Impossible Bodies Research Articles

Regimes of Visibility in the Global Parkour

Abstract Parkour is often defined through its strikingly visual dimension with breathtaking images of leaps covering amazing distances, recordings of seemingly impossible body movements and flying bodies apparently no longer constrained by gravity. However, the basic idea behind parkour is to find the most efficient or direct path as one crosses from one point to another while overcoming all obstacles using only one’s bodily capacities. No additional tools are used or are necessary. The seemingly weightless traceurs and traceuses (parkour practitioners) run, jump and climb through public and digital space. At the same time, they produce visual footage of their best movements. As in other sporting cultures, such as skateboarding, surfing or climbing, the productions of visual material and the visual representation of the sports practices are interrelated. This hints at an entangled relationship between parkour and media in its various forms and aspects. In the following article, parkour will be described as a mediatized global cultural practice with a focus on established regimes of visibility. The analysis will be conducted from a local Moroccan and gendered perspective and using an ethnographic approach.

On Being Impossible: Thoughts on Ethnicity, Embodiment and Kinship

ABSTRACT Who is an impossible body? An impossible body is the antithesis of the normative subject upon which our everyday lives are premised. An impossible body is hidden from view in popular culture, is maligned in social and economic contexts, is irrelevant to the discussion of policy. This ‘impossibility’ may be rebellious, it may be painful, but it may also offer opportunities for a shift in thinking. In considering which bodies and lives are considered normative and, as the foil, which are seen as different, we may expose the conditions of impossibility, the pitfalls of this precarious terrain, and the opportunities which emerge from the margins. This article aims to use a range of autoethnographic approaches to consider what may be learned by thinking about impossible bodies through the three lenses of ethnicity, embodiment and kinship.

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Screen resistance: New Anatomies of Beauty?

If “Hollywood films shape and express the way we see—and don’t see—our bodies, our selves” (Chris Holmlund, Impossible Bodies, 3), in an industry where “director and dialog matter less to box office take, while bodily spectacle and blasting sound matter more” (Ibid.), is there any room left for alternative discourses on the body on screen? While the dominant discourse of bodily spectacle looms large, with the development of franchise films in the past decade in particular, sensibilities to what bodies do what on screen, and how, have developed, testifying to a complex spectatorial engagement with the phenomenon. Meanwhile, television series have secured their slot in the entertainment business, competing with multi-million-dollar feature films for viewers’ attention. And while bodies on screen are still central to their attractiveness, the nature of these bodies begs attention: a gangly crew of children in Stranger Things, nerds and geeks in The Big Bang Theory, all matter of grotesque characters in American Horror Story, an African American female lead in How to Get Away with Murder or Scandal. As Hollywood regularly struggles with accusations of whitewashing and sexism in its most popular vehicles, popular TV fiction chips at the ideological edifice, promoting a more diverse visual environment. Yet it is a challenge that a handful of films are also trying to meet, encountering opposition proportionate to their intended viewership. This article examines how resistance to the promotion of “spectacular bodies” is developing on screens large and small and how bodily spectacle has become a political and cultural battleground. Attention focuses primarily on the female body and how its relationship to beauty as a generic expectation is problematized, concentrating on recent tv shows, (How to Get Away with Murder, Dietland, Girls), and films (Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford, 2016 and Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve, 2017).

De territorios-cuerpos imposibles y sus estésis de re-existencia.

El sistema de género moderno/colonial que comenzó a erigirse durante el siglo XVI, requirió de ciertas tecnologías de clasificación social como las de engeneramiento y racialización a partir de las cuales clasificar y organizar los cuerpos posibles y expulsar los cuerpos imposibles, en el sentido de no pasibles de “pro-yecto” en el mundo capitalista - moderno/colonial y patriarcal. La política y estesis de lo imposible que ofrecen los feminismos Abya Yaya intervienen las ontologías del cuerpo y la fundación de “lo común” desde un gesto político que torsiona a partir de lo imposible el orden de lo factible, haciendo de su praxis del pensar epistemologías desde la supervivencia para la re-existencia estésica. En esta torsión establecen diálogos y desplazamientos con otras expresiones del feminismo y con otras perspectivas críticas descoloniales. En lo que sigue, recorreremos los diálogos y desplazamientos que nutren este gesto de re-existencia.

