![]() Stacey Alaimo encourages us to think of the ‘material self’ constituted trans-corporeally, considering the ethical potentials which emerge ‘from the literal contact zone between human corporeality and more-than-human nature’ (2010, 2). ![]() As Celia Roberts eloquently puts it ‘what of less visible, microscopic body elements such as chromosomes, and indeed hormones? Are they culturally constructed?’ (2007, 7). Whilst highly productive for feminism, a historical emphasis on discursive productions of the body risks ‘cast the body as passive’ (Alaimo 2010, 3). Nevertheless ‘feminist approaches have helped to develop alternative understandings of health, illness, and the body, and to identify intersections between the humanities and biomedicine’ (Foster and Funke 2018, 2). ![]() Feminist and gender studies have provided new understandings of the body as ongoing material and relational projects. As Sherri L Foster and Jana Funke suggest in their special issue on ‘Feminism and Medical Humanities’, the shared methodological and disciplinary legacies between medical humanities and feminism remain partly unexplored, despite the need for further inclusion of the biomedical sciences in ‘the feminist research agenda’ (Oudshorn 1994, 2). At the heart of performance is a conception of life as materially embodied and enacted - a conception that it shares with both the health humanities and feminist approaches to selfhood. ![]()
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