No princípio era o corpo: em defesa do corpo complexo

Abstract

The theme of the body precedes the discourse of themes such as gender, prejudice, bullying, race, people with disabilities, among other fundamental issues to be thought and addressed by educators. The historical, political and cultural body is built upon the biological body and becomes more complex with it. This is a fact which, although finds some resistance in the field of education, cannot be denied. According to Damásio (2012, p.93), “whatever question we may raise about who we are and why we are as we are, one thing is certain: we are complex living organisms [and] with a body”. Therefore, to understand the human experience as a corporeal experience is not to turn the dialogue biologised, but rather the possibility of making it more complex. The discourse of the body, in the many fields that deal with it, is often fragmented, since the health sciences occupy themselves with studying only the biological body, finding it sometimes tedious to speak of the body as a social, historical and political construct. The human and social sciences, in turn, occupy themselves of the body that is constructed and constituted socially, historically and culturally, disregarding the biological body, as if its whole construct could happen without this entity, which is the physical, organic and biological body. What is proposed throughout this text is to make an analysis of the historical course of the fragmentation of studies of the body, as well to propose another way of thinking, contextualized historically and that perceives the need to reconnect knowledge so that it is possible to think the body without dissolving the complex multiplicity that is the humankind. It is not a matter of including the body in the themes addressed by education, because the body is already included in education.