ABSTRACT
As we have seen in this book, traces and places that we assume to be natural, to be the only way to be are often nothing of the kind. The process of undertaking a culturally geographical approach to place critically disentangles these ongoing compositions of traces and sees them as constructions, rather than givens. In this chapter we turn specifically to what Rich (1986) describes as the ‘geography closest in’ – the body. This material and somatic site can be considered as a place in the same way as any other: it can be taken and made, given meaning, and be part of a set of trace-chains that affect how we think about and act in the world around us. The place of the body is often assumed to be ‘natural’ and ‘essential’ – the body has a biology, gender, sex and sexuality that are often seen to be as natural as the day we were born. However, as this chapter will explore, the naturalness of these statuses can be questioned as our body’s features are (b)ordered in numerous ways. Similarly, the identities and meanings of the places in which are bodies live are constructed too – the geography of the body and the geographies it inhabits are far from being natural – how a body can be in place or out of place
is an affect of cultural values and acts of power. This chapter investigates how the body is (b)ordered, and how these (b)orders are changing. It explores how ideas of masculinity, femininity, hetero-and homosexuality are transgressed, and how the place(s) of the body change as a consequence. We will see how once ‘naturalised’ and ‘essentialised’ identities are increasingly crosscut and problematised by the range of other identity and place positions that we have been introduced to in this book. We will see how gender and sexuality are complicated by age, capitalism, religion, and nationality, for example. We will investigate the consequences of these new hybrid traces, how new places are being generated, and how cultural (b)orders are being changed to facilitate or control them. We begin by looking at how gender can (b)order our bodies.
