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, abjected 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 otie'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 predorainantly a constantly shifting ambiguous border, a limit of signification, social change and cultural intelligibility. From Introduction