Susan Bordo
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Susan Bordo | |
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Born | State University of New York at Stony Brook (Ph.D., 1982) |
Occupations |
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Employer | University of Kentucky |
Known for | Feminist philosophy |
Susan Bordo is an American
Overview
Bordo's writing contributes to a body of feminist, cultural and
Education and career
Susan Bordo was raised in
Theoretical context
Philosophical discourse
While Bordo's writing works to "reach outside the
Materialism
Bordo argues that "knowledge is 'embodied,' produced from a 'standpoint,' by a body that is located as a material entity among other material entities."
Feminism
Bordo's critique of gendered, and particularly feminine, bodies stems from both feminist and
Cultural studies
While situated within feminist and gender studies frameworks, Bordo's theories also stem from a cultural studies approach where the power of cultural phenomena such as television, advertising and popular magazines are analyzed in terms of means of domination and of resistance. While certain cultural theorists, for example John Fiske, who wrote Television Culture (1990), see elements of culture like television as "demonstrating the way representational codes and techniques shape our perception" but also as a means for resistance, where audience members could "decode" such messages and thus be able to "think resistantly about their lives,"[14] Bordo sees cultural coding as a more pernicious, binding and overwhelming force. For Bordo "the rules of femininity have come to be culturally transmitted more and more through the deployment of standardized visual images";[15] cultural transmitters such as television and print media work insidiously to "impose models of bodily beauty that get construed as freely chosen options by those victimized by them."[14]
Post structuralism
The notions of culture, power and gender/subject formation that dominate Bordo's writing arise in some degree from
Writing
The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (1987)
The Flight to Objectivity represents what Bordo refers to as a "fresh approach" to Descartes' Meditations. She critiques the stable notion of
Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993)
Bordo's Unbearable Weight presents a collection of essays that focus on the body's situatedness and construction in Western Society and offers "a cultural approach to the body."
Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. (1997)
Twilight Zones represents Bordo's continued preoccupation and study of cultural images and their saturation within contemporary culture. She utilizes
The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private (1999)
With The Male Body Bordo shifts her focus from looking specifically at female and feminized bodies to looking at the male body from a female perspective. She includes analyses of the male body that take into consideration the representation of the male body in popular cultural modes of communication such as movies, advertisements and literature, revealing how anxieties over bodily form and beauty are not limited to women but are of concern for men also. She also analyzes attitudes surrounding the penis and gay culture in the twentieth century.
The Creation of Anne Boleyn (2014)
In The Creation of Anne Boleyn, Bordo seeks to break down the "sedimented mythology turned into 'history' by decades of repetition" and rewrite Boleyn's story as an ambitious woman seeking power without the cache of distorted imagery around her appearance.[31]
The Destruction of Hillary Clinton (2017)
Bordo examines why "… the most qualified candidate ever to run for president lost the seemingly unloseable election."[32]
Bibliography
- Bordo, Susan. "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity: A Feminist Appropriation of Foucault." Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing. Eds. Alison M. Jaggar and Susan R. Bordo. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1989. 13-33.
- Bordo, Susan. The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture. Albany: State U of New York P, 1987.
- Bordo, Susan. The Male Body: A Look at Men in Public and in Private. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
- Bordo, Susan. Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997.
- Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.
- Bordo, Susan, ed. Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1999.
- Hekman, Susan. Review of Unbearable Weight, by Susan Bordo, and Bodies That Matter, by Judith Butler. Hypatia 10.4 (Fall 1995).
- Hekman, Susan. "Material Bodies." Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader. Ed. Donn Welton. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 61-70.
- Jarvis, Christina. "Gendered Appetites: Feminisms, Dorothy Allison, and the Body." Women's Studies 29.6 (Dec. 2000). 763-92.
- Rooney, Ellen. "What Can the Matter Be?" American Literary History 8.4 (Winter 1996). 745-58.
- "Susan Bordo." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Vincent B. Leitch, gen. ed. New York: Norton and Co., 2001. 2360-62
- Bordo, Susan The Creation of Anne Boleyn, A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen. HMH 2013
- Bordo, Susan. The Destruction of Hillary Clinton. Melville House (April 4, 2017). ISBN 978-1612196633
See also
References
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-06-29.
- ^ a b c Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 35.
- ^ "bordo". gws.as.uky.edu. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
- ^ Distinguished Weequahic Alumni, Weequahic High School Alumni Association. Accessed December 19, 2019. "Susan Klein Bordo (1964) a Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Kentucky."
- ^ a b Leitch, p. 2360.
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 4.
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 5.
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 3.
- ^ a b c Hekman, Review
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 38.
- ^ Hekman, "Material Bodies", p. 65.
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 21.
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 23.
- ^ a b Leitch, p. 1026.
- ^ Bordo, "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity", p. 17.
- ^ a b Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 27.
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 26.
- ^ Leitch, p. 2361.
- ^ Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity, p. 2.
- ^ Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity, p. 3.
- ^ Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity, p. 62.
- ^ Hekman, "Material Bodies", p. 62.
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 15.
- ^ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 24-25.
- ISBN 9781405183123.
- ^ Bordo, Twilight Zones, p. .
- ^ Bordo, Twilight Zones, p. 22.
- ^ Bordo, Twilight Zones, p. 19.
- ^ Bordo, Twilight Zones, p. 18.
- ^ Bordo, Twilight Zones, p. 24.
- ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (April 14, 2013). "For One Royal History Has Added Insult to Injury". The New York Times. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
- ^ Bordo, Susan (April 3, 2017). "The destruction of Hillary Clinton: sexism, Sanders and the millennial feminists". The Guardian. Retrieved April 3, 2017.