Can the body know?

This essay aims to discuss the use of the performance of the bodies as an instrument to produce knowledge within the space of the academy — a knowledge that should be validated and disseminated as presented in texts and books.

We start from Diana Taylor’s (2003) conceptions regarding the archive and the repertoire where: the archive is composed of texts, documents, buildings, evidence, images, etc., and the repertoire, by songs, rituals, dances, sports, gestures, languages, ​​and others, that is, the archive would be composed of materials, supposedly, resistant, and the repertoire, of ephemeral elements of the embodied practice. The repertoire would then be characterized by a performance practice and, in turn, performance, according to Taylor (2003), can be seen as that which is transferred in an opposite way to the archive, where it would be necessary the presence of a body that transmits knowledge and a body that learns.

When thinking about this need for the presence of the body, one could reach the understanding that the repertoire has a smaller scope and is more out of phase concerning the archive, a statement that is easily contradicted. Despite the idea present in most academic construction spaces where the archive is valued over the repertoire, both would be subject to changes over time, that is, neither books nor practices will be the same; bodies will take the learned knowledge, modify it and it will be modified by the next body that comes in contact — whether through the archive or the repertoire. And yet, this knowledge will be mediated and located, as Donna Haraway (2009) brings, by the context and by the subjects present in its construction and meaning, thus displacing (both) of a generalist idea of ​​distance and universality of knowledge.

Thus, as Taylor (2003) points out, although the archive and the repertoire exist in a constant state of interaction (and modification), the tendency is to banish the repertoire to the past — even if knowledge centered on incorporated expressions has participated, and probably will continue to participate in the transmission of social knowledge, memory, and identity beyond the presence of writing. As Diana Taylor shows, "Writing, though highly valued, was a performance stimulus, a mnemonic aid. More accurate information could be stored through writing and required specialized skills, but depended on the embodied culture for transmission (TAYLOR, 2003, p.17)".

From this brief presentation, we intend to discuss the possibilities, obstacles, and strengths of working with embodied (incorporated) knowledge within academic spaces, that is, of bringing the repertoire to the center of knowledge historically based on the archive.

Our thinking is based on knowledge transfer spaces based on incorporated practices. We see, for example, in Sloterdijk’s thought (2016) the illustration of the first transference space of human subjectivity definers, the sonospheric relationship between babies and the world — through the uterus. Despite possibly sounding like an extension very far from the notion of subjectivity, the first space of formation of the bubble — soul/subjectivity –, as Sloterdijk (2016) points out, would be given by the intimacy of the microsphere of the uterus, the first place of inner resonance, interpretation and inter symbiosis for the formation of identity; that is, the incorporation of knowledge would take place primarily through the sound sphere.

In this sense, this first place would also be the space for the emergence of a flat body of expressions of desire, or, as Deleuze and Guatarri (2011, 2012) bring up, a Body without full Organs. Since this body is the space of potencies generated from chaos, but, in contrast to the empty or cancerous Body without Organs, it does not become disorganized in its petrification and is led to the construction of subjectivity.

Thus, we can understand that the subject’s first, and perhaps primordial, constructions occur through body-oral experience, and, following the thought proposed here, these constructions are not made statically or directly — we can use the idea of Ruminations by Ferraz (2015). Ruminations would have an experience factor linked to learning in the spirit of the body, that is, not just humanly digesting but chewing and re-chewing, ruminating, as Ferraz (2015) brings; in the rumination process, new powers of the body will be activated and, consequently, new knowledge will be incorporated.

Thus, connecting Taylor’s (2003) ideas with the latest approximations, learning in the repertoire would take place throughout human life, would be centered on ontological (spatial and spiritual) movements, and would take place from a rumination — practice and repetition — of knowledge. If we connect these notions of continuity, transmission, and repetition with the knowledge of the repertoire, we see that there is no gap between archive and repertoire; therefore, why is there this distance between the academy and repertory knowledge?

