What is this “Physical” in Physical Cultural Studies?

Abstract

In this article, we identify various points of ontological, epistemological, and methodological intersection from which an embodied, generative Physical Cultural Studies project can emerge. We follow scholars such as Ingham (1997) and Andrews (2008) in arguing that contemporary “body work” scholars might benefit from “framing” (Butler 2009) embodiment and corporeality within the general coordinates of 1) cultural studies’ politics of articulation (as theory and method) and radical-contextualism and 2) the cultural exigencies of the body (i.e., cultural physicalities)—and in the “messy” practices of reflexivity, empirical vulnerability, and writing (as representation and performance) such embodied research as/in practice demands.