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Somatic theory is a theory of human social behavior based on the somatic marker hypothesis of António Damásio. The theory proposes a mechanism by which emotional processes can guide (or bias) behavior: in particular, decision-making, the attachment theory of John Bowlby, and the self-psychology of Heinz Kohut (especially as consolidated by Allan Schore).
It draws on various philosophical models: On the Genealogy of Morals of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger on das Man, Maurice Merleau-Ponty practiced on the lived body as a center of experience, Ludwig Wittgenstein on social practices, Michel Foucault on discipline, as well as theories of performativity emerging out of the speech act theory by J. L. Austin, in point of fact was developed by Judith Butler and Shoshana Felman. [1] Some somatic theorists have also put into somatic theory to performance in the schools of acting, the training was developed by Konstantin Stanislavski and Bertolt Brecht.
Barbara Sellers-Young [2] applies Damasio’s somatic-marker hypothesis to critical thinking as an embodied performance and provides a review of the theoretical literature in performance studies that supports something like Damasio’s approach:
Edward Slingerland [5] applies Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis to the cognitive linguistics by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, [6] as well as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. [7] In particular, Slingerland combines Fauconnier and Turner's theory of conceptual blending and Lakoff and Johnson's embodied mind theory of metaphor in his hypothesis. His goal to apply somatic theory into cognitive linguistics is to show that:
Douglas Robinson first began developing a somatic theory of language for a keynote presentation at the 9th American Imagery Conference in Los Angeles, in October 1985. It was based on Ahkter Ahsen's theory of somatic response to images as the basis for therapeutic transformations. In contradistinction to Ahsan's model, which rejected Freud's " talking cure" on the grounds that words do not awaken somatic responses, Robinson argued that there is a very powerful somatics of language. He later incorporated this notion into The Translator's Turn (1991), drawing on the (passing) somatic theories of William James, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Kenneth Burke in order to argue that somatic response may be "idiosomatic" (somatically idiosyncratic), but is typically "ideosomatic" (somatically ideological, or shaped and guided by society). Furthermore, the ideosomatics of language explain how language remains stable enough for communication to be possible. This work preceded the Damasio group's first scientific publication on the somatic-marker hypothesis in 1991, [9] and Robinson did not begin to incorporate Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis into his somatic theory until later in the 1990s.
In Translation and Taboo (1996), Robinson drew on the proto-somatic theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Gregory Bateson to explore the ways in which the ideosomatics of taboo structure (and partly sanction and conceal) the translation of sacred texts. His first book to draw on Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis is Performative Linguistics (2003); there he draws on J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts, Jacques Derrida's theory of iterability, and Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism, to argue that performativity as an activity of the speaking body is grounded in somatic theory. He also draws on Daniel Simeoni's application of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus in order to argue that his somatics of translation as developed in The Translator's Turn actually explains translation norms more fully than Gideon Toury's account in Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond (1995). [10]
In 2005, Robinson began writing a series of books exploring somatic theory in different communicative contexts: modernist/ formalist theories of estrangement (Robinson 2008), translation as ideological pressure (Robinson 2011), first-year writing (Robinson 2012), and the refugee experience, (de)colonization, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma (Robinson 2013). [11]
In Robinson's articulation, the somatic theory has four main planks:
In addition, he has tied additional concepts to somatic theory along the way: the proprioception of the body politic as a homeostatic balancing between too much familiarity and too much strangeness (Robinson 2008); tensions between loconormativity and xenonormativity, the exosomatization of places, objects, and skin color, and paleosomaticity (Robinson 2013); ecosis and icosis (unpublished work).
Stephanie Fetta’s approach to somatic theory weaves together an extensive array of disciplinary discourses, ranging from cognitive science and neuroscience to sociology and Sophiology. As a literary and cultural critic, Fetta draws attention to and investigates the role of the soma in her study of US Latin@/x creative texts. [12] Her scholarly work broadens the scope of somatic theory and literary scholarship by drawing support from the natural and social sciences to position the soma as a “ psychobiological agent” and social actor, and thus an overlooked (albeit indispensable) lens in the study of social power (2018, 37). Building on both biblical and contemporary uses of the term, Fetta reconceptualizes the soma as ‘the emotional, intelligent and communicative body’ and explains that it refers to the gestures of the physical body in internal response to external social pressures. Hence, she is one of the first somatic theorists to employ the term soma along these lines—despite the current spate of studies in neurology, cognitive literary studies, behavioral science, body studies, affect theory, theories of mind (ToM) and philosophy of mind (PoM), which piece together the connections among cognitive processes, bodily feeling reactions, and evaluative perceptions.
In 2018, she published Shaming into Brown: Somatic Transactions of Race in Latina/o Literature [13]—a detailed and analytic transdisciplinary study that renders the soma as “a pervasive yet unexpected site of subjectivity.” She employs this conception of soma as a primary tool to investigate intersectional racialization and the transactions of race in her case studies of Latin@/x literature (xiii). This book develops somatic analysis as a line of investigation, which reviewers maintain has applications in fields such as the humanities, critical race theory, neurology, behavioral studies, and so on. Somatic analysis has inspired, and been cited in, a growing number of academic, personal, [14] and artistic works. [15]
Fetta’s key applications of somatic analysis are as follows:
This article has multiple issues. Please help
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Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
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Somatic theory is a theory of human social behavior based on the somatic marker hypothesis of António Damásio. The theory proposes a mechanism by which emotional processes can guide (or bias) behavior: in particular, decision-making, the attachment theory of John Bowlby, and the self-psychology of Heinz Kohut (especially as consolidated by Allan Schore).
It draws on various philosophical models: On the Genealogy of Morals of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger on das Man, Maurice Merleau-Ponty practiced on the lived body as a center of experience, Ludwig Wittgenstein on social practices, Michel Foucault on discipline, as well as theories of performativity emerging out of the speech act theory by J. L. Austin, in point of fact was developed by Judith Butler and Shoshana Felman. [1] Some somatic theorists have also put into somatic theory to performance in the schools of acting, the training was developed by Konstantin Stanislavski and Bertolt Brecht.
Barbara Sellers-Young [2] applies Damasio’s somatic-marker hypothesis to critical thinking as an embodied performance and provides a review of the theoretical literature in performance studies that supports something like Damasio’s approach:
Edward Slingerland [5] applies Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis to the cognitive linguistics by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, [6] as well as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. [7] In particular, Slingerland combines Fauconnier and Turner's theory of conceptual blending and Lakoff and Johnson's embodied mind theory of metaphor in his hypothesis. His goal to apply somatic theory into cognitive linguistics is to show that:
Douglas Robinson first began developing a somatic theory of language for a keynote presentation at the 9th American Imagery Conference in Los Angeles, in October 1985. It was based on Ahkter Ahsen's theory of somatic response to images as the basis for therapeutic transformations. In contradistinction to Ahsan's model, which rejected Freud's " talking cure" on the grounds that words do not awaken somatic responses, Robinson argued that there is a very powerful somatics of language. He later incorporated this notion into The Translator's Turn (1991), drawing on the (passing) somatic theories of William James, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Kenneth Burke in order to argue that somatic response may be "idiosomatic" (somatically idiosyncratic), but is typically "ideosomatic" (somatically ideological, or shaped and guided by society). Furthermore, the ideosomatics of language explain how language remains stable enough for communication to be possible. This work preceded the Damasio group's first scientific publication on the somatic-marker hypothesis in 1991, [9] and Robinson did not begin to incorporate Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis into his somatic theory until later in the 1990s.
In Translation and Taboo (1996), Robinson drew on the proto-somatic theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Gregory Bateson to explore the ways in which the ideosomatics of taboo structure (and partly sanction and conceal) the translation of sacred texts. His first book to draw on Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis is Performative Linguistics (2003); there he draws on J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts, Jacques Derrida's theory of iterability, and Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism, to argue that performativity as an activity of the speaking body is grounded in somatic theory. He also draws on Daniel Simeoni's application of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus in order to argue that his somatics of translation as developed in The Translator's Turn actually explains translation norms more fully than Gideon Toury's account in Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond (1995). [10]
In 2005, Robinson began writing a series of books exploring somatic theory in different communicative contexts: modernist/ formalist theories of estrangement (Robinson 2008), translation as ideological pressure (Robinson 2011), first-year writing (Robinson 2012), and the refugee experience, (de)colonization, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma (Robinson 2013). [11]
In Robinson's articulation, the somatic theory has four main planks:
In addition, he has tied additional concepts to somatic theory along the way: the proprioception of the body politic as a homeostatic balancing between too much familiarity and too much strangeness (Robinson 2008); tensions between loconormativity and xenonormativity, the exosomatization of places, objects, and skin color, and paleosomaticity (Robinson 2013); ecosis and icosis (unpublished work).
Stephanie Fetta’s approach to somatic theory weaves together an extensive array of disciplinary discourses, ranging from cognitive science and neuroscience to sociology and Sophiology. As a literary and cultural critic, Fetta draws attention to and investigates the role of the soma in her study of US Latin@/x creative texts. [12] Her scholarly work broadens the scope of somatic theory and literary scholarship by drawing support from the natural and social sciences to position the soma as a “ psychobiological agent” and social actor, and thus an overlooked (albeit indispensable) lens in the study of social power (2018, 37). Building on both biblical and contemporary uses of the term, Fetta reconceptualizes the soma as ‘the emotional, intelligent and communicative body’ and explains that it refers to the gestures of the physical body in internal response to external social pressures. Hence, she is one of the first somatic theorists to employ the term soma along these lines—despite the current spate of studies in neurology, cognitive literary studies, behavioral science, body studies, affect theory, theories of mind (ToM) and philosophy of mind (PoM), which piece together the connections among cognitive processes, bodily feeling reactions, and evaluative perceptions.
In 2018, she published Shaming into Brown: Somatic Transactions of Race in Latina/o Literature [13]—a detailed and analytic transdisciplinary study that renders the soma as “a pervasive yet unexpected site of subjectivity.” She employs this conception of soma as a primary tool to investigate intersectional racialization and the transactions of race in her case studies of Latin@/x literature (xiii). This book develops somatic analysis as a line of investigation, which reviewers maintain has applications in fields such as the humanities, critical race theory, neurology, behavioral studies, and so on. Somatic analysis has inspired, and been cited in, a growing number of academic, personal, [14] and artistic works. [15]
Fetta’s key applications of somatic analysis are as follows: