vJ Contenta

A Tfno Bocty, Gondor, cría oexualltr

lntroductiori
Laqueur and the shift to the two-sex system
58
The location of sexual difference In history
61
The body in fernlnlst theory: Simone de Beauvoir's The Spud Ser 63
Foucault and the history of sexiiality
64
Queer theoiy and the body

67
The western-centrism of histories of gender and sexualiq
69
Conclusion

7o
5 Experlenolng the Body
Introductton

yg
Phenomenology

7S
Feminist crltique of phenomenotogy: lris Marlon Young
76
Postcolonial crttlque of phenomenology: Frantz Fanon
77

IntroductiOr1

yne rlse of the hletory of the boda

The history of the body US a separate field was sliaped in the 1980S and 1990s.
This new
attention to the body has been variously referred to as the corporeal, bodily, or
somatlC tum.
Mefore this corporeal turn, historians nad, as the french
medievallst Jacques le Goff put it, written the historles of men (and to a
lesser

History of bodily experíence: Barbara Duden

79 extent, women) 'without
bodies’, that 15 nistories of dlsei bodied people's

Historical phenomenology:†he passlons Historlcal phenomenology: Pain Historical

plienomenology:
Race Bourdieu's notion of habitus Psychoanalysis and the body in history
81 thoughts and ideas.' The body iR history had mostly been
discussed by
historlans
82 Of mۥdicine, who, hot\fever, assumpd the Dody to be an
unCbanging
biologtcal
84 entity. lt was the British hlstorlan Roy Porter who
first
proi5ded an oveiview
85 of the new history of the body in 1991, in a volume
edited by retet
Burke that
88 distanced itself from a more tradittonal history focused
on the
‘obJectlve’ recon-

Conclusion
90
s ructio
oí political events. The nes history, b\
contiast, was conceined wtth

t Tl
l, al dimensions, an analysis of structures and

6 Matarlailet Approachee to the Body

socio-economic, cultura
and politlc
lnterdtsdpltnary anaiysts of avaitety

Introduction
History, biology, and the neurosciences
93 datly life‘ítombeloW’, all of this based On an
94 oí primary sources and keen ti3 present opposlte vlewpoints.²
Within this new

New materialism: Karen Barad

96 peispective, Porter addtessed the
tnat so far this

New materialism: Gilles Deleuze and the ‘becomirlg’ body Science and technology
studies and the
body: Bruno Latour Piaxiography: Annemarie Mol and Amade M'Charek Praxiography and
history: Geertje
Mak
Conclusion

Conoluplon

Note.s
9g
103
103
107
108

115
had been neglected because both the classical and the Judeo-Christian traditions
neld a duatistic
division Ot «ian, privíleging wind over body. However, Porter pointed to
many developments,
both In academia arld III society, whlCh hád stimulated gteater attention
for the body,
also among historians: Marxism, the work of Russian philosopher and llterary
theorist Mlkhdll
Bakhtin, the French
Anuales histotlans, cultural anthropology, Sociotogy and medlcal sociology, íem-
lnisin, historlcal demography, and the impaCt of AIDS.' These factors had
led historlans
to write about, for instance, the history of pain, hysterla, sexuality,

Glossury
139
and beauty.
histories of the body underlined the Cultural and historical varia-

Furthep Reading
Index
t45 IS1
These new body instead of viewlng it aS á fixPd biological given. The cultural

liistorian Thomas Laqueur, for example, argued that from antiquity to the early
modern period
people dld not believe in the existence of two different bodies - male and female —
but thought
there was one type of body, of which the female was merely a less perfect version
(see Chapter 4).
This emphasis on the cultural history of the Dody was part of two, connected,
innovations ir
history writing: the cultural turn and the linguistic turn. Although in the first
half oí the
twentt- eth century some anthropologists and sociologlsts, as well as some of the
French Annales
historians, had aJready pard serious attentton to the body, from the
1970s, and
especlally in the 1980s and 1990s, the cultural turn shifted the focus of resemh
in the humanities
and social sciences írom socio-economtc sttuctuies and events in political history
to the making of
meanlng in daily llfe. This cultural turn was inforined by theortes from
anthropology, sociology,
and cultural stuó- ies. In the same period the lingulstic turn, based on
notions derived from
phi- losophy and literary saudíes, posited that meantng is made tlirough
language,
reptesentation, and discourse. In historiography tfie stronger emphasis on the-
ory resulted
mostly ftom the irnpact of poststructuzaltsm, which highllghted textual and
discursive
constructions of pfienomena, and their accompanying power stnictures.•
Cultural theory was now also applied to make sense of the Dody as mediated
introductton 3

experienced their bodles? Can historians pnly approach the representation of

ttie body tn
bOOk5L, anguage, or lmages, or can they also gauge more individual, iiitimate
feellngs? How can
they include the material aspects of the body? Should holars study dnmtnant
prescttpttons of
corporeal behavl ttr tnat are imposed 'from above’, by lnstltutions ni
ldeologle5, or should
they take a vlew ‘frorn tielow’, from the perspecttve of otdtnaiy people?
han we then speak
of bodily '*8e*w’, of people's fteedom tO Shape their CfWn bodies? Thls book
will revlew
iheoites that have addtessed these qoestlons.
The ratlonale behlnd thla bOOk
’this textbook aims to provide an overvlew of different theoretical approaches
that dave been
used to study the body In the past, showing how eaeh theory nlghllghts certain
aspects of the
body, and critically assesstng the advantages and pitíalls Of each appioñch.
lt also
exptoies how historians uninformed by theory have - by way of their empirical
research — at
times come to concluslons simiia› to ihose pxopounded En the abstract b9
theorists. l am
there(orecaieful
not to deplct the field of body history as solely folloWlng developments in pbi-
losophy ot theory, The tnteiaCtto»s ct cen theory ahí ÜiStO¥J i¥H mantfotd.

