FEMINIST THEORIZING OF SEXUALITY I
My aim here is to exacerbate rather than dissolve whatis commonly regarded as “the crisis of reason.” This crisis .. . has methodological, epistemological, and political implications formetatheoretical conceptions of knowledge and its production; it entailsreconceiving the sources, aims, and goals of knowledges. . . . This crisisof reason is in part a consequence of the historical privileging of thepurely conceptual or mental over the corporeal; that is, of the inabilityof Western knowledges to conceive their own materiality and the conditionsof ther (material) production. These knowledges must simultaneously relyon and disavow the role of the body. If the body is an un- or an inadequatelyacknowledged condition of knowledges, then the sexual specificity of bodiesmust be a relevant factor in the evaluation of these knowledges. This chapteraddresses the explicit sexualization of knowledges in order to draw outsome of the effects that a concept of sexed corporeality may have on relationsbetween knowers and objects known, as well as on the forms, methods, andcriteria of assessment governing knowledges.
—Elizabeth Grosz,”Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason” (25-6)
Required Readings
Flax, Thinking Fragments, Ch. 1 “Somethingis Happening” (3-13), Ch. 2 “Transitional Thinking” (14-15,28-29)
Seidman et al. New Sexuality Studies Part 2: “Sexual meanings,” Chs. 4-10 (27-78)
Weeks Sexuality, Ch. 3 “The Meanings of Sexual Difference” (41-56)
Wilshire “The Uses of Myth, Image, and the FemaleBody in Re- Visioning Knowledge” (Blackboard “Readings”)
Grosz “Towards a Corporeal Feminism” (Blackboard“Readings”)
Grosz “Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisisof Reason”
(Blackboard “Readings”)
Additional Resources
Homework questions Note: file not found
Due This Week
Weekly journal entry including main points from readings, to be submitted electronically, and observations about your own sexuality and understanding of sexuality, to be kept in a private journal.