This article discusses the datafied embodiment of the Internet of Bodies (IoB) technology by applying the methodology of postphenomenology. Firstly, the author claims that the boundaries of dual distinction between real and virtual, online and offline, and embodiment and disembodiment have become increasingly blurred. Secondly, the author argues that postphenomenology can help us to study today’s emerging technologies’ mediating role in human–world relations. Thirdly, the author analyses the implication of embodiment from phenomenological and postphenomenological perspectives and (...) then demonstrates in what sense the data collected from the IoB devices can constitute our embodiment and selfhood. Fourthly, the author elucidates how the IoB devices are datafying our bodies and the whole lifeworld and how these devices mediate and transform our religious practices and experiences. Fifthly, the author points out that the Quantified Religion as the possible new religious model would smooth out the differences and diversities between religions and then create homogeneous religious data selves, which will mediate, reshape, constitute and even replace our physical selves. Ultimately, the author argues that responsible designing of the IoB devices and establishing the ownership of personal religious data can be seen as significant measures in the face of the risk of our quantified religious future. Contribution: This article contributes to understanding the potential religious transformations caused by the IoB technology. This article analyses the mediating role the IoB technology plays in the relationship between humans and the world through a postphenomenological perspective, thereby explaining how body data harvested from the IoB devices can datafy and constitute our embodiment and selfhood. The article argues that the Quantified Religion as a new religious model will emerge in the future IoB era, and it will mediate, constitute and shape our religious practices and experiences through personal data harvesting and analysis. (shrink)

Humans have become increasingly datafied with the use of digital technologies that generate information with and about their bodies and everyday lives. The onto-epistemological dimensions of human–data assemblages and their relationship to bodies and selves have yet to be thoroughly theorised. In this essay, I draw on key perspectives espoused in feminist materialism, vital materialism and the anthropology of material culture to examine the ways in which these assemblages operate as part of knowing, perceiving and sensing human bodies. I (...) draw particularly on scholarship that employs organic metaphors and concepts of vitality, growth, making, articulation, composition and decomposition. I show how these metaphors and concepts relate to and build on each other, and how they can be applied to think through humans’ encounters with their digital data. I argue that these theoretical perspectives work to highlight the material and embodied dimensions of human–data assemblages as they grow and are enacted, articulated and incorporated into everyday lives. (shrink)

In the past 15 years, influential concepts from geography, social, cultural and communication studies have been proposed that conceptualize (everyday) space in the digital age - such as the concepts of 'code/space', 'datafied space', 'atmospheres' and 'hybrid spaces'. These deliver important contributions to theorizing the active role of data, codes, and algorithms, as well as bodies, embodiment, and affects in producing space. Yet, they consider less the role of practices, social intra-actions and difference, as well as more-than-human actants (...) and contexts beyond technologies. In this article, the authors develop the cON/FFlating spaces concept as a link between relational, more-than-human, more-than-representational, posthumanist, and (post-)feminist conceptualizations of (everyday) space. Using Karen Barad's 'diffractive methodology', data and findings from three research projects are read through different theoretical-conceptual approaches - among others Barad's concepts of 'entanglements', 'intra-actions' and 'diffraction' as well as Doreen Massey's 'multiple historicities'. Building on this, we propose 8 theses on cON/FFlating spaces. These discuss the role of practices, power, technologies, non-linear, open and multiple historicities, entangled presences, more-than-human actants and contexts, bodies and affects, and difference/'diffraction' in producing space and collectivity. (shrink)

The theory of embodiment is used in providing an account of the identity of acts and in providing solutions to various puzzles concerning acts.

