Body Techniques

One research focus of the Division for Early Modern History deals with body techniques, that is, the historically changeable, culturally structured, instrumental use of the body in all its various facets. The term, coined by Marcel Mauss, is conceptually far broader than either the concept of sport, which is aligned with competition, or of physical exercise, which relates to health and wellbeing. However, in the same vein as both these concepts, body techniques may serve as both lens and symptom for investigating individual and social developments as well as fields of conflict. Body techniques also lend themselves to enquiry into their function as sources of knowledge (embodiment) and procedural (body) memory. As we can only access past body postures and movements through the media of visual and textual sources, analysing both forms of depiction and their repercussions for bodily experience plays an important role in historical and historically oriented research.

I am especially interested in practices oscillating between an instrumental use of the body and voluntary physical activities like running, diving, and swimming (see various chapters on this webpage as well as the exhibition catalogue “Life on the Move”, 2008). Furthermore, I advocate for a deeper embedding of 16th- to 18th-century sporting practices in early modern contexts (and historiographies) as well as for considering multidirectional transfers and appropriations in order to transcend not only a modernization-theoretical perspective but also the dominance of the British case. The edited volumes on “Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture” (2016) as well as the “Cultural History of Sport in the Enlightenment” (2021) can be seen as steps in this direction.

Publications on body techniques, sport and physical exercise

(Current papers and downloads are available at  academia.edu.)

Rebekka v. Mallinckrodt

  • A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Enlightenment 1650–1800 = vol. 4 of A Cultural History of Sports, London: Bloomsbury 2021, 249 pages, 47 ill.
  • “Introduction,” in Ibid., 1–27.
  • “Sporting Time and Sporting Space” (co-authored with Angela Schattner), in Ibid., 51–76.
  • “Inclusion, Exclusion, and Segregation [Race, Class, Gender],” in Ibid., 137–160.
  • “Attractive or Repugnant? Foot Races in Eighteenth-Century Germany and Britain,” in Marlo A. Burks/ John Zilcosky (eds.), The Allure of Sports in Western Culture, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2019, 145–167.
  • “Schwimmende Prinzen und schwimmende Revolutionäre. Zur politischen Ikonologie einer Körpertechnik,” in Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio/ Beate Kellner/ Ulrich Pfisterer (eds.), Die Macht der Natur – gemachte Natur. Realitäten und Fiktionen des Herrscherkörpers zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Florence: Sismel 2019, 301–342.
  • “Außer sich sein – bei sich sein – über sich hinauswachsen. Schwimmen als Praktik der Subjektivierung im langen 18. Jahrhundert,” in Michael Hohlstein/ Rudolf Schlögl/ Isabelle Schürch (eds.), Der Mensch in der Gesellschaft. Zur Vorgeschichte des modernen Subjekts in der Frühen Neuzeit, Paderborn: Schöningh 2019, 209–232.
  • “Exploring Underwater Worlds. Diving in the Late Seventeenth-/ Early Eighteenth-Century British Empire,” in Daniela Hacke/ Paul P. Musselwhite (eds.), Empire of Senses. Sensory Practices of Colonialism in Early America, Leiden: Brill 2017, 300–322.
  • “Frühneuzeitliche Sportgeschichte 2.0,” in special issue „Neue Wege der Frühneuzeitgeschichte“, ed. by Wolfgang Behringer and Justus Nipperdey, Frühneuzeit-Info 28 (2017), 117–129. 
  • Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture. New Perspectives on the History of Sports and Motion, London: Routledge 2016 (co-edited with Angela Schattner), 272 pages.
  • “Introduction,” (co-authored with Angela Schattner), in Ibid., 1–17.
  • “French Enlightenment Swimming,” in Ibid., 231–251.
  • “Taucherglocken, U-Boote und Aquanauten – Die Erschließung der Meere im 17. Jahrhundert zwischen Utopie und Experiment,” in Karin Friedrich (ed.), Die Erschließung des Raumes. Konstruktion, Imagination und Darstellung von Räumen und Grenzen im Barockzeitalter (Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 51), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014, 337–354.
  • “Beschleunigung in der Sattelzeit? – Sportliche, medizinische und soziale Perspektiven auf den Wettlauf um 1800,” in Achim Landwehr (ed.), Frühe Neue Zeiten. Zeitwissen zwischen Reformation und Revolution, Bielefeld: transcript  2012, 83–104.
  • “GutsMuths Schwimmkonzepte im europäischen Vergleich,” in Michael Krüger (ed.), Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths (1759–1839) und die philanthropische Bewegung in Deutschland, Hamburg: Feldhaus 2010, 67–77.
  • entries “Laufen/ Running,” “Leibesübungen/ Physical exercise,” “Ringen/ Wrestling,” “Rudern/ Rowing,” “Schießen/ Shooting), “Schwimmen/ Swimming,” “Tauchen/ Diving,” “Tennis/ Tennis,” “Turnier/ Tournament” and “Wettkampf/ Competition” in Friedrich Jaeger (ed.), Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit/ Encyclopedia of Early Modern History, 16 vols., Stuttgart: Metzler 2005-2012 as well as online and in English translation Leiden: Brill, 2014.
  • Bewegtes Leben – Körpertechniken in der Frühen Neuzeit, exhibition catalogue Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel, 29 June – 16 November 2008, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2008, 384 pages, 181 ill.
  • “Einführung: Körpertechniken in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Ibid., 1–14.
  • “Oronzio de Bernardi und die Neubegründung der Schwimmkunst im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Ibid., 231–245.
  • “Leibesübungen,” in Ibid., 303–316.
  • “Schwimmtraktate der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Ibid., 366–375.
  • “‘Man entsage dem Betruge der misgeleiteten Vernunft (...) so wird man sehen, daß man schwimmen kann.’ – Schwimmpraktiken und -debatten im 18. Jahrhundert,” Werkstatt Geschichte 44 (2006), 7–26.
  • “Bewegte Geschichte. Plädoyer für eine verstärkte Integration und konzeptuelle Erweiterung der Sportgeschichte in die frühneuzeitliche Geschichtswissenschaft,” Historische Anthropologie 1 (2004), 134–139.