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Abstract

Examinations of the body have been productive sites for analyzing aspects of contemporary culture in general and issues of identity/difference in particular. They have also become battlegrounds for position-claiming within both the public arena and disciplinary practices, that is, bodies claimed in/for/of x discipline. I believe it would be more productive if, in the future, we were to begin to examine bodies in relation to power regimes instead. Bodies- and art-have been found to occupy the middle ground, the space between disciplines, between the `already given or said' in everyday life and knowledge alike. I have found navigational assistance for the spaces `in between' in Bourdieu's sociology, especially his concepts of the field and habitus. This paper is an articulation of my present position-that of an itinerant academic- and my presentational/rhetorical strategies reflect my appropriation of the canonical texts of the field, tempered by the disposition of one desirous of occupying a `social space' within the academic `field' and `the functioning ethos' of feminist politics. My narrative can be read as a feminist `take' on Bourdieu and a presentation of interdisciplinarity as social practice. It can also be read as a demonstration of a `habitus' at work, or as a practice of writing the body.

Keywords

art body Bourdieu feminism habitus

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Habitus: From the Inside out and the Outside in

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