Abstract

This article investigates Loïc Wacquant’s suggestion that ‘thinking is a deeply corporeal activity’ by showing how theoretical activities mobilize different bodies in practice, in both the natural and social sciences. It argues that knowledge is about exchanges of properties between different entities or bodies by drawing a parallel here between the sociologist (Loïc Wacquant) becoming his object of study and scientists becoming the objects they study. It also examines the reverse movement; that is, we have to invent devices to escape the hic et nunc of the body to project ourselves into other times and spaces. The article concludes by questioning Wacquant’s conception of ‘scientific knowledge’ by tracing a number of dichotomies present in his work: mind/body, subject/object, theory/practice. An alternative conception of the knowing subject is then formulated, one that is neither a transcendental subject nor a ‘socialized body’; I call this the distributed centered subject.