Women and the Body

Throughout history, arguments have been made associating women with the body.
The following WMST-L discussion from March/April 2006 and some messages in a
similar thread from May 2008 offer a variety of places where that association
appears.  For additional WMST-L files now available on the Web, see the
WMST-L File Collection.

A recent house fire destroyed all of my notes and books, so I am
hoping that someone here will be able to jog my memory of sources for
stuff I internalized long ago.  I am looking for sources (authors and
titles would be great!)  in which arguments are made about the
association of women with the body. In other words, women are often
more aligned with the body while men are more aligned with the mind.
Can anyone help?  I know it is out there....
 
Christina
 
______________________________

Dr. Christina  Fisanick
Assistant Professor of English
Writing Program Director
Xavier  University
Cincinnati,  OH
clfisanick  AT  aol.com

I think that the article you are looking for is by the sociologist
Dorothy Smith but I can't remember the title. Also, a nice supplement
to this is Kobena Mercer's book "Welcome to the Jungle" where he
discusses blacks having bodies and whites having minds.

So sorry about the fire
 
Gail
 
Gail Dines
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
Chair of American Studies
Wheelock College
35 Pilgrim Road
Boston, MA 02215
gdines  AT  wheelock.edu

 I think the Dorothy Smith discussion is in the following book:

Smith, Dorothy  E.
	1990	Texts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of
Ruling. London and New York: Routledge.


Chrisy Moutsatsos, Ph.D.
Anthropology and Women's Studies
University of California, Irvine 

How about The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin? I think it was published
in the middle 1980's.

My sympathies about your house, too.

Erin

Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight is excellent.  I add my sympathies to
everyone else's about the fire.  Best, Jane


jcaputi  AT  adelphia.net

What about "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?"?  Feminist  
Studies Vol. 1, No.2 (Autumn, 1972) pp. 5-31.

So sorry about the fire.

Joan

******************************************************
Joan Sitomer, J.D.
Ph.D. Candidate
Political Science Department
Women's Studies Program
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI   48109
jsitomer  AT  umich.edu

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,  
signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are  
not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

Basic books covering that topic:

_The Death of Nature_ by Carolyn Merchant and also, of course, _The
Second Sex_ by Simone de Beauvoir. (And good luck with the cleanup.)
 
Jo-Ann Pilardi
Professor, Philosophy and Women's Studies
Director, Graduate Program in Women's Studies
Towson University
Towson, Maryland 21252
E-mail: jpilardi  AT  towson.edu <mailto:jpilardi  AT  towson.edu> 

The history of the essentialization of women through identification  
with nature (at least in Western philosophy) is nicely summarized in  
the introduction to Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a  
Corporeal Feminism (Indiana, 1994); see also the anthologies Writing  
on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (Columbia, 1997);  
Feminist Theory and the Body (Routledge, 1997); and The Female Body  
in Western Culture (Harvard, 1986). If you're looking for some  
histories on this see Carolyn Merchant's early book The Death of  
Nature and, one of my favorites, Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity;  
Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle France (Oxford, 1986).  
And what about Sherry Ortner's classic essay, "Is Female to Male as  
Nature is to Culture?" in Women, Culture and Society (Stanford,  
1974). Can't remember for certain but I'd be stunned if Susan Bordo  
and Judith Butler didn't touch on this issue in their broader  
writings about bodies and techniques of embodiment.

Best,

Mike
********************
Michael J. Murphy, M.A.
mjmurphy  AT  wustl.edu

Hi Christina,
             let me add Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight to the list. 
Great book. john

-- 
John C. Landreau
Modern Languages &
Women's and Gender Studies
The College of New Jersey
e-mail: landreau  AT  tcnj.edu

Christina, let me add the following to the list, along with my  
condolences on your recent difficulties.

Genevieve Lloyd, Man of Reason, Minnesota Press 1993

Laurie

Laurie Finke
Women's and Gender Studies
Kenyon College
finkel  AT  kenyon.edu

Man as mind and woman as body is a very old argument.  For example,
see St. Thomas Aquinas: "Should Woman Have Been Made in the First
Order of Things" (where he even refers back to Aristotle's notion of
woman as misbegotten male).
 
