“What Is It You Want to Learn?”: Somatic Awareness in the Tradition of Elsa Gindler
Theo Davis
Theory & Event April 1, 2026 DOI: 10.1353/tae.2026.a986561 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that somatic awareness practices, originating with Elsa Gindler, resist containment by any specific political framework, and that embodied knowing is fundamentally empty and beyond conceptual or positional capture. |
Abstract
Abstract:This essay discusses somatic awareness practices created by Elsa Gindler and taught by her students Charlotte Selver, Carola Speads, Susan Gregory, and Stefan Laeng. Gindler’s somatics originated in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and her emigré students continued the work into the context of the postwar US Human Potential Movement and into our own time. Somatic awareness echoes between fascist biopolitics, phenomenology, and liberatory turns to the body in critical and political theory, yet the freedom of body-awareness is uncontainable by any specific politics or context. Embodied knowing is not located but empty, beyond our thinking, concepts, and positions.