Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Science - Department of General Pedagogy

Research Interest

 

  • Processes of Bildung
  • Embodiment
  • Ethics Education
  • Education for Sustainable Development
  • Curriculum Development

 

 

PhD-Project

 

Bildung with Capoeira. Videographic and phenomenological studies on practicing (Übung) the Afro-Brazilian martial art

 

The research project is situated at the intersection of the theory of Bildung, the theory of practicing (Übung), and empirical, phenomenological research. It aims to explore the Bildung potential of repetition-based, bodily, non-linguistic experiences, such as those that occur when practicing martial arts. Theories of Bildung in the German-speaking world have so far focused on discontinuous or crisis moments in the educational process (Koller, 2018). However, they can hardly capture repetitive and bodily experiences as experiences of Bildung (Brinkmann, 2021, pp. 73-74). My work addresses this desideratum. To do so, I draw on the phenomenological approach to bodily, motor experiences (Merleau-Ponty, 1966; Waldenfels, 2021), on the theory of practice that builds on it (Brinkmann, 2012; 2021), and on pedagogical phenomenological videography (Brinkmann & Rödel, 2018). The dissertation is located in theoretical-empirical research or theoretical empiricism (cf. Brinkmann, 2015), which aims to capture empirical experiences qualitatively and descriptively and design new theoretical perspectives from the data and evaluations obtained.

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines dance, fighting, and play. Its origins lie in colonial Brazil in the 19th century, where it was practiced mainly by enslaved Africans. Because of its history and cultivation of African forms of movement, music, and community, it is considered a practice of resistance (Assunção, 1999) that can be fruitful for a decolonial pedagogy (Abib, 2019). Since the 1990s, capoeira has been studied mainly in anthropology, history, and sociology. However, until now, it has not been approached from an educational theory perspective and explored with a videographic method.

Using the theory of practicing, the theory of Bildung, and videography, it is possible to approach the experiences of capoeira practitioners as non-linear, productive, and formative processes in which the individual actors form themselves in the community and transform it simultaneously. This approach to formative experiences of Bildung differs from perspectives on practicing capoeira as linear, receptive enculturation (Downey, 2012) or as acquiring a habitus (Delamont et al., 2017). Moreover, the phenomenological description of practices that can be experienced in a “decolonizing” way reveals the decolonial potential of capoeira. It contributes to an educational theoretical framing of decolonial approaches and a “decolonial” expansion of contemporary theories of Bildung.

I understand the experiences of Bildung as experiential processes in which the person’s relationship to self and the world changes (Buck, 2019; Benner, 2019; Brinkmann, 2022). My thesis is that formative experiences in capoeira occur in the context of steady, challenging, and repetitive practicing in which the bodily self is formed in the capoeira community.

I examine a sample of six video sequences collected, selected, and analyzed based on the pedagogical phenomenological videography (cf. Brinkmann & Rödel, 2018). The sequences are treated as typical ways of practicing capoeira and analyzed in data sessions using the phenomenological operations of description, reduction, and variation. The analyzed examples will be compared and contrasted to critically complement existing theories or generate new theories with an empirical basis (cf. Brinkmann, 2015).

My analysis’s results highlight the importance of the embodied, social, and negative dimensions of the experiences of Bildung in Capoeira. During the analysis, a critical extension of the conventional theories of Bildung becomes necessary. That includes, first, an extension based on a theory of practicing that can capture steady and repetitive processes as an educationally relevant formation. This extension posits the experiences of (still-)not-being-able-to as a form of negativity characteristic of practicing, which differs from other negative experiences by its subtlety, long duration, and repetitiveness. On the other hand, it calls for a decolonial extension that recovers and emphasizes the communal dimensions of education. Education is thus determined as formation and transformation in community, to community, and of community. That also means identifying in the educative experience characteristic moments of subversion and individuation (Brinkmann, 2016) that can also reach and transform the community of practitioners.