Becoming-Other: (Dis)Embodiments of Race in Anne Rice’s Tale of the Body Thief

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Gay Male ◽  
Human Flesh

Abstract The vampire/human split in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles is structured like a racial split. Becoming a vampire constitutes an essence, a shared material difference that is not something humans can come close to understanding. In the process of erasing actual racial differences through the "Dark Gift," Rice relies on embodiments of ethnicity and racial specificity in her management of gay male desire (a major factor in her popularity). The complexity of the relationships that shift and multiply between desire, race, sexuality and otherness is captured most strikingly in the fourth novel of the series, Tale of the Body Thief. After establishing the gender and sexuality work accomplished by Lestat’s body-switching, the paper examines David Talbot's switch into a young male body himself. Talbot’s own becoming-other, and becoming-vampire thereafter, are instances of both general and specific racialized embodiment. Lestat's experience of the human flesh is different from Talbot's, and in fact does more to constitute identity as gender and sexuality than as race. Talbot's assimilation into Lestat's identity formation (erasing ethnicity by way of becoming an other) still produces a specificity, one that exoticizes a youthful otherness overcoded by Portugal, Africa, India and Brazil. However, the othered body can only be animated by an aging white British gentleman’s mind and manners.

scholarly journals "No Sorrow, No Pity": Intersections of Disability, HIV/AIDS, and Gay Male Masculinity in the 1980s

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hrynyk
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Sexual Liberation ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
Gay Male ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
Disability Narratives ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Hiv Aids

This article examines narratives of disease and disability in Canada's gay and lesbian newspaper, The Body Politic (1971-1987), in order to demonstrate how gay male masculinity developed within a gay ableist culture deeply affected by HIV/AIDS. Over the course of the 1980s, two seemingly separate issues of disability and disease were woven together, establishing a dichotomy between the unhealthy and healthy, afflicted and non-afflicted, disabled and non-disabled body, which was marked by tension and, at times, hostility. As a result, two seemingly different discussions of disability and disease in The Body Politic intersected at the site of the gay male body, whereby issues of frailty and undesirability were shaped by pre-existing perceptions around disability. Narratives around disease and disability demonstrate how perceptions of bodily "failure" transferred from the disabled body onto the diseased body during the formative years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic through imagery and text. The aesthetics and language of disability are particularly important for understanding how the disabled body and the HIV/AIDS-afflicted body were culturally framed because the stylization of the body itself was fundamental to the politics of sexual liberation and the formulation of visible lesbian and gay communities.

scholarly journals Queering the (Camera) Matrix: Male Body Aesthetics in Erwin Olaf's and Ruven Afanador's Photography

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-173
Author(s):  
Krystian Grądz
Keyword(s):  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Social Conventions

In the following paper, the author approaches some of the visual work of two contemporary photographers – Erwin Olaf and Ruven Afanador – in an attempt to see how their work renounces traditional views on masculinity. The photographs chosen for this analysis appear to be a peculiar play with social conventions and expectations related to gender and sexuality. In their work, both Erwin Olaf and Ruven Afanador seem to disrupt and reject the economy of heterosexual desire in favour of a much freer – and unconstrained by propriety – expression of corporeality and sensuality. As a result of such a spectacle of re-creation, the body is redefined not only as a means of expressing performativity (or, the surface onto which it is inscribed), but above all as a medium of becoming which functions as a reservoir of ever-changing meanings.

‘The body that cannot be contained’: Queering mainstream psychology’s gay male body dissatisfaction imperative

Sexualities ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 622-643
Author(s):  
Alexander T Vasilovsky ◽  
Maria Gurevich
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Body Dissatisfaction ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
The Body ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Gay Male ◽  
Psychology Perspective ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Embodied Resistance

