Susan Bordo | University of Kentucky (original) (raw)
Papers by Susan Bordo
Contemporary Sociology, 1995
Index 343 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is extremely difficult for those of us at small colleges to find, in... more Index 343 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is extremely difficult for those of us at small colleges to find, in our heavy teaching schedules, time for writing. I have been both fortunate and highly privileged in having been given that time, in the form of more than generous institutional support from a variety of sources. Two residential fellowships, one to spend the spring semester of 1985 in Alison Jaggar's Laurie seminar at Douglass College and the second in 198788 as a Rockefeller Humanist in Residence at the Duke University/University of North Carolina Center for Research on Women, provided not only time to think and write but wonderful intellectual environments to stimulate the process. An American Council of Learned Societies/Ford Foundation Fellowship, awarded for the same period as the Rockefeller, made it possible for me to continue working on this project the following year, when I was generously granted early sabbatical leave by Le Moyne College. It is to Le Moyne that I owe my greatest debt-for several faculty research grants and course reductions in the past, for the open, diverse, and warm intellectual home that it has provided for me, and for its courageous decision to name a feminist scholar to its first endowed chair, the Joseph C. Georg Professorship. From my perspective, the award could not have been timelier; announced in 1991 just as I was entering the final stages of work on this book, it has provided me with needed time for revisions, financial resources for preparation of the manuscript and illustrations, and a boost of encouragement to see me through to the culmination of what has been a long and taxing-although absorbing and gratifying-project. Because this book is made up of essays written over a period of years, many different people have contributed to it in different ways. I have tried to acknowledge those contributions in an opening note for each essay; I apologize for any that have gone unmentioned out of forgetfulness. What are not represented in those notes, however, are the intellectual conversations and emotional support informally provided at various stages of this project by friends and colleagues such as
Springer eBooks, 1992
In the clinical literature on eating disorders, the description, classification, and elaboration ... more In the clinical literature on eating disorders, the description, classification, and elaboration of “pathology” has been the motor of virtually all research. In the leading journals, attempts to link eating disorders to one or another specific pathogenic situation (biological, psychological, familial) proliferate, along with studies purporting to demonstrate that eating disorders are members of some already established category of disorder (depressive, affective, perceptual, hypothalamic, etc.). Anorexia and bulimia increasingly are appearing in diverse populations of women, making the possibility of describing a distinctive profile for each less and less likely [11, 21, 30, 39, 66]. Yet the search for common “underlying” pathologies still fuels much research [24, 49]. As each proposed model is de-stabilized by the actual diversity of the phenomena, more and more effort is put into precise classification of distinctive “subtypes”, and new “multidimensional” categories emerge (e.g., bulimia as “biopsychosocial” illness [36]), which satisfy fantasies of precision and unification of phenomena that have become less and less amenable to scientific clarity and distinctness.
Adoption & culture, 2022
My experience as an adoptive mother who got to know my daughter's birthmother during her pregnanc... more My experience as an adoptive mother who got to know my daughter's birthmother during her pregnancy demonstrates the inhumanity of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which turns pregnancy into a fetal delivery system rather than a profoundly transformative experience. This de-humanization undergirds both the Alito/Barrett attitude toward abortion and adoption and the babies who are imagined as refilling diminished stock for the market in babies.
The Journal of Philosophy, 1988
J N the late 1970s in the United States, contemporary American feminism took an important turn. F... more J N the late 1970s in the United States, contemporary American feminism took an important turn. From an initial emphasis on legal, economic, and social discrimination against women, femi-nists began to consider the deep effects of the gender organization of human life on ...
University of California Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2003
... But until very recentlyoutside of homoerotic photography and porna naked (usually hairless)... more ... But until very recentlyoutside of homoerotic photography and porna naked (usually hairless) male ... ously ignored consumers out thereboth male and femalewho liked to look at male ... Buta new willingness to vi-sually foreground the sexuality of male hips and buttocks ...
