Special issue: The Body

Two months ago our editorial team met to decide the theme for the first printed version of our magazine, which came out in June. Where we do start from? What will our basis be? What emerged was: The Body.
We planned the first magazines in this series in the form of a trilogy. Even knowing that it was fanciful, we found it difficult to separate out the physical body from the emotional and the mental. All the questions we wanted to address from the perspective of one of them involved the other two. We are a unity made up of different yet interconnected levels, and it is impossible to treat them in isolation.
Our starting point is that body which we all are: as a microcosm. We listen to people from very different fields who work with physicality: dancers, actors, athletes, doctors, physiotherapists, artists, musicians, anthropologists. We look at malnutrition and its dire consequences in childhood, when the organism and its nervous system is going through its most substantial period of growth. Inevitably, the harm that is done afflicts the social body as a whole.
We investigate fashion. The constant need for change in the clothing that is supposed to cover and protect our bodies. The strange customs that have ill-treated and suppressed the body during the course of our history lead us to consider the deeper meaning of the concept of beauty, which so often fails to accept or respect our physical appearance. And we reflect also on another strange conception that we have inherited as an element of our culture, which tends to associate the body with the terrestrial, or the “less worthy”. Travelling south, we find a very different vision of the relation with the land on visiting a Mapuche community set on recreating links with their ancestors, and whose traditions express a profound respect for Mother Earth, the life-giver.
We cross over to new dimensions where the corporeal becomes less tangible: virtual worlds. When we come to focus on biopolitics, we see the interaction between biology and society.
Body, emotion, intellect. We played at dividing them and found that it was not feasible. Reality is entire. It is surprising how, without realizing it, we let ourselves be taken in by thought which, being a specific function of mind, uses division as the method for responding to practical necessities. If I count three stars in the sky, does that mean I can separate them out from the rest?
The reader is invited to trace his or her own meaning. We consider that the mission of this magazine lies in opening windows so that whoever draws near to them may feel inspired to carry on looking, and more deeply.

Dora Vidoni

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