ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses Mary Starks Whitehouse’s notion of authentic movement vis-à-vis Martin Heidegger’s notion of authenticity developed in his magnum opus Being and Time. Using Heidegger’s unique understanding of authenticity, I ask whether movement could be authentic in a philosophical-ontological sense. Is there a movement that belongs to each one of us existentially—that belongs to me as “I am”, as opposed to our repertoire of movements which consists of movements we imitated, identified with (consciously or unconsciously), learnt, as well as movements that are given to us by way of our habitus. If existence is prior to any of its characterizations, could there be a movement that is mine in an existential sense, before my movements are historically and socially situated in ways that are given to me? That is, could movement be an existentiale—a mode of Being? I argue that philosophy and DMT come close in acknowledging that movement is a medium of authenticity and that genuine movement is essentially a disclosedness of our fundamental connection with our being.
