Körpertechniken

Abstract

The contribution re-establishes Marcel Mauss's concept of body functional techniques: the social-anthropological basis, the theoretical technical position and the systematic programming of this term. According to Mauss, modern body functional techniques and their media inventions can be interpreted in different ways: as strategies for the reduction of the body and as a project of a reciprocal, psychosomatic, ritualistic and medial intensification.

The ‘Hunnic eye’: skilled mediation in popular re-enactment

“…Latour , ) and – derived from it – the Actor Media Theory (Thielmann and Schüttpelz ) that demands a symmetrical perspective on the relation between living beings and objects (or media) regarding their agency, they are situated in and shaped through social practices that are always only available through corporeal and sensory experience . This view on media allows to investigate socially meditated habits, bodily skills and rituals as media practices as Erhard Schüttpelz (, ) points out in a corresponding re‐evaluation of the relations between technical media and human bodies based on Marcel Mauss’ () notes on body techniques. As a particular group of cultural techniques, body techniques include ‘all techniques that consist of corporeal performances and in doing so treat the body as the primary object and primary medium of technical performances’ (Schüttpelz : 106; translation A.D.).…”

“…This view on media allows to investigate socially meditated habits, bodily skills and rituals as media practices as Erhard Schüttpelz (, ) points out in a corresponding re‐evaluation of the relations between technical media and human bodies based on Marcel Mauss’ () notes on body techniques. As a particular group of cultural techniques, body techniques include ‘all techniques that consist of corporeal performances and in doing so treat the body as the primary object and primary medium of technical performances’ (Schüttpelz : 106; translation A.D.). In contrast to other media theories, Schüttpelz () does not view technical media as exteriorisations of physical organs, but rather as something that is constantly (re‐)formed through the interactions of mutually constitutive media, body(technics) and cultural techniques.…”

Sexotic: The interplay between sexualization and exoticization

“…Comparisons between 'civilized European' and 'barbaric non-European' ways of shaping, using and maneuvering the body actually stood at the very beginning of 'Western' debates around bodily comportment (Schüttpelz, 2010). In practical terms, world exhibitions as well as the circus or the vaudeville were for a long time the main arenas within which such arguments were settled (Hinsley, 1991;Lewerenz, 2006).…”

“…Attention to body techniques brings into view processes of optimizing bodies and bodily abilities and the circulation of different behavioral models, ranging from effortful self-training or self-fashioning to unacknowledged adoption (Schildkrout, 2004: 319–344; Streng, 2013). Comparisons between ‘civilized European’ and ‘barbaric non-European’ ways of shaping, using and maneuvering the body actually stood at the very beginning of ‘western’ debates around bodily comportment (Schüttpelz, 2010). In practical terms, world exhibitions as well as the circus or the vaudeville were for a long time the main arenas within which such arguments were settled (Hinsley, 1991; Lewerenz, 2006).…”

After Kittler: On the Cultural Techniques of Recent German Media Theory

“…A cursory overview of the recent research on cultural techniques reveals how this rich history of associations returns in the present, media theoretical usage. When Schu¨ttpelz describes techniques of the body rendered legible and rational in the age of motion photography, he also presents us with an inventory of techniques for taking a body with life and potential and endowing it with a more stable, rational form that articulates a family of distinctions within and between cultures (Schu¨ttpelz, 2010). When Bernhard Siegert argues that 'the map is the territory', and describes the rise of modern cartographic methods as a method of rationalizing instruments, signs, and bodies around the defin-ition and demarcation of a new territory, we cannot help but feel some sense of Latin colere -with its emphasis on inhabiting and cultivating the land while displacing the nomads -stirring again in our age (Siegert, 2011).…”