Full Description
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.
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
