Thinking the Limits of the Body

Shows the inseparability of textuality, materiality, and history in discussions of the body.This collection maps the very best efforts to think the body at its limits. Because the body encompasses communities (social and political bodies), territories (geographical bodies), and historical texts and ideas (a body of literature, a body of work), Cohen and Weiss seek trans-disciplinary points of resonance and divergence to examine how disciplinary metaphors materialize specific bodies, and where these bodies break down and/or refuse prescribed paths. Whereas postmodern theorizations of the body often neglect its corporeality in favor of its cultural construction, this book demonstrates the inseparability of textuality, materiality, and history in any discussion of the body.At The George Washington University, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is Associate Professor of English and Human Sciences and Gail Weiss is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Human Sciences Program. Cohen is the author of Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages. Weiss is the author of Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality and coeditor (with Honi Fern Haber) of Perspectives on Embodiment: The Intersections of Nature and Culture.