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Paper short abstract:

How can imaginations and intuitions of thin-skinned, weakly-bounded and attuned bodies provoke social transformation and impact STS research? This performative intervention teaches STS researchers to blur their body boundaries, practice attunement and feel connected.

Paper long abstract:

In this performative intervention (multimodal guided visualizations), I propose the idea that social and environmental transformation requires a form of embodiment in which bodies are not bounded by that which is contained by the skin. Our current (social) climate asks for a different conceptualization of a body than the individual, such as a “second body” which connects an individual to each and every body on this earth, as proposed by Hildyard (2017). Worlds connect through bodies that are not whole. I propose an imagination of the body of the (STS) researcher as porous, adhering to break the one-body-one-person rule (Boll & Müller 2020) challenged, for instance, by scholars who present bodies and boundaries as leaky, permeable or dissolving (Shildrick 1997, Mol 2002, Hildyard 2017). But how does such a body feel? In this experiment, I present performative imaginations that facilitate blurring boundaries, practicing attunement and feeling connected. Provoking the idea that what social transformation needs is thin-skinned, weakly bounded, and attuned bodies, I end the session by inviting a lively debate about the transformative impact of such embodiments for STS research.

References:

Boll, T., Müller, S.M (2020). Body Boundary Work: Praxeological Thoughts on Personal Corporality. Hum Stud 43, 585–602.

Hildyard, D. (2017). The second body. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple. Ontology in medical practice. Durham: Duke University Press.

Shildrick, M. (1997). Leaky bodies and boundaries: Feminism, postmodernism and (bio)ethics. London: Routledge.