Beyond the Flesh : Rethinking the Body through Phenomenology in Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis and Waltz’s Körper and noBody
Eger Journal of English Studies January 1, 2025 Hadeel Ramez Endewy
The paper argues that Sarah Kane's play 4.48 Psychosis and Sasha Waltz's dance pieces Körper and noBody destabilize the body's ontological boundaries by reconfiguring psychosis as an alternative mode of being-in-the-world and dissolving corporeal boundaries through movement. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts of the lived body and Drew Leder's absent body, it shows that both works challenge binaries between self/world and subject/object, revealing perception as inherently participatory and entangled with the world's Becoming. Despite different media, theatre and dance converge to redefine corporeal experience, blurring physicality and abstraction.