Art and the Body Image: about Self and Stereotypes

Today's man is socially absorbed by problematic body issues and everything that this means and involves. Literature, publicity, science, technology and medicine compound these issues in a form of this theme that has never been seen before. In the artistic framework, body image is constantly suffering modifications. Body image in sculpture unfolds itself, assuming different messages and different forms. The body is a synonym of subject, an infinite metaphorical history of our looks, desires, that leads one to interrogate his/her image and social and sexual relations. These are understood as a manifestation of individual desires freed from a moral and social imposition. It attempts a return to profound human nature before we are turned into a cloning industry. In thisstudy it isimportant for usto understand in which form doessculpture reflect body image as a sociocultural and psychological phenomenon within the coordinates of our time. To understand how they represent and what artists represent in sculpture as a multiple and complex structure of human sexuality. Today, the sculptural body, expanding its representation, no longer as a reproduction of the corporal characteristics, presents the body in what it possesses of most intimate, unique, human and real, that moves, reacts, feels, suffers and pulsates, a mirror of us all.

The other of myself: representations of portuguese teachers about intercultural education related concepts

Having into consideration that we live in a multicultural society, it is important to analyse how far people view and accept each other. Therefore, one should reflect upon concepts such as: representations and stereotypes, because they are interpersonal constructs which are (re)built during the interaction of different sociocultural groups. In this study, we focus our attention on the representations a sociocultural group – Portuguese teachers - has of intercultural education and the role of teachers and educators in the promotion of an intercultural approach at school. We believe that teachers have the responsibility to: find out the representations students have of the Other; reconfigure stereotyped representations; and create representations which favor dialogue and relationship with the Other flourish. Following a sociolinguistic approach (Müller, 1998; Vasseur, 2001; Vasseur & Hudelot, 1998), which is related to the construction and diffusion of representations in discourse, we analyse the discourse of teachers during a workshop called ‘The Other and Myself’, in which they build and discuss about a didactic mask that portrays their own vision of both themselves and their ideas of intercultural education.