The postmonolingual turn: rethinking embodiment with New Confucianism in bodily education and research

ABSTRACT

The study of the body remains dominated by Western scholars examining Western bodies and using Western conceptualisations of the body. Though mainstream sociology of the body research is founded within dualisms, often privileging one side of a binary opposition at the expense of another, a thread within Chinese philosophies cut across such dualistic categories. This paper aims to reinvigorate this thread by the ‘turn to’ a postmonolingual approach, using New Confucianism to consider the challenges and implications for bodily education and research in three ways. First, this paper draws on a postmonolingual lens to extend current debates and limitations of embodiment literatures. Specifically, it provides examples of how thinking with New Confucianism in educating the body could help shift the academic landscape. Second, it offers an account of navigating through the ‘turns’ in order to reach for the ground of New Confucianism thinking in bodily education. Thinking through a postmonolingual lens with a focus on New Confucianism indicates a departure from Western approaches that have informed a Euro-American centric tradition of research. Such a shift reorientates thinking around postpositivist research that continues to perpetuate dualism and fails to capture the complexity, ambivalence and entangled relations of our embodied lives. Last, it highlights the revelations in how Chinese philosophical concepts can bring to challenge dominant Western notions of performance culture predicated upon binary oppositions and more broadly the privilege of the body over mind and emotions. Thinking about bodily education with New Confucianism this paper points to the potential to decenter normative assumptions and reshape the usual contours of the binary bodily praxis. It concludes by considering the potential and future directions when drawing on New Confucianism as a theoretical framework to rethink bodily education and research in the West.

KEYWORDS:

• Embodiment
• postmonolingualism
• Chinese philosophy
• New Confucianism
• bodily education
• dualism

Introduction

The body has become a central research topic in Western social sciences, particularly in sport and Physical Education (PE) since the 1980s (e.g. Evans et al., 2011; Fullagar, 2018; Hargreaves, 1985). Its emergence accords with a ‘postmodern turn’ in social theorising more broadly that challenged a mind-body dualism (Turner, 1991). Shilling’s seminal work (1991) adopted these arguments in assessing physicality and the body in Health/PE (H/PE) and sport, and challenged the marginal status of the body in the existing discussion of the production of social inequalities. More broadly, education research has focused on how schooling practices discipline students’ docile bodies in an attempt to reproduce certain habits and behaviours (e.g. Lester & Gabriel, 2017; Watkins, 2005).

Any attempt to understand embodiment and to develop the sociology of the body is to be concerned about the relationship between agency and structure/ nature and culture (Silk et al., 2017). It is acknowledged that Western feminism philosophical perspectives, and feminist scholars more broadly, have written extensively on embodiment, which aims to displace dualisms and emancipate notions of the body from Cartesian mechanistic models. Arguably, notable scholars such as Ahmed (2016) and Brah (1996), have further confronted Whiteness within feminism. Working within an existential-phenomenology framework, researchers in H/PE and Sport (e.g. Liu & Howe, 2012; Purser, 2018; Ward & Scott, 2020) and more broadly in education (e.g. Cadwallader, 2010; Elwick & Green, 2019; Thorburn & Stolz, 2020) have often drawn on Merleau-Ponty to discuss embodied experiences, meanings and perceptions that move beyond the age-old dualism of the mind and the body/empirical science and transcendental philosophy. According to Merleau-Ponty (1962), there is a paradoxical condition of human subjectivity that we are both a part of the world and coextensive with it, and therefore, rejects a stand-alone reflection and analysis of the body. Still, philosophical debates on the binaries on issues of gender, body and the mind seldom look beyond the West (Cheng, 2002; Man, 2016; Yasuo, 1987).

