Tracing bodylines: the body in feminist poststructural research

Abstract

This paper traces body lines in feminist poststructural research by identifying the conditions under which research into the lived body can be brought into discursive relation with contemporary theoretical formulations of the body. It begins by identifying the erasure of the corporeal body in the somatophobia of essentialism and the exclusive focus of poststructural research on the constitution of bodies in language. Potential methodologies for researching the lived body are suggested and the problems of phenomenological research identified. The theoretical conditions, methodological gestures, and analytical strategies for researching the body in body/place relations are explored in relation to the author's own work in Body/landscape journals (Somerville, 1999 ) and the work of other Australian researchers. These are brought together in relation to a small sample of the author's current research into safe bodies in the mining industry.