CORPOREAL FEMINISM I: GENDERED SUBJECT POSITIONS AND THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGES
Along with Foucault, Freud, Lacan, and others, [Nietzsche] assumes the corporeality of knowledge production, evaluation, and use; yet the corporeality invoked is itself not concrete or tangible, but ironically, “philosophical.” Once the universal is shown to be a guise for the masculine and knowledges are shown to occupy only one pole of a (sexual) spectrum instead of its entirety, the possibility of other ways of knowing and proceeding–the possibility of feminine discourses and knowledges–reveals itself. Only through developing alternative modes of representational and inscriptional etching of female bodies can the singular domination of the universal by the masculine be made explicit. Conversely, it is only through a careful reading of phallocentric texts and paradigms that the rifts, flaws, and cracks within them can be utilized to reveal spaces where these texts exceed themselves, where they say more than they mean, opening themselves up to a feminine (re-)appropriation.
—Elizabeth Grosz, “Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason,” Space, Time, and Perversion(37-8)
Required Readings
- Grosz, “Notes Towards a Corporeal Feminism” (1-16) [Moodle2]
- Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: “Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason” (25-43) [Moodle2]
- Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Preface (xi-xv), Ch. 11 “Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment” (221-238) [Moodle2 and free e-textbook (link on course’s Moodle2 site)]
- Baker, Sexed Texts, Ch. 3 “Doing gender: community and performativity” (72-89) [Moodle2]
Optional Readings
- Salih, The Judith Butler Reader, Introduction (1-17), “Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions (1990)” (90-94), Preface [to second edition of Gender Trouble] (94-103) [Moodle2]
- Butler, Gender Trouble, Preface (pp. ix-xiv), Ch. 1 “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” (1-9), Ch. 3 “Subversive Bodily Acts”: “iv. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions” (128-141), Conclusion “From Parody to Politics” (142-49) [Moodle2]
- Salih, The Judith Butler Reader, Introduction [to excerpt from Bodies That Matter] (138-143) [Moodle2]
- Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, Preface (ix-xii), Introduction (1-23), Ch. 4 “Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion” (121-40) [Moodle2]
- Salih, Sara. Judith Butler. Routledge critical thinkers. London: Taylor & Francis, 2002. ISBN 9780203118641 [Free e-textbook (link on course’s Moodle2 site)]
Additional Resources
Other Works by These Authors
- Grosz, Elizabeth
Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction
Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists
Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism - Collins, Patricia Hill
Another Kind of Public Education: Race, the Media, Schools, and Democratic Possibilities
From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism
Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism
Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice
Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology, co-edited w/ Margaret Andersen
Due This Week
Weekly journal entry including main points from readings and observations about language from daily life.