What is relatively well understood in the education of the body (in the West), and specifically in H/PE and sport is how critical scholars talked about body appearances and performances. Identity markers such as Whiteness (Azzarito, 2009), slenderness (Rich, 2010), muscularity (Lee et al., 2009), ability (Hay & lisahunter, 2006), youthfulness and pain-free culture (Phoenix & Sparkes, 2006), and pleasure (Gerdin & Pringle, 2017) are dominant embodied experiences in contemporary Western societies. As these critical scholars researching about the body argue, these dominant forms of subjectivities and knowledge are often underpinned by a postpositivistic paradigm that valued the determinants and mediators of health and physical activity (Mansfield & Rich, 2013). Gard and Wright (2001) continue this debate that these scientific messages about the body constitute health in terms of a moral imperative of self-control which creates the stigmatisation of obesity and the idealised body images of thinness. The triplex of ‘exercise = fitness = health’ has also been advanced through its impact on population surveillance with school children in food choices (Leahy & Wright, 2016), and quantifying the body using digital technologies (Lupton, 2013). Tinning and Glasby (2002) reminded us more than two decades ago, however, that not all contemporary interest in health and bodies is dominated by the Western medical paradigm, and whilst there are alternative forms of understanding bodies, the Asian body is still silenced in the education of the body. For example, Turner and Yangwen (2009) problematise our assumptions of the division between the body in Asia and the body in the West, and others have discussed how Heidegger’s philosophy of Being was heavily indebted to Eastern philosophies (Lewin, 2015; May, 1996) and his notion of embodiment to Lao-tzu (Parkes, 1987). As Turner and Yangwen (2009) noted,

The notion of Nature in Chinese (tzu-jan or zi ran), in Japanese (ji-nen) and in Korean (ja-yun) signifies a sense composure for the spontaneous naturalness of things and that the role of contemplation is to grasp the ‘this-ness’ of material beings. This way of thinking about nature is very close to Heidegger’s notion of the thrownness of facticity of being. (p. 20)

Contemporary Western traditions and in the philosophy of the body, including Foucault and Merleau-Ponty are notably Heideggerian. Yet, few realise that Heidegger’s ideas are profoundly influenced by Eastern philosophies (Turner & Yangwen, 2009).

Arguably, this problematic understanding of the division between the body in Asia and the body in the West can be accounted to the deep-seated fabric of our everyday subjectivities, thoughts, and practices woven by the dominant English language, French theorists, and Euro-American cultures which is not obvious to our consciousness. In the context of bodily education and research, as a person engages with bodily and health discourses underpinned by a Euro-American centric perspective, they can become a subject to particular positions. This is what Foucault (1981) terms as ‘discursive practice’ and ‘subject position’. Foucault (1981) purports that each society or culture has its own regimens of truth and that discourses are an instrument of power that transmit societal/cultural values considered to be ‘true’. Hence, alternative ways of understanding the body may have been silenced (Azzarito, 2019; Evans et al., 2011). According to Foucault, this silencing has created a shelter for power in ‘docile bodies’ that have promoted the reproduction of the cultural dominance of one ideal body in the West. For example, those who do not conform to these Western ideals of neoliberal rationalities of healthy citizenship, are therefore, othered and labelled as ‘bodies at risk’ (Burrows & Wright, 2004; Crawford, 1980; Gard & Wright, 2001).

So far, this paper has discussed how scholars interested in comparative research and dialogue among East Asian/Chinese philosophies, feminist studies and cross-cultural understanding have provided insights into an epistemological critique of the scientific paradigm of thinking about the body. Next, it provides an overview on postmonolingualism and the benefits it could bring to extend our understanding in embodiment. It will then focus on how the latest posthumanist turn has been challenged by postcolonial and Indigenous scholars as disregarding their established worldview and the tendency to erase their epistemes. In concurring with these postcolonial and Indigenous views on reclaiming their intellectual tradition, this paper offers further examples on how we can think with Chinese philosophical perspectives, specifically from New Confucianism. The paper concludes by considering the potential and future directions when drawing on Chinese philosophical perspectives as a theoretical framework on bodily research.

