Body(ies), Communication, and Culture. Academic Assessment of the Body and Corporality as Subject Matters of Communication

Abstract

Communication has privileged the study of the so-called media and addressed interpersonal and intersubjective processes to a much lesser extent; perhaps, this is why there are not many reflections on the body and corporality in this field. Beyond studies on interpersonal communication or the categories referring to non-verbal communication, reflection on the corporeal nature of communication and bodies —understood as vehicles for communication or means of communication of individuals with the world— is undoubtedly insufficient. These pages present a general assessment of the body as a subject matter of communication in the Ibero-American scholarly environment to pose some challenges to communication research —which is also cultural research—, whose subject matter continues to be questioned. As a theoretical essay, this paper uses a documentary method with a specific historiographic view since it is interested in providing an overview of the place that reflection on the body has occupied in communication research. Although the body and corporality have not been topics historically considered by communication research, their approach in our knowledge domain gives rise to suggestive research topics in the current communicative ecology, overshadowed somehow and in particular contexts by digital communication. Thus, incorporating the body and corporality as theme lines in the reflection on communication and culture can undoubtedly enrich the academic field concerned theoretically and empirically.