Reflexiones en torno a lo indecible y lo inenarrable. Una propuesta metodológica para el estudio de experiencias traumáticas

En el estudio de narrativas que tienen que ver con la experiencia traumática (E.T.) de la violencia sexual, las relaciones que construimos entre/con las personas que intervienen en una investigación tienen toda una dimensión sensitiva- corporal imposible de eludir a la hora de construir los materiales de análisis. En este artículo me propongo, por un lado, reflexionar- justamente- sobre estas relaciones que se construyen en campo, incorporando al corpus de análisis los registros experienciales del/a investigador/a a la hora de reflexionar para, por otro lado, poner al alcance del lector una propuesta metodológica para el abordaje de narrativas que tienen que ver con experiencias traumáticas. A partir de (y gracias a) esta vigilancia epistemológica poner en crisis algunas técnicas de recolección de datos tradicionales y preguntarnos por otras maneras de abordar-pensar-sentir y sistematizar relatos de experiencias traumáticas.

Swedes, Mormons, and Impossible Bodies: Scandinavian Whiteness in the American West

Research Article| July 01 2017 Swedes, Mormons, and Impossible Bodies: Scandinavian Whiteness in the American West Lisa Locascio Lisa Locascio Wesleyan University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scandinavian Studies (2017) 89 (2): 200–216. https://doi.org/10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0200 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Lisa Locascio; Swedes, Mormons, and Impossible Bodies: Scandinavian Whiteness in the American West. Scandinavian Studies 1 January 2017; 89 (2): 200–216. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0200 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressScandinavian Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Configural processing in body posture recognition

The body inversion effect is the finding that inverted body posture pictures are more difficult to recognize than upright body posture pictures are. The present study reinvestigated the body inversion effect in human observers using behavioral and eye movement measures to explore whether the body inversion effect correlates with specific eye movement features. Results showed that body postures elicited a robust and stable body inversion effect in reaction time throughout the experimental sessions. Eye-tracking data showed that the body inversion effect was robust only in the first fixation duration, but not in the second fixation duration. The analysis of the regions of interest showed that most fixations were located in the upper body for both the upright and the inverted body postures. Compared with inverted body postures, the upright postures led to a shorter reaction time and a shorter first fixation duration, but a larger portion of time to fixate on the head region, suggesting that participants tended to use head as a reference point to process upright body postures. For both the behavioral and the eye movement measures, the body inversion effect was robust for biomechanically possible body postures. However, for biomechanically impossible body postures (with angular manipulation of two joints), the effect was mixed. Although the error rate failed to show the body inversion effect, the reaction time measure and most eye movement measures, however, showed a body inversion effect. Overall, these results suggested that upright body postures are processed in expertise recognition and are processed configurally by human observers.

Infant and adult perceptions of possible and impossible body movements: An eye-tracking study

This study investigated how infants perceive and interpret human body movement. We recorded the eye movements and pupil sizes of 9- and 12-month-old infants and of adults (N=14 per group) as they observed animation clips of biomechanically possible and impossible arm movements performed by a human and by a humanoid robot. Both 12-month-old infants and adults spent more time looking at the elbows during impossible compared with possible arm movements, irrespective of the appearance of the actor. These results suggest that by 12months of age, infants recognize biomechanical constraints on how arms move, and they extend this knowledge to humanoid robots. Adults exhibited more pupil dilation in response to the human’s impossible arm movements compared with the possible ones, but 9- and 12-month-old infants showed no differential pupil dilation to the same actions. This finding suggests that the processing of human body movements might still be immature in 12-month-olds, as they did not show an emotional response to biomechanically impossible body movements. We discuss these findings in relation to the hypothesis that perception of others’ body movements relies upon the infant’s own sensorimotor experience.

