Physical education beyond sportification and biopolitics: an untimely defense of Swedish gymnastics.

In this article we try to think in new ways about the educational relevance of physical exercise at school, revisiting a concrete practice that is mostly seen as superseded, namely Swedish gymnastics. A phenomenological analysis of this ‘forgotten’ discipline will show that physical education might be taken in a very literal sense as the exercising of the body properly. Going against the criticism that this kind of gymnastics necessarily implies the subordination of corporeity to biopolitical regimes, we argue (referring to the work of Canetti and Agamben) that this practice might set physical activity free of any meaning whatsoever, and that it therefore might grant an experience of corporeal democracy. We argue furthermore that on this point Swedish gymnastics is opposed to other activities and especially sport, which have become dominant today. We hope that our analysis can stimulate the debate concerning the activities physical education-curricula should comprise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]