To describe phenomena that occur at different time scales, computational models of the brain must incorporate different levels of abstraction. At time scales of approximately 1/3 of a second, orienting movements of the body play a crucial role in cognition and form a useful computational level embodiment level,” the constraints of the physical system determine the nature of cognitive operations. The key synergy is that at time scales of about 1/3 of a second, the natural sequentiality of body movements (...) can be matched to the natural computational economies of sequential decision systems through a system of implicit reference called deictic in which pointing movements are used to bind objects in the world to cognitive programs. This target article focuses on how deictic bindings make it possible to perform natural tasks. Deictic computation provides a mechanism for representing the essential features that link external sensory data with internal cognitive programs and motor actions. One of the central features of cognition, working memory, can be related to moment-by-moment dispositions of body features such as eye movements and hand movements. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, UK government policy exhortations to promote and increase exercise and physical activity levels in the population have increased in volume. In recent years, too, there has been growing sociological interest in exercise and physical activity embodiment issues, including within phenomenologically-inspired research into lived-body experiences. This article contributes original insights to a developing body of phenomenological-sociological empirical work in this domain, in addressing the lived experience of organised exercise in outdoor environments, and specifically in theorising (...) the role of ‘lived weather’ in contouring these experiences. It thus addresses the call by Vannini et al. (2012) to remedy the notable ‘absent-presence’ of weather in much social science research. Drawing upon data from a two-year multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional ethnographic study of a nationwide exercise programme in Wales, UK, this article examines participants’ (n = 146) lived experience of weather, and theorises their ‘weather learning’, and ‘weather work’, both of which emerged as highly salient in the findings. (shrink)

Posthuman ethics -- Great ephemeral tattooed skin -- Art: inhuman ecstasy -- Animalities: ethics and absolute abolition -- Wonder of Teras -- Mystic queer -- Vitalistic ethics: an end to necrophilosophy -- After life.

abstract In this paper we question the basis on which judgements are made about the ‘quality’ of the lives of people whose embodied experience is anomalous, specifically in cases of impairments. In moral and political philosophy it is often assumed that, suitably informed, we can overcome epistemic gaps through the exercise of moral imagination: ‘putting ourselves in the place of others’, we can share their points of view. Drawing on phenomenology and theories of embodied cognition, and on empirical studies, we (...) suggest that there are barriers to imagining oneself differently situated, or imagining being another person, arising in part from the way imagination is constrained by embodied experience. We argue that the role of imagination in moral engagement with others is to expand the scope of our sympathies rather than to enable us to put ourselves in the other's place. We argue for explicit acknowledgement that our assessments of others’ QOL are likely to be shaped by the specifics of our own embodiment, and by the assumptions we make as a consequence about what is necessary for a good quality of life. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to situate the thought of Tetsurō Watsuji within contemporary approaches to social cognition. I argue for Watsuji’s current relevance, suggesting that his analysis of embodiment and social space puts him in step with some of the concerns driving ongoing treatments of social cognition in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Yet, as I will show, Watsuji can potentially offer a fruitful contribution to this discussion by lending a phenomenologically informed critical perspective. This is (...) because Watsuji challenges the internalist and cognitivist presuppositions informing the currently dominant “Theory of Mind” paradigm that is driving much social cognition research. Additionally, I show that Watsuji’s alternative model is not merely confined to the realm of phenomenological description but that it also receives robust empirical support from a number of different sources. I thus hope to open up aspects of Watsuji’s thinking that have yet to be fully appreciated. (shrink)

Feminist theorists have shown that knowledge is embodied in ways that make a difference in science. Intemann properly endorses feminist standpoint theory over Longino’s empiricism, insofar as the former better addresses embodiment. I argue that a pragmatist analysis further improves standpoint theory: Pragmatism avoids the radical subjectivity that otherwise leaves us unable to account for our ability to share scientific knowledge across bodies of different kinds; and it allows us to argue for the inclusion, not just of the knowledge (...) produced from marginalised bodies, but of the marginalised themselves. (shrink)

Weather experiences are currently surprisingly under-explored and under-theorised in sociology and sport sociology, despite the importance of weather in both routine, everyday life and in recreational sporting and physical–cultural contexts. To address this lacuna, we examine here the lived experience of weather, including ‘weather work’ and ‘weather learning’, in our specific physical–cultural worlds of distance-running, triathlon and jogging in the United Kingdom. Drawing on a theoretical framework of phenomenological sociology, and the findings from five separate auto/ethnographic projects, we explore the (...) ‘weather-worlds’ and weather work involved in our physical–cultural engagement. In so doing, we address ongoing sport sociological concerns about embodiment and somatic, sensory learning and ways of knowing. We highlight how weather work provides a key example of the phenomenological conceptualisation of the mind–body–world nexus in action, with key findings delineating weather learning across the meteorological seasons that contour our British weather-related training. (shrink)

