Papers by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
Frontiers in cognition, Jun 13, 2024
Can we again learn about ourselves and our surrounding world through dance as we age, thereby pro... more Can we again learn about ourselves and our surrounding world through dance as we age, thereby promoting our own health? This article documents facts of life showing that "older adults" do not have to learn to be cognitive of their movement, affective dispositions, or surrounding world; they have been experientially cognitive of all by way of tactility, kinesthesia, and affectivity from the beginning. Present-day cognitive neuroscience, concentrating and theorizing as it does on the brain's neuroplasticity, is however deficient in recognizing these experiential realities. Research studies on the brain and behavior, in contrast, demonstrate that coordination dynamics are the defining feature of both neurological and kinesthetic coordination dynamics. These dynamics are central to corporeal concepts, to the recognition of if-then relationships, and to thinking in movement. In effect, the brain is part of a wholebody nervous system. The study proceeds to show that the qualitative dynamics of movement that subtend coordination dynamics are basic to not only everyday movement but also to dancing-to experiencing movement kinesthetically and to being a mindful body. When Merce Cunningham writes that dance gives you that "single fleeting moment when you feel alive" and is not for "unsteady souls" and English writer D. H. Lawrence writes that "[w]e ought to dance with rapture that we are alive, and in the flesh, and part of the living incarnate cosmos," their words are incentives to those who are aging to awaken tactilely, kinesthetically, and affectively to the existential realities of dance.
Continental philosophy review, May 10, 2024
No abstract.
Routledge eBooks, Sep 7, 2023
The aesthetic unity of dancer and dance is a unique phenomenon in the art world. In exploring the... more The aesthetic unity of dancer and dance is a unique phenomenon in the art world. In exploring the nature and consequences of the aesthetic unity, this chapter first focuses on a dancer's and an audience's experience of dance, pointing out in the process an affective difference and a difference evident in an audience's recognition of technical virtuosity. The chapter then turns to writings of writer and filmmaker Susan Sontag and of eminent choreographer/dancer Merce Cunningham, and to those of Cunningham dancer Carolyn Brown and world-renown choreographer Pina Bausch, all of which describe in different ways the aesthetic unity of dancer and dance, ways that heighten understandings of dance, its uniqueness in the world of art, and its challenges. The well-known ending line from Yeats's poem "Among School Children"-"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"epitomizes just such a range of perspectives. The temporal awareness that runs like an undercurrent through the perspectives centers on the fleeting "nowness" of dance, its existential impermanence, hence the temporal unity of dancer and dance, and the temporality of movement itself, both of which are major factors in the challenge of preserving the art of dance. The chapter shows how this challenge may explain wayward phenomenological assessments and understandings of movement and of being a body, hence wayward phenomenological assessments and understandings of the aesthetic realities of dance and of dancing the dance, and more particularly the phenomenological neglect or faulty assessment and understanding of the sensory modality of kinesthesia. The writings of Merleau-Ponty and of Heidegger, and of various present-day phenomenologists such as Gallagher and Zahavi are of particular concern in this regard. Of contrasting concern are the highly informative and indeed edifying first-person experiential writings of notably famous choreographers/dancers Doris Humphrey and Merce Cunningham that highlight the centrality of kinesthesia to life as well as to dance, of notably famous theater directors Jacques Lecoq and Stanton Garner, and of music composer Roger Sessions, all three of whom write pointedly, experientially, and in thought-provoking ways of the centrality of movement to their art, in no way diminishing the uniqueness of the art of dance but both documenting and broadening the relevance of movement to aesthetic creativity.
