Mind-Body Synergy

Abstract

This chapter sets the foundation for an analysis of embodied agency in the Dune series by examining the development of Bene Gesserit women’s mind-body synergy and physical and mental feats. This involves showing how a more holistic understanding of the human as situated in the body serves to dismiss the idea that the female body limits women’s agential capacity. The chapter engages with the concept of dualistic thinking and René Descartes’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s perspectives on the body, as well as the influences of Eastern philosophies and Jungian psychology. It argues that the description of the Bene Gesserit’s feats helps to characterize them as capable and skilled women with a high degree of embodied agency. Examples include their skills in perception, prana-bindu, combat, and survival of the spice agony. The chapter also shows that the balance the Bene Gesserit maintain between the mind and the body is positioned as superior to the preference for logic of the Mentats.