Table Of ContentBody and Representation
Schriftenreihe der lnternationalen Frauenuniversitat
»Technik und Kultur«
Band 6
lnsa Hartel, Sigrid Schade (eds.)
Body and Representation
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2002
Die Schriftenreihe der lnternationalen Frauenuniversitat .. Technik und Kultur"
wird gefordert durch das Niedersachsische Vorab der VW-Stiftung. Der hier vor
liegende Band Nr. 6 wird auBerdem gefordert durch die Universitat Bremen.
Coverpicture using the Video Still from ,.Requiem for the XXth Century", 1994, opus 18
of .. The Angel Cycle" von Maria Klonaris und Katerina Thomadaki
Gedruckt auf saurefreiem und alterungsbestandigem Papier.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek-CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
ISBN 978-3-8100-3254-6 ISBN 978-3-663-11622-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-663-11622-6
© 2002 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
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Contents
Foreword
The Body and Representation.
The Centre for Feminist Studies Meets the ifu .............................................. 9
Sexuality and Agency
Introduction ... .. ......... ....... .... .................. ................. ........ ............ ................... 17
Ifi Amadiume
Bodies, Choices, Globalizing Neo-colonial Enchantments:
African Matriarchs and Mammy Water ........................................ ................ 21
Angela de Silva
Normalizing Heterosexuality in the 1996 House of Commons Debate
on Bill C-33 ................................................................................................... 35
Sabine Fuchs
Lesbian Representation and the Limits of "Visibility"-.................................. 43
JulikaFunk
The Lesbian Body-a Monstrous or a Transcendental Signifier?
Lesbian Representation and Cultural Construction....................................... 51
Linda Hentschel
Pomotopic Techniques of the Observer-The Origins of the World
(1866) by Gustave Courbet and the Pleasure of Scopic Penetration............. 59
6 Contents
Body Languages-Body Signs
Introduction . . . ... . . . . .... .. . . . . ... . . . . . ... .. .. . . .... .......... ... . ... . . . . . .. . ... . . . ... . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . .. .. . 69
Sigrid Schade
Body- Sign-Gender.
,Representation": Between Culture, Body and Perception.......................... 73
Sabine Broeck
Will White Feminism Surrender the Default Position?
Gender Studies and Whiteness...................................................................... 83
Elena Casado-Aparicio
Engendered Bodies: Metaphors in Feminism................................................ 91
Fataneh Farahani
The Absent Presence: Reflections on the Discursive Practice ofVeiling..... 99
Renata Sa/eel
The New Age of Anxiety ............................................................................. I 07
Insa Hartel
Leaving Mother Behind:
On the Production and Replacement of the Maternal in Space..................... 123
Sibylle Benninghoff-Liihl
Living Images of"Human-Beasts":
Reflections on the "Wild" in the Media........................................................ 131
The Body and the (New) Media
Introduction................................................................................................... 139
Maria Klonaris I Katerina Thomadaki
Dissident Bodies: Freeing the Gaze from Norms ......................................... 143
On a Cinematic and Visual Arts Practice
Joanna Jones
The Medium Is Not the Only Message.......................................................... 159
Contents 7
Hannelore Schwedes
The Construction of Gender in Photographs of Children ........................... .. 169
Ulrike Bergermann
Hollywood Reproductions: Mothers, Clones, and Aliens.............................. 179
Nation and Body
Introduction .................... .. .... .................... ......... ........ ................ .... ................ 187
Sumathi Ramaswamy
Body Language: The Somatics of Nationalism in Tamil India..................... 189
Silke Wenk
Gender Difference and the Visual Representation of the Political................ 201
Astrid Vornmoor
Social Constructions of Motherhood in Germany......................................... 215
Authors ............... .......... ........ ............ ............................................................. 223
Foreword
The Body and Representation:
The Centre for Feminist Studies Meets the ifu
The present work is the result of the cooperation between the Centre for Femi
nist Studies (ZFS) at the University of Bremen and the International Women's
University Hanover 2000 (ifu). For the project area Body (deans: Prof. Patricia
McFadden and Prof. Barbara Duden), in which roughly one hundred fifty par
ticipants from all over the world took part/ the Centre for Feminist Studies de
veloped and organized a two-week study phase, The Body and Representation:
Feminist Research and Theoretical Perspectives, which was carried out on the
campus of the University of Bremen from 30 July to 11 August 2000 (concept
and chair: Prof. Sigrid Schade; collaboration I coordination: Dr. Insa Hartel). It
formed the third and fourth weeks of a program that lasted thirteen weeks in all.
This publication is neither a documentation of this study phase nor an
"ideal" concept for such a curriculum. Neither of these possible variants for such
a publication was feasible, and neither would have made much sense, for a
number of reasons. The present form takes into account, on the one hand, the
desire of the participants of this study phase to read central contributions of the
curriculum in a published version and to discuss them further, and, on the other,
the wish to enable a broad audience that could not take part in the three-month
study phase to obtain an impression of the program after the fact. We left it to
the authors to decide whether and how to integrate their ifu experiences and the
discussion into their reworked texts. As a result, this happened more in some
cases than in others.
The cooperation of the ZFS with the project area Body began comparatively
late in 1999, in relation to the overall planning of the ifu, so that it was only
during the winter semester 1999-2000 that the program of the two-week cur
riculum could be developed in its final form.
