scholarly journals Girls’ Aesthetics of Existence in/With Hayao Miyazaki’s Films

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 376-383
Author(s):  
Laura Trafí-Prats
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
And Gender

In this article, I analyze the processual aesthetic production of girl subjectivity in/with Hayao Miyazaki’s films through a feminist materialist perspective informed by the writings of Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Elizabeth Grosz, and Affrica Taylor. I elaborate on feminist materialist concepts such as those of relational ontology, aesthetics of existence, worldmaking, mythopoesis, queer kin, and gender/sexual difference. With these concepts, I philosophically and ethnographically inquire in/with girl spectators who are interested in the experimentation with new modalities of existence that do not limit to those of success and alienation, but allow for creative possibilities of rupture, recomposition, and transversalization of girl subjectivities.

Thomas Aquinas on Sexual Difference: The Metaphysical Biology and Moral Significance of Human Sexuality

Pro Ecclesia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-215
Author(s):  
Paul Gondreau
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Human Sexuality ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Biological Design ◽  
Moral Excellence ◽  
Structural Differences ◽  
The Mean ◽  
And Gender

Thomas Aquinas offers for his time a novel take on human sexual difference, in that he grounds human sexuality in what we might term a metaphysical biology and accords it a privileged role in the moral life. Though his biology is drawn from Aristotle, which leads Aquinas to make problematic statements on sexual difference, he nonetheless offers a perspective that remains deeply relevant and significant for today. His method or approach of tethering sexual difference first and foremost to our animal-like biological design remains perennial, particularly at a time when many seek to dismiss biology as irrelevant to sexual identity and gender difference. The latest findings of the emerging field of neurobiology, which have uncovered structural differences between the male and female brains, offer key support to Aquinas’s approach. Even more important, he holds, in an unprecedented move, that sexual design and inclination provide a veritable source of moral excellence. He goes so far as to locate the mean of virtue in our sexual design and appetites.

scholarly journals Men of Parts: Masculine Embodiment and the Male Leg in Eighteenth-Century England

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-821 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis essay explores changes in eighteenth-century male clothing in the context of the history of sexual difference, gender roles, and masculinity. The essay contributes to a history of dress by reconstructing a range of meanings and social practices through which men's clothing was understood by its consumers. Furthermore, critically engaging with work on the “great male renunciation,” the essay argues that the public authority that accrued to men through their clothing was based not on a new image of a rational disembodied man but instead on an emphasis on the male anatomy and masculinity as intrinsically embodied. Drawing on findings from the material objects of eighteenth-century clothing, visual representations, and evidence from the archival records of male consumers, the essay adopts an interdisciplinary approach that allows historians to study sex and gender as embodied, rather than simply performed. In so doing, the essay not only treats “embodiment” as an historical category but also responds to recent shifts in the historical discipline and the wider academy towards a more corporealist approach to the body.

scholarly journals From reflection to diffraction: exploring the use of vignettes within post-humanist and multi-species research

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412092025
Author(s):  
Nicholas Jenkins ◽  
Louise Ritchie ◽  
Sam Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Pilot Project ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Methodological Principles

This article explores the use of vignettes in qualitative research from a post-humanist and multi-species perspective. Drawing on methodological principles espoused by Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, as well as empirical data from the Dementia Dog pilot project in Scotland, UK, we explore the use of vignettes as a technique for understanding human–dog relations in dementia. In so doing, we outline an approach to using vignettes that is guided by principles of diffraction, which is contrasted with humanist principles of interpretivism, reflection and representation. Moving away from humanist methodology, we argue, calls for new approaches to evaluating the quality of vignettes. This involves disrupting conventional approaches, within which vignettes are defined by their purpose and evaluated according to fixed criteria (e.g. validity, authenticity and trustworthiness). In their place, we argue for an approach to evaluating vignettes that is rooted in performativity and guided by the question: What can a vignette do?

Matrix

2011 ◽  
pp. 882-884
Author(s):  
Irina Aristarkhova
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Maternal Body ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
And Gender ◽  
As If

1. Matrix = Womb. 2. The Matrix is everywhere, it’s all around us, here, even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth ... that you, like everyone else, was born into bondage ... kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste or touch. A prison for your mind. A Matrix. (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999) 3. What is Matrix? Simply ... the “big Other,” the virtual symbolic order, the network that structures reality for us. (S. Zizek, 1999) What is Matrix? In the past years, the notion of the Matrix has become dominant in figurations of cyberspace. It seems as if it is the most desirable, the most contemporary and fitting equation; however, its gendered etymology is rarely obvious. On the opposite, the gender of the matrix as a notion and term has been systematically negated in such disciplines as mathematics, engineering, film studies or psychoanalysis. It is necessary thus to explore and critique the Matrix as a most “fitting” metaphor in/for cyberspace that has conceived it (cyberspace) as a free and seamless space very much like the maternal body (Aristarkhova, 2002). The challenge today, therefore, is to reintroduce the maternal as one of embodied encounters with difference, to recover the sexual difference and gender in the notion of matrix with reference to cyberspace and information technologies that support it.

