Constituting gender, locating the body

Abstract

The ontology of the body has been an ongoing object of discussion within various contexts, in particular those concerning the corporeal and its relation to gender or culture. To date, there are two main schools of thought concerning body and gender relations that posit the body and its gender as distinct, suggesting the autonomy of the body and conversely asserting that the body is always already a mark of culture. In this regard, this paper discusses these two schools of thoughts through a close examination of texts selected from three main collections – The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader and The Body Reader: Essential Social and Cultural Readings. The critical reading of these selected texts forms part of a large body of research that informs the development of a critical framework for reading images of the gendered body. Although the texts examined in this paper are limited to the above sources, it is sufficient to illustrate that there is a consistent pattern of argument that constitutes the two lines of thought. I include reference to Judith Butler's ideas concerning the body as a discursive construct and Foucault's theory of power relations in the context of formulating the idea of the body, discourses pertinent to the corporeal and its enculturation. On the whole, this paper aims to initiate a comparative reading of the two lines of argument concerning the body and its gendering in order to propose the body as an open text rather than enforcing a resolution that would either privilege the body as autonomous to culture or the purely textual body devoid of its flesh.

Keywords::

• body
• gender
• enculturation
• corporeal
• body discursivity
• poststructuralist

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisors Dr. Izmer Ahmad and Assoc. Prof. Shakila Abdul Manan for their support, advice and feedback on my ongoing Ph.D. work which this paper is based on. I would also like to express my gratitude to Lena Lie for graciously allowing herself to be my sounding board to critically reflect on my ideas for this paper. I also thank the School of the Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Kementerian Pengajian Tinggi Malaysia for their support and scholarship for my Ph.D. study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johan Awang Othman

Johan Othman, a native of Kuala Lumpur, obtained his undergraduate education at Oberlin Conservatory of Music graduating in 1997 with a major in music composition and in 1999 graduated from Yale University with a Masters of Music in music composition. He teaches music in the School of the Arts Universiti Sains Malaysia since 1999 and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. study at the School of the Arts under the supervision of Dr. Izmer Ahmad and Assoc. Prof. Shakila Abdul Manan. His research topic is the visual representations of Medea's gender. His past scholarly papers range from music and cultural studies, sound/image constitution in film, and gender/image signification that have been presented as the following titles: ‘The Body as Agency of Imaginary Gendering: Re-imagining Medea's Gender Formation and Positioning’ (ICHSC 2011), ‘Privileging the Absence in Claire Denis's “Vers Nancy”’ (2nd PACIA 2011) and ‘Cultural Decentraliasation Within A Post-Colonial Territory: Movements in Malaysia's Musical Culture’ (Wacana Seni 2002).