Rethinking bodily education with postmonolingualism

Language is the foundation upon which knowledge rests. Foucault (1981) asserts that power relationships in society are expressed through language and practice. His work points to the importance of discourse in (re)producing subjectivities and knowledge, as it embodies meanings and social relationships. This alludes to the relations between human subjectivity, language and power. Researchers who have a call into the question the exclusive use of Euro-American perspectives or English in teaching and research in higher education have attempted to turn to postmonolingual thinking. Yildiz (2012) introduced the term ‘postmonolingual’ and writes ‘Post signifies the period since the emergence of monolingualism as a dominant paradigm, which first occurred in the late eighteenth-century Europe’ (p. 4). It is a process of unfolding of the effects of the monolingual and of problematising ‘a field of tension in which the monolingual paradigm continues to assert itself and multilingual practices persist or reemerge’ (p. 5). Research that is underpinned by postmonolingualism asserts that a ‘monolingual habitus’ (Gogolin, 2002, p. 127) prevails in the intellectual field.

Under the influence of a monolingual practice, minority language rights and their practices continue to be undermined and their language differences positioned as deficit (May, 2013). Of note is work such as Singh and Lu (2020) who problematised the assumptions informing the monolingual mindset and highlighted the educational potential of multilingualism. Singh (2017) has examined multilingual researchers engaging in postmonolingual theorising in higher education in which they considered how languages relate to theorising and how theorising relates to languages. Their study highlighted a few key points to ever-more innovative post-monolingual practices: using and mixing different languages with-and without-translation, the recognition of alternative sources of theoretic-linguistic knowledge; and in moving beyond ‘deficit’ constructions of non-Western researchers and towards a space where they are producing knowledge through their multi/bi-lingual capabilities.

The postmonolingual approach further points to a dialogical process of integrating Asian cultures in order to complement existing theories and understandings into Western intellectual contours (Zhang et al., 2015). Although Shenghong and Dan (2004) noted how Chinese scholars in China and Taiwan have historically absorbed Western philosophy alongside developing their own Chinese philosophy in education, the knowledge diffusion process the other way around, that is how the West takes up Chinese philosophical perspectives and knowledge, is comparatively obscured. As Singh (2011) described this lack of engagement with Chinese theoretical tools is a form of intellectual inequality. The implications of these insights are also not sufficiently thought through within research that aims to educate the body, such as in the field of Health/Physical Education (H/PE), sport, leisure, physical activity. There are parallels of such a postmonolingualism approach with those derived from other cultures in H/PE and sport education, for example, kaupapa Māori research that has been used as a localised critical theory to challenge dominant, racist and Westernised hegemonies (Mahuika, 2008; Mane, 2009). This research asserts Māori language and cultural values as integral to its practices in areas of PE and sport (Hippolite & Bruce, 2013; Hokowhitu, 2016). Whatman et al. (2017) draw on ‘Indigenous knowledge’ (Nakata, 2007) as a way to disrupt norms in PE teacher education. Others have drawn on Connell’s Southern Theory (2007) to examine bodily cultures in sport (Spaaij et al., 2014; Toffoletti et al., 2018) and marks a shift from a focus on cultural difference towards an emphasis on geopolitical relations of power (Connell, 2011). More recently, researchers have applied Chinese philosophies and languages in understanding Chinese diasporic communities’ experiences in health and physical activity (Pang, 2018; Pang et al., 2016; Pang & Hill, 2018).

A postmonolingual world demands researchers to rethink their dominant language, the knowledge, concepts, and onto-epistemology that this entails, and the power relations that are reproduced in the knowledge production process. St. Pierre (1997) acknowledged that ‘escaping the mother tongue is not easy’ (p. 178) and argued that those attempted to challenge themselves to think differently would agree that it is necessary to move beyond the comfort zones of their own language and culture. In response to these challenges and the need to think differently, this paper addresses the question of how researchers can problematise the normative assumptions, and dominant and/or popular paradigms underpinned by Western onto-epistemologies that negate or ignore different embodied practices of living, thinking, and speaking. It argues for the capacity of the Chinese subject/knower, and therefore, draws on thinking that originate from a Chinese lineage as a critical thinking tool for reimagining the existing intellectual landscape on embodiment studies as it relates to bodily education and research.

