2005 Programme Session 9a

Session 9a: SAS and the Body
Chair: Nóra Séllei

The Monstrous Body: Cultural Analytic Reflections on Trans-Bodied Experience in D. Barnes’ Nightwood
Jules Sturm
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

J.L. Austin’s discussion of the intentionality of language that involves not only a phrase’s unwritten raison d'être, but also the accidents of “audition”, to which it is constantly exposed, gives room to speculate on the tension generated between a text and its reader’s experience thereof. Taking furthermore into account the genderedness of the reader, which brings with it it’s own desire for the text’s characters and narrative, the question of where the reader finds him/herself collaborating in the writing becomes relevant.
Overall, the aim of my paper consists in giving an impression of what we could consider as „queer cultural analysis“. Thereby, I want to emphasize the desiring sexed reading body, as culturally defined and delimited phenomenon, in modern literature. Specifically, I will depict the transgendered body, or the monstrous body, as instantiation or corporealization of “queer” experiencing in the process of performative reading. By means of concrete examples from Djuna Barnes’ novel Nightwood, and a cultural analytic reading thereof, I want to show that we do not only consistently reconstruct our gendered and sexed bodies written by the surrounding culture, but that we consequently also redefine the reading body – with its cultural imprints and its various sensory perceptions; we thus also incorporate our sex and sexuality into the cultural text at large. I thereby want to stress the reciprocity of everyday identificatory acts between our bodies and others’ bodies.
These considerations shall lead me to questions around trans-bodiedness and trans-genderedness in the sphere of cultural productions, ranging from literary texts using explicitly sexualized language and dealing with queer gendered experiences (i.e. Nightwood) to everyday performances of one’s corporeal identity.

Downlaod Conference Paper -

Where’s the Fun? Sex, Risk, and the Refugee ‘Body’
Shamser Sinha, Anthony Pryce, Shruti Uppal
St Bartholomew School of Nursing and Midwifery, Institute of Health Sciences, London, United Kingdom

This theoretical article emerges from sexual health research on teenage refugees and asylum-seekers in the UK.
The refugee and asylum-seeking body is at the centre of contemporary politicised discourse. Two discourses are particularly apparent. The first involves risk and fear, which have a reciprocal relationship when discussing the refugee body. It is symbolised in fears about ‘bogus asylum-seekers’, ‘porous borders’, the hidden ‘threat’ within and the need to govern it. This is present in casting refugees as carrying risks for ‘us’ in terms of crime, terrorism and the alleged drain put on health and welfare resources by their presence. Institutionally, it is enacted by the government through detention, employment and welfare regulations and dispersal. The second – its alternate- is the refugee body as ‘victim’. It acknowledges many refugees have gone through harrowing experiences we should address, casting them in the role of ‘victim’ and is reflected in health research by work particularly on mental health and isolation.
Refugee’s sexual health is on the margins between both discourses. The refugee body is seen as a risky vector of infection through communicable sexually transmitted infections, prompting fears about what might happen to ‘us’ – the first discourse- as well as how to reduce rates of infection for ‘them’ – the second. In terms of the first discourse this has uncomfortable similarities with historical characterisations of the ‘other’ as threatening the bloodline of the pure nation. Love, lust and sex as pleasure are absent in both discourses. Since refugees are particularly stigmatised and oppressed, research is needed into a positive understanding of how to support them as active bodies seeking to enjoy emotional pleasures of lust, love and sex, instead of positioning them within dominant discourses of risk/fear or its alternate ‘victim’ positionality

Sexing the Body: Sentiment, Desire, and the Politics of the Erotic in Early American Culture
Astrid Fellner
University of Vienna, Austria

Sexuality, according to Thomas Laqueur, “as a singular and all-important human attribute—the opposite sex—is the product of the late eighteenth century.” (Making Sex 13). Heterosexual difference, the opposition between “male” and “female,” became the crucial point of political and economic pressure at that time, insuring the coordination of male and female bodies, and helping to distinguish between productive and non-productive practices and proper, virtuous, and immoral behavior. As historians of the body have argued, the histories of sexual difference and of sexuality changed significantly from the beginning of the eighteenth-century to its close. The old Galenic model, in which men and women were arrayed according to their degree of metaphysical perfection, their vital heat, along an axis whose telos was male, gave way by the late eighteenth century to a new model of radical dimorphism, of biological divergence.
In my paper, I will analyze the organization of intimate relationships in various cultural representations in early America. Contrasting some colonial British American texts (e.g. Edward Taylor’s cross-gendered, erotic poems) with post-Revolutionary texts, I will analyze in what ways formulations of sex and sexuality were radically different from those in the enlightened early Republic. While there was a certain elasticity in notions of gender in Puritan America, post-Revolutionary explanations for the relation of sex and gender located the presence of sexuality in the body. Discussing the anonymous early American novel History of Constantius and Pulchera (1802) and Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette (1797), I will show that sexual difference came to organize all sensual relations. Desire and sensation in these texts testify to what Bruce Burgett calls “an emerging discourse of ‘heterosensuality.’” The difference between “man” and “woman” was seen to generate “natural” attraction, which in liberal thought was not only considered fundamental to society, but was also seen as a prerogative in marriage that secured the transmissibility of culture.



