abstract

Critical Somatics: Theory and Method is a proposal for a new discipline designed to thematize the body—the experiencing, performing, culturally and socially productive body—as the locus of both limitation and novelty, habit and creativity. This paper offers the theoretical bases for such a discipline, as well as methodological suggestions designed to integrate critical awareness with experiential attunement for the student enrolled in a Critical Somatics program. The main objective of a Critical Somatics discipline is for each student to develop an increased awareness of the relationship between his or her mode of bodily comportment, social and cultural institutions, and the limitations and possibilities for choice and change on both personal and social levels.

About this Blog

earthen foothold (or the first chakra) is the blog version of my undergraduate thesis, entitled critical somatics: theory and method, which i am currently expanding into a book. my thesis consists of the argument that a new academic discipline is needed that will bring together the critical social and political insights garnered from the academic fields of sociology & cultural studies, with the awareness of mind, body, & soul unity as cultivated through a broad and diverse range of holistic, non-academic healing modalities and spiritual practices.

critical somatics (cs) is designed to evoke new, experiential understandings of our in/habited bodies: of our experiencing, performing, culturally and socially productive bodies– bodies that serve as both source and anchor for our metaphorically expansive cognitive, communicative, and cultural meaning-making processes. the main objective of cs is for each student to develop an increased awareness of our embodied engagement with a pre-given, meaningful, social world whose origins are far too distant in time, and far too complex, to ever fully delineate. cs seeks to critically examine social learning & conditioning– i.e. ourinternalization and embodiment of postures & movements that, in turn, externalize, or actively express, generate, & reinforce, the given conditions of our world. the most salient feature of these conditions, from a cs perspective, is power: the internalized assumptions and externalized performances that result in the generation of social categories with vastly different access to economic resources as well as other, more symbolic, means of social power. importantly, cs is not merely interested in demonstrating just how much of our postural and experiential habits were learned, or how these habits create behaviors that tend to reproduce oppressive social conditions. cs is also interested in the ways in which contemporary holistic healing & spiritual practices can introduce novel ways of inhabiting our bodies, such that our habitual postures, orientations, attitudes, and cognitive structures can be transformed in ways that allow for more ease & freedom of movement, and that encourage a less conformist and more revolutionary, liberatory way of being– on the individual level, but also on the level of interpersonal and institutional social relationships.

critical somatics essentially sprang from my encounters with two distinct countercultural traditions, each simultaneously overlapping and contradicting the other. the first is the tradition and practice ofcritical (social) theory. the second is a tradition that could be called ‘holism’ and has been associated with a variety of different historical movements, from romanticism & ‘orientalism’ through what today is often called ‘new age’. bridging the radical differences between these two counter-traditions, critical somatics seeks to emphasize both an awareness of habitual & oppressive social, economic, & power dynamics, for which sociology and critical theory are indispensable; as well as an awareness of the ‘mind/body’ unity that is emphasized, although usually depoliticized, in a variety of contemporary, cross-cultural healing modalities and spiritual practices. my hope is to combine the political engagement and intellectual strength and rigor of critical theory, with the holistic awareness of various ‘new age’ mind/body practices, to create a new practice that is genuinely comprehensive, revolutionary, and conducive to both individual and collective liberation.