movements of the body, just as much as do the vestibular receptors and those
in the muscles, joints and skin.
(Reason 1982: 233)Contrary to Sherrington’s direct correlation of sensory experience with the
activation of specific receptors and their nerves of different cellular levels,
the kinaesthetic sense is a gestalt emerging from the interaction of all the other
senses. After Gibson we can speak of kinaesthesia in terms of its muscular, articu-
lar, vestibular, cutaneous, auditory and visual modalities (J.T.Gibson 1966:
36–38). In this view kinaesthesia is the ground to our consciousness (Stewart
1998: 44 ).
I think it can be argued that greater awareness of movement has in turn produced
a set of resources that enable us to separate out and value a present-orientated
stillness, thus promoting a ‘politics’ based in intensified attention to the present
and unqualified affectivity. Where might this present-orientation have come from?
I would argue that its history is born out of a number of developments which,
taken together, constitute a genealogy of the present.
The first of these developments is practices of contemplation. Foucault and
others have highlighted the significance of confession as a model for recent prac-
tices of the technology of the self. I think an argument can be made for a similar
kind of history based in practices of contemplation understood as ‘aptitudes of
performance’ (Asad 1993), rather than explicit belief. This history might touch
upon certain forms of prayer, the practices of some rituals and other religious
technologies which concentrate time.
Whatever the case, there seems no doubt that extant practices of contemplation
were gradually transmuted by a whole series of developments in the nineteenth
century and thereafter (Segel 1998). The first of these was the development of a
series of body practices which stressed sensory appreciation through a more
complete control of the body in order to provide more harmonious relations with
the environment. A good example of these developments is the rise of various
body techniques like the Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais technique,
Bioenergetics and Body–Mind Centring, which teach movement awareness and
the reorganization of movement sensation (Feldenkrais 19 7 2; Hartley 1995;
Lowen 19 7 5; MacDonald 1998; McGowan 199 7 a, 199 7 b). Feldenkrais (19 7 2),
for example, argued that cultivation of certain bodily practices could enhance our
ability to ‘know’ the world through systematic correction of what he called the
‘body image’.
The second development is the rise of systematic knowledge of body mea-
surement, based on increasing the efficiency of the body. From Marey’s and
Muybridge’s study of the physiology of movement through to Gilbreth and Taylor’s
time-and-motion studies and modern ergonomics and sports science, the study
and articulation of minute human movement have become a key to producing
human comportment (Dagognet 1992; Mattelart 1996). In turn, it can be argued
that the increasingly fine grain of the many bodily movements built out of this
study has made its mark on how time is constructed by the body.^6
64 Part I