Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity

by Ian Burkitt

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803988484
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	09/13/1999
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

Introduction
Prolegomenon to Bodies of Thought
The Ecology of Bodies of Thought
The Body as Object
From the Grotesque to the Closed Body
The Thinking Body
Feminism and the Challenge to Dualism
Social Relations, Embodiment and Emotions
Modernity, Self and Embodiment
Conclusion
Relations and the Embodied Person