Alexander Kamber
This cultural-studies dissertation project explores the relationships between bodies and their environments in modern movement cultures—from dance and theatre to gymnastics and early forms of body therapy. These practices are situated within the context of an emerging ecological mode of thought in the early twentieth century.
By posing the question of the “ecologies of the body,” the project examines how the living was conceptualized around 1900, both in movement cultures and in the life sciences, as existing in a dynamic interplay with its surroundings. The approach develops a denaturalized concept of ecology that moves beyond conventional notions of nature and takes into account the embedding of bodies in psychological, social, and technological environments. At the intersections of movement practices and life-scientific discourses, it becomes visible how mechanistic and vitalist approaches interpenetrate—an ongoing process unfolding in the context of the increasing scientification, aestheticization, and politicization of the body, shortly before the rise of cybernetic technologies.
Methodologically, the project combines the history of knowledge and the history of the body with discourse analysis and praxeology. Concretely, it investigates selected movement phenomena such as hypnotic dance at the intersection of occultism and experimental science, artistic and therapeutic dance and gymnastics models of the life-reform movements, as well as early approaches to body-based psychotherapy and Gestalt therapy.
This project is funded by the SNSF (doc.ch).