Letters to my mum
The dance of Eros and Thanatos
Butoh and Queer Pedagogy
“The Dance of Eros and Thanatos for Queer Pedagogy” brings to light the need for transformation of the human organism through dance and ritual.
A book dedicated to transformation.
The desire for transformation has been in the human since its birth. Through ritual and transformation, the human organism aspires to return to where it came from and finds the possibility to connect the profane dimension with the sacred dimension of existence. In this approach, as witnessed by cosmogonies, the boundaries between the great dichotomies at the base of our everyday language are narrowed. In this ritual dimension are laid the foundations -pedagogical, aesthetic and ethical- for the affirmation of an existential dignity of the human being, able to become aware of itself through the free play of its expression.
Why queer pedagogy?
On the basis of the biological characteristics that distinguish two different procreative modalities, the naturalization of the roles between masculine and feminine has been created, which has led to the creation of the stereotypes and conventions known to us today. What is at stake is not only the freedom of expression of the human organism, it is the possibility of leading a life worthy of being lived, without suffering the violence of a society that makes it unbearable because it does not conform to the norm.
Dance is freedom of expression
Butoh dance and queer pedagogy
Among the most iconic images of butoh is the goddess of compassion Kannon. A Japanese androgynous divinity, both female and male, whose power lies in metamorphosis, precisely for this reason its own sex is uncertain. Bound to the mythological figure of Kannon, the butoh dance aims to express the mystical union with the forces of nature, giving maximum respect to all the elements of existence, including the human being.
Both Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, founders of this ritual dance, used to dance in male and female costumes, to stage both their components17. In Butoh, distinctions with each other disappear, including gender distinctions and distinctions between human beings and nature.
What does queer mean?
The androgynous myth
The structure of the book
The research is developed in a theoretical and laboratory path. The First Chapter of this book is dedicated to the roots of queer pedagogy, which are to be found in the contemporary debate on gender theories, in the research on the pedagogy of expression at the Mimesis Lab in Rome and in my artistic research. The Second Chapter focuses on the exposition of a philosophical background to which this work owes from a theoretical point of view and in the vocabulary used; in particular, we will focus on the vision of the American philosopher John Dewey and on Pirandello’s “punto vivo”. The Third Chapter explores the alchemical aesthetics of butoh to reconstruct its vision of the world. The Fourth Chapter has the ambition to note down a methodology for a queer pedagogy, which has been deepened not only from a theoretical point of view but also on the basis of several laboratory experiences.