ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses bodies and matter which foreground particular histories of mattering: this includes histories of racialization, gendering, able-ism, class and sexualities. It covers research into bodily dispositions and embodied difference, moving from an explicit focus on class and race, and the concept of corporeal capital, to the concepts of body image and body-without-an-image, the latter being a key concept within affect studies. The chapter explores some of this earlier work by examining the writings of three influential feminist approaches to bodies and difference whose dialogues with each other have shaped some of the terrain of what is known as corporeal feminism. Then the chapter also explores the general assumptions of some of this work and particularly its commitment to 'thinking the body' outside of rigid demarcations and boundaries. Non-normative morphologies refuse the assumption of normalcy, turning our attention to what arrangements of forces enable certain bodies at the expense of others.
