Embodying Norms: Bodies and Feelings in Educational Practices over Time
2016-02-21

[1] Panel Chair: Sabine Krause, University of Vienna, sabine.krause@univie.ac.at [2] Discussant: [3] Abstract of the proposed panel: The proposed panel will consider two aspects to the concept of bodies and feelings in the history of education. First, we will focus on practices of embodiment as forms established in normative socio-cultural settings. Looking at practices of embodiment allows for an historical and historiographical discussion of embodiment in terms of agency. In the concept of agency, practice takes place in the discursive condition: Agency here connotes the process of creating meaning in (inter)action, whereby meaning cannot be seen as finalized or fixed but only situated. As Polanyi stated (cf. Polanyi 2009), acting is based on embodiment of time-specific and implicit situated knowledge that is understood to be more than just rational (cognitive) knowledge: such situated knowledge is acquired by and through the body and re-iterated in performances in which this specific knowledge is updated. Routinized acting and performance as described here are supported by tacit heuristics written “under the skin” (cf. Tanner 2011). The resulting embodiments are body languages in which we refer to others, in which we relate with other agents. This kind of embodied knowledge cannot be verbalized but it manifests itself in cultural products and in socio-cultural norms and forms. Emotions will be the second overarching concept in our panel to look at agency: they provide actors with a variable socio-cultural set of frameworks for their acting, which again are situated and historically contingent (cf. Frevert 2009). At the same time, emotions and feelings are formed within societal and cultural norms to offer space for variation and possible ways of expression for feelings (cf. Reddy 2001). From this perspective, the education of feeling is part of the history of civilization as described by Norbert Elias. Thus, time-specific forms of action and emotion are fulfillments of contingent (local) possibilities. In this sense they are closely connected to power relations and normative settings of the social and the cultural framework. Research in embodiment and emotions/feelings must therefore contextualize them within that framing. In historical research we can determine some points of crystallization of norms and forms of the social environment (Rabinow 1989) to study and scrutinize those phenomena. The first presentation illustrates that across time and space, emotions are integral to a symbolic-normative order that ensures cohesion, integration and solidarity in relationships and social groups. The second presentation deals with the notion of a healthy body and mind around 1900 within the German-Jewish youth group Blau-Weiss. The third presentation reflects the architecture of 19 th century schoolhouses as a pedagogical form that communicates values and that at the same time opens up spaces for possible acts of emotional expressions. The final presentation will consider the changing emotional landscape of the education of children’s bodies as they expressed and practiced love in the former German Democratic Republic. [4] the titles and abstracts of each of the panel's papers: Matthias Huber (University of Vienna, matthias.huber@univie.ac.at ): Learning Morality – The Education and Formation of Norms and Values in the Feeling Body In the history of education scholarship, emotions have been credited with multiple social functions with regard to their significance for individual and collective norms, values and socio-cultural conventions. In particular, their regulatory mechanisms have been discussed in terms of their dependence upon emotional markers, which determine their significance and meaning. That is to say that the preservation and implementation of collective and individual value systems are interlinked with the formation and internalization of values and norms in their development. This lecture addresses the essential role of emotions as the conscious and non-conscious evaluation of representations of mental processes for the individual and collective basic notions and ideals – a fundamental precondition of the embodied knowledge. Further, it illustrates that emotions have been and remain integral to a symbolic-normative order that ensures cohesion, integration and solidarity in relationships and social groups. Emotions evaluate and anticipate future events or situations based on emotional markings of previous lived or imagined experiences. This interdependent connection overcomes the persistent historical dualistic conception of the human being, since it presumes the unity of emotion and cognition as well as of body and mind. Moreover, this connection allows for a constructive approach to question the possibility of the communication (and education) of morality (and character) in addition to the transfer of ideals and norms, grounded in the theory of the feeling body. In this manner, this paper provides a basis for rethinking the role of emotions in the history of education research. Sabine Krause (University of Vienna, sabine.krause@univie.ac.at ) Embodying Jewish Identity at the Turn of the 20 th Century The foundation of the Zionistic Youth Movement Blau-Weiss (Blue-White) was one way to face ongoing problems at the beginning of the 20 th century, starting with the idea that for a new society a new kind of human being was necessary. This German Jewish youth movement strove for a new Jewish being in turning away from “urban risks” to educate bodily and mentally strong youth (at the individual level) and to create a new community spirit (at the societal level). Especially the formation of a strong, muscled body was emphasized to banish the myth of weak and decadent Jewish people. Establishing new role models and referring to ideas of the “Lebensreformbewegung” (life reform movement) was to help overcome existing attitudes and embodied knowledge. The Blau-Weiss adopted the traditional (Biblical) story of the Maccabees to make them role models: “Becoming men like the Maccabees...” was the motto. The emotional binding and intimacy on the one hand and the instructional usage of selected stories on the other should have ensured social cohesion and moral and intellectual continuity. But it did not: as seen from sources such as diaries and newspapers from the time, performances in the first years of Blau-Weiss illustrate the persistence of previously embodied norms and forms. Later it changed: the turn towards Zionism and related embodiments seemed to find success. The paper will focus on making/re-making of the body and educating feeling by carefully scrutinizing the sources with a detailed look at situated and embodied knowledge to enlighten the shift in norms and forms in Blau-Weiss. Martin Viehhauser (University of Tuebingen, martin.viehhauser@uni-tuebingen.de ) The Pedagogics of Schoolhouses: Building Emotions of Patriotism At the turn of the 19 th century and in a context of fast growing cities, architecture was increasingly conceived as a socially relevant art that – by daily use and unconscious bodily perception – communicates cultural values and fosters emotional bents. This presentation examines the architecture of schoolhouses as a way to “navigate” emotional attachments of the younger generation by the language of style. Around 1900, in Switzerland as well as in other national contexts a local and/or national romanticism shaped architectural designs of schoolhouses, among other types of buildings. The subtle pedagogics of these schoolhouse architectures communicated social and cultural values for a society to come in the future. This non-personal communication didn’t affect rational argumentation, but the ‘hearts’ of the users of a building: small entrances of schoolhouses for example communicated a protected pedagogical world based on patriotic emotions. Hence, this presentation discusses the topic of the body and education with respect to the historicity of emotions. According to Blumenberg, this inquiry focuses on the possibility of emotions within concrete historical situations. This approach reflects the architecture of schoolhouses as a pedagogical form that communicates values and that at the same time opens up spaces for possible acts of emotional expressions – patriotic ones in the case of schoolhouses that communicated national romanticism. Benita Carol Blessing ( Oregon State University, benita.blessing@oregonstate.edu ) Children’s Love in the Time of Communism What did children behind the Berlin Wall learn about love? In this paper I argue that cinemas in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) provided young people with a key site for the depiction and lessons about how to fall and be in love. Over the course of nearly a half-century of communism, state-sponsored films demonstrated a changing socio-cultural framework for understanding acceptable forms of heterosexual relationships that offered children increasingly emancipated expressions of female agency in love as a unifying societal construct. At the same time, neither the state nor individuals abandoned typically bourgeois relationship ideals. Girls and boys thus moved in a world of feelings motivated by the desire for a romantic Happy Ending that nonetheless acknowledged an increasing impracticality of expecting fairy tale-like relationships. Using children’s films from the early post-World War II days through the collapse of socialism, I consider how the representations of young bodies in love evolved over time. These transformations reflected not only changing societal values in the realm of feelings but also new relationships of East Germans – from filmmakers to audiences – to the single-party regime.