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Corporeal Habits: Addressing Essentialism Differently

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Vicki Kirby
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Abstract

Feminism could be described as a discourse that negotiates corporeality, what a body is and what a body can do. Nevertheless, the specter of essentialism means that the biological or anatomical body, the body that is commonly understood to be the “real” body, is often excluded from this investigation. The increasingly sterile debate between essentialism and antiessentialism has inadvertently encouraged this somatophobia. I argue that these opposing positions are actually inseparable, sharing a complicitous relationship that produces material effects.

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Type
Research Article
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Hypatia , Volume 6 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Feminism and the Body , Fall 1991 , pp. 4 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by Hypatia, Inc.

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