ABSTRACT
This essay proposes another way of defining embodiment: as first affordance. What this means is that when we sing, when we dance, when we train, when we practice, what we are doing is returning to grapple again and again with the primary site of living and being. The essay starts by asking why theorists of practice have so often skipped over the body when thinking about craft and skill. It ends by arguing that embodiment is an ethically and politically necessary concept in the current historical moment because of the pressing need to redraw distinctions between ecology and technology. Through the image of the city, I suggest that embodiment as a concept may no longer be relevant if and when human society becomes ecologically sustainable. There is then an essential and urgent relationship between the climate crisis and the idea of embodiment. 1