Carolyn DiPalma
Associate Professor Emerita
Department of Women's Studies
University of South Florida
cdipalma  AT  cas.usf.edu

likewise sorry to hear about the fire at your place christina, i think 
such a loss of notes and books would drive me to distraction so i hope 
you're coping better than that!

re titles:

i agree that the man is culture woman is nature idea has been around a 
long time and one could no doubt find this idea in the work of most male 
philosophers, western and nonwestern, even supposedly progressive ones 
(e.g. check out rousseau's Emile, much criticised by feminists).  but i 
think the request was for feminist critiques yes?

i back up the suggestion of The Second Sex, among others, and would add 
Colette Guillaumin's Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology (Routledge 1995 
I think), where a lot of the essays first published in translation in, I 
think, Feminist Issues, are republished.  In particular the 2 essays at 
the beginning of the book on the discourse of Nature and the essay 
'Question of Difference' are illuminating. 

For those who read French I also recommend her book 'L'idéologie 
raciste' which was recently republished in pocket paperback.
re men writing about the association of black with body and white with 
mind, check out Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks *but* NB black 
women do not appear in this book as subjects at all.  But it is in this 
book that the sentence 'le nègre, c'est le génital' & the associated 
arguments are found, and Guillaumin also looks at this in 'L'idéologie 
raciste'.

Bronwyn

-- 
***********************************************
Dr Bronwyn Winter
Senior Lecturer
Dept of French Studies 
School of Languages and Cultures
Mungo McCallum Building A17
University of Sydney  NSW 2006
Australia

email: bronwyn.winter  AT  arts.usyd.edu.au

***********************************************

So far, people are mentioning a wonderful list of theoretical works.   
You may also want to go directly to body-artists' works.  For  
example, any number of recent feminist books about dancers, like Ann  
Daly's Done into Dance about Isadora Duncan, address this issue  
directly. I would also check out artist like Frida Kahlo, and  
literary culture works like Gloria Anzuldua's Borderlands.

Gill Miller
millerg  AT  denison.edu

Thank you all so very much for these great titles! I remembered some
immediately, others are new to me, which is always a great find.  The
reason I asked is that I am working on an article about women and
tenure and promotion.  My general thesis: Because women are associated
with the body and the body is suspect (even abjected) in academia,
then women themselves are treated with suspicion and disregard.  I
have a similar article coming out in the Review of Education,
Pedagogy, and Culture in which I discuss the "normal professor body"
and the consequences (in terms of tenure and promotion) of not
occupying it/one.
 
I can't thank you enough for your help.  I didn't realize how much I
depended on notes (mariginal and typed) until I started working on
this article.  Before I asked, I pulled together four sources from
memory, knowing that the list was far greater. My library is being
rebuilt slowly.  You might be interested in knowing the first four
books I bought after the fire: Cunt by Muscio, Written on the Body by
Winterson, Writing on the Body by Conboy, Medina, and Stanbury, and
Grown-Ass Man by Cedric the Entertainer.  : )
 
In gratitude,
 
Christina
 
______________________________

Dr. Christina  Fisanick
Assistant Professor of English
Writing Program Director
Xavier  University
Cincinnati,  OH
clfisanick  AT  aol.com

Emily Martin, "The Egg and the Sperm:  How Science Has Constructed a
Romance Based on Stereotypical Male?Female Roles."  Signs-- Journal of
Women in Culture and Society. 16/3 (1991), 485-501 

Moore, Lisa Jean. (2003). "Billy, the Sad Sperm with No Tail:
Representations of Sperm in Children's Books. Sexualities. 6(3-4): 279-305.

Moore, Lisa Jean. (2002).  "Extracting Men from Semen: Masculinity in
Scientific Representations of Sperm." Social Text. 73. 1-46. 

Jaggar, Alison M. and Young, Iris Marion, eds.  1998.  A Companion to
Feminist Philosophy.  Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell

Londa Schiebinger, "Why Mammals are Called Mammals: Gender Politics in
Eighteenth?Century Natural History," In Evelyn Fox Keller Helen E. Longino,
eds.  1996.  Feminism & Science, NY: Oxford UP. 137?153
Londa Schiebinger.  1986.  "Skeletons in the Closet:  The First
Illustrations of the Female Skeleton in Eighteenth?Century Anatomy." 
Representations, 14 (1986): 4282.  Also in Londa Schiebinger.  2000. 
Feminism and the Body ^+ Oxford Readings in Feminism.  NY: Oxford UP.  25?57

Elizabeth Wright, ed.  1992.  Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical
Dictionary. 