This article explores Fanon's thought on dance, beginning with his explicit treatment of it in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. It then broadens to consider his theorization of Black embodiment in racist and colonized societies, considering how these analyses can be reformulated as a phenomenology of dance. This will suggest possibilities for fruitful encounters between the two domains in which (a) dance can be valorized while (b) opening up sites of resignification and resistance for (...) Black persons and communities-including a revalorization of Black embodiment as a kind of empowering danced experience. (shrink)

The sense of embodiment is vital for self recognition. An examination of anosognosia for hemiplegia—the inability to recognise that one is paralysed down one side of one’s body—suggests the existence of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ representations of the body. Online representations of the body are representations of the body as it is currently, are newly constructed moment by moment and are directly “plugged into” current perception of the body. In contrast, offline representations of the body are representations of what the (...) body is usually like, are relatively stable and are constructed from online representations. This distinction is supported by an analysis of phantom limb—the feeling that an amputated limb is still present—phenomena. Initially it seems that the sense of embodiment may arise from either of these types of representation; however, an integrated representation of the body seems to be required. It is suggested information from vision and emotions is involved in generating these representations. A lack of access to online representations of the body does not necessarily lead to a loss in the sense of embodiment. An integrated offline representation of the body could account for the sense of embodiment and perform the functions attributed to this sense. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the various meanings of embodiment from a patient’s perspective. Resorting to phenomenology of health and medicine, I take the idea of ‘lived experience’ as starting point. On the basis of an analysis of phenomenology’s call for bracketing the natural attitude and its reduction to the transcendental, I will explain, however, that in medical phenomenological literature ‘lived experience’ is commonly one-sidedly interpreted. In my paper, I clarify in what way the idea of ‘lived experience’ should (...) be revisited and, subsequently, what this reconsideration means for phenomenological research on embodiment in health and medicine. The insight that the body is a condition of possibility for world-disclosing yet, at the same time, itself conditioned by this world forces us to not only zoom in on the body’s subject-side, but also on its object-side. I argue that in order to render account for this double body ontology, phenomenology should include empirical sociological analyses as well. I thus argue in favor of the idea of a socio-phenomenology. Drawing on material from my own research project on embodied self-experiences after breast surgery, I show how this approach can be fruitful in interpreting the impact of disfigurements on a person’s embodied agency, or a person’s ‘I can’. (shrink)

This paper develops a taxonomy of kinds of actions that can be seen in group agency, human–machine interactions, and virtual realities. These kinds of actions are special in that they are not embodied in the ordinary sense. I begin by analysing the notion of embodiment into three separate assumptions that together comprise what I call the Embodiment View. Although this view may find support in paradigmatic cases of agency, I suggest that each of its assumptions can be relaxed. (...) With each assumption that is given up, a different kind of disembodied action becomes available. The taxonomy gives a systematic overview and suggests that disembodied actions have the same theoretical relevance as the actions of any ordinarily embodied human. (shrink)

This chapter develops an alternative to the dominant articulation of human existence on the basis of classical phenomenology, arguing that Edmund Husserl's phenomenological inquiries into the structures of embodiment provide a very different and more fruitful starting point for the investigation of sexual difference than the ideas of social gender and biological sex. The ways of classifying sex and gender characteristics mark them out on several different conceptual bases, and thus their categories may not correspond or coincide. Moreover historical (...) and biological inquiries indicate that the dimorphic notion of sex is prescriptive and constructive. Finally the sex/gender paradigm is dominated by the explanatory framework of causes and effects. The phenomenological analysis shows that the causal-functional framework is inadequate for the investigation of the plurality of the bodily existence and sexual difference as a dimension of this existence. In the light of the explication of the concepts of sex and gender, and the phenomenological analysis of embodiment, the sex/gender paradigm cannot offer a basis for a comprehensive philosophy of sexual existence. (shrink)

