Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T06:06:28.030Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What's in a Name? Somatics and the Historical Revisionism of Thomas Hanna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2022

Lindsey Drury Open the ORCID record for Lindsey Drury [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article questions how the historically revisionist history of “the West,” as initiated by Thomas Hanna, informs systems of inclusion, exclusion, and power within the field of “somatics.” Hanna, who coined the term somatics, sought in so doing to root the burgeoning field in a “Western” tradition of philosophy and science that he fundamentally misconstrued. Meanwhile, Hanna's work to formulate a historically and philosophically Western basis of a somatic field continues to provide cover for white somatic practitioners whose institutionally minted somatic forms extract philosophical and practical knowledge from non-white body-mind practices internationally. Subsequent accounts of somatics consequently articulate both the Western history of somatics and its “non-Western influences” on false grounds. This article theorizes the colonial and Western supremacist holdovers within a somatic field that nonetheless gives lip service to postcolonial discourse. Finally, by rebuilding an approach to the “deep time” history relating sōma and somatics, this article proposes how the field of somatics could reground its understanding of the “first-person experience of the body,” informed by Afropessimism, Black Accelerationism, and Afrofuturist thought.

Keywords

somaticssomahistory of the bodyembodimentHannadecolonizationOrientalismwhite-centrismEurocentrismAfropessimismBlack AccelerationismAfrofuturismappropriation
Type
Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , April 2022 , pp. 6 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Dance Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aschenbrenner, Joyce. 2002. Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life. Chicago: University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Batson, Glenna. 2009. “Resource Paper: Somatic Studies and Dance.” International Association for Dance Medicine and Science. https://iadms.org/media/3599/iadms-resource-paper-somatic-studies-and-dance.pdf. Accessed February 20, 2018.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. 2004. “Framing Fanon” Foreword to The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon, vii-xli. New York: Grove Press. Originally published in 1963 by Présence Africaine.Google Scholar
Bultmann, Rudolf. 2007. Theology of the New Testament. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.Google Scholar
Burton, John Hill. 1843. Introduction to the Study of the Works of Jeremy Bentham. Edinburgh: William Tait.Google Scholar
Criswell Hanna, Eleanor. 2020. “Somatics Research Bibliography: A Working Tool for Somatics and Somatic Psychology.” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 39 (1-2): 179–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Giorgi, Margherita. 2015. “Shaping the Living Body: Paradigms of Soma and Authority in Thomas Hanna's Writings.” Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies 5 (1): 54–84.Google Scholar
Doherty, Christo. 2020. Full Proceedings – Arts Research Africa Conference 2020. Johannesburg: Arts Research Africa, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand. Accessed January 11, 2021. https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/29248.Google Scholar
Duden, Barbara. 2002. “The Quest for Past Somatics” In The Challenges of Ivan Illich: A Collective Reflection, edited by Hoinacki, Lee and Mitcham, Carl, 219–230. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Eddy, Martha. 2002. “Somatic Practices and Dance: Global Influences.” Dance Research Journal 34 (2): 46–62. Accessed June 22, 2020. doi: 10.2307/1478459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eddy, Martha. 2009. “A Brief History of Somatic Practices and Dance: Historical Development of the Field of Somatic Education and its Relationship to Dance.” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 5 (1): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eddy, Martha. 2019. “Intersectionality – Within the Body and Beyond.” Embodied Philosophy, May 7. Accessed June 15, 2020. http://embodied.bestdevserver.com/healing/intersectionality-within-the-body-and-beyond/.Google Scholar
Embree, Lester, ed. 1997. Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Eshun, Kodwo. (1998) 1999. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books.Google Scholar
George, Doran. 2014. “A Conceit of the Natural Body: The Universal-Individual in Somatic Dance Training.” PhD diss., University of California: Los Angeles.Google Scholar
George, Doran. 2020. The Natural Body in Somatics Dance Training, edited by Foster, Susan Leigh. New York: Oxord University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibb, H.A.R. 1931. “Literature”, In The Legacy of Islam, edited by Arnold, Thomas. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Ginot, Isabelle. 2010. “From Shusterman's Somaesthetics to a Radical Epistemology of Somatics.” Dance Research Journal 42 (1): 12–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glancy, Jennifer A. 2002. Slavery in Early Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golding, Sandra. 2018. “Moving Tu Balance: An African Holistic Dance as a Vehicle for Personal Development from a Black British Perspective.” In Narratives in Black British Dance: Embodied Practices, edited by Akinleye, Adesola, 101–113. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 2003. The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Steven Jay. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Green, Jill. 2007. “Student Bodies: Dance Pedagogy and the Soma.” In International Handbook of Research in Arts Education, edited by Bresler, Liora, 1119–1132. Dordrecht, NL: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guignon, Charles B. 1983. Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Gundry, Robert H. 1976. Sōma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Thomas. 1970. Bodies in Revolt: A Primer in Somatic Thinking. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Hanna, Thomas. 1973. “The Project of Somatology.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 13 (3): 3–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Thomas. 1976. “The Field of Somatics.” Somatics: Magazine-Journal of the Bodily Arts and Sciences 1 (1): 30–34.Google Scholar
