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Carnal Thoughts Embodiment and Moving Image Culture 2004 328 pages Complementary Texts Tammy L Bennington and Geri Gay Laura U. Marks The Skin of the Film Keywords Copyright © 2004-2007 Isabel Pedersen |
Comprising 12 essays, Carnal Thoughts draws extensively on phenomenology through the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. It largely focuses on the concept of “embodiment.” Sobchack writes in the Introduction that “all the essays in this volume are focused on the lived body. That is, their concern is not merely with the body as an abstracted object belonging always to someone else but also with what it means to be “embodied” and to live our animated and metamorphic existences as the concrete, extroverted, and spirited we all objectively are” (1). She stipulates later that “we are both objective subjects and subjective objects” (9) Interestingly, to emphasize these claims, Sobchack uses autobiographical passages and anecdote to support the discussion in several essays. She calls this strategy an “antidote to objective accounts of the body” (7). By intermingling personal opinion, personal anecdote, films, critical theory, and popular culture, to name a few tactics, Sobchack delivers a fascinating and readable text that explores embodiment. |