Nine Ways of Seeing a Body by Sandra Reeve by Halley Freger

This blog post includes notes and quotes reflecting on Sandra Reeve’s Nine Ways of Seeing a Body.

I enjoyed reading this book, because I’m increasingly concerned with how we perceive bodies. It was interesting how often this book came back to challenging the mind/body divide. Why do we value the mind over the body? For the same reason we value men over women, line over color, day over night—our worldview is shaped by harmful binaries. I took a class this past semester called Subverting the Renaissance, in which we applied queer theory and historiography to Italian Renaissance art. It was shocking how often we kept returning to the idea of binaries. One day we split the board in half and made a list of everything we could think of on each side of the binary. Mind was on the superior “masculine” side, and body was on the “feminine” side. Whenever there is a binary, there is a dominant and an Other.

Reeves focuses on how we interpret the body and how movement can reveal things about our selves. Ultimately, by moving in a way that focuses on being in the world, she hopes “that we can give value to our selves and to our life stories as part of a profoundly interrelated network of beings” (51).  

Some important quotes to get a sense of her main ideas:

“At that time it was already clear to me that notions of self were culturally specific and that each person’s experience of self was unique; but the body seemed so ‘there,’ so biological, anatomical, physiological, indisputable…In that moment of practice, I understood that how we view our bodies, the way we inhabit our bodies and our experience of ‘body’ are equally varied” (v).

“how we move shapes (and even creates) our attitudes – and reveals those attitudes to the world” (2)

“we can change our attitudes by changing our movement” (2).

She divides the book into 9 different lenses through which you can see the body:

1. Body as Object/Mechanistic Body

“…so that ‘I,’ that is to say, the mind, by which I  am what I am is entirely distinct from the body, and even that it is easier to know than the body, and moreover, that even if the body were not, it would not cease to be all that is.”

 –Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, 54

“In Cartesian thought, the body was seen as an inert object, facilitating the needs and desires of the mind, which could exist independently” (6).

This made me think of something Adele and Ray talks about. Adele referred to people as “heads on sticks,” meaning that we ignore our bodies and just see them as an object to carry our brains.

Whereas smell, touch, taste, and hearing are immersive, sight creates a sense of distance. Sight becomes the superior and scientific sense. As we look out at the world, anything ‘other’ is seen as an object with a clear boundary, and this applies to our own bodies. The Western idea of perspective has also influenced how we see bodies as objects. John Dewey’s concept of a “spectator theory of knowledge” is related to sight and perspective. Basically, the distance between subject and object has increased, and we feel that we are not responsible for the events we witness.

This makes me think of all the ways in which we otherize people. We create clear boundaries between bodies, labeling them as other, and therefore increase our distance between other people. How is the body of a woman or a POC seen not as part of someone’s being, but as an object? When the horrible terrorist attack occurred in a historically black church in Charleston a few days ago, did the shooter see the people he killed as people, or objects? He saw them as “others,” so different from himself that he somehow thought they should die.

The body is not seen as part of our being, but rather an object that we must perfect and “do” something to, with things like diet and exercise. 

2. The Body as Subject

“The idea of the audience as separated observers gave way to experiments where the audience was placed as witness or participant or given a specific role to play” (11).

I’m really interested in challenging the way we think about performance as an observed event. I’m interested in the connection between performer and audience, and the implied contract that exists between them. By going on stage, a performer essentially gives the audience permission to look at them.

I love the notion of an “embodied movement vocabulary” (12). Reeve argues that movement can’t start from thoughts, body structure, or feelings. To begin moving doesn’t require accumulating formal skills, but rather moving in a way that feels good to your body. I was reminded of the “delicious movement” exercise we did the other day. At first I was so scared to move since I wasn’t performing a specific style or specific choreography, but once I started moving, it felt so natural and fun. I’m interested in how dance can allow people to control their bodies the way they want to. How can we make the body the subject?

3. The Phenomenological Body

Phenomenology refers to ‘body image’ and ‘body schema,’ but from the viewpoint of the mind. This approach makes us think about our own awareness and subjective experience, including what we experience through physical sensations.

Movement is interpreted by the mind of the mover or the witness. We give meaning to movements. However, Reeve argues that the materiality of the moving body holds its own ‘meaning.’

4. The Somatic Body

“The body structure becomes inherently meaningful as it develops attitudinal patterns through engaging with environmental factors and other bodies” (17).

-Feldenkaris, Somatics and Body–Mind Centering (BMC): release any block or held pattern that causes difficulties; no correct or incorrect way of moving

People should be encouraged to accept and appreciate the movement they already do. Their habits should be clarified so they become aware of how they move. Reeve pays attention to how individuals’ movements combine the different Laban Efforts: flow, weight, space, and time.

5. The Contextual Body

What are an individual’s movement tendencies and what influence do those habits have on environmental and cultural issues?

6. The Interdependent Body

According to Elizabeth Behnke, “Matching is a way of overcoming ingrained dualism; it involves a dynamic and participatory appreciation of time, it is predicated on a tendency towards health and wholeness, it encourages autonomy and responsibility without isolating the individual form the context […] Matching, however, is a way of re-appropriating my body as me […] with matching then, it is as though I begin to melt the boundary that the I-It paradigm imposes between me and my own body, and I can begin to let me-ness flow more fully into the whole of me” (28).

I love this idea of matching my own movement, creating a pattern that is my norm, and then allowing me to interpret and change it. I lie the idea of creating a “continuous feedback loop” with movement (29).

Reeve suggests guiding as an alternative to matching, because it includes environmental awareness. She takes in the environment and the other moving bodies and introduces movement stimuli into a situation she is a part of.

7. The Environmental Body

A new environment can cause new movements that challenge habits and change perception. For example, someone may have to walk differently when walking on rocky terrain. The change in movement is “through a felt sense, rather than cognitive” (36).

This makes me think of how our movements changed depending on which space we performed in this past week. When we danced in a gallery, the floors were much smother and we could use the walls. Outside, we had the ability to interact with nature—to look up and see the trees.

I also like the idea of how detrimental it can be to divorce someone’s movement from its context, because it might be misrepresented. This reminded me of a lot of conversations we’ve had about choosing the right form to present an idea.

8. The Cultural Body

Each individual has a different way of moving and completing movement tasks based on their distinct cultural, generational, or gendered resonances. Once individual habits are brought to light, you can play with how comprehension can be reached within a group. I think movement is very capable of creating dialogue while respecting difference.

‘Holarchy’ is a term “to indicate a human system, each element of which displays both self-assertive and integrative tendencies” (44).

9. The Ecological Body

“I describe an ecological body as a ‘body-in-movement-in-a-changing-environment.’ It is the emphasis on viewing the world through a lens of transition or flux, from movement and constant change, that distinguishes it in my mind from the ‘environmental body,’ which is situation in specific location and is in change but is often articulated as if viewed through a static lens” (48). Situations and environments change and so does the body and its movement. There is not a fixed notion of movement because there isn’t a fixed notion of self.

Reeve always supports people’s full potential in their movement, expanding their choices, rather than figuring out what they can’t do.

Movement becomes “something we do rather than something we are” (51). It’s not about looking for the story that movement reveals, but allowing it to create meaning itself.