Can the body be construed as one entity or is it really an assemblage of its constituent parts? If the latter, how does ‘the body’ relate to them? Who determines and controls knowledge about bodies, body parts, and their relational dynamics? Join us for the third of our interdisciplinary workshops, which examines bodily transformation with an extra focus on socio-economic status, age, gender, gender-related transformation, and pain as a transformative process.

The event will be held via Zoom. Papers will be pre-circulated. Materials and the Zoom link will be sent a week in advance.

Confirmed Speakers: Philippe Charlier (Paris-Saclay, Paris), Lennard Davis (University of Illinois Chicago), Fred Jones (Liverpool), Fiona Hobden (Liverpool), Ciara Kierans (Liverpool), Daniel King (Exeter), Kaye Mitchell (Manchester), Clarisse Prêtre (CNRS, Paris), and Simon van Rysewyk (Tasmania).

This event is generously sponsored by the Wellcome Trust.

There is no fee for this event, which is open to all. However, places are limited. If you are planning to attend, please register here.

For more information, please contact the organisers:

Esther Eidinow: esther.eidinow@bristol.ac.uk
Georgia Petridou: Georgia.Petridou@liv.ac.uk

About the project

'De/Constructing the Body: Ancient and Modern Dynamics' is an interdisciplinary project led by Georgia Petridou (Liverpool) and Esther Eidinow (Bristol).

Recent post-humanist theories have resulted in a surge of interest in the body as a cultural conception. Moreover, through recent explorations of embodiment, the body, as Csordas (1993, 135) writes, has emerged as “the existential ground of culture”. However, very little attention has been paid to the issue of body as a composite feature, and to debates surrounding corporeal knowledge and relational dynamics. Can the body be construed as one entity or is it really an assemblage of its constituent parts? If the latter, how does the body relate to them? Who determines and controls knowledge about bodies, body parts, and their relational dynamics?

The project engages with these questions and argues for a greater fluidity in both the signification processes and the signifying agents (patients, bodies, body parts, dead bodies, medical scientists, nurses, religious professionals and entrepreneurs, medical insurance policies, medical technology, biopolitics, etc.) that create focus and subsequently define physical and imagined frontiers in the human body. It comprises three exploratory workshops, each on a distinct but interrelated theme, aimed primarily at fostering blue-sky thinking and encouraging close collaborations between experts from the fields of Humanities, Disability Studies, Health and Social Sciences.

Image: Body seen as flame, wood engraving by Frederick Jones ARBSA.

De/Constructing the Body: Ancient and Modern Dynamics, Trans-Formation

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