@article{esj 207, author = {Aaron Reeves}, title = {Bodies of Matter: Theorising corporeality through Bhaskar, Butler and Latour}, volume = {1}, year = {2009}, url = {http://publications.essex.ac.uk/esj/article/id/207/}, issue = {1}, doi = {10.5526/esj152}, abstract = {<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0cm; line-height: 22px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Sylfaen, serif; color: black;">There is some difficulty for social theory in trying to understand corporeality.  This paper works through the ideas of Bhaskar, Butler and Latour in order to draw out those concepts that may be of value in theorising materiality.  Bhaskar’s Critical Realism deals with matter primarily through the concept of ‘emergence’.  His tri-partite ontology coupled with his multi-layered view of scientific reality and focus leads to an overly complex and cumbersome view of matter that leaves vey little space for social theorists to comment upon corporeality.  His conception of agents is useful and can be compared with Latour’s later ideas around humans, non-humans and actants (agents).  Butler’s work wants to move away from constructivist arguments of matter while retaining the history (or changing conceptions) of matter.  Butler therefore sees matter as caught in an aporia between materiality and signification; where each is reliant upon, but not reducible to the other.  In this regard Butler lays out how matter is brought to mean and the consequences of this for those bodies that are privileged and those that are abjected.  For Latour social theory is primarily concerned with associations between humans and non-humans (each are regarded as actants or agents).  In this regard he wants to collapse the bifurcation of nature, which Butler appears to be guilty of accepting uncritically.  Consequently, it is argued that social theory can speak about corporeality as long as it considers both humans and non-humans as actors, and remembers to consider the history of matter and the way that it comes to mean.  Bodies that matter are always bodies of matter, however they are materialised.  <o:p></o:p></span></p>}, month = {5}, keywords = {Social theory,corporeality,Bhaskar,Butler,Latour.}, issn = {2633-7045}, publisher={University of Essex Library Services}, journal = {Essex Student Journal} }