The Body

MAURIZIA BOSCAGLI Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara, USA ABIGAIL BRAY Lecturer at Murdoch University, Australia JUDITH BUTLER Maxine Elliot Professor in Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, USA CATHERINE CLAeMENT Novelist, essayist, diplomat, cultural critic RENAe DESCARTES (1596-1650) Philosopher FRANZ FANON (1925-61) Key figure in colonial and postcolonial theory and twentieth-century revolutionary thought MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984) Social scientist and historian of ideas, was Professor of History and Systems of Thought at the College de France SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939) Professor Extraordinarius at the University of Vienna, Austria, and popularly credited as the inventor of psychoanalysis SANDER L. GILMAN Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago, USA ELIZABETH GROSZ Director for the Institute of Critical and Cultural Studies, Monash University, Australia ELSPETH PROBYN Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia JOAN RIVIERE (1883-1962) Key figure in the reception of Melanie Klein's ideas about child analysis, and active participant in psychoanalytic debate JONATHAN SAWDAY Head of the Department of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, UK KLAUS THEWELEIT Teaches in the Institute for Sociology at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Professor of Art and Theory at the National Academy of the Performing Arts in Karlruhe, Germany MARIANNA TORGOVNICK Professor of English at Duke University, USA

What do we mean when we talk about 'the body'? The essays collected here foreground the historical construction of 'the body' throughout a range of discourses from the modern to the postmodern, and seek to present it not as a biological 'given', but as a contestable signifier in the articulation of identities.What do we mean when we talk about 'the body'? This Reader challenges the assumption that it can be invoked as a neutral, or indeed natural, point of reference in critical discussion or cultural practice. The essays collected here foreground the historical construction of 'the body' throughout a range of discourses from the modern to the postmodern, and seek to present it not as a biological 'given', but as a contestable signifier in the articulation of identities.