Papers by JulianFernando TrujilloAmaya
This article is concerned with the relationship between body, image and affect within consumer cu... more This article is concerned with the relationship between body, image and affect within consumer culture. Body image is generally understood as a mental image of the body as it appears to others. It is often assumed in consumer culture that people attend to their body image in an instrumental manner, as status and social acceptability depend on how a person looks. This view is based on popular physiognomic assumptions that the body, especially the face, is a reflection of the self: that a person's inner character or personality will shine through the outer appearance. The modification and cosmetic enhancement of the body through a range of regimes and technologies can be used to construct a beautiful appearance and thereby a beautiful self. The article begins by examining body images in consumer culture and their relation to photography and moving images. This is followed by an examination of the consumer culture transfor-mative process through a discussion of cosmetic surgery. The article then questions the over-simplistic logic that assumes that transformative techniques will automatically result in a more positive and acceptable body image. The new body and face may encourage people to look at the transformed person in a new way. But the moving body, the body without image, which communicates through proprioceptive senses and intensities of affect, can override the perception of the transformed appearance. A discussion of the affective body follows, via a closer examination of the body without image, the opening of the body to greater affect and indeterminacy. The affective body image and its potential greater visibility through new media technologies are then discussed through some examples taken from digital video art. The article concludes by examining some of the implications of these shifts within consumer culture and new media technologies.
We have not finished chanting the litany of the ignorances of the unconscious; it knows nothing o... more We have not finished chanting the litany of the ignorances of the unconscious; it knows nothing of castration or Oedipus, just as it knows nothing of parents, gods, the law, lack. The Women's Liberation movements are correct in saying: We are not castrated, so you get fucked.-Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 1984, 61. (onsider the central problem involved in examining eating disorders from an ethical or political perspective: On the one hand, as feminists, we want to recognize that the personal is political and that eating disorders cannot be explained at the level of individual pathology. An adequate account needs to address the social or ideological domain of representation that in some way helps produce such disorders. This recognition has led to the critique of a representational domain variously described as phallo-centric, phallogocentric, or patriarchal. On the other hand, there is a reluctance to locate women as passive victims in some point of innocence outside representation. Thus, the task for feminists has been conceived of as constructing autonomous women's representations, and this task has appealed to an articulation of the female body. The body is, then, considered as that which has been belied, distorted, and imagined by a masculine rep-resentational logic. At the same time, the body has been targeted as the redemptive opening for a specifically feminine site of representation. In terms of eating disorders, this ambivalence surrounding representation might be cashed out as follows: the anorexic is the victim of representation, trapped in embodiment through stereotypical and alienating images-but at the same time only representation can cure this malaise; only a realistic, nonrepressive and less regulative form of representation will allow women to see themselves as autonomous subjects. We argue that this tension surrounding representation actually sustains the Cartesian mind/body dualism that it ostensibly criticizes. In what follows, we draw on the work of Gilles Deleuze, a philosopher who has challenged the notion that reason or thought is the negation, repression, or ordering of some
the body as capital therefore create and reproduce bodies that are socially legitimized. They als... more the body as capital therefore create and reproduce bodies that are socially legitimized. They also shape their bodies in order to be attractive, envied and imitated. We thus cannot say that this group's bodies are "typical Brazilian bodies", but we can say that the body-capital displayed by this group is far and away the most imitated body by Brazilians in general and especially by Brazilian women. When women were presented with the question: what do you envy most in other women? Their most common answer was beauty, with "the body" coming in second, and intelligence in third. When men had to answer what they most envied in other men, the answers were: intelligence, financial power, beauty, and "the body."
I deliberately say techniques of the body in the plural because it is possible to produce a theor... more I deliberately say techniques of the body in the plural because it is possible to produce a theory of the technique of the body in the singular on the basis of a study, an exposition, a description pure and simple of techniques of the body in the plural. By this expression I mean the ways in which from society to society men know how to use their bodies. In any case, it is essential to move from the concrete to the abstract and not the other way round.