Impossible Bodies, Invisible Battles: Feminist Perspectives on the Psychological Research on and Treatment of Eating Disorders in Queer Women

Queer women have not been adequately represented in the literature on eating disorders, and as such, ideas about eating disorders in queer women are often rooted in stereotypes. This article aims to synthesize the research on eating disorders in queer women, with an emphasis on existing shortcomings and necessary future directions. A critique of current literature and existing findings related to eating and body image problems in queer women are presented, followed by a discussion of the current disjuncture between cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatment for eating disorders and culturally competent modifications of CBT for queer clients. Recommendations for the integration of feminist methods in research and practice are made, with the emphasis that improved understanding of sexually diverse women's experiences with eating disorders will create more accurate research findings, better treatment options for such clients, and a richer and more nuanced understanding of eating disorders in general.

Sixth Finger Gospel

161 MARK WAGENAAR SIXTH FINGER GOSPEL Blue Ridge blued by a sundown dusk aethereal as mist, as the bankbound pines let down their roots into the creek. Duck’s head a green fuse in the water, each drop it shakes off a sunlit moon-shadowed city, a city where I meet you for the first time each morning, where the new cathedrals are built with the languages we lose each day, even when we’re sleeping. I don’t know how to explain the dream we shared the same night an ocean apart, & instead thumb words like alchemy thrushsong resurrection. I don’t know why the moonlight, a fire kindled in salt, leads to an altar ten thousand steps in any direction, something we feel like a phantom limb, phantom days, altardark at the edge of all things. It may have gone its entire life without being seen, the owl horned in a nearby fir, such sidereal longing in between the pulse of someone waiting to hear it, because nothing returns from its cry, no one was there when Orpheus turned the day he climbed out of one hell & into another. No one knows how to measure an absence, drop-sized, city-sized, or a song that reaches the underworld. Here’s the first of the ten thousand, cicadas’ high drone in the trees 162 like old clocks winding down, the sound of their new bodies, their impossible bodies, the bodies they’ll leave behind when their song stops & they move like the rinsed rainlight through the spiked branches towards the translucent chute, the opening in the air only they can see, soon, like us, & soon. ...

Eating disorders in men: a review of the literature

Eating disorders have long been perceived to occur primarily in women; few disorders in general medicine or psychiatry exhibit such a skew in gender distribution. Men and women with eating disorders share common risk factors and exhibit some overlap in clinical presentation, but important differences do exist. Determining which factors best explain these differences remain uncertain. Furthermore, despite a marked increase in the incidence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa in women over the last 50 years, the awareness of eating disorders in men remains low. This is in spite of the fact that men represent 10‐20% of cases of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa and up to 40% of cases of binge eating disorder. Similarly, recent research has focused on the assumption and stereotype that eating disorders in men are associated with homosexuality, when male body image objectification and body dissatisfaction are also widespread in younger heterosexual men who are being increasingly confronted with the same impossible body image ideals that already challenge women and gay men. The stigma of being a man with an eating disorder continues, and we persist in attempting to fit men with eating disorders into a theoretical and clinical framework largely focused on the physical, psychological, and emotional development of women. This article reviews the literature on eating disorders in men and explores the factors that may explain this gender discrepancy.

The Impossible Bodies

This paper attempts to engage with theoretical discourses to address these intersections of gender, body, and space in the forefront of contemporary Chinese visual artists' radical performances. From Cui Xiuwen's scandalous video installation Lady's of the female bathroom in Tianshang Renjian Hotel to Ma Liuming's iconic androgynous walk on the Great Wall, contemporary Chinese visual/performance artists have challenged the limits and borders of body as art in radically experimental ways. Feminist art has been liberated from female painting in the post-socialist era, and gender hierarchy and norms have been more profoundly critiqued in these performative events. Pressed by the post-socialist political conditions, market economy, the influence of western art in the era of late capitalism, and the Confucian-Taoist tradition, the Chinese artists have embarked on an experimental journey, attempting to articulate a newness of their complicated lived experiences and to call for social and political transformations.

