Depiction Of Body Research Articles

Kui keha kõneleb. Margit Lõhmuse „Sterne” kui vastuhakk normile

When the body speaks. Margit Lõhmus’ Sterne as a challenge to the norm Keywords: feminism, transgressive literature, women’s writing, prose, queer literature Margit Lõhmus’ book Sterne has received attention for its portrayal of the female body and sexuality, which are presented in a hyperbolic and sometimes caricatured way, departing from conventional norms. This allows the book to be placed within the context of queer literature, understood here as literature that challenges norms. In Sterne, gender identity often does not conform to the expectations of heteronormativity, and gender is not simply divided into male and female. Queerness is also evident in the unexpected sources of pleasure, the characters’ appearances, and the depiction of bodies and relationships. Lõhmus intentionally employs obscene language, focusing on women’s bodily experiences and perspectives on the body and sexuality. Sexual encounters are frequently described as empty or disturbing, while a sense of wholeness is found in solitude. Sex with men is often depicted as alienating. In Sterne, the body is presented outside traditional heteronormative frameworks, with sexual pleasure and arousal occurring in non-sexual situations. Humour plays a significant role, especially through surprising metaphors and self-irony. The book’s transgressive nature is also reflected in its form, as Sterne employs colloquial language to ensure the authenticity of the characters and convey their personal worldview. In some stories, Lõhmus’ style mimics online communication, omitting punctuation and using lowercase letters to emphasize linguistic freedom and the contrast between imagination and reality. The book shifts between seriousness, irony, and grotesque scenes, challenging traditional gender roles and literary conventions. Through this, Lõhmus introduces into Estonian literature a queer work where gender is non-binary, and sexuality is freed from heteronormative constraints.

Peter Michael Martin's Corporeal Visions: Love, Death, and Democracy in Moby-Dick

Abstract: Moby-Dick has been the near-exclusive focus of artist Peter Michael Martin's prolific output—in woodblock print, papercut, sculpture, and photograph—over the past decade. By examining Martin's depictions of bodies—in isolation, in pairs, in collectives—this essay provides a primer on Martin's recent works. The essay begins by considering Martin's portraits of Ishmael, Queequeg, and Ahab in two series of black-and-white photographs, Altered Visions and Call me Ahab. Altered Visions illustrates the union of Queequeg and Ishmael as their embrace transcends physical and social divisions. Call Me Ahab , conversely, emphasizes Ahab's solitude, as he communes only with the "naught beyond" (Melville 159). Juxtaposing scenes of intimacy with emblems of death, these works consider the body as a site of both connection and isolation, friendship and subjugation. The second half of this essay discusses two of Martin's larger-scale works (the mixed-media assemblage Trumped Up Optimism and the woodblock print Above the Rest ), designed for display in public spaces. These works depict bodies en masse as deindividuated crowds under the control of a sole leader, recasting the social visions of Ishmael and Ahab as a conflict between democracy and totalitarianism. Ultimately, I argue, in the nude form, Martin finds an allegory for artistic vulnerability, which enables the radical self-expression Melville champions through Ishmael. Thus, in his depictions of bodies, Martin probes tensions between individual and collective agency and advances "Melvillean vulnerability" as a strategy for social transformation.

Adapting a Persian Magic Realist Novel on Screen: The Case of Women Without Men

Abstract This paper will explore Shirin Neshat’s adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men (1989). A primary focus will be on Neshat’s aesthetic choices related to the creation of space and the depiction of bodies and the extent to which they reflect her exilic condition. Another distinctive aspect to be explored concerns the dialectical relations in the film that visually depict gendered spaces inside homes and in public spaces. A related area here is the representation of an orchard as a heterotopian third space that gives shelter to wounded women. While both the novel and the film portray this orchard as a place of becoming, the film’s garden contains allegorical relations that portray it as a place of imaginary exile. Finally, the paper will argue that the portrayal of wounded female bodies is a political sign and a metaphor for women’s traumatic experiences of patriarchal culture.

BTS other-worlds: Music video and the intermediality of the self-reflexive musical

This close reading of Heartbeat, a 2019 music video by South Korean pop group, BTS, shows how intermedial musical performance generates narrative and meaning through depictions of bodies and movement. The article begins by highlighting the delivery of Heartbeat’s audiovisual narrative through a hybrid set of formal devices linking the music video with cinematic language. The article makes specific intercultural and intermedial links between Heartbeat and self-reflexive classical Hollywood musicals that highlight spontaneity, integration and the audience. Further discussion of Heartbeat focuses on the music video’s intimate address to viewers through song and writing, highlighting a key moment where on-screen text is made to move in a manner resembling dancing bodies – while English-language lyrics are sung in ways that permit multiple meanings. Elements within this music video – such as the use of bodies to bear musical meaning – ultimately connect with larger intermedial contexts and spin-off products, demonstrating that intermediality plays across several levels from the aesthetic to the commercial.

