VIEWPOINT The Body and Geography

Abstract

This paper highlights some of the major issues involved in theorising the body. Dualisms such as mind/body, sex/gender and essentialism/constructionism are discussed in order to provide a starting point for understanding the historical privileging of the conceptual over the corporeal in the production of hegemonic, masculinised and disembodied geographical knowledges. The paper also reviews some of the current literature in feminist geography that problematises the mind/body split and makes the sexed body explicit. This literature, I believe, provides fertile ground for further interdisciplinary and geographical inquiry .