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 2005
Tidskrift för genusvetenskap, Aug 1, 1993
Den slanka kroppens budskap Både anorexia och fetma hat sina rötter i konsumtionskulturens symbol... more Den slanka kroppens budskap Både anorexia och fetma hat sina rötter i konsumtionskulturens symboliska önskningar. Anorexi är en extrem utveckling av förmågan till självförsakelse. Fetma visar däremot på en kapitulation inför begäret. Självkontroll brukar kodas som maskulint medan hunger-liksom sexualitet-kodas som feminint. Det slanka kroppsidealet kan alltså tolkas som kvinnornas avståndstagande frän en reproduktiv förutbestämning.
Feminist Studies, 1992
... "There is a radical difference," hooks points out, "between a repudiation of t... more ... "There is a radical difference," hooks points out, "between a repudiation of the idea that there ... who do see the body - both as a living cultural form and as a subject of scholarly ... Within the scholarly arena, arguably, there has been a major paradigm shift over the last hundred years ...
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 2005
Publikationsansicht. 26561238. "Material Girl": The Effacements of Postmodern Culture (... more Publikationsansicht. 26561238. "Material Girl": The Effacements of Postmodern Culture (1990). Bordo, Susan. Abstract. University of Michigan.. Vol. 1, no. 2-issued as the University of Michigan official publication, v. 63, no. 74-. Electronic serial mode of access: World Wide Web.. ...
Metaphilosophy, 1996
: Over the last twenty-five years, feminist theory has been at the forefront of cultural, discipl... more : Over the last twenty-five years, feminist theory has been at the forefront of cultural, disciplinary, and philosophical critique. Yet feminists continue to be represented as engaged in specialized projects of concern only to women or, at best, those interested in “gender issues.” I argue that this is not merely a bit of residual sexism, but a powerful conceptual map which keeps feminist scholarship, no matter how broad its concerns, located in the region of what Simone de Beauvoir called “the Other.” I expose, critique, and explore the consequences of this construction in several contemporary intellectual arenas.
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, May 23, 1999
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1999
... Tony Manero's ritual in front of the mirror (Saturday Night Fever, 1977)-in which Ma... more ... Tony Manero's ritual in front of the mirror (Saturday Night Fever, 1977)-in which Manero (played by John Tra-volta) prepares his body meticulously, shaving, deodorizing, blow-drying, choosing just the right combination of gold chains and amulets, torso-clinging pants, and ...
transcript Verlag eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
University of California Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2003
Philosophy Today, 1997
I begin this essay with two current renditions of sexual harassment, one fictional and the other ... more I begin this essay with two current renditions of sexual harassment, one fictional and the other semi-fictional.' Let me say from the outset that I believe neither of them to be very helpful to an understanding of sexual harassment. Rather, they illustrate two equally crude poles toward which the popular imagination has tended to drift since the Thomas/Hill hearings opened up public conversation about these issues. That conversation began in a promising fashion, with an unprecedented attention to how commonplace sexual harassment is in our workplaces and educational institutions. We seemed poised on the brink of a long-overdue cultural discussion of normative ideologies of masculinity and femininity and the potential for misunderstanding and abuse latent in them. But even as this analysis seemed about to unfold, alternative constructions were emerging, leading in very different directions. I open with them as a way of beginning to diagnose what has gone wrong with the current conversation about sexual harassment.2 My first example is a fictional rendition, from Michael Crichton's Disclosure, recently made into a film directed by Barry Levinson and starring Demi Moore and Michael Douglas (rapidly becoming the benighted white boy of Hollywood films.) The film has been widely promoted as a provocative "role reversal" in which, to quote the NewYork Times, a "cool, smart and ferociously ambitious" female executive, Meredith Johnson (played by Moore) sexually harasses Tom Sanders, a male in her employ (played by Douglas). The event which is the centerpiece of the movie has Meredith aggressively pressing herself on Tom sexually and then seeking revenge when she is rejected. (Just in case the viewer is in doubt over whether her advances are "welcome," the scene has Douglas whimpering "no" a full thirtyone times as Moore performs oral sex on him.) Levinson, invoking a somewhat tenuous opposition, has insisted that the film is "Just a movie. Not a polemic."3 His claim is that the gender-reversal is not intended to exploit and incite the suppressed rage of contemporary male viewers, but to get viewers to "pay attention" to issues of power-abuse and victim helplessness. Nonetheless, both the novel and the film read like a litany from the whitemale hell of contemporary gender-politics: Meredith,to begin with, is not