Abstract
This paper is focused on analyses of the sensuous dimensions of bodies. In contemporary body studies, there has been a significant amount of research on issues of performance. Among those studies, I am specifically focusing on those projects where researchers actually master the performances that they are studying. In this paper, I call such research “practical performance studies” and examine not only their significance, but also how performers/researchers acquire and understand their body feeling from their performance. The critics whom I refer to in this paper are L.D. Wacquant, who studies boxing, G. Downey who studies capoeira, and E. Bar-On Cohen who studies karate. In this paper, I compare the perspectives of these three theorists with the arguments of Bourdieu in order to examine the possibilities of a theory of bodies that pays attention to the sensuous dimensions of the body. Downey and Bar-On Cohen phenomenologically describe processes of practice that are not effectively explained by Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Wacquant intrinsically describes how symbolic power is operating at the sensuous dimensions of the body. I conclude that these practical performance studies are significant in the following three ways. First, this research complements some of the blind points of Bourdieu’s theoretical perspective. Second, these researchers describe the construction of sensual reality. Third, they offer us a new methodological approach for understanding human performance.
