Word Made Skin: Figuring Language at the Surface of Flesh

Karmen MacKendrick

Published by Fordham University Press 2005

Word Made Skin

Figuring Language at the Surface of Flesh

Karmen MacKendrick

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823293599

Overview
Contents

About this book

Today, body and language are prominent themes throughout philosophy. Each is strange enough on its own; this book asks what sense we might make of them together. Words reach out. Hands pick up books; eyes or fingertips scan text. But just where, if at all, do words and bodies touch? In a trio of paired chapters, each juxtaposing an illustrative story or case study to a theoretical exploration, MacKendrick examines three somatic figures of speech: the touch, the fold, and the cut. In the first pairing, resurrection stories in the Gospel of John are set against a chapter on touch, which draws on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy to argue that touch is, paradoxically, the most lasting of the sensory modes in which the resurrected body is presented. T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" is then paired with a Deleuzean meditation on the fold. The final pair of chapters examines the sacred heart, an extraordinarily popular Catholic devotional image with an intriguing set of devotees-medieval mystics, sweet old ladies, and tattooed punks-in light of theoretical work of Foucault on the idea of inscribed bodies, of the cut. Theologically and philosophically sophisticated, indeed masterly, the book never loses its ground in real, specific bodily experience, performing both at the highest levels of abstraction and at the most quotidian levels of everyday life.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Word Made Flesh Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
Touch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
Unfolding “Ash Wednesday” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
Fold Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
Sacred Hearts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
Cut Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Conclusion: Figures of Desire Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 216

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9780823293599