Word as a body technique: word and movement in learning bodily practices

Abstract

This article is based on an ethnographic fieldwork on the training of theater actors in the city of Buenos Aires. The article aims to analyze the teaching strategies of a teacher of a particular style, understood as corporal techniques in the sense of Mauss. The originality of the approach proposed here lies in analyzing as body techniques, both the movement of the teacher and his words. By analyzing words as body techniques, I will seek to overcome a dichotomy that is very common for studies on learning bodily practices, which usually dedicates its efforts to movement, leaving aside the importance of the spoken word. Also, I analyze the teaching strategies of the teacher as they make part of a lineage, which the students themselves recognize. Through an analysis of these teaching techniques I will be able to show, to a certain extent, how each teacher reproduces but also transforms the teachings of a certain lineage.