Thinking the body as a basis, provocation and burden of life

Jean-Claude Schmitt

Thinking the Body in the Middle Ages

The body is not an a priori and immutable given object. In close relationship with the personal individuation process, it never ceases to construct itself: it transforms, it grows and it strengthens, it undergoes the process of illness and age, it dies and erodes. It also has a social life that can never be separated from its physiological development: it is watched, touched, loved or rejected, clothed or undressed, adorned or tortured, valued or despised. It is rarely alone, rather it communicates with other bodies through the eyes, the voice, through gestures: it is a social being. Finally, it is the subject of figural representations, painted or carved images or, nowadays, photographs: ...