Abstract

This dissertation employs a phenomenological perspective to explore recent attempts in poststructuralist feminist theory to return to the body. Importantly, these current approaches try to theorize the body in a way that avoids biological and essentialist accounts; what this means, however, is that they think the body in terms of representation and signification, and not embodiment. This is not surprising given that in this modern epoch, which is characterized by a propersity to rationalize all areas of our existence, we tend to live our bodies primarily according to the cognitive region of existence; accordingly, the insidiousness of this cognitive focus, or what I have called surface, means that attempts to explore embodiment also tend to end up at the "surface". ;By exploring embodiment phenomenologically, new approaches for feminist concerns over issues of essentialism, identity and difference, and the building of community can be explored. In developing further Merleau-Ponty's concept of depth, this dissertation shows up how our bodies have intrinsic structures and capacities, in particular an amazing capacity to move into the world and to take it up corporeally. This means that we move into and take up the systematicity of this age. Showing up the tendency to actually live our bodies representationally, or at the surface, is to begin to explore what it is to live our bodies-as-depth with the attendant ethical implications. ;What is significant about depth is that it is not an interior space of the body; indeed depth only emerges in our relations with others and the world. For this reason, depth can only be experienced by the phenomenal body; when cognitively thought it is easily reduced to breadth or width. But allowing an exploration of depth to show up our embodied capacities does not mean that the body is privileged over the cognitive. Indeed, the cognitive is but one region of the body. Exploring embodiment through depth means that we can more often think according to the body; the inherent sinuosity of the body shows up the potential for contingency and openness that is to often shut down in this age. ;In order to explore feminist postructuralist attempts to theorize the body, their philosophical foundations are first examined. A phenomenological understanding of depth allows for new ways of approaching the works of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, as well as Lacan, in order to show up the insidiousness of surface even in these important theoretical accounts of embodiment