CC1201 The Body in Culture

Gender, Sex, Tattoo

Is identity an inherent totality or a social

construct?Essentialist Approach• Identity (sexual, ethnic,

racial) is preexistent to our choices.

• We are who we are because we were born like that (genes, biology)

• We cannot change who we are as our inherent qualities determine our behaviour (as black people, white people, homosexual people, Muslim people)

Constructivist Approach• Identity is a product

of culture and external circumstances.

• We are born only to be exposed to cultural influences which determine who we are.

• We change constantly even if we are not aware of it. Our identity is not our prison.

Cultural Studies support social constructivism

• Duggan, Lisa & Nan D. Hunter. Sex Wars Sexual Dissent and Political Culture. Routledge. New York & London, 1995.

• Lesley Johnson and Justine Lloyd (2004) Sentenced to Everyday Life: Feminism and the Housewife, Oxford and New York: Berg,

• Estella Tincknell Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation (2005) Hodder, London & New York.

• Kathryn Woodward (ed.) Identity and Difference, Sage / OU Press. Shelved at 305 .• Andrew Tolson (1996) Mediations: Text and Discourse in Media Studies, Arnold. [Extract: pp.3-27.] Hall, S. (1997)

‘The work of representation’, in Hall (ed.) Representation: Cultural representation and signifying practices, Polity Press. • Dyer, R. (2006) Stereotyping in Durham, Meenakshi Gigi and Kellner, Douglas (eds) Media

and Cultural Studies : Keyworks, Malden, Mass. ; Oxford : Blackwell, available online through UEL Library, you have to sign in to Request.

• 9 McRobbie, A (2009) ‘Post-Feminism And Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and the New Gender Regime’, pp 11-24, in The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change Routledge: London

• Maddison, S & Storr, M, ‘The Edge of Reason: The Myth of Bridget Jones’ in in Joss Hands & Eugenia Siapera (eds) (2004) At the Interface: Continuity and Transformation in Culture and Politics Rodopi: Amsterdam & New York

• Frith, S (1996) ‘Music and Identity’ in Hall, S & du Gay, P (eds) Questions of Cultural Identity, Sage

• Frith, S (1992) ‘The Cultural Study of Popular Music’ in Grossberg et al. (eds) Cultural Studies, Routledge: London

Larry Houston“The social constructionist/essentialist debate is ultimately irresolvable, because these two positions are not commensurate.

Social constructionism and essentialistism not only offer different answers, but also ask different questions and rely on different approaches to finding the answers (empiricism versus rhetoric).”

Kitzinge, “Social Constructionism: Implications for gay Lesbian Psychology,” p.156 in. Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identities over the Lifespan: Psychological Perspectives, D’Augelli & Patterson.

The ongoing story of ex-gay Larry Houston, a Harvard-employed cook in Annenberg Hall, who was criticized by students late last year for speaking openly about his conversion, is just one more example of the intolerance faced by former homosexuals and lesbians all across this country. Robert Spitzer's Columbia University study of former homosexuals and lesbians has shown that same-sex attractions can be overcome. Ex-gay organizations such as National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, Regeneration Books, Evergreen, International Healing Foundation, One by One and Exodus have also helped demonstrate that homosexuality is neither genetic nor irreversible.

Nature vs Nurture• Essentialists assume that no sexual orientation, whether same-gender, bisexual,

or heterosexual, is a conscious choice.• Instead, a “fixed, independent biological mechanism steers individual desire or

behavior either toward men or toward women irrespective of circumstances and experience”

• social constructivism indicates that people take an active part in constructing their identity, but sometimes they may not be aware that they “construct” and they believe that they follow their “nature”

• So how do we know what we want?

Humanism as Essence – Rightist, conservative thinking

• An essence of human nature is permanent, eternal, unchangeable.

• Classical humanism believed in inherent human nature which needs to be protected. Human nature as a source of justice, good, and virtue.

Classical humanism in England - the Oxford Group, “Oxford reformers,” Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, John Colet, and William Lyly, Sir Thomas More, and a contemporary of the Dutch humanists: Erasmus.

