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The Body as an “Object” of Historical Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Doug Mann
Doug Mann
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Extract

Body theory is the work of historians, sociologists, philosophers, and other scholars in the past twenty to twenty-five years that explicitly focuses on the body, especially on sexuality and gender. The body is seen as an ideological surface on which history and politics inscribe their truths. It is, in short, a corporeal epistemology standing in opposition to all the old cognitive epistemologies (e.g., Descartes, Locke, and modern analytic thought as a whole). Régimes of power are known through the way they oppress, manipulate, and construct the human body. Body theory includes the work of Michel Foucault, Thomas Laquer, and feminist scholars such as Hélène Cixous, Laura Mulvey, and Elaine Showalter. This work is carried on, by and large, in the methodological atmosphere of a constructivist notion of gender, sexuality, social ideas, and the self.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Fall 1996 , pp. 753 - 776
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1996

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