, but so far few studies regarding the experience of starting a fight. In order to comprehend the process of starting a fight, this study aims to investigate and describe it through both a comparative and phenomenological approach of Brazilian karate, capoeira and mixed martial arts (MMA) practitioners (<em>n </em>= 11, 7, 11, respectively). Semi-structured interviews were conducted and in the analysis we used a phenomenological perspective. Most of the karatekas described the distance adjustment and bowing to their opponent as the beginning of the combat. Capoeiristas highlighted the sound of music and the <em>roda</em>, referring to the way they organize themselves to start fighting. MMA athletes commonly described the beginning of the fight as when they start the <em>camp</em>, from the weigh-in or the octagon entrance. Using the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, the process of beginning a fight can be understood as a relationship between a bodily consciousness and the world. The findings in this paper concur with the phenomenological understanding, according to which actions are not seen as randomly executed: instead they are pre-reflexively and corporeally understood, as well as situated within a specific context; this is illustrated in the manner a fight within each modality seems to begin somewhat differently, according to the specific modality in question. These results help us comprehend the beginning of the fight in which body and world are constantly intertwined. Future directions include comprehension of the fighting experience as a whole, understanding the perception and movement of these fighters through the entire combat, and enhancing phenomenological studies regarding bodily experiences.</p>

Anthropomorphic Clay Figurines of the Jomon Period of Japan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koji Mizoguchi
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Japanese Archipelago ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Japanese Archipelago

This chapter charts the trajectory of change of Jomon period clay anthropomorphic figurines in the Japanese archipelago. The earliest specimens embodied the perception of the body and female bodily experiences rather than accurately representing the body itself. Emphasis gradually shifted from the material embodiment of unmediated bodily perception and experiences to the visual representation of the body. Through this process, the subject of the representation expanded from the female body to the bodies of various categories of being, including animals and fantastic/supernatural beings, and the figurines came to embody the mutual transformability. These beings were networked to form an ‘animistic’ cosmology whose successful reproduction was metaphorically linked to that of human life and community. The decline of the symbolic role of the female reproductive faculty as the universal referent in the prayer for communal well-being led to the end of the Jomon clay anthropomorphic figurines.

A Multimodal Account of Bodily Experience

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédérique de Vignemont
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Veridical Perception ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Bodily Awareness ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Multisensory Interactions ◽  
The Way

What are the implications of pervasive presence of multisensory interactions for bodily awareness? It has been assumed that bodily experiences exclusively result from bodily senses, with no influence from external senses, but vision is actually required to maximize the veridical perception of the body. Consequently, bodily experiences in those who have never seen are of a different kind to the way one normally experiences one’s body. Whether or not one is currently seeing one’s body, vision plays an essential role in delineating the boundaries of the body, in locating our body parts in space and in bridging the gap between what happens on the skin and what happens in the external world. In this sense, the bodily experiences of the sighted (or those who were once sighted) can be said to be constitutively multimodal.

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