Moving beyond Cartesian dualism in educating the body

In moving beyond the Cartesian dualism, recent developments on the sociology of the body have been influenced by new materialist perspectives such as actor-network theory, non-representational theory, assemblage theories, and posthumanism (Fox & Alldred, 2018). These perspectives have been argued as cutting across many of the binaries including mind/matter, structure/agency, and micro/micro. As Fox and Alldred (2017) noted these perspectives shift human as the focus of sociological attention to human and non-human interactions and a monist or ‘flat ontology’ (DeLanda, 2005, p. 51). While the current paper could not expand further on the vast literatures on new materialist perspectives, Fox and Alldred (2018) summarised three ontological underpinnings of posthumanism and new materialism, including the production of the world is connected to both social and natural encounters; the material world is relational and is constantly changing and depends ‘entirely upon the micropolitical forces deriving from matter’s interaction within events’ (p. 318); and ‘an understanding of agency that no longer privileges human action’ (p. 318) and that all matter is affective. Therefore, the task for sociologists is to examine the relationality of a range of elements from the physical, social, material, biological, semiotic which assemble to create the social forces (Braidotti, 2016; Deleuze & Guattari, 1988). This involves asking about what a body can do in terms of how it interacts within an assemblage. For example, Fullagar (2018) explored the material-discursive relations of women’s depression and recovery and purports an (un)knowing beyond dualistic and reductionist categories of thought that perpetuates healthy/ill and normal/abnormal subjectivities. This radical departure from dualistic sociologies transcends the historical Euro-American centric paradigm of the binary logic of self and other, and the traditional mind/matter dualism (Braidotti, 2016) as well as post-structuralist perspectives that privilege discourse and cultural interpretation, at the expense of materiality and matter (Fox & Alldred, 2017).

While posthumanism seems to be useful in understanding and unfolding a more complex world, postcolonial and Indigenous scholars have contested the legitimacy of this ‘new style’ of thinking (Ahmed, 2008; Tompkins, 2016). Todd (2016), an Indigenous feminist, yearned to hear the referencing of Indigenous thinkers in a direct and meaningful way in European lecture halls, to challenge the ‘trendy and dominant’ ontological turn (i.e. posthumanism thinkings), and to reclaim the intellectual contribution. Sundberg (2014) points out that Eurocentric perspectives of posthumanism have a tendency to erase Indigenous epistemes and locations. Posthumanist thought often assumes ‘the nature/culture split as a universal phenomenon rather than a reality that originates from specific cultures and knowledge traditions’ (Sundberg, 2014, p. 35).

Standing alongside these postcolonial and Indigenous thinkers, this paper concurs that the ‘ontological turn’ in posthumanism is another word for colonialism, as many of these ‘discoveries’ seem to be newly articulated but continue to draw on a European intellectual lineage. Such ‘White posthumanism’ does not respond directly to postcolonial thought that asserts if Humanism is to move beyond the limitations of Eurocentrism, it has to come from non-Western sources and traditions (Braidotti, 2013). By extension, Kuokkanen (2011) notes that a dialogue and learning between epistemic worlds is much needed to foster ‘multiepistemic literacy’ in a ‘pluriversal world’ (Grosfoguel, 2008) that goes beyond all knowledge claims by Western cultures. The point is to enable Western scholars to become more aware of similar, complementing or competing discourses, such as the focus of this paper, happening outside of this Euro-American centric trend.

Evidently, ongoing onto-epistemological challenges facing researchers engaged in understanding the contemporary complexities of embodiment studies require careful consideration of how epistemic justice¹ informs their methodological positions. A postmonolingual approach is offered here as a means to reconceptualise embodiment and open up new spaces for critical thinking in languages and cultures beyond English. The next section examines how the concepts generated in the Chinese context in the sociocultural relations of the periphery can contribute to the development of the social sciences of embodiment that have their roots in the metropole.

