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. |
From inside the book
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Page 2
... essay " Of Experi- ence , " from the Essays ( 1588 ) : " I , who operate only close to the ground , hate that inhuman wisdom that would make us disdainful enemies of the cultivation of the body ( culture du corps ) " ( III , 13 : 849 ) ...
... essay " Of Experi- ence , " from the Essays ( 1588 ) : " I , who operate only close to the ground , hate that inhuman wisdom that would make us disdainful enemies of the cultivation of the body ( culture du corps ) " ( III , 13 : 849 ) ...
Page 7
... Essays knowledge is embodied , not only because it takes as its horizon the lived , experiential body , but also because its terminology and meanings are situated within representation . The body is not independent of the ways of ...
... Essays knowledge is embodied , not only because it takes as its horizon the lived , experiential body , but also because its terminology and meanings are situated within representation . The body is not independent of the ways of ...
Page 8
... Essays , language is presented as a material medium that in the process of representing things gives them body and endows them with physical effects . Representation bears in its materiality as a signifying practice the trace of ...
... Essays , language is presented as a material medium that in the process of representing things gives them body and endows them with physical effects . Representation bears in its materiality as a signifying practice the trace of ...
Page 9
... Essays , the referential character of sexuality is dis- lodged from physical reality and transposed into representation , so that its meaning is contextually defined as an intertextual gesture marked by inter- sexual overtones . In d ...
... Essays , the referential character of sexuality is dis- lodged from physical reality and transposed into representation , so that its meaning is contextually defined as an intertextual gesture marked by inter- sexual overtones . In d ...
Page 10
... Essays within the materiality of representation , Montaigne opens up the question of the experiential body to a broader inquiry that dislocates its phenomenal solidity by resituating it within the reiterative logic of such cul- tural ...
... Essays within the materiality of representation , Montaigne opens up the question of the experiential body to a broader inquiry that dislocates its phenomenal solidity by resituating it within the reiterative logic of such cul- tural ...
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