The Phenomenology of Corporeality: From Experience to Idea (In the Context of Shamanism)

The article presents a phenomenological analysis of corporeality followed up by an analysis of key elements of shamanic ideology and practice by means of interpreting primary corporal and corporal-semantic situations. It is argued that the body acts as a mediator between experience and the meaning this experience generates, and thus the body is the primary carrier of meaning as well as the universal boundary designating human existence. Three ways of being in the world are defined, based on different corporal experiences. The body immersed in the world of nature has a unique way of being: it exists 'in-itself. The world becomes accessible to our experience through perception. Along with being-in-oneself, there comes being-for-oneself, as people discover the world for themselves and does this through their body. In addition to the experience of distinguishing oneself and the world needed to interact with the world, being-for-oneself presupposes a special kind of bifurcation. Discovering the world for and around them, people also discover themselves-outside-the-world. And here, the body acts as an axis around which the world of things is constituted. Cultural meanings are produced as a result of human transition from being-for-oneself to being-for-others. Corporeality in being-for-oneself allows people to 'coalesce' with the surrounding environment and become integrated into it without the mediation of signs and representations. Being-for-others implies introducing oneself to the world and forming a space of signs needed for this presentation of oneself, including creating the categories of space and time. Ancient people, in a sense, found themselves in a situation of a pendulum swinging back and forth between different modes of existence: from immersing themselves into the world (being-for-others) to distancing themselves from it (being-for-oneself). In terms of signs and representations, the latter is seen as a 'sacred' reality as opposed to the world of the 'profane', i.e., the world-for-others. It is concluded that the primary vagueness of the 'profane' reality's space-time characteristics and its blurred boundaries resulted in the plurality of worlds and in the multiple and unstable nature of human self-identification in these worlds. The formation of ideas about boundaries was crucial for the humans to 'assemble' themselves, identify 'their' world, and separate it from 'other' worlds. Shamanic ideology, with the world tree symbolizing the universe's sacred axis (being-for-oneself), is expressed in shamanic practices as a controlled return to the primary experience of swinging between different modes of existence and multiple identifications. Shamanism did not compete with ideologies serving the sphere of the sacred; it sought to maintain relationships with different forms of the profane. That is why elements of shamanic practices were always retained at a grassroots level, outside of social and religious hierarchies, and for that reason these elements successfully continue into the present.

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