2nd Global Conference Wednesday 30th November - Saturday 3rd December 2005 Vienna, Austria Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 9a: SAS and the Body Chair: Nóra Séllei The Monstrous Body: Cultural Analytic Reflections on Trans-Bodied Experience in D. Barnes’ Nightwood Jules Sturm Amsterdam, The Netherlands J.L. Austin’s discussion of the intentionality of language that involves not only a phrase’s unwritten raison d'être, but also the accidents of “audition”, to which it is constantly exposed, gives room to speculate on the tension generated between a text and its reader’s experience thereof. Taking furthermore into account the genderedness of the reader, which brings with it it’s own desire for the text’s characters and narrative, the question of where the reader finds him/herself collaborating in the writing becomes relevant. Overall, the aim of my paper consists in giving an impression of what we could consider as „queer cultural analysis“. Thereby, I want to emphasize the desiring sexed reading body, as culturally defined and delimited phenomenon, in modern literature. Specifically, I will depict the transgendered body, or the monstrous body, as instantiation or corporealization of “queer” experiencing in the process of performative reading. By means of concrete examples from Djuna Barnes’ novel Nightwood, and a cultural analytic reading thereof, I want to show that we do not only consistently reconstruct our gendered and sexed bodies written by the surrounding culture, but that we consequently also redefine the reading body – with its cultural imprints and its various sensory perceptions; we thus also incorporate our sex and sexuality into the cultural text at large. I thereby want to stress the reciprocity of everyday identificatory acts between our bodies and others’ bodies. These considerations shall lead me to questions around trans-bodiedness and trans-genderedness in the sphere of cultural productions, ranging from literary texts using explicitly sexualized language and dealing with queer gendered experiences (i.e. Nightwood) to everyday performances of one’s corporeal identity. Downlaod Conference Paper - Where’s the Fun? Sex, Risk, and the Refugee ‘Body’ Shamser Sinha, Anthony Pryce, Shruti Uppal St Bartholomew School of Nursing and Midwifery, Institute of Health Sciences, London, United Kingdom This theoretical article emerges from sexual health research on teenage refugees and asylum-seekers in the UK. The refugee and asylum-seeking body is at the centre of contemporary politicised discourse. Two discourses are particularly apparent. The first involves risk and fear, which have a reciprocal relationship when discussing the refugee body. It is symbolised in fears about ‘bogus asylum-seekers’, ‘porous borders’, the hidden ‘threat’ within and the need to govern it. This is present in casting refugees as carrying risks for ‘us’ in terms of crime, terrorism and the alleged drain put on health and welfare resources by their presence. Institutionally, it is enacted by the government through detention, employment and welfare regulations and dispersal. The second – its alternate- is the refugee body as ‘victim’. It acknowledges many refugees have gone through harrowing experiences we should address, casting them in the role of ‘victim’ and is reflected in health research by work particularly on mental health and isolation. Refugee’s sexual health is on the margins between both discourses. The refugee body is seen as a risky vector of infection through communicable sexually transmitted infections, prompting fears about what might happen to ‘us’ – the first discourse- as well as how to reduce rates of infection for ‘them’ – the second. In terms of the first discourse this has uncomfortable similarities with historical characterisations of the ‘other’ as threatening the bloodline of the pure nation. Love, lust and sex as pleasure are absent in both discourses. Since refugees are particularly stigmatised and oppressed, research is needed into a positive understanding of how to support them as active bodies seeking to enjoy emotional pleasures of lust, love and sex, instead of positioning them within dominant discourses of risk/fear or its alternate ‘victim’ positionality Sexing the Body: Sentiment, Desire, and the Politics of the Erotic in Early American Culture Astrid Fellner University of Vienna, Austria Sexuality, according to Thomas Laqueur, “as a singular and all-important human attribute—the opposite sex—is the product of the late eighteenth century.” (Making Sex 13). Heterosexual difference, the opposition between “male” and “female,” became the crucial point of political and economic pressure at that time, insuring the coordination of male and female bodies, and helping to distinguish between productive and non-productive practices and proper, virtuous, and immoral behavior. As historians of the body have argued, the histories of sexual difference and of sexuality changed significantly from the beginning of the eighteenth-century to its close. The old Galenic model, in which men and women were arrayed according to their degree of metaphysical perfection, their vital heat, along an axis whose telos was male, gave way by the late eighteenth century to a new model of radical dimorphism, of biological divergence. In my paper, I will analyze the organization of intimate relationships in various cultural representations in early America. Contrasting some colonial British American texts (e.g. Edward Taylor’s cross-gendered, erotic poems) with post-Revolutionary texts, I will analyze in what ways formulations of sex and sexuality were radically different from those in the enlightened early Republic. While there was a certain elasticity in notions of gender in Puritan America, post-Revolutionary explanations for the relation of sex and gender located the presence of sexuality in the body. Discussing the anonymous early American novel History of Constantius and Pulchera (1802) and Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette (1797), I will show that sexual difference came to organize all sensual relations. Desire and sensation in these texts testify to what Bruce Burgett calls “an emerging discourse of ‘heterosensuality.’” The difference between “man” and “woman” was seen to generate “natural” attraction, which in liberal thought was not only considered fundamental to society, but was also seen as a prerogative in marriage that secured the transmissibility of culture.
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