‘La Décadente a fait son temps’: Rachilde and Georges de Peyrebrune's Une décadente

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Sharon Larson
Keyword(s):  
Medical Rhetoric ◽  
Medical Discourses

In 1886, Georges de Peyrebrune (1841–1917) published the novella Une décadente, a scarcely veiled depiction – and biting critique – of Rachilde (1860–1953) and her unconventional lifestyle. In her depiction of Hélione, a fictionalized version of Rachilde, she borrows from contemporary medical discourses on hysteria and suggests that her heroine's true fulfillment can only be realized through motherhood. Peyrebrune positions these male-authored discourses alongside a concurrent ridicule of Hélione's aspirations as a writer of decadent literature. However, in an unanticipated twist in the final pages, the discursive medical framework of her narrative collapses, exposing the precariousness of the literary and scientific constructions of hysteria and thus leading readers to rethink Peyrebrune's traditionalist views. In positioning these discourses within the larger aesthetic and ideological interrogations of the text, we may uncover Peyrebrune's own revision – albeit subtle at times – of a fictional model and the medical rhetoric that shapes it.

Female Onanism: Condemned Pleasures, Medical Probes, and Late-Victorian Pornography

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-164
Author(s):  
Stefano Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Self ◽  
Erotic Literature ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The more Victorian physicians deepened their research into female sexuality, the more a culture of lust infected the hypocritical façade of a nation strictly attached to social norms of order, formality, and bigotry. Lascivious sexual desire and carnal appetite – here embodied in female masturbation – were taboos that had to be forcibly silenced. Yet, late-Victorian pornography mocked medical discourses on female onanism, as well as fears related to female sexuality, and revealed ‘unspeakable’ secret domestic settings marred by ‘dangerous’ practices, scandalous carnality and deviant desires. Furthermore, contemptuous of literary censorship and strict morality, the plenteous erotic literature, represented here by William Lazenby's pornographic magazine The Pearl, not only dared to taunt physicians’ concerns about female ‘self-pollution’ circulating at that time, but also found a great inspiration in the huge domestic success of some innovative medical tools – specifically patented to assuage women's nerves – being produced in those years: electric vibrators. Those ‘engines’ rapidly invaded pornographic literature of the late nineteenth century and became central to a great number of erotic stories, titillating fables and poems, as clearly demonstrated by the contents of The Pearl.

scholarly journals Defining “the marijuana problem”: An Analysis of the Polish daily press, 2015–2016

2020 ◽  
pp. 145507252093680
Author(s):  
Piotr Kępski
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Medical Marijuana ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Daily Press ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Recreational Marijuana ◽  
The Media

Aim: This study analyses discourses on marijuana in the Polish daily press and explores ways of defining “the marijuana problem” during a debate about legalisation of medical marijuana. Methods: 384 press articles published in three national newspapers in 2015–2016 were analysed. The method used was discourse analysis. The theoretical background was social constructionism, including Spector and Kitsuse’s four-stage constructionist model of defining social problems. Results: The study shows that marijuana problems were mainly constructed through criminal and politically medical discourses. In addition to celebrity and pop culture discourses, recreational marijuana use discourses and social problems discourses were identified. Discussion: The marijuana problem can be defined differently through various discourses. Definitions pertain to diverse marijuana meanings ranging from a negative marijuana-as-drug, through an ambivalent recreational marijuana up to a positively valued medical marijuana. The research pointed out that, from a discursive standpoint, the marijuana problem may be viewed as a complex network of relations between particular discourses, marijuana meanings, claim-makers and the media. Conclusion: Different definitions of the marijuana problem are constructed through a dynamic discursive and social process. Various claim-makers try to impose their meanings on marijuana. Mass media are not neutral. They also participate in defining the marijuana problem.

scholarly journals No Man’s Land? Gendering Contraception in Family Planning Advice Literature in State-Socialist Poland (1950s–1980s)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agata Ignaciuk
Keyword(s):  
Family Planning ◽  
Sexual Interest ◽  
Contraceptive Methods ◽  
Advice Literature ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Health Project ◽  
Mixed Messages ◽  
No Man's Land ◽  
State Socialist ◽  
Party State

Summary This article examines popular medical discourses on contraception produced in state-socialist Poland following the legalisation of abortion in 1956, a time when the party state declared family planning to be a public health project. By analysing popular medical literature, I argue that the popularisation of family planning constructed and relied on gender norms that could ease anxieties about the mainstreaming of ideas relating to sexuality and contraception, as well as about gender equality in a state-socialist context. I show that the femininity constructed in Polish birth control advice was based in fertility and the physical attractiveness required to maintain a husband’s sexual interest. Although masculinity was represented as distant, egoistic and violent, experts broadcast mixed messages about the effectiveness and usefulness of popular male contraceptive methods, some of which were at times utterly demonised.

