Dichotomies and ambiguities : culture perceptions of the body and its cultural stigmas

W artykule zostaje postawiony problem ciała i cielesności w kulturze. Głównym zadaniem autorki jest pokazanie w jaki sposób ciało nabiera znaczeń przez kulturowe symbolizacje, oraz w jaki sposób my sami jako nasze ciała rozumiemy czym/kim jesteśmy. Problem ciała w kulturze prowadzi do pytań o przemoc wobec człowieka poprzez ciało, o zrozumienie cielesności na różnych płaszczyznach kultury, o to w jaki sposób człowiek jest swoim ciałem i równocześnie posiada swoje ciało.Joanna Hańderek’s chapter "Dichotomies and Ambiguities: Culture Perceptions of theBody and its Cultural Stigmas" illustrates the history of corporality from the philo-sophical perspective and makes an attempt to create a comprehensive account of the cultural perception of the human body across the decades. Human beings are eccentrically positioned - they possess body and are bodies at the same time, as Helmuth Plessner has stated. As entities, human beings are forced to rework their corporality, considering not only its natural, but also the symbolic side, perceiving in the scope of human body not only its intimate and private expression, but also the public one. Consuming food is a necessity, although culturally, it has not been adapted to the needs of body (of surviving, sating hunger), but adapted instead to modes of social interaction, rituals and manifestations of status. Body and corporality are therefore entwined in the specific network of meanings, in which the biological and cultural aspects form an inseparable whole. Various forms of re-presentation of corporalityin-dicate differentmodes of its interpretation - often encumbered with the context of historical meanings and institutions, cultural specifics, gender differences, debasing and negating corporality or, on the contrary, accepting and even favouring it