A turn to Chinese philosophical perspectives on educating the body

Eastern and Western ways of seeing have been locked ‘in their own silos’ until the beginning of East–West contact in the seventeenth century. Arguably, as with Western philosophy, the roots of Chinese philosophy could be discussed in several historical epochs. For example, dating back to the Spring and Autumn Warring Period (approximately 770 to 476 BCE) there was the beginning of the Pre-Han Confucianism, followed by traditional Confucianism, Neo Confucianism, and the present New Confucianism, or as Li (2000) suggested that these four distinct periods were ‘Rujia (儒家), Han Ru (漢儒), Song-Ming Ru (宋明儒), and Xiandai Xin Ru (現代新儒)’ respectively (p. 2).

Xiandai Xin Ru (現代新儒)/ New Confucianism started in the nineteenth /twentieth century, i.e. in Modern China Period, aimed to reconcile traditional Confucius beliefs with modernity (Solé-Farràs, 2008). In the late twentieth century, the New Confucian movement was led by some intellectuals who left China for Hong Kong and Taiwan when Communism was established as the ruling ideology in the People’s Republic of China in 1949 (Tu, 2001). This New Confucian movement was later prompted by an increased interaction and challenge by Western counterparts as well as those who believed the philosophy of Confucianism to be unscientific and contrary to the progress of a modern China. Tu Wei-Ming attempted to bridge the East–West differences suggesting that Confucianism has the potential to be successfully adapted to a Western perspective, and not be confined to the Chinese culture, tradition and intellectual space.

New Confucianism scholars who had exposure to Western cultures have worked to provide insights to bridge differences that were not found in the West. For example, the Boston Confucians, a group of New Confucian scholars located in Boston such as Tu-Wei Ming and Robert Neville, and others including Daniel Bell and John Makeham, have studied Confucianism in a context outside China and applied the concepts for modern-day cultural and political lives. These scholars have worked with New Confucianism in using metaphysical ideas from both Western and Eastern philosophy.

Building on the work of New Confucian scholars, this paper offers three examples of how Chinese perspectives extend Western binary perspectives of embodiment. First of all, Chinese perspectives assert that the difference between two entities are only opposite insofar as they are complementary. This paradigm originated during the Neo Confucianism period from the concept of Yin (陰) and Yang (陽) which represents two distinct principles relative to each other, yet both receive equal status and are complementary in existence (Cheng, 2008; Kim, 1973). Chen et al. (2010) further describe Yin-Yang as ‘an encompassing, yet flexible, systematic concept, it hence can be used to explain many phenomena around our daily life’ (p. 176). In dissolving disagreements or contradictors, according to Peng and Nisbett (1999), Yin-Yang duality resembles the dialectical thinking in the West, which is considered to consist of sophisticated approaches toward seeming contradictions and inconsistencies’ (Peng & Nisbett, 1999, p. 742). The difference between them is that Yin-Yang captures the Chinese view of independent and complementary opposites while dialectics captures the Western view of exclusive opposites (Chen, 2002). Subsequently, this traditional Chinese system of thought has significantly influenced various movements of cultural practices. For example, principles that underpin Chinese medical and health-related discourses include blood circulation, Qi² and meridians (Griffiths, 1999; Wang & Zhu, 2011). Specifically, health is maintained and acquired through balancing the two complementary entities of blood and Qi, and the Yin meridians and Yang meridians (Torsch & Ma, 2000).

