Vulgar Bodies and Nasty Trades | Hacker News Reader

Vulgar Bodies and Nasty Trades

laphamsquarterly.org

27 pointspepys11 comments

Ah, this lovely new trend among academic types of describing an individual as a "body". For a group of people said to be so interested in the human condition, it's a strikingly dehumanizing term.

Maybe so, but please don't take HN threads on generic tangents—especially when there isn't a discussion yet. Those lead to shallower, ragier threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nevertheless, it was an interesting tangent. Hadn't heard about that word usage previously.

The article is literally talking about physical bodies, in the context of sickness. And all the quotes from doctors using the word are from the 1600s. These new academics, eh?

Impressive that they managed to write the article's title back in the 1600s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_politic The notion of individualization is a recent one, from what I know.

No, that's a age-old, more general metaphor, This trend of using "body" as a synecdoche for "individual" is much more recent, starting in the past 4-5 years:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/02/24/what-with-all-b...

The article describes the term as catching on among the activist left in general, but this particular usage finds its origin in academic papers from the humanities.

I agree there's some kind of recent trend here, but "body" has been used to mean "individual" for a long time. Here's an example from 1782:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comin%27_Thro%27_the_Rye

"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Probably even the word "anybody" comes from this usage. It's old and widespread.

I recall hearing somewhat archaic phrasing that something was "good for what ails a body", or some such. Specifically, I think it's an archaic southern-ism? Though you're right about the general trend.

What's the difference between, say, white people and black people? It is that the white people's bodies have pale skin - or "white" if you prefer - and that black people's bodies have dark skin - or, perhaps, "black". Any discussion of white people vs black people must, then, at heart, be somehow about their bodies. Because that's exactly what "white" and "black" refer to.

I assume the terminology is intended to deliberately draw one's attention to this.

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