Richard Shusterman, Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (2000): In the portions of the text we take up, Shusterman works to disrupt the mind/body split and presents a new form of aesthetic theory as both philosophy and as a practical art of living. Shusterman argues for a return to the body as a critical site for understanding and developing aesthetics (as representation and as experience) as well as reworking existing forms of aesthetic theory in order become more bodily-focused. While Shusterman values pleasure and personal fulfillment, he wants to promote our chances for human survival in a highly fragmented, postmodern world heavily influenced by technology. Some references to a democratic project, but not developed in the chapters we review.

Shusterman works, in part, through Benjamin (reclaiming aura), Adorno, and a number of Anglo-American theorists, including John Dewey, to establish his argument for a somatic turn. His project selects strands from each theorist, and explains why most of their critical work does not go far enough to address contemporary concerns. His audience is Western, but he is trying to undo a number of binaries. With his Anglo-American analysis, Shusterman starts with a more expansive view of Western thought than we have seen from other texts. He also embraces non-Western traditions in his work. He is setting a new agenda for the twenty-first century, and calls for other scholars to engage in particular kinds of somaesthetic analysis.

I would like to address Chapter 8 in class. As someone who found rolfing to be a life-changing experience, I valued Shusterman’s discussion of the Alexander technique, Reichan bioenergetics, and the Feldenkrais Method as important tools for facilitating somaesthetic experiences, and I agree with his assertion that these methods hold promise for increasing care of our bodies in contemporary culture. While he ends the Chapter promoting Feldenkrais over the other two, I still not sure that Chapter 8 fully supported critical connections (practically and theoretically) between these methods and more universal concerns with identity, spirituality, and negotiating new relationships with nature (161-162).

Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement, “Lexicon Rhetoricae” (1931, 1968): Our portions of this text reflect Burke’s belief that the social, embodied nature of language calls for a rethinking of classical rhetoric and further reflects his call for a broader form of the aesthetic that embraces more of the body, and turns away from the perceived rationality of science or aesthetic’s purely political functions.

It would seem this text was written, in part, for scholars in newly developing fields of communication and rhetoric. It seems to also be speaking to a number of cultural influences, particularly new image-based mediums (although the first edition was too early for television), and a science-oriented tendency to denigrate imagination.

Burke works with the body, the somatic, in very specific ways. I think it would be helpful to examine these portions of the text in greater detail when we meet later today.