Zone 4: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 2

Feher, Michel; Naddaff, Ramona; Tazi, Nadia

ISBN 10: 0942299248 / ISBN 13: 9780942299243

Published by Urzone, Inc., New York, 1989

About this Item

Crisp, clean pages except for a pencil ghost and eraser mark on the first (half-title) page; square, uncreased spine; soft cover shows thin lines of surface wear and the beginnings of laminate peeling around head and heel edges as well as small bends across free corners; otherwise well-kept. 552pp.

Seller Inventory # 00093303

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Zone 4: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 2
• Publisher: Urzone, Inc., New York
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0942299248
• ISBN 13: 9780942299243
• Binding: Softcover
• Condition: Very Good-
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • Cultural Studies
  • Essays & Criticism

About this title

Synopsis

The forty-eight essays and photographic dossiers in these three volumes examine the history of the human body as a field where life and thought intersect. They show how different cultures at different times have entwined physical capacities and mental mechanisms in order to construct a body adapted to moral ideas or social circumstances ― the body of a charismatic citizen or a visionary monk, a mirror image of the world or a reflection of the spirit.

Each volume emphasizes a particular perspective. Part 1 explores the human body’s relationship to the divine, to the bestial, and to the machines that imitate or simulate it. Part 2 covers the junctures between the body’s “outside” and “inside” by studying the manifestations ― or production ― of the soul and the expression of the emotions and, on another level, by examining the speculations inspired by cenesthesia, pain, and death. Part 3 brings into play the classical opposition between organ and function by showing how organs or bodily substances can be used to justify or challenge the way human societies function and, conversely, how political and social functions tend to make the bodies of the persons filling them the organs of a larger body ― the social body or the universe as a whole.

Among the contributors to Fragments for a History of the Human Body are Mark Elvin, Catherine Gallagher, Françoise Héritier-Augé, Julia Kristeva, William R. LaFleur, Thomas W. Laqueur, Jacques Le Goff, Nicole Loraux, Mario Perniola, Hillel Schwartz, Jean Starobinski, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and Caroline Walker Bynum.

About the Author

Michel Feher, a Belgian philosopher, is the author of Powerless by Design: The Age of the International Community and the editor of Nongovernmental Politics and Europe at a Crossroads, among other titles. Founder of Cette France-là, a monitoring group on French immigration policy, Feher is also a founding editor of Zone Books.