ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the mind and body in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin and Constantin Stanislavsky: the body as the agency which acts and the body that is an image for an observer. Bakhtin has no conception of any such progressive and continuing learning with and about one's own body. Another important feature of Stanislavsky's approach is that it is psycho-physical. Bakhtin focuses on the value but omits to mention that this naming of the body also allows infants to recognise these discrete body parts and thus learn how to piece together an image of themselves as articulated moving structures. Bakhtin's history of the body begins with the antique body which he argues was entirely external. Stanislavsky argues that as an artistic instrument the actor's body is not a given but has to be created through training. One could argue that what drove him in his research was the demand that acting should involve this dimension of personal experience.
