Non-normative Bodies Research Articles

Jesse Egner’s Disidenticications: Steven Baboun in Conversation with Jesse Egner

In this article, Steven Baboun interviews Jesse Egner about his photographic series, Disidentifications—a series of absurd, unusual, and playful portraits of queer individuals meant to evoke the uncanny, humor, and curiosity. Inspired by the theory of disidentification as described by queer theorist José Muñoz, this series examines the liminality of disidentities that neither identify nor counter-identify with a dominant ideology. As a gay man with a non-normative body, Egner has experienced extensive rejection from members of his fellow gay community, forcing him into a precarious relationship with himself. The playful and performative acts and symbols in these photographs reflect this relationship, while the fragmented narratives and uncertainty—existing in a space between reality and fantasy—reflect the liminal space of queer identity.

From the Elephant Man to Barbie Girl: Dissecting the Freak from the Margins to the Mainstream

From the Elephant Man to Barbie Girl: Dissecting the Freak from the Margins to the Mainstream

Attack on normativity: A queer reading of Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan)

Isayama Hajime’s Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan 2009–present, hereafter SnK) has gained huge resonance since its first release, a popularity by no means limited to Japan, and enhanced by the high-quality animation series by the same name (2013–present), directed by Araki Tetsurô (first season) and Koizuka Masashi, which has followed from the manga storyline. Without doubt, this success is due to a gripping narrative, focusing on fierce fights between the apparently invincible titans and the numerous characters that aim to save humanity, whose different aesthetic and behavioural characteristics unfailingly appeal to very mixed audiences. In this sense, there are three very notable features of SnK. First, the female characters subvert, redraw or re-interpret stereotypes about femininity both aesthetically and behaviourally, and they can be read as queer. Second, the text presents a lesbian subtext that enriches the narrative in queer terms. Ultimately, the ability of some main characters to shift between the two categories of ‘human’ and ‘titan’ contributes to destabilizing binary divisions in terms of normative or non-normative bodies, providing an additional layer to a queer reading of this text. Through an analysis of the manga and anime versions of SnK, this article investigates how gender stereotypes, heteronormativity and the dichotomy normalizing normative identities vis-à-vis non-normative identities are portrayed. This analysis sheds light on the (lack of) alternatives to binary models in terms of gender and sexuality in the shōnen manga genre, problematizing the contemporary relationship between dominant and oppositional identities. I argue that the non-normative characteristics of the main characters in SnK represent a significant case of non-normative and counter-hegemonic representation in a typically heteronormative genre, which potentially offers a means of identification for the female and queer audiences of shōnen manga.

"Good Icing can't Change an Average Cake"

Abstract Research on the impact of gameful experiences on the automation of labour and value creation is in need of a critical reformulation. The results presented in this study developed from a critical reading of the current literature on gamification and its internal struggles. I question what the gamification of work is, this time including knowledge collected by decades of academic research in the field of digital cultures and society, converging in a diverse yet attuned corpus of neomaterialist, post-anthropocentric, anti-Humanist, and intersectional theories of politics, algorithmic cultures and social justice (see Braidotti/ Hlavajova 2017). Findings suggest the experimental development of gamification technologies materializes from an interest in governance through the automation of behavioural management, resulting in the forced correction of non-normative bodies through self-optimization. Beyond colonial, anthropocentric binaries, gamification’s genealogy is not found in the overcoming of the Eurocentric distinction between work and games, but in the algorithmic architecture of techno-capitalism.

Introduction to the Special Issue “Fat Matter(s): The Art-Science(s) of Future Body-Making”

ABSTRACT This themed issue explores the erasure of non-normative bodies within conceptual and material spaces of creative, scientific, and technological future making. It focuses on offering a critical understanding of the ways in which notions of fatness, thinness, healthiness, and able-bodied/able-mindedness intersect with each other when analyzing-imagining emerging and forthcoming aesthetic, technological, political, and scientific understandings of the body – and of the arrangements B/bodies make across multiple dimensions. This volume also highlights practices of resistance and creative disruption in existence against, within, and along established industrial complexes that reinforce thinness, whiteness, being able-bodied/minded, cisgender, and heterosexual as what is considered desirable, beautiful, and deserving of future existence. Lipids put into question the relevance of the apparatuses sustaining the scientific, theoretical, and performative practices meaning-making the potential futures that co-exist within each instant. Taking as a starting point diverse insights on “lipidology”, We have attempted to meaning-make a “soft matter system” of academic essays, poems, illustrations, photographic work, and digital art pieces that function as, and honor the functioning of, lipid membranes when thinking about what is yet to come.

