“…NOTES 25. The terms "body schema" and "body image" were developed toward the end of the nineteenth century, but it is the work of neurologist Henry Head (Head 1920), and psychiatrist Paul Schilder (Schilder 1923;1935/1999) that have become the main literature on the subject. Recently, the American philosopher Shaun Gallagher has taken up these notions: see Gallagher 1986;2005, 19f. 26.…”
Section: Incarnated Effects Of Discoursementioning
confidence: 99%
“… Veronica Vasterling wants to attenuate this criticism of Butler's position (Vasterling ), showing that it is not “incompatible with the goals of feminism”, as Benhabib claims (Benhabib , 20). Rather than characterizing Butler's theories as discursive monism, Vasterling uses the term “epistemological linguisticism” to describe her viewpoint, which is not without its own problems.…”
Through a close reading of Judith Butler's 1989 essay on Merleau‐Ponty's “theory” of sexuality as well as the texts her argument hinges on, this paper addresses the debate about the relation between language and the living, gendered body as it is understood by defenders of poststructural theory on the one hand, and different interpretations of Merleau‐Ponty's phenomenology on the other. I claim that Butler, in her criticism of the French philosopher's analysis of the famous “Schneider case,” does not take its wider context into account: either the case study that Merleau‐Ponty's discussion is based upon, or its role in his phenomenology of perception. Yet, although Butler does point out certain blind spots in his descriptions regarding the gendered body, it is in the light of her questioning that the true radicality of Merleau‐Ponty's ideas can be revealed. A further task for feminist phenomenology should be a thorough assessment of his philosophy from this angle, once the most obvious misunderstandings have been put to the side.
“…NOTES 25. The terms "body schema" and "body image" were developed toward the end of the nineteenth century, but it is the work of neurologist Henry Head (Head 1920), and psychiatrist Paul Schilder (Schilder 1923;1935/1999) that have become the main literature on the subject. Recently, the American philosopher Shaun Gallagher has taken up these notions: see Gallagher 1986;2005, 19f. 26.…”
Section: Incarnated Effects Of Discoursementioning
confidence: 99%
“… Veronica Vasterling wants to attenuate this criticism of Butler's position (Vasterling ), showing that it is not “incompatible with the goals of feminism”, as Benhabib claims (Benhabib , 20). Rather than characterizing Butler's theories as discursive monism, Vasterling uses the term “epistemological linguisticism” to describe her viewpoint, which is not without its own problems.…”
Through a close reading of Judith Butler's 1989 essay on Merleau‐Ponty's “theory” of sexuality as well as the texts her argument hinges on, this paper addresses the debate about the relation between language and the living, gendered body as it is understood by defenders of poststructural theory on the one hand, and different interpretations of Merleau‐Ponty's phenomenology on the other. I claim that Butler, in her criticism of the French philosopher's analysis of the famous “Schneider case,” does not take its wider context into account: either the case study that Merleau‐Ponty's discussion is based upon, or its role in his phenomenology of perception. Yet, although Butler does point out certain blind spots in his descriptions regarding the gendered body, it is in the light of her questioning that the true radicality of Merleau‐Ponty's ideas can be revealed. A further task for feminist phenomenology should be a thorough assessment of his philosophy from this angle, once the most obvious misunderstandings have been put to the side.
“…Butler's work encounters persistent criticism for its rejection of conscious agency and the extralinguistic body within theories of subjectivity. Specifically, as Veronica Vasterling () points out in her consideration of Bodies that Matter (Butler ), Butler's tight fusing of language and subjectivity may not allow space for embodied forms of ontological access outside the limits of rational language. Yet in “Doing Justice,” Butler suggests that “there is an understanding to be had that exceeds the norms of intelligibility itself” (Butler , 634).…”
Section: Doing Justice To Someonementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Lived experience is not restricted to the intelligible body … It is exactly because we have access to the unintelligible body with its, sometimes, unintelligible desires that we not only may come to feel ill at ease with the intelligible body but also may come to conceive of, for instance, heterosexuality as an oppressive norm. (Vasterling , 170)…”
Sites of embodied disruption challenge academics to engage with power at its seams. In this article I consider an ethics of embodiment, situating it within questions raised by Judith Butler in her articles, “Doing Justice to Someone” (Butler 2001a) and “Giving an Account of Oneself” (Butler 2001b). In “Giving an Account,” Butler claims that gaps in knowledge and representation are germane to ethical practice, that brave inadequacies and creative approximations are the best we can do for others and ourselves. In “Doing Justice,” Butler enacts this stance, recounting the story of David Reimer, a child who in 1965 was offered up to science after his penis was severed in a botched circumcision. She seizes upon, through narrative fragments, a body whose sexual indeterminacy became the site and occasion for particularly brutal regimes of interpretation. Butler situates this patchwork narrative within the academic industry that reappropriates David's story for its own purposes. Taking Butler's ideas to heart, I carefully trace the nuances of her argument and highlight the (necessary) silences and foreclosures of her account. I propose “seamfulness” as a possible ethical‐aesthetic strategy for embodying Butler's ethical concerns. I close by briefly introducing some implications for arts‐informed representations in academic work.
“…But then the psyche, because it too has taken in existing social norms, is also a sort of surface, though this can be reshaped to some degree. Veronica Vasterling argues that Butler is denying “not the possibility of an ontologically independent, extra‐linguistic reality, but the possibility of access to an ontologically independent, extra‐linguistic reality”(Vasterling 1999, 21). At issue here between Butler and Sheets‐Johnstone is a difference in directionality: the forming of a body and psyche by acculturation vs. the body's own intentionality that issues into achievements of consciousness.…”
Using Judith Butler's notion that bodies are materialized via performances, "resignifying" disability involves a "democratizing contestation" of staircases because they exclude those in wheelchairs. Paleoanthropologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone shows how consistent bipedal locomotion, together with the knowledge that we will die (upon which mutuality is based), are ingredients of our pan-hominid speciation, not contingent constructions. As axiologically important as contestation is, it forecloses the possibility of achieving a mutuality with others that is wonderfully possible.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL STANDPOINTDuring the summer of 1997, a doctor told me that I would never walk again without great pain. I am now fully recovered. Initially using crutches for many months, and then using a wheelchair for another eight months, I discovered the genre of illness memoirs, which G. Thomas Couser calls "autopathographies," written by people who had faced or were facing health challenges and medical adventures (Couser 1997, 5). As a philosopher, I found these vivid accounts to be compelling in their focus on the questions that initially drew me into philosophy, questions about how to live. If these people, facing down death, disability, and the medical profession, could not only survive, but also find a revitalized agency in challenging or diminished circumstances, I wanted to hear about it. And if philosophy has anything to say to us about how to live well, then it has to be able to address these situations.Although I eventually recovered from my foot problems, I have an ongoing disability, namely, congenital hearing impairment, which I have written about
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