Author: Frances E. Mascia-Lees
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438412177
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
Contemporary theory across a wide range of disciplines denaturalizes the body and reveals it to be a social construction. Cultural practices which deform, adorn, mutilate, and obliterate the body illustrate that it is an important site for the inscription of culture. The authors draw on cross currents in feminist theory, literary criticism, anthropology, and history to analyze several such cultural practices as examples of the power of culture to encode its messages on the human form.
Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment
Author: Frances E. Mascia-Lees
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438412177
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
Contemporary theory across a wide range of disciplines denaturalizes the body and reveals it to be a social construction. Cultural practices which deform, adorn, mutilate, and obliterate the body illustrate that it is an important site for the inscription of culture. The authors draw on cross currents in feminist theory, literary criticism, anthropology, and history to analyze several such cultural practices as examples of the power of culture to encode its messages on the human form.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438412177
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
Contemporary theory across a wide range of disciplines denaturalizes the body and reveals it to be a social construction. Cultural practices which deform, adorn, mutilate, and obliterate the body illustrate that it is an important site for the inscription of culture. The authors draw on cross currents in feminist theory, literary criticism, anthropology, and history to analyze several such cultural practices as examples of the power of culture to encode its messages on the human form.
Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World
Author: Frances E. Mascia-Lees
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791491870
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World offers an engaged cultural criticism in a postfeminist context. At the end of the twentieth century, an increasingly globalized world has given rise to a cultural complexity characterized by a rapid increase in competing discourses, fragmented subjectivities, and irreconcilable claims over cultural representation and who has the right to speak for, or about, "others." While feminism has traditionally been a potent site for debates over questions that have arisen out of this context, recently, it has become so splintered and suspect that its insights are often dismissed as predictable, seriously reducing its capacity to offer powerful cultural criticism. In this postfeminist context, the authors argue for a cultural criticism that is strategic, not programmatic, and that preserves the multiple commitments, ideas, and positions required of interactions and identifications across lines of cultural, racial, and gender difference. Selecting sites where such interactions are highlighted and under current scrutiny—film, consumer culture, tourism, anthropology, and the academy—the authors theorize and demonstrate the struggles and maneuvers required to "take a stand" on a wide range of issues of significance to the contemporary cultural moment.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791491870
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World offers an engaged cultural criticism in a postfeminist context. At the end of the twentieth century, an increasingly globalized world has given rise to a cultural complexity characterized by a rapid increase in competing discourses, fragmented subjectivities, and irreconcilable claims over cultural representation and who has the right to speak for, or about, "others." While feminism has traditionally been a potent site for debates over questions that have arisen out of this context, recently, it has become so splintered and suspect that its insights are often dismissed as predictable, seriously reducing its capacity to offer powerful cultural criticism. In this postfeminist context, the authors argue for a cultural criticism that is strategic, not programmatic, and that preserves the multiple commitments, ideas, and positions required of interactions and identifications across lines of cultural, racial, and gender difference. Selecting sites where such interactions are highlighted and under current scrutiny—film, consumer culture, tourism, anthropology, and the academy—the authors theorize and demonstrate the struggles and maneuvers required to "take a stand" on a wide range of issues of significance to the contemporary cultural moment.
Torture
Author: Mirko Bagaric
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791479676
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Book Description
The "war on terror" has brought the subject of torture to the forefront of public attention. In contrast to other discussions that focus narrowly on the practice of torture, and condemn it under any and all circumstances, Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke argue that to take this position is to live in a moral vacuum. The subject of torture causes our emotions to conflict with our reason. When we have a choice between saving the life of an innocent person, and not harming a terrorist or other wrongdoer, it is indecent to absolutely prefer the interests of the wrongdoer. In contrast, they propose a moral standard where each individual's interest counts equally. Within this standard, the ostensibly brutal act of torture may be permissible if it has the potential to achieve compassionate outcomes in the form of saving innocent lives.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791479676
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Book Description
The "war on terror" has brought the subject of torture to the forefront of public attention. In contrast to other discussions that focus narrowly on the practice of torture, and condemn it under any and all circumstances, Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke argue that to take this position is to live in a moral vacuum. The subject of torture causes our emotions to conflict with our reason. When we have a choice between saving the life of an innocent person, and not harming a terrorist or other wrongdoer, it is indecent to absolutely prefer the interests of the wrongdoer. In contrast, they propose a moral standard where each individual's interest counts equally. Within this standard, the ostensibly brutal act of torture may be permissible if it has the potential to achieve compassionate outcomes in the form of saving innocent lives.