A sizable body of mainstream social psychological body image research suggests that gay men are more dissatisfied with their bodies than heterosexual men (Morrison et al., 2004). However, much of this research has been criticized for producing explanatory models that pathologize gay men by foregrounding homosexuality, irrespective of broader sociohistorical factors, as the source of gay male body dissatisfaction ( Filiault, 2010 ; Filiault and Drummond, 2009 ; Kane, 2009 , 2010 ) – what we refer to as psychology’s gay male body dissatisfaction imperative. Situated within a critical psychology perspective ( Teo, 2015 ), this article relies on the voices of 19 gay/queer participants to problematize psychology’s epistemological determinism. Their ‘talk’ was less interiorized and totalized than the models’ conceptualizations of gay male identity and body image, highlighting the need for models that instead explicate how gay men develop individual, embodied understandings of sexual and gender identity while navigating heterosexist, masculinist, and neoliberal discourses. We investigate the corporeal manifestations of discourse and pay specific attention to queer forms of embodied resistance.

Criss-Cross: Identity and Transformation in Re-reading Billy Elliot

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-551
Author(s):  
Jacqui Miller
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up

Billy Elliot (2000) has been widely recognised as an important British film of the post-Thatcher period. It has been analysed using multiple disciplinary methodologies, but almost always from the theoretical frameworks of class and gender/sexuality. The film has sometimes been used not so much as a focus of analysis itself but as a conduit for exploring issues such as class deprivation or neo-liberal politics and economics. Such studies tend to use the film's perceived shortcomings as a starting point to critique society's wider failings to interrogate constructions of gender and sexuality. This article argues that an examination of the identity formation of some of the film's subsidiary characters shows how fluidity and transformation are key to the film's opening up of a jouissance which is enabled by but goes beyond its central character.

The Right to Dream: Gender, Modernity, and the Problem of Class in Kate O'Brien's Bourgeois Bildungsromane

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Naoise Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Aristocratic Culture ◽  
Modern Form

Feminist critics have celebrated Kate O'Brien's pioneering approach to gender and sexuality, yet there has been little exploration of her innovations of the coming-of-age narrative. Creating a modern Irish reworking of the Bildungsroman, O'Brien's heroines represent an idealized model of female identity-formation which stands in sharp contrast to the nationalist state's vision of Irish womanhood. Using Franco Moretti's theory of the Bildungsroman, a framing of the genre as a thoroughly ‘modern’ form of the novel, this article applies a critical Marxist lens to O'Brien's output. This reading brings to light the ways in which the limitations of the Bildungsroman work to constrain O'Brien's subversive politics. Their middle-class status remains an integral part of the identity of her heroines, informing the forms of liberation they seek. Fundamentally, O'Brien's idealization of aristocratic culture, elitist exceptionalism and ‘detachment of spirit’ restricts the emancipatory potential of her vision of Irish womanhood.

The Resurrection Body

2019 ◽  
pp. 660-674
Author(s):  
Taylor G. Petrey
Keyword(s):  
Radical Change ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Approaches To Studying ◽  
Early Christian

This chapter surveys the relevant ancient Christian and Jewish texts on the resurrection that discuss gender and sexuality and the scholarship about these topics. It provides particular emphasis on the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, and the early Christian reception of their ideas in the second through fourth centuries. The saying of Jesus that those who are resurrected shall be “as angels” is central to early Christian theologies of the body and sexuality. Paul’s discussion of the nature of the resurrected body and the importance of the parts also informs how early Christians developed these ideas. The tension in early Christian writing about the resurrection was between those who emphasized continuity between the mortal and resurrected self, and those who emphasized a radical change between the two. Further, the chapter provides an overview to major scholarly methods and approaches to studying the resurrection, including feminist scholarship.

Young Male with Bilateral ICA Dissection: Beyond CADISS Trial

2021 ◽  
pp. 251660852098428
Author(s):  
Vikas Bhatia ◽  
Chirag Jain ◽  
Sucharita Ray ◽  
jay Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Management Strategies ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Acute Onset ◽  
The Body ◽  
Artery Dissection ◽  
Cervical Artery Dissection ◽  
Stroke Study ◽  
History Of

