Welcome to the first blog entry for Sport in Theory.
Freund, P. (1988). Bringing society into the body: Understanding socialized human nature. Theory and Society, 17, 839-864.
Bynum, C. (1995). Why all the fuss about the body: A Medievalist’s perspective. Critical Inquiry, 22, 1-33.
Fanon, F. (1967). The fact of blackness. Black skin, white masks (pp. 109-140). New York: Grove Press.
Freund addresses social science’s “disembodied” view of human beings. In dualistic thinking so typical of Western thought, he states, the social sciences assign mind priority over the body, removing it from its embodied form. Within this approach mind and body do not interpenetrate each other, and thus persons stand in opposition to the environment of which they are a part. Although some sociologists are beginning to understand that social actors have bodies that are integral to human existence, Freund argues that they still gloss over important aspects in the interplay between mind, body, and society. Basically, he stresses the need to consider the social construction of the body. In doing so, he attempts to “bring society into the body” by giving the body it deserved place in sociological theory.
Freund suggests that the mind, society, and the body dynamically interpenetrate each other. I find this idea fascinating, especially when he talks about socially constructed bodies acting as “concrete manifestation and prototypes” that relay ideas about what a socially appropriate body should be and how this is a mechanism of social control. To relay this point he points to gender and how women’s bodies are socially constructed as weak, and in turn weak women’s bodies are held up as the prototypical (or normal) woman’s body. I liked this article because it provided some background into how the body has been theorized in the past, but it seems to narrowly argue one simple idea – the physical body has a profound effect on society, and vice versa. Is the main argument really that simple? Is Freund really just trying to ensure that the body has its deserved place in sociological theory? On the surface that seems like an attainable and rather easy task.
Bynum’s article is an attempt to bring out the body that eats, that works, that dies, that is afraid into recent writings on the body. She starts by examining the definition of “body” to find that the term can refer to different things. She makes three general observations about writings on the body: discussion on the body has typically focussed on sex and gender; current sets of understandings of the body seem characterized by discomfort or uneasiness with the subject matter; many current analyses are dualist in nature, identifying the body with nature and the female. Bynum wants to get past those observations and investigate issues relating to bodies and embodiment that are missing in current studies of the body. She does this by discussing her own research on the European Middle Ages and the widespread medieval concern about “the body that dies.” According to Bynum, contemporary academics have tended to overlook questions of identity and death, questions that today’s popular culture have been asking all along. Theorists of the body do not look at what our popular culture indicates we are actually worrying about (survival, bodily stuff, desire), issues people worried about in the European past as well. Medieval theories about the body that dies addressed issues of identity and individuality, physicality and desire.
Bynum talks about a her friend who is starting a women’s studies program in Europe that suspected that a conversation between medieval ideas and modern ones might reintroduce into her classroom something of the stuffness of body that she found missing in contemporary literary and feminist theory. This friend mentions that so much written about the body dissolves into language. To me this simply means that ideas of the body get lost in language, that the body becomes an abstract concept. However, in reality the body is something that we can touch, experience, see – a physical reality. What is your take on the body dissolving into language?
Franz Fanon’s chapter titled “The Fact of Blackness” from Black Skin, White Masks situates the black body as the main reason for black marginalization at the hands of white men. In it, Fanon comes to grips with his body, his black body. “In the white world,” he states, “the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness.” (p. 110) What Fanon is saying is that his body predetermines his identity in the world. Despite his intelligence, despite his hard work, despite his education, he is first and foremost a black man. At one point he notes that “the corporeal schema crumbled, its place taken by a racial epidermal schema.” (p. 112) I think he means that what he actually is, his flesh and blood, the person that he knows himself to be crumbles away in the face of what others think of him, the racial idea that white people hold towards black men.
What do we think of Fanon’s treatment of black women, or lack of attention to issues surrounding black femininity? I find it a little strange that Fanon sees the marginalization of black people as the oppression of black men at the hands of white men. Furthermore, I would imagine that Fanon thought the struggle for black rights was a war to be fought by black men. I don’t know? Perhaps for the benefit of black women, but still, it appears that the actors here are male. Should this matter? Can we fault him for such a misogynist approach when it is obvious that his ideas of the body and race were revolutionary?
5 comments:
As I read Freund’s article I also felt that he was simply arguing that the physical body has an effect on society and vice versa and I didn’t quite know how to interpret that.
