Main description:

Some fundamental aspects of the lived body only become evident when it breaks down through illness, weakness or pain. From a phenomenological point of view, various breakdowns are worth analyzing for their own sake, and discussing them also opens up overlooked dimensions of our bodily constitution. This book brings together different approaches that shed light on the phenomenology of the lived body-its normality and abnormality, health and sickness, its activity as well as its passivity. The contributors integrate phenomenological insights with discussions about bodily brokenness in philosophy, theology, medical science and literary theory. Phenomenology of the Broken Body demonstrates how the broken body sheds fresh light on the nuances of embodied experience in ordinary life and ultimately questions phenomenology's preunderstanding of the body.

Contents:

Introduction

Espen Dahl, Cassandra Falke, Thor Eirik Eriksen

Section I: Vulnerable Bodies

1. Weakness and Passivity: Phenomenology of the Body after Paul

Espen Dahl

2. The Vulnerable Body - Merleau-Ponty and Psychoanalysis

Stale Finke

3. Bodily Pain and the Breakdown of Language in Algerian Testimony and Literature

Alexandra Megearu

4. Framing Embodiment in Violent Narratives

Cassandra Falke

Section II: Suffering Bodies

5. Only Vulnerable Creatures Suffer: On Suffering, Embodiment and Existential Health

Ola Sigurdson

6. The Body Beyond Scientific Certainty - Brokenness, Uncanniness, Affectedness

Thor Eirik Eriksen

7. No Way Out: A Phenomenology of Pain

Christian Gruny

8. The Phenomenology of Fatigue

Katherine Morris

Section III: Recovery and Lifes Margins

9. Suffering's Double Disclosure and the Structure of Normality in Experience

James McGuirk

10. Recovery as Re-attunement: Repairing the Body-World Relationship

Drew Leder

11. Notes from a Heart Attack

Kevin Aho

12. Broken Pregnancies

Talia Welsh

13. Dying Bodies and Dead Bodies: A Phenomenological Analysis of Dementia, Coma and Brain Death

Fredrik Svenaeus