archaeography

Ballinalacken Castle
The Burren
Co. Clare, Ireland
July 2004

The fact that Lefebvre never bothers to demonstrate or explain the existence of this total body does not help recommend his argument. So we accept that the body is lost within discourse, but are we satisfied that in turn we appropriate and exploit this vague concept? Is it acceptable for us to base so many arguments on a concept that we cannot pretend to understand?

This admission -- the idea of a body constituted only through discourse – bothers many archaeologists. We do not want to force an essential concept of the body onto anyone else, but we ourselves do not want to possess bodies without essence. It is interesting that Lefebvre too has a problem with this, and yet he has no problem with space constituted only through discourse. For him, that which is conceived is a reality – the object created by discourse is no less real because of that discourse. Lefebvre, however, believes that there are also essential realities that are outside of discourse, and what is frustrating is realizing that if there is such an essential reality, we can never get at it.

With the body, we want there to be a tangible, bounded reality that is the body. Why is it difficult to accept the validity of the discursive body – why do we strive to find an essential body? I think it is because we do not want to believe that anything that we live and experience in such an intimate way is less than real. In spite of our Western adherence to the mind-body duality, there is a concept of self that is lodged firmly between body and mind. We may cling to the concept of the Ego, and we may assure ourselves that our Ego will ‘outlive’ our body, that it exists independently of corporeality. I think, however, that once the body becomes a product of discourse, the self begins to become a product of discourse, and if we reject the discursive body as real, the next step is rejecting the discursive self as real. This is disconcerting.