Lefebvre2020a

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Lefebvre2020a
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
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 150-170
URL Link
DOI 10.4324/9781003026631-7
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title Touch in Social Interaction: Touch, Language, and Body
Chapter

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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.

Notes