Paul B. Preciado's Testo Junk

Louise Halfe’s “Body Politics” challenges the qualities and behaviour of the idealized feminine woman by contrasting the stereotypical “city woman” with a more masculine “real woman.” The poem’s speaker describes her mother’s opinion of what it means to be a real woman, which is seen through “Mama said.” Throughout the poem, the speaker uses vivid imagery to create a stark contrast between the idealized feminine “city woman” and a “real woman” who does not conform to the feminine gender norm. To begin with, the title of the poem itself can be viewed as an obvious critique of the feminine ideal. By definition a body politic is a group of people “considered as a collective unit” (Merriam-Webster). This is significant because in Butler’s theory, she emphasizes that a person’s gender can vary depending on a given situation, and therefore women cannot be grouped together and defined exclusively by their feminine qualities. Instead, she argues that women should be viewed as individuals capable of possessing both masculine and feminine behaviour. This belief relates directly to the poem’s title, as Halfe is clearly making a statement on the manner in which patriarchal societies expect women to conform to a singular feminine ideal. Moreover, it illustrates how women’s bodies become a political site for the masculinist culture to impose feminine gender on. With consideration to the title’s reference to a homogeneous group of women, it is interesting that stanzas two through four all

Erauso’s action in cutting her hair symbolizes her entrance into a new world of masculinity, as she “cuts ties” with the female gender. By transforming the way the outside perspective views her outward appearance, Erauso is able to persuade her audience of this new identity. Whether she partakes in transvestism as the act in itself or as a way to express her new identity, Erauso convinces those around her that she is a Spanish man simply by altering physical aspects. This is significant in that one’s hairstyle and dress are associated with a particular gender and each serve a purpose in the sphere they associate with. Dressing in breeches, a doublet, and a hose as well as sporting short hair supports the theory that men primarily focus on the public sphere, engaging in physical activity. Their clothing and hairstyle serve a purpose of the daily life of Spanish men during the 17th century.

These physical expressions through “processes of non-traditional literacy production, gender/race/sexuality articulation,” is presented in ways that outside of these spaces, would be “definitionally obscene,” much like the harassment and violence that transgender and gay individuals, along with drag queens, often encountered in 1980s hegemonic spaces (Gregory 28). “The irony is that the very real experience of difference, the heightened awareness that it brings, should help to create a disguise so immaculate that nothing remains but the in-joke of one 's private knowledge,” proving that successful gender performances are not innate nor natural, arguments that 1980s heteronormativity argued to justify oppressive power hierarchies (Hentzi 36). These performances exposed the truth of outside society’s discomfort and defensiveness of their beloved and seemingly meaningful gender, race, sexual, and class boundaries. This is because “if men can be women, blacks can be white, the poor can be rich, and gays or lesbians can be straight (and vice versa in each of these examples), then the necessity and inevitability of these boundaries become suspect,” and these boundaries can indeed be crossed and ceased (Schacht 148). 1980s balls ultimately could prove that “hierarchical borders that previously demarcated superiority and subordination would lose their omnipotent meaning” and these

Yet in presenting something as inaccessible and dangerous, an invitation to know and to possess is extended. The secrecy associated with female bodies is sexual and linked to the multiple associations between women and privacy. (92)

Prosser (1998) enters the gender-identity conversation with a rather counter-intuitive project. At a time when poststructuralism is busily deconstructing the sex/gender linkage in ways that transcend the materiality of the subject, Prosser wants to bring the “ontological” trans body back into the dialogue by charting the arc of the changing body within transgender narratives. Only by mapping these transitions in this frame can he describe a complex transsexual experience that breaks free from the political binaries used by essentialists and poststructuralists, such as “literal/deliteralizing, subversive/hegemonic” (16). If the former has been guilty of a dogmatic reliance on a narrow understanding of biology to describe transsexuals, Prosser argues, then the former is equally guilty of deconstructing gender to the point of reducing the material body to an inconvenient concept (13).

In this essay we will be looking at the ways contemporary artists represent the body. And how we no longer look to art for idealist portrayals of the human form. Through contemporary art the body has become a territory and vessel, which can transmit ideas within our society. We will be exploring theories surrounding this topic, particularly notes from Mulvey's 'The Gaze' and Leo Bersani's 'The Freudian Gaze'; where they have successfully pinpointed why society's depiction of the human body has become romanticised and idealised. We have decided to analyse the work of Jenny Saville and the way in which she paints series of her grotesque and yet entirely realistic self portrait.

