Mediations of Body in Popular Spaces/Culture (Editor’s Note)
Abhishek Sharma | Sri Guru Nanak Dev Khalsa College, University of Delhi
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.71106/IEQC4622
Publication: Volume 6 Issue 4
Excerpt | The inexhaustibility of questions around the human body hinges on modernity’s perception of it as both private and public, a pre-given flesh and a politically encoded frame. Since Descartes introduced the formalised philosophical divide, giving rise to modernity’s dyadic lens of subject and object for interpreting reality, the human self has been cleaved into a thinking being, Cogito, that remains disengaged from its material extension, res extensa, the body. This has problematised the modern perception of self as it wrestles to counter the body’s uncertain standing within post-Cartesian discourse. Rather than being dismissed as an expendable material for the Cogito, it is slowly gaining recognition as the essential seat of humanness. Merleau-Ponty calls it the “flesh of the blood”—“chair du monde—to indicate its intersubjective nature, through which the human ‘self’ experiences the world. As a relational entity, the body becomes a contested site of political, economic, and cultural constructions. Bourdieu focuses on the unreflective body through his idea of habitus, Judith Butler investigates gender performance of masculinity and femininity, and Foucault points towards “biopower” as a means of systemic control of collective bodies—all of which suggest a body struggling with its status as an apriori entity as it slowly becomes self-aware. Underneath all ideological constructs, however, lies a more seminal anxiety that is born out of the body’s awareness of its own deterioration which often elides its awareness. The uncertainty arising from the body’s anxiety about its continual decay and its struggle to determine whether it is a pre-given flesh or an ideologically inscribed construct presents modernity with a complex problem that has no easy resolution.
Keywords | Human Body, Descartes, Cartesian Duality, Cogito, Merleau-Ponty, Decay, Mortality, Death, Uncertainty, Nonconforming Bodies, Intersubjective, Legitimised Cultural Spaces, Virtual World, Social Media, Body And Identity, Autonomy, AI, Human Subjectivity
Abhishek Sharma (abhishek.sharma@sgndkc.du.ac.in) is an Associate Professor at Delhi University, India. His career extends over thirty-three years at Delhi University. He holds a Ph.D. in the hermeneutical study of Valmiki’s Ramayana. His specialization lies in the comparative analysis of Western and Indian literature, particularly focusing on the epic traditions of Ancient India and Greece. His research is deeply rooted in cross-cultural hermeneutics, aiming to connect Indian and Western traditions to illuminate the origins of epics and to explore the foundations of Greek tragedy alongside its distinct Indian counterpart, influenced by Bharata’s theory of Rasas. Furthermore, Dr. Sharma is engaged in the study of Enlightenment philosophy, the Romantic tradition, and German Idealism. He employs an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach in his teaching, integrating philosophy, popular culture, and modern performance.
MLA Citation for this Article
Sharma, Abhishek. “Mediations of Body in Popular Spaces/Culture (Editor’s Note).” Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 6, no. 4, 11 Jun. 2026, pp. v-viii, https://doi.org/10.71106/IEQC4622.