Problematising the Body in Physical Education

This book is based on the words of Post. Dr Carmen Lúcia Soares and Dr Andrea Moreno. Carmen Lúcia Soares and Dr Andrea Moreno who highlighted the quality of the research the originality of the methodology and the elegance of the writing. It takes Michel Foucault's notion of the body as a starting point for thinking about Physical Education. For this philosopher the body is a modellable surface produced from historically localised political technologies that are influenced by relations of power and knowledge. Thus the very production of knowledge about the body is an exercise of power over it and power and knowledge are related. Throughout the history of Physical Education in Brazil power-knowledge about the body has prioritised a simplified translation of the body reducing it through human anatomy and physiology. However intensifying in the 1980s new ways of understanding the body which took into account historical political and social aspects appeared in the field. From this context and based on the Foucauldian methodological principles of discourse analysis we conducted interviews with Physical Education teachers in order to understand how they problematise the body in their classes.