Our long-term collaborator Piotr Konderak (who interalia helped develop the Semiotic Hierarchy model), will be visiting us in Lund again, presenting new angles to his ongoing research on the roots of experience and intentionality, seeking them in pre-natal embodiment. All are warmly welcome to the room, or to the zoom link, starting from 15:00 for introductions.

Inspired by Sheets-Johnstone’s phenomenological analyses of movement and dance (1999; 2015), I trace the roots of bodily expressivity—exemplified in spontaneous dancing—back to prenatal life. Considering the foetus as a lived body, rather than merely a living one, I try to interpret available empirical observations of foetal activities (Piontelli 2015) in phenomenological terms. Concepts such as body schema, retention and protention are of crucial importance here. In particular, I discuss proto-spatial and proto-temporal dimensions of foetal bodily experience as sedimented upon pre-natal activity. In other words, foetal proto-temporality and proto-spatiality are considered foundational for later expressive movement of the “ekstatic body” (Sheets-Johnstone 2015) and—ultimately—for the emergence of reflective consciousness (Ciaunica & Crucianelli 2019). 

Ciaunica, A., Crucianelli, L. (2019). Minimal self-awareness from within – A developmental perspective. Journal of Consciousness Studies 26(3-4), 207–226.

Lymer, J. (2011). Merleau-Ponty and the affective maternal-foetal relation. Parrhesia 13, 126–143.

Piontelli, A. (2015). Development of Normal Fetal Movements: The Last 15 Weeks of Gestation. Berlin: Springer.

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (1999). Emotion and movement. A beginning empirical-phenomenological analysis of their relationship. Journal of Consciousness Studies 6(11–12), 259–277.

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2015). The Phenomenology of Dance. Temple University Press.