Monash University Arts Undergraduate handbook 1995

Copyright © Monash University 1995
Enquiries to publishing@udev.monash.edu.au

CRT2020

Rethinking bodies

Proposed to be offered next in 1996

Elizabeth Grosz

8 points * 2 hours per week * First semester * Clayton

This subject offers an introduction to various theoretical accounts of the body. The body has generally been relegated to a secondary or subordinate position relative to the mind or reason throughout the history of western thought. We will examine how the humanities rely on unacknowledged accounts of the body to develop concepts of the mind. The subject will be divided into four parts. The introduction will present a selective survey of the ways in which the body and the mind have been formulated in modern western thought. In the second part, we will discuss some relatively rare accounts which do discuss the lived experience of the body, notably those provided by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. In the third part, we will examine the body in a socio-political context, as a surface of cultural inscription. And in the fourth and final part, we will look at the implications of acknowledging the corporeal differences between the sexes for notions of knowledge and representation.

Assessment

Written (6000 words): 100%

Recommended reading

Deleuze G and Guattari F A thousand plateaus Athlone Press

Douglas M Purity and danger Penguin

Foucault M Power/knowledge Harvester

Foucault M Discipline and punish Penguin

Foucault M The history of sexuality vol 1, Random House

Irigaray L This sex which is not one Cornell UP

Kafka F Metamorphosis and other short stories Penguin

Kristeva J Powers of horror Columbia UP

Lacan J Ecrits: A selection Tavistock

Lingis A Excesses: Eros and culture SUNY Press

Lingis A Libido: The French existential theories Indiana UP

Merleau-Ponty M The primacy of perception Northwestern UP

Nietzche F The genealogy of morals Vintage Books

O'Neill J Five bodies Cornell UP

Turner B The body and society: Explorations in social theory Blackwell



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