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Queer Intercorporeality: Bodily Disruption of Straight Space
Abstract
This thesis explores the potential of queer embodiment through the experiences of transgendered people. After discussing the importance of researching the body, often left out of academic enquiry, I engage with theoretical frames that radically reconfigure concepts of subjectivity providing the means to reveal the innovative forms of embodiment that participants embrace. Within these frameworks the mind/body division is disrupted and reconfigured to demonstrate that these are not separate entities rather the mind exists in the body as does the body in the mind. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's version of the becoming body, I locate the body as a vibrant multiplicity of particles capable of infinite connections as opposed to a separated and contained entity. Through approaching embodiment as a never ending process of becoming I look to the way in which spatial settings such as the family have a major influence on the way in which bodies are formulated. In these spaces, I contend, bodies are directed and regulated to conform to dominant understandings of being. Such directing I argue creates 'straight' bodies/space restricting the presence of queer bodies and the disruption they embody. Extending this spatial investigation I look to the way in which open spaces are straight spaces and how the dynamics of such spaces create the queer body as hyper-visible. Exploring queer as a spatial term I suggest that the queer body exists at an angle to the normative straight line creating new and challenging ways of living. A major theme that runs throughout this thesis is the intercorporeal nature of bodies. In developing this concept I demonstrate the generosity of queer bodies and their radical disruption of the distinction between maleness and femaleness. In doing so I explore how bodies are spatially sexed according to the myth of two-sexes, disrupting such a limited view I demonstrate how queer bodies have the potential to move beyond the boundaries of recognizable identity/bodily categorizes and anatomical understandings and embrace a space of intermezzo/ in-betweeness.
Gender is both indeterminate and multifaceted: many individuals do not fit neatly into accepted gender categories, and a vast number of characteristics are relevant to determining a person's gender. This article demonstrates how these two features, taken together, enable gender to be modeled as a multidimensional sorites paradox. After discussing the diverse terminology used to describe gender, I extend Helen Daly's research into sex classifications in the Olympics and show how varying testosterone levels can be represented using a sorites argument. The most appropriate way of addressing the paradox that results, I propose, is to employ fuzzy logic. I then move beyond physiological characteristics and consider how gender portrayals in reality television shows align with Judith Butler's notion of performativity, thereby revealing gender to be composed of numerous criteria. Following this, I explore how various elements of gender can each be modeled as individual sorites paradoxes such that the overall concept forms a multidimensional paradox. Resolving this dilemma through fuzzy logic provides a novel framework for interpreting gender membership.
In this chapter, I take up parts of the documentary Gender Rebel (2006) as an example of a text that can be read as participating in a cultural politics that expands the terms of “gendered
humanness” by challenging normative understandings of what constitutes the “proper” gendered body for biological females.
In my analysis, I focus on the lives of two “women” whose genderqueer embodiments can be read as a complex personhood under
the sign of the masculine (Halberstam, Telling tales: Brandon Teena, Billy Tipton, and transgender biography. In Passing: Identity and interpretation in sexuality, race, and religion, pp. 13–37, 2001) that enables the “women” to work on undoing restrictive gender norms, as these have played out on the site
of the body, in order to inaugurate more livable lives. From this perspective, the narratives about genderqueer embodiments
represented in Gender Rebel become one way to “relate the problematic of gender and sexuality to the tasks of persistence and survival” (Butler, Undoing gender, p. 4, 2004). My own specific analysis is situated within the broader context of what Judith Butler refers to as the “New
Gender Politics that has emerged in recent years, a combination of movements concerned with transgender, transsexuality, intersex,
and their complex relations to feminist and queer theory” (2004, p. 4). Along these lines, by drawing from the theoretical
insights of queer and trans (gender) theories, this chapter explores the notion of the “queer imaginative body” where queer
imagination is understood as a form of “embodied criticality” functioning as a politics that undermines the hegemonic terms
of gender arising from a system of bigenderism. Situated within a discussion of the politics and pedagogy of trans generosity,
the chapter concludes with a critical reflection on the pedagogical significance of taking up queer masculine embodiment (e.g.,
the body of the “genderqueer female-to-male [FTM] trans man”) as a site of generosity within the women’s studies classroom.
