Re-touched

Re-touched is a collaborative project by collage artist Sarah Eyre and fashion photographer Xanthe Hutchinson. Both artists share an interest in the female body, particularly the notion of pleasure in display and gaze between women and the body. The body of work that forms Re-touched combines photographic and collage methods in order to embody a sense of sensuality through the opening up and enfolding of the female form, on set and through the process of collage. The artists position their work within a framework of feminist theory that questions the binary thinking around the gaze. They draw on the writing of Laura U. Marks to bring a haptic quality to their photographic and collage interventions to the image, and in inviting the viewer to be touched by their images. Through this series of photographic collages, they have established a visual and tactile approach that utilizes the body, is collaborative and re-figures the power structures between model, photographer and viewer. Their images offer a way of rethinking and reshaping representations of the female nude.

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Cuerpo indeterminado: La precariedad del cuerpo en el discurso feminista

Revista de la Academia ◽

10.25074/0196318.0.47 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 20 ◽

pp. 47

Author(s):

María Isabel Peña Aguado

Keyword(s):

Feminist Theory ◽

Queer Theory ◽

Female Body ◽

The Body ◽

Philosophical Tradition ◽

Font Size ◽

Feminist Discourse ◽

Feminist Movements ◽

Cuerpo Femenino

La teoría feminista heredó de una tradición filosófica hostil la identificación de cuerpo y mujer. Partiendo de esta identificación de mujer y cuerpo es comprensible que un cuestionamiento del concepto ‘mujer’ influya asimismo en el lugar que va a encontrar el cuerpo dentro del movimiento y teoría feministas. Ese lugar será diferente dependiendo de las diversas reivindicaciones que marcan las diferencias entre los distintos feminismos y teorías queer. La pregunta que se plantea es hasta qué punto la precariedad del cuerpo femenino dentro de la misma teoría feminista es consecuencia del cuestionamiento del concepto de mujer o si, por el contrario, no será más bien el rechazo a una realidad corporal concreta lo que ha permitido y ayudado a desarmar los conceptos de ‘mujer’ y ‘mujeres’ hasta el punto de considerarlos como innecesario para el mismo discurso y políticas feministas contemporáneos.Palabras claves: cuerpo, mujeres, feminismo, Teoría Queer Indeterminacy of the body: precariousness of body in the feminist discourseFeminist theory inherited the identification of woman and body from a hostile philosophical tradition. Given this identification, it is understandable that a questioning of the concept ‚woman‘ also influences the place that the body will find in the feminist movements and theories. The question that arises is how far the precariousness of the female body within feminist theory itself is the result of a questioning of the concept of ‘woman’ or whether, on the contrary, it is the rejection of a concrete corporal reality which has enabled and helped to disarm the concepts of ‚woman‘ and ‚women‘ to the point of considering them unnecessary for contemporary feminist discourse and politics. Keywords: body, women, feminism, Queer Theory

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Women’s Work

10.1093/oso/9780190615093.003.0008 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Kristin C. Bloomer

Keyword(s):

Water Resources ◽

Gender Roles ◽

Rural Community ◽

Female Body ◽

Women's Work ◽

The Body ◽

Power Structures ◽

Power Struggles ◽

Women’S Work

This chapter begins with the story of Sahaya Mary, a resident of Dhanam’s village who struggled with a difficult pregnancy and marriage and was healed by Mātā, who diagnosed her as being possessed by Pāndi Muni. Her story displays the restrictions placed on the female body through local customs, religion, and Catholic doctrine. As with Rosalind and Nancy, possession by Mātā gives Dhanam authority outside normal gender roles and power structures and, on occasion, allows her to confer that greater authority on others. Her experiences are notably different than those of Nancy and Rosalind. Mātā’s interventions through the body of Dhanam allow women to circumvent certain daily power struggles. Dhanam specifies differences between Mātā and Hindu deities. Changes are coming to the rural community as newcomers stretch land and water resources. One such newcomer threatens Dhanam, and her possession practices wane.

