Simon Ellis

If all knowledge is embodied, and all practices that generate and enact knowledge are embodied, then I think the question becomes, ‘How are different research practices and processes embodied differently or uniquely?’ That is, are there types of embodiment that are different by kind or degree? My hunch is that research that explicitly calls itself embodied is done so by a subject giving the body some kind of status as a special kind of object (but an object nevertheless). But who is this subject laying claim to the body as object if indeed their research is embodied? There is a grammatical ‘trick’ that goes like this: The phrases “I am a body”, “I have a body” or even “I know my body” can become: “body being”, “body having”, “body known” or even “body being known”. If there is body being known, then known by what? Radically embodied research would mean that there is nothing to be found at this point.

-Simon Ellis