SOMMAIRE

Le sternum brûle la plèvre
La plèvre, contractée, étouffe les poumons.
L’air pleut en escarbilles sur l’estomac.
Un acide coule le long des vertèbres et dévore les racines du ventre. Tout devient blanc. Les os entassent
leur rocaille. Le regard se casse, d’un ébouillis à l’autre,
puis rampe.
En haut, dans la sinistre solitude du crâne, l’œil pend.

Bernard Noël, Extraits du corps, 1958

In recent decades, following the leading work of Roy Porter, and his key assumptions that human bodies are the main signifiers of all political, medical and religious meanings, many scholars have paid growing attention to the body in terms of medical culture, power, politics, art, religion, literature, anatomy and history, right up to the most recent studies on ethical and gender issues. In addition, recent spectacular artists' installations and performances on the body (by among others Gunther Von Hagens, Christian Boltanski and Peter Greenway) keep the questioning around the body deeply rooted in our society.

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The Eye of the Surgeon: Bodily Images from the Collection of the Royal Academy of Surgery of Paris, 1731–93

écrit par Épistémocritique

Abstract:
This article examines the ways in which the human body was represented in eighteenth-century France, using a range of surgical drawings. While trying to enhance the scientific status of pictures of the human body, which endows them with their own epistemological value, these drawings remain rooted in academic artistic conventions as well as in the Christian iconographic tradition.

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Devotion and Healing. The sick, miraculously cured, examined Body of Sister Maria Vittoria Centurione in Eighteenth-Century Genoa

écrit par Épistémocritique

Abstract:
This research study aims to analyze documentation related to bodies, their definition and management. For this purpose, documents were used from a box entitled "Grazie" (n. 1355) from the Archives of the Diocese of Genoa, in which documents concerning miracles that occurred in the Diocese were kept. The nun Maria Vittoria Centurione of the Carmelite monastery of Saint Teresa was involved in a series of miracles studied by the Genoese ecclesiastical authorities between 1701 and 1705. In particular, she was healed from a form of vertigen tenebrosa with subsequent progressive paralysis through the intercession of St Teresa in 1701, and from another unknown disease through the intercession of St Pasquale Bailon, who appeared to her in her cell in the monastery. This study illustrates perceptions of the body in the monastery and in the Curia, notably through the theological books used by the ecclesiastical officials, as well as in the Genoese medical community.

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The ‘Polite’ Face: The Social Meanings Attached to Facial Appearance in Early Eighteenth-Century Didactic Journals

écrit par Épistémocritique

Abstract:
The early eighteenth-century English elite were obsessed with their looks, and this article will examine why. Through analysis of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s didactic journals the Tatler, the Spectator and the Guardian, this paper will explore what symbolic meanings and associations were attached to the face in this period and how they informed the ways in which the face was perceived. This discussion will show that a range of evidence contained within these papers reveals that the face was inscribed with many complex meanings directly informed by the social idiom that characterised elite culture in this period: ‘politeness’. It will be argued that looks were of such concern to contemporaries in the early eighteenth century because of the ways in which Addison and Steele presented the active management of the face through its expression as a plausible means by which individuals could render their ‘personal identity’ and display it to others.

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Sexing the body. The case of Giacoma Foroni

écrit par Épistémocritique

Abstract:
Giacoma Foroni, born near Mantua in 1779, was raised as a girl and believed herself to be one. Her unusual sexual organs were deemed female by different midwives, both at her birth and after puberty. The value of outward appearance, anatomical knowledge, the way to define an individual’s sex, the question of case studies, etc. are posed by and in the texts about and drawings of a body which departed from the norm, as examined by a deputation of scientists from the Virgilian Academy. These learned men concluded it to be that of a male. The body was made to give evidence against the individual’s own beliefs regarding his/her sex. As a result, the scientists had to distinguish between sex and gender.

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An Archive of Sins: Experimenting with the Body and Building a Knowledge of the ‘Low’ in José Ignacio Eyzaguirre’s General Confession (1799-1804)

écrit par Épistémocritique

Abstract:
In this paper I will analyze an unpublished document from the late eighteenth century, currently held in Chile’s National Archives. In it, its author, José Ignacio Eyzaguirre, an educated man in his twenties, tries to analyze himself and his actions using confessional discourse. The result is an archive of bodily sins, intended to help Eyzaguirre’s memory in the process of confessing all his bad deeds. It will be shown how he recounts his actions and desires in relation to sexuality and how the document reflects the ways in which Eyzaguirre built his own knowledge of the body.

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