Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (50 page)

1. Susan Bordo,
   The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture
   (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), pp. 11418.
   

2. Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," p. 199.
   

3. See Christian, "The Race for Theory," for an extended discussion of such dynamics and the way they sustain the exclusion of the literatures and critical styles of peoples of color.
   

4. Suleiman, "(Re)Writing the Body," p. 24.
   

5. Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," p. 219.
   

6. Jacques Derrida and Christie V. McDonald, "Choreographies,"
   Diacritics
   12, no. 2 (1982): 76.
   

7. Drucilla Cornell and Adam Thurschwell, "Feminism, Negativity, Intersubjectivity," in Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, eds.,
   Feminism as Critique
   

   (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 14362.
   

8. Suleiman, "(Re)Writing the Body," p. 24.
   

9. Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," pp. 205, 223.
   

10. Carroll SmithRosenberg,
    Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America
    (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 291.
    

11. Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," p. 191.
    

12. Haraway elides these implications by adopting a constant and deliberate ambiguity about the nature of the body she is describing: It is both "personal" and "collective." Her call for "polyvocality" seems at times to be directed toward feminist culture as a collectivity; at others, toward individual feminists. The image she ends her piece with, of a "powerful infidel heteroglossia" to replace the old feminist dream of a "common language,'' sounds like a cultural image—until we come to the next line, which equates this image with that of "a feminist speaking in tongues." I suggest that this ambiguity, although playful and deliberate, nonetheless reveals a tension between her imagination of the cyborg as liberatory "political myth" and a lingering "epistemologism" which presents the cyborg as a model of "correct" perspective on reality. I applaud the former and have problems with the latter.
    

13. Friedrich Nietzsche,
    The Will to Power,
    ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1968), p. 272.
    

14. Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," p. 216.
    

15. Grimshaw,
    Philosophy and Feminist Thinking,
    p. 73.
    

16. In speaking of "the practice of reproduction" I have in mind, not only pregnancy and birth, but menstruation, menopause, nursing, weaning, and spontaneous and induced abortion. I do not deny, of course, that all of these have been constructed and culturally valued in diverse ways. But does that diversity utterly invalidate any abstraction of significant points of general contrast between female and male bodily realities? The question, it seems to me, is to be approached through concrete exploration, not decided by theoretical fiat.
    

17. Coppélia Kahn, "Excavating 'Those Dim Minoan Regions': Maternal Subtexts in Patriarchal Culture,"
    Diacritics
    12, no. 3 (1982): 33.
    

1. "On Separation from and Connection to Others: Women's Mothering and the Idea of a Female Ethic," keynote address, tenth annual conference of the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy, University of Guelph, September, 1987.
   

2. "Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Feminism," University of North Carolina Women's Studies lecture series, Chapel Hill, October, 1987.
   

3. I discuss this point in detail with respect to the history of philosophy in "Feminist Skepticism and the 'Maleness' of Philosophy," in Elizabeth Harvey and Kathleen Okruhlik, eds.,
   Women and Reason
   (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992).
   

4. Patricia Williams, "The Bread and Circus Literacy Test,"
   Ms.
   2, no. 4 (Jan.Feb. 1992): p. 37.
   

5. Grimshaw,
   Philosophy and Feminist Thinking,
   pp. 8485.
   

6. Grimshaw,
   Philosophy and Feminist Thinking,
   p. 102.
   

7. Lynne Arnault makes a similar point in "The Uncertain Future of Feminist Standpoint Epistemology" (unpublished paper).
   

8. Bell hooks is particularly insightful about sexism as "a political stance mediating racial domination, enabling white men and black men to share a common sensibility about sex roles and the importance of male domination. Clearly both groups have equated freedom with manhood, and manhood with the right of men to have indiscriminate access to the bodies of women." She goes on to analyze this sexualization of male freedom and selfdetermination as a myth of masculinity that is dangerous and "lifethreatening" not only to women but to the young men who "blindly and passively" enact it.
   (Yearning
   [Boston: South End Press, 1990], p. 59.)
   

