This Mortal Coil: The Human Body in History and Culture

by Fay Bound Alberti

How humans have felt and thought about the body-our bodies-has never been static. Rather, it has shifted across times and cultures, taking and losing definition due to any number of forces and trends-philosophical, religious, cultural, technological. Sometimes we imagine our identity purely as an extension of our fleshly self and its assemblage of functions, organs, and appendages, sometimes as something entirely separate and discrete-trapped as opposed to defined by our "mortal coil," as Hamlet frames it in his famous soliloquy. So, too, over time, our ideas about what constitutes the desirable, the healthy, the beautiful, and the whole have remained partial, each an impression formed by its particular moment in time.
In this probing and illuminating new book, Fay Bound Alberti deploys the global histories of medicine, pathology, and sensibilities to examine our changing notions of the human body. Each chapter focuses on one part-bones, skin, sexual organs, spine, tongue, heart-revealing the cultural meanings tied to each, the repercussions of these associations, and ultimately the harm that comes of distinguishing mind and body, the parts from the whole, as is so often the case in Western medicine.

This Mortal Coil explores many enduring themes: the nature of identity, the relationship between the brain and the heart, and the gendering of our physical and emotional selves. Moving beyond the surface and down to what lies beneath, Bound Alberti provides a rich and fascinating account of the human body, shedding light on the role scientific developments-from medical care to plastic surgery to cloning-play in how we look at and shape ourselves. Bound Alberti's provocative and engrossing book reveals how the mortal coil can be unwound, then looked at as if for the first time.

Genres: History, Science, Philosophy, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2016

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Academia has been investigating the histories of the body and body parts for about the last 20 years or so: in situating her work against the field (Sawday, Mazzio and Hillman, Hodges) Alberti focuses especially on the medical body, the history of medical interventions, and modern narratives and constructions of the gendered body. While she claims to be offering a 'history' and often introduces her chapters via brief incursions into Shakespeare, most of the work here takes its evidence from the nineteenth century and investigates modern phenomena such as obesity, the fashion for the removal of female pubic hair, breast cosmetic surgery and the aestheticisation of female genitalia whether through elective cosmetic surgery or female genital mutilation.

Alberti writes fluently and given her focus on contemporary bodily narratives this book has crossover appeal to both an academic and more general readership: it's light on theorisations of the body and keeps all its scholarly apparatus out of the way.

It's a little sketchy on the historical background to the corporeal narratives that emerge from the nineteenth century onwards (for example, racial narratives in the early modern period are far more complex, contradictory and problematic than this book allows) but focus is fine. I guess I feel the title is a little misleadingly general for what this book actually offers: the 'history and culture' is primarily modern and contemporary.

So an interesting updating on where the body (or female body) stands in our current cultural narratives: this will speak to scholars and students working on body histories, and probably prove an illuminating read for non-academics.

[Hollie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book. It really makes you think about everyday assumptions we make of the body. The history of animal experiments did upset me but I enjoyed the other historical parts. I think the most important thing this book does is make you realise there's still a lot about the body we don't know.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In This Mortal Coil: The Human Body in History and Culture Fay Bound Alberti discusses the 21st century view of the body (or perhaps bodily organs/systems to be more accurate) by contrasting it with the view from Shakespeare (primarily) through the late 20th century in both culture and medicine.

This volume works on several levels and could, I think, be of interest to a reader on any or all of them. One overarching theme is the lamentation over the loss of the treatment of the whole body, indeed the whole person, because of today's (over?)emphasis on specialization. Alberti stops short of actually wanting to go back to those days, without all of the knowledge the specializations have provided, but certainly wants to find a way to treat the entire patient through a more coordinated use of specialists. It is not really the scope of this work to attempt to figure the logistics for such a system but such a desire is strong.

Changes in how and why we perceive our bodies differently are presented in chapters that are, well, specialized for lack of a better way of saying it. Each chapter is about an organ (or the system associated with an organ) and through cultural and medical examples we are presented with how things have changed. The example I think everyone knows and understands to some extent is the shift from the heart as the location of our "soul" or identity to our brain (or mind) as the seat. While some phrases remain in popular discourse, such as feeling love in the heart, we know now that that is not the case.

I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in the study of the body in society or culture (a field that has been active for well over 50 years, not just the past 20) as well as those interested in the pathology of the body as it is often portrayed in popular culture. This book is academic in topic but written for a general audience with a minimal amount of jargon or complex theory.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.