Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis 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%