staehler_exploring pregnant embodiment.pdf (602.63 kB)
Exploring pregnant embodiment with phenomenology and Butoh dance
How does pregnancy transform our embodiment? This question will be explored with the help of phenomenology and Butoh dance. Although Butoh has not yet been able to fulfil its true potential for disclosing female embodiment and particularly pregnant embodiment, it will provide us with helpful clues. In pregnancy, objects are less ready-to-hand, more out of reach -- world as we know it becomes removed. The habit body vanishes away. But pregnancy is not just a loss of the ordinary: it also opens up new dimensions. One such dimension is that of being touched from within. A phenomenology of the pregnant body thus leads to a removal of world, but also reveals new dimensions of world, and it even comes to disclose the other as a new world within. It means to carry something alien, like the stone in Butoh play 'Child’s Breath', which can only be carried slowly, awkwardly.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Yearbook for Eastern and Western PhilosophyISSN
2196-5889Publisher
De GruyterExternal DOI
Issue
2Volume
2017Page range
35-55Department affiliated with
- Philosophy Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes