The structure of embodiment and the overcoming of dualism: an analysis of Margaret Lock’s paradigm of embodiment

Abstract

This paper elaborates the structure of the dualistic theory and that of embodiment in order to demonstrate the existence of a linkage between the two using a topological approach. This theoretical step is taken in order to analyze the so-called overcoming of dualistic theories by the theory of embodiment. The author takes into analysis one particular theory of embodiment: Margaret Lock’s. The analysis of her theory of embodiment takes into consideration both the level of enunciation and the enunciated, which enables the conceptualisation and understanding of Lock’s subjectivity as immanent to her theory. The specific moral position taken by Lock, which is required by her ‘project,’ is not transcendental, but rather an effect of the structure of her theory. This approach enables the author to develop a critique that aims at developing further her theory rather than pragmatically negating it. The paper ends with the conclusion that the object of the overcoming is not the dualism itself, but the element called ‘Difference.’ This element belongs to the dualistic relation yet simultaneously cannot be integrated into the relation. Conversely, a theory of embodiment is faced with the same element (Difference), but the former finds another structural solution to it. In the claim of an overcoming of dualities, the theory of embodiment demonstrates a reactionary position in relation to Difference. Precisely this position produces the structural impossibility of accepting the fact that the actual problem is not to bridge Difference, but, rather, to formulate it as such.