La autotraducción al servicio de la visibilidad de discursos disidentes: el caso de la poeta y traductora cuir muxe’ Elvis Guerra.

El presente artículo aborda el papel que la práctica de la autotraducción puede entrañar como instrumento político de resistencia en la obra poética cuir de Elvis Guerra, artista mexicano muxe’ que trabaja la disidencia de género y la etnicidad desde la poesía. El eje principal del trabajo es el libro de poemas Ramonera (Círculo de Poesía, 2019; Letraversal, 2020) en el cual el autor propone una crítica no solo a la exclusión o la violencia ejercida sobre los cuerpos que se reconocen en identidades periféricas sino también a la mitificación de la que han sido objeto las muxe’.

Deafening Modernism: Embodied Language and Visual Poetics in American LiteratureBlasphemous Modernism: The 20th-Century Word Made FleshTransatlantic Aliens: Modernism, Exile, and Culture in Midcentury America

Deafening Modernism: Embodied Language and Visual Poetics in American LiteratureBlasphemous Modernism: The 20th-Century Word Made FleshTransatlantic Aliens: Modernism, Exile, and Culture in Midcentury America

Negotiating the Hyphens in a Culture of Surveillance: Embodied Surveillance and the Representation of Muslim Adolescence in Anglophone YA Fiction

In the era defined by the war on terror, border security, and increased Western cultural anxiety, the discourses of politics, race, and gender influence the representation of non-normative bodies, notably in the signification of female Muslim adolescent bodies as sites of political, racial, and cultural contestation within a culture of surveillance. Mirroring Western society, Anglophone YA fiction typically privileges white normative portrayals of Western adolescence. Fostered in a culture of suspicion, the revitalized orientalist tropes depict Muslim adolescent girls as bodies to “save,” “fear,” and “Westernize.” An emerging group of YA novels presents a substantive challenge to this tradition by seeking to disrupt patriarchal, white normative conceptualizations of Western adolescence. Through an analysis of Randa Abdel-Fattah’s When Michael Met Mina and S. K. Ali’s Saints and Misfits, this article explores the ways in which the female Muslim adolescent body is constructed as a product of surveillance, problematizing the experiences of embodied surveillance and the complexities of being identified as a part of racialized surveillant assemblages.

The Body Binary: Compulsory Able-bodiedness and Desirably Disabled Futures in Disney's <em>The Little Mermaid</em> and <em>The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea</em>

A feminist/queer/crip close textual reading of Disney's The Little Mermaid and its straight-to-DVD sequel, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, uncovers contrasting cultural narratives of disability. The first film, and mermaid Ariel's story line, represent conservative ideologies of compulsory able-bodiedness and the need for overcoming disability, as well as a strongly reinforced binary of merfolk versus humans. Conversely, the sequel, and (Ariel's and Prince Eric's daughter) Melody's narrative, imagine more progressive desirably disabled futurities and welcome hybrid embodiments through the process of shifting societal perspectives and deconstructing binaries that work to other those with nonnormative bodies.

