Embodied Perception: Redefining the Social

Abstract

Common to different versions of social constructionism is the definition of discourse as taking place between persons. Experiences that take place in the absence of immediate others, such as thinking to oneself or reading a text, are treated as secondary phenomena, as introjected versions of social utterances/gestures. This article asserts that representative constructionist articulations of between-person relationality rest on abstractions masking a more primary locus of sociality. I offer an alternative formulation of the social as the embodiment of sensate experience, borrowing from Merleau-Ponty's and Gendlin's accounts. Sensate experience is already radically relational before and beyond any notion of sociality as between-person voices/gestures, generating more intimate and mobile possibilities of interpersonal understanding than are offered via discursive readings of terms like ‘social’, ‘language’ and ‘embodiment’. © 2001, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.