The Extended Body: Negotiations Between Body and Space Through Changing Scales PhD

Kanaka Dhirendra Thakker [PhD year 3]

Supervisors: Alessandro Ayuso, David Littlefield & Maja Jović

Introducing a broader concept of the ‘body,’ this thesis aims to record the body as an extended phenomenon to explore its role in shaping and establishing identity. Terming this notion the ‘Extended Body’, the research defines it as an evolving perimeter that the body constructs around itself by momentarily being part of objects, spatial patterns and other bodies, and using them as ‘Extensions’ of its ‘self’. It proposes that the Extended Body allows the body to inhabit an unfamiliar space by creating extensions that offer ambiguous characteristics of cultural and personal familiarity.

Looking at the body as a rhizomic, non-hierarchical form, the thesis allows for the sense of the body to be seen as fluid,
non-linear and with multiplicities that are not fixed.

This approach situates the research within the current context of unprecedented immigration to the UK post-COVID, where migration intersects with issues of exclusion arising from unfamiliarity and difference. Using the case study of voluntarily displaced Indian-Hindu migrants, the research aims to develop a method to represent how migrant bodies’ shape and negotiate their identity in response to these challenges.

KEY WORDS: rhizome; migrant identity; memory; culture; belonging