1st Edition

Body Transformations Evolutions and Atavisms in Culture

By Alphonso Lingis Copyright 2006
    162 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    162 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book presents some eruptions of archaic compulsions and behaviors and the forms that they acquire in contemporary societies. It explores how we see and feel our bodies and some of the ways evolution and culture are transforming them.

    Introduction -- Discontinuities -- Our Species: Premature, Symbiotic, Atavistic -- The Evolution of Splendor -- Quadrille -- How One Feels, How One Looks -- Dismemberments -- The Social Body -- The Physiology of Art -- Transparency -- Attachments -- Appetite -- Fetishism -- Potlatch -- Flesh Trade -- Good Deeds.

    Biography

    Alphonso Lingis is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He has published several books and contributed essays to numerous volumes and journals.

    "Lingis has an uncanny ability to make you sit up and take notice at the oddity of the world, how the experience of human nature and nature by far exceeds our theories. His writing is in synchrony with this excess; he interpolates personal anecdotes in ways I find utterly convincing and helpful, like jewels in a fishnet. Lingis is a unique voice in English language commentary." -- Michael Taussig