Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies of the Body

1993 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl L. Cole
2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Tolvhed

In this article, I discuss sport and physical activities as a field of empirical investigation for feminist cultural studies with a potential to contribute to theorizing the body, gender and difference. Sport has, historically, served to legitimize and rein-force the gender dichotomy by making men “masculine” through developing physical strength and endurance, while women generally have been excluded or di-rected towards activities fostering a “feminine suppleness”. The recent case of runner Caster Semenya, who was subjected to extensive gender tests, demon-strates how athletic superiority and “masculine” attributes in women still today stir public emotions and evoke cultural anxieties of gender blurring. But the rigid gender boundaries have also made sport a field of transgressions. From the “Soviet amazon” of the Cold War, transgressions in sport have publicly demonstrated, but also pushed, the boundaries of cultural understandings of gender. Gender verification tests have exposed a continuum of bodies that cannot easily be arranged into two stable, separate gender categories. In spite of the so called “corporeal turn”, sport is still rather neglected within cultural studies and feminist research. This appears to be linked to a degradation, and fear, of the body and of the risk that women – once again – be reduced to biology and physical capacity. But studies of sport might further develop under-standings of the processes through which embodied knowledge and subjectivity is produced, in a way that overcomes the split between corporeality and discursive regimes or representations. Furthermore, with the fitness upsurge since the 1980s, the athletic female body has emerged as a cultural ideal and a rare validation of “female masculinity” (Halberstam) in popular culture. This is an area well-suited for “third wave” feminist cultural studies that are at ease with complexities and contradictions: the practices and commercialized images of the sportswoman are potentially both oppressive and empowering.


Derrida Today ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Morris

Over the past thirty years, academic debate over pornography in the discourses of feminism and cultural studies has foundered on questions of the performative and of the word's definition. In the polylogue of Droit de regards, pornography is defined as la mise en vente that is taking place in the act of exegesis in progress. (Wills's idiomatic English translation includes an ‘it’ that is absent in the French original). The definition in Droit de regards alludes to the word's etymology (writing by or about prostitutes) but leaves the referent of the ‘sale’ suspended. Pornography as la mise en vente boldly restates the necessary iterability of the sign and anticipates two of Derrida's late arguments: that there is no ‘the’ body and that performatives may be powerless. Deriving a definition of pornography from a truncated etymology exemplifies the prosthesis of origin and challenges other critical discourses to explain how pornography can be understood as anything more than ‘putting (it) up for sale’.


2019 ◽  
pp. 14-17
Author(s):  
B. E. Nosenok

Cultural studies as a humanities researcher takes the place of an expert. The relevance of this topic is due to the lack of development of the issues of “culture-based studies” in Ukrainian culturology. There is a lack of translated into French or Ukrainian languages of French sources published since 1975. French culturological science, which developed after 1975, is almost not represented in Ukrainian culturology. The present stage of the development of French historiography, which lies at the heart of cultural history, and cultural studies, is associated with increased attention to social knowledge. This stage is characterized by the deployment of a “critical turn”, which proceeds from the following principles: the interdisciplinary approach, the significance of cultural expertise, the severity of publications and the multiplicity of their forms, multidisciplinarity. The “critical turn” affects the following spheres of knowledge: la Culturologie, les Études culturelles, les Sciences de la Culture. The article substantiates the relevance of the use of the concept of “culture-based studies” to the definition of processes that are unfolding within the framework of French humanities and are associated exclusively with the theoretical formations in the context of the social sciences. The purpose of the article is to outline a map of culture-based studies in the field of French humanitaristics. The methodology of the article is based on the application of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to research in the field of culturology. Also, methodological developments in the field of “critical turn” and the achievements of the sociological circle and the interdisciplinary discussion club “Eranos” were applied. The scientific novelty of the article is to substantiate the appropriateness of the use of the concept of “culture-based studies” on the definition of processes that are unfolding within the framework of French humanitaristics and relate exclusively to theoretical formations in the context of social sciences. This concept to the field of Ukrainian culturology is introduced for the first time. Also, for the first time, the place and forms of culturology in French humanities were clarified. Conclusions. Working with a source base and methodology is one of the points that are compulsory on the way to the solution of the tasks, the main of which is the formation of the body of fundamental works for French history (including the history of culture) and historiography of the period since 1975 year to the present day. On the basis of this building, there is the prospect of building an alternative national cultural history project addressed to the vector of the French historiographical, historical-anthropological and cultural-related issues in the field of social knowledge. The article presents the arguments why it is appropriate to use the concept of “culture-based studies” in the context of conducting research in relation to French humanitaristics, in particular, the modern period of its development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 651-667
Author(s):  
Shahrzad Mohammadi

Drawing on feminist cultural studies, this article critically analyzes the interrelationship between state ideology and gender policies in the sporting domain with a particular focus on the prolonged interdiction of Iranian female spectators from stadiums. Data were collected from online social spaces such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The findings suggest that in the absence of free and democratic public spaces for negotiation of their rights, Iranian women have increasingly used social media and online campaigns as enabling platforms to partake in a communication discourse, raise awareness, practice democracy, mobilize masses, and protest against social injustice.


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