Date/Time
Thursday
16 Apr 2015
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Location
470 Stephens Hall

Event Type
Colloquium

Annemarie Mol
Professor of Anthropology of the Body; University of Amsterdam

‘My body’ stands as an icon for situated individuality. Here it is, here I am. Recognising one’s bodily contours in the mirror should impart a person with a sense of self; and I send you an image of my face to illustrate my name and advertise this meeting. However, such localising moves do not take account of eating. Eating bodies do not walk through a world in which they dwell, instead they incorporate parts of a world they thrive on. The foods they swallow enter into their guts, anatomical inside, physiological outside. Is this where they get digested? Partly so, but a lot of digestion took place earlier, in sites spread out beyond the skin. This, then, is what in my talk I will explore. How do practices of eating interfere with the situatedness of human bodies and which lessons does this holds for academia and its theoretical repertoires?