Something other than its own mass: Embodiment as corporeality, animality, and materiality

Abstract

Anthropological concern with embodiment began in part with consideration of Merleau-Ponty's theory of perception, and this essay continues in that vein by considering his theory of nature. Embodiment from this standpoint is our general existential condition and an indeterminate methodological field for a cultural phenomenology attuned to the immediacy of lived experience. Without claiming to define nature or human nature, the essay offers an outline of embodiment as a framework for integrating corporeality, animality, and materiality. These three domains have generated lively bodies of literature that do not always speak to one another, and that invite phenomenological critique in a world where the existential and ethical position of humanity is increasingly in question and precarious.