CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
Governing the Female Body: Gender, Health, and
Economies of Power
Organiser: Paula Saukko
Reed, Lori (University of Rhode Island,
USA) WOMEN WHO LOVE THEIR COMPUTERS TOO MUCH: THERAPEUTIC PRACTICE AND
TECHNOLOGIES OF WORKPLACE EFFICIENCY
This presentation traces the historical and gendered formation of
"pathological" computer use in the workplace. It draws on theories and
methodologies from critical discourse analysis to investigate how the management
of women's relationships to computer technologies in the workplace has been
spoken through discourses on health and illness and has functioned toward the
establishment a productive female workforce. The paper describes the management
of "pathological" computer fear in the 1970-80s and then discusses
contemporary diagnoses of "pathological" computer use in the
workplace. In particular, the paper explores how, in work settings,
"Internet Addiction" is often used synonymously with "Internet
Misuse" and how it is increasingly used as rationale for the institution of
monitoring and management of employee computer use. Yet, since employee
monitoring is said to increase "technostress" and to foster a sort of
technophobia, the final section focuses on this tension between the corporate
need to allow and encourage (productive) computer use and the need to limit and
direct that use. In particular, the paper explores specific health-based
interventions deployed to direct and regulate female computer use even as these
interventions function to produce and regulate a normative femininity and the
female body.
Saukko, Paula (University of Leicester,
United Kingdom) FROM AUTONOMY TO FLEXIBILITY: KAREN CARPENTER, PRINCESS DIANA,
EATING DISORDERS, AND 'HEALTHY' FEMALE SELF
While most research on eating disorders examines normative discourses, such as
beauty ideals, which inform or cause these conditions, this presentation
discusses the way in which discussions on eating disorders themselves suggest a
normative healthy female self--as opposed to the disordered anorexic or bulimic
self. Based on an analysis of the popular iconography on Karen Carpenter and
Princess Diana, the arguably most famous women to have had eating disorders, the
presentation analyses how they set forth an ideal female identity, exploring its
historical and political underpinnings. The high-profile lives and deaths of
Carpenter and Princess Diana have provoked heated social debate on gender,
class, and politics. Carpenter and her soft-rock music have been eulogised as
the epitome of a dreamy, wholesome, femininity, and deplored as an embodiment of
an infantilised woman and annihilating, conservative, family-values. Princess
Diana has been adored both as the royal virgin bride and as the outspoken
divorcee and outcast, both in relation to the royal family and in relation to
people of colour, gays, and people with AIDS that were associated with her life,
image and her charitable activities. The paper investigates the popular and
intellectual discussions on Carpenter as embodying and succumbing to an ideal
femininity, and Princess Diana as an inventive 'survivor' of a turbulent life,
arguing they point to a historical shift from an ideal 'autonomous' toward an
ideal 'flexible' self. It examines the connections between these ideals and the
social polarization of post-Sixties' neo-conservative America and the fluidity
of Nineties' New Labour Britain, and evaluates their contradictory implications,
both in terms of offering models of female behavior, and of legitimating
particular social and political regimes.
Turtiainen, Jussi (University of
Tampere, Finland) SHAPING THE FEMALE BODY IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Physical education is the site for shaping, normalizing and reconstructing
bodies through various cultural practices, educational settings and discursive
formations. Departing form Foucault's conceptualizations on the body, discipline
and normalization, I explore the ways in which the female body is portrayed in
Finnish physical education texts and analyze the underlying assumptions of
health, gender and the body. Based on more recent research on the body, health
and gender, I extend Foucault's notions in two directions. First, I will expand
the analysis to include the gendered demarcation of the body. Second, I develop
the idea where the body is seen as a self-project, and bodily identity is
reconstituted through reflexivity and an internalized and medicalized gaze of
the self. It should be noted, however, that physical education texts do not
produce one hegemonic depiction of the female body, but merely constitute a site
for negotiating definitions of the female body and the ideal 'healthy' body.
Basu, Srimati (DePauw University, USA)
SHADOWS IN THE COURTROOM: THE INTERPELLATION OF GENDER & AUTHORITY IN THE
INDIAN HIGHER COURTS
This presentation examines debates in the area of feminist jurisprudence,
including the significance of legal reform in postcolonial contexts. Based
primarily on readings of family law cases from Indian appellate courts, it shows
some ways in which judicial authority invents and incorporates gendered notions
of family and law, e.g. the meanings of "healthy" marriage, family,
class, national identity and religious identity, by drawing upon and reinventing
"authoritative" bodies of knowledge. Women's legal claims appear to be
most favorably received when they match dominant definitions of gender, although
these can be trumped by the ways in which class (and therefore opportunities)
are constructed. Religion based rights often get tied to national political
negotiations. Legal solutions appear to be both powerful instruments for
achieving greater gender equity as well as subversive sites for recuperation of
gender, class and religious hegemonies in the guise of protection and
liberation. The slippage between the intent and effects of both
"progressive" and "reactionary" legislation indicates that
feminist theorists should focus both on discursive effects of gender and on
power relations in the legal realm.
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