He argued strongly against a mind-body dualism that he seemed to say is still very prevalent, but then gave examples of research dating from the nineteenth century that suggested otherwise. He also gave many examples of how the body is socially constructed, yet he seemed to say that the research (that he was pulling from) was almost nonexistent.
I found it hard to understand the concept of “openness” in regards to human bodies compared to other creatures. Does he mean that we are more open to change? More readily able to conceive of changes that may (or may not) be beneficial to our evolution and therefore survival? I can see how that would be a great example of how society, the mind, and the body interpenetrate each other, but I wasn’t sure that was what he meant?
I very much enjoy examples of how society physically influences the body but I often didn’t like how he used language to portray these examples and felt it really influenced how I read and understood his article. When he suggested that labour under capitalism is ‘crippling’ because it separates the mind and body I don’t think that he realized that his prosecution of the word capitalism was contradictory in nature. I assume he was simply trying to stress the idea that different working and living conditions have a physical effect on individual bodies, which I agree with. Did anyone else find that his use of language may have had any (negative) impact on how they experienced and related to the article?
I think that the language we use to talk about the body keeps the physicality of it in mind, so Bynum’s fear of the body dissolving into language seems unwarranted. I mean, to speak of desire, death, or fear is to have a ‘feeling’ or personal (and therefore felt) experience with it, which I think protects discourse on the body from ever really dissolving into language.
Most people could probably relate to Bynum’s statement that bodies are the subject and object of desire, and I think that people can relate because they have physically experienced their own bodies, and anyone who is writing and theorizing about the body actually 'has' a body, which would also maintain that physical realm.
I liked her discussion of the matter and individuality of bodies and how that could extend to ownership issues and therefore to potential ethical dilemmas when dealing with organ transplants or even body disposal. I had never really applied theories of the body to current issues like that, and I appreciated the context in which she managed to make it both relevant and interesting.
I thought Fanon’s article was an excellent example of the application of Freund’s concluding statement on how important it is to understand the ways in which socially structured physiology can affect social behaviour. It was interesting to read how a black man experienced his black body and to see the different extremes in which individuals might experience their own physical bodies.
I didn’t fault him for his lack of attention to black women. I felt that since he was writing about his own experiences as a black man, and that ones’ experiences and feelings can only be their own, that his seemingly gender-biased reflection was justified because of the context.
I found myself asking different, perhaps unnecessarily precise questions in the Freund article. I am jarred by the anthropocentrism within it. Where Nat expressed confusion I disagreed. When Freund sites examples of humans as more self-aware than other species, I kept wondering what the premise for these assumptions were. I am not sure I fully understand what consciousness/self-awareness means in my own life and daily decisions, and thus feel ill equipped to place those value judgments upon other species. Butin talking about the body I put forth the question, flaky as it may be: is it possible to discuss the body in a way that is not anthropocentric? I suspect the answer is ‘no’, but I hope for something else. Regardless, I put forth in regards to Freund’s article that the (human) body can be discussed without creating a problematic consciousness/self-awareness hierarchy across species that seems untenable. Addressing Marty’s question about whether or not Freund’s article is really about locating the body in sociological theory, while reading Freund I felt as though if I had a better understanding of sociological theory in 1988 I might be able to understand the weight of this article.
Fanon’s reading, I think, best embodied/practiced the two most impressionable points for me from Freund and Bynum’s articles. It dealt brilliantly, as Nat has already mentioned, with Freund’s argument that the environment and the body have an interpenetrating relationship, especially in regard to social control (at least that’s how I interpreted your mentioning of his concluding points). I found Fanon especially powerful contrasted against Grossinger’s quote: "As it became clear that it was impossible to overthrow the system and that the system had gotten into one's guts and cells, the important thing became to change oneself to make oneself a new person, an actual revolutionary who purges the somatic-psychic fact of having been born and raised in the belly of the giant." (quoted in Freund, 859). Fanon beautifully demonstrates through his diasporic experience the struggle to exist in an environment that was not built to serve him and to purge the internalized reflections of others onto his body.
Furthermore, addressing Bynum’s reading he was able to transform the body from something academically dealt with sterilely and cerebrally, to flesh that reacts and feels. His narrative is about a physical body, and he repeatedly draws attention to the physicality of it with tying the language of emotions and experience to medical descriptions of the body, “But I rejected all immunizations of the emotions” (113) and “In the face of this affective ankylosis of the white man, it is understandable that I could have made up my mind to utter my Negro cry” (122). By drawing on his own experience he can bring emotion back into the discourse of his body.
