Thinking beyond the brain: embodiment and the psycho-somatic

Abstract

When mind and body are in dispute, desire arises for stable points of reference like disciplinary boundaries. This paper contends that the sense of the integrity of a ‘body’ of thought or of a critical textual corpus is not a spatial-corporeal metaphor, but is an aspect of the way in which disciplinarity represents modes of being in the world, which, like all human activity, involve actualisation of the mind and body. Such actualisation is described here as ‘embodiment,’ which is defined as the ways in which the unconscious posits its exterior. Critical theorising about mind and body must include an account of the relationship between ‘theorising’ mind and body and ‘being’ embodied. This paper makes this point by using ‘polytextual’ readings of texts that discuss phenomena (such as phantom limbs) which render problematical the intuitive understanding we have of our minds and bodies.