The Emperor Has a Body: Body-Politics in the Between

Male/female, human/environment, mind/body, white/black...Western culture is built on the assumption that these either/or splits are real - and that one of each pair is better than its so-called opposite. Elise Peeples exposes the artificiality of these divisions, using her own version of the Emperor's New Clothes fairytale as a starting point. Peeples then advocates "bewholing" the world with a new approach called the Between model. The Between is the shared space between us, between mind and body and humans and their environment. "The Between is where we overflow the boundaries of either/or. It is all that has fallen into the chasm created by splitting the whole. It is vital and alive with creativity and possibility... This model provides a way to envision what, in our linear mindset, we might call paradox. We are together and separate at the same time." -- from The Emperor Has a Body The Between model gives us a new perspective on diverse issues including the women's movement, abortion/adoption, motherhood, ethics, language, and environmental issues. We become the mirrors for the emperor, the pranksters playing with language, and the weavers of "new clothes" fit for all of us.