Cross-Border Bodies: How to Fit When Your Body Does Not

Cross-Border Bodies: How to Fit When Your Body Does Not Leonor Ruiz-Guerrero (bio) Brun-Cosme, Nadine. Daddy Long Legs. Illustrated by Aurélie Guillerey, Kids, 2017. 26 pp. $16.95 hc. ISBN 9781771383622. Cali, Davide. The Tiny Tale of Little Pea. Illustrated by Sébastien Mourrain, Kids, 2017. 36 pp. $18.99 hc. ISBN 9781771388436. Leng, Qin. I Am Small. Kids, 2018. 40 pp. $18.99 hc. ISBN 9781525301155. Renaud, Anne. The True Tale of a Giantess: The Story of Anna Swan. Illustrated by Marie Lafrance, Kids, 2018. 32 pp. $18.99 hc. ISBN 9781771383769. The societal and literary understanding of the non-normative body has evolved throughout history, from monstrous abnormality to corporeal diversity. The material turn adopted in recent years in several research scopes has contributed [End Page 184] powerfully to the shift (Nikolajeva 132–33). The emergence of new cross-border bodies in children’s literature results from this change of paradigm. Bodily borders depend on the pre-existence of a normal body. Power structures configure it through medical discourse, literature, and identity narratives, among others. A range of interrelated bodily markers, such as weight, height, skin tone, sex, or form, is used to judge the bodies. Sameness is the pattern. Therefore, any deviation is noted as abnormal. Normalization processes deny the humanity of different bodies, tagging them as pathological, monstrous, or other. In contrast, cross-border bodies challenge this denial by declaring their humanity without renouncing their non-normative features. This review considers four picture books that address the issue of embodiment and extraordinary bodies. The four texts put into question the borders of what a human being ought to be. For a long time, deviant bodies suffered from isolation, rejection, and ridicule in spaces such as freak shows. The True Tale of a Giantess exemplifies these circumstances but with significant nuance. The protagonist participates in a Gallery of Wonders, not a freak show, where she is respected and not treated like a monster. As Nikolajeva asserts, “Physical deviation has traditionally been viewed as abnormality, be it anatomy, skin or hair colour, or disfigurement” (140). However, this perspective began to change during the second half of the twentieth century, as advances in medicine led to the understanding that these bodies were as human as any other. In Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature by Rosemarie Garland Thomson, published in 1997 and reprinted in 2017, the term “normate” is coined to address the concern of the normativity-non-normativity binary. Garland defines normate as the privileged stance of a socio-cultural figure whose boundaries are drawn by deviant bodies (8). The characters in the picture books taken up in this review might be considered non-normate but with some objections, as all of them are white, thin, without disabilities, and living in middle-class contexts in Western countries. The term normate is conditioned by both bodily configurations and cultural capital (Garland-Thomson 8). Thus, these bodies are partially normate. The picture books in this review fall into two groupings: those that focus on small bodies—I Am Small; The Tiny Tale of Little Pea—and those that focus on large bodies—Daddy Long Legs; The True Tale of a Giantess. All stress the physicality of the body and how it takes up space in the world. [End Page 185] One might be tempted to argue that there is no real disruption of the norm in these books, since a size far from the standard is the only deviation rendered. There is no alteration of visible form that can lead to thinking about the dismantling of the characters’ humanity. If these bodies were considered apart from the context of the stories, they would not differ from any normative body. The intent to challenge norms becomes blurred when the diversity appears as a single instance rather than a representation of human difference. Bodily diversity has increasing visibility in children’s literature, but with limitations: while more texts promote positive non-hegemonic bodies, other divergent bodies, such as fat bodies, are omitted.1 In her study about the shame associated with body image in children’s literature, Joy Mauldin highlights a tie between negative...

Thinking beyond the binary: Barriers to trans* participation in university sport

Sport is a significant part of university life in the UK, where students may try new sports for the first time. Research also demonstrates links between sport participation and mental health and employment prospects. Despite the positive aspects of university sports, by mimicking wider sport practices, they may also be environments that exclude non-normative bodies, including those who are trans*. The experiences of trans* people in sport is still a limited research area, with existing studies suggesting a range of exclusionary practices are evident. However, it is currently unclear to what extent these practices are replicated in the university sport environment across institutions in the UK. As part of a broader study on LGBT+ inclusion in UK university sport, focus groups with student union officers and LGBT+ students were conducted, with one student identifying as trans*. Data derived from the trans* student, alongside the viewpoints of officers, suggests further action can be taken to ensure university sport is inclusive to all, particularly in regard to the reliance on wider binary gender structures in sport, which are also evident in the British Universities and Colleges Sport transgender policy. This research may be useful for student unions, university sport clubs and other bodies in control of sport provision to increase inclusion for all.

Teaching in disruptive bodies: finding joy, resistance and embodied knowing through collaborative critical praxis

In the current political moment, a collision of a post-racial/diversity politics and the era of Trump, highlights the multiple risks of engaging in social justice pedagogies within teacher preparation. The era of Trump is defined by the dismantling of civil rights accompanied by unapologetic and overt displays of violence. In teacher education classrooms, these contradictory realities underscore the tenor of conversations on justice and education. Thus, for teachers in non-normative bodies this very moment exacerbates the risks of unveiling systems of oppression. This essay juxtaposes how two teacher educators imagine their bodies as tools for resistance while simultaneously having their bodies resisted. They propose a collaborative critical praxis as an intervention, a way to embody an alternative way of knowing and being that engages and disrupts contradictions in and violences upon non-normative bodies in teacher education. Using this method, the authors discuss both implications and possibilities of resistance for teacher preparation classrooms and pedagogy.

