Zone 3: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 1

The forty-eight essays and photographic dossiers in these three volumes examine the history of the human body as a field where life and thought intersect. They show how different cultures at different times have entwined physical capacities and mental mechanisms in order to construct a body adapted to moral ideas or social circumstances the body of a charismatic citizen or a visionary monk a mirror image of the world or a reflection of the spirit. Each volume emphasizes a particular perspective. Part 1 explores the human bodys relationship to the divine to the bestial and to the machines that imitate or simulate it. Part 2 covers the junctures between the bodys outside and inside by studying the manifestations or production of the soul and the expression of the emotions and on another level by examining the speculations inspired by cenesthesia pain and death. Part 3 brings into play the classical opposition between organ and function by showing how organs or bodily substances can be used to justify or challenge the way human societies function and conversely how political and social functions tend to make the bodies of the persons filling them the organs of a larger body the social body or the universe as a whole. Among the contributors to Fragments for a History of the Human Body are Mark Elvin Catherine Gallagher Franoise Hritier-Aug Julia Kristeva William R. LaFleur Thomas W. Laqueur Jacques Le Goff Nicole Loraux Mario Perniola Hillel Schwartz Jean Starobinski Jean-Pierre Vernant and Caroline Walker Bynum.