Psychotherapy and Politics International, Dec 18, 2022
This article focuses on the evolutionary reality of power-driven competitive humans. It documents... more This article focuses on the evolutionary reality of power-driven competitive humans. It documents how evolutionary biologists describe successful power-driven males as 'alpha males' and later references Darwin's extensively documented account of 'the law of battle' that drives male-male competition for females on behalf of reproduction. The article proceeds to show how male-male competition across species has been exapted by humans in their harming and killing of other humans in wars of all kinds: ethnic, religious, territorial, racial, and so on. The article questions whether war is an inevitable practice of humans. It continues by exemplifying wars in today's global world; wars activated by power-driven autocratic leaders and their power-driven followers. The closest psychotherapy comes to recognizing the sickness of such power-driven humans is via diagnoses of narcissism that take addictions into account. Self-addiction, however, is not among the addictions taken into account. In effect, no matter the cost to other humans, power-driven self-addicted humans are not recognized as psychologically deficient but remain free to perpetuate their own glory.
To say … that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only fo... more To say … that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer. Herbert Muller (1943:107)
BRILL eBooks, Jun 2, 2023
BRILL eBooks, Jun 2, 2023
BRILL eBooks, Jun 2, 2023
BRILL eBooks, Jun 2, 2023
Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Apr 3, 2022
GERTRUDIS VAN DE VIJVER © www.psychoanalytischeperspectieven.be biological sciences. And I was ac... more GERTRUDIS VAN DE VIJVER © www.psychoanalytischeperspectieven.be biological sciences. And I was actually teaching dance at the time. I was a professor of dance. GVdV: Classic dance, jazz dance? MSJ: Modern dance. In the States, you had the tradition of Martha Graham. GVdV: You were a professional dancer? MSJ: Yes, but I was also a professor of dance and my dissertation was actually in the area of aesthetics. My dissertation was titled "The phenomenology of dance". GVdV: With whom did you do it? MSJ: Eugene Kaelin, at the University of Wisconsin. The dissertation was published; it is a book (Sheets-Johnstone, 1966). I became very concerned through my phenomenological studies of dance with concepts, with all the concepts that were generated in the process of moving and dancing, and I always wanted to understand what I had done. I did an awful lot of choreography and I was regarded, when I was in graduate school, as a very fine choreographer, but nobody understo od what I was doing theoretically, at all. Actually I had such great difficulty with my advisers in the dance department that they refused to work with me anymore, and only people in philosophy followed what I was doing. GVdV: Really? Does that mean you were particularly difficult to work with, because of your philosophical interest? MSJ: No. Well, it was because there was a certain way of looking at dance, and a phenomenological approach demanded a different kind of analysis, a different kind of analysis of movement. GVdV: Can you give us a more precise idea? MSJ: I wanted to look at dance as both a formed and a performing art. That meant looking at it from a phenomenological point of view, which meant giving a descriptive analysis of movement first of all, of movement with respect to dance, and that meant forcing myself to think about how to
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Nov 1, 2016
This article details fundamental aspects of habits, beginning with the fact that habits are dynam... more This article details fundamental aspects of habits, beginning with the fact that habits are dynamic patterns that are learned, and that in coincidence with this learning, habits of mind are formed, as in the formation of expectations, thus of certain if/then relationships. it points out that, in quite the opposite manner of the practice of phenomenology, the strange is made familiar in the formation of habits. it shows how clear-sighted recognition of the seminal significance of movement and phenomenologically-grounded understandings of movement are essential to understandings of habits and the habits of mind that go with them. The article differentiates non-developmentally achieved habits from developmentally achieved habits, but elucidates too the relationship between instincts and habits. it elucidates the relationship in part by showing how, contra merleau-Ponty, "in man" there is a "natural sign"-or rather, natural signs. By relinquishing an adultist stance and delving into our common infancy and early childhood, we recognize the need for what husserl terms a "regressive inquiry" and thereby recover 'natural signs' such as smiling, laughing, and crying. at the same time, we honor husserl's insight that "habit and free motivation intertwine." as the article shows, resolution of the relationship between habit and free motivation requires recognition of nonlinguistic corporeal concepts that develop in concert with synergies of meaningful movement, concepts and synergies achieved not by embodied minds but mindful bodies. on tHe oRIgIn, nAtURe, And genesIs of HABIt CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Routledge eBooks, Apr 12, 2019