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“Incisive, Dissonant” Rationality vs. Aesthetic Modernism: Hedenius and Trotzig

Humanities ◽

10.3390/h9030103 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (3) ◽

pp. 103

Author(s):

Ulf Olsson

Keyword(s):

Welfare State ◽

Scientific Basis ◽

The Body ◽

Body Of Christ ◽

Literary Representations ◽

Contemporary Society ◽

Literary Critic ◽

Social Reforms ◽

The Gaze ◽

Opening Up

The Swedish “Welfare State” of the 1950s was described as a rational, well-organized society by leading Swedish philosopher, Professor Ingemar Hedenius. His biopolitical vision emphasized the scientific basis for social reforms, and he was an active opponent to any kind of religious thinking. Hedenius also worked as a literary critic, and he would use that role to confront literary representations of contemporary society that did not fit in with his promulgation of rationality. Hedenius furiously attacked Swedish writer Birgitta Trotzig’s A Landscape (1959). In her book, she challenges any harmonizing vision of society. She does it through representations of the body, and the gaze that does not shy away from the anguished and pained body, the body opening up and giving birth. The body in Trotzig’s work is also the tortured body of Christ. With the Swedish welfare state as a point of reference, this article explores the collision between what can be called a “rational modernism” and aesthetic modernism: Hedenius called Trotzig’s book “evil,” and Trotzig, when she commented upon this almost three decades later, saw Hedenius’s review as an authoritarian assault.

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Expansive Posture

Psychology ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0267 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sally D. Farley

Keyword(s):

Nonverbal Communication ◽

Two Dimensions ◽

The Body ◽

The Gaze ◽

Comparative Similarity ◽

Motivational States ◽

Psychological Correlates ◽

Nonverbal Expression ◽

Opening Up ◽

Romantic Interest

Much can be gleaned about the affective, cognitive, and motivational states of others by attending to various channels of nonverbal communication. Although there are a variety of ways to organize the body of research on the psychological correlates of nonverbal behavior, researchers in social psychology and communication often distinguish between two dimensions: the hierarchical dimension (status/dominance/power) and the affiliative dimension (liking/romantic interest). Most nonverbal cues have implications for both of these dimensions, and postural expansion is not an exception. Postural expansion includes “enlarging” behaviors such as sitting more erectly, opening up the torso, and extending limbs away from the body. In contrast, postural constriction involves postures that ultimately make an organism appear smaller (such as slumping the shoulders, wrapping limbs around the body, or averting the gaze downward). Numerous researchers have noted the comparative similarity between postural expansion and constriction in humans and, respectively, dominance and submission displays in animals. For example, the bristling of a cat’s fur (piloerection) in response to threat serves to make the animal look larger and more threatening, while the exposure of a dog’s stomach in submission or appeasement serves to make the animal appear smaller, less threatening, or more vulnerable. Substantially more literature has investigated the association between postural expansion and the hierarchical dimension than the affiliative dimension, a bias that is duplicated here. Furthermore, it is important to note that the “hierarchical” literature addresses several related, but unique, questions: (1) How does postural expansion affect perceptions of others’ status/dominance/power? (2) Is postural expansion linked with actual differences in status/dominance/power or other relevant dependent measures? (3) Is postural expansion reliably linked with an important universal nonverbal expression?

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(Ad)dressing the female body

Scene ◽

10.1386/scene.2.1-2.127_1 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 127-132

Author(s):

Madaleine Trigg

Keyword(s):

Body Image ◽

Conceptual Understanding ◽

Cosmetic Surgery ◽

Female Body ◽

The Body ◽

Living Body ◽

Cultural Ideals ◽

A Site ◽

The Relationship ◽

Opening Up

This visual essay presents a body of work that uses a ‘language of flesh’ and fabric to make explicit the relationship between the body, image and our increasingly material world. Recognizing that our skin is a site of inscription for social and cultural ideals, it considers how these images have been internalized and appropriated onto the body. As the temptation to sculpt our body through clothing and cosmetic surgery becomes increasingly pressing, it is important to pose questions as to how and why we are fashioned. Weaving together feminist concerns, and touching upon (syn)aesthetic discourses to frame and embellish these samples of practice, it is hoped that certain assumptions about the female body are ruptured. Using the site/sight of the body to try and expose these fabrications, I have created these ‘articulate’ costumes to unpick them.These costumes are critical as they deny their conventional function, instead opening up and celebrating the visceral, living body. These subversions, in undermining typical narratives of fashion and flesh, create a space to (re)present this body; allowing it to speak for itself. (Ad)dressing the female body here refers to material and physical strategies to un/dress; in order to readdress our corporeal and conceptual understanding of the body.

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From the Culture of Matter to the Matter of Culture: Feminist Explorations of Nature and Science

Sociological Research Online ◽

10.5153/sro.780 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 92-103 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Myra Hird

Keyword(s):

Cultural Studies ◽

Feminist Theory ◽

Sexual Difference ◽

The Body ◽

Paradigm Shifts ◽

Cultural Assumptions ◽

Scientific Discourses ◽

Cultural Constructions ◽

Opening Up

‘The body’ has come to represent a key signifier both within, and beyond, cultural studies. Analyzing and challenging the underlying cultural assumptions of scientific discourses of nature have keenly involved feminist theory in the project of uncovering the culture of matter. The aim of this paper is to review the important insights feminists have brought to bear on the cultural constructions of materiality. I then go on to suggest that considering the matter of culture might be both interesting and useful for feminist theory, especially in opening up new sites of analysis of sexual difference. I explore four areas of materiality that might assist feminist analyses in this area: paradigm shifts, boundaries, technology and the evolution of sexual difference.

