"Imagining Bodies demonstrates how Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the body has broad implications for philosophy, aesthetics and the social sciences. By examining Merleau-Ponty's analysis of the body as a dialectic of habituation and creativity, Steeves unveils a deeper relation between self and world that is mediated by images of embodiment. This creative embodiment forms the basis for all other forms of imagining, including fanciful thinking, perception, aesthetic production and psychopathology." The book also amends traditional theories of imagination by suggesting a new approach to determining what it is and how it functions. The imagination is not only extended beyond the realm of fanciful thinking but is restored as being essentially spatial and embodied; there is a primacy of the imaginary within perceptual experience. Further, Steeves demonstrates a stronger connection between Merleau-Ponty's early works on the body and perception and his later works on aesthetic and social theory and on the ontology of the "flesh." Finally, Steeves answers to recent criticisms of Merleau-Ponty's work from postmodernism, deconstructionism and feminism, paving the way for a new understanding of perception and ontology.