reclaiming the body

"For me, the whole reason and worth of reclaiming the body – or rather, of letting the body reclaim us – is so that we may find ourselves back inside this delicious world from which schooling had exiled us, rediscovering our embedment in the thick of things…" (Abram in Abram & Jardine, 2000, p. 168). This embedment, which acknowledges reciprocity with the animate and 'many-voiced' Earth (Abram, 1996) also shifts the sites of knowledge production and the languages through which it can be produced.

Poststructural theorizing, with its focus on language and the discursive, has often been accused of being disembodied (Somerville, 2004). Yet it can also be very powerful tool to make visible ways in which all bodies – human and more-than-human – are continuously marginalized and the discursive rational mind privileged. This practice of privileging and marginalization is (re)inscribed continuously in everyday work practices in the academy and public schools.