The Body in Historical Space: from Tradition to Postmodernity

Abstract

The article is devoted to the changes in the perception of the body and the corporeal that occurred in the twentieth century, when traditional society was replaced by modern society, the society of modernity. Another transition takes place in the second half of the century, when humanity takes a step towards the situation of postmodernity, postmodernity, which also brings a variety of changes in the idea of the corporeal. The body is a socio-cultural construct, it is produced and reproduced in different ways depending on both the historical epoch and ethnic differences. The purpose of the article is to reveal these changes in the context of a principled approach to the body and physicality.The article uses the method of historical and ethnological analysis of historiography, as well as field sources obtained by the author during field studies of the practice of oriental martial arts in modern halls of Moscow and Elista. The result of the study is the conclusion about the essential nature of changes in attitude to the body. In traditional European culture, the body is thought of in opposition to the spirit, as a vessel containing it, as, for example, the body of a king is equated in the political theology of the Middle Ages to the whole state apparatus. In the industrial world of modernity, the body is thought of as a mechanism, and in a work situation – as an appendage to machine production. In a postmodern situation, the discourse of the body splits into transhumanistic and non–traditional - there is a kind of rollback to the old meanings, but in a new reading. The conclusions made by the author are, perhaps, a step towards a comprehensive understanding of the already double transformation that physicality undertook in the XX century.