“Do as I say but do not do as I do!”: Décalage as a tool for understanding body and food practices

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a theoretical and instrumental tool, décalage, which enables a comprehensive view of agents in the health field. Food and Nutrition and Physical Education are taken as scientific fields of education, professional practices and knowledge, and guideline productions that correspond to two strong pillars in the reproduction of a particular speech riddled with biomedical standards intensely disseminated in society. However, neither the professionals of these areas nor the students of the corresponding undergraduate courses faithfully follow what they preach, such as healthy eating and regular practice of physical exercises. Thus, a space appears between “what is said” and “what is done” in relation to food and bodily practices, often identified as an “error to be corrected” in the biomedical view of life. Distinctively, here we consider the need of a methodological tool to assist in understanding two aspects of subjectivity: the action and the discourse about the action, which complement each other in social relationships. Human beings live with décalage in their social relations with creativity in the reconstruction of meanings, considering incompatibilities or inconsistencies, sustaining a social dynamic in the sense of their human being condition, creating what is possible and dreaming of what it would be impossible. And, dreaming the impossible, he builds what is possible: an ever new world; perhaps a less ill world, if décalage is considered.