Abstract
A body, and especially a body considered as a whole, is a mass distinct from other masses. It occupies space, and as a geometric figure, it is three-dimensional having length, breadth, and thickness. Its dimensions and its weight can be measured. To be a body is thus to have boundaries, to be singularized and exclusive of other bodies. However, this view of the body is clearly not as simple and straightforward as it sounds. Even though a body is a mass distinct from other bodies, it nevertheless receives its distinct dimensions and forms only in relation to those other bodies from which it is distinguished. Bodies are thus in their very singularity and exclusivity intimately interrelated with one another. The boundaries distinguishing one body from another are also what constitute their connection. Bodies are interconnected both insofar as they share one another’s distinctive lines of demarcation and insofar as the shared boundaries between them make them parts of one whole. Thus, bodies are exclusive of one another only by virtue of their mutual inclusion within each other’s boundaries and in the world. Further, even though the dimensions and borders of a body can be measured, they are by no means fixed and unchangeable; rather, bodies continuously materialize in new ways as their boundaries are drawn and redrawn, reinforced, transgressed, and altered.
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Notes
- 1.
See Husserl 1989, § 41a, p 165f for a description of the lived body in terms of zero-point of orientation.
- 2.
For a further discussion of bodily boundaries in terms of horizon, see Käll 2014.
- 3.
I take the term “the 21st century body” from a symposium with the same title that took place at the University College London on May 18, 2012. The symposium raised questions of how perceptions of human identity and the meaning of being human are being recast in light of new scientific and technological developments that seem to offer endless possibilities of transformation.
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Käll, L.F. (2016). Vulnerable Bodies and Embodied Boundaries. In: Käll, L. (eds) Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities. Crossroads of Knowledge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22494-7_1
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