Hostname: page-component-66644f4456-q629f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-13T06:38:17.362Z Has data issue: true hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Renaturalizing the Body (with the Help of Merleau-Ponty)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Carol Bigwood
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Some poststructuralist feminist theorists hold that the body is merely the product of cultural determinants and that gender is a free-floating artifice. I discuss how this “denaturalization” of gender and the body entrenches us yet deeper in the nature/culture dichotomy. The body, I maintain, needs to be “renaturalized” so that its earthy significance is recognized. Through a feminist reappropriation of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body, I develop a noncausal linkage between gender and the body. I present the body as an indeterminate constancy that is culturally and historically contextualized, on the one hand, yet part of our embodied givenness on the other. Interspersed throughout the paper are passages that describe my own bodily condition as I wrote the paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 6 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Feminism and the Body , Fall 1991 , pp. 54 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Benhabib, Seyla. 1990. Epistemologies of postmodernism: A rejoinder to Jean‐Francois Lyotard. In Feminism/postmodernism. Nicholson, Linda J., ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 1990. Feminism, postmodernism, and gender‐skepticism. In Feminism/postmodernism. Nicholson, Linda J., ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1989. Sexual ideology and phenomenological description: A feminist critique of Merleau‐Ponty's Phenomenology of perception. In The thinking muse: Feminism and modern French philosophy. Allen, Jeffner and Young, Iris Marion, eds. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.Google Scholar
De Lauretis, Teresa. The essence of the triangle or, taking the risk of essential ism seriously: Feminist theory in Italy, the U.S. and Britain. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 1(2): 3–37.Google Scholar
DiStefano, Christine. 1990. Dilemmas of difference: Feminism, modernity and postmodernism. In Feminism/postmodernism. Nicholson, Linda J., ed. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Ann. 1981. Androgyny as an ideal for human development. In Feminism and philosophy. Vetterling‐Braggin, Mary, Elliston, Frederick A., and English, Jane, eds. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co.Google Scholar
Flax, Jane. 1990. Postmodernism and gender relations in feminist theory. In Feminism/postmodernism. Nicholson, Linda J., ed. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1990. Feminism, science, and the anti‐Enlightenment critiques. In Feminism/postmodernism. Nicholson, Linda J., ed. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy. 1990. Foucault on power: A theory for women? In Feminism/postmodernism. Nicholson, Linda J., ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and time. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward, eds. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 1971. The origin of the work of art. In Poetry, language, thought. Hofstadter, Albert, trans. New York: Harper Colophon Books.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The question concerning technology. In The question concerning technology and other essays. Lovitt, William, trans. New York: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 1982. Nietzsche. Vol. 4: Nihilism. Krell, David Farrell, ed. and Frank A. Capuzzi, trans. San Francisco: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Kahn, Robbie Pfeufer. 1989. Mother's milk: The “moment of nurture” revisited. Resources for Feminist Research 18(3): 29–36.Google Scholar
King, Ynestra. 1983. The ecology of feminism and the feminism of ecology. Harbinger: The Journal of Social Ecology 1.Google Scholar
Llyod, Genevieve. 1984. The man of reason: “Male” and “female” in Western philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 1962. The Phenomenology of perception. Smith, Colin, trans. New Jersey: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Naess, Arne. 1973. The shallow and the deep, long‐range ecology movement: A summary. Inquiry 16: 95–100.10.1080/00201747308601682CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholson, Linda J., ed. 1990. Feminism/postmodernism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1976. Thus spake Zarathustra. Hollindale, R. J., trans. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Palmer, Gabrielle. 1988. The politics of breastfeeding. London: Pandora Press.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary. 1988. Feminism and deconstruction. Feminist Studies 14(1): 51–66.10.2307/3177998CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Joan W. 1988. Deconstructing equality versus difference: Or, the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism. Feminist Studies 14(1): 33–50.10.2307/3177997CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trebilcot, Joyce. 1981. Two forms of androgynism. In Feminism and philosophy. Vetterling‐Braggin, Mary, Elliston, Frederick A., and English, Jane, eds. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co.Google Scholar
YoungIris, Marion Iris, Marion. 1990. Throwing like a girl and other essays in feminist philosophy and social theory. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar