Corporeal inscriptions. Representations of the body in cultural and literary texts and practices

The articles gathered in this volume examine the complex relations between the corporeal and the social, approaching the body as both a discursive product and a producer of discourse. Bodies that disrupt, docile bodies, objected and liminal ones, idealised and deformed - all participate in cultural production of a certain "truth" of the body and the subject. What is the relation between one's body and one's self? How are bodies produced in discourse? How do they become intelligible and analyzable? What kinds of discourses/narratives do they produce? What is the relation between bodies and power? How do gender, race and nationality mark the body? What kind of narratives are mobilized to present the seemingly unpresentable? The collection of articles offers answers to the questions outlined above through reference to contemporary social, cultural and literary discourses, addressing the body as predominantly a constantly shifting ambiguous border, a limit of signification, social change and cultural intelligibility.

From introduction

Introduction; Textual Bodies: Narratives of the Body in Literature and Film: Marta Wiszniowska: Sex, Gender and Female Body Awareness in Popular European Novels; Arthur Redding: Encounters: Nomadic Ethics in Gilles Deleuze, Alphonso Lingis, Alain Badiou, and Paul Bowles; Sandra Meskova: Traumatized Female Body in Latvian Women's Writing of the 1990s; Vesna Lopicic: Heaven or Hell: The (Ab)uses of the Body in Donne's and Golding's Writings; Małgorzata Hołda: Whose Body Is This? Playing with the Body Politics in Malcolm Bradbury's "Composition" and "Miniature Golf"; Edyta Lorek-Jezińska: The Marionette, the Automaton and the Body in Performance and Narrative: Brith Gofs Haearn; Monia Andreani: The Body as a Borderline Phenomenon: A Re-reading of the Pandora Myth; Sophie Belot: Subjectification or Subjection of Women? Romance and the Foucauldian Discourse on Sexuality; Katarzyna Więckowska: Image, Body, Text: Corporeal Writing in Peter Greenaway's Pillow Book; Ann McKinnon: Zombie Sex: David Cronenberg's Crash; Gilad Padva: Desired Bodies and Queer Masculinities in Three Popular TV Sitcoms. Cultured Bodies: Reproducing Bodies in Socio-Cultural Practices: Mark Neocleous: Inscribing the Fascist Corpse; Marek Jeziński: Does Ziggy Stardust Dream of Electric Sheep? David Bowie and the Androgynous Creation of Android Messiah; Izabela Kowalczyk: Body and Power in Contemporary Polish Art; Lenore Lyons: Embodying Transnationalism: The Making of the Maid; Imke Schmincke: Marginalized Bodies; Liz Schwaiger: Cultural Inscription and Corporeal Agency: The Experience of Gendered Ageing in Western Theatrical Dancers; Katrina Jaworski: (Un)desirable Acts of Death: Gendered Truths in the Cultural Production of Suicide; Jill Dubisch: Body, Self and Cosmos in "New Age" Energy Healing; Lisa McDonald: The Spell of the Cell: Molecular Reproduction and the Genetic Imaginary; Andrew Blake: Mobile Technology, Body and Mind: Re-imagining the Production and Consumption of Identity in a Digital Environment; Lucy Tatman: Corporeality and the Numinous; Notes on Contributors

Edyta Lorek-Jezińska

Katarzyna Więckowska