A Breath of Fresh Air: Or, Why the Body is Not Embodied

One of the more irritating affectations of much recent writing in the humanities and social sciences is the habit of inserting the word "embodied" in front of the topic in question, as though by doing so the specter of binary thinking could be magically exorcised. Almost anything, it seems, can be embodied–the mind, consciousness, experience, knowledge, skills, practices, the self, meaning. If there is one thing that cannot be embodied, however, it is the body itself. At first glance, the phrase "embodied body" looks like a simple case of tautology, of saying the same thing twice. "How can a body not be embodied?" you will protest. "It's the embodiment that makes it a body!" But on second thought, the matter is not so straightforward. For if the body is the predicate of a process of embodiment–if it comes after embodiment, so to speak–then all the other things we claim can be entered into the process must come before it. Thus, the dualism of mind and body, to take just one example, is still there, just as categorical as it ever was, but it no longer equates to a schism between ideal and material worlds. It is, rather, a matter of separating what is poured into the funnel of embodiment from what is extruded at the other end of it. It is a division between what goes in, and what comes out. Only things that go in can be embodied. The body, since it comes out of the process, cannot.