Hanna, Thomas. 1986. “What is Somatics?” Somatics: Magazine-Journal of the Bodily Arts and Sciences 5 (4): 4–8.Google Scholar
Hanna, Thomas. 1991. “Beyond Bodies in Revolt.” Somatics: Magazine-Journal of the Bodily Arts and Sciences 8 (2): 22–27.Google Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya V. 1997. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Holmes, Brooke. 2010. The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hozumi, Tada. 2020. “Open Letter to Mark Walsh and the Embodiment Conference.” Medium. Accessed October 20, 2020.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. 1980. Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences: Third Book – Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Illich, Ivan. 1974. Medical Nemesis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Don Hanson. 2004. “Body Practices and Human Inquiry: Disciplined Experiencing, Fresh Thinking, Vigorous Language.” In The Body in Human Inquiry: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Embodiment, edited by Berdayes, Vincent, 105–122. New York: The Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Don Hanson. 2018. Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices: Toward an Inclusive Somatics. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.Google Scholar
Kanō, Jigorō. 2005. Mind over Muscle: Writings from the Founder of Judo. Translated by Ross, Nancy H.. Tokyo: Kodansha International.Google Scholar
Karkou, Vassiliki, Oliver, Sue, and Lycouris, Sophia, eds. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleinert, Carl Ferdinand. 1928. Allgemeines Repertorium der Gesammten Deutschen Medizinisch-Chirurgischen Journalistik: In Verbindung mit mehreren Mitarbeitern. Leipzig, DE: bei Christian Ernst Kollmann.Google Scholar
Klopfer, Peter. 1994. “Konrad Lorenz and the National Socialists: On the Politics of Ethology.” International Journal of Comparative Psychology 7 (4): 202–208. Accessed January 11, 2022. https://escholarship.org/content/qt50b5r4d6/qt50b5r4d6.pdf?t=n0b8t6.Google Scholar
McDonald, Ian. 2006. “Political Somatics: Fascism, Physical Culture, and the Sporting Body.” In Physical Culture, Power, and the Body, edited by Vertinsky, Patricia and Hargreaves, Jennifer, 52–73. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
McMillan, Christopher-Rasheem. 2018. “Be Still and Know: Authentic Movement, Witness and Embodied Testimony.” Dance, Movement & Spiritualities 5 (1): 71–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menakem, Resmaa. 2017. My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press.Google Scholar
Mineo, Liz. 2018. “The Kerner Report on Race, 50 Years On.” The Harvard Gazette, March 21. Accessed January 10, 2022. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/03/harvard-professor-reflects-on-the-kerner-report-50-years-on/.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando. 1982. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Porter, Roy. 1993. “The Body and the Mind, the Doctor and the Patient: Negotiating Hysteria.” In Hysteria beyond Freud, edited by Gilman, Sander Lawrence, Gilman, Sander L., King, Helen, Porter, Roy, Rousseau, G. S., and Showalter, Elaine, 225–285. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poyner, Helen. 2014. “Working Like a Farmer: Toward an Embodied Spirituality.” In Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives, edited by Williamson, Amanda, Batson, Glenna, Whatley, Sarah, and Weber, Rebecca, 209–220. Bristol, UK: Intellect.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raphael-Hernandez, Heike. 2000. “An Island Occupied: The U.S. Marine Occupation of Haiti in Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse and Katherine Dunham's Island Possessed.” In Holding Their Own: Perspectives on the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States, edited by Fischer-Hornung, Dorothea and Raphael-Hernandez, Heike, 153–168. Tübingen, DE: Stauffenburg-Verl.Google Scholar
Renehan, Robert. 1979. “The Meaning of ΣΩΜΑ in Homer: A Study in Methodology.” California Studies in Classical Antiquity 12:269–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
River, Suzanne. 2014. “Global Somatics Process: A Contemporary Shamanic Approach.” In Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives, edited by Williamson, Amanda, Batson, Glenna, Whatley, Sarah, and Weber, Rebecca, 327–348. Bristol, UK: Intellect.Google Scholar
Robinson, John A. T. 1952. The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology. London: SCM Press.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. [1978] 1994. Orientalism. New York: Random House Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Scornaienchi, Lorenzo. 2008. Sarx und Sōma bei Paulus: Der Mensch zwischen Destruktivität und Konstruktivität. Göttingen, DE: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shug, Seran E. 2010. “Speaking and Sensing the Self in Authentic Movement: The Search for Authenticity in a 21st Century White Urban Middle-Class Community.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Snell, Bruno. 1943. The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought. Translated by Rosenmayer, T. G.. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Spatz, Ben. 2018. “The Politics of Somatics.” Somatics Toolkit (blog), Coventry University. September 9. Accessed January 10, 2022. http://somaticstoolkit.coventry.ac.uk/ben-the-politics-of-somatics/.Google Scholar
Spatz, Ben. 2019. “Notes for Decolonizing Embodiment.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 33 (2): 9–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tommasi, Francesco Valerio. 2018. “Somatology: Notes on a Residual Science in Kant and the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In Knowledge, Morals and Practice in Kant's Anthropology, edited by Lorini, Gualtiero and Louden, Robert B., 133–146. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilderson, Frank B. III. 2020. Afropessimism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Zhu, Lin. 2012. The Translator-Centered Multidisciplinary Construction: Douglas Robinson's Translation Theories Explored. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zondi, Mlondolozi. 2020. “Haunting Gathering: Black Dance and Afro-Pessimism.” ASAP/Journal 5 (2): 256–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar