What to read after Bodies of Knowledge?

Bodies of Knowledge challenges homogenizing (mis)understandings of knowledge construction and provides a complex discussion of what happens when we do not attend to embodied rhetorical theories and practices. Because language is always a reflection of culture, to attempt to erase language and knowledge practices that reflect minoritized and historically excluded cultural experiences obscures the legitimacy of such experiences both within and outside the academy.

The pieces in Bodies of Knowledge draw explicit attention to the impact of the body on text, the impact of the body in text, the impact of the body as text, and the impact of the body upon textual production. The contributors investigate embodied rhetorics through the lenses of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability and pain, technologies and ecologies, clothing and performance, and scent, silence, and touch. In doing so, they challenge the (false) notion that academic knowledge—that is, “real” knowledge—is disembodied and therefore presumed white, middle class, cis-het, able-bodied, and male. This collection lays bare how myriad bodies invent, construct, deliver, and experience the processes of knowledge building.

Experts in the field of writing studies provide the necessary theoretical frameworks to better understand productive (and unproductive) uses of embodied rhetorics within the academy and in the larger social realm. To help meet the theoretical and pedagogical needs of the discipline, Bodies of Knowledge addresses embodied rhetorics and embodied writing more broadly though a rich, varied, and intersectional approach. These authors address larger questions around embodiment while considering the various impacts of the body on theories and practices of rhetoric and composition.