Mapping Bodies, Designing Feminist Icons

Bodies are nuanced, fluid, and political—often combining forms of intersecting and experiential identities. Nevertheless, bodies are frequently missing from maps altogether or, when they are included on maps, they are reduced to points, lines, and polygons. Focusing on iconography, I explore the depiction of bodies in map symbolization through a feminist lens. I apply a feminist semiotic analysis to thirty-eight Maki icons to problematize the ways in which bodies are depicted, abstracted, or erased. I analyze icon symbolization, particularly the presence/absence of bodily forms, the presence/absence of an embodied object, and the icons’ iconicity. My feminist analysis reveals the underlying silences, defaults, and power dynamics within the Maki icon set. I call mapmakers to rethink the depictions of bodies in icons—and the role of “universal” icon sets, more broadly—through a feminist lens. I offer design opportunities as a starting point for such an endeavor.

Fashion, Plastic and Myths in Color

This short article examines a photograph in a 1956 catalogue for the French department store Galeries Lafayette in the context of the country’s postwar modernization, Paris renovations and the development of the readymade garment industry. It relates the production of image to the construction and dissemination of fashion and femininity in the print media. In particular, it notes how the use of changing technologies in image production, notably Kodachrome color film, shaped and exposed these constructions. Drawing on the notion of myth, as formulated by Roland Barthes, this article asks how the image spoke to modernity’s inherent contradictions, notably between old and new, in its depiction of bodies, plastic and synthetic fabric. Finally, it shows why this was particularly relevant in the culture of postwar France.

Love: Art of Emotion 1400–1800 ed. by Angela Hesson, Charles Zika and Matthew Martin

Reviewed by: Love: Art of Emotion 1400–1800 ed. by Angela Hesson, Charles Zika and Matthew Martin Andrea Bubenik Hesson, Angela, Charles Zika, and Matthew Martin, eds, Love: Art of Emotion 1400–1800, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 2017; paperback; pp. xii, 233; fully colour illustrated; R.R.P. AU$49.95; ISBN 9781925432312. Is there any emotion more complex and nuanced than love? It is well known that the ancient Greeks had at least sixteen terms for love in all its forms: from love that is physical (eros) to altruistic (agape), to love of a friend (philia). The Swiss philosopher Denis de Rougement recognized these nuances in his classic book on the subject, Love in the Western World (1956), in which he attempted to survey the evolution of love from a literary perspective, with particular focus on the later emergence of romantic and passionate love. Rougement’s attempt to read [End Page 213] two thousand years of texts through evolving concepts of love is one of the most significant forays in the field of the history of emotions. Surprisingly, a similar history for visual culture remains to be written. Therefore, the present publication is a very welcome one indeed. Love: Art of Emotion 1400–1800 graphic is an impressive and beautifully illustrated catalogue that accompanied the exhibition of the same title at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in 2017. As the principal outcome of a collaboration between the NGV, The University of Melbourne, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions 1100–1800 (CHE), the exhibition and now its catalogue are part of a burgeoning field of historical research in which the emotions are at the forefront rather than receded. The painstaking curation by Angela Hesson deserves to be singled out—it could not have been easy to bring cohesion to this diverse and complex array of objects—as much as her excellent and evocatively titled ‘Silver-sweet and Frantic-mad’ introduction to the catalogue. For those who could not attend the exhibition, this catalogue is a welcome surrogate; those who did will be drawn into happy reminiscence of a thoughtful and often sensual show that was further enriched by accompanying music. The focus is very much on Western art, with the diversity of objects well suited to an emotion that continues to defy facile characterization. Love as embodied in family, friendship, religious devotion, patriotism, and nostalgia are represented not only in the expected paintings and prints but also earthenware bowls, porcelain sculptures, reliquaries, rings, fans, silks, and linens. A significant outcome is to highlight just how varied and rich the NGV collections are, with over two hundred objects chosen for inclusion. The shifts between the micro and the macro, the private and public—tiny painted snuff boxes to large scale canvases—are entirely fitting for the multifarious theme. Objects have lives, and they are very much palpable here. As rich in thought as the objects themselves are the scholarly essays, which invoke the works of art featured in the exhibition and beyond. Anne Dunlop gives a rich discussion of the reception of Ovid, whose poetry was so central to early modern conceptions of love; Patricia Simons explores the spaces of love from gardens, to bathhouses, to taverns; and James Grantham Turner considers depictions of bodies in physical and amorous pursuits. Rituals of love are detailed by Matthew Martin, while Gary Schwartz explores the love of art itself. Some of the most surprising objects featured in the exhibition—such as pendants, rings, and fans—are discussed by curator Angela Hesson and Lisa Beaven, and their characterizations of ‘the erotic charge between collector and objects’ are amongst the most compelling passages in this catalogue. Indeed, it is the ‘the emotional life of objects’ that is perhaps the most striking thematic to emerge. In effect, the choice of works and the timeframe predate the notion of romantic love. Perhaps a significant outcome here is to highlight how relatively recent such a notion really is (as anticipated by Rougement’s book cited above). As Anne [End Page 214] Dunlop points out, the essays and objects to hand ‘suggest just how historically contingent the idea of love always is...

