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Deformation of the Human Body

In the Sorbonne lectures on the philosophical and psychological inquiry of child development, Merleau-Ponty offers a fundamental insight about imitation. Denying the representation-based explanation of imitation, he proposes that gestures occur without representation through the body-object relation, such as “precommunication” based on the works of body schema. Merleau-Ponty’s thought could be examined by way of more practical examples of body techniques. This paper describes the experience of object manipulation, in particular, Bunraku puppetry. Because three puppeteers manipulate a single puppet together in Bunraku, this example might be a challenge to an ordinary assumption that a body is owned by an individual and that inner thoughts control the body. Merleau-Ponty’s insight suggests that the puppeteers share another type of body schema that is not internalized to their individual bodies but emerges afresh in each performance through collaborative movement.