The Body in Historical Space: from Tradition to Postmodernity

Umgaev Semen Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0003-0778-1607 Senior lecturer at Kalmyk State University named after B.B. Gorodovikov 358000, Russia, Republic of Kalmykia, Elista, Pushkin str., 11 sam_umg@yahoo.com Dzhalsanova Eseniya Sanalovna Student of Kalmyk State University named after B.B. Gorodovikov 358000, Russia, Republic of Kalmykia, Elista, Pushkin str., 11 eseniasanalovna@yandex.ru Kyukenov Danzan Valer'evich Student of Kalmyk State University named after B.B. Gorodovikov 358000, Russia, Republic of Kalmykia, Elista, Pushkin str., 11 eseniasanalovna@yandex.ru Vasyarkieva Tsagan Ochirovna Student of Kalmyk State University named after B.B. Gorodovikov 358000, Russia, Republic of Kalmykia, Elista, Pushkin str., 11 eseniasanalovna@yandex.ru

Chudutova Alina Mergenovna Student of Kalmyk State University named after B.B. Gorodovikov 358000, Russia, Republic of Kalmykia, Elista, Pushkin str., 11 eseniasanalovna@yandex.ru

The human body is another social construct that has a historical dynamic of change. Historically, ideas about the body have changed, each epoch has developed its own ideas about the body. After all, the human body is a "constantly produced and re-produced cultural construct." ^[10]

The purpose of the article is to reveal the general nature of the dynamics of changes in body concepts at the moments of paradigm shift from traditional society to modern society, and then to postmodern society. The article is based on the analysis of key historiography. The author's field observations are also used in the part that concerns the use of terminology in various martial arts.

In general, interest in the body is not obvious, for a long time the body was thought of as inextricably linked, integral in relation to a person, and therefore something natural, having a biological nature. Accordingly, the body was of interest only to biological anthropologists as a matter of biological unity and difference. The body itself, its movements and manifestations were understood as something natural, conditioned by the biological nature of man, unrelated to the social. At the same time, modern approaches to the consideration of historical reality force us to approach the issue differently. The body is both a means of communication, a text, a carrier of social information, and a way of perceiving reality (we know reality physically), and a "carrier of social ideas", and a "metaphor of the political/cosmological system", as well as a natural object of human interest. ^[11]

The traditional medieval world is characterized by the sacralization of the body, which is like a receptacle for the soul or the divine spirit. The body is a vessel, but by no means a subject in itself. Ernest Kantorovich in his work "Two bodies of the king" noticed that the body of the king plays a special role in the political and cultural life of medieval Europe. The royal physicality has the property of immortality, and the king himself is like a filler for the royal body that is replaced along the dynastic line. The very name of the state apparatus, corpus, in Latin means an administrative "body" that never dies, comes from the idea of a royal body, cementing the inherited state with its immortality. At the same time, this concept has theological grounds, as well as political and legal implications.^[2]

In general, in the Middle Ages, the body, on the one hand, played an insignificant role, bodily practices, sports, bodily pleasures were not encouraged by Christian doctrine, because it was believed that the immortal soul was primary and most important. Moreover, techniques of "killing" the body, self-mutilation and suffering, various fasts and deprivations were common. At the same time, the bodies that contained "special" entities, such as the king or the divine spirit, seemed to be sacralized, as if a piece of the spirit that once inhabited them remained in them, and from this came, for example, the worship of holy relics. And the Church itself was considered the "body of Christ" in a sense similar to the body of the king in medieval political theology. In general, in Western civilization, the body is sharply opposed to the spirit.^[7]

Of course, it is quite difficult to fix a change in the representation of the body in the historical space, because visual sources are needed here first of all, and preferably moving ones, i.e. film. Thus, in order to notice the bodily changes, it was necessary to have a special transitional era, as well as visualization tools that made it possible to focus attention on the manifestations of the bodily.

True, and one of the first to notice these historical changes in the concepts of the body, the French sociologist and ethnologist Marcel Moss in his article "Body Techniques". ^[3] Indeed, the body, of course, is natural, but it exists in a social space, it manifests itself and functions depending on social conditions, on the difference in culture and historical development. 

Moss focused on the problem using well-known facts to ethnographers: "I was well aware that, for example, gait, swimming style, and other phenomena of this kind are specific in certain societies, that Polynesians do not swim like us, and my generation did not swim like the current one."^[3]

It is noteworthy that Marcel Moss did not just comprehend these changes after the fact, no, he was a living witness of these changes that occurred as a result of the spread of sports culture bearing modern rationality. This is a rational, result-oriented culture, as it were, erased movements, removed any "similarity" with the world of nature and things, leaving only utilitarian conciseness, creating only those movements that are needed.

Moss notes that this apparent rationality changed the imitative, irrational nature when body techniques were taken from the modernist machine world invented by people: "... In addition, they abandoned the habit of swallowing and spitting out water, whereas in my childhood swimmers considered themselves something like steamboats." ^[3] However, Moss notes that with the improvement of body techniques, there is a rejection of such deliberate imitation, new, more convenient and practical body techniques appear.

In general, sport is not in vain a product of modernity, a product of modernity. It was sports practice that reflected the very idea of the development of body techniques, gave rise to physical culture as a bright phenomenon of modernity.

