Advisor/tutor: Marina Vishmidt 

Arnhem, June 2016

Abstract

This thesis departs from metaphors embedded within the field of cultural practices, specifically art and gymnastics, as a framework to address the question of position, posture and role. Position is a geographic term and posture a corporeal term. Both are intrinsically related to the body. Therefore, their symbolic meaning is assessed in relation to material transformations, physical embodiment and discursive formation. The question of role is approached from a less figurative and more theoretical framework, in the second part. It is claimed that political strategies, technologies and the formation of subjectivity is limited by a contingent idea of the constitution of human nature and ought to be understood more accurately through the paradigm of transmutability and recent biological discoveries. In that regard, I examine the work of Catherine Malabou and present how her concept of plasticity introduces a rethinking of power and its relation to the social body through a greater account of agency.