Deviant Bodies Research Articles

‘Indelible Characters’

ABSTRACTSince the late nineteenth-century works of criminologists Lombroso and Lacassagne, tattoos in Europe have been commonly associated with deviant bodies. Like many other studies of tattoos of non-indigenous origin, the locus of our research is the convict body. Given the corporeal emphasis of prison records, we argue that tattoos form a crucial part of the power dynamic. Tattoos in the carceral context embody an inherent paradox of their being a component in the reidentification of ‘habitual criminals’. We argue that their presence can be regarded as an expression of convict agency: by the act of imprinting unique identifiers on their bodies, convicts boldly defied the official gaze, while equally their description in official records exacted power over the deviant body. Cursory findings show an alignment with other national studies; corporeal inscriptions in Ireland were more prevalent in men's prisons than women's and associated, however loosely, with certain occupations. For instance, maritime and military motifs find representation. Recidivists were more likely to have tattoos than first-time offenders; inscriptions were described as monotone, rudimentary in design and incorporated a limited range of impressions. Further to our argument that tattoos form an expression of convict defiance of prison authority, we have found an unusual idiosyncrasy in the convict record, that is, that the agency of photography, while undermined in general terms, was manipulated by prison officers.

Taste in the Anthropocene: The Emergence of “Thing-power” in Food Gardens

Taste in the Anthropocene: The Emergence of “Thing-power” in Food Gardens

Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transitional Jamaica, by Deborah A. Thomas

Exceptional Violence. Embodied Citizenship in Transitional Jamaica, by Deborah A. Thomas. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2012. xiv, 298 pp. $84.95 US (cloth). Post-independence discussions about Jamaica's violence range from esoteric examinations, domestic- and international-research reports and statistical rankings, to more sophisticated theorizing that attribute violence to a number of economic, social, and political factors. Using an anthropological lens, Deborah Thomas acknowledges traditional sociological and criminological explanations, but also challenges, expands, and locates the problem within the historical context of slavery with its practice of social exclusion, alienation, and inequalities. Thomas uses the discussion of violence to rethink the post-colony from the perspective of an earlier imperial moment, and by so doing, she interrogates particular forms of violence, that for her, foundational to the development and deployment of ideologies regarding (p. 3). For Thomas, two related themes are repeated: one examines and its relationship to history, violence, and practices of citizenship; the other explores culture and its relationship to representation, debates about the appropriateness and availability of representations, notions of who has the power to create representations, and the relationships between representation and economic development (p. 4). She situates violence within the colonial epoch. This systematic interrogation sets the context for understanding possession and perception of citizenship, its meaning, impact, representations, and power relations in the experience of violence. Current manifestations of violence in Jamaica have been observed in other post-colonial societies. Indeed, the discussion underscores how historic injustices are overlaid on contemporary Jamaican cultural and political practices and institutions, thereby replicating, in different forms, that which the colonial made dominant. The chapters are treated topically. The introduction, entitled Moving Bodies and subtitled Reluctant Witnessing articulates how violence pervades the psyche of government and citizens. Consequently, levels of interpersonal violence are symptomatic of historical trajectories of structural violence. The explication of Dead Bodies in Chapter one lays the groundwork for the understanding that patterns of authority in the political sphere are extensions of practices from colonial period (p. 7). Chapter two invokes the notion of Deviant Bodies to contextualize the effects of slavery on family formation, as well as provide the scaffolding for understanding culturalist notions of poverty and violence. The discussion of Spectacular Bodies in Chapter three dismisses the attribution of violence in Jamaica to the influence of American media, suggesting instead that such interpretation obscures earlier histories of imperialista and slavery, and specifically the transnational organization of violence. Instead, spectacular forms of punishment and discipline during slavery better account for the more performative dimensions of current killings. Public Bodies, in Chapter Four, juxtaposed narratives and counter-narratives about the emancipation statute--Redemption Song--to explore the crisis. This discussion deconstructs the superimpositions of norms related to gender, sexuality, and family, and thereby underscores how these control mechanisms serve as a foundation for respectability. The most poignant articulation of interrupted citizenship is outlined in Chapter five. …

Freakery and the Discursive Limits of Be-ing in Julia Ward Howe's <em>The Hermaphrodite</em>

