FEMINIST THEORY
AND THE BODY
A READER
Edited by
Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick
ROUTLEDGE
NEW YORK
© Selection, arrangement and
introductory materials Janet Price and
Margrit Shildrick, 1999
Published in the United Kingdom by
Edinburgh University Press
Published in the USA and Canada by
Routledge
29 West 35 th Street
New York, NY 10001
[Link]
Typeset in Sabon and Gill Sans
by Bibliocraft Ltd, Dundee, and
printed and bound in Great Britain
at The University Press, Cambridge
A CIP record for this book is available
from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0 415 92565 7 (hardback)
ISBN 0 415 92566 5 (paperback)
The right of the contributors to be
identified as authors of this work has
been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Openings on the Body: A Critical Introduction
Margrit Shildrick with Janet Price
Section 1: Woman as Body? 15
Introduction 17
1.1 Londa Schiebinger:
'Theories of Gender and Race' 21
1.2 Elizabeth V. Spelman:
'Woman as Body: Ancient and Contemporary Views' 32
1.3 Lynda Birke:
'Bodies and Biology' 42
1.4 Felly Nkweto Simmonds:
'My Body, Myself: How Does a Black Woman
Do Sociology?' 50
1.5 Helen Marshall:
'Our Bodies, Ourselves: Why We Should Add Old
Fashioned Empirical Phenomenology to the
New Theories of the Body' 64
Section 2: Sexy Bodies 77
Introduction 79
2.1 Luce Irigaray:
'When Our Lips Speak Together' 82
2.2 Jeanette Winterson:
'The Nose' and 'Taste' 91
2.3 Evelynn M. Hammonds:
'Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality:
The Problematic of Silence' 93
2.4 Lynne Segal:
'Body Matters: Cultural Inscriptions' 105
Contents
2.5 Barbara Creed:
'Lesbian Bodies: Tribades, Tomboys and Tarts' 111
2.6 Judith Halberstam:
'F2M: The Making of Female Masculinity' 125
2.7 Juniper Wiley:
'NO BODY is "Doing It": Cybersexuality' 134
2.8 Sue-Ellen Case:
'The Hot Rod Bodies of Cybersex' 140
Section 3: Bodies in Science and Biomedicine 143
Introduction 145
3.1 Audre Lorde:
'A Burst of Light: Living with Cancer' 149
3.2 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick:
'Breast Cancer: An Adventure in Applied
Deconstruction' 153
3.3. Ludmilla Jordanova:
'Natural Facts: A Historical Perspective on
Science and Sexuality' 157
3.4 Anne Fausto-Sterling:
'Menopause: The Storm before the Calm' 169
3.5 Emily Martin:
'The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has
Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical
Male-Female Roles' 179
3.6 Jana Sawicki:
'Disciplining Mothers: Feminism and the New
Reproductive Te c h n o l o g i e s ' 190
3.7 Donna Haraway:
'The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies:
Determinations of Self in Immune System Discourse' 203
Section 4: After the Binary 215
Introduction 217
4.1 Denise Riley:
'Bodies, Identities, Feminisms' 220
4.2 Moira Gatens:
'Power, Bodies and Difference' 227
Contents
4.3 Judith Butler:
'Bodies that Matter' 235
4.4 Susan Bordo:
'Feminism, Foucault and the Politics of the Body' 246
4.5 Trinh T. Minh-ha:
'Write Your Body' and 'The Body in Theory' 258
4.6 Elizabeth Grosz:
'Psychoanalysis and the Body' 267
Section 5: Alter/ed Bodies 273
Introduction 275
5.1 Anne Balsamo:
'Forms of Technological Embodiment:
Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture' 278
5.2 Rosi Braidotti:
'Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt:
On Teratology and Embodied Differences' 290
5.3 Pratibha Parmar and Alice Walker:
'Interview from Warrior Marks' 302
5.4 Awa Thiam:
'The Trials of the Black African Woman' 309
5.5 Bibi Bakare-Yusuf:
'The Economy of Violence: Black Bodies and the
Unspeakable Te r r o r ' 3 11
5.6 Susan Wendell:
'Feminism, Disability, and Transcendence of
the Body' 324
Section 6: BodySpaceMatter 335
Introduction 337
6.1 Christine Battersby:
'Her Body/Her Boundaries' 341
6.2 Gillian Rose:
'Women and Everyday Spaces' 359
6.3 Andrea Benton Rushing:
'Surviving Rape: A Morning/Mourning Ritual' 371
6.4 Elizabeth Grosz:
'Bodies-Cities' 381
Contents
6.5 Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick:
'Mapping the Colonial Body: Sexual Economies
and the State in Colonial India' 388
6.6 Nalini Natarajan:
'Woman, Nation and Narration in Midnight's
Children' 399
Section 7: Performing the Body 4 11
Introduction 413
7.1 Judith Butler:
'Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions' 416
7.2 Kristina Straub:
'The Guilty Pleasures of Female Theatrical Cross-
Dressing' 423
7.3 Margrit Shildrick and Janet Price:
'Breaking the Boundaries of the Broken Body' 432
7.4 Fen Coles:
'Feminine Charms and Outrageous Arms' 445
7.5 Kathy Davis:
'"My Body is my Art": Cosmetic Surgery as Feminist
Utopia?' 454
7.6 Heather Findlay:
'"Freud's Fetishism" and the Lesbian Dildo Debates' 466
Copyright Acknowledgements 477
Subject Index 481
Name Index 485