Introduction

What happens when bodies are foregrounded as information sources and brought into thinking about information literacy? In what ways do theories of embodiment and of the body disrupt current discourses and practices about information literacy and help to shape a deeper understanding of the complexity of the practice? What do we gain when we bring the body into view?

Embodiment represents knowledge that is acquired by doing and by subjecting or being subject to experiences with knowledges (our own and others) derived from enculturation, encoding or embedded performance (Blackler, 1995). Embodied knowledge is only partially explicit but nonetheless important, as it references our tangible interactions and developing experiences with practices, performances and others over time and space. Embodiment represents the enmeshment of the corporeal, emotional, sensory and sentient dimensions of the lived experience. Upon this view embodiment is a construction that is subject to the various discourses that construct, deconstruct, emplace and disrupt the body in-practice and as-it-practises. To put this in another way, embodiment is informational.

The centrality of the body to our everyday practice should not, therefore, be relegated or reduced to secondary knowledge in the library and information science (LIS) field. Our bodies act as site and source for our inward reflection and reflexivity and outwardly as site and source for others. As we reflect upon and ‘read’ embodied performances, we access the trajectories and history of the lived experience. The increasing enmeshment of our information culture with digital platforms and technologies further means that theories of embodiment and corporeality are required to ensure the centrality of the body as site and source is foregrounded and not silenced or relegated to secondary knowledge.

An argument for the body

A claim for the inclusion of the body and embodiment in information literacy research and, more broadly, in LIS, is woven through this chapter. Primarily this claim proposes that disassociating information literacy from the corporeal and embodied experience will lead to an incomplete understanding of the complexity of the practice. This, in turn, diminishes the field’s understanding of the central role that information, in all its manifestations, plays in practice.