This conference aims at exploring and discussing the formation of embodied memory from different research traditions and disciplines.
Already the acquisition of procedural skills and habits such as dancing, driving or using tools is rooted in the habitual body memory. This memory functions as an “active immanence of the past” (E. Casey) that informs present and upcoming encounters in a regular manner. Here the question arises how these procedural processes are related to the emergence of other memory types such as episodic, semantic or collective memory that are crucial for the constitution of the enculturated social self.
On this background, the conference will pursue the following questions:
- How should we conceive the constitution of embodied memory?
- What are the temporal processes that contribute to the constitution of body memory?
- How can we explicate the impact of intercorporeality and social interaction in general on the formation of body memory?
- How is body memory informed by processes of enculturation that are also mediated by discursive practices and external storage systems?
- How can pathologies in psychiatric disorders contribute to the investigation of these processes?
The conference is organized by the research group of the Marsilius-Kolleg Embodiment as a Paradigm for an Evolutionary Cultural Anthropology and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für phänomenologische Anthropologie, Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie (DGAP), i.e. German Society of Phenomenological Anthropology, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy.
We would be glad to welcome you at Heidelberg University and hope you will enjoy the multidisciplinary approach to the topic and take advantage of the exchange to stimulate fruitful prospective ideas on the thematic field of the conference.