What a Body Can Do [Hardcover]

In What a Body Can Do, Ben Spatz develops, for the first time, a rigorous theory of embodied technique as knowledge. He argues that viewing technique as both training and research has much to offer current debates over the role of practice in the university, including the debates around practice as research.

Drawing on critical perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, dance studies, enactive cognition, and other areas, Spatz argues that technique is a major area of historical and ongoing research in physical culture, performing arts, and everyday life.

CONTENTS

Foreword ix

JOSEPH ROACH

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction: What Can a Body Do? 1

A body can & 1

Five stories 5

From performance to practice 9

Embodiment and sustainability 11

Methodology and chapters 14

1 An epistemology of practice 23

Which epistemology? 23

A selective genealogy of technique 26

The structure of practice 38

Branches and pathways 44

Linguistic peninsulas 48

Sedimented agency 50

The trope of excess 56

Research in embodied technique 60

The problem of the substrate 64

2 The invention of postural yoga 73

Yoga and physical culture 73

A royal success 75

The yoga wars 80

Healthism and performance 83

Two studios in the East Village 86

The gendering of yoga 92

Between athletics and somatics 95

A therapeutic turn 100

What is physical education? 104

3 Actors without a theatre 113

Craft and presence 113

Beyond actor training 117

Stanislavskis threshold 122

The method of physical actions 129

Grotowskis legacy 1lÃØ