Abstract
My presentation, titled In-corp-orating the Spirit, contributed a cross-cultural perspective to the symposium’s exploration of embodied knowledge. It engaged with questions surrounding the differences and commonalities in how embodied knowledge is interpreted, particularly in relation to the assumed link between knowledge and thinking, and between knowledge and the body.
While performing as a medium in China, Zhaiyu’s physical body becomes a permeable membrane through which the material and the immaterial, the visible and the invisible converge: during her practice, the invisible spirit of the ancestor or deity is made visible through embodiment. Most importantly, the entity’s divine knowledge is literally embodied by Zhaiyu and is used to help ‘guests’ who have come to seek advice.
The symposium highlighted “the stimulating breadth and diversity of enquiry into embodied knowledges taking place at Edith Cowan University and elsewhere”.