Strangers on a Tram: Space, Time, Power, and Performance in Franz Kafka's ‘Der Fahrgast’ and Ruth Klüger's weiter leben

This article compares two encounters on trams: a scene from Ruth Klüger's weiter leben and Franz Kafka's ‘Der Fahrgast'. It suggests that narrative spaces are performative and narrative time complicates performances of identity. Both scenes construct apparent dichotomies between male and female, old and young, subject and object, binaries that are made ambiguous by the topography of theatricalization and cinema. The article introduces the concepts of 'spatial' and ‘temporal’ concertinas, whereby shifts in perspective alter power dynamics. The analysis suggests that the depiction of bodies, space, and time offers insight into aspects of identity and subjectivity that otherwise remain hidden.

Strangers on a Tram: Space, Time, Power, and Performance in Franz Kafka's ‘Der Fahrgast’ and Ruth Klüger's <em>weiter leben</em>

This article compares two encounters on trams: a scene from Ruth Klüger's weiter leben and Franz Kafka's ‘Der Fahrgast'. It suggests that narrative spaces are performative and narrative time complicates performances of identity. Both scenes construct apparent dichotomies between male and female, old and young, subject and object, binaries that are made ambiguous by the topography of theatricalization and cinema. The article introduces the concepts of 'spatial' and ‘temporal’ concertinas, whereby shifts in perspective alter power dynamics. The analysis suggests that the depiction of bodies, space, and time offers insight into aspects of identity and subjectivity that otherwise remain hidden.

Reading the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (review)

Reviewed by: Reading the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel Rebecca Haidt Juliet McMaster . Reading the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2004. xviii+194pp. £50; US$75 (hb). ISBN 978-1-4039-3314-0. This engaging study takes as its focus "contemporary discourses on the body that fed into fictional practice, especially those that produced codes of meaning in physical appearance" (xi), examining (as promised) a wide range of discourses channelled through texts on theories of the passions, physiognomics, pathognomics, actors' manuals, treatises on the depictions of bodies in painting, or medical theories of disease as manifest on bodies. McMaster's particular fascination throughout the book is "the body and what it can—and can't—tell us about the mind" with regard to both the characters created by authors, and the readers who responded to detailed fictional explorations of mind-body relationships (25). "A great deal of what we know about the inner workings of characters in eighteenth-century fiction is limited to what we can find out by tracking their bodily signs," observes McMaster; reference to "who blushes, sighs, turns pale, trembles, stammers, and faints is crucial for following psychological action, and often it is our only means of knowing who feels what" (136). McMaster's argument is that eighteenth-century literature is all about the reading of bodies, whether by characters within literary works, or by audiences who (according to McMaster) were expected by authors to "be as educated as a skilled physician in reading signs in the body to arrive at their conclusions about what goes on in the mind" (24). McMaster examines select seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European theories of the body, and while she principally draws on British theoretical sources (Bulwer, Siddons, Reynolds, Hogarth), her reading of Lavater, della Porta, Descartes, and LeBrun enriches her contextualization of what is happening in English novels of the period. Some chapters in Reading the Body provide discussion of interrelated discourses around the legibility of facial expressions, gestures (such as those held most appropriate to accompany oratory and theatrical declamation), and the manifestation of the passions; other chapters offer targeted interpretations of particular novels as read through the lens of body-mind relationships. For example, chapter 4, "Facial Expression: The Mind's Construction in the Face," brings [End Page 118] together pathognomics, Reynolds's Discourses on Painting, and Cartesian thinking on the external signs of the passions in an analysis of the ways in which conventions of painting, drama, and the novel cross-referenced one another and "gave the reading public a vocabulary and mode of discussion for aspects of experience and representation which were familiar, but which they had not hitherto found means to articulate" (83); while chapter 7, "Body Language Censored: Camilla " is dedicated to a reading of Frances Burney's novel as "a sustained meditation on the relation of mind to body, and the ways in which the one can be figured forth in the other" (148). The eight chapters of McMaster's study are illustrated by compelling eighteenth-century images that bolster the author's contentions. Though her enthusiasm for the material is infectious, the author makes some unsupported assertions about what audiences might have believed during the period, and seems to work with a rather limited archive of resources. For example, in chapter 1, "The Body inside the Skin," McMaster briefly discusses metaphors of the crisis of disease, and claims that "the effective physician [in the eighteenth century] has needed to be skilled in ministering to the mind as well as to the body" (9). Yet this claim is unsupported by reference to any medical textbook, physician's correspondence, or physiological treatise. Given the rich European repertoire of eighteenth-century complaints about doctors, it is not self-evident that doctors would have been expected to have such skills; thus it would have been helpful to learn of the sources that McMaster might have drawn on in making such an assertion. In the chapter "Physiognomy: The Index of the Mind," McMaster notes "the contested nature of the doctrine [of physiognomics], as different authorities and novelists took up their positions" (51), but does not provide much evidence concerning the authorities...