Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: René Descartes bequeathed western thought a problem it has been struggling to solve: the relationship between mind and matter.Within queer studies and feminism, the problem boils down to this: To what extent are the phenomena we call gender and sexuality determined by biological matter -genes, hormones, and so on -and to what extent are they creations of culture, language, symbols, and so on?For a long time, the dominant feminist response to the question was a widespread somatophobia that kept the material body at bay lest biological essentialism should rear its ugly head.When feminism and queer studies did approach the materiality of bodies, they did so within a predominantly linguistic and psychoanalytical framework that emphasises language and discourses rather than the materiality of lived experience (e.g., Butler 1993; see also, Howson 2005).In effect, they opted for the non-material side of the Cartesian divide.Attention to the role of material culture in maintaining or subverting gender/sexual norms has often focussed on how objects serve to amplify and overdetermine relatively small sexual differences between humans to produce distinct genders.Giving pink things to girls and blue things to boys is only the most obvious and simplest process that begins at birth, or earlier if the gender of the foetus is known.However, research also amply demonstrates that material things do not automatically support dominant expectations -gendered, sexual, or otherwise (see, Scanlon 2000).Material things can be deployed to challenge gender and sexual
Source: lambda nordica
DOI: 10.34041/ln.v25.618
Author: Mark Graham
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4249584229