Living Across and Through Skins
Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism, and Feminism
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Indiana University Press
Published:22nd Mar '01
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Explores the dynamic relationship between bodies and the world around them.
What if we lived across and through our skins as much as we do within them? According to Shannon Sullivan, the notion of bodies in transaction with their social, political, cultural, and physical surroundings is not new. Early in the 20th century, John Dewey elaborated human existence as a set of patterns of behavior or actions shaped by the environment. Underscoring the continued relevance of his thought, Sullivan brings Dewey into conversation with Continental philosophers—Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty—and feminist philosophers—Butler and Harding—to expand thinking about the body. Emphasizing topics such as the role of habit, the discursivity of bodies, communication and meaning, personal and cultural structures of gender, the improvement of bodily experience, and understandings of truth and objectivity, Living Across and Through Skins acknowledges the importance of the body's experience without placing it in opposition to psychological, cultural, and social aspects of human life. By focusing on what bodies do, rather than what they are, Sullivan prompts a closer look at concrete, physical transactions that might be changed to improve human experiences of the world.
Sullivan (Pennsylvania State Univ.) constructs a pragmatic feminist theory by weaving together seemingly disparate strains of philosophical thought, including central ideas of Merleau—Ponty, Judith Butler, Sandra Harding, Lucius Outlaw, and Nietzsche, with the work of John Dewey. What survives scrutiny imbues a Deweyean pragmatism that emphasizes a dynamic, reciprocal, transformative relationship between individual members of the environment and with the environment itself, denying traditionally accepted dichotomies such as mind/body, subject/object, and nature/experience. Two ideas ground Sullivan's theory. First, human corporeality, not an abstract metaphysic, is the basis of truth, moral agency, conceptions of self, and human flourishing. Second, the improvement of individual embodied existence and the improvement of the world are mutually dependent. At times, the idea of bodies is somewhat elusive; still, Sullivan is superb at making difficult ideas in feminism and Continental philosophy seem natural partners for pragmatism. This is an important book for those interested in seeing how traditional philosophy can contribute to contemporary feminist theory. It complements Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993); Raia Prokhovnik's Rational Woman: A Feminist Critique of Dichotomy (CH, Jun'00); and Charlene Haddock Seigfried's Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey (2001). Upper—division undergraduates through faculty and researchers. —S. Martinell
-- Fernandez * Choice *This is an important book for those interested in seeing how traditional philosophy can contribute to contemporary feminist theory.
* ChoiISBN: 9780253214409
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
224 pages