Embodied collective memory : the making and unmaking of human nature / Rafael F. Narváez.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-212) and index.

The French sociological tradition -- Pierre Bourdieu -- Somatic compliance, somatic deviance -- Symbolic violence vs. creativity -- Resistive mechanisms (phylogeny) -- Basic instincts : Eros and Thanatos -- The subject (ontogeny) -- Biology and meaning (phylogeny) -- Biology and meaning (ontogeny) -- Embodying the past and embodying the future -- An example of embodied collective memory : race -- Layers of ECMs -- External features of ECMs -- Internal features of ECMs -- Perceptual collective memory : the eye -- The role of institutions.

The human body is not a given fact; it is not, as Descartes believed, a "(Bmachine made up of flesh and bones." The body is acquired, achieved, and learned. It is thus full of mimetic and mnemonic implications. The body remembers, and it does so in collectively relevant ways. Gestures, corporeal and phonetic rhythms, affective idioms, and emotional styles -- perceptual, sensorial, motoric, and affective schemata -- are all largely learned in shared social contexts. These aspects of the embodied experience are often consigned to habit, to bodily automatisms, and to corporeal memories that reflect aspects of culture. But if the body reflects certain aspects of culture that press to become naturalized and organically attached to social actors, it also resists these kinds of cultural pressures. These adaptive and resistive dynamics, as this book shows, are not without consequences for individuals and groups. These processes can result in both advantages and disadvantages for social actors. They can take us toward certain futures while foreclosing others. It is therefore necessary to understand how, why, and to what extent corporeal memories are constructed but also resisted, modified, or created anew.