ABSTRACT
Psychological and social psychological literature on body image, as Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul argue, has been unaffected by the somatic turn in the social sciences. Despite its potential for applicability across analytical domains within the sociology of the body, the concept of body image continues to be affected by a variety of dualisms that subjugate it to a logic of Cartesian heritage. The solution is simple, Vannini and Waskul argue, sociologists of the body need a new concept that reflects the active role played by social agents in constituting representations of the body to the self and others. Drawing from Peircean semiotics and Dewey’s pragmatist deconstruction the concept of body, “ekstasis” attempts to capture semiotic and social relations that transcend binary oppositions and forms of determinism.
