Awards
- Nominated for Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies 2009
- Nominated for Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award 2011
- Nominated for René Wellek Prize 2012
Overview
In Agency and Embodiment, Carrie Noland examines the ways in which culture is both embodied and challenged through the corporeal performance of gestures. Arguing against the constructivist metaphor of bodily inscription dominant since Foucault, Noland maintains that kinesthetic experience, produced by acts of embodied gesturing, places pressure on the conditioning a body receives, encouraging variations in cultural practice that cannot otherwise be explained. Drawing on work in disciplines as diverse as dance and movement theory, phenomenology, cognitive science, and literary criticism, Noland argues that kinesthesia-feeling the body move-encourages experiment, modification, and, at times, rejection of the routine. Noland privileges corporeal performance and the sensory experience it affords in order to find a way beyond constructivist theory's inability to produce a convincing account of agency. She observes that despite the impact of social conditioning, human beings continue to invent surprising new ways of altering the inscribed behaviors they are called on to perform. Through lucid close readings of Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Bill Viola, André Leroi-Gourhan, Henri Michaux, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Derrida, and contemporary digital artist Camille Utterback, Noland illustrates her provocative thesis, addressing issues of concern to scholars in critical theory, performance studies, anthropology, and visual studies.
Full Product Details
Author: Carrie Noland
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.544kg
ISBN: 9780674034518
ISBN 10: 0674034511
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 01 October 2009
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
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Reviews
Carrie Noland challenges Michel Foucault's metaphor of bodily inscription by proposing gesture as scriptural having the characteristics of writing. Agency and Embodiment constitutes a highly original contribution to thinking on the body, power, and culture across fields in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, from a decidedly interdisciplinary perspective.--Mark Franko, Professor of Dance, University of California, Santa Cruz
Author Information
Carrie Noland is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.