Secondly, Western sociologies ask questions about the relationship between nature and culture, while Confucianism further asks what is the proper role and relationship between heart-mind (xin心)? Leading New Confucianist scholars, including Qian Mu, Tang Junyi, and Feng Youlan, argued that the most significant contribution of New Confucianism thought is the notion of the ‘unity of Heaven and Humanity’ (Tianrenheyi 天人合一). In Tu Weiming’s seminal work (1998), he notes that New Confucianism relates to an anthropocosmic, ontological perspective rather than an anthropocentric worldview. In other words, New Confucianism offers a holistic ontological paradigm that identifies the unity of the three realms of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity (Tian, Di, Ren 天地人) in understanding the body/heart and mind relationship. Heaven and nature are accessible through self-knowledge as nature is ‘an unending process of transformation rather than a static presence’, and thus to understand Heaven ‘we must continuously cultivate ourselves’ (Tu, 2001, p. 256). Tang (2007) pointed out that Chinese philosophy is based on the unity of Heaven and human, thereby subject and object are connected which is in contrast to Western ontological dualism.

Similar to New Confucianism, posthumanism shifts humans from the central focus of sociological imagination (Braidotti, 2011). Yet, different from New Confucianism, posthumanism has a ‘flat ontology which rejects any sense of social structures such as patriarchy, neoliberalism, masculinity’ (Fox & Alldred, 2017, p. 7). On the contrary, New Confucianism’s worldview of human and non-human interaction, although embraces a correlative ontology on changes and processes (Karmazin, 2016), is hierarchical (Tu, 2010). As Solé-Farràs (2013) highlighted, ren (仁) as the moral virtue is what makes human beings different from non-humans. Its understanding of hierarchy is social as opposed to ontological. One performs actions according to their responsibilities and roles in the societal structure/hierarchy. It is the human agents’ actions that establish the center of humanity as opposed to an ontologically predetermined center of humanity that creates agency in human beings (Xiang, 2019). Based on this agency principle that is centered in human beings, the key notions in Confucianism are the pursuit of one’s virtue through self-cultivation and the practice of balance through holism, for example, ‘the unity of body and mind, the exterior and the interior’ (Tang, 2007, p. 38).

Applying Chinese philosophical concepts in bodily education and research

As discussed previously, the notion about the bodily education of a person in relation to identity markers such as whiteness, slenderness, muscularity and so on have been researched in the fields of PE, sport, and other forms of movement culture. Evans et al. (2008) draw on body pedagogies to discuss the centrality of the ‘ideal body’ within consumer culture that legitimise the value placed on the display and performance of the body within contemporary Western society. The education of bodies in a broader sense alludes to how socio-cultural, economic and political interests have informed our understanding and interest in the body. In so doing, this section focuses on highlighting studies that have used Chinese philosophies and specifically New Confucianism perspectives to think about bodily education and research which can contribute to the reconceptualisation of the dominant embodiment experiences in contemporary Western societies in several ways. Specifically, it sheds light on how the dichotomies of mind and body can be resolved in the Confucian tradition in sport and physicality research (see Journal of Chinese Philosophy Special Issue on Physicality, Spirituality, and Chinese Philosophy, 2016).

The performance culture and the tendency to read the physical body as the only signifier of health is arguably a dominant feature in Western bodily practices (Rich, 2010). In response to this challenge, Chinese philosophies espouse the cultivation of the art of living, akin to the shaping of an aesthetic body include the development of one’s body and emotions, and not merely the ability to think well or to perform an action. Tu (1998) reminded us that the body is never merely material and mechanical, but an open flowing system of vital energy. This is akin to the posthuman body which calls for a transversal link between the social, political, ethical and aesthetic dimensions that constitute our ecologies of being (Braidotti, 2019; Guattari, 2000). In understanding the defining characteristic of the Chinese world-view of embodiment, Ni (2016) poignantly posed a question of ‘Can Bad Guys Have Good Gongfu’? In gongfu, the martial arts/sport is distinctively related to the mind and the body. The core meaning of gongfu is ‘the art of life in general, including efforts, methods, and cultivated and embodied methods of living well’ (p. 9). This shaping of an aesthetic body further relates to Mencius (371-289BC) ideas of the body and mind. Mencius noted every human being possesses the ‘four beginnings’ (四端) which are the four fundamental feelings that constitute moral knowledge, known as ‘liangzhi’ (conscience 良智). These four fundamental feelings include: the feeling of shame, courtesy, right and wrong, and commiseration. Mencius considered ‘liangzhi’ as the foundation of a cultivated human being, and its relation to the body is that it needs to be nurtured (in Man, 2016, p. 37). Similar to Maivorsdotter and Lundvall’s study (2009) which refers to Dewey (2005) and aesthetic experience to understand students’ embodied learning in bodily movement in PE, ‘liangzhi’ further provides an analytic tool to explore students’ feelings of conscience.

