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Body and the reproduction of femininity Susan Bordo 20th Century – Agoraphobic, anorexia nervosa, bulimia Symptoms could
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Body and the reproduction of femininity Susan Bordo
The main thesis of The Body and Reproduction of Femininity is that the body is as much a result of culture as it is a result of genes—the body, particularly the female body, is a medium for culture, in which the current culture of the society can reflect itself. The main arguments for this were focused on how the view of the woman’s body has changed to reflect societal norms in America over the past many decades, focusing mainly on rises and falls of hysteria, anorexia, and agoraphobia in women over this time period. Bordo argues that, depending on the viewpoint of women at the time, the neurosis experienced by women will change to reflect it. For example, in the Victorian era, women were supposed to be frail and faint of heart, prone to fainting and getting overworked—and during that time, hysteria became prominent in many women. And during the era of the housewife, agoraphobia became present—and during the age of slimmer and slimmer bodies? Anorexia. Social constructions of gender reflect in the people, and how many people will view this as a reason for the social constructions, confusing which is the cause and which is the effect. Reconstructing Feminist Discourse on the Body: The concept of “body” – a medium of culture The body is more than a text of culture. According to Bourdieu and Foucault, it is a practical, direct locus of social control. An effective political discourse expected The Concept of “body”: Body as a medium of culture Bourdieu: culture as a made body, can be converted into automatic, habitual activity. Foucault: the primacy of practice over belief is not chiefly through ideology, but through the organization and regulation of the time, space and movements of our daily lives. These means make our bodies trained, shaped, and impressed with prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, femininity. Docile bodies – Female bodies forces and energies are habituated, to external regulation, subjection , transformation and “improvement.” “Through the exacting and normalizing disciplines of diet, makeup, and dress, women are rendered less socially oriented and more centripetally focused on self-modification.” “The discipline and normalization of the female body[…] has to be acknowledged as an amazingly durable and flexible strategy of social control.” Reconstructing Feminist Discourse on the Body: An effective political discourse expected In the era that appearance is the contemporary preoccupation, when applying Foucault’s idea, it is important that we think of the network of practices, institutions, and technologies that sustain positions of dominance and subordination in a particular domain. We need an analytics to describe a power, not repressive but constitutive. We need a discourse to “account for the subversion of potential rebellion”; a discourse that not merely insists on objectively analysis on power relations, social hierarchy, political backlashes, but also confronts the difficulty and entrapment that “the subject” at times is trapped in sustaining “her own oppression.
The Body as a Text of Femininity: 1. History of female disorder and “normal” feminine practice 2. Disordered body as a text – Reading of the slender body 3. A double bind 1.History of female disorder and “normal” feminine practice: Symptoms of disorder Among most close reading or analysis of disorder, women appear to be apparently much more vulnerable (than men). 19th Century – Neurasthenia and hysteria
Body and the reproduction of femininity Susan Bordo 20th Century – Agoraphobic, anorexia nervosa, bulimia Symptoms could be regarded as the text and be analyzed as a textuality Symptoms of disorders contain symbolic or political meanings that can be taken as reflections upon the constructed and existed gender roles o Example: Women are expected to fee, to serve, to sacrifice; they starve themselves and whittling down the space they/their bodies take up. An ideological construction of femininity o Femininity is constructed and the definition of femininity is homogenized and normalized disregard of race, class and other differences. o Disordered female bodies – aggressive texts/graphics for interpreters Historical “normal” feminine practice o 19th Century: the definition of “lady” and the traits of a “lady” o Delicacy, dreaminess, sexually passive, charmingly labile and capriciously emotional o In various literary texts and scientific reports, the term “hysteria” becomes interchangeable with the term “feminine Femininity is constructed through standardized visual images. o Femininity: a matter of constructing, the appropriate surface presentation of self o Example: 1950s~1960s agoraphobia 2. Disordered body as a text – Reading the slender body 1950s~1960s – agoraphobia Emerged at a period of reaffirmation of domesticity and dependency as the feminine ideal “Career women” – a dirty word Movie and screen images as examples The emaciated body of the anorectic: contemporary ideal of hyper slenderness for women, despite the game resistance of racial and ethnic difference, has become the norm for women today 3.A Double Bind Women – emotional and physical nurturer “The rules for this construction of femininity […] require that women learn to fee others, not the self”(2367). Self-feeding is taken as greedy and excessive for women who are expected to develop an other-oriented emotional economy. Femininity + Masculinity the anorexic as an extreme performer Women are continually taught “feminine” virtues and are also expected (simultaneously) to learn the “masculine’ language and value. Popular images of femininity and masculinity The androgynous ideal hence tears the subject into two.
Protest and Retreat in the Same Gesture Muteness as a way to protest A feminine slim body that demonstrates well-control and self-mastery American and French feminists interpret the hysteric speaking as a protest through their muteness. o Dianne Hunter and other Lacanian feminists’ view on the hysteric’s regressive and expressive articulation to patriarchal thought Catherine Clement – the hysterics accuse and points Helene Cixous – Dora as an example, core example of the protesting force in women
Body and the reproduction of femininity Susan Bordo
Literary protest o Robert Seidenberg and Karen DeCrow as examples o Carroll Smith Rosenberg o Susie Orbach – the anorectic uses “hunger strike” to express a “political discourse” Retreat: Kim Chernin : By intervening personal development, the anorexic may assuage the guilt and separation anxiety: o Of being surpassed their mothers (in terms of freedom?) o Of living freer lives ( Is that possible?) Agoraphobia : usually happens shortly after marriage, a way to weld dependency and attachment The self-destructing nature of the protest The symptoms of disorders actually isolate and weaken the sufferer. The life of the body becomes the anorectic’s fetish. For the hysterics: They use their bodies to express. Muteness turns them into silent and uncomplaining woman. Their muteness can be regarded as a gesture of rejecting the symbolic order of the patriarchy; Recovering a lost world of semiotic, maternal value. Anorexia as a feminine practice: The Anorexic’s experience of power is illusory Reshaping the body does not mean they are able to gain male power or privilege. Is to have some sense of control that social order limits female possibilities Two different bodies under the same discourse: 1. The intelligible body: Scientific, philosophic, and aesthetic representations of the body. 2. The useful body: The one that is shaped and trained by practical rules and regulations in the presentation of cultural conceptions of the body Cooperation of these 2 bodies o 19th Century the ideal female body of “hourglass” figure: intelligible symbolic form that represents a domestic and sexualized ideal of femininity became a useful body through feminine praxis o 17th Century concept of the body as a machine
Helena Michie’s The Flesh Made Word: makes metaphorical connections between female eating and female sexuality; discusses female hunger as “unspeakable desires for sexuality and power”
The sharp cultural contrasts between the female and male form, made in symbolic terms the dualistic division of social and economic life into two male and female spheres Bordo views bodies as “site of struggle” where we must work on so as to carry on daily practices that resist gender domination, docility and gender. She suggests that we ought to be more aware of the existing contradictions “between image and practice, rhetoric and reality.