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technical paper
Ethically productive bodies
keywords:
asia
body
ethics
In this panel we present ethnographically grounded contributions that explore the processes through which bodies give rise to moral thinking. We introduce case studies that move beyond embodied knowledge and enskillment by showing that bodily experiences are not only a means of accruing understanding and bodily memory, but also a vital element in shaping cognition of higher order. In particular, by focusing on ethically generative possibilities of the body, we move beyond the Foucauldian paradigm with its focus on the body as a docile site of power inscription and explore contrarian ideas engendered by bodily experiences and their potential to redefine the hegemonic structures. Further, in our contributions we show these transformations not as isolated in spaces estranged from labour relations, but rather infusing these relations with alternative principles and (re)shaping human relationships in ways that are not aligned with or reliant on capitalist interests. The body, at once private and public, singular and multiple, has been on one hand, the basis of political and theoretical domination, and of erasure, exclusion and omission, on the other. By focusing on how differently positioned bodies can give raise to different moral universes and practices, we hope to interrogate the theoretical assumptions about the power that at once disclose its injustices and confirm its hegemony therefore obscuring the transformative ethical formations emerging from and through the body.