Bodily Natures

How do we understand the agency and significance of material forces and their interface with human bodies? What does it mean to be human at a time when our bodies are inextricably interconnected with our physical world? Bodily Natures considers these questions by grappling with the power and pervasiveness of material forces and their increasingly harmful effects on the human body. Drawing on feminist theory, environmental studies, and the sciences, Stacy Alaimo focuses on trans-corporeality, or movement across bodies and nature, that has profoundly altered our sense of self. By looking at a broad range of creative and philosophical writings, Alaimo illuminates how science, politics, and culture collide when the human body becomes inseparable from the environment. Alaimo suggests that a new sense of ethics and justice emerges when we recognize that the environment is as close as our own skin.