In this way, I advocate what I refer to as a pedagogy of trans generosity. I argue that, because the queer masculine embodiments
of biological females run the risk of being positioned across any number of cultural and social locations as a threatening
“Other,” especially in relation to delimited understandings of the category woman, a pedagogy of trans generosity becomes
a necessary critical intervention to challenge this viewpoint. Such a pedagogy, I attempt to initially work out here, provides
an opportunity to situate queer masculine embodiments within a language of possibility that draws attention to the innovative
quality of these embodiments as sites of generosity. That is, by way of their ongoing processes of becoming, they generously
expand the meanings, as well as the possible range of lived experiences, of the (female) body and of gender/sexual identity
in ways that queer these concepts so that they provide greater sustainability to a broader array of bodies and identities.
From this perspective, a pedagogy of trans generosity opens up the possibility of framing queer embodiments more generally
as forms of “bodily generosity” that can potentially become a resource for students in terms of imagining their own bodies
and identities as sites of “endless becoming.”
This essay proceeds by presenting different 'takes' on corporeality in the age of posthumanism. Alternating theoretical reflections with personal experiences and/or observations on aspects of embodiment—and thus trying to do justice to Merleau-Ponty's insight that any body is always already a 'body-in-the-world'—it seeks to explore the function of fantasy generally and of cultural production in particular in the process of the body/subject's differentiated becomings. Additionally taking into account the increasing 'technologization' of bodily matter and corporeal practices in the Western world today, these cumulative reflections eventually result in an attempt to combine, or rather assemble, the ostensibly incommensurable ideas on the body/subject offered by Freud and Deleuze/Guattari, respectively, to point up the critical role of fantasy, operating as the necessary interface, in the material/cultural production of embodied subjectivity.
Gay female-to-male transgenderists (gay FTMs) are women who become men, and who then form erotic relationships with other men. Analysis of interviews with five gay FTMs depicts how they rely upon and reproduce distinctions between sex, gender, and sexuality in order to make sense of their bodies, their feelings and their interactions. Sex, gender and sexuality are produced as distinct and real through a range of interlocking material, discursive, and interactional practices. These categories of intelligibility function in relation to each other and serve to mutually constitute and reinforce each other. Although the distinctions drawn between sex, gender, and sexuality are real, the veracity of these distinctions is limited given their inextricability in the contiguous terrain of actual human lives.
This article offers speculative analyses on embodiment and corporeality, with particular reference made to drag kinging as an embodied performance of female masculinity to both initiate and highlight these. In particular I explore and employ Karen Barad's post-humanist elaboration of performativity, and Warwick and Cavallaro's provocative discussions on the dress/body relationship to do this. This lends itself to thinking and theorizing corporeality and the socially produced body in terms not reducible to easy dualisms; for example, material/immaterial, mind/body and nature/culture divides. By maintaining a ‘tension’ between such dualisms, I hope to highlight, through personal drag king narratives and my own speculative writing, that drag kinging is much more than just a ‘performance’, but is in fact a powerful corporeal experience that I have come to term ‘drag king embodiment’.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was one of the most important figures in the existential and phenomenological traditions in twentieth-century Continental philosophy. Merleau-Ponty: A Guide for the Perplexed is the ideal text for students encountering Merleau-Ponty's philosophy for the first time. The book assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, and takes the reader though the key themes in Merleau-Ponty's work, casting light on complex ideas, including - crucially - his interpretations of 'perception', 'embodiment' and 'behaviour'. Most importantly this Guide for the Perplexed offers a full and authoritative explication of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological account of human behaviour.
Amid ever more abstract theorizations of ‘the body’, calls are now frequently made for greater attention to be given to the lived, fleshy experience of embodiment. Where sexuality, and especially hetero-sexuality, is concerned, such calls are currently more easily made than answered. On the one hand we have theories of the body and of the social construction of sexuality which say little about embodied sexual practices and on the other we have statistical data on who does what with whom and how often, but which tells us nothing about the processes involved.
Approaches to Human Geography is the essential student primer on theory and practice in Human Geography. It is a systematic review of the key ideas and debates informing post-war geography, explaining how those ideas work in practice. Avoiding jargon - while attentive to the rigor and complexity of the ideas that underlie geographic knowledge - the text is written for students who have not met philosophical or theoretical approaches before. This is a beginning guide to geographic research and practice.
In this paper I examine the common representation in western culture of the female sexual body via images of interiority, domesticity, and containment. I argue that such depictions are connected to our understandings of 'space' as a feminine concept; and may also be traced to classical ideas about women's role in reproduction and maternity. The notion of female sexuality being located 'inside' women's bodies is shown to prevail in the everyday discourse of heterosexual women living in New Zealand. Twenty women took part in a study in which, during individual interviews or focus group discussions, they were asked to discuss their ideas about - and experiences of - female (and male) heterosexuality, sexual health and safer sex practice. My analysis of interview material is influenced by both feminist and poststructuralist theories. I argue that such prevalent understandings of women's sexed bodies - that is, as interiorized 'domestic' spaces - contribute to notions of what 'normal' or 'real' sex is; and also influence ideas about female bodies being simultaneously vulnerable (at risk) and dangerous (risky). I also propose that the common picture of women's sexed bodies as 'inner spaces' may be challenged by new innovative theories of space. © 2002, Annie Potts and Journal of Mundane Behavior. All rights reserved.
Michel Foucault's historical and philosophical investigations have gone through many phases: the archaeological, the genealogical, and the ethical among them. What remains constant, however, is the question that motivates them: “who are we?” Todd May follows Foucault's itinerary from his early history of madness to his posthumously published Collège de France lectures and shows how the question of who we are shifts and changes but remains constantly at or just below the surface of his writings. By approaching Foucault's work in this way, May is able to offer readers an engaging and illuminating way to understand Foucault. Each of Foucault's key works ? Madness and Civilization, The Archaeology of Knowledge, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish and the multi-volume History of Sexuality ? are examined in detail and situated in an historical context that makes effective use of comparisons with other thinkers such as Freud, Nietzsche and Sartre. Throughout the book May strikes a balance between sympathetic presentation and criticism of Foucault's ideas and in so doing exposes Foucault's contributions of lasting value. The Philosophy of Foucault is an accessible and stimulating introduction to one of the most popular and influential thinkers of recent years and will be welcomed by students studying Foucault as part of politics, sociology, history and philosophy courses.
This book offers a readable and compelling introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century's most important and elusive thinkers. Other books have tried to explain Deleuze in general terms. Todd May organizes his book around a central question at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy: how might we live? The author then goes on to explain how Deleuze offers a view of the cosmos as a living thing that provides ways of conducting our lives that we may not have dreamed of. Through this approach the full range of Deleuze's philosophy is covered. Offering a lucid account of a highly technical philosophy, Todd May's introduction will be widely read amongst those in philosophy, political science, cultural studies and French studies.
Phenomenology is to be a science of phenomena conceived to function as transcendental criticism. It is intended to elucidate the bases of scientific thought - the very fact that cognition is cognition of something given, is empirical cognition; then the nature of what is taken as given by the sciences; and the inner structure of the evidence for what is taken as given. But just exactly what is to count as phenomenological elucidation? Is it to be a simple presup-positionless, metaphysic-free intuition into the ultimate data of knowledge, achieved by a neutralizing of the theoretical sediment through which a theoretically committed mind approaches them? Or, on the contrary, is it to be a metaphysically idealist explanation of how the data of cognition originate out of transcendental constitutive consciousness, on the one hand, and out of the pretheoretical data of the Lebenswelt, the world of life, on the other hand? Is phenomenological elucidation intuition, or is it explanation?
