In this volume such institutional sites as the media, literature, art, psychoanalysis, and medicine, and cultural practices around disease, death and sexuality are examined. In the introduction the author sets out basic claims for the embodied grounds of communication and the civillzing process and the long history of the inside/outside body. The following chapters raise questions regarding critical conventions in the humanities and social sciences - life/death, good/bad, right/left, rational/sensate, male/female, and nature/culture.