ABSTRACT
The word embodiment represents how values, dispositions, and preferences from the world (re)make the body through practice and performance. The problem that presents itself when attempting to embody the past arises because one’s habitus is particular to a time, place, and social system. Embodied practices and an embodied engagement with objects help enliven the semiotics of the mise-en-scene: enhancing the what, where, and why, with how. The normative practices of any body are developed within a particular place and time. The body’s shape and actions are transfigured by what a culture considers to be natural, proper, and authentic in the world. To claim the body as archive and tool for research is to offer reenactment as a form of performance as research. Performance is meant in its widest sense, anything on a continuum from framed actions with witnesses, to staged fictions with audiences.