Body Modification
Author: Mike Featherstone
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446227979
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
This fascinating collection explores the growing range of body modification practices such as piercing, tattooing, branding, cutting and inserting implants, which have sprung up recently in the West. It asks whether this implies that we are returning to traditional tribal practices of inscribing identities onto bodies on the part of ′modern primitives′, or is body modification better understood as purely cosmetic and decorative with body markings merely temporary signs of transferable loyalties?
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446227979
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
This fascinating collection explores the growing range of body modification practices such as piercing, tattooing, branding, cutting and inserting implants, which have sprung up recently in the West. It asks whether this implies that we are returning to traditional tribal practices of inscribing identities onto bodies on the part of ′modern primitives′, or is body modification better understood as purely cosmetic and decorative with body markings merely temporary signs of transferable loyalties?
Tattoos, Desire and Violence
Author: Karin Beeler
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786482532
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Whether they graphically depict an individual's or a community's beliefs, express the defiance of authority, or brand marginalized groups, tattoos are a means of interpersonal communication that dates back thousands of years. Evidence of the tattoo's place in today's popular culture is all around--in advertisements, on the stereotypical outlaw character in films and television, in supermarket machines that dispense children's wash-away tattoos, and even in the production of a tattooed Barbie doll. This book explores the tattoo's role, primarily as an emblem of resistance and marginality, in recent literature, film, and television. The association of tattoos with victims of the Holocaust, slaves, and colonized peoples; with gangs, inmates, and other marginalized groups; and the connection of the tattoo narrative to desire and violence are discussed at length.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786482532
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Whether they graphically depict an individual's or a community's beliefs, express the defiance of authority, or brand marginalized groups, tattoos are a means of interpersonal communication that dates back thousands of years. Evidence of the tattoo's place in today's popular culture is all around--in advertisements, on the stereotypical outlaw character in films and television, in supermarket machines that dispense children's wash-away tattoos, and even in the production of a tattooed Barbie doll. This book explores the tattoo's role, primarily as an emblem of resistance and marginality, in recent literature, film, and television. The association of tattoos with victims of the Holocaust, slaves, and colonized peoples; with gangs, inmates, and other marginalized groups; and the connection of the tattoo narrative to desire and violence are discussed at length.
Athletic Intruders
Author: Anne Bolin
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791487563
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Informed by feminism and the fields of anthropology and sociology of sport, this anthology investigates women's place in sport and exercise from a sociocultural perspective, documenting women's struggle into the sports arenas of male hegemony. The nine ethnographic case studies explore issues of identity, embodiment, and meaning in various sports and exercise, including triathlons, aerobics, basketball, bodybuilding, weightlifting, motorcycle riding, softball, casual exercise, and rugby.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791487563
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Informed by feminism and the fields of anthropology and sociology of sport, this anthology investigates women's place in sport and exercise from a sociocultural perspective, documenting women's struggle into the sports arenas of male hegemony. The nine ethnographic case studies explore issues of identity, embodiment, and meaning in various sports and exercise, including triathlons, aerobics, basketball, bodybuilding, weightlifting, motorcycle riding, softball, casual exercise, and rugby.
Lotman and Cultural Studies
Author: Andreas Schonle
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299220435
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
One of the most widely read and translated theorists of the former Soviet Union, Yurii Lotman was a daring and imaginative thinker. A cofounder of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, he analyzed a broad range of cultural phenomena, from the opposition between Russia and the West to the symbolic construction of space, from cinema to card playing, from the impact of theater on painting to the impact of landscape design on poetry. His insights have been particularly important in conceptualizing the creation of meaning and understanding the function of art and literature in society, and they have enriched the work of such diverse figures as Paul Ricoeur, Stephen Greenblatt, Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Julia Kristeva, and Frederic Jameson. In this volume, edited by Andreas Schönle, contributors extend Lotman's theories to a number of fields. Focusing on his less frequently studied later period, Lotman and Cultural Studies engages with such ideas as the "semiosphere," the fluid, dynamic semiotic environment out of which meaning emerges; "auto-communication," the way in which people create narratives about themselves that in turn shape their self-identity; change, as both gradual evolution and an abrupt, unpredictable "explosion"; power; law and mercy; Russia and the West; center and periphery. As William Mills Todd observes in his afterword, the contributors to this volume test Lotman's legacy in a new context: "Their research agendas-Iranian and American politics, contemporary Russian and Czech politics, sexuality and the body-are distant from Lotman's own, but his concepts and awareness yield invariably illuminating results."
