Ideal habitus, body technique and everyday life

I argue, that in order to create an ideal habitus of the actor, Jouko Turkka’s pedagogy aimed to purify the student from the tensions brought about by urban life and modernization by applying non reflexive body techniques. Turkka’s actor training is contextualized here in relation to similar psycho-physical practices that have developed the methods and practices to counter everyday life. I identify the modern discourses and dominant ideologies of western modernity, such as the concept of vitalism, which influenced Turkka’s pedagogy and were directed towards constructing the actor’s individual habitus as a masculine and heroic self-creating project. On the other hand, I will point out, there was also a collective habitus in Turkka’s pedagogy that could be seen as ‘feminine construction’ and as a resistance to the forced individualization brought about by modernization. Finally, I conclude the article by proposing the development of an actor training pedagogy that, instead of trying to liberate the trainee from one’s social and cultural conditioning, will strive to raise the trainee’s awareness of her existing social and cultural habitus as well as will take a collective habitus as a model for further elaboration.