Similarly, improvement processes took place in purely labor bodily practices, such as physical labor in a factory. Frederick Taylor, one of the legendary founders of the science of management, even formed whole systems of rational actions in the workplace. He seemed to imagine the worker as part of a large mechanical process, which is the factory. The worker was for Taylor an extension of the mechanism or even an independent mechanism. With the help of rationalization of the simplest working functions like bricklaying, shoveling, carrying blocks with cast iron and other similar actions, Taylor in his work "Principles of Scientific Management" creates the image of a new body of modernity. It should be noted that such an approach has significantly influenced American and global industry and ideas about industrial efficiency, while at the same time increasing the workload and operating standards.^[4]

Interestingly, there was also a close connection with sports: it was F. Taylor is also credited with inventing the complex movement of the pitcher at the time of the ball in baseball, when a player uses all three axes of rotation to give the ball the greatest speed.

Modern management, however, does not always consider even such essentially corporeal problems as demographic policy in the context of corporeality. It is curious that the body is, as it were, taken "out of the brackets" of the social, manifesting itself only in the form of one of its qualities – "health".^[12]

In general, the similarity of movements with mechanisms, some "mechanization" of the human body characterized the twentieth century as a whole. The body was presented as a kind of doll on hinges, the appropriate movements were selected for it. For example, in such sports disciplines as sambo, in self-defense practices constructed within the framework of the body culture, such as the Kadochnikov system, such an understanding of the body is widely used. This is manifested in the use of characteristic terminology, such as "elbow lever", "infringement", "hall". All terminology implies the impact on the fragile "hinges" of the bodily mechanism. 

Some departure from the mechanistic ideas of modernity occurs in the postmodern era, when the Western world begins to show great interest in eastern body techniques, in particular, in martial arts. Oriental martial arts cannot be called a practice of only bodily or only spiritual, because in the space of oriental martial arts, one always generates another, and it is impossible to functionally separate body and spirit. Hence, it is impossible to attribute martial arts, for example, Wingchun or Tai Chi only to the field of sports. ^[1]

In traditional martial arts, the body has internal, hidden properties. There is, as it were, a body inside the body, a certain system of movements and positions that is not directly related to the muscles. Sometimes it is called "ligaments" or "tendons" (the concept of a "tendon" complex). Hence the concept of "internal" styles in wushu, for example.

Sometimes the body within the body takes on a mystical character. The body seems to be filled with mystical energy like "ki" or "tsy". The training of internal energy allows the body to acquire fantastic properties. The mystical motif in martial arts is perfectly reflected in the mythological culture surrounding these practices. The mythical founders of Chinese Wushu styles are endowed with capabilities related more to the field of witchcraft and mysticism, for example, Zhang Sanfeng, the Taoist and founder of the Taiziquan style, could walk in the rain without getting wet at all.^[5]

On the contrary, the pitching body is like an external, muscular force. Modern ideas that gave rise to bodybuilding and generated by bodybuilding, force physical culture to focus on the aesthetic moment, on the proportions and volumes of muscles, on their simplest and most obvious indicator – muscular strength. The whole industry is working to ensure the growth of muscle mass of a modern person. And even here there is a historical dynamic of the transition from the subculture of "basement rocking chairs" to the commercial industry of fitness centers.^[9]

In this pursuit of athletic strength and athletic performance, a person goes beyond human capabilities with the help of means provided by modern medicine and biotechnology. Starting from sports nutrition, taking various dietary supplements to taking anabolics and doping.

It is generally recognized that modern sport of great achievements is impossible without substantial doping support of an athlete both during the training and in the competition period.

In general, modernity has really put the human body in the spotlight, but the postmodern situation has posed a new challenge to physicality - overcoming it. Of course, transhumanism is currently a science fiction dream, but various manipulations with one's own body have already captured the public consciousness. And if doping is a way to achieve greater results in sports, then in social terms, textuality changes are widespread: tattoos, plastic surgery, scarring, piercing, etc.  Modern society is literally fascinated by various ways to change its body, so much so that even new terminology is proposed, for example, if for a Polynesian a tattoo is a true social marker, then for a modern person a tattoo is a "somatic modification", an attempt to go beyond oneself.^[8]

The peculiarity of modern corporeality is that it is possible to know it with the help of one's body, with the help of ethnological methods. Loik Wakan, in the experience of "pugilistic" cognition, used his own body for a socio-anthropological study of the boxing community and boxing culture in the black ghetto of Chicago. It was the path of the ethnological study of the body in the social space that led him to a whole world of meanings and facts that exist outside of verbal communication and manifest themselves only in the boxing gym. ^[6]

Thus, the ideas about the corporeal changed along with the cardinal change of the socio-cultural paradigm, the change of the traditional model of society to the modernist one. A significant transformation of ideas about the body takes place at the beginning of the XX century along with the development of modern sports. Bodily techniques are being improved, industrial unification of human movements is taking place. In the situation of the modern crisis of the second half of the twentieth century, physicality acquires a transhumanistic character on the one hand, and on the other hand, there is a rollback to a number of traditional and non–traditional bodily practices, such as oriental martial arts.