1. Reinstating Corporeality: Feminism and Body Politics -Janet Wolff
“The Story is told as a History of the Body”: Strategies of Mimesis in the Work of Irigaray and Baucsh
-Susan Kozel
Presentation by Smeli Porterfield and
Adrienne Chuck
Edited by: Dr. Picart and Donna Gallagher

2. What to Look Forward to (Aims):
Exploration of Wolff’s article
Explanation of how the body relates to society
Discussion pertaining to the views society holds on the body
Relating the relationship between society and the body to dance

3. Key Words and Phrases:
Corporeality:
Feminism:
Body Politics:

4. What Wolff Does:
Discusses body politics as related to the way women are viewed.
Questions if the female body can be used for cultural protest.
Relates body politics to dance.

5. Current Ideas/Views of the Body:
Buñuel’s The Phantom of Liberty
Manners
These apply to every body.

6. Discussion Question:
What are other examples of ways we utilize our bodies or bodily functions that are shunned by society?
Why?

7. “Classical Body” vs. “Grotesque Body”

8. Discussion Questions:
How is the female body, in particular, viewed in society?
What are common norms we associate with things that are “feminine”?

9. Defiance! Wolff asks her own discussion question:
“What happens when the female body is affirmed and displayed, in defiance of the dominant “perfect body,” acknowledging the reality of actual women, the diversities of shape and size, the functions of corporeal existence (eating, excreting, menstruation, sex, pregnancy, aging, illness)?

10. Discussion Question:
What do we see portrayed in dance (namely, ballet), the “classical” or the “grotesque” body?

11. Question:
Can you think of any examples of any medium which uses the “grotesque” body type?

12. Concluding Question:
Will breaking away from the constant use of the “perfect body” in dance (and other arts) help to dissolve the ideologies regarding the female body in our culture?

13. What to Look Forward to (Aims):
Exploration of Kozel’s article
A look into mimesis
Elements of mimetic strategy
Brief discussion of duality
A look at both Irigaray and Bausch

14. Key Words and Phrases: Mimesis- Duality-
Time, space, fluidity, and desire as they relate to mimesis

15. Question:
If a dance or a painting does not imitate and resemble nature or life, is it not as beautiful as those that do?

16. Question:
Is it absolutely necessary to obtain the negative to get to the positive and vice versa? Why?

17. Question: What does Lacan’s theory remind you of?
(Here’s a hint: that should give it away!)