ABSTRACT

Irony would have it that I begin a chapter, focused on women’s bodies, with wisdom from a Greek who uses the inclusive “man” in this insightful sentence.2

What is “that with which [we are] most familiar” if not the intimacy we each have with our separate bodies? Heraclitus’ understanding acts as a bridge between famous Greek rationalism that continues to inform and dominate Western culture and the utter familiarity of the irrational in the body’s appetites, emotions, and the imagery of desire. That which is most familiar, housed in the human body, is a unique view of the world, a palpable sense of what it feels like to be me. Words, thoughts, ideas can estrange us from a form of knowing that is instinctual in the body, a form of knowing that has been with us since the first humans contemplated the landscape of our African homeland.