Drawing on the intellectual resources of Chinese philosophies, Man (2016) discussed the vital force ‘qi’ (气). It is specifically through Yangqi (养气), in nourishing the vital force that enables the strengthening of the mind. Zhao (2021) highlighted ‘qi’ brings a new understanding of ‘person’ as contingent, evolving along with a myriad of relations. This is different to an essential identity in Western thinking (i.e. an agency, a self). As Ames (2011) noted, with the Chinese ‘qi’ perspective, the world is not made up of separate things but is ‘an active, ongoing, auto-generative process as experienced from within it’ (p.61, italics original). In other words, ‘qi’ foregrounds a co-being feature of relationality between human experience and their lived environment which posthumanism also espouses (Braidotti, 2006; Fox & Alldred, 2016).

Related to qi, experience and the body is Ti (体), the concrete corporeal body that a person possesses (Cheng, 2002). Ti, however, is not just a matter of physical elements but a living body of subjective experiences. TiYan (体验) is where we experience an event intimately and derive meaning into such situation. Thus, TiYan is a way of understanding reality and making meaning. Ti as a verb also means embodiment, in which one’s body is totally immersed with a thing or a situation. To immerse into the system thus implies the interdependence of ecological beings in nature. The body’s meaning will change according to the contexts, and its possibilities and limits will only be revealed by its ongoing interactions with the environment (Man, 2016). A further meaning of Ti is to practice or to implement. It implies the unity of one’s value and life practice and the cultivation of ren (仁) (virtue) in forming one’s personality. As such, Chinese notions of embodiment and specifically TiYan encourage a relational and non-dichotomised view of nature and culture that recognise the cultural and historical specificity of bodies (Pang, 2020).

Cheng (2016) noted that ‘Chinese philosophy has an essential component named practicality’ which can be used to understand physicality and that ‘any idea must be practically embodied in physical reality and thus bodily practiced’ (p. 3). In Confucian texts, there is a range of qualities discussed which are related to virtues practiced through the body, ‘humaneness (ren 仁) is mentioned over one hundred times in the Analects … ritual propriety (li 禮), trustworthiness (xin 信), wisdom (zhi 知), dutifulness (zhong 忠), righteousness (yi 義), respectfulness (jing 敬) … ’ (Connolly, 2016, pp. 272–273). Ames (1984) contended that li (禮) is akin to rituals and structure within sport which the bodily and intuitive aspect is grounded in and that formalises the psychosomatic dispositions (in Hsu & Ilundáin-Agurruza, 2016). Hsu and Ilundáin-Agurruza (2016) employed Confucian views of ‘bodymind’ (心) to discuss alongside De Coubertin’s ideals concerning Modern Olympism in which training body and mind is an essential requirement to fulfil human potential.

