Fucking the Body, Rewriting the Text: Proto-Queer Embodiment through Textual Drag in Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928) and Monique Wittig's Le Corps lesbien (1973)

Paragraph ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-316
Author(s):  
Kayte Stokoe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Interaction ◽  
Gender Fluidity ◽  
Conceptual Frame ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Lesbian Body ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Romance Narratives

Inspired by Judith Butler's conceptualization of drag as ‘gender parody’, I develop the conceptual frame of ‘textual drag’ in order to define and examine the relationship between parody, satire and gender. I test this frame by reading two seminal feminist works, Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928) and Monique Wittig's Le Corps lesbien (The Lesbian Body) (1973). Both texts lend themselves particularly persuasively to analysis with this frame, as they each use parodic strategies to facilitate proto-queer satirical critiques of reductive gender norms. Orlando deploys an exaggerated nineteenth-century biographical style, which foregrounds the protagonist's gender fluidity and her developing critique of the norms and systems that surround her, while Le Corps lesbien rewrites canonical romance narratives from a lesbian perspective, challenging the heterosexism inherent in these narratives and providing new modes of thinking about gender, desire and sexual interaction.

Living with Barren Truths: A Tale of Triumphalism and Tribulations of a Technology

2021 ◽  
pp. 097168582110159
Author(s):  
Sital Mohanty ◽  
Subhasis Sahoo ◽  
Pranay Kumar Swain
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship

Science, technology and human values have been the subject of enquiry in the last few years for social scientists and eventually the relationship between science and gender is the subject of an ongoing debate. This is due to the event of globalization which led to the exponential growth of new technologies like assisted reproductive technology (ART). ART, one of the most iconic technological innovations of the twentieth century, has become increasingly a normal social fact of life. Since ART invades multiple human discourses—thereby transforming culture, society and politics—it is important what is sociological about ART as well as what is biological. This article argues in commendation of sociology of technology, which is alert to its democratic potential but does not concurrently conceal the historical and continuing role of technology in legitimizing gender discrimination. The article draws the empirical insights from local articulations (i.e., Odisha state in eastern India) for the understandings of motherhood, freedom and choice, reproductive right and rights over the body to which ART has contributed. Sociologically, the article has been supplemented within the broader perspectives of determinism, compatibilism alongside feminism.

scholarly journals Shaping Toronto: female economy and agency in the corset industry, 1871-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna M. M. McKnight
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fashion History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Female Consumers ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Relationship

In amplifying the contours of the body, the corset is an historical site that fashions femininity even as it constricts women’s bodies. This study sits at the intersection of three histories: of commodity consumption, of labour, and of embodiment and subjectivity, arguing that women were active participants in the making, selling, purchasing and wearing of corsets in Toronto, a city that has largely been ignored in fashion history. Between 1871 and 1914 many women worked in large urban factories, and in small, independent manufacturing shops. Toronto’s corset manufacturers were instrumental in the urbanization of Canadian industry, and created employment in which women earned a wage. The women who bought their wares were consumers making informed purchases, enacting agency in consumption and aesthetics; by choosing the style or size of a corset, female consumers were able to control to varying degrees, the shape of their bodies. As a staple in the wardrobe of most nineteenth-century women, the corset complicates the study of conspicuous consumption, as it was a garment that was not meant to be seen, but created a highly visible shape, blurring the lines between private and public viewing of the female body. Marxist analysis of the commodity fetish informs this study, and by acknowledging the ways in which the corset became a fetishized object itself, both signaling the shapeliness of femininity while in fact augmenting and diminishing female bodies. This study will address critical theory regarding the gaze and subjectivity, fashion, and modernity, exploring the relationship women had with corsets through media and advertising. A material culture analysis of extant corsets helps understand how corsets were constructed in Toronto, how the women of Toronto wore them, and to what extent they actually shaped their bodies. Ultimately, it is the aim of this dissertation to eschew common misconceptions about the practice of corsetry and showcase the hidden manner in which women produced goods, labour, and their own bodies in the nineteenth century, within the Canadian context.

scholarly journals Republican Relicts: Gender, Memory, and Mourning in Irish Nationalist Culture, ca. 1798–1848