French classical humanists: Michel de Montaigne and Rabelais

Italy: Petrarch and Giovanni BoccacioUtopian engineering of well-being: More’s Utopia, Sir

Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Campanella’s City of the Sun.

Humanism believes in the mind

• Mind is a source of knowledge• Physical aspects of existence are of lower kind and should be ignored.

• Essentialist standpoint: Only through the mind human beings learn and can change into better (progress).

• No religion of the bible engages with the body (Christianity, Islam, Judaism)

Mind BodyReason UnreasonCulture NatureIntellect InstinctWhite European Imperial Man

WomenRacial ‘others’

Liberal Humanism – Binary Oppositions

Mind/body split?Where does

their respective cultural capital reside?

Gender Mind Body• Gender politics and body politics originate in humanist approach to what is right for humanity.

• Female drives are a threat to humanity

Contemporary Politics of the Body

• List all the ways in which you have to practice “self-management” (Benson 1997) of your body?

• Susan Benson (1997) ‘The Body, Health and Eating Disorders’ in Kathryn Woodward (ed.) Identity and Difference, Sage / OU Press. [Extract: pp.122- 132.]

Inthorn, S. (2010) It’s disgusting how much salt you eat! Television discourses of obesity, health and morality,

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 13(1): 83–100. • A growing number of scholars have observed the ways in which television programmes may act as ‘instructional devices that encourage self-responsibility, self-entrepreneurialism, and self-improvement as a neoliberal form of governance’ (Bratich, 2006: 67)

• While the government has a role to play, it is reduced to that of the provider of ‘opportunities’ and ‘information’. Individual citizens have to become health experts and take active charge of their well-being.

• Indulgence is interpreted as deviant behaviour, whereas self-discipline and control are held up as ideal

• Responsibility of society and the state is neutralised. An individual is to blame…

• Tied to the idea that body weight is a matter of individual will is the theme of the ‘body as a machine’. We are expected to take control over our bodies and make them work to the best of their abilities. To help us do this, some programmes offer knowledge in the form of food facts, as for example in Diet Doctors (4 July 2007, Five).

Body Politics• Body = responsibility, self-management• Health = managing risk• Maintain gendered norms for masculinity & femininity

• The body as a site of political struggle• The body as place where individuals surpass the power of the (masculine) mind.

• The body is a site where one can define his/her own self regardless of the voices of dominating powers.

• Or is it an illusion of freedom?

Tattooing: form of self-empowerment?

• While still in the minority, individuals with tattoos represent a significant portion of the population. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 36 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds have at least one tattoo. Forty percent of those between 26 and 40 have at least one.

A respectable

mother celebrated her divorce by asking her new

boyfriend to cover her entire body – with a single

TATTOO”)

Jacqui Moore

The body is “my space”• But is it?

The politics of the maternal body

• Good and bad mothers• Who owns the maternal body?• What is good for society is implied in a mother

• Limited feminine archetypes, both ‘of the body’: virgin and whore

23 May 2005EXCLUSIVE: THREE TEEN SISTERS PREGNANTBy Rod Chaytor

THREE teenage sisters have given birth to three babies – after all became pregnant while of school age and within 10 months of one another.

Jemma Williams, who conceived at 12, Jade, pregnant at 14 and Natasha, expecting at 16, live with jobless mum Julie Atkins and the family rakes in £31,000 of benefits a year.

Natasha had already had an abortion and two miscarriages before conceiving the child of a 38-year-old man who lives with his parents.

The girls’ mum accepts they have “ruined their lives” and knows who is to blame. Not her, but their school.

Julie, 38 and with two failed marriages behind her, insists teachers should have given the trio sex education much earlier

“How I Got My Figure Back”“How I got my body back”“My body after baby”

• What are the primary signifiers here?• What are the signifiers of the concept of motherhood?

• Why isn’t there an image of the baby?• Why is there an image of the baby?• What kinds of control over the body are being exhibited here?

• Is this a feminist representation of motherhood?

Torture, shape, modify • For what?