In her first book since the critically acclaimed Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam examines the significance of the transgender body in a provocative collection of essays on queer time and space. She presents a series of case studies focused on the meanings of masculinity in its dominant and alternative forms'especially female and trans-masculinities as they exist within subcultures, and are appropriated within mainstream culture. In a Queer Time and Place opens with a probing analysis of the life and death of Brandon Teena, a young transgender man who was brutally murdered in small-town Nebraska. After looking at mainstream representations of the transgender body as exhibited in the media frenzy surrounding this highly visible case and the Oscar-winning film based on Brandon's story, Boys Don't Cry, Halberstam turns her attention to the cultural and artistic production of queers themselves. She examines the "transgender gaze," as rendered in small art-house films like By Hook or By Crook, as well as figurations of ambiguous embodiment in the art of Del LaGrace Volcano, Jenny Saville, Eva Hesse, Shirin Neshat, and others. She then exposes the influence of lesbian drag king cultures upon hetero-male comic films, such as Austin Powers and The Full Monty, and, finally, points to dyke subcultures as one site for the development of queer counterpublics and queer temporalities. Considering the sudden visibility of the transgender body in the early twenty-first century against the backdrop of changing conceptions of space and time, In a Queer Time and Place is the first full-length study of transgender representations in art, fiction, film, video, and music. This pioneering book offers both a jumping off point for future analysis of transgenderism and an important new way to understand cultural constructions of time and place.
Working with new concepts of impulsive intensity- libidinal space, libidinal time, libidinal identity, Jean-Fran?;ois Lyotard's Economie libidinale' sets out to interpret in a coherent discourse the essential data of psychoanalysis, which had been formulated in a fragmented- physicalist, mechanist, hydraulic and mythical--language, or, in the phenomenological reworking, in mentalist, intentional, language. But Lyotard's book does not only devise a philosophically more coherent language for the findings of psychyanalysis; it also elaborates an interpretation of the data themselves. Assembling literary and theological texts along with certain Freudian texts given a new importance, Lyotard's book shows how theoretical activity and political economy reverberate with libidinal processes, and how the primary process libido continues even in its matured and sublimated forms. This new conceptual elaboration is principally due to a divesting of the Freudian conceptual apparatus of its phallocentric and reproductive normativity, and even of the idea of organism as a norm. If wholeness, organism, is the general form of any norm, then we can say that this philosophy presents a libido without norms. Just what kind of theoretical work do we have here? It is not really an autonomous phenomenology of sexual experience, taken to be an exhibition of the pretheoretical, preconceptualized given experience. Phenomenology could pretend that it could, with its own vocabulary allegedly framed after immediate intuitions, elaborate a purely descriptive account of, among other things, sexual experience, which could then function as a criterion against which to judge the theoretical elaborations of science, because it thought it had found an autonomous locus of access to the primary and preconceptual experience itself. This locus was self-consciousness. It was originally all intuitive: an intuition of itself in its primary, that is, intuitive, acts or contacts with various zones of mundane reality. Lyotard's work is, to be sure, philosophical and not empirical. In what sense? Not in this phenomenological sense. The "thing itself," the libidinal life, is not a succession of acts essentially intuitive. These sensuous sensations would not fit in, with minor adjustments, to the Husserlian concept of perceptions
