The Culture of the Body: Genealogies of Modernity by Dalia Judovitz (review)

Abstract

of postmodernityboth abide by and eschew the logic of such arguments. Rather than unqualifiedindeterminism,postmoderncultureexhibitspartialindeterminism, where significationis multiple and shifts according to context while still rendering communication possible. Chapter 2, 'Ambivalence', traces psychoanalyticaltheories by Lacan, Lyotard, Deleuze, and Guattari which have converged with postmodern work. Showing how these models transformthe understandingof the self as limited consciousness, Nash suggests that they share a view of identity that hinges upon the notion of ambivalence:'a condition of mind in which conflictingvalues are allowed to share the space and investment of our attention' (p. 55). To explain the nature of such ambivalenceNash introducesthe notion of 'narcissance':a processof self-alienation and coping with inner contradictions. In 'Waysof Speaking',Nash explores the longing, sense of loss or absence, oscillations , tensions,paranoiaand dissolutionthat characterizethe postmodernsubject, or 'narcissant'.Nash moves from patterns of thought to ways of acting in postmodern culture, particularlyin the domains of affect and economy. Postmodern currentsinduce 'a chilling frissonbetween contradictorystates' (p. I41).Emotion is not fullydisplacedinto sensationbut ratherinto sentimentalambivalencecharacterized by the volatility and undecidabilityof feelings. Analogously, material culture promises happiness and authenticitythrough the accumulation and fetishizationof goods. Yet material goods do not bring happiness, nor materialismfulfilment. 'Living through Postmodernity' considers the social coherence and division of groupsin this era. In groups,as with Nash's model of the self,the longing for coherence is never satisfied,while indeterminacy is never absolute. This liminal sense of the self is identified, not as a problem, but 'more potently creative of meaning' (p. 248). Nash stimulatesa readiness to 'lend an ear and hear what and who else -other, different- is there, and [be] preparedto be surprised'.This book should prove thought-provoking. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CLAUDIA MOSOVICI The Cultureof the Body: Genealogies of Modernity.By DALIAJUDOVITZ. (The Body in Theory) Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press. 2001. 235 pp. $59.50; ?37 (pbk $19.95; ?12.50). ISBN: 0-472-09742-3(pbk 0-472-06742-7). This book challengesus to rethinknotions of embodiment, identity, and modernity in the light of postmodern and poststructuralisttheory. Over thirty years such theory has enabled us to regard the body as a material reality invested with social meanings by its modes of representation.Yet postmodern debates have reacted against two movements associatedwith modernity:the late-nineteenth- and earlytwentieth -centurymovement of modernism and, especially in French theory, the values associatedwith Enlightenmentrationalismand empiricism.In its genealogical studyof representationsof the body, this book shiftsthe focus of the postmodern critique of modernity to the Renaissance, and so illuminateshistoricalresonances with currentways of thought. Dalia Judovitz notes the cultural tension between two formulations of the body that emerged during the Renaissance:the 'baroque' and the Cartesian. She examines the works of Montaigne (1533-I592) and d'Urf (1567-I625) to trace an of postmodernityboth abide by and eschew the logic of such arguments. Rather than unqualifiedindeterminism,postmoderncultureexhibitspartialindeterminism, where significationis multiple and shifts according to context while still rendering communication possible. Chapter 2, 'Ambivalence', traces psychoanalyticaltheories by Lacan, Lyotard, Deleuze, and Guattari which have converged with postmodern work. Showing how these models transformthe understandingof the self as limited consciousness, Nash suggests that they share a view of identity that hinges upon the notion of ambivalence:'a condition of mind in which conflictingvalues are allowed to share the space and investment of our attention' (p. 55). To explain the nature of such ambivalenceNash introducesthe notion of 'narcissance':a processof self-alienation and coping with inner contradictions. In 'Waysof Speaking',Nash explores the longing, sense of loss or absence, oscillations , tensions,paranoiaand dissolutionthat characterizethe postmodernsubject, or 'narcissant'.Nash moves from patterns of thought to ways of acting in postmodern culture, particularlyin the domains of affect and economy. Postmodern currentsinduce 'a chilling frissonbetween contradictorystates' (p. I41).Emotion is not fullydisplacedinto sensationbut ratherinto sentimentalambivalencecharacterized by the volatility and undecidabilityof feelings. Analogously, material culture promises happiness and authenticitythrough the accumulation and fetishizationof goods. Yet material goods do not bring happiness, nor materialismfulfilment. 'Living through Postmodernity' considers the social coherence and division of groupsin this era. In groups,as with Nash's model of the self,the longing for coherence is never satisfied,while indeterminacy is never absolute. This liminal sense of the self is identified, not as a problem, but 'more...