RSSFriday Random Ten - The “I’m Trying to Read 7 Books at Once and It Isn’t Working” Edition
One of the seven books I’m reading right now is Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing, edited by Jaggar and Bordo (1989). If you like feminist theory, cultural studies, and philosophy, this text is for you. I’m juggling other books at the same time, so I’m only near the end of the first essay, “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity: A Feminist Appropriation of Foucault” by Susan R. Bordo. Bordo is discussing how the female body is a medium for the expression of patriarchal culture–she specifically examines agoraphobia, hysteria, and anorexia nervosa. A lot of her essay addresses the culture of the late 1980s, but most of what she writes is applicable to today, particularly her examination of anorexia.
Through the exacting and normalizing disciplines of diet, make-up, and dress–central organizing principles of time and space in the days of many women–we are rendered less socially oriented and more centripetally focused on self-modification. Through these disciplines, we continue to memorize on our bodies the feel and conviction of lack, insufficiency, of never being good enough. At the farthest extremes, the practices of femininity may lead us to utter demoralization, debilitation, and death. (p. 14)
I am looking forward to the rest of the text.
Here’s what I was listening to:
- The Moldy Peaches — Nothing Came Out
- Devendra Banhart — At The Hop
- Journey — When The Lights Go Down In The City (ugh)
- Peaces — Operate
- Devo — Head Like A Hole
- DJ Paul V — Yo Majesty vs Depeche Mode — Just Can’t Get Club Action [mashup]
- Bratmobile — Polaroid Boy
- Eric Bachmann — Lonesome Warrior
- Cola Wars — V As In Victory
- Princeton — Tokyo, Japan
Blast from the Past Bonus: It was 1993 and I was totally listening to these guys while painting my nails black and dying my hair pink:
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