Vortrag im Ethnologischen Kolloquium von Prof. Csordas

13. Juni 2023, von Franziska Neubauer

Am Dienstag, den 6. Juni 2023, hat Prof. Dr. Thomas J. Csordas (University of California San Diego) einen Gastvortrag in unserem ethnologischen Kolloquium gehalten. Prof. Csordas hat mit seinen Arbeiten den sogenannten embodiment-turn in der Ethnologie eingeleitet, der die Körperlichkeit (bzw. Leiblichkeit) des Menschen in den Vordergrund gestellt hat. Das hat die Ethnologie nachhaltig verändert. Zu seinen jüngsten Veröffentlichungen zählt das Buch "Troubled in the Land of Enchantment: Adolescent Experience of Psychiatric Treatment" (gemeinsam mit Janis H. Jenkins, University of California Press 2020).

Something Other Than Its Own Mass: Embodiment as Corporeality, Animality, and Materiality

Anthropological concern with embodiment began in part with consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception, and this paper continues in that vein by considering his theory of nature.  Embodiment from this standpoint is our general existential condition and an indeterminate methodological field for a cultural phenomenology attuned to the immediacy of lived experience.  Without claiming to define nature or human nature, the essay offers an outline of embodiment as a framework for integrating corporeality, animality, and materiality.  These three domains have generated lively bodies of literature that do not always speak to one another, and that invite phenomenological critique in a world where the existential and ethical position of humanity is increasingly in question and precarious.