'[T]he intrinsic motivation to order one's universe is an imperative of mental life. And the infa... more '[T]he intrinsic motivation to order one's universe is an imperative of mental life. And the infant has the overall capacity to do so, in large part by identifying the invariants (the islands of consistency) that gradually provide organization to experience. In addition to this general motivation and capacity, the infant needs specifi c capacities to identify the invariants that seem most crucial in specifying a sense of a core self. Let us look closely at the four crucial invariants.' (Stern, 1985, p. 76) 'The Body is, as Body, fi lled with the soul through and through. Each movement of the Body is full of soul, the coming and going, the standing and sitting, the walking and dancing, etc. Likewise, so is every human performance, every human production.' (Husserl, 1989, p. 252)
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Dec 1, 2011
Phenomenology and The Cognitive Sciences, Dec 2, 2011
This paper raises fundamental questions about the claims of art historian David Freedberg and neu... more This paper raises fundamental questions about the claims of art historian David Freedberg and neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese in their article "Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience." It does so from several perspectives, all of them rooted in the dynamic realities of movement. It shows on the basis of neuroscientific research how connectivity and pruning are of unmistakable import in the interneuronal dynamic patternings in the human brain from birth onward. In effect, it shows that mirror neurons are contingent on morphology and corporeal-kinetic tactile-kinesthetic experience. Accordingly, it poses and answers the overlooked but seminally important question of how mirror neurons come to be. The original neuromuscular research of Parma neuroscientists and the findings of Marc Jeannerod concerning kinesthesia support the answer that the "underpinnings" of visual art appreciation are themselves underpinned. An abbreviated phenomenological analysis of movement and its implications regarding the fact that the making of all art is quintessentially contingent on movement, hence a dynamic enterprise, further bolster the given answer as does a brief review of an empirical phenomenological analysis of the natural dynamic congruency of emotions and movement. In the end, the paper shows that movement and life are of a piece in the creation and appreciation of art as in everyday life.
Frontiers in Cognition, 2024
Can we again learn about ourselves and our surrounding world through dance as we age, thereby pro... more Can we again learn about ourselves and our surrounding world through dance as we age, thereby promoting our own health? This article documents facts of life showing that "older adults" do not have to learn to be cognitive of their movement, affective dispositions, or surrounding world; they have been experientially cognitive of all by way of tactility, kinesthesia, and affectivity from the beginning. Present-day cognitive neuroscience, concentrating and theorizing as it does on the brain's neuroplasticity, is however deficient in recognizing these experiential realities. Research studies on the brain and behavior, in contrast, demonstrate that coordination dynamics are the defining feature of both neurological and kinesthetic coordination dynamics. These dynamics are central to corporeal concepts, to the recognition of if-then relationships, and to thinking in movement. In effect, the brain is part of a wholebody nervous system. The study proceeds to show that the qualitative dynamics of movement that subtend coordination dynamics are basic to not only everyday movement but also to dancing-to experiencing movement kinesthetically and to being a mindful body. When Merce Cunningham writes that dance gives you that "single fleeting moment when you feel alive" and is not for "unsteady souls" and English writer D. H. Lawrence writes that "[w]e ought to dance with rapture that we are alive, and in the flesh, and part of the living incarnate cosmos," their words are incentives to those who are aging to awaken tactilely, kinesthetically, and affectively to the existential realities of dance.
Continental Philosophy Review, 2024
Keywords:
Heidegger’s “bodily nature” · Merleau-Ponty’s “ambiguous body” ·
Husserl’s “animate or... more Keywords:
Heidegger’s “bodily nature” · Merleau-Ponty’s “ambiguous body” ·
Husserl’s “animate organism · Vision and kinesthesia · Aliveness, feelings, and“Being-toward-Death”
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Papers by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
Heidegger’s “bodily nature” · Merleau-Ponty’s “ambiguous body” ·
Husserl’s “animate organism · Vision and kinesthesia · Aliveness, feelings, and“Being-toward-Death”
Heidegger’s “bodily nature” · Merleau-Ponty’s “ambiguous body” ·
Husserl’s “animate organism · Vision and kinesthesia · Aliveness, feelings, and“Being-toward-Death”