Teaching non-normative bodies: simulating visual impairments as embodied pedagogy in action

ABSTRACTIn an attempt to better prepare prospective PE teachers for teaching pupils with disabilities, our research takes up the call of Sparkes, A., Martos-Garcia, D., & Maher, A. (2019). Me, Imperfect Osteogenesis and my classmates in physical education lessons: A case study of embodied pedagogy in action. Sport, Education and Society, 24(4), 338–348 [for an accumulation of ‘case studies involving teacher educators attempting to put embodied pedagogy into action’ (p. 10). We used snapshot vignettes to reflect on our experiences of delivering learning activities that endeavoured to enable 90 prospective PE teachers to (1) simulate visual impairment (VI); and (2) plan and deliver learning activities to peers who were simulating VI. Our discussion centres on the authenticity of simulations and the pedagogical development of prospective PE teachers. From our observations, we remain sceptical about the extent to which the non-disabled Self can empathise with the disabled Other through embodied simulation because of the ease at which the Self could and would step out of the shoes of the Other by removing blindfolds. This disrupted attempts to blur the lines between the prospective PE teachers’ Self and the disabled Other, and thus the extent to which knowledge of the disabled Other in PE was embodied. We did observe, however, some positive pedagogical developments during simulations. These included increased: clarity and precision of verbal instructions; use of pedagogical touch; knowledge of how to adapt learning activities; and critical thought about the concept of educational inclusion. To finish, we argue that the simulation of VI appears to impact positively of the inclusive pedagogies of our prospective teachers, but we call for future research that explores the ethics of these simulations.

Relocating the Freak Show: Disability in the Medical Drama

AbstractThrough an analysis of various negotiations of disability inHouse, M.D. andGrey’s Anatomy, my paper discusses the narrative and non-narrative means that make the medical drama such an appealing genre to contemporary audience members. As the most successful medical dramas of the post-millennial era,House, M.D.andGrey’s Anatomyrely heavily on the exhibition of non-normative bodies, the humorous device of re-naming patients, and the narrative construction of disability as unbearable deviance. While Laura Backstrom locates the freak show in non-fictional television formats like the talk show and documentary, my paper illustrates how the medical drama, although at times highly self-reflexive, has become another pervasive relocation of the freak show into contemporary television. In a close reading ofGrey’s Anatomy, I further demonstrate how the portrayal of a disabled doctor as a series regular both manifests and challenges some of the normative perceptions of the body that the genre relies on.

Non-normative Bodies, Queer Identities

In this article we consider the absence of queer female protagonists in dystopian Young Adult (YA) fiction and examine how texts with queer protagonists rely on heteronormative frameworks. Often seen as progressive, dystopian YA fiction features rebellious teen girls resisting the restrictive norms of their societies, but it frequently sidelines queerness in favor of heteronormative romance for its predominantly white, able-bodied protagonists. We analyze The Scorpion Rules (2015) and Love in the Time of Global Warming (2013), both of which feature queer girl protagonists, and conclude that these texts ultimately marginalize that queerness. While they offer readers queer female protagonists, they also equate queerness with non-normative bodies and reaffirm heteronormativity. The rebellion of both protagonists effectively distances them from the queer agency they have developed throughout the narratives.

Multimedia Storytelling Methodology: Notes on Access and Inclusion in Neoliberal Times

In this article, the authors examine the impact of using their evolving multimedia storytelling method (digital art and video) to challenge dominant representations of non-normative bodies and foster more inclusive spaces. Drawing on their collaborative work with disability and non-normatively embodied artists and communities, they investigate the challenges of negotiating what ‘access’ and ‘inclusion’ mean beyond the individualizing discourses of neoliberalism without erasing the specificities of differentially-lived experiences. Reflecting on their experiences in a variety of workshops and on a selection of videos made in those workshops, they identify and analyze three iterative ‘movements’ that mark their storytelling processes: from failure to vulnerability, from time to temporality, and from individual voice to collective concerns. The authors end by considering some of the ways they have experimented with developing an iterative workshop method that welcomes difference while simultaneously allowing for an examination of the terms of the shared space and of the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion operating within that space.

