Riding: Embodying the Centaur

Game, Ann

doi:10.1177/1357034x01007004001

Cited by 150 publications

(126 citation statements)

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“…The quotation above is in line with the description of the "centaur feeling" when the rider and horse "merge as one," as described by Podhajsky (1965) and Game (2001). This is also what Despret (2004) describes when talking about how humans and horses affect each other's bodies and horses can "read the mind of the rider through the pressure of the bit" (Despret, 2004, p. 114).…”

Section: Equestrian Feelsupporting

confidence: 62%

“…The interesting thing here is that it seems as if the riders' percept of the boundary between their own bodies and the body of the horse is somewhat fuzzy. The changes in the horse's body can be perceived both through one's own body and in one's own body, something that certainly evokes the notions of transcendence and co-being, as well as the use of the centaur metaphor, prevalent in much of the literature in the HAS tradition (Game, 2001;Argent, 2012;Maurstad, Davis & Cowles, 2013). This ambiguity is a recurring theme in the interviews, and would be very interesting to analyze further.…”

Section: Equestrian Feelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Much of the communication is dependent on the body-to-body interfaces of the horse's back, sides, and mouth; and the rider's seat (seat bones and crutch); legs; and hands, respectively, which are instantly activated when horse and rider engage in mutual movement (Game, 2001;Birke, 2009;Dashper, 2016). In equestrian communication, both horse and rider respond primarily to movements in different parts of the other's body (Keaveney, 2008;Wolframm, 2014).…”

Section: Research On Equestrian Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sometimes riders describe that they can experience, and look for, "a centaur feeling" of the two bodies moving as one. Game (2001) describes this rider and horse coming to "inhabit riding through rhythm as a musician inhabits a piece of music" (p. 8). However, riding is not always as smooth as this idealized description suggests.…”

Section: Research On Equestrian Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Riders’ Perceptions of Equestrian Communication in Sports Dressage

Blokhuis

Lundgren

2017

SOAN

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The aim of this study is to enhance the understanding of how sport dressage riders describe rider-horse communication when riding, and to relate these descriptions to current research on human-horse communication. Interviews with 15 amateur dressage riders were analyzed using a qualitative approach. The study shows that the interviewed riders describe the communication with the horses partly in a behavioristic way, applying concepts based on learning theory, which deviate from the description of riders as lacking understanding of these concepts put forth by some researchers. The riders connect the timing of their aids to equestrian feel, which they describe as the most difficult yet the most awarding aspect of the interspecies communication that riding is. Simultaneously, they acknowledge that horses are fully capable of choosing to listen to and cooperate with their requests.

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Section: Equestrian Feelsupporting

confidence: 62%

Section: Equestrian Feelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research On Equestrian Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research On Equestrian Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Riders’ Perceptions of Equestrian Communication in Sports Dressage

Blokhuis

Lundgren

2017

SOAN

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“…If recent body theory has claimed that "the human body is not simply human," in the Australian sociologist Ann Game's formulation, the new skin-to-skin relationship proposed can just as plausibly be a horse-human one. [6] Game writes: "Putting into question humanist assumptions, I propose that we are always already part horse, and horses, part human; there is no such thing as pure horse or pure human." [7] Lisa Blackman chooses "Becoming (Horse-Human)" to iillustrate the new relationality of body theory, based on the work of Game and of the Belgian philosopher Vinciane Despret, in which "becoming" and "being-with" are forms of horse-human relationship in which mutual transformation occurs.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

English Brutes, Eastern Enlightenment

Landry¹

2011

ecy

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What is Enlightenment? The concept of fellow and companion species, of creaturely life, opens up new possibilities for re-asking Kant's question, and for revisiting historical definitions of the Enlightenment. These historical definitions and the genealogies they presuppose in turn raise questions about ethics and emancipation. How have relations between humans and animals been configured with regard to ethics, given gross disparities of power between species? How might alternatives to the Euroamerican ideal of political equality as the necessary ground for any ethical relation be found? A non-Eurocentric genealogy of the Enlightenment derived from European exchanges with the Ottoman empire reveals possible Eastern precedents for European Enlightenment ideas about kindness rather than cruelty in human-animal relations. The particular case of English people and imported Eastern horses during the long eighteenth century richly reveals Ottoman precedents at work. If horsemanship might be understood to mirror political governance and society at large, Ottoman horsemanship and forms of governance and sociality potentially have much to teach us since the ethics they instantiate does not presuppose political equality as a necessary ground.

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Agency as Interspecies, Collective and Embedded Endeavour: Ponies and People in Northern England 1916–1950

Wadham¹

2021

J Historical Sociology

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Animals are increasingly acknowledged as historical agents. There are calls for more critical approaches that explore how this agency-often shared with humans-is embedded within wider relations of power. This paper responds by employing Critical Theory, particularly the ideas of Jurgen Habermas, to explore how interspecies agency is shaped and constrained by its broader socioeconomic context. Empirical illustrations are drawn from the experiences of Dales ponies and people in the early twentieth century, who found themselves navigating the growing commodification of their shared lifeworld. The findings suggest the outcome of this process of "colonisation" was not inevitable. Rather, just as the demise of the ponies seemed unstoppable, their shared communicative relations re-emerged powerfully during the harsh winter of 1947. The paper asks what this means for our understanding of the apparently irrevocable decline of horsepower and how we might better understand horses' own experiences of such events and processes.

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Riding: Embodying the Centaur

Cited by 150 publications

References 1 publication

Riders’ Perceptions of Equestrian Communication in Sports Dressage

Riders’ Perceptions of Equestrian Communication in Sports Dressage

English Brutes, Eastern Enlightenment

Agency as Interspecies, Collective and Embedded Endeavour: Ponies and People in Northern England 1916–1950

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