Lefebvre2020a
Lefebvre2020a | |
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BibType | INCOLLECTION |
Key | Lefebvre2020a |
Author(s) | Augustin Lefebvre |
Title | To touch and to be touched: The coordination of touching-whole-body movements in Aikido practice |
Editor(s) | Asta Cekaite, Lorenza Mondada |
Tag(s) | EMCA, Aikido |
Publisher | Routledge |
Year | 2020 |
Language | English |
City | London |
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Pages | 150-170 |
URL | Link |
DOI | 10.4324/9781003026631-7 |
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Book title | Touch in Social Interaction: Touch, Language, and Body |
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Abstract
The chapter focuses on Aikido practice (not instruction), a domain of human interaction in which intersubjectivity occurs centrally through touching moments. Aikido practitioners simulate martial situations – implying that fighters touch each other – through the participation categories of attacker, counterattacker, and whole-body-movements. As soon as the bodies make contact, practitioners generate a shared whole-body-movement through two symmetric actions: to touch and to be touched. The counterattacker becomes the toucher leading the shared movement, followed by the touched-attacker. I examine how the attacker actively follows the movement by spreading the counterattacker’s movement throughout his whole body. I also present the distinction between two methods for organizing the bodily interaction through touch: touching-in-stillness and touching-in-movement. I argue that the coordination of whole-body movements through touch occurs in a form of sequentiality merged with simultaneity. The analysis relies on video recordings of Aikido practice recorded in Japan and France.
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