Normative Embodiment. The Role of the Body in Foucault's Genealogy. A Phenomenological Re-Reading

In Foucault's later works, experience and embodiment become important for explaining the normative constitution of the subject: for norms to be effective, discourses are insufficient – they must be experienced and embodied. Practices of “discipline” inscribe power constellations and discourses into subjective experience and bodies. In his lectures on the Hermeneutics of the Subject, he turns this “violent” form of normative embodiment into an ethical perspective by referring to the Stoic tradition. Even though Foucault never developed a notion of experience and embodiment himself, his ideas can be re-read and complemented from a phenomenological perspective.

The article tries to investigate the role of bodily experience and practice in Foucault's Genealogy and to bring it into dialogue with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty's conceptions of the lived body. It will attempt to show that concepts like sedimentation and habituality can help to explain how cultural norms not only influence the way we think about, but also how we perceive and are affected by the world. This operation of norms happens already at the lowest stages of experience, where embodied experience leaves its traces, in sedimentation and habitualization. These passive layers of experience are permeable to historical discourses, so that norms are literally inscribed in the body. These are the foundations for what I seek to define as normative embodiment.     

‘Bodies (that) matter’: the role of habit formation for identity

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - This paper will interpret Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and materialization as a theory of identity, and so put it into dialogue with a...     

The Relation of Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression to Suicidal Ideation and Suicidal Desire

The differential relations between the emotion regulation strategies “cognitive reappraisal” and “expressive suppression” and suicidality in a mixed inpatient sample (N = 232, 69.4% female) of a German psychotherapeutic hospital were examined. Patients filled in the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and items on suicidal ideation and desire. A structural equation model fitted the data (RMSEA = .044; CFI = .96) and revealed that “expressive suppression” significantly predicted increased suicidal ideation. Moderation analysis showed that results were independent from a current depressive episode. Potential implications for psychotherapeutic treatment of suicidality are discussed.     

Childhood Parental Death and Lifetime Suicide Attempt of the Opposite‐Gender Offspring in a Nationwide Community Sample of Korea

Although previous studies have shown that childhood parental death influences suicide attempts of their offspring, few studies have examined influence of gender and age at exposure. Koreans show the third highest suicide rate in the world, and many children and adolescents lost their parents during and after the Korean War. A total of 12,532 adults, randomly selected through a one‐person‐per‐household method, completed the Korean version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview and questionnaire for suicidal ideation, plan, and attempt (response rate 80.2%). A total of 2,332 subjects experienced biological parental death in childhood (18.6%). Male suicide attempts were associated with age of exposure to maternal death from 0 to 4 years (adjusted OR = 4.48, 95% CI 1.32–15.18) and from 5 to 9 years (adjusted OR = 5.52, 95% CI 1.97–16.46), but not with paternal death, after adjusting for age, education years, marital status, monthly income, and psychiatric comorbidities. Female suicide attempts were associated with paternal death from 5 to 9 years (adjusted OR = 2.20, 95% CI 1.13–4.27), but not with maternal death. Childhood parental death is significantly associated with lifetime suicide attempt in the opposite‐gender offspring, especially when exposure occurs before age 10.