Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity

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SAGE, Sep 13, 1999 - Social Science - 163 pages
In this incisive and truly impressive book, Ian Burkitt critically addresses the dualism between mind and body, thought and emotion, rationality and irrationality, and the mental and the material, which haunt the post-Cartesian world.

Drawing on the work of contemporary social theorists and feminist writers, he argues that thought and the sense of being a person is inseparable from bodily practices within social relations, even though such active experience may be abstracted and expanded upon through the use of symbols. Overcoming classic dualisms in social thought, Burkitt argues that bodies are not purely the constructs of discourses of power: they are also productive, communicative, and invested with powerful capacities for chang

 

Contents

The Ecology of Bodies of Thought
24
from the Grotesque to the Closed Body
45
The Thinking Body
67
Feminism and the Challenge to Dualism
90
Social Relations Embodiment and Emotions
110
Modernity Self and Embodiment
129
Relations and the Embodied Person
147
Index
161
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About the author (1999)

Ian Burkitt is in the Department of Social and Economic Studies, University of Bradford

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