In 1841 Julia Ward visited Perkins Institution for Blind and was swept away by noble rider on a noble steed whose arrival claimed her attention (Howe, Reminiscences 82). Ward had not journeyed to Perkins to see that man, Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she would go on to marry in 1843. Instead, she was there to see Bridgman, his protegee. Under Howe's tutelage, had become first blind and deaf person to be able to communicate. She was a miracle, a beacon of hope, and a symbol of potential of science to heal humanity's ills and unlock sours greatest potential. (1) But she was also, various observers described her, an almost peculiar case a most remarkable being, a wonderful child (Stevens 273; Laura Bridgman Feb. 1841, 33; Laura Bridgman 15 May 1843, 145). She was not a thing, perhaps, but not a whole person--a subject or an agent--either. Ironically, Bridgman's objectification resulted from Howe's attempts to counter public understandings of disabled individuals less than human (Klages 118, 144-45). To that end, he publicized her achievements in public exhibitions and through his published records. Bridgman's status as a major tourist attraction in Boston's guidebooks attests to popularity of her public appearances (Gitter 5). Nearly popular herself were Howe's widely circulated annual reports of her physical, intellectual and moral progress, which contained information on everything from her head measurements to her growing vocabulary to her manipulative relationships (Laura Bridgman 1 Feb. 1841, 41). (2) Rather than fully humanizing Bridgman, Howe's narrative control rendered her symbol to be described and interpreted by others, an image to be manipulated, much like, Elisabeth Gitter observes, freaks in P. T. Barnum's freak shows (Klages 144; Gitter 106). And if was freak, Howe was her manager, who, [no less than Barnum ... mastered art of manipulating public's interest in her story, capitalizing on their concern in order to advance both his career and his institution (Freeberg 3). (3) As Samuel Gridley Howe's wife, Julia Ward Howe also benefited from an anomalous body, albeit in more personal and psychological ways. In approximately 1846 she began crafting what was in 2004 published The Hermaphrodite but what she called the history of a strange being (Scrap-book 30). (4) It is worth remarking that her protagonist, Laurence, intersexual extraordinary case of anomalous humanity, has much in common with Laura, blind and deaf anomalously conditioned human spirit who made Samuel Gridley Howe famous (Howe, Hermaphrodite 194; Stevens 273). Both and Laurence are individuals ensnared in a web of popular and scientific discourses that converged in concurrent production of normal and so-called deviant bodies; both of their stories are infused with language of otherness; and both are objectified and spoken of but rarely spoken to. However, at least one key difference separates and Laurence, and it is this: Laurence has a voice. Samuel Gridley Howe's control of Bridgman's story follows a long tradition of denying disabled people's ability to speak for themselves. (5) By contrast, Julia Ward Howe's Laurence self-narrates, telling his story in first person. In giving Laurence a voice, Howe offers a kind of counternarrative to those stories that had muted, or entirely silenced, disabled. Her use of first person provides an intimate glimpse into emotional and relational consequences of othering process deployed in categorization of bodies. Scholars from a number of theoretical backgrounds have unpacked ways that popular entertainments such freak shows and elite professions such medicine and comparative anatomy converged in their attempts to determine and stabilize physical and behavioral norms for body. (6) These and other discourses focused both on interior biological differences that render [ed] invisible and on exterior ambiguities that freak shows--with their displays of hermaphrodites, dwarves, giants, and others--made patently visible (Wiegman 31). …

Deviant bodies, stigmatized identities, and racist acts: examining the experiences of African-American gamers in Xbox Live

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how minority gamers, particularly African-American males, are subject to the label of deviant within the virtual gaming community of Xbox Live. They are labeled deviant based on the stigma of their physical identity – blackness, through a process of linguistic profiling. By employing virtual ethnography, the author identifies a process that leads to racism based on how the black gamer sounds within the space. The act of racism emerges through a process involving questioning, provoking, instigating, and ultimately racism. Many black gamers have normalized these racist experiences and have accepted the label of deviant placed upon their bodies.

From the Freak Show to the Living Room: Cultural Representations of Dwarfism and Obesity1

This article examines how cultural representations of deviant bodies vary based on historically informed narratives of bodily stigma. Using content analysis of 40 episodes of reality television programming, I contrast cultural representations of dwarfism and obesity. Over time, dwarfism became constructed as an identity project with the aim of bodily acceptance, whereas obesity became regarded as a body project with the goal of body transformation through weight loss. The mostly positive historical characterizations of dwarfs allowed them to easily adopt the tenets of the disability rights movement as they evolved from freak show performances to television as an educational platform. They have adopted a social model of disability, positive social identity, self‐acceptance, and full social participation. By contrast, the past and contemporary representations of obesity have been overwhelmingly negative. Obese freak show performers were openly mocked, and classifying obesity as a disability has not yet gained traction as a civil rights movement. Instead, obesity is viewed through the lens of individual responsibility and limits of social participation are emphasized. Body modification through weight loss constructs an identity based on self‐change. Generally, this article suggests that cultural representations as de‐stigmatization projects are enabled or constrained by historical factors and the nature of the bodily stigma.