through cultural sign systems. Thts implied a shih to representotions of

the
The reason why the history of the body 1s taken here as a separate
field,

body: rather than studying the body working, breathing, or belng ill In
daily life,
historians now became interested In how diseases were labelled, or which
even thoug lt overlaps to SOmR M8
of mediclne, gender, Sexuality, emotion,
with other ílelós suCh as the history sports, fashion, and tne self, IS thát

body parts were believed to constitute femaleness in certatn periodo. Ten

years
aftei writing his 1991 artlcle, Porter looked back upon the expansion of
body history and
was pleased to note that the field was booming, especlally its theo- retical
dlmenslon. Porter
expressed dissatisfaction, however, with the theoredcal approaches and methodology
used by body
hlstorians. Remindtng readers that body history 'Es not merely a matter of
ciunching vital
statistics, nor just a set of techniques for deciphering “represeritations”’,s
he warned against
a one-sided
lncreasingly body history has become a speclflc conferences and journals, and
scholars ldentlfying
as disciplinary journal Body & SoreJy, for lnstance, was
practlce has included more contrlbutlons from SOCIOIO ists phi
than from hiStOnans. More recently, the German Journal BOd/ PoÍitirs. Zeltschñ S
fiir Káty‹ $‹ hicbte (founded In 2013 and including contrlbutions in German
and Engllsh) has been added to the )ournals publishin$ work on body history,

rellance on theory, to the excluslon of empirical research.• He also noticed that

though related articles can of
course also be found in many other journals.

much body history ‘has compounded a lack of methodological sophistlcation

with a want of scholarly rigor. Authors have sloppily conflated bodily representa-
mostly In those íocuslng on women's and gender history.
In addltion to separate )ournals on the body, a number of mu

tions with liistorical realitles’.7 Porter concluded that historians liad

negtected
views of body history have leen published.
These series, as well as a recent

the ways lndivtduals and social groups experlenced their embodied selves in the
past.•
In Porter's two review articles, the central questions in body history come to
the fore: To what
extent can historians reconstruct the ray people In the past
monograph,'° however, pay little attention to the use of theory In body history.
And while a
number of textboo¥s have lncluded a discussion of tneoretical approaches to
the body, these
have mosdy been wrltten by sociologtsts and only

4 History of the Body

include a few historlcal examples." Therefore, this textbook aims to

integrate soclal and
cultural theory with a wealth oí historical examples. In the selection of
theories and histories
on the body, a number of choices have been made, on the Dasis of my own
expertise, which lies
mostly in the cultural and social history of the western world in the early
modern and
modern perlods. Anclent and medieval ideas on the body are discussed only in
Chapter 1, which
provldes a
Introducdon 5

ilourdleu's notion of ‘habitus’, and psychoanaiytlcal analysis. Lastly, Chapter 6

reflects on the
recent ‘material turn’ in the humanlties, and its effects on theofies and
histories of the body.
Apart from the ‘neurohlstorÍcál’ approach pr€iposed ley historias Dan1e1 Lord
Smail, this
chapter mostly díscusses ‘new materlalist’ sctiotars such as karen Barad and
Gílles Deleuze,
including those new material-
ists wno can be classified as scholars working with a praxiOgraphical approach,

historical overview of the most important changes in the fepiesentation of the

body. Generally, the modern period is taken as point of reference. Furtliermore,
tor example Annemaiie Mol.
This recent material turn in the
humanities can be regarded as the second body
- to have influeJiced the hiStOJ Ot
although this textbook does address the issues of race and (post)colonialism in
several
chapters, further research 1s needed to write a truJy global history of the
oí theorles - in addition to the cultural turn
the body. Chis influence is still ongoliig, and
the iinpact f the material turn to be seen what exciting new

body." Also, this book focuses mostly on cultural ideas about the body,
ratlier
than on socio-economic circumstances which impacted on people's health, and has
opted to leave the
interpretation of irnages of the body to art historians and histonans of vlsual
cultura.'3

The etructure of thla book

After the opening chapter, which provides a historical overview of the
most impoitant
tontinuities and changes in Ideas on the body from antiquity to
modernity, and explains
a number of returning notlons (such as humoral the- ory), the next chapters
each address a
body of theory and the ways historians have applied those theorles. Chapter 2
discusses the
tnftuenttal notton of disct- pline, first conceptualized by sociologist Norbert
Elias and
philosopher Mlchel Foucault, as well as its corollary: bodily agency. Chapter 3
elaborates on the
more generó notlon of social construction, including arithropologlcal
approaches such as the
ideas of Mary Douglas, and theories that use the notion of the Dody or illness
as metaphor.
Chapter 4 presents the most important (feminist and queer) theories ori
gender and
sexuality that have been forinative for the field of body history, such as the
work by Simone de
Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler. Chapter 5 focuses on a philosophical
strand that is
tess well known ainong historians: that of phenomenology. Here, the ideas of
FTench
partos- opher Maurice Merleau-Ponty are discussed, includlng his feminist and
post- colonial
critics (lris Marion Young and lrantz Fanon respectively), as well as a number of
historians who
have used phenomenological approaches to interpret corporeal experiences in the
past. Other
approaches, also addressed in this chap- ter, which aim to zoom in on
‘embodiment’ - the lived
Dody - include Pierre
has not yet fully crystallized. lt therefore rernalns
tkeoretical paths the histo@ Of the body will take in the future.