See Metz-Gockel, S. (Ed.) (2001). Lehren und Lernen an der Internationalen Frauen
universitiit. Ergebnisse einer Wissenschaftlichen Begleituntersuchung. Schriften der In
ternationalen Frauenuniversitiit - Technik und Kultur · Bd. 3, Opladen: Leske + Bu
drich.
10 Foreword: The Body and Representation
The concept of a study phase designed to complement the project area in
Hanover was agreed upon in discussions with the planning group (here we
would like to thank Prof. Barbara Duden, Prof. Patricia McFadden, Sumati Nair,
Dorothee Noeres, and Dr. Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez for suggestions).
Turning the concept into a program required, on the one hand, financial
support. The study phase in Bremen was entirely self-financed, even paying the
costs of housing for the participants (here we wish to thank especially Renate
Kahl, University of Bremen). On the other hand, it depended on the cooperation
of the participating scholars and artists and/or overlaps with other project fields
and forums of the ifu.
Adopting the structure of the project area Body in Hanover, the module in
Bremen retained a number of different types of presentations, such as key lec
tures (in plenary presentations in the morning), workshops, seminars, discussion
presentations (in parallel presentations in the afternoon), public lectures (eve
nings), a party, and a podium discussion (on the weekend).
Many authors presented llot just once but several times or offered additional
seminars and workshops. Tutorials accompanied the presentations in Hanover
and in Bremen, for which we would like to express our thanks to the tutors.
The cultural program we organized - museum visits, city tours, etc., related
to the theme of "Body" - was embraced by many of the participants. The dance
and sports workshops also received praise from many participants. As the cur
riculum is developed, this area should be expanded to include other offerings.
Unfortunately, nearly all of the planned cooperative efforts with artists that
had been considered in cooperation with the Art Advisory Board of the ifu fell
through for a variety of reasons, in part because several of the artists relevant to
our theme presented in other forums of the ifu and did not have the time to come
to Bremen as well. Two of the artistic contributions that we were nonetheless
able to organize could be published here (Joanna Jones and Maria Klo
naris/Katerina Thomadaki).
Because we were not able to document all of the presentations in full, sev
eral of the texts included represent condensed, abridged, or otherwise altered
versions. Some of the talks could not be published here because they had not yet
been committed to paper. These included contributions by Prof. M. Jacqueline
Alexander, Prof. Marie-Luise Angerer, Prof. Birgit Hein, and Claudia Wittrock.
On the other hand, the volume contains two essays that could not be presented
during the ifu phase for organizational reasons (Sabine Fuchs and Dr. Insa
Hartel).
The course offerings in Bremen not only benefited from the resources and
infrastructure of the Centre for Feminist Studies (for which we would like to
thank Kathrin Heinz and Barbara Thiessen in particular) but could also rely on
the course offerings from professors and other members of the ZFS (including
Prof. Sabine Broeck, Prof. Sigrid Schade, Prof. Hannelore Schwedes - the last-
Foreword: The Body and Representation 11
named was the chairperson for the ZFS). At the same time, we considered it im
portant to take into account our "own" junior scholars when planning and car
rying out the curriculum.
On the occasion of the founding of the ZFS in the summer of 1998 a number
of university teachers conceived of a research group working on the theme
"Constructions of Body and Gender: Models, Self-Images, Options" and applied
for funding for doctoral candidates (chair: Prof. Sigrid Schade). This came about
at the same time as the study phase of the ifu. The researchers and scholarship
students working in this project took part in the course offerings (Angela de
Silva, Astrid Vornmoor) and contributed essays to the publication.
The richness of these offerings - some said they were too rich - was con
ceived not least in order to provide choices for a very heterogeneous group of
participants who could choose their courses and use the European Credit Trans
fer System in order to obtain an ifu certificate. This heterogeneity - not at all
only in terms of cultural and geographical origin but also age, level of education,
academic degree, field of study, orientation within disciplines, work experience,
and interests - was a central challenge to all project areas of the ifu that should
receive more attention in the future.2 Bremen had not participated in the an
nouncement of the scholarships, the choice of criteria, and the selection of par
ticipants. Our program was designed for participants who had completed at least
one exam, a master's degree, and thus was intended a postgraduate program. In
practice, however, participants with bachelor's degrees or the equivalent were
also admitted. There was therefore a broad spectrum, ranging from students to
lecturers who were already active in teaching and research.
When it became clear during the study phase that the participants included
several experts in specific areas that could complement our spectrum, we tried to
"make room" for them post hoc. This was possible only to a limited extent dur
ing the two weeks of presentations in Bremen, and one of these participants has
contributed to this volume (Fataneh Farahani).
In contrast to the group in Hanover, which at the end of the conception
phase ultimately decided to present, in a kind of "academy," selected positions
of several outstanding scholars, in Bremen we held to the idea from the initial
phase to present thematically arranged modules. This was summarized under the
title The Body and Representation: Feminist Research and Theoretical Per
spectives. The modules, whose themes sometimes overlapped in particular con
tributions, included one developed together with Sumati Nair, Sexuality and
Agency, as well as Body Languages and Body Signs and The Body and the New
Media. The contributions originally intended for another module planned for
Bremen on the theme Imagined Communities: Gender Difference and Repre
sentations ofP olitics were, for organizational and time reasons, instead included
2 See ibid.
