Bodily-Affective Attunement in Social Interaction
Bodily-Affective Attunement in Social Interaction

Summary/Abstract: The paper intends to supplement the studies of emotional affordances of BAA by elaborating on theconception of participatory sense-making as well as developmental studies on joint attention and interattentionality. I address different spheres of expertise from the experience-based phenomenologicalperspective, which allows exploring the problem both from the first-person and second-person perspectives. This research presents the conception of inter-selfness that carries on M.Merleau-Ponty’sidea of intercorporeality, T.Fuchs’ et al. analysis of intersubjectivity and phenomenologically orientedpsychoanalysis by E.Z.Tronick et al., R. Stolorow et al. The mechanism of BAA is presented throughthe conception of participatory sense-making and the idea of minimal inter-attentionality in developmental studies. The paper presents an emotional affordances scheme that illustrates the emotionalregulation of BAA.By examining this process of regulation one could see in what way the self becomesan inter-self in communication. The article also postulates correlation between cultural mediation ofemotional affordances and their direct accessibility from the second-person perspective. In the last partof the paper, I examine social interaction from the viewpoint of developmental studies (C.Trevarthen,V.Reddy, M.Carpenter). The developmental perspective supplements the idea of emotional regulationin interaction, by focusing on primary such forms of BAA between a caregiver and a baby, as jointattention and mutual gaze. Herein, I demonstrate how the initial forms of the positive bodily-affectiveattunement develop into the interattentionality and self-representation practices of the subject. Thispoint could contribute to the theory of personal identity by exploring the process of maturing of thesense of self in its different aspects. The results of the research could be useful for further study of BAAand its pathologies. The results could also be of use for the discussion on non-human or human-likeaffordance-based technological interaction theory.

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