Methods that Move: A Physical Performative Pedagogy of Subjectivity

Abstract

Driven by a desire to interrogate and articulate the role and place of the body in the study of sport, this paper encourages those who are incited by a richer understanding of the physical to expand and elaborate upon the fleshy figuration that guides the research projects and practices/strategies of the present. This call for papers is an opportunity to unpack the methodological impetus of “body work” (Giardina & Newman, 2011a) and to locate it within the nexus of dialogues that expressly seek to reengage an eclectic body politic at precisely the time when the body is a site of continuous scrutinizing and scientific confession. As researchers we grapple with and problematize method(ologies) in light of the conjunctural demands placed upon our scholarship and so I reflect on a recently conducted project and the methodological moments that it brought to light. Conceptualized in terms of a physical performative pedagogy of subjectivity, I tentatively forward a discussion of what moving methods might look and feel like and thus I question why, when we research into physical, sporting, (in)active experiences, do we refrain from putting the body to work? Why do we not theorize the body through the moving body?

Os Estudos De Cultura Física Na Universidade De Bath-Reino Unido: Dimensões De Uma Abordagem Muito Além Da Fisicalidade

“…Francombe (2013) segue nessa direção ao propor uma pedagogia físico-performativa da subjetividade que leve o pesquisador a se envolver com os pesquisados no entendimento de sua subjetividade e experiências de embodiment e a estar atento às relações de poder nesse processo. Para tanto, são requeridos outros modos de percepção da fisicalidade -para além do físico (SILK et al, 2015) -em seus elos com a saúde, com o bem-estar, a educação, o lazer, as políticas ambientais, respeitando-se os diferentes corpos em suas dimensões contextuais diversas.…”

“…Mesmo que tenhamos alocado os artigos analisados em dado subtema a partir dos assuntos neles destacados, um ou outro artigo compôs mais de um subtema, a exemplo do texto de Silk, Francombe-Webb e Andrews (2014), presente tanto em "esporte, meio ambiente, consumo e regulação do corpo" quanto no subtema ligado aos "métodos criativos e práticas pedagógicas inovadoras". Outro exemplo se refere ao texto de Francombe (2013), evidenciado no quarto e também no quinto subtema, sobretudo por sua rica tematização da subjetividade feminina e dos métodos criativos no âmbito da cultura física. Em acréscimo, discussões em torno do corpo, de sua regulação e das experiências de embodiment estão presentes em parte significativa dos textos analisados, embora tais conteúdos tenham sido abordados a partir dos textos que, a nosso ver, deram ênfase a esses temas.…”

“Just tape it up for me, ok?”: Masculinities, injury and embodied emotion

“…Central to my project here, this conceptualization: attends to the articulation of self and social structure; concerns itself with the complexity and layering of emotions; and calls forth the methodological bricoleur who draws on research methods that forefront "emotions in situ as they occur during sequences of interaction" (Walby et al,, 2012: 5). This conceptualization highlights how we both experience and become aware of emotion in bodily ways, in the context of (inter)corporeal action in particular social situations (see Francombe, 2013;Hubbard, 2005;Williams, 2001).…”

“…Beyond that, though, I interrogate my gender project in the process, exploring masculinities as "constructed, performed, and read via complex webs of on-going social interactions in specific relation to the workings of discourses and associated power relations that are allegorically connected to male bodies" (Pringle and Hickey, 2010: 119, emphasis in original). My aim in undertaking this project is to move my "tacit, sensuous body, its fleshy sinews, its movement and its (in)activity" (Francombe, 2013) into the texts I produce. So what I want to move "out of the shadows" (Giardina and Newman, 2011a: 530) are my own embodied (hyper)masculine performances and the ways in which they might be conceptualized as part of a pursuit of an impossible (and imaginary) ideal (Pringle and Hickey, 2010).…”

On the Transgressive Possibilities of Physical Pedagogic Practices

“…We thus tentatively sketch our thoughts and reflections on what a resuscitated physical pedagogic approach might (not ought to) look like; a trans-/ inter-disciplinary field as both constitutor and constituent of a critical curriculum of the corporeal (see Francombe, 2013). It draws on a range of exciting and innovative methodologies/practices that provide the languages of, and possibilities for, a politically progressive, socially just and democratic citizenry.…”