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Muscle Memory and Its Somatic Dangers |
Lecture by Richard Shusterman
Sat 18 May, 7pm
Laboratory Theatre Space
Admission free
Memory is a cherished cognitive skill that contributes enormously to human flourishing, yet it sometimes proves detrimental. Much of the memory we productively employ in everyday life is implicit memory that results from habit. The paper first demonstrates the important somatic dimension of implicit memory that gives rise to the popular notion of “muscle memory” by articulating six different forms of implicit memory in which the body plays a central role. The paper next focuses on some problems relating to these forms of memory and deriving from flawed habits of somatic perception and performance. I then explain how these problems of muscle memory can be treated by disrupting such memory through heightened, explicit consciousness involving methods of somaesthetic attention and reflection.
Richard Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Director of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University. He is the leading theorist of the interdisciplinary research field of somaesthetics, which he originated in the late 1990s, based on philosophical ideas but also on his practical experience with different body disciplines. A professionally certified Feldenkrais teacher and therapist, Shusterman has frequently given practical workshops in body consciousness to professional dancers, choreographers, musicians, designers and visual artists. His major authored books include Thinking Through the Body; Body Consciousness; Surface and Depth; Performing Live; Practicing Philosophy; and Pragmatist Aesthetics (now published in fifteen languages). Shusterman received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and has held visiting professorships in France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Austria, China and Japan. The French government honored him as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and he was awarded research grants from the Fulbright Commission, the Humboldt Foundation, UNESCO and other prestigious institutions.
More: www.fau.edu/humanitieschair/bio.php
As part of BodyConstitution, practical seminar
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