ABSTRACT
Barbara Brook (1999) asks a simple question at the start of her book Feminist Perspectives on the Body; a simple question, that is, that rapidly becomes more and more complicated. Her discussion is a useful place to start, because it points towards some of the key questions that have vexed social and cultural theorists trying to think about ‘the body’:
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10111 1 2 3 4 15111 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2
What about the body? Try reading that . . about the body? What about the body? What about the body? Think too about that strange collective single entity that is thus named . . . [‘T]he body’ is not the way you would immediately designate yourself, nor is it possible to come up with a picture of what ‘the body’ is, since that single term strives to encompass all the multiple ways human material is formed and arranged not only within space but also through time.
