The Politics of In/Visibility: Being There

179 Pages·2015·0.801 MB·English

by  Kath Woodward (auth.)

Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
Series Editors: Victoria Robinson, University of Sheffield, UK and D iane
Richardson , Newcastle University, UK
Editorial Board: R aewyn Connell, University of Sydney, Australia, K athy Davis ,
Utrecht University, The Netherlands, Stevi Jackson, University of York, UK,
Michael Kimmel , State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA, K imiko
Kimoto , Hitotsubashi University, Japan, J asbir Puar, Rutgers University, USA,
Steven Seidman , State University of New York, Albany, USA, Carol Smart ,
University of Manchester, UK, Liz Stanley, University of Edinburgh, UK, Gill
Valentine , University of Leeds, UK, Jeffrey Weeks, South Bank University, UK,
Kath Woodward , The Open University, UK
Titles include :
Jyothsna Belliappa
GENDER, CLASS AND REFLEXIVE MODERNITY IN INDIA
Edmund Coleman-Fountain
UNDERSTANDING NARRATIVE IDENTITY THROUGH LESBIAN AND GAY
YOUTH
Niall Hanlon
MASCULINITIES, CARE AND EQUALITY
Identity and Nurture in Men’s Lives
Brian Heaphy, Carol Smart and Anna Einarsdottir (e ditors )
SAME SEX MARRIAGES
New Generations, New Relationships
Sally Hines and Yvette Taylor (e ditors )
SEXUALITIES
Past Reflections, Future Directions
Meredith Nash
MAKING ‘POSTMODERN’ MOTHERS
Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps and Body Image
Meredith Nash
REFRAMING REPRODUCTION
Conceiving Gendered Experiences
Barbara Pini and Bob Pease ( editors )
MEN, MASCULINITIES AND METHODOLOGIES
Victoria Robinson and Jenny Hockey
MASCULINITIES IN TRANSITION
Francesca Stella
LESBIAN LIVES IN SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA
Post/Socialism and Gendered Sexualities
Shirley Tate
BLACK WOMEN’S BODIES AND THE NATION
Race, Gender and Culture
Yvette Taylor and Michelle Addison ( editors )
QUEER PRESENCES AND ABSENCES
Yvette Taylor, Sally Hines and Mark E. Casey ( editors )
THEORIZING INTERSECTIONALITY AND SEXUALITY
Thomas Thurnell-Read and Mark Casey ( editors )
MEN, MASCULINITIES, TRAVEL AND TOURISM
Kath Woodward
SEX POWER AND THE GAMES
Kath Woodward
THE POLITICS OF IN/VISIBILITY
Being There
Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–27254–5 hardback
9 78–0–230–27255–2 paperback
( outside North America only )
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order.
Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with
your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above.
Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
The Politics of In/Visibility
Being There
Kath Woodward
Emeritus Professor of Sociology, The Open University, UK
© Kath Woodward 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-57751-4 ISBN 978-1-137-31930-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137319302
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Woodward, Kath.
The politics of in/visibility : being there / Kath Woodward, Emeritus Professor
of Sociology, The Open University, UK.
pages cm.—(Genders and sexualities in the social sciences)
1. Representation (Psychoanalysis) 2. Sex. I. Title. II. Title: The politics of
visibility.
BF175.5.R43W66 2015
305.3—dc23 2015014438
To Steve, for being there, especially with the Labradors.
This book is for Reu and Pickle too, who provided hours of
wonderful distraction.

Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 I ntroduction: Are You Really There? 1
2 B eing There and the Culture of Boxing 2 4
3 T he Gaze: Looking at You Looking at Me 4 0
4 S ex Gender and Sexuality in Virtual and Actual Space 58
5 P ublic and Private Spaces and Relationships 8 0
6 L ooking and Seeing: Bodies and Images 9 6
7 B eing There in the Zone: Sex Gender and In/Visibility 111
8 R ethinking Affect, Sensation and Perception 129
9 C onclusion 1 44
References 154
Index 167
vii
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my enormous gratitude to Philippa Grand and
Judith Allan at Palgrave Macmillan, and would also like to thank Vidhya
Jayaprakash and the team at Newgen for their patience, diligence and
professionalism in the editing process.
Thanks too to Prof. Martin Heusser and Dr Johannes Riquet and
colleagues in the English Department at University of Zurich for inviting
me to address such a stimulating conference on Images of Identity in
early 2015, which gave me so many ideas which are relevant to my work
in this book.
I am most grateful to Dr Steve Woodward for completing the index
with such diligence and professionalism.
viii
1
Introduction: Are You Really There?
On 4 August 2012, I was at the Courtyard Theatre of the Royal Shakespeare
Company in Stratford on Avon watching Shakespeare’s play, Much Ado
About Nothing. I was sitting in row B, just the second row from the front,
very near the stage. I know the play well and go to the theatre often. The
wedding party of Claudio and Hero was being staged, as a traditional
Indian wedding, when suddenly a member of the cast leapt into the aisle
and extended a hand to invite me up onto the stage. There is a boundary
between being in the audience, however close to the action, and being
on the stage, but now I was in a liminal space between audience and
cast, between watching and being watched. There is a threshold between
actors and audience and one crosses a physical space between the two
domains, but this was also a psychosocial liminal space, combining the
inner world of desires and fears and my perception and the perceptions
of the rest of the audience and outer, social worlds of norms and prac-
tices: the internal awareness of being in the in-between space and the
social context, with all its rules and expectations, not least those of the
audience as well as the (real) actors on stage.
I sat on a cushion on the stage ‘playing the part’ of a wedding guest,
looking back into the darkness of the audience from the brightly lit stage.
I was both part of the action and yet outside it. My outsider status was
acknowledged by the surreal intervention of health and safety concerns
when the young actor who had invited me up onto the stage to join
the party, offered me sweetmeats, with the whispered comment that
they contained nuts, ‘just in case you’re allergic’. Feelings of not really
belonging to this cast were subverted by the next step in the play. Was I
really there? Was I part of what was going on? The scene terminates with
the heart rending and dramatic rejection of his bride by the bridegroom,
1