Phenomenology of the Broken Body

Description

Some fundamental aspects of the lived body only become evident when it breaks down through illness, weakness or pain. From a phenomenological point of view, various breakdowns are worth analyzing for their own sake, and discussing them also opens up overlooked dimensions of our bodily constitution. This book brings together different approaches that shed light on the phenomenology of the lived body--its normality and abnormality, health and sickness, its activity as well as its passivity. The contributors integrate phenomenological insights with discussions about bodily brokenness in philosophy, theology, medical science and literary theory. Phenomenology of the Broken Bodydemonstrates how the broken body sheds fresh light on the nuances of embodied experience in ordinary life and ultimately questions phenomenology's preunderstanding of the body. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents Introduction Section I Vulnerable Bodies 1 Weakness and Passivity: Phenomenology of the Body After Paul 2 Perceiving the Vulnerable Body: Merleau-Ponty’s Contribution to Psychoanalyses 3 Torture and Traumatic Dehiscence: Améry and Fanon on Bodily Vulnerability 4 Framing Embodiment in Violent Narratives Section II Suffering Bodies 5 Only Vulnerable Creatures Suffer: On Suffering, Embodiment and Existential Health 6 The Living Body Beyond Scientific Certainty: Brokenness, Uncanniness, Affectedness 7 No Way Out: A Phenomenology of Pain 8 Toward a Phenomenology of Fatigue Section III Recovery and Life’s Margins 9 Suffering’s Double Disclosure and the Normality of Experience 10 Re-possibilizing the World: Recovery from Serious Illness, Injury or Impairment 11 Notes from a Heart Attack: A Phenomenology of an Altered Body 12 Broken Pregnancies: Assisted Reproductive Technology and Temporality 13 Dying Bodies and Dead Bodies: A Phenomenological Analysis of Dementia, Coma and Brain Death Bibliography Contributors Index