“Bodies that matter”: Analyzing biographies as embodiments of the discursive

In this paper, I will discuss biographical research from the perspective of sociology of body and embodiment. I will firstly show how the question of the meaning of bodies and the idea of embodied biographical knowledge emerged during the interviewing and analyzing process. Secondly, I will discuss with the help of case study vignettes and interview sequences the nexus of discourses and their different embodiments in biographical narrations. Thirdly, I pose the question what kind of theoretical challenges the notion of discursive embodiment poses to the method of biographical interviewing in particular and to the biographical analysis in general and what kind of new ways of researching, writing and presenting biographical research should be followed from this.