The aim of this article is to put in evidence the mutual relevance of the studies on corporal formation and the analysis based on historical materialism. For that, we divided the text in three moments: firstly, we analyse the way in which the issue of corporality arises related to post-modernist paradigms of analysis. In the second moment, when we relate the studies on body with those on labour, we show how Marx's works are accepted or criticised. We then, thirdly, develop some critical possibilities to study the corporal formation on the basis of historical materialism. As result, we could verify that by linking the issue of corporality with transformations in labour patterns it is possible to further analyses on the body. With that, we hope to prove that studies on the body are important themes for reflections on capitalist society, in the same way that reflections on the transformations in the form of labour offer valuable possibilities for researchers of corporality.
corporality; formative processes; Marxism; historical materialism; labour; post-modernism