only Tom's boss, but has gotten precisely the job Tom had coveted-and she's gotten it, as the President of the company openly declares, in order "to break the glass ceiling." After Tom rejects Meredith, not only does she try to sabotage him at meetings and the like, but-in a reversion to more traditional stereotypes-she falsely accuses him of sexual harassment! In the interrogation that follows, Tom's faithful Asian secretary also accuses him of touching her in "inappropriate" ways. The book and movie thus hit all the currently raw male anxieties, both warranted and fantastical, from legitimate concerns over one's behavior being interpreted as harassment to nightmares of sexually castrating, scheming executrixes and rage at imagined injustices of affirmative action policies. (It's just a movie, remember, not a polemic.) Crichton's book, too, refuses to own its politics. The following is a speech-put into the mouth of Tom's glamorously tough-as-nails, scrupulously egalitarian and vehemently antip.c. Latina attorney--that states the point that Crichton claims he is making, about the protean, neuter nature of power: Harassment is about power he undue exercise of power by a superior over a subordinate. I know there's a fashionable point of view that says women are fundamentally different from men, and that women would never harass an employee. But from where I sit, I've seen it all. I've seen and heard everything you can imagine-and a lot that you wouldn't believe if I told you. That gives me another perspective. Personally, I don't deal much in theory. I have to deal with the facts. And on the basis of facts, I don't see much difference in the behavior of men and women. …
Contemporary Sociology, 1995
Index 343 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is extremely difficult for those of us at small colleges to find, in... more Index 343 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is extremely difficult for those of us at small colleges to find, in our heavy teaching schedules, time for writing. I have been both fortunate and highly privileged in having been given that time, in the form of more than generous institutional support from a variety of sources. Two residential fellowships, one to spend the spring semester of 1985 in Alison Jaggar's Laurie seminar at Douglass College and the second in 198788 as a Rockefeller Humanist in Residence at the Duke University/University of North Carolina Center for Research on Women, provided not only time to think and write but wonderful intellectual environments to stimulate the process. An American Council of Learned Societies/Ford Foundation Fellowship, awarded for the same period as the Rockefeller, made it possible for me to continue working on this project the following year, when I was generously granted early sabbatical leave by Le Moyne College. It is to Le Moyne that I owe my greatest debt-for several faculty research grants and course reductions in the past, for the open, diverse, and warm intellectual home that it has provided for me, and for its courageous decision to name a feminist scholar to its first endowed chair, the Joseph C. Georg Professorship. From my perspective, the award could not have been timelier; announced in 1991 just as I was entering the final stages of work on this book, it has provided me with needed time for revisions, financial resources for preparation of the manuscript and illustrations, and a boost of encouragement to see me through to the culmination of what has been a long and taxing-although absorbing and gratifying-project. Because this book is made up of essays written over a period of years, many different people have contributed to it in different ways. I have tried to acknowledge those contributions in an opening note for each essay; I apologize for any that have gone unmentioned out of forgetfulness. What are not represented in those notes, however, are the intellectual conversations and emotional support informally provided at various stages of this project by friends and colleagues such as
Springer eBooks, 1992
In the clinical literature on eating disorders, the description, classification, and elaboration ... more In the clinical literature on eating disorders, the description, classification, and elaboration of “pathology” has been the motor of virtually all research. In the leading journals, attempts to link eating disorders to one or another specific pathogenic situation (biological, psychological, familial) proliferate, along with studies purporting to demonstrate that eating disorders are members of some already established category of disorder (depressive, affective, perceptual, hypothalamic, etc.). Anorexia and bulimia increasingly are appearing in diverse populations of women, making the possibility of describing a distinctive profile for each less and less likely [11, 21, 30, 39, 66]. Yet the search for common “underlying” pathologies still fuels much research [24, 49]. As each proposed model is de-stabilized by the actual diversity of the phenomena, more and more effort is put into precise classification of distinctive “subtypes”, and new “multidimensional” categories emerge (e.g., bulimia as “biopsychosocial” illness [36]), which satisfy fantasies of precision and unification of phenomena that have become less and less amenable to scientific clarity and distinctness.