Continuity, change and possibility in older age: Identity and ageing-as-discovery

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peta S. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Older People ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Older Age ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Age Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Active Exploration

Traditionally, sociology has framed older age as a time of disengagement, withdrawal and reduced social integration. While now largely dismissed in contemporary sociological understandings of ageing, narratives of decline still feature heavily across social, media, and medical discourses. This negativity towards ageing could be at odds with how older people experience their age and identity. In this article, I will explore how 16 older people construct their self-identity. Drawing on participant-generated imagery and interview data, this article exposes that they experience older age as a time of continuity, discovery, possibility and change, where identity is multiple and fluid, and emerges through the links they make between the past, present and future. Thus, while ageing is not without its difficulties, the research participants challenge the social myths that reductively and negatively frame older age by constructing an identity that builds on their past through an active exploration of new possibilities and experiences.

A terra dos mortos na cidade do Rio Negro: Mudanças nas práticas funerárias na cidade de Manaus e a construção do Cemitério de São José (1848-1859)

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Fábio Augusto Carvalho Pedrosa
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rio Negro ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Funeral Practices ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The City

Até determinado período do oitocentos, vivos e mortos conviviam no mesmo espaço, mantendo relações bastante diretas. Essa relação estava a séculos arraigada no cotidiano. Os discursos higienistas e as práticas de normatização do espaço público, com a construção de cemitérios públicos e a proibição do contato tradicional com os cadáveres, distanciaram cada vez mais esses dois. Dessa forma, pretende-se analisar como se deram as mudanças nas práticas funerárias na cidade de Manaus na segunda metade do século XIX, partindo das primeiras discussões presentes no Código de Posturas Municipais de 1848. Nesse período os discursos médicos penetraram na região, sendo reforçados pelas graves epidemias que atingiram a capital entre 1855 e 1856, que culminaram na construção do Cemitério de São José (1856-59), que marcou o início de uma nova forma da população manauara relacionar-se com a morte e os mortos.Palavras-chaves: Morte, Práticas Funerárias, Cemitério.Abstract Until a certain period of the eight hundred, living and dead lived in the same space, maintaining fairly direct relations. This relationship was rooted in the centuries. The hygienist discourses and practices of standardization of the public space, with the construction of public cemeteries and the prohibition of the traditional contact with the corpses, have distanced more and more these two. In this way, the aim is to analyze the changes in funeral practices in the city of Manaus in the second half of the 19th century, starting from the first discussions in the Code of Municipal Postures of 1848. During this period medical discourses penetrated the region and were reinforced by the serious epidemics that hit the capital between 1855 and 1856, culminating in the construction of the São José Cemetery (1856-59). Keywords: Death, Funeral Practices, Cemetery.

scholarly journals A Contagious Living Fluid

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joost van Loon
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Pathogen Virulence ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Petri Dishes ◽  
Separate Discipline

This article deals with the birth of `the virus' as an object of technoscientific analysis. The aim is to discuss the process of objectification of pathogen virulence in virological and medical discourses. Through a short excursion into the history of modern virology, it will be argued that far from being a matter of fact, pathogen virulence had to be `produced', for example in petri-dishes, test-kits and hyper-real signification-practices. The now commonly accepted objective status of `the virus' has been an accomplishment of a complex ensemble of actors. Indeed, this illustrates why objectification rather than objectivity has become the main focus of science and technology studies. The objectification of `the' virus was by no means a smooth process. It involved more than five decades of highly speculative and fragmented research projects before it became actualized as a separate discipline under the heading of virology. The specific objectification of viruses took place through an inter-disciplinary de-differentiation of research questions, methodologies, techniques and technologies. The main argument of this article is that viruses only became intelligible after the establishment of a virology-assemblage. Its inauguration in the early 1950s was radical and sudden because only then could the various substrands of virological technoscience affect each other through deliberate enrolment, and engender a universal intelligibility.

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