Body as Space 1

Reading

• Valentine Ch 2 especially pp. 15-18

• Office Hours: – Mon 2:30-3:30 p.m. N412 Ross

Assignment #1

• Directed essay (choice)

• Due Oct 21

• circa 8 pages, word processed, double-spaced

• Use text but go beyond it– other texts in social geography, sociology,

geography

Essay A

• How fundamental is the body to the field of social geography?

Essay B

• What is the importance of scale in the discussion of the social relations of place?

Body

• boundary between Self and Other

Michel Foucault

• Power and space intertwines

• Can explore power by looking into the places which it creates

• Power is a way of looking at things

Michel Foucault

• The Gaze:– a culturally-learned way of looking

• Self: the observer

• Other: what is observed

• Difference:– the Otherness of the Other

Body as personal space

• Cultural/spatial differences in personal space

• link 1

• link 2

Body as location

• for identity, Difference

• for social relations

• site of social struggles, disputes

Disputed bodies

• social access to the body

• personal movement, conduct

Disputed bodies

• where should a body be?

What is a body?

• a temple?

• a machine?

• a prison?

• sacred/secular?

• private/public?

• natural/social?

Cartesian Dualism

• “I think therefore I am” (Rene Descartes)– Body and mind are separate

• body takes up space

• mind occupies no space

– Justifies other dualisms:• People vs Nature

• Culture vs Nature

• Mind vs Body

– Plain wrong

Descartes

• Venerates the rational mind– vs bodily urges

• Body and universe– become a machine– something to be mapped,

explored, dissected by rational science

Age of Reason

• Growth of rational science

• Culture venerates rationality, consciousness

• Represents educated (white, male) mind as– rational, scientific, critical, objective

• Others (women, non-white) represented as– irrational, emotional, superstitious, corporeal

• Dualism a basis of much Western thought

Spinoza

• C17th Dutch Jew

• Objected to Cartesian Dualism

• Proposed double-aspect theory:– Mental & physical different

aspects of the same substance

C19th/C20th Changes

• Biology– Universe is not just a

machine– Reveals the animal

inside the human

• Analytical Psychiatry– Showed that the mind

is both rational and irrational

Feminist contribution

• The body as an important “site” in social relations

• Connection between bodies and society

• Critique of dualism:– men/mind/culture vs women/bodies/nature

– bodies, minds, society, the universe are all integrated

"They say television is making people dumber. What do they mean by that?"

- Scott E. Roeben

Neil Postman

• Present-day media and culture critic

• TV and electronic media destroy intellectual culture

• we are– amusing ourselves to death (1986)– informing ourselves to death (1990s)

“We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.”

—Robert Wilensky.

Dualisms

• Rene Descartes: bodiless heads

• Neil Postman: headless bodies

Critique of Postman

• Assumes technology shapes culture– culture shapes technology too

• Assumes people are passive consumers of media-generated images– They have a consciousness too– They create images and counter-

images

Dualisms in Geography

• Enduring effect of Cartesian Dualism

• Rationality still venerated– Decision-makers supposed to be “rational” in

economic geography

• Universal human subject – often white, heterosexual