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This collection looks from a variety of angles at the human body as it resists the determinations of gender, sexuality, socialisation and history. Ranging from classical hermaphrodites, Bruegel's blind faces and Weimar transgender surgery, via Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , state-socialist sport and Proust, to Barbie, Lari Pittman, American Psycho , IVF and video dance, the sixteen essays question the relationship between politics, culture and desire. This richly illustrated book also features the original work of two young photographers and a theatre director.
List of contents
Introduction; L.Taylor, N.Segal & R.Cook Prefatory Essay: The Tale of Nema; R. Stainton Rogers & W.Stainton Rogers On Wanting a Child or: An Idea of Desire; K.Lesnik-Oberstein Where is Action Man's Penis? Determinations of Gender; J. Bignell The Ideology of the Genderless Sporting Body: Reflections on the Czech State-Socialist Concept of Physical Culture; L.Oates-Indruchová 'Lying Beneath Me She is Only a Shape': Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and the Representation of Madness; A.Scott Determined Indeterminacy in the Work of Lari Pittman; R.Cook 'The Some had Rather it Were She than I ': Sexing the Textual Body; N.Segal Not from Adam's Rib: The Origins of Transgender Surgery in Weimar Culture; S.L.Gilman 'Sweet Hee-She-Coupled-One': Unspeakable Hermaphrodites; C.Williams In/determinacy in Cyberspace; F.Froy Flaunting the Feminine; M.Meagher Shape-Shifting and Role-Splitting: Theatre, Body and Identity; L.Taylor Unhomely Bodies and Dislocated Identities in the Drama of Frank McGuinness and Marina Carr; A.McMullan Blindness and the Politics of the Gaze; D.Forgacs Bodies in Transition, or the Unbearable Lightness of the Transitionless Self; M.Csabai & F.Erös Revolution in Video Dance: The Construction of a Fluid Body; S.Dodds
About the author
AJAMU self-taught photographer, SM/cultural activist and black queer arts festival producer
JONATHAN BIGNELL Senior Lecturer in Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London
MÁRTA CSABAI Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Research Institute of Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
SHERRIL DODDS Lecturer in Dance Studies, University of Surrey
FERENC ERÖS Deputy Director and Head of the Department of Social and Cultural Psychology, Research Institute for Psychology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest and Professor of Social Psychology, University of Pécs
DAVID FORGACS Professor of Italian, University College London
FRANCESCA FROY attended the MA in The Body and Representation, University of Reading, 1995-6 following a degree in Anthropology
SANDER L. GILMAN Distinguished Professor of the Libral Arts and Medicine, University of Illinois, Chicago and Director of the Humanities Laboratory
KARÍN LESNIK-OBERSTEIN Lecturer in English Literature, University of Reading and Deputy Director of the University's Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL)
ANNA MCMULLAN Director of the MPhil in Irish Theatre and Film at the School of Drama, Trinity College Dublin
MICHELLE MEAGHER completed the MA on The Body and Representation, University of Reading, 1997
LIBORA OATES-INDRUCHOVÁ teaches literary theory and gender studies at the Faculty of Humanities, Pardubice University, Czech Republic
VANDA PLAYFORDartist and doctor
ANN SCOTT Senior Lecturer, School of Integrated Health, University of Westminster, London and Deputy Editor, British Journal of Psychotherapy
REX STAINTON ROGERS was, until his death in 1999, a Lecturer in Psychology, University of Reading
WENDY STAINTON ROGERS Head of the Research School, Open University
CAROLYN D. WILLIAMS Lecturer in English, University of Reading
Summary
Ranging from classical hermaphrodites, Bruegel's blind faces and Weimar transgender surgery, via Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , state-socialist sport and Proust, to Barbie, Lari Pittman, American Psycho , IVF and video dance, the sixteen essays question the relationship between politics, culture and desire.
