Teaching and corporeality: for an ethical use of the body

Abstract

The article, of a critical and hermeneutic reconstructive nature, aims to reflect on teaching, signalling an ethical perspective for education and the use of the body. The reflections focus on the idea of replacing the conception of education as ‘action’ with the conception of education as the ‘use of bodies’, pointing out that this is a challenging but effective approach to humanisation and the development of greater sensitivity towards the body and human life in general. We believe that Agamben's analytical categories can contribute to re-signifying the education of the body. This is not just any education. It is an education that promotes a new politics with an ethical dimension, making teaching a practice of freedom. This is possible by using the Agambenian devices of profanation and inoperability as a way of life, converting them into a critical and transformative experience, providing another perspective on the education of corporeality, so as to make the use of the body a more humanised, loving, tender and sensitive practice.

Keywords: education; corporeality; Agamben.