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 608-637
Author(s):  
Catriona Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Irish Studies ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Memory ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn the past two decades, remembrance has emerged as one of the dominant preoccupations in Irish historical scholarship. There has, however, been little sustained analysis of the relationship between gender and memory in Irish studies, and gender remains under-theorized in memory studies more broadly. Yet one of the striking aspects of nineteenth-century commemorations of the 1798 and 1803 rebellions is the relatively prominent role accorded to women and, in particular, Sarah Curran, Pamela Fitzgerald, and Matilda Tone, the widows of three of the most celebrated United Irish “martyrs.” By analyzing the mnemonic functions these female figures performed in nineteenth-century Irish nationalist discourse, this article offers a case study of the circumstances in which women may be incorporated into, rather than excluded, from national memory cultures. This incorporation, it is argued, had much to do with the fraught political context in which the 1798 rebellion and its leaders were memorialized. As the remembrance of the rebellion in the first half of the nineteenth century assumed a covert character, conventionally gendered distinctions between private grief and public remembrance, intimate histories and heroic reputations, and family genealogy and public biography became blurred so as to foreground women and the female mourner.

The Dilemmas of Male Consumption in Nineteenth-Century Argentina: Fashion, Consumerism, and Darwinism in Domingo Sarmiento and Juan B. Alberdi

2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 771-795
Author(s):  
ADRIANA NOVOA
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Luxury Consumption ◽  
Darwinian Revolution ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article explores how the relationship between luxury, consumption and gender in Argentina changed in response to the introduction of Darwinian ideas. Ideas surrounding consumerism were transformed by the 1870s, influenced by a scientific revolution that gave new meaning to gender categories. The introduction of Darwinism at a time of extreme ideological confusion about how to organise the nation only enhanced the perceived dangers about how economic changes and the expansion of markets would affect elites' ability to govern. The article focuses specifically on changing perceptions of gender and consumerism between 1830 and 1880, paying particular attention to the work of two of the most important intellectuals of the Generación del '37, Juan B. Alberdi and Domingo F. Sarmiento. By closely examining their reflections on the expansion of markets and accumulation of luxury goods, it reveals the nature of the cultural changes introduced by the Darwinian revolution.

scholarly journals Shaping Toronto: female economy and agency in the corset industry, 1871-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna M. M. McKnight
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fashion History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Female Consumers ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Relationship

In amplifying the contours of the body, the corset is an historical site that fashions femininity even as it constricts women’s bodies. This study sits at the intersection of three histories: of commodity consumption, of labour, and of embodiment and subjectivity, arguing that women were active participants in the making, selling, purchasing and wearing of corsets in Toronto, a city that has largely been ignored in fashion history. Between 1871 and 1914 many women worked in large urban factories, and in small, independent manufacturing shops. Toronto’s corset manufacturers were instrumental in the urbanization of Canadian industry, and created employment in which women earned a wage. The women who bought their wares were consumers making informed purchases, enacting agency in consumption and aesthetics; by choosing the style or size of a corset, female consumers were able to control to varying degrees, the shape of their bodies. As a staple in the wardrobe of most nineteenth-century women, the corset complicates the study of conspicuous consumption, as it was a garment that was not meant to be seen, but created a highly visible shape, blurring the lines between private and public viewing of the female body. Marxist analysis of the commodity fetish informs this study, and by acknowledging the ways in which the corset became a fetishized object itself, both signaling the shapeliness of femininity while in fact augmenting and diminishing female bodies. This study will address critical theory regarding the gaze and subjectivity, fashion, and modernity, exploring the relationship women had with corsets through media and advertising. A material culture analysis of extant corsets helps understand how corsets were constructed in Toronto, how the women of Toronto wore them, and to what extent they actually shaped their bodies. Ultimately, it is the aim of this dissertation to eschew common misconceptions about the practice of corsetry and showcase the hidden manner in which women produced goods, labour, and their own bodies in the nineteenth century, within the Canadian context.

scholarly journals Adjusting Swedish gymnastics to the female nature: Discrepancies in the gendering of girls’ physical education in the mid-nineteenth century

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Johannes Westberg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Differences ◽  
Physical Education ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western World ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Relationship

During the nineteenth century, Swedish gymnastics became one of the main models of physical education in the Western world. The purpose of this article is to explore how Swedish gymnastics was adjusted to the female body and mind in the mid-nineteenth century. Using handbooks published by the Swedish educationalist Anton Santesson as an empirical starting point, this article shows how the relationship between gender and gymnastics was complicated and exhibited significant discrepancies. In part, Swedish gymnastics was marked by a one-sex model of gender differences, which meant that gymnastics was perceived as a method for catering to the deficiencies and weaknesses of the feminine nature, in an attempt to make girls and young women more similar to boys. Swedish gymnastics had, nevertheless, vital elements of a two-sex model, according to which gymnastics was supposed to realise the true feminine nature of girls. Following this line of thought, Santesson claimed that, since gymnastics merely followed the laws of the body, it could not make girls more like boys. Santesson’s vision of gymnastics also included disciplinary mechanisms, such as the partitioning of space, which were gender neutral. Apart from presenting insights into the ambiguous and contradictory notions of gender in Swedish girls’ gymnastics, this article thus also raises questions regarding whether other models of physical education were marked by similar discrepancies during the nineteenth century. 

The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany. By Michael B. Gross. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. 2004. Pp. 376. $70.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-472-11383-6 (cloth); 0-472-03130-9 (paper).

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-314
Author(s):  
Siegfried Weichlein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

In recent years, a growing literature on nationalism has highlighted cultural and gender topics. At the same time, religion, most prominently Catholicism, has attracted the intellectual energy of more and more scholars. To date, however, the relationship between nationalism and religion has been undervalued. Helmut Walser Smith's study German Nationalism and Religious Conflict was one of the first to relate religious conflict to the character of German nationalism. Michael B. Gross now analyzes the relationship between German liberalism and religion.

The Sexual Politics of Nature Writing and Lepidoptery: ‘The siren song of entomology’

2019 ◽  
pp. 126-153
Author(s):  
Danielle Sands
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nature Writing ◽  
Vladimir Nabokov ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Ethical Awareness ◽  
Objectification Of Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Politics Of Nature ◽  
The Relationship

Arguing that the discourse of insect collecting is one of objectification and domination, and that entomological classification and practices continue to reflect concerns about sex and gender which were present in its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century instantiations, this chapter aligns the objectification of women with that of insects. It interrogates the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness as licence for such objectification, asking whether aesthetic disinterestedness permits an empathetic disengagement which, at its worst, leads to a sociopathic lack of ethical awareness. The chapter has three parts, focusing on John Fowles’s The Collector, insects (particularly butterflies and moths) in contemporary nature writing and, finally, the role of lepidoptery in the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov. The closing section examines the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, appealing to the simultaneous necessity of both cross-species empathetic engagement and of a distancing that is alert to its own subjective positioning.

Rethinking queer failure: Trans youth embodiments of distress

Sexualities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 48-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Roen
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Trans Youth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
The Way

This article examines trans youth embodied distress in relation to the workings of normativity. I consider the normative cruelties that structure the embodied and gendered experiences of trans youth, and I locate trans youth embodied distress in relation to a notion of queer failure. Central to this analysis is the way emotion is implicated in normativity. I focus on the idea that happiness norms are implicated in keeping gendered subjects in line, and I consider the specific emotions that are bound up in queer failure and embodied distress, such as shame, hatred, and fear. Trans youth frequently respond to the challenges of embodied distress by embarking on a significant emotional, relational project that can involve reworking the relationship to the body and reworking the relationship to norms. In the context of this emotional, relational project, some trans youth self-harm and/or become suicidal. I work with empirical data from trans and gender questioning youth who write online about their self-harming and suicidal feelings, and I use this analysis to locate self-harm in relation to the ways in which some trans youth are crafting embodied and gendered ways of being that break with norms.

The corporeality of sound: drag performance, lip-synching and the popular critique of gendered theatrics in Australian film and television

2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110315
Author(s):  
Rob Cover ◽  
Rosslyn Prosser ◽  
Duc Dau
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Subversion

This article investigates the representation of male and trans drag performance in Australian film to interrogate drag’s continuing potential for gender subversion. We argue that while drag has become mundane through repetition and recognisability, attention to the disjuncture between the visual and the sound (or lip-synching’s non-sound) in drag opens new possibilities for film depictions to disrupt gender norms. We begin with an account of how lip-synching provides new critical ways to think about drag, identity and gender performativity, and then analyse how three Australian films represent drag performance in the context of sound. By showing how drag frames performance through layers of sound emanating from different corporeal sources (the body, the recording), we argue that contemporary drag subverts the cultural demand for the seamlessness of vocal sound and visual embodiment for authentic gender identity, thereby pointing to the precarity of gender normativity.

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