106-443 Body Cultures

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Subject Description:

This subject focuses on the ways in which 'the body' is culturally inscribed in a variety of contemporary discursive, representational and imaginative regimes. An understanding of shifts in historical understandings of the body frame the body as both a material and cultural object; as constituted through historically specific practices of representation. These broad themes are developed through a series of particular studies concerned with techniques of the body; the sexed-sexualised body; disciplined and modified body and other cultures of the body. The various feminist, historicist, psychoanalytic and materialist frameworks enable students to understand why the body has emerged now as an object of theoretical reflection and to explore how different practices and techniques constitute the body as a culturally intelligible form.

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Course reader available from the department.

• J Crary & S Kwinter, Incorporations: Zone 6, Zone.