Merleau-Ponty's category of embodiment enriches our understanding of human subjectivity in ways which avoid some of the pitfalls of Australian materialism (a reductionist conception of the body as a non-cultural ahistorical phenomenon) and postmodernism (the subject as an effect of discourse).
It also opens up space of "lived engagement" of the embodied subjects of within their environments. As Marjorie O’Loughlin says embodiment:
"...captures a sense of the human being's "immersion" in places, spaces and environs in which, as gendered subjects, they encounter the world as dwelling place."
Embodiment offers an alternative pathway to the age-old the mind and the body dualism to that of Australian materialism, which reduces mind to body in opposition to idealism that sees consciousness (reflecting mind) as primary and the body as secondary (ie., it prioritises the mental above the physical).