Affective incorporation

Giovanna Colombetti

pp. 231-248

in: Simmons, James E. Hackett (eds), Phenomenology for the twenty-first century, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstrakt

In this chapter, Colombetti draws on classic and "post' phenomenological analyses to argue that material objects can be "incorporated' (literally, taken into the body) not just in the case of sensorimotor activities, but also of affective episodes. She first reviews Merleau-Ponty and Ihde's accounts of incorporation, disambiguating between two meanings of the term—what she calls "habit-incorporation' and "object-incorporation'. She then provides examples of both habit- and object-incorporation in the affective domain. The case of affective habit-incorporation is illustrated by cultural differences in bodily emotion expressions. As for affective object-incorporation, Colombetti provides two examples: one that highlights the affective dimension of object-incorporation into our sensorimotor skills, and one that illustrates the incorporation of instruments in the activity of playing music.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice