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Darrera modificació: 2018-01-09
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Green, Monica H., "Bodily essences: bodies as categories of difference", dins: Kalof, Linda - Bynum, William (eds.), A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Middle Ages, Oxford - Nova York, Berg, 2010, vol. 2 (A Cultural History of the Human Body in The Medieval Age, 500 - 1500, ed. Linda Kalof), pp. 149-172 i 264-268.
- Resum
- This essay examines the ways in which the physical body served to both carry and mark differences that played out in the social and political realms. The “unmarked” body seems the norm, unlimited in its potentiality; the body marked by “difference”—sex, age, debility—is limited in its potentiality. I argue here that the bodily difference most important to medieval society was sex. The physiology of the female body was decidedly different from that of the male body, and in some respects even more defining of “difference” than were the anatomical features that distinguished male from female. I take issue with the thesis of Thomas Laqueur that medieval Europe was characterized by a “one-sex body” notion, the idea that male and female were on a single (and potentially reversible) continuum. As noted, the physiological differences between male and female were understood to be profound, and they guided all basic concepts of medical thinking about basic gynecological disease. Rather, following suggestions by Katharine Park, I point out that adoption of the Galenic homological discourse by surgeons in particular (not physicians generally) was a way to make up for their relative lack of information on female pelvic anatomy. As surgeons began more and more to move into gynecological, and then obstetrical care, they analogized from male genital anatomy (which they knew well from many decades of increasingly sophisticated work on male hernias and other genital surgeries) to female anatomy. “To deliver on such claims [to have gynecological and obstetrical expertise], they had to act as if they knew what they were doing.” I also survey traditions of depicting the female body in medical contexts. I also discuss so-called “male menstruation” (which in some cases was seen a salubrious hemorrhoidal bleeding) and hermaphroditism. On the latter topic, I suggest that contrast between Islamic views and Christian ones is fruitful. So, too, is consideration of uterine anatomy, which was founded on the idea that the human uterus is multi-celled, with the central one believed capable of producing hermaphrodites.
I then turn to paleopathology for assistance in assessing the ways in which physical debility—most importantly the classic disabling disease, leprosy—also “marked” individuals. Surprisingly, physical disability seems not to have been the most common means of distinguishing people. Still, in extreme situations, such distinction was done, a fact we see most striking in excavations from leprosaria, where the evidence suggests that those more severely (and visibly) affected by the disease were also those most like to be segregated. After a quick glance at physiognomy, the actual science of essential discernment based on physical characteristics, and chiromancy, which focused on the hands, I turn to the “markings” allowed by dress, which could more readily be taken on or cast aside at will.
- Matèries
- Història de la medicina
Medicina - Cirurgia i anatomia
Medicina - Ginecologia, obstetrícia i cosmètica
Dones
Història de la cultura
- Notes
- Les notes a les pp. 264-268.
- URL
- https://www.academia.edu/5113368/Monica_H._Green_Bo ...
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