Abstract
The present proliferation of alternative and non-western practices challenges the way how modern selves are enacted, the distinction between ancient and contemporary, and obliges us to rethink the ways our bodies and minds are produced. By mingling the care of the self and self knowledge, some technologies of the self offer interesting paths to redefine and change our selves, questioning the hegemony of Science and Technology as the only way to operate a radical transformation of the human condition. I propose, through this article, an ontological and performative conception of vipassana meditation, faithful to the performative idiom of Science and Technology Studies, but recognizing its limitations to talk about selves and non-western practices. Performativity, here, is not understood as some naïf nostalgia of pre-representational realism – it rather explores the substantial nature of practice (and ritual), questioning ontological determination and carrying anthropological and political implications.
Highlights
I will start this article by providing a brief account of the meaning of the notion of performativity
I will revisit some theories of subject formation/enactment that deal, at a certain extent, with the notion of performance or performativity, namely Goffman‟s, Judith Butler‟s and Michel Foucault‟s. Before presenting those three theoretical „blocks‟, I will explore an article by Marcel Mauss and his notion of techniques of the body, as well as Althusser‟s concept of Ideological State Apparatuses
After exploring some theories of self formation that deal with the notion of performance/performativity, I will briefly portray some general ideas concerning the practice of vipassana meditation, taken as a material process of “liberation” – liberation from reaction and unwanted agency
Summary
I will start this article by providing a brief account of the meaning of the notion of performativity. After exploring some theories of self formation that deal with the notion of performance/performativity, I will briefly portray some general ideas concerning the practice of vipassana meditation, taken as a material process of “liberation” – liberation from reaction and unwanted (non-human?) agency.
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