At women writing architecture, we are teaming up with Jessie Buckle to investigate the concept of ‘bodymind’. We will be exploring it as a glossary term through a lunchtime workshop and developing means to explore it further and weave it into further projects. In the meantime, the beginning of our definition (below) is accompanied by a collection of texts concerned with ‘bodymind’.

The term bodymind is synonymous with the concept of embodied cognition. It is concerned with the relationship between how you move and the way you think, how each affects and constructs the other. It emerges as an important term in disability studies and engages with assumptions of physical differences – of the body and neurological difference – of the mind, from the typical, suggesting that an impairment in one leads to a restriction, or difference in the other.

The CDC defines disability as: “any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around them (participation restrictions).” What if, however, the typical –in terms of activity and participation within the physical, social and conceptual world – is not understood as a monolithic state, but rather as a field of possibilities with undefined boundaries.

Catherine Prendergast coined the term “rhetoricability” to mean the ability to be received and respected as a valid subject, a condition that depends upon social context. If this is framed by a fixed idea of what is typical, those outside it often must forgo this human right. “Just as one’s body is more and less abled by the built context that surrounds one, so too with one’s mind,” writes Margaret Price.