El cos: objecte i subjecte de les ciències humanes i socials El ...

RESUMS / RESÚMENES / ABSTRACTS:
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28.01 matí/mañana/morning
SESSIONS PLENÀRIES/ SESIONES PLENARIAS/ PLENARY SESSIONS:__
Sala d’actes de l’IEC:
El cuerpo femenino: genealogías de libertad
Milagros Rivera
Universitat de Barcelona
Me acercaré a la historia del cuerpo teniendo en cuenta el hecho casual pero necesario de la
sexuación humana. Estudiaré algunas invenciones simbólicas para decir el sentido libre del ser
mujer en la Europa cristiana, particularmente en la medieval.
Reconstructing the prehistoric body
2
Claudine Cohen
École des hautes études
en sciences sociales,
Paris
Prehistorians have invented indirect methods in order to know the appearance, consciousness,
use and meaning of the Human body in prehistoric times. For a very long part of the
Palaeolithic, palaeontologists deal mostly with rare and scattered bones, from which they
attempt to reconstruct anatomically the skeleton, figure, gait, sexual dimorphism, and other
features such as muscles, hair and skin color which are even more hypothetical, in order to
account for body adaptations and evolution in extinct human species.
On another hand, technological experimentations provide ways to approach body
consciousness through the understanding of toolmaking and tool use and through the
reconstruction of gestures and the “chaîne opératoire”, while footprints and hand stencils in
Upper palaeolithic ornated caves can give direct evidence of physical human presence and
intention.
For the more recent periods, burials and figurative art provide insights into body consciousness,
and into the social uses and symbolic meanings of the human body in these ancient times.
From the Atlantic shores to the Don Valley, from the Gravettian to the Magdalenian, upper
Palaeolithic sites have yielded an abundance of sculpted feminine figures, naked bodies with
no facial features and opulent shapes, or more slender figures. The Human body is also
metonymically represented by genitals that often coexist with more realistic representations.
Such body states as pregnancy and sexual postures seem to be represented with predilection.
Through the attention to these different features, prehistoric sciences find access to the human
body, not only as an anatomical, but also as a major cultural reality. However it should not be
forgotten that this knowledge of our ancestors’ bodies and its social uses is indirect, highly
hypothetical and often influenced by assumptions and prejudices