Despite several decades of feminist activism and scholarship, women’s bodies continue to be sites of control and contention both materially and symbolically. Issues such as reproductive technologies, sexual violence, objectification, motherhood, and sex trafficking, among others, constitute ongoing, pressing concerns for women’s bodies in our contemporary milieu, arguably exacerbated in a neoliberal world where bodies are instrumentalized as sites of human capital. This book engages with these themes by building on the strong tradition of feminist thought focused on women’s bodies, (...) and by making novel contributions that reflect feminists’ concerns—both theoretically and empirically—about gender and embodiment in the present context and beyond. The collection brings together essays from a variety of feminist scholars who deploy diverse theoretical approaches, including phenomenology, pragmatism, and new materialisms, in order to examine philosophically the question of the current status of gendered bodies through cutting-edge feminist theory. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the paradigm of the lived-body developed by Straus, Merleau-Ponty and others has important implications for medical practice and theory. Certain recognized flaws in modern medicine, such as its reductionist tendencies and lack of emphasis on preventive measures are shown to be related to the exclusive use of a Cartesian notion of embodiment. Increased attention to the paradigm of the lived-body emphasizing its unity, purposiveness and "enworldment" could help to beneficially reorient practice. Moreover, this portrayal of (...) the body as an intentional entity may provide a better tool than the traditional view for conceptualizing the psychological and psychosocial components of disease etiology, as well as some newly developed modes of treatment. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Cognitive science is in some sense the science of the mind. But an increasingly influential theme, in recent years, has been the role of the physical body, and of the local environment, in promoting adaptive success. No right-minded cognitive scientist, to be sure, ever claimed that body and world were completely irrelevant to the understanding of mind. But there was, nonetheless, an unmistakeable tendency to marginalize such factors: to dwell on inner complexity whilst simplifying or ignoring the complex inner-outer interplays (...) that characterize the bulk of basic biological problem-solving. This tendency was expressed in, for example, the development of planning algorithms that treated real-world action as merely a way of implementing solutions arrived at by pure cognition. It also surfaced in David Marr's depiction of the task of vision as the construction of a detailed threedimensional image of the visual scene. For possession of such a rich inner model effectively allows the system to ‘throw away’ the world and to focus subsequent computational activity on the inner model alone. (shrink)

The phenomenological tradition has had a long interest in embodiment, and bodily experience beyond the confines of the “skinbag” body. Here I respond to Helena De Preester’s analysis of different types of protheses: limb, perceptual, cognitive. In her paper “Technology and the body: the (im)possibilities of re-embodiment”, she wants to make finer distinctions between extensions and incorporations . Today’s hi-tech developments make this refinement necessary and possible. I respond to the three levels or types of prostheses taking note (...) of the increasing difficulty at each level and express certain worries about cognitively framed notions of bodily experience. (shrink)

This paper explores the theory and practice of embodied epistemology or mindful embodiment in ethics case consultation. I argue that not only is this epistemology an ethical imperative to safeguard the integrity of this emerging profession, but that it has the potential to improve the quality of ethics consultation (EC). It also has implications for how ethics consultants are trained and how consultation services are organized. My viewpoint is informed by ethnographic research and by my experimental application of mindful (...) embodiment to the development of an ethics consultation service. My argument proceeds in four phases. First I explore the notion of ‘situatedness’ in the bioethics literature, identifying gaps in the field's theories as they apply to EC. I then describe my theoretical approach to embodiment grounded in critical-interpretive medical anthropology and autoethnography. I use embodiment to refer to a moral epistemology grounded in the body, comprised of the interplay of physical, symbolic, intersubjective and political elements. Third, I describe how mindful embodiment can inform the role of the ethics consultant and the development of effective training techniques, vocabularies and processes for EC. I also discuss the benefits of this orientation, and the potential harms of ignoring the embodied dimensions of EC. My goals are to expose the fallacy of the ‘theory-practice gap’, to demonstrate how my own EC practice is deeply informed by this theoretical orientation, and to argue for a wider definition of what ‘counts’ as relevant theory for ethics consultation. (shrink)

