Abstract:

In the contemporary era, the body has assumed an increasing centrality being considered a resource available to the individual for the construction of his own identity and his own life path, a fundamental tool for establishing relationships with others and with the surrounding environment.
Everything that surrounds us becomes recognizable and habitable thanks to the exploratory and constructive actions that we move using our body, which is continuously conditioned by a vocabulary of shared language that promotes the acquisition of certain patterns of perception, action and personal construction.
The educational relevance of the discourse on the body concerns, therefore, the ways in which we learn to use a specific body language, to attribute sense and meaning to it and to use it in the relationship with the other.

The first important studies on the body, in particular those related to the concept of Embodiment, supported by the reflections of cultural phenomenology attentive to the subjectivity and experience of individuals, have highlighted how the human body is not a simple biological attribute or an additional quality. In addition to being, in fact, a cultural and symbolic phenomenon, firmly anchored to a particular historical moment, the body represents the driving force from which our perceptions and sensations start. Starting from these reflections, we tried to investigate the complex relationship between corporeality and disability, paying particular attention to the contribution of the performing arts on the representation of disability and on the need to promote an education to corporeality that knows how to enhance the diversity and uniqueness of everyone.

In this perspective, moreover, we want to outline, with a precise educational purpose, the didactic tools useful for promoting a personal sense of the body that goes beyond any form of objectivity and obviousness, also offering people with disabilities a way to feel at home in and with their own body.

Keywords:

Corporeality, disability, body language, education, identity.