The Iranian-American Body In Between

Abstract

Possessing a body or, rather, a body image, profoundly influences our sense of identity—maybe even more so than speaking language(s). The way we think of our bodies might indeed be considered the very basis of how we think of ourselves—and how we think of ourselves in turn influences our bodies. This acknowledgment of the interrelatedness of mind and body involves a radical departure from Descartes’s dualism, a departure convincingly argued for by the feminist Elizabeth Grosz. She rejects the Cartesian assumption of two distinct, mutually exclusive substances, that is mind and body, as she sees a manifest connection between the two. Cartesianism, as well as the reductionism of both rationalism and idealism on the one hand and empiricism and materialism on the other, she contends, leave the interaction of body and mind unexplained (7). Spinoza’s monism offers a way out of the dilemma, as his notion of an absolute and infinite substance declares mind and body to be, effectively, one: “Substance has potentially infinite attributes to express its nature. (…) Extension and thought—body and mind—are two such attributes. (…) There is no question of interaction, for they are like two sides of a coin” (10f.).