Body aesthetics

288 Pages·2016·1.06 MB·English

by  Sherri Irvin

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/24/2016, SPi
Body Aesthetics
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/24/2016, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/24/2016, SPi
Body Aesthetics
edited by
Sherri Irvin
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/24/2016, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955745
ISBN 978–0–19–871677–8
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/24/2016, SPi
This book is dedicated to the memory of Tobin Siebers
(January 29, 1953–January 29, 2015), with gratitude for his
outstanding scholarship on the aesthetics of disability.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/24/2016, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/24/2016, SPi
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
List of Contributors xiii
Introduction: Why Body Aesthetics? 1
Sherri Irvin
Part I. Representation
1. Black Silhouettes on White Walls: Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 15
Maria del Guadalupe Davidson
2. Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression 37
A. W. Eaton
3. From “Little Brown Brothers” to “Queer Asian Wives”: Constructing
the Asian Male Body 60
C. Winter Han
Part II. Look
4. Appearance as a Feminist Issue 81
Deborah L. Rhode
5. A Tale of Two Olympians: Beauty, “Race,” Nation 94
Shirley Anne Tate
6. The Merrickites 110
Glenn Parsons
7. And Everything Nice 127
Stephen Davies
Part III. Performance
8. In/Visible: Disability on the Stage 141
Tobin Siebers
9. Live, Body-Based Performance: An Account from the Field 153
Jill Sigman
10. Aesthetic Effortlessness 180
Barbara Gail Montero
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viii contents
11. Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite
Women’s Sports 192
Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser
Part IV. Practice
12. Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues 225
Yuriko Saito
13. White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the
Aesthetics of Un-Suturing 243
George Yancy
14. Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating 261
Richard Shusterman
15. Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the Possibility of Transformation 281
Ann J. Cahill
16. Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness 299
Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin
Index 319
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List of Illustrations
1.1 Renée Cox. The Yo Mama, 1993. 16
1.2 Unknown maker, French. Nude study of a Black Female, about 1855. 19
1.3 Map from Henry Rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines. 23
1.4 Ernest Benecke and Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard. Zofia, Femme
du Caire, 1853. 25
Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
1.5 Kara Walker. Detail of Camptown Ladies, 1998. 28
Artwork © Kara Walker; Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
1.6 Kara Walker. Detail of Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War
as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and
Her Heart, 1994. 32
Artwork © Kara Walker; Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
1.7 Kara Walker. A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage
to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet
tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on
the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining
Plant, 2014. 33
Photo: Jason Wyche. Artwork © Kara Walker; Courtesy of Sikkema
Jenkins & Co., New York.
8.1 Film still of Mary Duffy in Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back
(1996), directed by Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell.
Marquette, MI: Brace Yourself Productions. 150
9.1 Wafaa Bilal. Detail from Domestic Tension, performance, 2007. 157
Copyright Wafaa Bilal. Courtesy Driscoll Babcock Galleries.
9.2 Luminosity (originally performed by Marina Abramović, 1997),
as reperformed by Jill Sigman. 159
Photo: Jonathan Muzikar © The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed
by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. © 2015 Marina Abramović. Courtesy
of Sean Kelly Gallery/(ARS), New York.
9.3 Dancers Sally Hess, Donna Costello, and Irene Hsi in the
movement section of last days/first field (2013). 162
Photo by Rafael Gamo.
9.4 Dancers planting a field of kale seedlings during a performance
of last days/first field (2013). 162
Photo by Rafael Gamo.