A phenomenology of embodiment

pp. 187-215

in: Lanei Rodemeyer, Lou Sullivan diaries (1970-1980) and theories of sexual embodiment, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

Introducing Husserl's phenomenology of the body, the author argues that this approach can negotiate the different—and sometimes conflicting—manners in which we experience sexual embodiment. Following through several levels of embodiment as evident in Husserl's analyses, the author argues that different aspects of the body's materiality, sexuality, and sensory and concrete experience are constituted within each level. Thus, although the experiences of each level filter into and influence the others, we can understand our embodiment in very different ways in spite of (and along with) any apparent conflicts. The body is a unified whole of these experiential levels, from fundamental sensory experience through the social and discursive constitutions of sexual embodiment.Excerpts from Sullivan's diaries accompany the theoretical discussion in a way that Sullivan himself might engage in the theory.