Skolering av kroppen. Om kunnskap og makt i kroppsøvingsfaget
Abstract
The topic of my doctoral dissertation is regulation of the body in time and space. In particular, I will look at the role of the school in constructing the concept of the body in modem times, and how changes in body images are founded in changed forms of practice and materials. To be more specific, I will investigate how "truths" or preconceptions about the body are produced and managed, and what effects these truths have. The focus for this study is school gymnastics in the period from 1889 to 1960. By studying gymnastics and changes in the practice of gymnastics I want to illustrate how the definition of the "acceptable" or legitimate body is created, transformed and transmitted within the public space.
The subject physical education is this dissertation's unit of analysis or case. Better stated, this concrete practice is the focal point of the study. I will, in other words, investigate the role that school subject physical education has played in the social construction of the body, and what truths about the body have been produced, managed and implemented here. Concretely, I ask: • • What bodily practices have been ''produced" by the school institution during this period? • How is the body classified, defined and determined in the school? Upon what authorities and systems of knowledge did the school draw when making judgements about the body?
I will describe the discourses and practices that construct and reconstruct the gymnastic perspective on the body (gymnastics' mode of perception). Further, I will show how the object (body) presents itselfto the teacher as a consequence of the room in which it occurs, the language with which it is expressed and the conceptions associated with it. Using this approach, I will also be able to "discover" inconsistencies in the way the body is understood or interpreted.
The concrete methodological approach is strongly inspired by what Foucault calls genealogy. I will attempt to view gymnastics as a point of crystallisation for various forms of discourse. My question is: where do all of the objects, practices and discourses embodied by gymnastics originate from? We can pull the subject of gymnastics apart into its various component pieces, each part having its distinct origin in history and found in various segments of society. These are coupled together. It is, in other words, an issue of ancestry or genealogy. We are looking for small or large "technologies" that were originally found not in schools, but which gradually take up residence in the school (gain control or are integrated). Gymnastics represents a centre for various discourses and technologies which now and then exclude each other and now and then melt together in a new synthesis. In this way one can discover forces that work toward heterogeneity and those that work toward homogeneity. Each kind of practice, each object, each regulation and each concept has a history of origin, and they take on their characteristic meaning and function according to the elements they are combined with or the scenes into which they are set. By writing the history from the bottom up, from the details in the particular objects, exercises and regulations, I depart from the approach usually used in many other dissertations.
We are talking about heterogeneity with regard to origins: from the hospital to the school, from the military to the school, from sports to the school, from play to education, from church to medicine, from church to school. The dimbing, the ball, the play, the marching, balancing, etc., each have their own history, and are thematisized using concepts from various discourses. Where do these concepts or arguments come from, who speaks for them and what happens when they are introduced into the gymnastics discourse? Gymnastics consists of a variety of practices, with a variety of logics, originating from different institutions. Using the discourse and the practices as the starting point, I am at the same time searching for homogenising factors: these are concepts and technology that act as forces across various types of institutions ( even though they may have different effects and significance within the different institutions). That is, they are forces or principles for structuring that permeate a number ofinstitutions and practices. From what knowledge regimes or "image of body" do these forms of practice draw their discursive and non-discursive resources?