Perspectives on Embodiment

Gail Weiss is Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Ph.D. program in the Human Sciences at The George Washington University. She is the author of Body Images (Routledge 1998). Honi Fern Haber was Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Colorado, Denver. She is the author of Beyond Postmodern Politics (Routledge 1994). She died in 1995.

"This impressive group of philosophers have come together across the continental/analytic divide to reconceptualize the body in relation to philosophy. When we view the body as the subject of perception and not just the object, as Gail Weiss points out, it becomes essential to reconceptualize many of the fundamental concepts used in philosophies of action, of mind, and of consciousness. We will need to reconceptualize the cognitive sciences, given that perception is structured by the body as a whole rather than an abstracted perceptual organ. These essays provide an excellent entree into this exciting new area of philosophical discussion." -- Linda Alcoff

• Introduction Part 1. Identifying Bodies and Bodily Identifications. one Critical Resistance: Foucault and Bourdieu, two The Soul of America: Whiteness and the Disappearing of Bodies in the Progressive Era, three The Abject Borders of the Body Image, four Claiming One’s Identity: A Constructivist/Narrativist Approach, Part 2. Embodied Mind: Phenomenological Approaches to Cognitive Science, Psychology, and Anthropology. five Embodied Reason, six The Challenge of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment for Cognitive Science, seven Affordances: An Ecological Approach to First Philosophy, eight Embodiment and Cultural Phenomenology Part 3. Rewriting the History of the Body. nine Returning the Gaze: The American Response to the French Critique of Ocularcentrism, ten The Epoch of the Body: Need and Demand in Kojève and Lacan, eleven Disciplining the Dead, twelve The Preservation and Ownership of the Body