Looking good and judging gazes: The relationship between body ideals, body satisfaction and body practices among Norwegian men and women

This article compares how people with normal bodies and bodies that deviate from dominant media-depicted body ideals, live with and accept their bodies. Media images of ideal bodies encompass judging gazes. These gazes affect and discipline people and may make it challenging for them to accept their bodies. The data material is part of the interdisciplinary Nordic project called “Beauty comes from within: looking good as a challenge in health promotion”. Based on 20 interviews with Norwegian men and women, of whom 10 have particular appearance-related problems, the article discusses the relationship between the media-depicted body ideals, descriptions by informants of what a good-looking body is, body satisfaction and body practices. The article shows resonance between how people describe good-looking bodies and satisfaction or not with own bodies. Women express more dissatisfaction with their bodies than men, but the article shows that many have strategies for trying to accept their bodies as they are. The comparative perspective highlight that the people having deviant bodies, more than those with normal bodies, balance the idea of “being myself” with the idea of “doing the best out of my (bodily) situation”. Most interestingly, they show that it is harder to accept handicaps that are changeable, like overweight, than harelips, deformed legs and skin injuries. As such, overweight becomes a double burden.

O corpo intersex e a politização do abjeto em XXY

What can the intersex body tell us? How does this issue get more complex if we think about its representation in the media, specially in cinema? In this article, starting from Lucia Puenzo's XXY, we pose these and other questions related to deviant bodies and desires. With a subversive and non-pathologizing discourse, XXY proposes a careful look at the subjectivities of these experiences. We argue that the film, in resonance with the queer studies, is alert to the politicization of the abject bodies.

Nuns, Dykes, Drugs and Gendered Bodies: An Autoethnography of a Lesbian Feminist’s Journey Through ‘Good Time’ Sociology

This article provides an autoethnographic account of my personal journey through ‘good time’ sociology. Telling my story involves recounting my experience as a Catholic nun and closeted lesbian in 1970s’ USA; providing a picture of what it was like to do the first PhD on lesbians in the UK; explaining the impact of drugs and alcohol research on my lesbian feminist sociological imagination and reflecting upon the place of ‘deviant bodies’ in the new genetics and generally in society. My stories are framed by the backdrop of being a lesbian feminist sociologist in academia and informed by a small yet, emerging body of work by LGBT scholars who use autoethnography. Autoethnography is introduced as a methodological tool for speaking and writing reflexively about being out in academia. I demonstrate that telling one’s story can become a gift — ‘a telling creating conversations that transcends our traumas’ and a way of healing ourselves and others.

475° FROM SEPTEMBER 11

Under US leadership, political structures in the post-9/11 world have developed and deployed rhetorical techniques aimed at identifying, excluding, and prosecuting specific bodies. In this paper, we analyze governmental and cultural rhetoric in the United States during 2006 on the issues of immigration (including immigration policies and proposed reform) and same-sex marriage (including bans to same-sex marriage via constitutional amendments), and we connect the rhetorical devices used to address these two concerns with constructions of US citizenship, notions of Americanness and the ongoing waging of war. Specifically, we highlight the conversion of ‘terrorists,’ immigrants, and same-sex couples into deviant bodies detached from US mainstream culture. That is to say, we concentrate on the social transformation of these bodies into ‘brown’ bodies – bodies perceived as threats and as requiring strict containment.

Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility: Transgender Bodies and U.S. State Surveillance After 9/11

This article considers recent measures of U.S. state surveillance that may first appear unrelated to transgender people, to demonstrate that such policies are in fact deeply rooted in the maintenance and enforcement of normatively gendered bodies, behaviors and identities. The paper argues that surveillance of these bodies centers less on their identification as transgender per se than it does on the perceived deception underlying transgressive or non-normative gender presentation. Finally, the paper argues that the primary strategies and responses offered by transgender advocacy organizations tend to reconsolidate U.S. nationalism and support the increased policing of deviant bodies.

