Feminism and the Biological Body

Feminism and the Biological Body PDF

Author: Lynda Birke

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13:

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Bodies may be currently fashionable in social and feminist theory, but their insides are not. Biological bodies always seem to drop out of debates about the body and its importance in Western culture.

Vital Signs

Vital Signs PDF

Author: Margrit Shildrick

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13:

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From anorexia, sexuality, skin, pregnancy, the mouth, menstruation, biopsychiatry and male hysteria, to the heart, this work examines the relationships between feminism, the body and biomedicine. The book uses post-conventional/post-modern theory in the area of bio/logical body and the clinic.

Gender/body/knowledge

Gender/body/knowledge PDF

Author: Alison M. Jaggar

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 9780813513799

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The essays in this interdisciplinary collection share the conviction that modern western paradigms of knowledge and reality are gender-biased. Some contributors challenge and revise western conceptions of the body as the domain of the biological and 'natural, ' the enemy of reason, typically associated with women.

Psychosomatic

Psychosomatic PDF

Author: Elizabeth A. Wilson

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2004-06-16

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 0822386380

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How can scientific theories contribute to contemporary accounts of embodiment in the humanities and social sciences? In particular, how does neuroscientific research facilitate new approaches to theories of mind and body? Feminists have frequently criticized the neurosciences for biological reductionism, yet, Elizabeth A. Wilson argues, neurological theories—especially certain accounts of depression, sexuality, and emotion—are useful to feminist theories of the body. Rather than pointing toward the conventionalizing tendencies of the neurosciences, Wilson emphasizes their capacity for reinvention and transformation. Focusing on the details of neuronal connections, subcortical pathways, and reflex actions, she suggests that the central and peripheral nervous systems are powerfully allied with sexuality, the affects, emotional states, cognitive appetites, and other organs and bodies in ways not fully appreciated in the feminist literature. Whether reflecting on Simon LeVay’s hypothesis about the brains of gay men, Peter Kramer’s model of depression, or Charles Darwin’s account of trembling and blushing, Wilson is able to show how the neurosciences can be used to reinvigorate feminist theories of the body.

The Rejected Body

The Rejected Body PDF

Author: Susan Wendell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1135770476

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The Rejected Body argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes disability and what could 'cure' it; and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. Wendell provides a remarkable look at how cultural attitudes towards the body contribute to the stigma of disability and to widespread unwillingness to accept and provide for the body's inevitable weakness.

Feminism and the Body

Feminism and the Body PDF

Author: Londa L. Schiebinger

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 0198731914

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This collection of classic essays in feminist body studies investigates the history of the image of the female body; from the medical 'discovery' of the clitoris, to the 'body politic' of Queen Elizabeth I, to women deprecated as 'Hottentot Venuses' in the nineteenth century. The text look atthe way in which coverings bear cultural meaning: clothing reform during the French Revolution, Islamic veiling, and the invention of the top hat; as well as the embodiment of cherished cultural values in social icons such as the Statue of Liberty or the Barbie doll. By considering culture as itdefines not only women but also men, this volume offers both the student and the general reader an insight into the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural study involved in feminist body studies.

The Biopolitics of Gender

The Biopolitics of Gender PDF

Author: Jemima Repo

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0190256915

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This title provides a theoretically and methodologically new and distinct approach to gender through the frameworks of biopolitics and genealogy, theorising it as a historically specific apparatus of biopower. Through the use of a diverse mix of historical and contemporary documents, the book explores how the problematisation of intersex infant genitalia in 1950s psychiatry propelled the emergence of the gender apparatus in order to socialise sexed individuals into the ideal productive and reproductive subjects of White, middle-class postwar America.

The Body

The Body PDF

Author: Chris Shilling

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 0198739036

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In this introduction, Chris Shilling considers the social significance of the human body, and the importance of the body to individual and collective identities. He examines how bodies not only shape but are shaped by the social, cultural, and material contexts in which humans live.

Gut Feminism

Gut Feminism PDF

Author: Elizabeth A. Wilson

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2015-09-17

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0822375206

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In Gut Feminism Elizabeth A. Wilson urges feminists to rethink their resistance to biological and pharmaceutical data. Turning her attention to the gut and depression, she asks what conceptual and methodological innovations become possible when feminist theory isn’t so instinctively antibiological. She examines research on anti-depressants, placebos, transference, phantasy, eating disorders and suicidality with two goals in mind: to show how pharmaceutical data can be useful for feminist theory, and to address the necessary role of aggression in feminist politics. Gut Feminism’s provocative challenge to feminist theory is that it would be more powerful if it could attend to biological data and tolerate its own capacity for harm.

Volatile Bodies

Volatile Bodies PDF

Author: Elizabeth Grosz

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1994-06-22

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9780253208620

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"Volatile Bodies demonstrates that the sexually specific body is socially constructed: biology or nature is inherently social and has no pure or natural 'origin' outside culture. Being the raw material of social and cultural organization, it is subject to the endless rewriting and inscription that constitute all sign systems. Grosz demonstrates that the theories of, among others, Freud and Lacan theorize a male body. She then turns to corporeal experiences unique to women--menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, menopause--to lay the groundwork for new theories of sexed corporeality."--Back cover.