Surveilling Strangers: The Disciplinary Biopower of Digital Genre Assemblages

Abstract This article identifies and names the digital visual genre of strangershots: photographs of strangers taken without their knowledge or consent and then shared online, accruing derogatory comments as they circulate through online networks. By closely describing a specific strangershot posted on Reddit and then connecting it to further examples, I aim to demonstrate that strangershots constitute a genre identifiable by the recurring social actions they accomplish by producing similar responses to recurring social situations. After identifying the genre, I apply actor-network theory to demonstrate how this genre is produced by assemblages of humans and non-human technologies. Following that, I argue that the genre reifies normalcy by leveraging biopower against non-normative bodies through explicit public shaming. The technological assemblage producing the genre, and the very notion of this genre as a regularized response to recurring social situations, has created new avenues for biopower to regulate individuals. This critical genre analysis provides nuance to assemblage theories of composition pedagogy by valuing ethical analyses of assemblage genre’s social actions. This analysis of strangershots helps us meet the digital imperative to pedagogically address 21st-century technology-driven composition practices while meaningfully considering the social actions performed by the genres and texts we teach.

Contested Interiority: Sense of Outsideness/Insideness Conveyed through Everyday Interactions with University Campus Doors

Our sense of place in the world is mediated through our everyday interactions with both people and space (Seamon, 1985). Everydayness is one of the most profound levels and shapers of human experience, yet too often this level of relation is overlooked and taken for granted in the design of environments (Dyck, 2005; Tuan, 1977). In this article, I present a first-person phenomenological account of my everyday interactions with doors on a university campus to uncover contested notions of interiority. My body-space routines reveal how a sense of outsideness/insideness is controlled through my interactions with objects such as doors, door handles and thresholds. These accounts suggest that given our everyday activities are intrinsically linked to designed environments (Upton, 2002) and that interiority is relational (Atmodiwirjo & Yatmo, 2018), adopting an everydayness frame from diverse users’ perspectives is imperative to improve human experiences and spatial justice within design practice. This is critically important for non-normative bodies like mine whose subjective experience of interiority is constantly being disputed and denied by hostile materiality.

Beautiful Monsters: Sickness, Disability, and the Extraordinary Body

This essay builds on work by disability scholars such as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Kate Ellis to discuss the progression of the physically disabled body into the extraordinary body in horror films, including Alien: Resurrection (1997), Planet Terror (2007), and A Quiet Place (2018). Applying disability studies research in parallel with theories about the non-normative Gothic body, it argues that contemporary horror builds on the subversive Gothic; avoiding physiognomical prejudices, which suggest that external physical difference is caused by deviance within. This work draws from practitioners such as Fred Botting, Susan Sontag, Joshua David Bellin, Sharon Snyder, and David Mitchell, as well as director Breck Eisner, developing theories such as the transgressive – sometimes dangerous – figures of the supercripple and the hyper alive, before going on to discuss the fear of sickness underlining metamorphic monster narratives. The transgressive nature of the Gothic aligns with the metamorphic properties of sickness and disability, disrupting the healthy/sick, human/monster binaries. Therefore, this work argues that the key to characters with disabilities surviving – or even thriving – in horror and science fiction is to accept and create a symbiotic relationship with their disability, transforming the non-normative body into the extraordinary one.

Exercising exclusions: Space, visibility, and monitoring of the exercising fat female body

ABSTRACTThe author’s aim is to inspect the position of the fat (female) body in the field of exercise. Specifically, the author is interested in fat women’s experiences of their treatment while exercising in public, and argues that, in particular, public spaces for exercise, such as gyms and swimming pools, are currently discursively and concretely constructed as “exclusive” spaces for the normative bodied. Bodies that are deemed non-normative, such as fat bodies, are often made either invisible or intolerable in the discourse of physical activity and exercise. Consequently, public spaces for exercise such as gyms or swimming pools are seen as out of bounds for non-normative bodies and this is reflected in fat people’s experiences of their treatment doing exercise. Fat women in particular experience disrespectful treatment in such places: they are harassed, ridiculed, and commented on. As the material, the author uses a public discussion concerning fat people and exercise that took place in the Finnish media in the spring of 2015, and the author aims to show that to make physical activity and exercise more attractive to fat people, more attention should be paid to its discursive and practical construction as a space for all bodies.