Objective: To report a case of young male with stroke and bilateral internal carotid artery (ICA) dissection. Background: Cervical Artery Dissection in Stroke Study trial has provided some insight on management of patients with ICA dissection. However, there is a need to modify the management strategies as per specific clinical scenario. Design/Methods: Case report and literature review. Results: A 45-year-old male presented with 1 month old history of acute onset numbness of right half of the body with slurring of speech. Computed tomography angiography showed complete occlusion of left cervical ICA just beyond origin with presence of fusiform dilatation and spiral flap in right extracranial cervical ICA. The patient was started on antiplatelets and taken for endovascular procedure using 2-mesh-based carotid stents. Patient was discharged after 3 days on antiplatelet therapy. At 1-year follow-up, there were no fresh symptoms. Conclusion: This case emphasizes the role of successful endovascular management of carotid dissection in a young male. These clinical situations may not be fully represented in trials, and a case-based approach is required.

scholarly journals Caring for affective subjects produced in intimate healthcare examinations

2021 ◽  
pp. 136345932110200
Author(s):  
Jenny Gleisner ◽  
Ericka Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Medical Students ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Digital Rectal Exam ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Work Spaces ◽  
Pelvic Exam ◽  
Care Practices

This article is about the feelings – affect – induced by the digital rectal exam of the prostate and the gynaecological bimanual pelvic exam, and the care doctors are or are not instructed to give. The exams are both invasive, intimate exams located at a part of the body often charged with norms and emotions related to gender and sexuality. By using the concept affective subject, we analyse how these examinations are taught to medical students, bringing attention to how bodies and affect are cared for as patients are observed and touched. Our findings show both the role care practices play in generating and handling affect in the students’ learning and the importance of the affect that the exam is (or is not) imagined to produce in the patient. Ours is a material-discursive analysis that includes the material affordances of the patient and doctor bodies in the affective work spaces observed.

scholarly journals Turkey’s queer times: an introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Cenk Özbay ◽  
Kerem Öktem
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Queer Culture ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
And Gender

Today Turkey is one of the few Muslim-majority countries in which same-sex sexual acts, counternormative sexual identities, and expressions of gender nonconformism are not illegal, yet are heavily constrained and controlled by state institutions, police forces, and public prosecutors. For more than a decade Turkey has been experiencing a “queer turn”—an unprecedented push in the visibility and empowerment of queerness, the proliferation of sexual rights organizations and forms of sociabilities, and the dissemination of elements of queer culture—that has engendered both scholarly and public attention for sexual dissidents and gender non-conforming individuals and their lifeworlds, while it has also created new spaces and venues for their self-organization and mobilization. At the point of knowledge production and writing, this visibility and the possible avenues of empowerment that it might provide have been in jeopardy: not only do they appear far from challenging the dominant norms of the body, gender, and sexuality, but queerness, in all its dimensions, has become a preferred target for Islamist politics, conservative revanchism, and populist politicians.

scholarly journals Effect of foot–floor friction on the external moment about the body center of mass during shuffling gait: a pilot study

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Takeshi Yamaguchi ◽  
Kei Shibata ◽  
Hiromi Wada ◽  
Hiroshi Kakehi ◽  
Kazuo Hokkirigawa
Keyword(s):  
Friction Surface ◽  
Center Of Mass ◽  
Young Male ◽  
The Body ◽  
Low Friction ◽  
Surface Conditions ◽  
Normal Gait ◽  
External Moment ◽  
Body Center ◽  
Floor Condition

AbstractHerein, we investigated the effect of friction between foot sole and floor on the external forward moment about the body center of mass (COM) in normal and shuffling gaits. Five young male adults walked with normal and shuffling gaits, under low- and high-friction surface conditions. The maximum external forward moment about the COM (MEFM-COM) in a normal gait appeared approximately at initial foot contact and was unaffected by floor condition. However, MEFM-COM in a shuffling gait under high-friction conditions exceeded that under low-friction conditions (p < 0.001). Therein, MEFM-COM increased with an increasing utilized coefficient of friction at initial foot contact; this effect was weaker during a normal gait. These findings indicate that increased friction between foot sole and floor might increase tripping risk during a shuffling gait, even in the absence of discrete physical obstacles.

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