Assisted Eating: Intercorporeal Interaction

This chapter explores how two human bodies can interact without much relying on spoken languagespoken language. We adopt the conceptintercorporeality/intercoporealintercorporeal interaction of intercorporeal interactioninteraction/interactional to frame how humans’ interactionsinteraction/interactional are conducted through physical engagement (see also Meyer and Wedlestaedt in Moving bodies in interaction—Interacting bodies in motion. Intercoporeality, interkinesthesia, and enaction in sports. John Benjamins, 2017, on the role of body in interactionBody, in interaction). This concept is instrumental in describing and understanding supportive collaborationcollaboration that occur through physical contacts, such as those that happen in interactionsinteraction/interactional involving persons living with advanced dementia. By focusing on bodily actions and how they interact it becomes possible to understand that mundane activities such as assisted eatingassisted eating presuppose and include the use and coordinationcoordination of everyday body knowledge. interaction/interactional.