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299220435
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
One of the most widely read and translated theorists of the former Soviet Union, Yurii Lotman was a daring and imaginative thinker. A cofounder of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, he analyzed a broad range of cultural phenomena, from the opposition between Russia and the West to the symbolic construction of space, from cinema to card playing, from the impact of theater on painting to the impact of landscape design on poetry. His insights have been particularly important in conceptualizing the creation of meaning and understanding the function of art and literature in society, and they have enriched the work of such diverse figures as Paul Ricoeur, Stephen Greenblatt, Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Julia Kristeva, and Frederic Jameson. In this volume, edited by Andreas Schönle, contributors extend Lotman's theories to a number of fields. Focusing on his less frequently studied later period, Lotman and Cultural Studies engages with such ideas as the "semiosphere," the fluid, dynamic semiotic environment out of which meaning emerges; "auto-communication," the way in which people create narratives about themselves that in turn shape their self-identity; change, as both gradual evolution and an abrupt, unpredictable "explosion"; power; law and mercy; Russia and the West; center and periphery. As William Mills Todd observes in his afterword, the contributors to this volume test Lotman's legacy in a new context: "Their research agendas-Iranian and American politics, contemporary Russian and Czech politics, sexuality and the body-are distant from Lotman's own, but his concepts and awareness yield invariably illuminating results."
The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction
Author: Rob Latham
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199838852
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 641
Book Description
The excitement of possible futures found in science fiction has long fired the human imagination, but the genre's acceptance by academe is relatively recent. No longer marginalized and fighting for respectability, science-fictional works are now studied alongside more traditional art forms. Tracing the capacious genre's birth, evolution, and impact across nations, time periods, subgenres, and media, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction offers an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of this robust area of scholarly inquiry and considers the future directions that will dictate the terms of the scholarly discourse. The Handbook begins with a focus on questions of genre, covering topics such as critical history, keywords, narrative, the fantastic, and fandom. A subsequent section on media engages with film, television, comics, architecture, music, video games, and more. The genre's role in the convergence of art and everyday life animates a third section, which addresses topics such as UFOs,
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199838852
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 641
Book Description
The excitement of possible futures found in science fiction has long fired the human imagination, but the genre's acceptance by academe is relatively recent. No longer marginalized and fighting for respectability, science-fictional works are now studied alongside more traditional art forms. Tracing the capacious genre's birth, evolution, and impact across nations, time periods, subgenres, and media, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction offers an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of this robust area of scholarly inquiry and considers the future directions that will dictate the terms of the scholarly discourse. The Handbook begins with a focus on questions of genre, covering topics such as critical history, keywords, narrative, the fantastic, and fandom. A subsequent section on media engages with film, television, comics, architecture, music, video games, and more. The genre's role in the convergence of art and everyday life animates a third section, which addresses topics such as UFOs,
The Edge of Modernism
Author: Walter Kalaidjian
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142142939X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
In The Edge of Modernism, Walter Kalaidjian explores American poetry on genocide, the Holocaust, and total war as well as on postwar social antagonisms, racial oppression, and domestic violence. By asking what it means for traumatic memory to have agency in the American verse tradition, Kalaidjian creates an original historical account of how American poets became witnesses, often unconsciously, to modern extremity. Combining psychoanalytic theory and cultural studies, this intense, sweeping account of modern poetics analyzes the ways in which literary form gives testimony to the trauma of twentieth-century history. Through close readings of well-known and less familiar poets—among them Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Edwin Rolfe, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Peter Balakian, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Anne Sexton, and Anthony Hecht—Kalaidjian discerns the latent "edge" of modern trauma as it cuts through the literary representations, themes, and formal techniques of twentieth-century American poetics. In this way, The Edge of Modernism advances an innovative and dynamic model of modern periodization.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142142939X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
In The Edge of Modernism, Walter Kalaidjian explores American poetry on genocide, the Holocaust, and total war as well as on postwar social antagonisms, racial oppression, and domestic violence. By asking what it means for traumatic memory to have agency in the American verse tradition, Kalaidjian creates an original historical account of how American poets became witnesses, often unconsciously, to modern extremity. Combining psychoanalytic theory and cultural studies, this intense, sweeping account of modern poetics analyzes the ways in which literary form gives testimony to the trauma of twentieth-century history. Through close readings of well-known and less familiar poets—among them Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Edwin Rolfe, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Peter Balakian, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Anne Sexton, and Anthony Hecht—Kalaidjian discerns the latent "edge" of modern trauma as it cuts through the literary representations, themes, and formal techniques of twentieth-century American poetics. In this way, The Edge of Modernism advances an innovative and dynamic model of modern periodization.
Between Rites and Rights
Author:
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804768375
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
The study shows, in chronological fashion, how African women writers in the past five decades have introduced a new, autobiographical discourse around their experience of excision, bringing nuance and vitality to the FGM debate.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804768375
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
The study shows, in chronological fashion, how African women writers in the past five decades have introduced a new, autobiographical discourse around their experience of excision, bringing nuance and vitality to the FGM debate.