In this article I present an argument for 'embodied ways of knowing' as an alternative epistemolo... more In this article I present an argument for 'embodied ways of knowing' as an alternative epistemological strategy, drawing on feminist research and embodied experience. To present my argument, I begin by considering a number of problematic dualisms that are central to Western knowledge, such as the separation between mind and body and between knowledge and experience. In critique of mind/body dualism, feminists and phenomenologists claimed that Western understandings were based on a profound ignorance about and fear of the body. Mind/body dualism needed to be challenged and articulated differently, potentially through valuing and understanding 'embodiment'. In critique of the knowledge/experience dualism, feminists and phenomenologists have suggested that 'knowing' could be based on lived experience. From lived experience, knowledge could be constructed by individuals and communities, rather than being universal and resulting strictly from rational argument. Research on women's ways of knowing and on movement experience provided valuable insights into alternative ways of knowing. Just as lived experience and movement experience could be ways of knowing, I argue that 'embodied ways of knowing' could also contribute specifically to knowledge. The relevance of understanding 'embodied ways of knowing' for those involved in education and movement studies may be the further appreciation, development and advocacy for the role of movement experience in education.
In her article ‘Sorcerer Love’, Luce Irigaray offers a re-reading of
Plato’s Symposium. Her focus... more In her article ‘Sorcerer Love’, Luce Irigaray offers a re-reading of
Plato’s Symposium. Her focus is on Diotima’s speech which, she notes, is “loosely woven but never definitely knotted”.2 There are still spaces for Irigaray to weave her own voice through Diotima’s in order to uncover a forgotten passage within this speech, a crucial shift in Diotima’s teaching. In so doing, Irigaray seeks to turn us back from a metaphysics which devalues the body to a fecund erotic encounter which nourishes both body and soul. However, Diotima’s teaching not only offers a philosophical revaluation of the erotic - it is equally concerned with the relation between the erotic and philosophy, or with the journey towards wisdom as erotic. Thus, in this paper, I will first show how Irigaray reclaims a forgotten wisdom from Diotima’s speech, and then draw out the potential of this recovered teaching for re-thinking the pedagogical relation itself. I will suggest that the key to both elements is Irigaray’s radical revaluation of the erotic encounter as a birthing or engendering of infancy as both the process and condition of learning.
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Papers by JulianFernando TrujilloAmaya
Plato’s Symposium. Her focus is on Diotima’s speech which, she notes, is “loosely woven but never definitely knotted”.2 There are still spaces for Irigaray to weave her own voice through Diotima’s in order to uncover a forgotten passage within this speech, a crucial shift in Diotima’s teaching. In so doing, Irigaray seeks to turn us back from a metaphysics which devalues the body to a fecund erotic encounter which nourishes both body and soul. However, Diotima’s teaching not only offers a philosophical revaluation of the erotic - it is equally concerned with the relation between the erotic and philosophy, or with the journey towards wisdom as erotic. Thus, in this paper, I will first show how Irigaray reclaims a forgotten wisdom from Diotima’s speech, and then draw out the potential of this recovered teaching for re-thinking the pedagogical relation itself. I will suggest that the key to both elements is Irigaray’s radical revaluation of the erotic encounter as a birthing or engendering of infancy as both the process and condition of learning.
Plato’s Symposium. Her focus is on Diotima’s speech which, she notes, is “loosely woven but never definitely knotted”.2 There are still spaces for Irigaray to weave her own voice through Diotima’s in order to uncover a forgotten passage within this speech, a crucial shift in Diotima’s teaching. In so doing, Irigaray seeks to turn us back from a metaphysics which devalues the body to a fecund erotic encounter which nourishes both body and soul. However, Diotima’s teaching not only offers a philosophical revaluation of the erotic - it is equally concerned with the relation between the erotic and philosophy, or with the journey towards wisdom as erotic. Thus, in this paper, I will first show how Irigaray reclaims a forgotten wisdom from Diotima’s speech, and then draw out the potential of this recovered teaching for re-thinking the pedagogical relation itself. I will suggest that the key to both elements is Irigaray’s radical revaluation of the erotic encounter as a birthing or engendering of infancy as both the process and condition of learning.