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Why do bodies matter? "Body Matters" is a collection of essays by feminists working in literary and cultural studies which addresses this question from a range of theoretical perspectives. The collection includes essays by critics including Elisabeth Bronfen, Regenia Gagnier, Vivien Jones and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan. The essays discuss current theoretical debates with sustained analysis of literary and other kinds of textual representations of "the body". The work of Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Bronte, Dorothy Richardson, Daphne du Maurier, Alice Walker, Audre Locke, Toni Morrison and others is considered in the light of theorists such as Judith Butler, Elisabeth Grosz, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Cixous and Irigaray. The essays are organized into sections which consider the "matter" of the body from different and often conflicting perspectives and which foreground issues such as: production, consumption and reproduction; the ethics of representation; "the body" as a foundation for contemporary identity politics; literary and cultural value; spiritualism, mysticism and transcendence.