The Anthropology of the Body is a dynamic and emerging subfield in anthropology. Its importance stems from the historical neglect of bodies in Western humanist scholarship. The seminar will focus on the materiality of the human body, as a critical nexus between the individual and the external world. Our task in this course will be two-fold: first, to interrogate the intellectual traditions that have led an impoverished understanding of the body, such as the dualism of the mind-body divide; and second, to explore anthropological and other theoretical writings about the body that enable us to envision alternative worlds and modes of existence.
We should be prepared to struggle with the material in this course. In the words of Gilles Deleuze, we will attempt to make the leap into the “plane of immanence.” But we should recognize that this leap may be partial and incomplete. Our goal is to develop a set of theoretical tools that we can carry with us beyond this course, so that we can continue this arduous, but in my opinion, immensely rewarding task in our everyday lives.

The literature on the body has proliferated and grown so rapidly that there are countless ways to design a course such as this. Our approach this semester will have three parts. In Part I, we will begin with critique, exploring the implications of the mind-body divide, and looking at key theorists who offer tools for thinking beyond it. In Part II, we will explore phenomenological approaches to perception and “post-humanist” investigations of the body and its relationship to the environment. In Part III, we will conclude with ethnographic explorations of alternative bodily practices – in our case, dance (capoeira) in Brazil and wrestling in India – to enhance our understanding of our new concepts and further develop our own research projects.