Contatti e Confini: Corpo e Citta tra Occidente ed Estremo Oriente

The research has its roots on the one hand in the anthropology studies of the body and perception carried out by Le Breton who, moving from the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and the theories of Michel Foucault on the body and biopower, gives us an image of the body as profusion and meaning of the sensible. On the other hand, based on a tradition that goes from Simmel to Rykwert, the city is analyzed as a primarily immaterial entity. The city transcends the mere urban-architectural complex that shapes it, going to draw a complex system of material, symbolic and even mythical relationships, stratified in time and space. Corporeality and urban space come out here as the two terms of a dialectical relationship in which, not only one tends to define the other in a relationship of continuous reciprocity and transformation, but also as two entities that tend to intertwine each other. This is particularly true when we analyze the impact that digital technologies have on shaping bodies and cities, starting a virtualization process that leads to the onset of new urban forms and, as a reaction and adaptation to a new environment, to the post-human threshold. In order not to relegate the entire research to an excessively theoretical area, it was deemed necessary to integrate the debate both through empirical data, attempting to grasp the change in its unfolding, as well as resorting to cinematographic and literary suggestions. Starting from a tradition of urban studies that sees in contemporary Tokyo the overcoming of the modern city, the limits and the merits of such an approach have been highlighted, then trying, following the Tradits’ analysis, to provide an original solution to the problem. Finally, the specificity of the phenomenon from the global elements was split, using a comparative aesthetic analysis.