José Viegas Brás & Maria Neves Gonçalves

Authors, Editors

2013

Year of edition

978-989-851-268-0

ISBN

Synopsis – [The Body – Memory and Identity]. From the Organic to the Functional and Symbolic launches us into the problem of the unity of reality. In this experiential category, the organic and the symbolic are intricately intertwined in a power relationship, producing identities in which man and body merge into a single existence inserted into a specific social fabric of history. In this power relationship, the material is linked to the immaterial, the sensible to the intelligible, the organs, muscles, and joints to reason, ideas, and emotions. To make the body a person is to understand the human condition of its existence. In its relationship with the world, a symbolic system shapes it, humanizes it, meaning that it appropriates the values ​​and meanings of the social use of the body. Through the body, man becomes the world. This book presents different perspectives on the approach to the body: historical, philosophical, sociological, artistic, and literary.