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