This startling volume explores the traumas and possibilities of embodiment as it is lived in a political world. Unveiling the influence of phenomenology, particularly that of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, on contemporary thought. Bodies of Resistance cuts across the disciplines of philosophy, political theory, literature, and cultural studies to explore anew how we are at once produced by yet resistant to cultural norms.
Introduction: The Resistant Material Laura Doyle
Part I. (Dis)Embodiment in Political Philosophy
Chiasmus in the Polis: The Reversible Flesh of Community in Political Philosophy Jacob Rogozinski
The "Body Politic" and Social Contract Theory: The Phenomenon of "Total Alienation" Claudia Brodsky Lacour
Part II. Political Bodies in Initimate Alterity
Sexual Difference as a Question of Ethics: Alterities of the Flesh in Irigaray and Merleau-Ponty Judith Butler
Bodies Inside/Out: A Phenomenology of the Terrorized Body in Prison Laura Doyle
Part III. Gazing Bodies Made Visible
Matrixial Gaze and Screen: Other Than Phallic and Beyond the Late Lacan Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger
Hidden Aspects of Goethe's Writings on Color, Seeing and Motion and Their Significance for a Feminist Visual Theory Beate Allert
Part IV. Racial Bodies Performing Resistance
Legal Bodies, Racial Bodies: Autobiography and Autonomy in Patricia Williams's Alchemy of Race and Rights Janis Greve
Post-World War II Black Diaspora Musics as Material Practice: Preliminary Thoughts on Time, Culture, and Politics Kevin Gaines
Part V. Colonial Bodies: Mapping and Counter-Mapping
Method Practice: Toward a Phenomenology of Crosscultural Studies Cheryl Herr
The Dimensions of History: Colonial Mapping, Architecture, and the Perils of "Constructing Phenomenology" Daniel Bertrand Monk
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
LAURA DOYLE is an associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her book Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture received the George and Barbara Perkins Prize from the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature. She is also the recipient of an ACLS Fellowship and a Rockefeller Fellowship.
"This collection is both timely and important. It will help establish the necessity of grounding discussions of the body in careful philosophical analyses and go a long way toward reminding us of ways in which phenomenology broke ground and can continue to break ground in exploring the meanings of our embodiment." —Debra Bergoffen, George Mason University
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