Abstract

IFFRIG, Nicolas  and  SAINT-MARTIN, Jean. Masculine Identities, Body language and Physical Education in France between 1967 et 1985. Educ. Rev. [online]. 2021, vol.37, e77812.  Epub Aug 08, 2021. ISSN 1984-0411.  https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-4060.77812.

In the heart of France in the 1970s, marked by a wave of ideological and cultural upheavals and in the face of the hegemony of sports in this school subject, body language constitutes an innovative and unique experience in Physical Education. Through its deregulated, personal and emancipatory approach, body language marks a change in school children’s body management. It allows students to access new practices involving both the sensitive and the expressive. This conception of physical education also deregulates the representation of the Masculine Identity of this period. Dominant, courageous, authoritarian and mainly reproduced in the teaching of sport, the masculin ideal is hence redefined and questioned. By denouncing the reproductive and unequal nature of sport, the promoters of male body language not only aim to desecrate the patriarchal model but also seek the emergence of a new male ideal, geared towards more emancipation and fulfillment. Moreover, the authors note the emergence of new masculinities which they qualify as subordinate or even marginalized, and which find in the teaching of body expression an unprecedented field of predilection. The exhaustive analysis of professional journals (Cahiers du GREC, Revue Esprit, Revue EPS) and the interviews of various specialists in corporal expression (in particular JB. Bonange) make it possible to highlight a predominance of social class relations over social relations of gender. In France, body language emerges mainly in privileged circles such as universities, and does not succeed in spreading to popular circles, places of resistance and of traditional hegemonic masculinity.

Keywords : Body language; Physical Education; Masculine Identities; France.

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