9. Maria Lugones, "Playfulness, 'World'Travelling, and Loving Perception,"
   Hypatia
   2, no. 2 (1987): 320.
   

10. Nancy Cott,
    The Grounding of Modern Feminism
    (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 282.
    

11. Cott,
    The Grounding of Modern Feminism,
    p. 277.
    

12. Cott,
    The Grounding of Modern Feminism,
    p. 281.
    

13. Cott,
    The Grounding of Modern Feminism,
    p. 231.
    

14. Cott,
    The Grounding of Modern Feminism,
    pp. 232, 237.
    

15. Cott,
    The Grounding of Modern Feminism,
    p. 235.
    

16. Such destabilization is not equivalent to recognition that the very notion of "race" is a cultural construction. One can acknowledge the latter (as I do), yet insist that when the context calls for it we remain able to talk in general terms about the social and historical consequences of being marked as a certain "race."
    

17. Cott,
    The Grounding of Modern Feminism,
    p. 239.
    

Earlier versions of this essay were delivered at the 1988 meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existentialist Philosophy, Duke University, Syracuse University, the 1990 meetings of the Popular Culture Asso

ciation, the State University of New York at Binghamton's 1990 Conference on Feminism and Cultural Studies: Theory, History, Experience, and Sienna College. I thank all those who offered comments on those occasions, and Cynthia Willett and Cathy Schwichtenberg for reading an earlier written draft and making suggestions on it. This version was originally published in Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall 1990), and is here reprinted with some revisions and several new illustrations.

1. Quoted in Trix Rosen,
   Strong and Sexy
   (New York: Putnam, 1983), pp. 72, 61.
   

2. "Travolta: 'You Really Can Make Yourself Over,'"
   Syracuse Herald American,
   Jan. 13, 1985.
   

3. "Popular Plastic Surgery,"
   Cosmopolitan
   (May 1990): 96.
   

4. Tina Lizardi and Martha Frankel, "Hand Job,"
   Details
   (Feb. 1990): 38.
   

5. Jennet Conant, Jeanne Gordon, and Jennifer Donovan, "Scalpel Slaves Just Can't Quit,"
   Newsweek
   (Jan. 11, 1988): 5859.
   

6. "Donahue" transcript 05257, n.d., Multimedia Entertainment, Cincinnati, Ohio.
   

7. Dahleen Glanton, "Racism Within a Race,"
   Syracuse Herald American,
   Sept. 19, 1989.
   

8. Essence
   reader opinion poll (June 1989): 71.
   

9. Since this essay first appeared, DuraSoft has altered its campaign once more, renaming the lenses "Complements" and emphasizing how "natural" and subtle they are. "No one will know you're wearing them," they assure. One ad for "Complements" features identical black twins, one with brown eyes and one wearing blue lenses, as if to show that DuraSoft finds nothing "wrong'' with brown eyes. The issue, rather, is self determination: "Choosing your very own eye color is now the most natural thing in the world."
   

10. Linda Bien, "Building a Better Bust,"
    Syracuse HeraldAmerican,
    March 4, 1990.
    

11. This was said by Janice Radway in an oral presentation of her work, Duke University, Spring, 1989.
    

12. John Fiske,
    Television Culture
    (New York: Methuen, 1987), p. 19.
    

13. Michel Foucault,
    Discipline and Punish
    (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 138.
    

14. Related in Bill Moyers, "A Walk Through the Twentieth Century: The Second American Revolution," PBS Boston.
    

15. Foucault,
    Discipline and Punish,
    pp. 2627.
    

16. Susan Rubin Suleiman, "(Re)Writing the Body: The Politics and Poetics of Female Eroticism," in Susan Rubin Suleiman, ed.,
    The Female Body in Western Culture
    (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 24.
    

17. Jacques Derrida and Christie V. McDonald, "Choreographies,"
    Diacritics
    12, no. 2 (1982): 76.
    

18. Cathy Schwichtenberg, "Postmodern Feminism and Madonna: Toward an Erotic Politics of the Female Body," paper presented at the University of Utah Humanities Center, National Conference on Rewriting the
    

(Post)Modern: (Post)Colonialism/Feminism/Late Capitalism, March 3031, 1990.

1. John Fiske, "British Cultural Studies and Television," in Robert C. Allen, ed.,
   Channels of Discourse
   (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), pp. 25490.
   

2. Quoted in John Skow, "Madonna Rocks the Land,"
   Time
   (May 27, 1985): 77.
   

3. Skow, "Madonna Rocks the Land," p. 81.
   

4. Molly Hite, "Writingand Readingthe Body: Female Sexuality and Recent Feminist Fiction," in
   Feminist Studies
   14, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 12122
   .
   

5. "Fat or Not, 4th Grade Girls Diet Lest They Be Teased or Unloved,"
   Wall Street Journal,
   Feb. 11, 1986.
   

