Reconsidering the Life of Power

<p><b>Offers a compelling intercultural perspective on body art self and society.</b></p><p><i>Reconsidering the Life of Power</i> examines Chinese perspectives on bodily self-cultivation and explores how these can be resources for working past the ritual scripts of everyday life. In recent decades European and American thinkers like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler have called attention to the way that people live out ritual scripts in order to be recognized by other people such that they might survive. Philosophers in China however have a long history of considering ritual not just in terms of confining power structures but also in terms of <i>empowering</i> artistic self-cultivation. Out of this convergence a response to Butler's <i>The Psychic Life of Power</i> becomes possible along with fascinating implications for improving real-world experience.</p><p>James Garrison looks at art and aesthetics as a way of responding positively to the vicissitudes of everyday life. This means reframing ritual practice in domains like meditation yoga tai chi chuan dance calisthenics fashion and beyond as a kind of work that delves into and unearths society's long-accruing unconscious habits in a way that makes conscious one's everyday speech comportment countenance and presence. The everyday body thus becomes an artwork speaking in novel ways to the everyday self by revealing an alternative to the programmed ritual scripts through which most of us tend to survive. <i>Reconsidering the Life of Power</i> offers a compelling contemporary intercultural perspective on body art self and society that bridges theory and practice by providing an actionable yet deeply philosophical approach to enhancing life.</p>