Regenerative Medicine promises to develop treatments to regrow healthy tissues and cure the physical body. One of the emerging developments within this field is regenerative implants, such as jawbone or heart valve implants, that can be broken down by the body and are gradually replaced with living tissue. Yet challenges for embodiment are to be expected, given that the implants are designed to integrate deeply into the tissue of the living body, so that implant and body become one. In (...) this paper, we explore how regenerative implants may affect the embodied experience of implant recipients. To this end, we take a phenomenological approach. First, we explore what insights the existing phenomenological and empirical literature on embodiment offers regarding the experience of illness and of living with regular (non-regenerative) implants and organ transplants. Second, we apply these insights to better understand how future implant recipients might experience living with regenerative implants. Third, we conclude that concepts and considerations from the existing phenomenological literature do not sufficiently address what it might be like to live with an implantable technology that, over time, becomes one with the living body. We argue that the interwovenness and intimate relationship of people living with regenerative implants should be understood in terms of ‘entanglement’. Entanglement allows us to explore the complexities of human-technology relations, acknowledging the inseparability of humans and implantable technologies. Our theoretical foundations regarding the role of embodiment may be tested empirically once more people will be living with regenerative implants. (shrink)

The overall goal of this target article is to demonstrate a mechanism for an embodied cognition. The particular vehicle is a much-studied, but still widely debated phenomenon seen in 7–12 month-old-infants. In Piaget's classic “A-not-B error,” infants who have successfully uncovered a toy at location “A” continue to reach to that location even after they watch the toy hidden in a nearby location “B.” Here, we question the traditional explanations of the error as an indicator of infants' concepts of objects (...) or other static mental structures. Instead, we demonstrate that the A-not-B error and its previously puzzling contextual variations can be understood by the coupled dynamics of the ordinary processes of goal-directed actions: looking, planning, reaching, and remembering. We offer a formal dynamic theory and model based on cognitive embodiment that both simulates the known A-not-B effects and offers novel predictions that match new experimental results. The demonstration supports an embodied view by casting the mental events involved in perception, planning, deciding, and remembering in the same analogic dynamic language as that used to describe bodily movement, so that they may be continuously meshed. We maintain that this mesh is a pre-eminently cognitive act of “knowing” not only in infancy but also in everyday activities throughout the life span. Key Words: cognitive development; dynamical systems theory; embodied cognition; infant development; motor control; motor planning; perception and action. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show that human cognition cannot be characterised purely in mentalistic term. It has a bodily basis and cognition is thus the product of the interplay between mind, body, and brain. This is how the idea of embodiment and its importance is realised and gets its foothold in both philosophy and cognitive science. This brings a radical change introducing a new framework for philosophy and cognitive science. In this new change philosophy and cognitive science have a (...) special role to play which this paper seeks to explore. Philosophy in its capacity as a conceptual inquiry provides justification for human embodiment on a conceptual ground whereas cognitive science provides the same on an empirical and experimental ground. This brings the two disciplines closer resulting into a new field of inquiry which can be best described as the interface between philosophy and cognitive science. An important consequence that follows from this alignment is that the traditional epistemological distinction between the a priori and the empirical can no longer be rigidly maintained. (shrink)

Current theories of addiction try to explain what addiction is, who experiences it, why it occurs, and how it develops and persists. In this article, I explain why none of these theories can be accepted as a comprehensive model. I argue that current models fail to account for differences in embodiment, interaction processes, and the experience of addiction. To redress these limiting factors, I design a proposal for an enactive account of addiction that follows the enactive model of autism (...) proposed by Hanne De Jaegher. (shrink)

This article presents the first empirically-based and theoretically-informed investigation of the effectiveness of the ‘self-declaration model’ of legal gender recognition in Denmark, the first European state to adopt it. Drawing upon analysis of legislative materials, as well as interviews with stakeholders in the legislative process and trans and intersex legal subjects, it contends that self-declaration is not without its limitations. By conceptualising embodiment as an ontological and epistemological process of becoming, and emphasising the institutional dimensions and effects of such (...) processes, it demonstrates that self-declaration may not address the complexities of legal embodiment, particularly concerning restrictions on trans and intersex people’s access to health care. The article’s empirical findings are directed towards the policymakers and activists tasked with shaping reforms of gender recognition legislation in the UK and elsewhere. The analytical agenda it develops may be adopted, and adapted, by scholars working in this area and other regulatory contexts. (shrink)

One big challenge faced by cognitive science is the development of a unified theory that integrates disparate scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena. In this paper, I offer a unified framework that provides a way to integrate neural and behavioral scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena—typically addressed by neuroscience and experimental psychology, respectively. The framework is based on the concept of resonance originated in ecological psychology and aims to be the foundation for a unified theory for radical embodiment; that (...) is, a unified theory for that dissident part of cognitive science that shares a methodological commitment to dynamic systems theory and remains skeptical about the adequacy of mechanism and representationalism as the guiding ideas in the field. In the course of my presentation, I analyze different issues regarding the requirements and constraints unification poses to radical embodiment. (shrink)

