5
In the Introduction to Volatile Bodies , Elizabeth Grosz declares her intention to rethink the nature of the body with “ its psychical interior and its corporeal exterior , by showing not their fundamental identity or reducibility but the torsion of the one into the other ”. 6 Her goal is to show that the body is best understood as a schema that does not exclusively reduce to a biological exterior or a mental interior , rather a tertium quid of both . She develops this concept of a tertium quid through the analogy of the Mobius strip , including both psychoanalytic theory and neuroscience to explain and justify her theory of corporeality ( of the body as biological and mental ).
Two concepts stand out as especially important towards this end : Lacan ’ s concept of imaginary anatomy and Sir Henry Head ’ s neurological studies into the phantom limb phenomenon . Lacan ’ s imaginary anatomy is a psychoanalytic term . It refers to the subject ’ s map of meaning for his or her body ; it derives from the subject ’ s sense of self , other ’ s perception of the subject , and from cultural influences . 7 Any given person ’ s image of self is not purely a mental construct . Rather , it develops from a weave of the actual contours of the body , social expectations , and the peculiarities of the individual . Grosz complements this psychoanalytic approach to body schema with neuroscience – in particular , on the phantom limb phenomena . A phantom limb is a limb felt as if still present well after the physical limb has been amputated or lost . Head ’ s neurological studies suggest that what people call an arm or leg is not reducible to a purely biological appendage . Building upon the neurological research of Sir Henry Head , she explains that phantom limbs exist because the biological body is mentally informed by past experiences and future expectations . 8 For example , my arm is more than flesh and bone , because it includes my intentions and expectations . Sensations are conditioned by expectations . These past and future experiences and expectations derive from culture and social life . As Grosz argues , these concepts demonstrate that the physical body and mind cannot be so easily sundered , because the body is not so much a discrete , physical thing , as it is a schema of physical reality and psychical activity .
Yet , the physical body and the mental image of oneself do not always perfectly correspond . Sometimes , people experience incongruence between the two . For example , notable journalist Amy Ellis Nutt recently published an account about a family learning of their son ’ s transgender identity and the path that finally lead to their acceptance of that identity . 9 This account illustrates the transgenderism of modern identity politics . The trans movement is the belief that gender is primarily an identity dependent upon personal experience – more precisely , the importance of “ felt ” experience as “ lived ” experience . While Nutt is a journalist and not a scholar , her work clearly exemplifies the popular understanding of gender . In Becoming Nicole , Amy Ellis Nutt offers her perspective on the transgender movement and comments on the philosophy of gender . 10 She claims that “ our genitals and our gender
6 Ibid . 7 Elizabeth Grosz , Volatile Bodies : Toward a Corporeal Feminism ( Bloomington , IN : Indiana University Press , 1994 ),
41-42 . 8 Ibid , 65 . 9 Amy Ellis Nutt , Becoming Nicole : The Transformation of an American Family ( New York : Random House , 2015 ).
10 Ibid , See Chapter 14 – “ The X ’ s and Y ’ s of Sex ”.