Bodies as Culture

Today’s Goals Recognize the body as a site of culture & cultural practices Understand the mind/body dualism Appreciate how desires operate as disciplines

Why is the body a site of culture? Bodies are prominent mediated images Bodies are prominent in philosophy –As animal –As appetites –As deceiver –As prison of the soul

Bodies as culture “Our bodies, no less than anything else, that is human, are constituted by culture.” Plato, Augustine, Descartes – ultimate aim of philosophy is to learn to live without the body, to achieve intellectual independence from the body’s illusion, distractions, hungers and desire.

The Mind/Body Dualism Women cast as the body Men as the ‘inevitable (i.e., a pure idea) Imbedded in medicine, law, literature Sustained through popular culture Obsessed by bodies, even as we do not accept them

Female body as desire Women as alluring is women tying to lure men to arousal –Disclaims male ownership of the body –Explains arousal as the result of female manipulation

Female body as desire Even when women are silent, their bodies seen as “speaking” a language of provocation. Anorexia nervosa, manifested after sexual abuse or humiliation, can be seen as a defense against the ‘femaleness’ of the body and a punishment of its desires.

Female body as desire Desires culturally represented through the metaphor of female appetite. Denial of appetite provides two options: –Transcend the body totally, becoming pure ‘male’ will or –Capitulates to the degraded female body 1

Beyond the oppressor/oppressed model Representations homogenize Smoothes racial, ethnic and sexual differences – differences that disturb ‘traditional’ heterosexual expectations

Beyond the oppressor/oppressed model Homogenized images normalize They function as models against which the self continually measures, judges, disciplines, and corrects itself Normal images of female bodies

Foucault/Power/Norms Power not in possession of people Expressions of power have particular effects (not purely random) Power works from below – via individual self-surveillance & self-correction to norms

Foucault/Power/Norms No need for physical force – the gaze is enough Dominant forms constantly penetrated and reconstructed by values, styles, & knowledges that have been developing & gaining strength at the margins

Food /Hunger/Control Hunger as ideology –Increasing universality, with Western cultures, of the relationship between slenderness & beauty Trope of control –Women need to reassert –Sense of male control

Hunger When women are positively depicted as voracious about food their hunger for food is employed as a metaphor for sexual appetite –Food constructed as sexual object of desire –Eating legitimated as much more than nutritive Food becomes sensual –Eating becomes the sexual act

Obsession & Binges Language of obsession suggests binge behavior –Invoking the rhetoric of indulgence Unrestrained appetite as inappropriate & a private, transgressive act Makes restriction & denial of hunger central features of the construction of femininity –Binging becomes inevitable 1

The disciplining of hunger Social control of female hunger operates as a practical ‘discipline’ that trains female bodies in the knowledge of their limits and possibilities. Denying oneself food becomes the micro- practice in the education of feminine self- restraint & containment of impulse

The disciplining of hunger The only way to win to go beyond control, to kill off the bodies desires entirely Thinness represents triumph of will over the body and the thin soul is associated with purity & intellectual strength

Women’s status & women’s bodies Slenderness / masculine norms –Self-control –Determination –Emotional discipline Pursuit of slenderness & denial of appetite intersects new requirement to embody the masculine values of the public arena.

Thin as success/ Fat as failure Firm body symbol of the correct attitude –One cares about oneself & how one appears to others –Suggests willpower, energy & ability to ‘shape your life’ Fat perceived as: –Indicative of laziness –Lack of discipline –Unwillingness to conform

Male Bodies – ‘Cult of hardness’ Need for male form to express strength & hardness at core -- –Clinton as soft body _Clinton as soft body_ Soft body as undisciplined, needy, needy, hungry little boys Impotence threatens the whole body

First steps Recognition of dominance of coercive forms Enhanced understanding of the power, complexity and systematic nature of culture

Slender consumers Slender body codes ideal of well-managed self, despite the temptations of consumer culture. Lean body of today’s career businesswomen symbolizes social neutralization Consumption/production axis is overlaid by the dualism of (female) body & (male) will.

Today’s Goals Recognize the body as a site of culture & cultural practices Understand the mind/body dualism Appreciate how desires operate as disciplines