Somatic theory explained

Somatic theory is a theory of human social behavior based on the somatic marker hypothesis of António Damásio. The theory proposes a mechanism by which emotional processes can guide (or bias) behavior: in particular, decision-making, the attachment theory of John Bowlby, and the self-psychology of Heinz Kohut (especially as consolidated by Allan Schore).

It draws on various philosophical models: On the Genealogy of Morals of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger on das Man, Maurice Merleau-Ponty practiced on the lived body as a center of experience, Ludwig Wittgenstein on social practices, Michel Foucault on discipline, as well as theories of performativity emerging out of the speech act theory by J. L. Austin, in point of fact was developed by Judith Butler and Shoshana Felman.^[1] Some somatic theorists have also put into somatic theory to performance in the schools of acting, the training was developed by Konstantin Stanislavski and Bertolt Brecht.

Theorists

Barbara Sellers-Young

Barbara Sellers-Young^[2] applies Damasio’s somatic-marker hypothesis to critical thinking as an embodied performance and provides a review of the theoretical literature in performance studies that supports something like Damasio’s approach:

• Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, especially bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
• Thomas Hanna’s believe that “we cannot sense without acting and we cannot act without sensing”^[3]
• Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's movement-pedagogy
• Konstantin Stanislavski’s acting theory that “in every physical action, unless it is purely mechanical, there is concealed some inner action, some feelings. This is how the two levels of life in a part are created, the inner and the outer. They are intertwined. A common purpose brings them together and reinforces the unbreakable bond.”^[4]

Edward Slingerland

Edward Slingerland^[5] applies Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis to the cognitive linguistics by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner,^[6] as well as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.^[7] In particular, Slingerland combines Fauconnier and Turner's theory of conceptual blending and Lakoff and Johnson's embodied mind theory of metaphor in his hypothesis. His goal to apply somatic theory into cognitive linguistics is to show that:

the primary purpose of achieving human scale is not to help us apprehend a situation but rather to help us to know how to feel about it. Especially in political and religious discourse--situations where speakers are attempting to influence their listeners' values and decision-making processes--, I would like to argue that the achievement of human scale is intended primarily to import normativity to the blend, which is accomplished through the recruitment of human-scale emotional-somatic reactions. This argument is essentially an attempt to connect conceptual blending theorists with those neuroscientists who argue for the importance of somatic states and emotional reactions in human value creation and decision-making.^[8]

Douglas Robinson

Douglas Robinson first began developing a somatic theory of language for a keynote presentation at the 9th American Imagery Conference in Los Angeles, in October 1985. It was based on Ahkter Ahsen's theory of somatic response to images as the basis for therapeutic transformations. In contradistinction to Ahsan's model, which rejected Freud's "talking cure" on the grounds that words do not awaken somatic responses, Robinson argued that there is a very powerful somatics of language. He later incorporated this notion into The Translator's Turn (1991), drawing on the (passing) somatic theories of William James, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Kenneth Burke in order to argue that somatic response may be "idiosomatic" (somatically idiosyncratic), but is typically "ideosomatic" (somatically ideological, or shaped and guided by society). Furthermore, the ideosomatics of language explain how language remains stable enough for communication to be possible. This work preceded the Damasio group's first scientific publication on the somatic-marker hypothesis in 1991,^[9] and Robinson did not begin to incorporate Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis into his somatic theory until later in the 1990s.

In Translation and Taboo (1996), Robinson drew on the proto-somatic theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Gregory Bateson to explore the ways in which the ideosomatics of taboo structure (and partly sanction and conceal) the translation of sacred texts. His first book to draw on Damasio's somatic-marker hypothesis is Performative Linguistics (2003); there he draws on J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts, Jacques Derrida's theory of iterability, and Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism, to argue that performativity as an activity of the speaking body is grounded in somatic theory. He also draws on Daniel Simeoni's application of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus in order to argue that his somatics of translation as developed in The Translator's Turn actually explains translation norms more fully than Gideon Toury's account in Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond (1995).^[10]

In 2005, Robinson began writing a series of books exploring somatic theory in different communicative contexts: modernist/formalist theories of estrangement (Robinson 2008), translation as ideological pressure (Robinson 2011), first-year writing (Robinson 2012), and the refugee experience, (de)colonization, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma (Robinson 2013).^[11]

In Robinson's articulation, the somatic theory has four main planks:

1. The stabilization of social constructions through somatic markers.
2. The interpersonal sharing of such stabilization through the mimetic somatic transfer.
3. The regulatory (ideosomatic) circulation or reticulation of such somatomimeses through an entire group in the somatic exchange.
4. The "klugey" nature of social regulation through the somatic exchange, leading to various idiosomatic failures and refusals to be fully regulated.