In Jeff Erbach’s The Nature of Nicholas we witness a treatment of the queer or gay as Other. Indeed, the film takes on a very literal representation of what Diana Fuss calls “the homosexual as abject”. The implications of Fuss’ claim on The Nature of Nicholas, therefore, calls for an analysis of how the abject as non-normative is schematized, and used to negotiate the ontological boundaries between Self and Other. Indeed, Fuss’ claim in juxtaposition with the film’s diegesis, produces a discussion of how western narratives of sexuality often require a certain repression of the elements that trouble the stability of the heteronormative “I”, both within one’s self and with in society.

The first force of dominant culture evident in this film was the unalterable influence that society has in shaping subjective indications of what gender entails. In respect to Ludovic and the transgender community, the author will identify Ludovic with the pronouns she/her throughout this paper. The

In this society, feminism is forbidden. Women do not get virtual rights, power, or freedom. What is more frightening than losing control of yourself in an unknown and oppressive government? The common theme throughout this tale is that women’s bodies are used as political

The surveillance of women has been a consistent form of oppression in countless societies, spanning location, time, and belief system. Not every society shows evidence of the oppression of women; however, proof of the regulation of the female body is overabundant from both past and present societies. Such regulation is often an attempt to maintain the sole power of the male body and an attempt at maintaining the purity of the female body, and through the female, the purity of the children and the rest of the descendants. Silverblatt’s Modern Inquisitions states that, “Spanish gender norms decried women’s participation in Andean public life and denounced their fatal attraction to Satan and heresy.” (2004 p. 193) By doing so, the Spanish destroyed the previous elements of equality found between males and females in the Andean culture. Silverblatt later continues by saying, “The gendered institutions of Spanish colonialism systematically eroded the life possibilities of most Andean women.” (2004 p. 203) Throughout history and into modernity, the oppression of women focuses on the difference between the female and male body and asserts that the male body is inherently better than the female body.

The author then draws to Pat Califia’s contrast between the “pleasure” of sadomasochism and “the real slavery or exploitation.” This contrast draws attention to the main theme of Califia’s essay, which relates sexual pleasures as converse to sexuality’s institutional formations. He claims this contrast has shaped the connection between queer theory and intersex. Her contrast between subcultural sadomasochism and institutionalized heteronormativity conveys how queer discourse of pleasure prioritized transient sexual activities over stable gender identities, likewise, intersex activism has emphasized healthy sexual functioning as an alternative to reforming gender

Butler argued that performativity is a reiterative process of the citations of norms. Butler’s argument inquiries into the idea of gender identities produced through actions. In order to understand this, it is important to note that Butler classifies performativity as a “reiteration of a norm or a set of norms” (Butler, 538). They really bring forward the point with the use of the sexed body, the crafting and signification of one, which will be a “set of actions performed in compliance with the law” (Butler, 538). A sexed body requires one to develop an act-like status. The act will not just be theatrical, but it will disguise one’s character. This will be done through performing the repetition of a norm, in order to develop gender identity.

A prominent movement in Argentina is the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose activism began in the late 1970’s and still continues today (Sutton, 2007: 138). The social position of motherhood actually sparked the activism of these women (Sutton, 2007: 136). Their grief and struggle to get back their children, lost to the military dictatorship is how their resistance emerged. Similarly, it’s evident that their activism is deeply embodied (Sutton, 2007: 136), it politicises social reproduction and motherhood itself. Through their many demonstrations including paper silhouettes, masks and human shapes drawn onto pavement and their aid to “worker-run factories, organised popular education workshops, engaged in hunger strikes to support political prisoners, and often appeared in key demonstrations” (Sutton, 2007: 139). These women, these mothers embody activists that manage to legitimise their everyday motherhood as a site of political involvement. Now common in Argentina, the body is used as a form of resistance. After the economic collapse the citizens, even more specifically the women, “put their bodies on the line in protest, and engaged in embodied practices of care and solidarity in their neighbourhoods, communities and social movements” (Sutton, 2007: 133). This was evident in many ways through the actions of the

“Whether the body is clothed or naked, transgressive or traumatised, grotesque, abject or celebratory, its staged significance resides in its capacity to focus on minds of the matter of what is being seen and heard” .

The body in contemporary art has been a means of transportation for many ideas and concepts relating to the human condition. Many of the concepts deal with