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In recent years and, in light of the latest developments in the field of neurotechnology, some critics have claimed that mind uploading could become technically feasible in a not-too-distant future. While transhumanist critics embrace this procedure and dream of a postbiological future in which human beings possess greater cognitive, emotional, and sensorial abilities, the critical posthumanists warn of the risks inherent to the idea of leaving biology behind to lead a virtual life in cyberspace. Significantly, these warnings reverberate in some twenty-first century cultural productions such as Mark McClelland’s Upload (2012), a novel that is also representative of an emerging trend of SF novels written by tech professionals. Although the novel may seem to be at first a defense of simulated life, this work aims to prove that McClelland’s narrative choices ultimately uncover a critical posthumanist view of embodiment as an essential part of human identity.

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My experience and observation of the physical manifestations of insecurities as a dancer and sociologist led me to develop questions surrounding kinesthetic intelligence, critical cerebral processing, the concept of a “self,” and feelings of embodiment. I became interested in how these reconcile under structures that promote external validation, alienation, and logical thought. This article describes a research-creation project that I began by choreographing a dance with six conservatory students researching themes of alienation, socialization, and scripted behavior. These dancers were individually interviewed about the creation process as well as their experience of dancing. I also conducted a contact improvisation event and group interview with the six dancers and three sociology students. An analysis of the results revealed that they felt a pervasive sense of monotony and disenchantment occurring with routine behavior and interaction in everyday life. They were able to disrupt this disenchantment by working to generate a sense of their own embodiment. Specifically, this entailed attending to concrete details, personal responsiveness, and acknowledging their own impulses toward and away from others. This allowed them to connect to a “self” and to others. In addition, novel physical interactions helped facilitate an understanding of where attention lies, amplified social connection, and combated alienation and disenchantment.

The thinking in this short report emerged from the author's participation as an online learner in the TBI 101 course on Mabel Elsworth Todd by Pamela Matt, The Thinking Body Institute. Participation in this course, during a Ph.D. internship period at C-DaRE, Coventry University as a visiting researcher in 2018, prompted reflections on e-learning and feelings of embodied or disembodied experience, particularly in close connection to the author's doctoral research on sensory and creative possibilities of a somatic approach to improvisation in performer training. This report reviews the pedagogical and technological challenges of the TBI 101 study programme in order to better understand the potential connections between (dis)embodied research and online learning, and to offer a foundation for a somatic point of view on e-learning. The thinking offered here investigates different levels of (dis)embodied engagement, suggesting it is dependent on the synergy of the participant's learning style, the technological platform and the pedagogical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay develops aspects and implications of Poteat's critique of the Enlightenment's critical paradigm and development of post-critical thinking in dialogue with Pascal in his dissertation and four post-critical thinkers who figured prominently in his project: Kierkegaard, Merleau- Ponty, Wittgenstein, and Polanyi. Then it critiques from a Poteatian perspective the critical, dualistic, discarnate picture that still dominates the academy, especially attending to the cognitive science of religion. CSR involves both a reductive physicalism involving unconscious mental mechanisms and a re-inscribing of subjectivistic or mentalist (alleged) beliefs in disembodied supernatural and human spirits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds nuance to existing human capital theory by critiquing the rationality principle underpinning this theory that leads to the disembodiment of skills and knowledge. Accordingly, individual investment in education is said to be rationally calculated on a cost‐and‐benefit basis, and a collective of individual skills and knowledge enables social development. In contrast, by using the Heideggerian perspective of engagement with the world, it is argued in this article that such decisions can be affected and reshaped by individuals’ embodied interactions with others under the effects of socio‐political norms and practices. As such, investment in education and training and its outcomes are socially and politically shared and enacted. This argument is supported by an examination of the evolving human capital policies in Vietnam that disembody human capital from individuals’ embeddedness in the world. In Vietnam, human capital is considered as a diplomatic, political, economic, and innovative commodity for socioeconomic development and participation in global competition for talent. This public commodity is collective, symbolic, and quantifiable. This disembodied commodity is produced through a joint‐venture effort among individuals, the Vietnamese Government's exercise of multilateralism, other governments, and foreign universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]