Acknowledgements.Introduction.1. Masculinity - Illusion or Reality?Men's Nature, Men's History.Natural Men?Masculinities in History.Functionalism and the Male Sex Role.Gender and Functionalism.Perspectives on Sex/Gender Roles.Psychoanalytical Perspectives.Freud.Jung.From 1st to 2nd Wave (Pro)Feminism.Multiplicity, Materiality - and Illusion.Multiple Masculinities.The Materiality of Men's Violences.Material Actualities - a global perspective.Conclusion.2. The Personal and the Political: Men and Feminism.A Crisis of Masculinity or a Moral Panic?A Discourse of Crisis.The Crisis Discourse in Politics and Public Policy.The Male Crisis in Perspective.Men as a Political Category.The Discursive Connection.Men's Responses to Feminism.Marking Differences.Political Polarisations.Black and Latino Men, Black and Latino Masculinities.Gay Male Liberation and Queer Theory.Concluding on Changing Men (and Women).3. Power and Resistance.Structural Models of Gender Power.Juridico-Discursive Theories.Patriarchy.Hegemonic Masculinity.Gender Order.Masculinism.Power as Discursive.Bringing Back the Resisting Subject.A Foucauldian Analysis.The Discursive Subject of Power.Summary.4. Public Men.He's Leaving Home: The heroic male project.Myths and Icons.An Heroic Male Project - building empires.Work, Management and the Professional.Men at Work.Men as Managers.Masculinity and Professionalism.Time to Play.Gendered Time.Gendered Leisure. Summary.5. Private Men.The Private 'I'.Fathers and Families.Friendships and Relationships.Men's Relationships.Men's Friendships.Pure Relationships.Sexualities.Trust, Intimacy and Emotion.Trust.Intimacy.Emotions and Feelings.Endings and Openings.6. Marking Male Bodies.Male Bodies.Male Bodies in Process.Throwing Like a Boy.Materialising Male Bodies.Gazing at the Male Body.Race Man.A Gay Body of Men.Ageing Male Bodies.Summary.7. Desires of The Masculine Subject.The Masculine Subject.Masculine Ontology.Desire To Be (a man).Implications and Conclusion.Notes.Bibliography.Index.
Unrivalled in its clarity and coverage, this sparkling new edition of Chris Shilling's classic text is a masterful account of the emergence and development of body matters in sociology and related disciplines.A timely, well reasoned response to current concerns and controversies across the globe, it provides chapter-by-chapter coverage of the major theories, approaches and studies conducted in the field. Each chapter has been revised and updated, with new discussions of ‘action network theory’, bodywork, pragmatism, the global resurgence of religious identities, ‘new genetics’, biological citizenship, and figurations of the living and dead.Packed full of critical analysis and relevant empirical studies the book engages with the major classical and contemporary theories within body studies including the: Naturalistic; Constructionist; Structuralist; Realist; Interactionist; Feminist; PhenomenologicalOriginal, logical and indispensible, this is a must-have title for students and researchers engaged with the study of the body.
In Disability Studies the question of ontology is establishing itself as a live issue. Whilst there are many arguments and tendencies emerging from this literature, this paper identifies and critically examines an approach to the ontological question in disability studies that is based on an appeal to frailty as a universal characteristic of humanity. The argument builds on the relatively familiar claim that everyone is only temporarily able-bodied. This approach is exemplified in recent work by Bryan Turner and by Tom Shakespeare and Nick Watson. I argue that their universalistic approach is problematic. While it may constitute a theoretical means of ameliorating the existential negativity associated with being disabled it does so at the expense of disability identity. What is required is a critical social ontology that problematises non-disablement and exposes the forms of invalidation that lie at the heart of disabling culture.
In this article, we draw connections between notions of embodiment and conceptions of citizenship to provide insights into contemporary debates about desirable modes of governance. We suggest that there is a need to challenge the instrumental conception of bodies which informs much public policy (our examples are New Reproductive Technologies and cosmetic surgery in Australia), and which underlies much citizenship theory, both feminist and mainstream. We identify a demarcation in our selected policies between those presumed to have control over their bodies and those presumed to be controlled by their bodies. The former are designated `autonomous citizens' (with autonomous meaning distance from government oversight), while the latter are constituted as lesser citizens in need of forms of control. Women appear on both sides of the dichotomy, but in ways which leave them invisible as political subjects. We coin the term `social flesh' to capture a vision of interacting, material, embodied subjects and initiate consideration of the forms of governance that might be appropriate for embodied citizens.
Is the closet just a metaphor? Closet Space provides a highly original account of the spatial metaphor of "the closet", and is the first geography text to focus on this important issue. Using a variety of research techniques and materials, the book explores the closet through texts including: * the oral histories of gay men in the UK and US * the sexualised landscape of a New Zealand city * the national census of Britain and the US * international travel guides and travelogues and refers to the work of Butler, Lefebvre and Foucault.