Toril Moi.  2002.  "While We Wait: The English Translation of The Second
Sex." Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society.  27:4, 1005-1035


Barrie Karp, Ph.D., Philosophy
www.barriekarp.com (paintings)

New School Faculty Member since 1982.
Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts since 1988. Cultural
Studies & Media Concentration.  Gender & Knowledge Concentration.
Parsons The New School for Design, Liberal Studies Dept & UULS^+1982 through
2002.
School of Visual Arts, Humanities & Sciences Dept. since 1982.

Artist & educator teaching philosophy, cultural studies, antiracist
feminist studies and arts in New York City colleges and universities since
1970.

barriekarp  AT  earthlink.net (preferred)
karpb  AT  newschool.edu 

Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter
Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body
Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One
Londa Schiebinger, ed., Feminism & the Body (Oxford UP)
Teresa Brennan, Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis
Joan Scott & Judith Butler, Feminists Theorize the Political
 
 
Sorry about the fire also.
 
Barrie Karp
 
Barrie Karp, Ph.D., Philosophy
www.barriekarp.com (paintings)
 
New School Faculty Member since 1982.
Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts since 1988. Cultural
Studies & Media Concentration. Gender & Knowledge Concentration.
Parsons The New School for Design, Liberal Studies Dept & UULS^+1982 through
2002.
School of Visual Arts, Humanities & Sciences Dept. since 1982.
 
Artist & educator teaching philosophy, cultural studies, antiracist
feminist studies and arts in New York City colleges and universities since
1970.
 
barriekarp  AT  earthlink.net (preferred)
karpb  AT  newschool.edu 
 

Christina,

This article may be of interest re your article:

Teresa Brennan.  "My Open Agenda, or How Not to Make the Right Career
Moves."  2003.  In Linda Martin Alcoff, ed.  Singing in the fire: tales of
women in philosophy.  NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.  23-40. 
ISBN 0742513823

Barrie

Barrie Karp, Ph.D.
barriekarp  AT  earthlink.net (preferred)
www.barriekarp.com (paintings)
karpb  AT  earthlink.net

> Does anyone have a textual reference for the concepts of a) woman as body/man
> as mind (I have references to the idea, but who originally thought this up?),
> and b) woman as figuratively the colonized body/ the colonized body as      
> feminine.  Also, if anyone has a reference for the idea of woman being      
> associated with nature, the outside, etc, that would be a real help."

If you want the original discussions, you probably want to look at Thomas
Aquinas and the church fathers, who discuss a kind of dualism in which man is
identified with the spirit (the higher, better part) and woman with the body
(the baser nature).  For a good reference on this, see Rosemary Radford
Ruether, "Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church," in
her book Religion and Sexism.

Best,

Jeana DelRosso
 
Dr. Jeana DelRosso
Chair, Department of English
Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies
College of Notre Dame of Maryland
4701 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD  21210
jdelrosso AT ndm.edu

Hi--

For discussions of women being associated with nature, the land, etc,
particularly in the US, see Annette Kolodny's two books /The Lay of the
Land/ and /The Land Before Her/. They're old but look at frontier writings
as methods to feminize the land (and thus justify "conquering" it) so they
discuss early moments of this phenomenon in the case of the white settlement
of the US.

Jodi Kelber-Kaye
Lecturer, Gender and Women's Studies
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
jodik AT umbc.edu

I recommend the book Ecofeminism and the Sacred, edited by Carol J. Adams
(Continuum 1993) and especially one of its essays, "Sin, Nature, and Black
Women's Bodies" by Delores S. Williams -- and also the whole book but
especially the concluding chapters of The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo
and Barbara Mor, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991)

jane caputi
jcaputi AT comcast.net

Hi -

One of the locations of Sheri Ortner's important article "Is Female to Male as
Nature is to Culture?" is Woman, Culture & Society edited by Michelle Rosaldo
and Louise Lamphere.

Susan Griffin's work has also been important in this discussion; particularly
Woman & Nature and Pornography and Silence.

Dr. Vicki Kirsch
Associate Director, Women and Gender Studies
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
vkirsch AT gmu.edu

Ortner's essay is reprinted in her book "Making Gender: The Politics and
Erotics of Culture" Beacon Press, 1996.  In this volume she has an essay
revisiting her earlier work and reframing the issues.

Deborah Mindry, Ph.D.
Research Scholar
Center for the Study of Women UCLA
dmindry AT ucla.edu