Abstract

Although much recent political thought, particularly that issuing from feminism and race theory, starts from the notion of embodiment, it leaves that notion uninvestigated. As a result, it tends to fall back into the very abstraction of 'the body' that it attempts to leave behind. In this thesis, I enrich existing accounts of the socio-historical situatedness of different bodies as subjects through a philosophical examination of the role of embodiment in the constitution of subjectivity. Turning to the thought of Merleau-Ponty, I argue that his philosophy avoids the residual mind-body dualism of early phenomenological thought, and offers a deeper understanding of the relation of meaning and embodiment. In particular, I argue for a distinction between two often-conflated notions in his thought: the 'corporeal schema' and the 'body image'. I then consider the thought of Luce Irigaray and her elaboration of difference and embodiment through the project of sexual difference. Following this examination, I consider Irigaray's contention that Merleau-Ponty's thought on embodiment, elaborated in his later notion of the flesh, is forged on the basis of an unjust ontology, which eclipses difference. I then argue that, although her political criticism is vital to a rich account of embodiment, her criticism of Merleau-Ponty has not sufficiently considered his corpus. I suggest that such a consideration would ultimately offer resources for her own project-particularly an examination of the distinction between the corporeal schema and the body image. Additionally, I propose that 'gesture' is an exemplar of Irigaray's central notion of the sensible transcendental and, moreover, is another site of possible engagement between her psychoanalytical thought and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological approach. I contend that both thinkers and both traditions offer us valuable resources for deepening our understanding of the role of embodiment in the constitution of subjectivity