Embodied Selves

by Gonzalez-arnal, Stella; Jagger, Gill; Lennon, Kathleen

• ISBN13: 9780230299740
• ISBN10: 0230299741
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This interdisciplinary collection explores the role the body plays in constituting our sense of self, signalling the interplay between material embodiment, social meaning, and material and social conditions. Collectively the papers draw attention to aspects of embodiment which are not always centre stage in other debates, particularly issues of bodily vulnerability. They make clear, in considering the relation of bodies and selves, that more is at stake than social identity categories; but that what is at stake is, nonetheless, an inter-subjective making of the self. Utilizing theoretical and biographical material, key strands of contemporary thought are brought into conversation: the new materialism, poststructuralism and, importantly, phenomenology. The consequences for an embodied ethics and a corporeal political theory are considered. There is a substantial and accessible introduction placing the papers in the context of contemporary debates. Collectively, the volume marks a major development in philosophical and critical accounts of embodiment.

Author Biography

STELLA GONZALEZ-ARNAL is a lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of Hull, UK.


GILL JAGGER is a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Hull, UK. Her publications include Judith Butler: Sexual Politics, Social Change and the Power of the Performative and the co-edited Changing Family Values. She is Co-Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Hull, UK.


KATHLEEN LENNON is the Ferens Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hull, UK. Her publications include the co-authored Theorising Gender and The World the Flesh and the Subject. She is the director of the Centre for Research into Embodied Subjectivity at the University of Hull, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Gender and Reproduction; L.Alcoff
Biology and the Metaphysics of Sex Difference; K.Lennon
'All human beings are pregnant, both in body and in soul': The Bisexual Imaginary in Plato's Symposium; S.Sandford
Personal Identity and Transsexual Narratives; S.Gonzalez-Arnal
The Embodiment of Cultural Identity; P.Gilbert
This Body Which is not Mine: The Nnotion of the Habit Body, Prostitution and (Dis)embodiment; M.Coy
Turned into Body by the Other; S.Burwood
Disability and the Thinking Body; J.Leach Scully
Hearing deafness: Subjectness, Articulateness and Communicability; A.Schriempf
The Voice of Pain: The Semiotic and Embodied Subjectivity; M.Inahara
Hospitality and 'the Gift of Life': Reconfiguring the Other in Heart Transplantation; M.Shildrick
Embodied Subjectivity, Power and Resistance: Bourdieu and Butler on the Problem of Determinism; G.Jagger
Suffering, Silence and Social Weightlessness: Honneth and Bourdieu on Embodiment and Power; L.McNay