Corpus: An Interdisciplinary Reader on Bodies and Knowledge

by M. Casper, P. Currah

Overview

Corpus begins with the argument that traditional disciplines are unable to fully apprehend the body and embodiment and that critical study of these topics urgently demands interdisciplinary approaches. The collection's 14 previously unpublished essays grapple with the place of bodies in a range of twenty-first century knowledge practices, including trauma, surveillance, aging, fat, food, feminist technoscience, death, disability, biopolitics, and race, among others. The book's projected audience includes teachers and scholars of bodies and embodiment, interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners, and scholars interested in the any of the substantive content covered in the book. The collection could be adopted in courses on the body at advanced undergraduate and graduate levels, including: cultural studies; queer, gender and sexuality studies; body and power; biopolitics; intersectional approaches to the body; anthropology of the body; sociology of the body; embodiment and space; digital bodies; anthropology of knowledge production; health, illness, and medicine studies; science, knowledge, and technology studies; and philosophy and social theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230113800
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	05/25/2011
Edition description:	2011
Pages:	227
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

MONICA CASPER Professor of Women's Studies at Arizona State, USA.

PAISLEY CURRAH Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York, USA.

Table of Contents

Bringing Forth the Body; P.Currah & M.J.Casper Distributed Reproduction; M.Murphy Multiculturalist White Supremacy and the Substructure of the Body; D.Rodríguez Materializing Hope: Racial Pharmaceuticals, Suffering Bodies, and Biological Citizenship; J.X.Inda Dismantling Food Pyramids, Embodying Food Studies; D.A.Freedman Epistemologies of Fatness: The Political Contours of Embodiment in Fat Studies; K.LeBesco Disability, Disciplinarity, and the Problem with Posthumanism; D.Serlin Identities without Bodies: The New Sexuality Studies; L.J.Moore & L.Rodriguez The Bugs of the Earth: The Politics of Nature, Labor, and the Body under Socialism; D.Mincyte Somatechnics Manifesto; S.Stryker & N.Sullivan The Audible Body; S.Magnet Virtual Body Modification: Embodiment, Identity and Non-Conforming Avatars; M.Kosut Trauma's Essential Bodies; M.Stevens Hold On!: Falling, Embodiment and the Materiality of Old Age; S.Katz The Gimmick: or, The Productive Labor of Non-living Bodies; G.Sanders

Editorial Reviews

"Corpus provides a sorely needed update to conventional body studies. Collectively, the articles address the academic, technological, and economic questions we have today, while demonstrating deep knowledge of where the body has been and where it is going next. Combining sharp currency with historical complexity, this collection is an ideal teaching tool." - CL Cole, Professor, Gender and Women's Studies, Media and Cinema Studies, and Institute for Communication Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Deleuze, echoing Spinoza, has famously noted that we can never know in advance what a body can do. The essays in this wide-ranging collection document the impressive scope of what bodies are already considered capable of doing and encourage their readers to imagine an even vaster horizon for embodiment's future potential. Mindful of the biopolitical stakes at play, this genuinely interdisciplinary anthology is both erudite and deeply political. It offers food for thought for anybody who has a body." - Susan Stryker, Associate Professor, Gender Studies, Indiana University Bloomington

"A brilliant addition to the lively field of embodiment studies, this richly interdisciplinary collection interrogates how different bodies of knowledge produce complex and discrepant bodies that matter. Self-reflexive methods abound throughout its diverse and innovative chapters, each attuned to the politics of knowledge. Corpus is a must-read if you are wondering what has become of bodies and the way they are made meaningful in the twenty-first century." - Jennifer Terry, author of An American Obsession and editor of Deviant Bodies

"This book is a provocative delight. Whether theorizing about racialized medicine, embodied work relations, vanishing bodies, fat and food studies, or de-corporealization, this collection puts feminist and sexuality studies to work in new and exciting directions. The body in Corpus is never singular, always constructed orthogonally, and we readers are enriched by its many lessons." - Rayna Rapp, Professor, Anthropology, New York University

From the Publisher