ABSTRACT
Simone de Beauvoir and, later, Iris Marion Young were among the first philosophers to relate the embodiment of gender to the embedment of one’s activities in a material and cultural situation. Comparatively, Pierre Bourdieu investigates the way the body incorporates social structures, resulting in a specific habitus. All three seek to demonstrate why norms and the gendered forms of embodiment which result from them are ‘permanent,’ that is, highly resistant to change and adaptation. However, what does this imply for the body in the case of transformative practices? Is the change of structural norms even possible? To answer these questions, I will analyse how exactly the body incorporates norms by taking a closer look at Beauvoir’s, Young’s and Bourdieu’s notions of, respectively, situation, embodiment and habit. This analysis will reveal that the lived-body is not a passive piece of wax upon which norms are inscribed, rather, that it acquires them through repeated activity and participation in one’s situation. Developing upon Judith Butler’s work, this paper will show that performativity functions at the level not only of language, but also of the body. While performativity contributes to the perception of embodied norms as permanent, it also provides us with possibilities for transformation.
