Вody experience in nonverbal educational practices: a cognitive-phenomenological perspective

author: Tetiana Ivashchenko

Urgency of the research. The leading principle of the modern humanitarian paradigm in pedagogy is the personal and semantic orientation of education. Accordingly, the study of the fundamental role of the body and its motor attitudes in the organisation and provision of human cognitive processes is an important area of development of the philosophy of education.

Target setting. Consciousness and language, as the main sources of human meaning-making, are traditionally in the focus of attention of educational philosophers, while the problem of meaning transmission by non-verbal means is still insufficiently studied. In the context of the above-mentioned humanitarian paradigm, the traditional representationalist epistemological paradigm of cognition as a process of producing mental representations, the dichotomy of the mental and the physical, and the value priority of the former over the latter are subject to refutation. This will open up new - cognitive and phenomenological - strategies for using such components of human emotional and sensual being as music, drama, dance, physical education, etc. in the educational process.

Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. The research problem has led to the choice of works by such researchers as M. Merleau-Ponty, A. Clark, M. Foucault, К. Shyues, M. Kimball, S. McWilliams, T. Roholt, R. Shusterman and others.

The research objective. Based on the phenomenology of M. Merleau-Ponty, as well as on modern research in the cognitive sphere, to clarify the role and prove the importance of “body language” for the theory and practice of education.

The statement of basic materials. The article focuses on a kind of ontology developed by Merleau-Ponty, which can be summarised in the following thesis: perception is rooted in the body, and therefore corporeality is the most important component of the life world. It is the body that gives meaning not only to natural objects but also to cultural objects such as words. That is, the primary perception given through the body is the basis of all meanings and values. It is proved that the primary importance of the phenomenological concept of the body for the educational field lies in its educational potential. A person mainly evaluates his or her identity, his or her body as “natural” and “normal”, and assigns “unnatural” and “abnormal” to the identity of the Other. However, the assessment of something as natural and normal is often based on a stereotype formed and maintained by socio-cultural relations, because the body itself is not a natural given but a product of these relations. This opens up the possibility of realising the relativity of one's identity and restraining egocentricity.

Conclusions. The whole body is involved in the formation of a person's life world as a set of motor habits, which is a kind of synergistic system in which cognitive data and abilities are interdependent: to understand something means to integrate it into one's bodily space, to make it part of one's habitus. An effective mind-body system, or the experience of embodied presence, is the basis for ensuring the integrity of a human being, laying the foundation for the formation of a coherent image of the world.

Keywords: non-verbal educational practices, corporeality, phenomenology of the body, “embodied presence”, kinesthetic consciousness

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