Feminist literary criticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Feminist Literary Criticism ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Economic Construction

Feminist literary criticism looks at literature assuming its production from a male-dominated perspective. It re-examines canonical works to show how gender stereotypes are involved in their functioning. It examines (and often rediscovers) works by women for a possible alternative voice. A study of the social suppression and minimalization of women’s literature becomes necessary. These questions emerge: What is sexual difference and how has it been represented? How has the representation of woman relied on a presupposition of inequality between the sexes? Is there a feminine essence, biological or otherwise, that produces ‘women’s writing’? Feminists who believe that a ‘woman’ is culturally or socially constructed look for evidence of that process in literature. The socio-cultural and politico-economic construction of sexual difference is ‘gender.’ A study of the difference between sexual and gender difference can establish alliances with gay and lesbian studies. Feminist criticism sometimes relates to psychoanalysis and/or Marxism, criticizing their masculinism and using their resources. It expands into film/video as well as social-scientific or philosophical texts. Feminists sensitive to racism and imperialism demonstrate the culture-specificity of all of the above.

Modern Mormonism and Gender Theory in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Taylor G. Petrey
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Gender Theory ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
World War ◽  
Gender Essentialism ◽  
Gender Fluidity ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

The introduction sets the parameters of the book’s focus on Modern Mormonism in America, which arises after World War II. It further sets this period in the context of gender theory and the history of sexuality, to explore how Mormon approaches to these topics are situated between competing theories of sexual difference in modernity, gender essentialism and gender fluidity.

Mormonism in the History of Sexuality

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-224
Author(s):  
Taylor G. Petrey
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sexual Contacts ◽  
And Gender

This book has explored one example of a set of teachings that are widely believed to be quite stable in Mormonism but have actually been open to dramatic changes. LDS teachings about marriage, gender roles, sexual difference, and sexuality have undergone remarkable transformation since World War II. Teachings on marriage, sexual practices within marriage, and gender roles all trended toward greater liberalization during the period of modern Mormonism, even if they lagged behind broader cultural changes. But this progress had its trade-offs. Latter-day Saints could accommodate liberalizing trends on race, marriage, sexual contacts, birth control, and gender roles in part because their attention focused on homosexuality as a particularly egregious problem.

Darwin's Orchids

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-550
Author(s):  
Donovan O. Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Masculinity And Femininity ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Single Moment ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Life On Earth

Abstract Is there a queer Darwin? It is often assumed that Darwinian biology is an ally of conservative approaches to sexuality and gender. The Christian legal framework known as natural law philosophy, for instance, reads Darwin as a champion of heterosexual coupling, proving the biological imperative of straight sex. Some feminist readings of Darwin (such as that of Elizabeth Grosz) find in Darwin a confirmation of the necessity of sexual difference organized around masculinity and femininity—an approach Myra Hird has called the “ontology of heterosexuality.” But these interpretations are incorrect. Schaefer argues that far from being an advocate for the ontology of heterosexuality, Darwin provides tools to demolish it. Turning to his research on barnacles and orchids and his speculation on the sources of organic variation, this essay highlights the irreducible importance of diversity and change for Darwin's framework. The ongoing ferment of variation that is the guideline of all life on earth extends not only to the morphology of sex organs but to desire itself. Darwin shows that the ontology of heterosexuality is an arbitrary snapshot, a single moment in the fluid trajectory of life, rather than a law that can be arbitrarily cast over the whole arc. In this, Darwin supports Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's first axiom for queer theory: “People are different from each other.” The essay concludes by connecting a Darwinian approach to sex with José Esteban Muñoz's call for a queer ecstasy that anticipates the futurity of desire.

Researching masculinities, narrating sexual difference

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-63
Author(s):  
Jennifer Germon
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Development ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sex Development ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Female Sexual Development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to engage with a foundational gendered imaginary in Western medical and popular discourse regarding fetal sexual development. It is an imaginary that consists of dual narratives that bolster an oppositional complementary model of sex-gender. By these accounts male sexual development results from complex and multi-faceted processes generated by the Y chromosome while female sexual development is straightforward, articulated through a discourse of “default sex” (Jost, 1953). Such apparent truths fit seamlessly with the timeworn notion of maleness and masculinity as always already active, and femaleness and femininity always and inevitably passive. In other words, he does and she is. Design/methodology/approach – Despite embryogenetic findings thoroughly debunking these ideas, contemporary medical and biological textbooks remain haunted by outdated androcentric models of sex development. This paper attends to biomedical and everyday understandings of sex and gender to demonstrate how fresh lines of inquiry produce conditions that enable new ways of understanding bodies and embodied experiences. Findings – This paper demonstrates how new ways of thinking can lead to a new understanding with regards to sex, gender, bodies, and experiences. Originality/value – This paper attends to biomedical and everyday understandings of sex and gender to demonstrate how fresh lines of inquiry produce conditions that enable new ways of understanding bodies and embodied experiences.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document