6. Catherine Texier, "Have Women Surrendered in MTV's Battle of the Sexes?"
   New York Times,
   April 22, 1990
   ,
   p. 31.
   

7. Cosmopolitan
   (July 1987): cover.
   

8. David Ansen, "Magnificent Maverick,"
   Cosmopolitan
   (May 1990): 311.
   

9. Ansen, "Magnificent Maverick," p. 311; Kevin Sessums, "White Heat,"
   Vanity Fair
   (April 1990): 208.
   

10. Susan McClary, "Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshy,"
    Genders,
    no. 7 (Spring 1990): 2.
    

11. McClary, "Living to Tell," p.
    12.
    

12. E. Ann Kaplan, "Is the Gaze Male?" in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, eds.,
    Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality
    (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), pp. 30927.
    

13. E. Ann Kaplan,
    Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture
    (New York: Methuen, 1987), p. 63.
    

14. McClary, "Living to Tell," p. 13.
    

A version of this essay containing only reviews of the books and my introductory comments on postmodernism, appeared as a review essay in
Feminist Studies
18, no. 1 (Winter 1992
).
The essay as it is printed here contains anecdotal material and new cultural analysis that did not appear in the review essay, and some of the book reviews themselves have been revised. I thank Edward Lee for his insights into modernity and postmodernity and his invaluable criticisms of earlier drafts of the essay. Thanks also to Linda Alcoff, Lynne Arnault, and the editors of
Feminist Studies
for their suggestions.

1. Charles Jencks,
   What Is PostModernism?
   3d ed. (London: St. Martin's Press, 1989), p. 16.
   

2. Jencks,
   What Is PostModernism?
   p. 30.
   

1. Jane Flax,
   Thinking Fragments
   (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 3; bell hooks,
   Yearning
   (Boston: South End Press, 1990); Judith Butler,
   

   Gender Trouble
   (New York: Routledge, 1990).
   

2. Flax,
   Thinking Fragments, p. 5.
   

3. Flax,
   Thinking Fragments,
   p. 194.
   

4. Flax,
   Thinking Fragments, p.
   226.
   

5. hooks,
   Yearning,
   p. 155
   

6. hooks, "Postmodern Blackness," in
   Yearning,
   p. 29.
   

7. Flax,
   Thinking Fragments, p.
   221.
   

8. hooks,
   Yearning, p.
   31.
   

9. hooks,
   Yearning,
   pp. 2122.
   

10. hooks,
    Yearning,
    p. 229.
    

11. Flax,
    Thinking Fragments,
    pp. 219, 183.
    

12. hooks,
    Yearning,
    p. 111.
    

13. hooks,
    Yearning,
    p. 63.
    

14. Maria Lugones, "Playfulness, 'World'Travelling, and Loving Perception,"
    Hypatia
    2, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 320.
    

15. Domna Stanton, quoted in Scott Heller, "The Human Body and Changing Cultural Conceptions of It Draw Attention of Humanities and SocialScience Scholars,"
    

    Chronicle of Higher Education
    (June 12, 1991): A4.
    

16. See the introduction to this volume for clarification of my use of the term
    material
    here.
    

17. Erving Goffman,
    The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
    (Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Doubleday, 1959). Goffman also explores the specifically gendered dimension of the presentation of self in
    Gender Advertisements
    (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).
    

18. Butler,
    Gender Trouble,
    p. 136.
    

19. Butler,
    Gender Trouble,
    p. 93.
    

20. Butler,
    Gender Trouble,
    p. 92.
    

21. Butler,
    Gender Trouble,
    p. 91 (emphasis mine).
    

22. Butler,
    Gender Trouble,
    p. 137.
    

23. Butler,
    Gender Trouble,
    p. 137.
    

24. Butler,
    Gender Trouble,
    p. 137.
    

25. Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna,
    Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach
    (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Holly Devor,
    Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality
    (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
    

26. Esther Newman,
    Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America
    (New York: PrenticeHall, 1972), p. 127.
    

27. Jan Morris,
    Conundrum
    (New York: New American Library, 1974), pp. 2526.
    

28. "People" column,
    Syracuse Herald Journal,
    Sept. 4, 1992, p. A3.
    

29. Even Sandra Dee, in her day, did not believe that she was what men wanted. In 1992
    ,
    looking extremely thin, she revealed that she had struggled with food and bodyimage problems throughout her career and had in fact been anorexic for much of her adult life.
    

30. Hooks,
    Yearning,
    p. 22.