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Embodiment and Agency

SO4025: Lecture 416 October, 2007

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Outline

• Finish Bourdieu– Critical commentary

• Merleau-Ponty– ‘Body-subject’– Corporeal schema– Habit– Criticisms

• Leder’s absent body– Bodily dys-appearance– Criticisms

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Bourdieu: Critical Comments• Extremely influential approach• Arguments re: determinism

– Individuals engage in fields before they have incorporated their structures

– Social fields change in unpredictable ways

– Individuals act beyond the habitus

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Merleau-Ponty• Effort to overcome mind/body

(subject/ object) dualism• The ‘body/subject’

– Knowing/doing – Self/body– Intention/action– Body/environment

• Corporeal schema: bodily ‘know how’– External objects– Social interactions

• Habit: behaviour derived from corporeal schema

• Power and freedom

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Merleau-Ponty:Critical Comments• Fails to account

for power relations

• Implies bodily universals

• ‘Discontinuous unity’ of female embodiment

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The Absent Body (Leder 1990)

• The body is the basis of human existence

• Yet, much of the body fades from conscious awareness – It serves as a ‘corporeal

background’

• The body reappears:– New skills– Positive physical sensations– Negative bodily experiences

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Bodily ‘Dys-appearance’

• The body ‘dys-appears’ due to:– Failure to perform– Pain– Negative emotions

• ‘Dys-appearances’ are:– Acute or chronic– Threatening– Motivating

• They can also be ‘social’– The objectifying gaze

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‘Dys-ing’ Leder• Shilling (2003)

– Sees the body as marginal to the self

– Underestimates continual nature of body projects

– Ignores the embodied reality of social inequality

• Nettleton and Watson (1998)– Methodological critique– Healthy people should be unable to

speak about their bodily experiences

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And my defence…

• Re: Shilling’s criticism– Leder’s absent body can ‘dys-

appear’ frequently– It may also be continually present– Social ‘dys-appearance’ is based

in power differences

• Re: Nettleton and Watson– ‘Dys-appearance’ is not the only

form of bodily awareness– The ‘absent’ body can be accessed

(and studied) in a variety of ways

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Summary

• Bourdieu– Social fields, capital and habitus– Overly deterministic?

• Merleau-Ponty– Body-subject, body schema, habit– Ignores power relations?

• Leder– Absent but dys-appearing body– Material and methodological

problems?