Bodies as Knowledge

Abstract

Harding and Norberg (2005: 2009) point out that ‘our lives are [powerfully] governed by institutions, conceptual schemes, and their “texts”, which are seemingly far removed from our everyday lives’. Consequently, in the context of critical analysis of existing literature and research in this chapter, I investigate several conceptual schemes or ‘texts’ that ontologically ground ‘knowing’ with/in the body. Specifically, I turn to the feminist areas of: poststructuralism, autobiography, psychoanalysis, cultural, performance and film theories. In doing so, my aim is twofold: first, to enrich these texts by incorporating recent biological discourses, neuroscientific and developmental research and, second, to consider how a feminist embodied practice can potentially invigorate dominant (biological) discourses about the body and human development. By interweaving these discourses, I am afforded the opportunity to elicit tensions between views of the socially constructed and the biological (sexual and gendered) body and thus argue for an interdisciplinary view of the body and the process of embodiment. Notably, my positioning is underscored by my DMP and performance practice where I ground the body and dance movement improvisation at the heart of any theorization and ‘knowing’, something I aim to make clear throughout the chapter.