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Here is a place for you/know your place: Critiquing “biopedagogy” embedded in images of the female body in fitness advertising

Journal of Consumer Culture ◽

10.1177/1469540519876009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 146954051987600 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Carly Drake ◽

Scott K. Radford

Keyword(s):

Public Goods ◽

Feminist Theory ◽

Female Body ◽

The Body ◽

Critical Reading ◽

Sport Culture ◽

Contemporary Media ◽

Endurance Runners ◽

The Ideal

The historically masculine realm of sport has not always been welcoming to women. Today, women have found a place in sport culture, but contemporary media position and address them as objects whose bodies are public goods available for interested parties to judge. In this critical reading of fitness advertisements targeting female recreational endurance runners, we combine poststructuralist feminist theory and a hermeneutic methodology to investigate if and how advertisements participate in this practice. Given the body’s salience at the intersection of sport, the marketplace, and media, we focus on how the body is depicted. We find that advertisements treat the body as a machine, prescribing and normalizing an obsession with athletics. They glorify the pursuit of the ideal running body through athletics and discount women’s potential in and contributions to sport. In this way, advertisements function as a “biopedagogy” that teaches consumers how a suitable body appears and functions.

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RE-READING MUSTANG IN THE CONTEXT OF THE IDEOLOGICAL COMPONENTS OF NARRATIVE

The Turkish Online Journal of Design Art and Communication ◽

10.7456/11102100/019 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 617-634

Author(s):

Nermin ORTA

Keyword(s):

Female Body ◽

Feminist Criticism ◽

Point Of View ◽

The Body ◽

The Gaze ◽

Patriarchal Ideology ◽

Active Subject ◽

Stage Order ◽

The Subject ◽

Passive Object

Representation of the female body has been one of the most emphasized issues in gender debates. To refrain from reproducing the patriarchal ideology, it is important to be careful with the distinction between the body being tabooed and covered or transformed into an object of consumption under the name of freedom. The sexualization and objectification of the female body has taken place in the historical process. In many products from works of art to mass media, the woman, who is a passive object in front of the man who is the active/subject, is presented to the consumption of the male gaze. In almost every branch of art, from photography to cinema, the female body has been the object of the gaze and has been turned into an object of desire by being removed from the subject identity. Even in films that are claimed to be made with a woman's point of view and against gender discourses, the female body is sometimes objectified with elements such as the stage order, lighting, and perspective preferences. In this study, which aims to reveal how cinematographic elements can change the world of meaning, the first film of Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Mustang (2015), was discussed with feminist criticism in the axis of object-body by giving examples from various art branches in terms of cinematographic preferences. As a result of the study, it has been determined that the film, which claims to have set out with critical point of view, reproduces the discourses it tries to criticize. The reason for this is that the film falls into the traps of patriarchal ideology.

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Men’s Hunger, Food Consumption, and Preferences for Female Body Types

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000210 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (6) ◽

pp. 495-497 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Nicolas Guéguen

Keyword(s):

Food Consumption ◽

Female Body ◽

The Body ◽

Slender Body ◽

Mediation Effect ◽

Point Scale ◽

Body Type ◽

Experimental Conditions

Nelson and Morrison (2005 , study 3) reported that men who feel hungry preferred heavier women. The present study replicates these results by using real photographs of women and examines the mediation effect of hunger scores. Men were solicited while entering or leaving a restaurant and asked to report their hunger on a 10-point scale. Afterwards, they were presented with three photographs of a woman in a bikini: One with a slim body type, one with a slender body type, and one with a slightly chubby body. The participants were asked to indicate their preference. Results showed that the participants entering the restaurant preferred the chubby body type more while satiated men preferred the thinner or slender body types. It was also found that the relation between experimental conditions and the choices of the body type was mediated by men’s hunger scores.

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Diaghilev and British Writing

Dance Research ◽

10.3366/e0264287509000255 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 65-92

Author(s):

Susan Jones

Keyword(s):

Visual Arts ◽

The Body ◽

The Novel ◽

Literary Responses ◽

Literary Aesthetics ◽

Ballets Russes ◽

The Arts ◽

The Subject ◽

And Gender ◽

Opening Up

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.

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