Movement, Mimesis and Meaning in the dancing Body By Prof. Arindam Chakrabarti

Topic - Movement, Mimesis and Meaning in the dancing Body Insights into Abhinavgupta and Merleau Ponty By Prof. Arindam Chakrabarti
Speekar - Prof. Arindam Chakrabarti
Prof. Emeritus hawaii University, USA ICPR, Overseas Scholar
Venue:- Sociology Seminar Hall, PU Chandigarh
Department of Philosophy, Panjab University Chandigarh

Arindam Chakrabarti
Arindam Chakrabarti is currently a professor of philosophy at Ashoka University, India.
Arindam Chakrabarti earned a D.Phil from Oxford University and is currently a Professor of Philosophy and Director of Center for South Asian Studies, at University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. Philosophy of language and logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and Indian philosophy are his major areas of specialization. He has been a Visiting Professor at Institute of Advanced Studies in Edinburgh, UK, the Sanskrit University in Tirupati, India, at Trinity College Cambridge, and at the National Institute of Advanced Study, Bangalore, India. In his teaching and research Professor Chakrabarti has been trying to combine analytic, classical Indian (especially Nyāya and Kashmir Shaivism) and continental philosophies.

Besides numerous papers in journals and anthologies, his major publications include his book on negative existentials and fictional discourse Denying Existence, an introduction to 20th century Western epistemology in Sanskrit, and five books in Bangla, the latest on the philosophy of food and clothing. His co-edited volumes include Knowing from Words (with B.K.Matilal), Universals, Concepts and Qualities (with P.F. Strawson), Apoha: Buddhist Nominalism (with Mark Siderits and Tom Tillemans), and Mahabharata Now (with Sibaji Bandyopadhyay). The Eastern Philosophy of Consciousness and the Humanities Project (EPOCH Project) with its focus areas on imagination, concepts and emotion, has recently taken off under his direction.

Abstract
"Nartaka ātmā" (नर्तक आत्‌मा ॥ (S'iva sūtra III.9). The Self is defined in the Kashmir Shaiva tradition as "a dancer". A disembodied cartesian self or an ubiquitous (vibhu) Nyaya self cannot move in space. Much of Vedantic and Buddhist spirituality takes the body as a bondage, as an impediment to moksa /liberation. Yet, if liberation consists in recognition (pratyabhijna) of the self's essential identity with Shiva-who is the "king of all dancers" (nat.arăja)-- then the body of the dancing soul could not be a bondage but the very vehicle through which we can self-relish the Divine cosmic creative freedom (svatantrya)

In this lecture we shall consider Bharata-Abhinavagupta's theory of abstract pure dance (nr.tta) through the lens of Merleau Ponty's phenomenological analysis of "motility". Though his phenomenology of proprioception is not directly concerned with aesthetic rapture of a dancer, the "bodily subjectivity" the felt flexibility that he talks about could be shown to be continuous with the embodied self's reflexive feeling of "wonder at the rule-guided yet liberating rhythmic movements of Dance that Tand.u-a dance-disciple of Shiva taught Bharata Muni. What is it like for a dancer-soul to marvel at this kinetic poetry that her body can freely compose and thereby enjoy this liberating redistribution of the proprioceptive bodily senses and affordances in the joints and curves of the body?