Adoption & culture, 2022
My experience as an adoptive mother who got to know my daughter's birthmother during her pregnanc... more My experience as an adoptive mother who got to know my daughter's birthmother during her pregnancy demonstrates the inhumanity of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which turns pregnancy into a fetal delivery system rather than a profoundly transformative experience. This de-humanization undergirds both the Alito/Barrett attitude toward abortion and adoption and the babies who are imagined as refilling diminished stock for the market in babies.
The Journal of Philosophy, 1988
J N the late 1970s in the United States, contemporary American feminism took an important turn. F... more J N the late 1970s in the United States, contemporary American feminism took an important turn. From an initial emphasis on legal, economic, and social discrimination against women, femi-nists began to consider the deep effects of the gender organization of human life on ...
University of California Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2003
... But until very recentlyoutside of homoerotic photography and porna naked (usually hairless)... more ... But until very recentlyoutside of homoerotic photography and porna naked (usually hairless) male ... ously ignored consumers out thereboth male and femalewho liked to look at male ... Buta new willingness to vi-sually foreground the sexuality of male hips and buttocks ...
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 2005
Tidskrift för genusvetenskap, Aug 1, 1993
Den slanka kroppens budskap Både anorexia och fetma hat sina rötter i konsumtionskulturens symbol... more Den slanka kroppens budskap Både anorexia och fetma hat sina rötter i konsumtionskulturens symboliska önskningar. Anorexi är en extrem utveckling av förmågan till självförsakelse. Fetma visar däremot på en kapitulation inför begäret. Självkontroll brukar kodas som maskulint medan hunger-liksom sexualitet-kodas som feminint. Det slanka kroppsidealet kan alltså tolkas som kvinnornas avståndstagande frän en reproduktiv förutbestämning.
Feminist Studies, 1992
... "There is a radical difference," hooks points out, "between a repudiation of t... more ... "There is a radical difference," hooks points out, "between a repudiation of the idea that there ... who do see the body - both as a living cultural form and as a subject of scholarly ... Within the scholarly arena, arguably, there has been a major paradigm shift over the last hundred years ...
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 2005
Publikationsansicht. 26561238. "Material Girl": The Effacements of Postmodern Culture (... more Publikationsansicht. 26561238. "Material Girl": The Effacements of Postmodern Culture (1990). Bordo, Susan. Abstract. University of Michigan.. Vol. 1, no. 2-issued as the University of Michigan official publication, v. 63, no. 74-. Electronic serial mode of access: World Wide Web.. ...
Metaphilosophy, 1996
: Over the last twenty-five years, feminist theory has been at the forefront of cultural, discipl... more : Over the last twenty-five years, feminist theory has been at the forefront of cultural, disciplinary, and philosophical critique. Yet feminists continue to be represented as engaged in specialized projects of concern only to women or, at best, those interested in “gender issues.” I argue that this is not merely a bit of residual sexism, but a powerful conceptual map which keeps feminist scholarship, no matter how broad its concerns, located in the region of what Simone de Beauvoir called “the Other.” I expose, critique, and explore the consequences of this construction in several contemporary intellectual arenas.
