45Mediating Theories, Mediating Bodies19

Social constructionist theories of the governed body, action and phenomenological accounts of the lived body, and structuration theories have provided us with systematic theoretical alternatives, demonstrated the ubiquity
of the body as a subject, and imparted to the field an identity. These are considerable achievements. However, their opposed ontological and epistemological assumptions served ultimately to increase the body’s elusiveness.
They variously demanded of the body that it justify the argument that society constructs what are normatively presented to us as ‘natural’ identities,
that the body is the seat of all experience, and that social structures are
absorbed and actively reproduced by embodied subjects. While focusing
variously on the body as a location for, as a source of, and as a means for the
positioning of individuals within their environment, none allows room for
the embodied subject’s multi-dimensional implication in all three of these
processes. It is one thing to acknowledge the body’s importance as a location on which the structures of society inscribe themselves, as a vehicle
through which society is constructed, or as circuit which connects individuals with society, but any comprehensive theory of the body needs to take
account of all three of these processes