Displays and fragments - Embodiment and the configuration of social worlds

This paper draws a distinction between the concepts of embodiment and the body. It focuses upon embodiment as a central condition of social life, through which individuals are able to symbolize their world. The physically bounded body is often seen as a matter relating either to individual experiences of corporeality, or to social evaluations and constraints concerning its scope of action. Embodiment, however, is fundamental to how people collectively and individually 'take a stand' towards each other, and in so doing define or propose the worlds in which they meet. The paper explores this idea through an examination of display in social life, drawing upon the work of Goffman and of Geertz on expression, Simmel on style and Goodman on exemplification. It argues that display enables us to reconfigure possible 'ways of life'. This involves us, as embodied beings, in entering into and transforming the present moment. This refiguring of everyday experience is achieved by virtue of our appearing as exemplars of the social worlds portrayed (i.e. those that we embody), such as the spheres of play, ecstasy or danger.