In addition, he has tied additional concepts to somatic theory along the way: the proprioception of the body politic as a homeostatic balancing between too much familiarity and too much strangeness (Robinson 2008); tensions between loconormativity and xenonormativity, the exosomatization of places, objects, and skin color, and paleosomaticity (Robinson 2013); ecosis and icosis (unpublished work).

Stephanie Fetta

Stephanie Fetta’s approach to somatic theory weaves together an extensive array of disciplinary discourses, ranging from cognitive science and neuroscience to sociology and Sophiology. As a literary and cultural critic, Fetta draws attention to and investigates the role of the soma in her study of US Latin@/x creative texts.^[12] Her scholarly work broadens the scope of somatic theory and literary scholarship by drawing support from the natural and social sciences to position the soma as a “psychobiological agent” and social actor, and thus an overlooked (albeit indispensable) lens in the study of social power (2018, 37). Building on both biblical and contemporary uses of the term, Fetta reconceptualizes the soma as ‘the emotional, intelligent and communicative body’ and explains that it refers to the gestures of the physical body in internal response to external social pressures. Hence, she is one of the first somatic theorists to employ the term soma along these lines—despite the current spate of studies in neurology, cognitive literary studies, behavioral science, body studies, affect theory, theories of mind (ToM) and philosophy of mind (PoM), which piece together the connections among cognitive processes, bodily feeling reactions, and evaluative perceptions.

In 2018, she published Shaming into Brown: Somatic Transactions of Race in Latina/o Literature^[13] —a detailed and analytic transdisciplinary study that renders the soma as “a pervasive yet unexpected site of subjectivity.” She employs this conception of soma as a primary tool to investigate intersectional racialization and the transactions of race in her case studies of Latin@/x literature (xiii). This book develops somatic analysis as a line of investigation, which reviewers maintain has applications in fields such as the humanities, critical race theory, neurology, behavioral studies, and so on. Somatic analysis has inspired, and been cited in, a growing number of academic, personal,^[14] and artistic works.^[15]

Fetta’s key applications of somatic analysis are as follows:

• Racial Shaming: a social technology that uses the somatic body to materialize Brown into social fact. Her thesis is anchored in two psychoanalytic theories: bioenergetic analysis, developed by Alexander Lowen, and affect theory, put forth by Silvan Tomkins.
• Scenes of Racialization: a social practice in which “bodies impose social asymmetries through the somatic expression” (2018, xv). Fetta identifies four steps, or somatic sequences, through which the notion of race conditions personal and intersubjective interactions. The racializer begins by (1) identifying phenotypic and somatic cues as a reason to stymie somatic mirroring and withdraw interpersonal rapport with the racialized interlocutor, blocking any empathy toward her or him. This leads, in turn, to (2) social rejection and somatic dissonance, which functions as a source of shame. In line with Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis, she argues (3) socially and culturally crafted sensory scripts are applied, (4) completing the process of racialization with a somatic expression of disgust, as registered through the senses (vision, audition, and olfaction).
• Internal Soma: Fetta examines racialization from the perspective of the somatic interior body. In her case study of Oscar ‘Zeta’ Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), she takes heed of the parallels between Oscar’s struggle with internalized self-loathing and his nonconforming somatic stomach.^[16]
• Somatic Portrayal: a process relied on by successful Method actors, in which actors must override their own somatic expression by inhabiting and portraying the soma of their character. Fetta further complicates the performance goal of Method acting’s the purportedly real somatic portrayal and contends that such portrayal may “rub up against another style of acting [she] refers to as body image management […] which lacks the naturalness of lived somatic expression” (2018, 95). Extended to the concept of magico nanny, somatic performance is exacted on social inferiors, whose true somatic expression could betray vulnerability to shaming or even violence.^[17]
• The Soma and Sophia: Fetta also (re)introduces Sophia, the second figure in certain Christian trinities, to literary analysis and somatic theory. She explains that Andres Montoya’s poetry collection, The Ice Worker Sings and Other Poems (1999), provides another vision of the soma—a spiritual or divine soma, one that transforms pain, suffering, and sin through the sacred figure of Sophia. Thereby, she claims that Sophia is not only a biblical figure but also a powerful analysis of the divine soma.

