WAYS OF KNOWING: INTEGRATING MIND AND BODY

TAMAH NAKAMURA

ABSTRACT

A regional Japanese butoh dance group serves as a vehicle to explore concepts of how
participants create self, relationship and community through verbal and somatic
dialogue. Park’s (2001) representational, relational, and reflective knowledges, drawing
from Habermas’ theory of rationality in speech acts, act as a springboard to explain
the meaning of participants’ ways of understanding through verbal dialogue in their
activities, discussions and events. However, the butoh group also demonstrates ways
of knowing that are embedded in communication through body movement. Concepts
of somatic movement, the self as experienced as a first-person observer, are based in
psychology (Hanna, 1998), anthropology (Cscordas, 2002), and Japanese philosophy
(Yuasa, 1987; Ichikawa, 1992). Through interactive and recursive ways of knowing, the
butoh group presents opportunities for participants to reflect on themselves in relation
to others in the group and the larger society.