Are We Heading Toward a Disembodied Education?

Han argues that the “new” power of (digital)neoliberalism rejected the body as the object of industrial production and social control. The body has been reduced to a commodity to be “purchased” in gyms and through beauty and health treatments. The end of the phase of social control organized through defined spaces (schools, barracks, offices, prisons, gyms, etc.) results in a stronger transition to self-containment. Bodies are no longer the objects of control because we submit to the power by simply clicking “like” (a quasi-bodiless action) without actually being physically constrained. Is the body becoming obsolete in education? Even those facing this “dilemma” (Panciroli & Rivoltella, 2023) hesitate to explore the theme of the already marginalized body. Will the “absent presence” of the pandemic permanently characterize education? A corporeal, human, and analogical turn (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011) in education is therefore necessary to valorize adults’ and pupils’ bodily experiences, limits, and errors.