The Body of Nature and Culture

by Giblett, Rod

• ISBN13: 9780230222731
• ISBN10: 0230222730
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book explores the relationship of human bodies with natural and cultural environments, arguing that these categories are linked and intertwined. It argues for an environmentally sustainable and healthy relationship between the body and the earth.

Author Biography

ROD GIBLETT is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, School of Communications and Contemporary Arts, Edith Cowan University, Australia. He is the author of Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology; Living with the Earth: Mastery to Mutuality; Forrestdale: People and Place; Health Recovery: The Taoist Tai Chi Way and Sublime Communication Technologies.

Table of Contents

List of Table and Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xv
Where Land and Body Meet: Body Culture and Nature	p. 1
The body: The starting point	p. 2
Stigmata	p. 7
Body techniques	p. 13
Machine Body of Modern Western Medicine	p. 19
The body as machine	p. 20
Body machinery	p. 23
Medical mechanics	p. 27
Mapping the machine of the body	p. 31
Battlefield Body of Illness Narratives	p. 37
Illness narratives	p. 37
The body as battlefield	p. 41
The military metaphor in hypermodern medicine	p. 47
The earth as body/body as earth	p. 49
Grotesque Body of the Lower Strata	p. 56
The popular body of the marketplace	p. 56
The bourgeois body	p. 60
The s(ub)lime and beautiful body and landscape	p. 63
The body without organs	p. 69
Monstrous Body of the Slimy Depths	p. 74
Grotesque, gargantuan, generous, grateful	p. 76
The monstrous-maternal	p. 80
Orally sadistic alien	p. 82
Sky gods, earth goddesses	p. 86
Fascist Body of the War-Machine	p. 90
Maculinist, monumental, machinic, metallic, muscular	p. 91
Bachelor machines for a bachelor birth	p. 95
The militarisation of civilian life	p. 99
The war against nature	p. 102
Writing on the Surface of the Textual Body	p. 108
Is the soul the prison of the body?	p. 109
The body writes back	p. 113
Body-writing machines	p. 118
Sporting Body Imprisoned in the Time-Machine	p. 125
A body built on pain	p. 125
Speed, suffering and sublimation in sport	p. 131
The sporting body of Australia	p. 136
Cyborg: The Body-Machine of the Civilian-Soldier	p. 140
Cybernetics and cyborgs	p. 140
Symbiosis and symbionts	p. 148
Taoist Body of the Earth	p. 157
Taoism	p. 158
Picture of internals	p. 161
Taijiquan	p. 164
Health recovery stories	p. 167
Healthy Land, Healthy Body: State of the Environment, State of Health	p. 173
Soil conservation	p. 174
Taoist ecology	p. 178
The body of the earth with organs and the body of Australia	p. 185
References	p. 191
Index	p. 203
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