Virtual lesion of ventral premotor cortex impairs visual perception of biomechanically possible but not impossible actions

Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies show that action observation facilitates the onlooker's cortico-spinal system supporting the notion of motor mirroring. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over ventral premotor cortex (vPMc) impairs visual discrimination of body actions. Although studies suggest that the action observation–execution matching system may map only actions that belong to the observer's motor repertoire, we demonstrated comparable motor and premotor facilitation during observation of biomechanically possible as well as impossible actions. It has also been shown that seeing impossible body movements activates the extrastriate body area (EBA). Using event-related rTMS, we sought to determine whether vPMc and EBA are actively involved in the visual discrimination of actions performed through biomechanically possible or impossible kinematics and of their biomechanical plausibility. Stimulation of vPMc impaired discrimination of possible actions while leaving intact the discrimination of biomechanically impossible actions and of biomechanical plausibility. No effect of EBA rTMS on any type of action processing was found. Thus, vPMc is crucial for discrimination of the goal of actions that can be actually performed suggesting that this area is involved in the visual processing of goal-directed actions.

Book Review: Impossible Bodies, Impossible Selves: Exclusions and Student Subjectivities

Book Review: Impossible Bodies, Impossible Selves: Exclusions and Student Subjectivities

Impossible Bodies: TV Viewing Habits, Body Image, and Plastic Surgery Attitudes among College Students in Los Angeles and Buffalo, New York

Impossible Bodies: TV Viewing Habits, Body Image, and Plastic Surgery Attitudes among College Students in Los Angeles and Buffalo, New York

Anatomical limitations in mental transformations of body parts

Two experiments investigated whether possible and impossible body postures influence mental rotation processes differently considering that anatomical limitations constrain the way in which subjects perform mental transformations of body parts. In Experiment 1, mental rotation was performed on two stimuli presented simultaneously. Both possible and impossible body postures elicited mental rotation, although the mental rotation rate was slower for impossible postures. In Experiment 2, only one stimulus was presented at a time and subjects decided whether it represented a correct body-part configuration or not. A typical mental rotation function was only present for correct body-part configurations. The results are discussed in terms of the familiarity of the stimuli. Unfamiliar stimuli (physically impossible) are rotated via local representations of their parts, whilst global representations are used for rotating familiar (anatomically correct) stimuli.

Impossible Bodies: Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies (review)

Impossible Bodies: Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies (review)

Impossible Bodies: Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies (review)

Impossible Bodies: Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies (review)

Contesting identities: sports in American film

Since the earliest days of the silent era, American filmmakers have been drawn to the visual spectacle of sports and their compelling narratives of conflict, triumph, and individual achievement. In Contesting Identities, Aaron Baker examines how these cinematic representations of sports and athletes have evolved over time - from The Pinch Hitter and Buster Keaton's College to White Men Can't Jump, Jerry Maguire, and Girlfight. He focuses on how identities have been constructed and transcended in American society since the early twentieth century. Whether depicting team or individual sports, these films return to that most American of themes, the master narrative of self-reliance. Baker shows that even as sports films tackle socially constructed identities like class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender, they ultimately underscore transcendence of these identities through self-reliance.Looking at films from almost every sporting genre - with a particular focus on movies about boxing, baseball, basketball, and football - Contesting Identities maps the complex cultural landscape depicted in American sports films and the ways in which stories about 'subaltern' groups winning acceptance by the mainstream majority can serve to reinforce the values of that majority. In addition to discussing the genre's recurring dramatic tropes, from the populist prizefighter to the hot-headed rebel to the 'manly' female athlete, Baker also looks at the social and cinematic impacts of real-life sports figures from Jackie Robinson and Babe Didrikson Zaharias to Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.'A must-read for cinephiles and sports fans alike, Contesting Identites is a knock-out. Aaron Baker cogently combines previous work on identities, sports, and media and moves discussion to new levels. His analysis of how race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class are represented in feature sports films are consistently thought-provoking and intriguing' - Chris Holmlund, author of Impossible Bodies: Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies.