Maria-Nefeli Panetsos - ‘Dancing Phenomenology: A New Source of Non-Verbal Knowledge’

<p>Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features a presentation from Maria-Nefeli Panetsos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.</p> <p> </p> <p>ABSTRACT: When talking about Phenomenology we usually think about only the traditional studies of the subject’s perception of its surrounding phenomena. However, when turning the point of view towards the body, except the first steps done by Merleau-Ponty, Philosophy remains under some limitations of the orthological perception of reality. I found interesting the fact that in the history of Philosophy there is a clear absence towards the art of Dance, as the main corporeal - and for Hegel ‘primitive’ and ‘uncivilized’ - form of art which has no place in the fine art hierarchy. Looking for the reasons why this may have happened, I see that there always have been the fear of the body as a source of knowledge, as it has been always seen as unreliable filter of the human perception. However dance helps to see how the process of sensing and understanding one’s subjectivity and may enrich and change the perspective of one’s identity. I would like to merge the concept of the dancer with the phenomenological existential subject, as an example of conscious and aware subject that actively experiences its existence, transcendental self and its physicality into the intersubjective space where it lives. Through dance, borders and ‘merleaupontian’ fleshes can be managed in a conscious way, essentially focusing on one’s subjectivity and its relationship with time, space, other objects and subjects. As Prof. Shusterman already proposes in his Somaesthetics, the philosophical research can be amplified in the embodied experience of other corporeal activities that usually are not taken into consideration as explanatory for the human existence. An involved, inclusive phenomenological process, will definitely find further ways to sense and understand the aspects of the subje