Language comprehension requires a simulation that uses neural systems involved in perception, action, and emotion. A review of recent literature as well as new experiments support five predictions derived from this framework. 1. Being in an emotional state congruent with sentence content facilitates sentence comprehension. 2. Because women are more reactive to sad events and men are more reactive to angry events, women understand sentences about sad events with greater facility than men, and men understand sentences about angry events with (...) greater facility than women. 3. Because it takes time to shift from one emotion to another, reading a sad sentence slows the reading of a happy sentence more for women than men, whereas reading an angry sentence slows the reading of a happy sentence more for men than for women. 4. Because sad states motivate affiliative actions and angry states motivate aggressive action, gender and emotional content of sentences interact with the response mode. 5. Because emotion simulation requires particular action systems, adapting those action systems will affect comprehension of sentences with emotional content congruent with the adapted action system. These results have implications for the study of language, emotion, and gender differences. (shrink)

In Supersizing the Mind, Andy Clark argues that the human mind is not bound inside the head but extends into body and environment.

This book proposes a novel and rigorous explanation of consciousness. It argues that the study of an aspect of our self-consciousness known as the ‘feeling of embodiment’ teaches us that there are two distinct phenomena to be targeted by an explanation of consciousness. First is an explanation of the phenomenal qualities – 'what it is like' – of the experience; and second is the subject's awareness of those qualities. Glenn Carruthers explores the phenomenal qualities of the feeling of (...) class='Hi'>embodiment using the tools of quality spaces, as well as the subject's awareness of those qualities as a functionally emergent property of various kinds of processing of these spaces. Where much recent work on consciousness focuses on visual experience, this book rather draws evidence from the study of self-consciousness. Carruthers argues that in light of recent methodological discoveries, awareness must be explained in terms of the organization of multiple cognitive processes. The book offers an explanation of anomalous body representations and, from that, poses a more general theory of consciousness. Ultimately this book creates a hybrid account of consciousness that explains phenomenology and awareness using different tools. It will be of great interest to all scholars of psychology and philosophy as well as anyone interested in exploring the intricacies of how we experience our bodies, what we are and how we fit into the world. -/- . (shrink)

The practice of nursing involves ongoing interactions between nurses' and clients' lived bodies. Despite this, several scholars have suggested that the “lived body” (Merleau‐Ponty, 1962) has not been given its due place in nursing practice, education or research (Draper, J Adv Nurs, 70, 2014, 2235). With the advent of electronic health records and increased use of technology, face‐to‐face assessment and embodied understanding of clients' lived bodies may be on the decline. Furthermore, staffing levels may not afford the time nurses need (...) to be as “present” with their clients in embodied ways. The failure to attend to the lived body may contribute to missed opportunities for care and decreased quality of life for both clients and healthcare practitioners. In this paper, we undertake an analysis of selected aspects of the work of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty. The aim is to advance understanding of the affordances this work may offer to enhancing client–nurse interactions within the practice of nursing. Merleau‐Ponty's notions of embodiment, intersubjectivity and intercorporeality as articulated in his seminal texts The Phenomenology of Perception (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012) and The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968) are examined. These three constructs are discussed as they relate to the lived body in client–nurse interactions in nursing practice and education. Finally, implications of how attention to “the lived body” could shape interactions and have the potential to foster increased quality of life of clients and nurses are considered. (shrink)

Phenomenologically speaking, one can consider the experiencing body as normative insofar as it generates norms through repeated actions and interactions, crystallizing into habits. On the other hand according to Foucauldian approaches, the subjective body does not generate norms but is itself produced by norms: Dominant social norms are incorporated via repeated practices of discipline. How is the individual level of habit formation in phenomenology related to this embodiment of supra-individual norms? In what sense can we differentiate between a habit (...) formation that results in a skill and one that disciplines a body? To address these questions the paper will analyze examples of the embodiment of norms in Foucault and feminist philosophy and show how they rely on the phenomenological concept of the actual and habitual body. (shrink)