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This Mortal Coil - The Human Body in History and Culture (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R524
Discovery Miles 5 240
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(17%)
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This Mortal Coil - The Human Body in History and Culture (Hardcover)
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List price R633
Loot Price R524
Discovery Miles 5 240
You Save R109 (17%)
Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available.
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To many people the idea that 'the body' has its own history might
sound faintly ridiculous. The body and its experiences are usually
seen as something that we share with people from the past. Like
'human nature', it represents the unchanging in a changing world.
Bodies just are... But the body does have a history. The way that
it moves, feels, breathes, and engages with the world has been
viewed very differently across times and cultures. For centuries,
'we' were believed to be composed of souls that were part of the
body and inseparable from it. Now we exist in our heads, and our
bodies have become the vessels for that uncertain and elusive thing
we call our 'true selves'. The way we understand the material
structure of the body has also changed radically over the
centuries. From the bones to the skin, from the senses to the
organs of sexual reproduction, every part of the body has an
ever-changing history, dependent on time, culture, and place. This
Mortal Coil is an exploration of that history. Peeling away our
assumptions about the unchanging nature of the human body, Fay
Bound Alberti takes it apart in order to put it back anew, telling
the cultural history of our key organs and systems from the inside
out, from blood to guts, brains to sex organs. The understanding of
the 'modern body' she reveals in the process is far removed from
the 'eternal' or timeless object of common assumption. In fact, she
argues, its roots go back no further than the sixteenth century at
the earliest - and it has only truly existed in its current form
since the nineteenth century.
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