TRANSFORMATIONS OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHY OF THE BODY AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH–21ST CENTURIES

Abstract

In recent decades, French philosophy of the body has taken shape at the intersection of the phenomenology of lived experience, an intersubjective ontology, and the historical–cultural regimes of discipline. As digital interfaces, exosomatic memory carriers, and new regimes of visibility reshape practices of attention, care, and interaction, there is a need for a framework that explains not only what embodiment is, but how and why its interpretations change. This article surveys contemporary French approaches that combine phenomenology of experience, intersubjective ontology, and historical – cultural/social reconstructions. Key authors and corpora include Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-Luc Marion, and – foundationally – Maurice Merleau-Ponty; as well as Michel Foucault, Georges Vigarello, Pierre Bourdieu, Bernard Stiegler, Catherine Malabou, Paul Virilio, and interdisciplinary work in media philosophy, cultural history, and the sociology of the body (David Le Breton, among others). To reconstruct and theorize transformations in French philosophy of the body from the late 20th to early 21st century by integrating affective-phenomenological, intersubjective, and event-phenomenological approaches with historical–cultural and techno-mediated conditions; to identify mechanisms of conceptual evolution; and to propose an operative model of “medial embodiment.” Despite a large literature, the field still lacks an integrated frame linking the “first-person” of bodily experience with intercorporeal address and institutional mechanisms of normalization. As a result, accounts remain fragmented – either “from within” experience or “from without” via norms, techniques, and interfaces. The proposed model of medial embodiment combines phenomenological description with empirical protocols, opening paths to comparative analyses of cultural “economies of attention” and to ethical–legal reflection on prosthetic forms of embodiment. An interdisciplinary approach combining phenomenology with the historical– cultural genealogy of discipline/self-discipline and a media-philosophical analysis of exosomatic memory, plasticity, and interfaces. French concepts are compared with Anglophone embodiment studies to align theory with empirical work. Methods include content and discourse analysis, media-archaeological mapping, and close reading of philosophical texts, historical–political documents, and materials of media culture.