Smart Body or the Problem of Human Corporeality Development in the Context of Outsourced Life. Paper Two

This paper continues to explore the problem of formation of non-organic body of personality touched upon in the previous part. The author shows how this problem is addressed in the works of E.V. Ilyenkov, B. Spinoza and L.S. Vygotsky and, in particular, in the works of D.B. Elkonin and B.D. Elkonin who introduced the concepts of ‘mediatory action’ and ‘event of action’, crucial for the understanding of personality construction. In the final part of the paper the author reviews the practices of blind, deaf and dumb pedagogy as the phenomenon of cultural development and cultural corporeality. Working with blind, deaf and dumb children proves the correctness of the cultural-historical concept aimed at tool/activity-based character of personality structure formation that may well be described in terms of smart corporeality. Without such practices of exploration and acquisition of his/her own behavior the individual becomes a functionally disabled person. Thus the author considers the practice of cultural development an anthropological alternative to the trend of outsourcing that implies the individual’s rejection of his/her basic cultural functions and practices. And this alternative acts as a response to the challenge of the increasing cultural, functional and personal disabilities.The research was conducted with the assistance of the Russian Science Foundation (project №14-18-03087 “Designing Non- classical Anthropology. New Human Ontology”).