Somaesthetics and C. S. Peirce

Abstract

From its outset, the project of somaesthetics?briefly defined as the critical, ameliorative study of the experience and use of the body as a locus of sensory aesthetic appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning?has been largely inspired and shaped by the perspectives of classical pragmatist philosophy. Among the classical pragmatiste, John Dewey has clearly been the preeminent influence on somaesthetics. The project was first introduced through a study of Dewey's views on immediate experience and embodiment and his work with somatic therapist F. M. Alexander.1 Moreover, reclaiming the still vibrant utility of the notion of experience that is central to Dewey and the classical pragmatist tradition, somaes thetics sought to balance our culture's unhappy obsession with oppressive norms of attractive external body appearance (the realm of representational somaesthetics) by instead proposing a compensating focus on appreciating the inner experience of aesthetic feelings of one's own body {experiential somaesthetics). As this project developed, it was articulated in terms of three branches?analytic somaesthetics (a descriptive inquiry into the functioning of our bodily perceptions and somatic practices and their various cognitive, social, and cultural uses), pragmatic somaes thetics (a more normative inquiry into methods of somatic improvement and their comparative critique), and practical somaesthetics (the fully embodied concrete practice of somatic disciplines). Dewey emerged as the paradigmatic prophet of this field, for he was exemplary in vigorously and astutely pursuing all three of these branches, by making disciplined somatic self-cultivation a matter of personal practice and not just a topic for theoretical and methodological discourse.2 When Shannon Sullivan advanced the somaesthetic project by emphasizing the transactional nature of somatic experience while underlining its applications to feminist and race issues, she too chose Dewey (and his concept of transac tional selves) as the classical pragmatist inspiration for her work.3 In Martin Jay's Somaesthetics and Democracy: Dewey and Contemporary Body Art, which explores somaesthetics as a resource for progressive projects of democracy and