Elizabeth Grosz Refiguring Bodies Summary

Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

In ‘’Refiguring bodies” published in 1994 by the Indian University Press, philosophical journal ‘Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism’, Elizabeth Grosz, examines ‘key features of the received history that we have inherited in our current conceptions of bodies’ (47). The significant term ‘somatophobia’ is used by Grosz to describe the philosophical foundations of our notion of the body, meaning ‘fear of the body’. More importantly it acts as some sort of guide, leading to questions regarding the bodies of both men and women, more specifically the effects ‘mind’ and ‘body’ have on each other. Grosz argues that philosophy has
Grosz looks at ancient philosophical writers such as Plato, Aristotle and Descartes that evidently emphasize ‘ideals based on sexual binaries and hierarchies’ (47). ). Descartes accomplished‘ Dualism’ which regards both the body and the mind as ‘two mutually exclusive and mutually exhaustive, each, inhabiting their own self-contained sphere’ (48) contradicting feminist work. Grosz uses Cartesianism to explain the more modern day contemporary form of thought that first investigates the body in regards to an ‘object used for natural sciences’ (49). The second line of investigation, views the body ‘ in terms of metaphors that construe it as an instrument, tool or machine at the disposal of consciousness’ (50). The last line investigates the ‘body as a signifying medium, a vehicle of expression, a mode of rendering public and communicable what is essentially private’ (51). Grosz recognizes that the notions of the ‘body’ are embodied from not