Winter 2003 English 822/Comp Lit 791 "Body Theory" TH 3:00-6:00 p.m.  2018 Tisch Hall Tobin Siebers Hours: TH 2:00-3:00 and by appointment @ 2015 Tisch Hall Phone: 763-2351; tobin@umich.edu

"We are not well advised," Stanley Cavell muses, "to inspect the population to discover who among us in fact have bodies and who have not." We all have bodies--this is an indisputable fact, but not all facts are equal, and neither are our bodies. The last thirty years have seen an explosion of theoretical speculation about the body, some of it bent on showing the primacy of the body, some of it contending that the body is anything but fact. We have seen the emergence of the gendered body, the queer body, the racial body, the docile body, the body politic, the body in pain, the disabled body, the ritual body, etc. "Every body wants to get into the act," said the man with the humongous nose. This seminar will examine contemporary body theory, ranging from its origins in the human geography of psychoanalysis and the materialism of Marx to its postmodern incorporations. Some areas of special focus will be the use of human and animal bodies in art, hunger artistry, blood and the media, prosthetics, intersex identity, narcissism, ritual and exhibitionism, social constructionism, piercing, and disability studies. Headliner theorists include Georges Bataille, Judith Butler, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, Sander Gilman, René Girard, Donna Haraway, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Nancy Mairs, and others. Our main question throughout will be: what does body theory incorporate, and what does it not?
 

January

9          Introduction: Lines of descent, Common and uncommon bodies

16      Sex and Power

Required Readings: Georges Bataille, The Tears of Eros, Michel Foucault, "The Body of the Condemned" and "The Spectacle of the Scaffold" in Discipline and Punish, Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic (WB)
 

Required Readings: Sandra Lee Bartky, "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power" (WB), Susan Bordo, "Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body" (BM), Foucault, "Docile Bodies" (Discipline and Punish)

Required Readings: Gloria Anzaldúa, "La conciencia de la mestiza" (WB), bell hooks, "Selling Hot Pussy"  (WB), Patricia Williams, "On Being the Object of Property" (WB)

February

6           Sex and Power Again

Required Readings: Georges Bataille, The Story of the Eye,  Donna Haraway, "The Persistence of Vision" (WB), Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage" (CP), Catharine MacKinnon, "Rape: On Coercion and Consent" (WB)

Required Readings: Marcel Mauss, "Body Techniques" (CP), Marion Jackson, "Where Sleeps are a Measure of Miles" (BA), Cheryl Davis, "Disability and the Experience of Architecture" (CP)

Mary Douglas, "The Two Bodies" in Natural Symbols(CP), Eric Gans, "The Body Sacrificial" (BA), Tobin Siebers, "The New Art" (BA), Stelarc's webpage

Resources: Body Modification Ezine

March

6           Gender

Required Readings: Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Construction" (WB), Kaori Chino, "A Man Pretending to be a Woman" (BM), Luce Irigaray, "This Sex Which Is Not One" (WB), Monique Wittig, "One is Not Born a Woman" (WB). Showing of Breathing Lessons

Resources: Public Genitals Project

Required Readings: Joseph Grigely, "Postcards to Sophie Calle" (BA), Mark O'Brien, "The Man in the Iron Lung," "Faith," "Sonnet #2," "Breathing," "Mrs. Garcia," "In Saint Catherine's Home for the Hopelessly Crippled" in The Man in the Iron Lung, Anita Silvers, "From the Crooked Timber of Humanity..." (BM)

Resources: Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Worldwide ; Disability Social History Project

Required Readings: Cynthia Greig, "The Bride Wore Trousers" (BA), Mark O'Brien, "Tracy would've been a pretty girl" and "Femininity" in The Man in the Iron Lung,"becoming her,"  "&Shriek A Cripple Song," "Trio," @ Mark O'Brien homepage , Sandy Stone, "The Empire Strikes Back" (WB) and her homepage , David Valentine and Riki Anne Wilchins, "One Percent of the Burn Chart..." (CP)

Resources: Intersex Society of North America

Required Readings: Peg Zeglin Brand, "Bound to Beauty" (BM), Kathy Davis, "'My Body is My Art,' Cosmetic Surgery as Feminist Utopia?" (CP), Sander Gilman, "Imagined Ugliness" (BA), Rene Girard, "Hunger Artists" (BA), Orlan homepage

3        Disability Again

Required Readings: Rosi Braidotti, "Mothers, Monsters, and Machines" (WB), Nancy Mairs, "Sex and the Gimpy Girl" (CP), Mary Russo, "Female Grotesques" (WB)

Required Readings: Susan Bordo, "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity" (WB), Nancy Mairs, "Carnal Acts" (WB), Mark O'Brien, " On Seeing a Sex Surrogate "

Books Available at Shaman Drum Book Shop, 315 South State Street:

Georges Bataille. The Story of the Eye. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel. San Francisco: City Lights, 1987.
_____. The Tears of Eros. Trans. Peter Connor. San Francisco: City Lights, 1989.
Peggy Zeglin Brand, ed. Beauty Matters. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury, ed. Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage 1977.
Mark O'Brien. The Man in the Iron Lung. Berkeley, CA: Lemonade Factory, 1997.
Tobin Siebers, ed. The Body Aesthetic: From Fine Art to Body Modification. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Course packs for your consultation are available in the Comparative Literature Library and the English Graduate Student Lounge and include:

Cheryl Davis. "Disability and the Experience of Architecture." Rethinking Architecture: Design Students and Physically Disabled People. Ed. Raymond Lifchez. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Kathy Davis. "'My Body is My Art,' Cosmetic Surgery as Feminist Utopia?" European Journal of Women's Studies4, no. 1 (1997): 23-37.
Mary Douglas. "The Two Bodies" in Natural Symbols.New York: Vintage, 1973.
Jacques Lacan. "The Mirror Stage." Ecrits. New York: Norton, 1977.
Nancy Mairs. "Sex and the Gimpy Girl." River Teeth 1, no. 1 (1999): 44-51.
Marcel Mauss. "Body Techniques." Sociology and Psychology: Essays. London: Routledge, 1979.
David Valentine and Riki Anne Wilchins. "One Percent of the Burn Chart: Gender, Genitals, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude." Social Text 52/53, nos. 3 and 4 (1997): 215-22.