The answer lies in the difficulty of accepting incorporation — and Autopoiesis, as Maturana and Varela (1980) bring it — as a space for validating knowledge, that is, the inability and disinterest in promoting an active proposal for the construction of knowledge from bodies. Furthermore, this construction focused only on the removal and universalization of archival knowledge is the cause of several epistemicides — silencing and subalternization of non-hegemonic knowledge. Thus, incorporating knowledge of the body in academic spaces is, above all, an ethical issue. However, how can this knowledge be incorporated?

We believe that the first step is to expand what we understand as knowledge. As Diana Taylor shows, by taking performance as a system of learning, storing, and transmitting knowledge seriously, performance studies allow us to expand what we understand as “knowledge” (2003, p.16). When generating a shift from written knowledge to embodied knowledge, we will have to review our methods, as proposed by Taylor (2003), this movement would shift our gaze from patterns of cultural expression centered on texts and narratives to an observation of scenarios and contexts — spaces that they do not reduce gestures and incorporations to narrative description practices –; that is, the change will be in the knowledge base itself and not just in the application of this knowledge in the academy.

Our first step to reshape knowledge must be to think about the approaches that have been made to bodies and what they consider, such as the historical factors influencing that body (such as the diaspora) being considered? Is the context where that body lives, has the experience and affects it brought to the construction of knowledge? Is the perspective and location (geographical, political, aesthetic, and ethical) of the researcher brought to the text in a clear way, as well as the relationships and affectations between researcher and research subject?

After locating and partializing knowledge, we must break with the ideas of universalization of archive knowledge to expand the idea of ​​what knowledge would be. As Taylor (2003) shows, contrary to what is stated in academia, the archive is not resistant to changes, corruption, and political manipulations — individual elements (books, images, evidence) can mysteriously disappear or appear in the archive space. Thus, the objective of knowledge itself cannot be the creation of universal knowledge, but rather a procedural construction of living approximations of the subjects and elements of the world.

The third point that must be constantly brought to academic practices to bring them closer to embodied knowledge is the deconstruction of the researcher as one who observes, categorizes, and analyzes objects. By transforming subjects into objects, we are creating a space of epistemic violence centered on the subalternization of the body outside the academy and, by creating an abysmal split between the roles of the researcher and the research subject, we are generating a hierarchy — having the academy as the only space where knowledge is produced, and bodies are the target of observation for those who are in the privileged space of the academy.

Thus, the first stage for using the repertoire as a validated and disseminated knowledge within the academy is the deconstruction of the current understanding of what knowledge is — through partialization and localization, breaking the universality and deconstructing the role of the observer researcher X of the research subject transformed into an object. From this, so that we can bring a first note that corroborates the inclusion of knowledge incorporated in the academy, we must understand the central element of repertorial knowledge: the process.

When we talk about rituals, sports, dances, songs, languages, gestures, and other performance practices, the element of the process becomes key to the construction and transfer of knowledge these practices, as Taylor (2003) points out, the presence of a teaching body is necessary. and one that learns and added by us, these bodies affect each other through a process of passing on from practice. The process is the key to understanding how this body knowledge can be validated within the academic space; when we consider subjects as non-static and, consequently, their practices as susceptible to change through affectations and time, we can approach methods that consider the process (error, repetition, change) as the path of knowledge construction.

When we consider the process as the focus space of embodied knowledge, we turn power struggles within academic knowledge into something secondary; the focus would not be to find universal results to corroborate or deny marginal and divergent practices, the focus would be on experimentation and, consequently, in the encounter with diverse possibilities — an encounter that would open space for diverse worlds of knowledge. Thus, the repertoire would be elevated to the same status of power to which the archive was imbued; academic practices would take performance as the primary space for the construction of knowledge and, only from this, would they initiate processes of approximation and construction of knowledge — these being repeated and modified from the archive or the repertoire.