Bodies

Abstract

In recent years, in line with a general focus on the human body in the humanities, the corporeal aspects of memory have also been explored in the field of memory studies, concerning both collective and individual forms of embodied memory. Paul Connerton, a social anthropologist, argues that embodied practices are a significant way in which we remember on a societal level — for example, in the body’s performative integration in reenactments and rituals (Connerton 1989: 172). Tribal markings or the circumcision of Jewish men as the physical sign of the covenant between God and his people indicate that those who carry them are part of a certain group. The interest in the individual embodiment of memory extends not only to neuroscience and the physical paths of cultural memory but also to explorations of how our bodies are literally and metaphorically inscribed by the past: in the body’s language of markings and symptoms, the story of a life becomes visible and readable.