The Culture of the Body: Genealogies of ModernityWhat is the body? How was it culturally constructed, conceived, and cultivated before and after the advent of rationalism and modern science? This interdisciplinary study elaborates a cultural genealogy of the body and its legacies to modernity by tracing its crucial redefinition from a live anatomical entity to disembodied, mechanical and virtual analogs. The study ranges from Baroque, pre-Cartesian interpretations of body and embodiment, to the Cartesian elaboration of ontological difference and mind-body dualism, and it concludes with the parodic and violent aftermath of this legacy to the French Enlightenment. It engages work by philosophical authors such as Montaigne, Descartes and La Mettrie, as well as literary works by d'Urfé, Corneille and the Marquis de Sade. The examination of sexuality and the emergence of sexual difference as a dominant mode of embodiment are central to the book's overall design. The work is informed by philosophical accounts of the body (Nietzsche, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty), by feminist theory (Butler, Irigaray, Bordo), as well as by literary and cultural historians (Scarry, Stewart, Bynum, etc.) and historians of science (Canguilhem, Pagel, and Temkin), among others. It will appeal to scholars of literature, philosophy, French studies, critical theory, feminist theory, cultural historians and historians of science and technology. Dalia Judovitz is Professor of French, Emory University. She is also author of Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit and Subjectivity and Representation in Decartes: The Origins of Modernity. |
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... than presupposing a knowledge of the body as a term defined since Descartes in opposition to the mind , this study explores the construc- tion of the body as an entity whose historical character 2. The Culture of the Body.
... than presupposing a knowledge of the body as a term defined since Descartes in opposition to the mind , this study explores the construc- tion of the body as an entity whose historical character 2. The Culture of the Body.
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... defines the body as a process of embodiment whose provisional instances mark moments in the history of its becoming ... definition breaks radically with previous philosophical and literary accounts based on the experiential or lived body ...
... defines the body as a process of embodiment whose provisional instances mark moments in the history of its becoming ... definition breaks radically with previous philosophical and literary accounts based on the experiential or lived body ...
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... definition as a thinking subject , reduces the body to a pure object of knowledge , defined as matter and extension . With Descartes , the body ceases to function as the expression of embodiment , since its materiality no longer ...
... definition as a thinking subject , reduces the body to a pure object of knowledge , defined as matter and extension . With Descartes , the body ceases to function as the expression of embodiment , since its materiality no longer ...
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... definition as " I think , therefore I am " marks its virtual existence , its hypostatic position within a new ... define its construction as an embodied entity . To think sexuality in the mode of embodiment is to resituate the logic of ...
... definition as " I think , therefore I am " marks its virtual existence , its hypostatic position within a new ... define its construction as an embodied entity . To think sexuality in the mode of embodiment is to resituate the logic of ...
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... define representa- tion . This is not to suggest that social and cultural roles are not at play , but rather that their ... defined as an intertextual gesture marked by inter- sexual overtones . In d'Urfé's Astrea , the undecidability of ...
... define representa- tion . This is not to suggest that social and cultural roles are not at play , but rather that their ... defined as an intertextual gesture marked by inter- sexual overtones . In d'Urfé's Astrea , the undecidability of ...
Contents
Montaignes Scriptorial Bodies Experience Sexuality Style | 15 |
Emblematic Legacies Regendering the Hieroglyphs of Desire | 41 |
Cartesian Bodies Virtual Bodies | 65 |
The Automaton as Virtual Model Anatomy Technology and the Inhuman | 67 |
Spectral Metaphysics Errant Bodies and Bodies in Error | 83 |
Incorporations Royal Power or the Social Body in Corneilles The Cid | 109 |
Materialist Machines | 131 |
MenMachines | 133 |
Sex at the Limits of Representation | 147 |
Conclusion | 169 |
Notes | 179 |
211 | |
223 | |
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Common terms and phrases
affirmation Alexis allegory analogy analysis animal Astrea baroque becomes Cartesian Celadon character Chimène concept context Corneille's count's critique culture d'Urfé deception defined Descartes Descartes's desire discourse Discourse on Method disembodiment effort elaboration embodiment emerges entity exchange existence experience fiction figurative Foucault French function gender gesture Honoré d'Urfé ical identity imagination insofar interpretation kidney stone king La Mettrie language legacy Lignon literary lived body logic machine Marquis de Sade Maurice Merleau-Ponty Meditations ment merely Merleau-Ponty metaphysical Mettrie Mettrie's Michel Foucault mind Misfortunes of Virtue Montaigne Montaigne's Montaigne's Essays nature notion novel object organization Paris parody perception perverse philosophical pleasure position present principles Querelle du Cid question rational reader reality redefines reflects representation represents rhetorical Rodrigue Rodrigue's Sade Sade's Sadean script senses sexual difference social soul speech style suggests thing thought tion trans transvestism undermined understanding University Press valor virtual