Vulnerable Bodies

Full course description

In the framework of this course, vulnerable bodies are bodies that depart from the norm, especially the norm of ability and youth that we today associate with success in life. If you already have wondered why there is so little diversity in the images of corporeality that surround us or have questioned your own behavior when taking another idealistic image of yourself to post on one of your social media, this course will definitely appeal to you. The elective Vulnerable Bodies combines approaches to the topic from gender, disability, and aging studies, theories of care as well as philosophy, i.e., phenomenology and ethics. Combined, these perspectives help us understand what the relationship entails between individuals as corporeal agents and the societal structures that bind these bodies together and how exclusionary practices are based on oppressions of bodily differences.

A renewed interest in the body that has emerged within the humanities and social sciences in the past decades and that often is characterized as the material or somatic turn builds on the work of scholars such as the late Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, and Featherstone. Foucault explains how knowledge (cf. the rise of clinical medicine) about the body served to uphold various forms of power relations within society. Bodily differences and identities resulted from operations of “bio-power.” In his late work, Foucault addresses the subjectivity and personal agency of human beings to resist power dynamics by introducing concepts such as “self-care.” In Merleau-Ponty’s view, the body is our primary means of knowing the world and the condition for “lived experience.” He challenges the mind-body dualism of the western tradition and shows how we are all perceiving bodies, part and parcel of the social and material world. Featherstone connects society’s current obsession with beautiful, fit, and young bodies with consumer culture. The underlying logic of this culture is to promise us embodied success by making smart consumer choices. This lifestyle is constantly propagated by means of the visual presence of stars, models, and celebrities and sold as the “good life.”

Taking these and other perspectives as theoretical foundation, our elective focuses on the corporeality of human existence and the consumerist society in which this corporeality is embodied. Throughout the course, we will examine literature, art, media, and other practices that challenge the hierarchal dual orderings of the body (young/old, slim/fat, able/disabled, etc.) through which oppression is realized and that encourage us to develop a nuanced understanding of what is often referred to as “body positivity.”