Open Bodies
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Arno Böhler
Abstract
On the basis of Patañjali′s classic definition of yoga in Yogasūtra 1.2 yoga usually has been interpreted as a practice to calm down the restless agitations of our embodied minds during their entanglement with the material world. A yoginī thus has to turn her senses away from the outside world in order to unite herself with the absolute that dwells in all of us. In line with David G. White one could call such a classic view of the Indian body a closed model of the same. It is the aim of this text to offer an alternative reading of the Indian body as an open system, in which a body is understood as an entity, always already ex-posed, substantially, toward the world it is surrounded by, so that it is impossible for it to hide itself from the environment it is embedded in and affected by. In the final part of my text I will compare this ancient Indian concept of an open model of bodies with contemporary efforts of Jean-Luc NANCY to induce such an idea in the West by interpreting bodies as a space of a world-wide being-with.
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Rethinking the Body: An Introduction
- A Hindu to His Body: The Reinscription of Traditional Representations
- The Skin and the Self: A Note on the Limits of the Body in Brahmanic India
- God′s Body: Epistemic and Ritual Conceptions from Sanskrit Texts of Logic
- Yogic Rays: The Self-Externalization of the Yogi in Ritual, Narrative and Philosophy
- Body, Breath and Representation in Śaiva Tantrism
- Telling Bodies
- The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History
- Open Bodies
- Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar
- Performing God′s Body
- Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi
- Ritual Competence as Embodied Knowledge
- Human Body, Folk Narratives and Rituals
- Translating the Body Into Image. The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- The Multiple Bodies of the Bride: Ritualising 'World Class′ at Elite Weddings in Urban India
- The Politics of the Sensuous and the Sacred Body in India
- Lost in Transition? Managing paradoxical situations by inventing identities
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Rethinking the Body: An Introduction
- A Hindu to His Body: The Reinscription of Traditional Representations
- The Skin and the Self: A Note on the Limits of the Body in Brahmanic India
- God′s Body: Epistemic and Ritual Conceptions from Sanskrit Texts of Logic
- Yogic Rays: The Self-Externalization of the Yogi in Ritual, Narrative and Philosophy
- Body, Breath and Representation in Śaiva Tantrism
- Telling Bodies
- The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History
- Open Bodies
- Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar
- Performing God′s Body
- Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi
- Ritual Competence as Embodied Knowledge
- Human Body, Folk Narratives and Rituals
- Translating the Body Into Image. The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- The Multiple Bodies of the Bride: Ritualising 'World Class′ at Elite Weddings in Urban India
- The Politics of the Sensuous and the Sacred Body in India
- Lost in Transition? Managing paradoxical situations by inventing identities
