Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Note: I posted my actual questions and rubric a couple of posts down, but I thought it might be useful to also provide the examples I drew from to form my questions, so here are my responses to the various steps of the question-and-answer making process: 

5 key concepts or ways of thinking about something that you learned either from faculty or fromyour peers:

1) The importance of cutting things up and reorganizing them to create a different perspective or reveal creative, unexpected ideas like Julia did in “The Paper Suit.”

2) The importance of “the blind spots, or the space-off” DeLauretis mentions on page 25.  While going through my notes from Julia’s “Mugshots and Screentests” lecture I also found a quote from Julia that reminded me of this idea of DeLauretis’.  In regards to Greta Garbo’s 1949 screentest Julia said, “Backgrounds are important to get a sense of what’s not there.”

3) From Elizabeth, the way the body’s behavior reflects the hierarchical position of a space.  For instance, a person with their hands in their pockets, walking single-file is evident of a demand for order in a highly regarded space, whereas outdoor markets with no walls or carpeting are lower in the hierarchy and one does not have to adhere to the same bodily performance demands that are expected in a “high space.”    

4) From the Beauty Parlor presentation on the Olympia capitol building, how a building or location can represent a body, with an internal structure and definite presence depending on its design and setting.

5) The concept brought up by Scott Turner Schofield that perhaps people constantly have to keep coming out to stay in the sexuality that has chosen them; this notion that maybe in order to secure your sexuality you have to be relentlessly performing your life. 

10 QUOTATIONS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SMITTEN WITH:

1) From Dyer’s "The White Man’s Muscles:" “The built white body is not the body that white men are born with; it is the body made possible by their natural mental superiority.  The point after all is that it is built, a product of the application of thought and planning, an achievement" (Dyer 164).

2) From “The Body You Want” Interview: “To the extent that gender is a kind of psychic norm and cultural practice, it will always elude a fixed definition" (86).

3)  From DeLauretis’ “The Technology of Gender”: “The sex-gender system, in short, is both a sociocultural construct and a semiotic apparatus, a system of representation which assigns meaning (identity, value, prestige, location in kinship, status in the social hierarchy, etc.) to individuals within the society” (DeLauretis 5). 

4) From Roaring Girl, page 281 in my book: “He that can take me for a male musician, I cannot choose but make him my instrument, And play upon him.”

5) From The History of Sexuality, “Governments perceived that they were not dealing simply with subjects, or even a ‘people,’ but with a ‘population,’ with its specific phenomena and its peculiar variables: birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, state of health, frequency of illnesses, patterns of diet and habitation.” 25

6) From Sexing the Body, pages 28-29: “It seems hard to avoid the view that our very real, scientific understandings of hormones, brain development, and sexual behavior are, nevertheless, constructed in and bear the marks of specific historical and social contexts.”

7) From Mary Douglas, pg. 79: “Consequently I now advance the hypothesis that bodily control is an expression of social control – abandonment of bodily control in ritual responds to the requirements of a social experience which is being expressed.”

8) Brecht on Theater page 110: “In the theatre reality can be represented in a factual or a fantastic form.  The actors can do without (or with the minimum of) makeup, appearing ‘natural’, and the whole thing can be a fake; they can wear grotesque masks and represent the truth.”

9)  From Marcel Mauss page 73: “There is always a moment when, the science of certain facts not being yet reduced into concepts, the facts not even being organically grouped together, these masses of facts receive that posting of ignorance: ‘Miscellaneous.’  This is where we have to penetrate.”  

10) From Tomorrow’s Eve, page 93: “Hadaly’s birds are nothing but winged condensers.  I thought fit to give them human voices and human laughter instead of the old-fashioned, meaningless song of the normal bird – it seemed to me more in harmony with the Spirit of Progress.”

5 indispensable vocabulary terms that have helped to shape your approach to thinking about the body: 

1)  PHYSIOGNOMY: The science of forming supposedly accurate connections between peoples’ body parts and mental capabilities.

2) DOMAIN OF CULTURAL INTELLIGIBILITY – The extent to which one can fit oneself into the designated boxes on forms.

3) COMPORTMENT – Stability, bodily carriage; the manner in which one carries oneself.

4) GESTUS - A gesture that embodies one’s character while also pointing beyond to make a commentary on the social environment.

5) PANOPTICON: An area in which everything is visible from a central surveillance section.   

Put your notes aside and, in your own words, come up with 3 themes or subtopics thatrepresent something you’ve learned about the body in the last 7 weeks. Each question should address one of the three sections of the syllabus: citizen, subject, self.

CITIZEN:The body’s capability of representing power personified.

1) From Dyer’s The White Man’s Muscles: “The built white body is not the body that white men are born with; it is the body made possible by their natural mental superiority.  The point after all is that it is built, a product of the application of thought and planning, an achievement" (Dyer 164).

PHYSIOGNOMY: The science of forming supposedly accurate connections between peoples’ body parts and mental capabilities. 

SUBJECT: The body as a constant performance piece, whose audience is society and whose stage is the places the body frequents. The concept brought up by Scott Turner Schofield that perhaps people constantly have to keep coming out to stay in the sexuality that has chosen them; this notion that maybe in order to secure your sexuality you have to be relentlessly performing your gender. 

COMPORTMENT – Stability, bodily carriage; the manner in which one carries oneself.

GESTUS - A gesture that embodies one’s character while also pointing beyond to make a commentary on the social environment.

2) From “The Body You Want” Interview: “To the extent that gender is a kind of psychic norm and cultural practice, it will always elude a fixed definition" (86). 

3)  From DeLauretis’ “The Technology of Gender”: “The sex-gender system, in short, is both a sociocultural construct and a semiotic apparatus, a system of representation which assigns meaning (identity, value, prestige, location in kinship, status in the social hierarchy, etc.) to individuals within the society” (5).

6) From Sexing the Body, pages 28-29: “It seems hard to avoid the view that our very real, scientific understandings of hormones, brain development, and sexual behavior are, nevertheless, constructed in and bear the marks of specific historical and social contexts.”

8) Brecht on Theater page 110: “In the theatre reality can be represented in a factual or a fantastic form.  The actors can do without (or with the minimum of) makeup, appearing ‘natural’, and the whole thing can be a fake; they can wear grotesque masks and represent the truth.”  

SELF: Bodies as machines that follow their commands “just as we [humans] obey all of our impulses" (I'Isle-Adam 83).