Corporeal Knowledges and Deviant Bodies: Perceiving the Fat Body

The empiricist logic of humanism insists that we can know the essence of something through observation. However, it is my aim in this paper to challenge this notion by asserting that empirical observation is never neutral, but always laden with cultural meanings, specificities and prejudices. I argue that medical science is founded in a humanist empiricism in order to make bodies intelligible as “normal” or “pathological”, depending on a range of bodily markers. In designating a body as “normal”, the clinician uses measures of “sameness” that are underpinned by a deeper concern for normalisation. In upholding the norm/pathology binary in medical discourse, what is effected is a neglect of a recognition of the socio-cultural function of the categories of “normal” and “pathological”, and medical participation in the way these terms come to “mean” in lay society, and their sedimentation in pre-conscious practices of perception. The central task of this paper is to examine the “clinical gaze”, and moreover the consultation between the paternalistic and rational figure of the doctor and the patient/subject, understood simply as a malfunctioning machine in need of restoration to normality. Drawing on the work of Linda Alcoff, I argue that what is ignored in medical discourse is the persistence and irrevocability of tacit bodily knowledges that construct us within every context, not least the privileged “objective” space of medical consultation and diagnostics.

Deviant Bodies: Corporeal Otherness in Contemporary Wome's Writing

In recent years, the body has emerged as a recurrent trope in literary works exploring issues related to migration, exile and cultural identity. Indeed, many authors currently living and writing in France have placed the ethnic minority body at the centre of their work in order to examine what Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla have called 'embodied deviance' the ways in which certain body types are figured as deviant in relation to the norm. 1 Although written in very different styles, the three texts to be discussed in this article Marlene Amar's La Femme sans tete (1993), Fawzia Zouari's Ce pays dontje meurs (1999) and Bessora's 53cm (1999)2all focus on the theme of corporeal Otherness. In each of these works, all of which can be described as forms of life writing, a young woman's attitude towards her body in the context of immigration or exile is used to address the relationship between the social body and its Others. Through their emphasis on rewriting, these works raise important questions about the ways in which the 'deviant' (ethnic) body is inscribed within the dominant cultural group, and all highlight the need for self-representation as a form of corrective vision.

Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture

Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture

Book Reviews

Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla. eds. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 416 pages.

Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Science and Difference in Popular Culture edited by Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla

Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Science and Difference in Popular Culture edited by Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla

State Formation and Property—Reflections on the Political Technologies of Space in Central America

The paper analyzes state formation as the process whereby power/knowledge complexes organize, use and produce social space. In particular the focus is placed on private land ownership as a historical form of land possession. Privatization of land as a technique of government produced a homogeneous fragmentation of space, and the argument made in the paper is that this space became the primary technique in the construction of dualized Salvadorean society based on the exclusion from the political nation of a large group of delinquent and deviant bodies that should be policed, and the inclusion in the political nation of a small group of land owning individuals that took part in politics.

Deviant eyes, deviant bodies: sexual re-orientations in film and video

Engaging feminist and queer theory ranging from Nancy Chodorow to Judith Butler to Valerie Solanis's SCUM Manifesto, Straayer considers the wealth of films made by and for nontraditional viewers. Straayer investigation ranges from Stella Dallas to Mrs. Doubtfire, experimental lesbian and gay films from the classic Maedchen in Uniform to the contemporary Go Fish, and music video icons such as David Bowie, Dead or Alive, and Divine to investigate transgressions of traditional gender boundaries.

Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture.

Introduction: Mapping Embodied Deviance N Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla Gender, Race and Nation: The Comparative Anatomy of OHottentotO Women in Europe, 1815ETH1817 N Anne Fausto-Sterling Framed: The Deaf in the Harem N Nicholas Mirzoeff Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman: The Salvation Army in British India N Rachel Tolen This Norm Which Is Not One: Reading the Female Body in LombrosoOs Anthropology N David G. Horn Anxious Slippages between OUsO and OThemO: A Brief History of the Scientific Search for Homosexual Bodies N Jennifer Terry The Destruction of OLives Not Worth LivingO NRobert N. Proctor Domesticity in the Federal Indian Schools: The Power of Authority Over Mind and Body N K. Tsianina Lomawaima Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality N Carol Groneman Theatres of Madness N Susan Jahoda The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture N Jacqueline Urla and Alan Swedlund Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sexual Addiction N Janice Irvine Between Innocence and Safety: Epidemiologic and Popular Constructions of Young PeopleOs Need for Safe Sex N Cindy Patton The Hen That CanOt Lay an Egg (OBu Xia Dan De Mu JiO): Concepts of Female Infertility in Modern China N Lisa Handwerker The Media-fed Gene: Stories of Gender and Race N Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee Notes on Contributors Index