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, May 23, 1999
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1999
... Tony Manero's ritual in front of the mirror (Saturday Night Fever, 1977)-in which Ma... more ... Tony Manero's ritual in front of the mirror (Saturday Night Fever, 1977)-in which Manero (played by John Tra-volta) prepares his body meticulously, shaving, deodorizing, blow-drying, choosing just the right combination of gold chains and amulets, torso-clinging pants, and ...
transcript Verlag eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
University of California Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2003
Philosophy Today, 1997
I begin this essay with two current renditions of sexual harassment, one fictional and the other ... more I begin this essay with two current renditions of sexual harassment, one fictional and the other semi-fictional.' Let me say from the outset that I believe neither of them to be very helpful to an understanding of sexual harassment. Rather, they illustrate two equally crude poles toward which the popular imagination has tended to drift since the Thomas/Hill hearings opened up public conversation about these issues. That conversation began in a promising fashion, with an unprecedented attention to how commonplace sexual harassment is in our workplaces and educational institutions. We seemed poised on the brink of a long-overdue cultural discussion of normative ideologies of masculinity and femininity and the potential for misunderstanding and abuse latent in them. But even as this analysis seemed about to unfold, alternative constructions were emerging, leading in very different directions. I open with them as a way of beginning to diagnose what has gone wrong with the current conversation about sexual harassment.2 My first example is a fictional rendition, from Michael Crichton's Disclosure, recently made into a film directed by Barry Levinson and starring Demi Moore and Michael Douglas (rapidly becoming the benighted white boy of Hollywood films.) The film has been widely promoted as a provocative "role reversal" in which, to quote the NewYork Times, a "cool, smart and ferociously ambitious" female executive, Meredith Johnson (played by Moore) sexually harasses Tom Sanders, a male in her employ (played by Douglas). The event which is the centerpiece of the movie has Meredith aggressively pressing herself on Tom sexually and then seeking revenge when she is rejected. (Just in case the viewer is in doubt over whether her advances are "welcome," the scene has Douglas whimpering "no" a full thirtyone times as Moore performs oral sex on him.) Levinson, invoking a somewhat tenuous opposition, has insisted that the film is "Just a movie. Not a polemic."3 His claim is that the gender-reversal is not intended to exploit and incite the suppressed rage of contemporary male viewers, but to get viewers to "pay attention" to issues of power-abuse and victim helplessness. Nonetheless, both the novel and the film read like a litany from the whitemale hell of contemporary gender-politics: Meredith,to begin with, is not only Tom's boss, but has gotten precisely the job Tom had coveted-and she's gotten it, as the President of the company openly declares, in order "to break the glass ceiling." After Tom rejects Meredith, not only does she try to sabotage him at meetings and the like, but-in a reversion to more traditional stereotypes-she falsely accuses him of sexual harassment! In the interrogation that follows, Tom's faithful Asian secretary also accuses him of touching her in "inappropriate" ways. The book and movie thus hit all the currently raw male anxieties, both warranted and fantastical, from legitimate concerns over one's behavior being interpreted as harassment to nightmares of sexually castrating, scheming executrixes and rage at imagined injustices of affirmative action policies. (It's just a movie, remember, not a polemic.) Crichton's book, too, refuses to own its politics. The following is a speech-put into the mouth of Tom's glamorously tough-as-nails, scrupulously egalitarian and vehemently antip.c. Latina attorney--that states the point that Crichton claims he is making, about the protean, neuter nature of power: Harassment is about power he undue exercise of power by a superior over a subordinate. I know there's a fashionable point of view that says women are fundamentally different from men, and that women would never harass an employee. But from where I sit, I've seen it all. I've seen and heard everything you can imagine-and a lot that you wouldn't believe if I told you. That gives me another perspective. Personally, I don't deal much in theory. I have to deal with the facts. And on the basis of facts, I don't see much difference in the behavior of men and women. …