Further reading

• Damasio, Antonio R. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam.
• Damasio, Antonio R. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt.
• Damasio, Antonio R. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. New York: Harcourt.
• Felman, Shoshana. (1980/2003). The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan With J. L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages. Translated by Catherine Porter. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Fetta, Stephanie. (2016). "A Bad Attitude and A Bad Stomach: The Soma in Oscar 'Zeta' Acosta’s The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo." Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 6.1: 89-109.
• Fetta, Stephanie. (2018). Shaming into Brown: Somatic Transactions of Race in Latina/o Literature. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
• Hanna, Thomas. (1995). "What is Somatics?" In Don Hanlon Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath and Gesture, 341-53. Berkeley: North Atlantic.
• Robinson, Douglas. (1991). The Translator’s Turn. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Robinson, Douglas. (1996). Translation and Taboo. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
• Robinson, Douglas. (2003). Performative Linguistics: Speaking and Translating as Doing Things With Words. London and New York: Routledge.
• Robinson, Douglas. (2008). Estrangement and the Somatics of Literature: Tolstoy, Shklovsky, Brecht. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Robinson, Douglas. (2011). Translation and the Problem of Sway. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Robinson, Douglas. (2012). First-Year Writing and the Somatic Exchange. New York: Hampton.
• Robinson, Douglas. (2013). Displacement and the Somatics of Postcolonial Culture. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, forthcoming.
• Sellers-Young, Barbara. (2002). "Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body and Critical Thinking." Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 3.2 (August).
• Sellers-Young, Barbara (1998) "Somatic Processes: Convergence of Theory and Practice," Theatre Topics 8/2 (September 1998) 173-187.
• Sellers-Young, Barbara (1999) "Technique and the Embodied Actor," Theatre Research International 24/1 (Spring 199) 89-102.
• Sellers-Young, Barbara (2008) “Consciousness, Contemplation and the Academy,” Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts, 9/1 (April) 1-15.
• Sellers-Young, Barbara (2013) “Stillness in Motion – Motion in Stillness: Contemplative Practice and the Performing Arts”, Embodied Consciousness – Performance Technologies, New York: Palgrave.
• Slingerland, Edward G. (2005). "Conceptual Blending, Somatic Marking, and Normativity: A Case Example from Ancient China." Cognitive Linguistics 16.3: 557-584.
• Slingerland, Edward G., Eric Blanchard, and Lyn Boyd-Judson. (2007). "Collision with China: Conceptual Metaphor Analysis, Somatic Marking, and the EP3 Incident." International Studies Quarterly 51: 53-77.
• Stanislavski, Konstantin. (1961/1989). Creating a Role. Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. London and New York: Routledge.

Notes and References

1. Felman, Shoshana. (1980/2003). The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan With J.L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages. Translated by Catherine Porter. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2. Sellers-Young, Barbara. (2002). “Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body and Critical Thinking” . Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts 3.2 (August).
3. Hanna, Thomas. (1995). “What is Somatics?” In Don Hanlon Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath and Gesture, 345. Berkeley: North Atlantic.
4. Stanislavski, Konstantin. (1961/1989). Creating a Role, 228. Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. London and New York: Routledge, 1989.
5. Slingerland, Edward G. "Conceptual Blending, Somatic Marking, and Normativity: A Case Example from Ancient China." Cognitive Linguistics 16.3: 557-584. Also Slingerland, Edward G., Eric Blanchard, and Lyn Boyd-Judson. (2007). "Collision with China: Conceptual Metaphor Analysis, Somatic Marking, and the EP3 Incident”. International Studies Quarterly 51: 53-77.
6. Fauconnier and Turner (2002), The Way We Think. New York: Basic Books.
7. Lakoff and Johnson (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.
8. "Conceptual Blending," p. 558.
9. Damasio, Antonio R., Daniel Tranel, and Hannah Damasio. (1991). "Somatic Markers and the Guidance of Behaviour: Theory and Preliminary Testing." In H.S. Levin, H.M. Eisenberg and A.L. Benton (eds.), Frontal lobe function and dysfunction, 217-229. New York: Oxford University Press
10. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995, pp. 56ff.
11. See Further Reading for bibliographical information.
12. Stephanie Fetta uses the term Latin@/x when referring to someone who is native to or descends from a Latin American or Spanish-speaking Caribbean country for the following reasons: first, this term does not reinforce the historical connotations of colonialization nor comply with governmental attempts to classify non-hegemonic persons into deceptive categories like the term Hispanic does; second, the @ does not overlook historical struggles for gender equity; third, the suffix x acknowledges the existence of gender fluidity and non-binary sexual identities.
13. Published by Ohio State University Press as part of the Cognitive Approaches to Culture series. Awarded the 2019 Modern Language Association Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies.
14. See: Delgado, Richard. (2019.) "Metamorphosis: A Minority Professor's Life." UC Davis Law Review, 53.1: 1-33. Aldama, Frederick Luis. (2019.) "PUTTING A FINGER TO THE VIBRANT BEAT OF LATINX LITERARY STUDIES TODAY." Latinx Spaces.
15. Artistic works include Kathy Davalos's performance at the MALCS Conference, July 2019.
16. Fetta, Stephanie. (2016.) "A Bad Attitude and A Bad Stomach: The Soma in Oscar 'Zeta' Acosta’s The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo." Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 6.1: 89-109.
17. The concept of magico nanny builds off of Frederick Luis Aldama’s term magicorealism argued in Postethnic Narrative Criticism (University of Texas Press, 2003) in the critique of magical realism.