Based on Confucian values on community and using the concept of zhong (忠), Elstein (2016) guided us to think through LeBron James’s decision to leave his basketball team. The study discussed his desire for profit and fame alongside Confucian texts on loyalty, contributing to a further understanding of his reasons for leaving a committed place. The concept, zhong, resonated with how posthumanist scholars such as Braidotti (2013) described ‘loyalty’ as the vital energy that feeds the affective forces required in creative pursuits to impact upon one’s self and others. Zhao (2021) also highlighted Daoist philosophy of ‘co-being with’ is similar to posthumanist views in that ‘humans are supposed to attune to, correspond to, and follow the Dao movement’ (p. 87) in relation to the natural world. Central to Daoist philosophy is the analogy of the water which evokes images of depth, flow, strength of purpose, potential, flexibility, and unpredictability (Keith, 2016). Notions such as noncontention and flow help to unpack and enhance the experience of working with nonhuman agencies such as the human-horse partnership in dressage (Keith, 2016). The Daoist idea of ‘wu-wei’ (無爲) further expresses the kind of active non-interference that dressage riders try to achieve (Ames, 1989). These virtues exemplified through bodily practice (e.g. staying/leaving a place, reaching human potential, human-horse interactions) demonstrated the ‘practicality’ of Chinese philosophical perspectives on embodiment.

Although this paper intends to privilege Chinese philosophical perspectives specifically New Confucianism in bridging the gap in the education and research of the body, the notion of relational and non-dichotomised view of bodies is also explored by Japanese philosophers in the broader East Asian realm (Yasuo, 1987). McCarthy (2010) highlighted the accord between Western feminist perspectives and modern Japanese philosopher such as Watsuji’s view (1889-1960) of the body. Watsuji’s philosophical discussion focused on the somatic and the affective and the interdependence of the two which is underpinned by Buddhist, Confucian and Shinto ideas. For example, Watsuji used the term ningen (human) to explain the nondualism or embodied nature of an individual that explains the continuous interactions between the self and community, and self and other. A self that is not fixed but rich and dynamic, and fundamentally linked to others.

Indeed, there are multiple alternatives to the entrenched Western dualism that allow us to rethink body-mind relationships, and Chinese/East Asian philosophical understandings of embodiment is one of them. This section demonstrates the epistemic knowledge and contribution of Chinese philosophical perspectives to bodily education and research and adds a critical voice to, and extends the debates perpetuated between postcolonial and Indigenous scholars and posthumanist scholars in the current intellectual landscape. It also offered examples of how Confucian ideas of the body can contribute to the recent discussion on the posthuman body.

Conclusion

What then might be the benefits of New Confucianism for a sociological imagination in bodily education and research? This paper offers three main opportunities. First, a shift is needed to recognise Chinese knowers as intellectual subjects, and to acknowledge New Confucianism as a legitimate source of knowledge for moving beyond conventional approaches of understanding dualistic bodily practices. As demonstrated, New Confucianism dissolves sociological dualisms and clears the ground for a correlative ontology that engages productively with the wider world. Second, New Confucianism invites scholars to draw on concepts that purport complementary differences to explore people’s experiences and practices. Also, ‘the unity of body and mind, the exterior and in the interior’ (Tang, 2007, p. 38) to examine the entanglement of the human-technology-environment in relation to educating the body. This has the potential to rethink the dominant embodiment experiences in contemporary Western bodily research and pedagogical practices. Third, moving towards a postmonolingual approach to researching embodiment demands monolingual scholars to consciously take up the challenge to extend their onto-epistemological knowledge. New Confucianism perspectives can be used to reimagine and disrupt normative assumptions of bodies positioned as healthy or unhealthy, dualistic gendered ontologies, and mind-body tension. The intention of this paper has been to mobilise Chinese theoretical and linguistic resources in widening the knowledge base in embodiment research, and to open up a discursive space to challenge, think through, and invite scholars to engage in New Confucianism as a theoretical framework for bodily education and research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions [grant number 796282].

Notes

1 Fricker (2007) characterised epistemic justice in two forms: ‘testimonial injustice, in which someone is wronged in their capacity as a giver of knowledge and hermeneutical injustice, in which someone is wronged in their capacity as a subject of social understanding’ (p. 7).

2 Man (2016) discussed the vital force ‘qi’ (气) as the central bodily substance and matter which is different from our rational mind but both are inter-related in the sense that the mind is to govern the qi.