The body is a self-developable means, not passive imprint or natural expression

Evidence

The concept of habitus invites us to analyze any assemblage of embodied aptitudes not as systems of meanings to be deciphered. In Mauss’s view, the human body was not to be regarded simply as the passive recipient of “cultural imprints” that can be imposed on the body by repetitive discipline-still less as the active source of “natural expressions” clothed in local history and culture-but as the self-developable means by which the subject achieves a range of human objects-from styles of physical movement (for example, walking), through modes of emotional being (for ex- well as more contemporaneous shaykhs like his fellow Hanbalis, al-Ansari al- Harawi and Abd al-Qadir, and the latter’s own shaykh, Hammad al-Dabbas. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1210

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets out the habitus concept as a third position beyond the passive-imprint and natural-expression accounts of the body.
• CANDY: The crisp either/or of body theory — imprint vs. self-developing instrument — makes for a compact, shareable distinction.
• XREF: connects to: The body is a permanent structure of being, not a contingent addition. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 870; One’s own body is lived as self, not experienced as an object. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 733; The body is a situation shaping but never determining projects — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 105 (+2 more)