corporeal schema

is bodily space which makes manifest the historical world. It is, in short, a way of stating that my body is in-the-world.

[b]odily space can be distinguished from external space and envelop its parts instead of spreading them out, because it is the darkness needed in the theatre to show up the performance, the background of somnolence or reserve of vague power against which the gesture and its aim stand out, the zone of not being in front of which precise beings, figures and points can come to light. In the last analysis, if my body can be a 'form' and if there can be, in front of it, important figures against indifferent backgrounds, this occurs in virtue of its being polarized by its tasks, of its existence towards them, of its collecting together of itself in its pursuit of its aims... the body schema is finally a way of stating that my body is in-the-world' (Ibid., p. 115).

is the way in which the body's agency makes manifest the historical world.

Merleau-Ponty's corporeal schema describes the way in which the body's agency makes manifest the historical world. For Merleau-Ponty, our bodies are not objects in space, rather they inhabit space and through them we experience the world and the other. In so far as the body is able to participate in and transform its historico-cultural horizon, it is free... in so far as its capacity for expression and its ability to alter its own history and given context are denied, it is not free.[1]'

corporeal schema, n.Definitions

corporeal schema