Introduction

Recent sociological and feminist theorising about the body has recognised that past accounts had a tendency to bracket out biology in an often unconscious adherence to the received circumscriptions of the nature/culture dichotomy. Now the focus has turned to an examination of the dynamism and productivity of bodies, to a consideration of what bodies can do. The body in these conceptualisations is not the passive substrate of past theory, something which is animated by the social, but, instead is seen as animation, agency and sociality. These accounts provide rich descriptions of the vibrant and lively capabilities of bodies, their capacities to affect and be affected, to effect changes to other bodies and to their environments. Such approaches are also a call to re-envisage our concepts of bodies, a warning to be wary of historical- progressivist accounts of our investigative endeavours and the attainment of knowledge. Making this point in a recent essay, Diana Coole (2010) reminds us that the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty offered a cogent assessment of the problems that accompany a progressivist approach to research, one whose pitfalls still resonate with contemporary critiques. Her essay is a reminder for us not to forget the work of past theorists such as Merleau-Ponty, as former insights can remain pertinent to our current concerns.

Merleau-Ponty (2002) offers a critique of the assumptions and methodology of empiricism, contending that it effectively ignores and devalues the complexities of experience. Merleau-Ponty links empiricism to the sciences of chemistry, physics and mathematics (2002: 12, 26), but this methodology comprises a set of assumptions that can underlie any information-gathering venture, not just the sciences he identifies. The principles of empiricism align with our traditional, taken-for-granted world view and are, in summary: a linear conceptualisation of time; science as the progressive accumulation and mastery of knowledge; and the objects of science theorised as discrete entities with a temporal-spatial separation between them. It is a method that assumes that scientists are distanced from their objects of investigation and, similarly, that bodies are also separate objects, quite distinct in their function and capacity from the mind or culture which motivates them. Bodies, Merleau-Ponty claims, are reduced to mere processes of stimulus and response by such empiricist modes of inquiry (2002: 26).