Freund not only called for attention to the social construction of the body but how the reproduction of ‘appropriate bodies’ impacts and helps to shape social life and individual embodied experience. Freund also discusses how a consciousness of these practices reveals deep seeded control over our bodies that we like to close our eyes to. “We prefer to think that society operates upon us intellectually and consensually rather than directly upon our bodies, which suggests a more slavish relation” (O’Neill in Freund, p. 859). My privacy and personal feelings of connectedness with my body has been shaken up, as I now know that my body despite it belonging to me, is somewhat out of my control. My body is me, but I am not in control of how I am perceived, my body is judged against the ‘appropriate’ bodies society seeks to reproduce for capital and power (patriarchal) gains.
In terms of the idea that the body dissolves into language in contemporary discussions, for me this refers to how the body has been taken for granted and the mind has been favoured as the site for inquiry. Its sociological role (influence) and affectedness has been denied/ignored and trumped by discussions of the mind. The readings have cemented the fact that the mind and the body cannot be severed. A terrific example is Freund’s sociology of physiology.
Fanon is saying that his black body predetermines his identity in the world. Isn’t this the same for everyone in terms of their body, a white body, a female body, an able body, these statuses of the body determine how we can participate in the world. The body determines ones social role. How might the experience of a black body be different? What is unique about it? Or is it the same idea. Can we even understand the difference from a white (or female) standpoint?
Fanon (and Marty), talk about how the white man’s perception of black people is internalized; it takes over and trumps any of his own identity formations/perceptions. “All of those white men with guns in their hands cannot be wrong. I am guilty. I do not know of what, but I know that I am no good”. (P.139). I feel that Fanon is expressing his feelings of powerlessness over his social identity. Regardless of his education or personality he is forever and foremost a black man. This powerlessness outlines the lack of control one has over his body and thus supports the notion that our bodies are acted upon by society. The individualism of the body is undermined when one feels they are not in control of their sense of self.
Big thanks to Marty for a provocative and appropriately pitched inaugural blog, and to everyone who has had a chance to participate so far. You’ve raised a diverse and rich range of questions that I’m looking forward to discussing further in class. I will try to figure out my role in the blog as the semester proceeds; for today I will identify what I see as the key questions to have emerged from the discussion in order to shape an agenda for our seminar on Wednesday.
Marty asks if Freund’s argument is really as simple as: “The physical body has a profound effect on society, and vice versa”? We need to think about this question in the context of the genre of the article (review essay/agenda setting), as Marty implies, and also, as Kat notes, the period in which it was written. Nat draws our attention to the inconsistencies that emerge when authors make grand claims about the state of x or y field—we should discuss this problem too. We might also consider, more generally, the value of simple vs. complex arguments. I’m not certain that ensuring that the body has its deserved place in sociological theory is that easy (and I’m not sure Freund’s argument is simple). Or at least I think what both Freund and Bynum are arguing is that we need to ponder more carefully how the body is theorized. Our challenge is to figure out the appropriate place for the body in social theory and vice versa.
This brings us to the question addressed by all of you in one way or another: What does it mean to say that “the body dissolves into language”? I think we need to dissect this claim a little and to think about the broad theoretical shifts (anti-essentialism is key here as Bynum notes) that have made that possible. What are the explanatory pros and cons of “textualizing the body”? There are multiple ways in which they body gets dissolved into language and to some degree that’s unavoidable. Is there an alternative to this dissolution given that we can only theorize through abstractions imposed on a messy, complex, and unpredictable body and social world? My sense is that Bynum seems to think so. What about Nat’s idea, counter to much of what we read this week, that to write or speak of the body “is to have a ‘feeling’ or personal (and therefore felt) experience with it”?
Kat raises fascinating questions about Freund’s anthropocentrism in relation to his claim about the openness of human bodies vs. those of other species (it made me think we should read Haraway’s work on Companion Species as part of our readings on the body) and Nat asks for clarification. We will try.
Both Nat and Kat read Fanon and Freud against each other in productive ways. I would especially like to focus on the assumptions embedded in the Grossinger quote that Kat draws our attention to.
Engaging Fanon, Marty and Karima raise questions about what poststructualist theories sometimes refer to as the “universal vs. the particular,” the place of experience in social theory, structure vs. agency, and a range of other big sociological questions. While we may not get to all of these in the first class (that would be quite a feat!), we should certainly strive to keep them on the table and to visit and revisit them throughout the semester.
My reading of the Freund article raised a new semantic issue in the social constructionism and biological determinism debate. The article gave several examples of how the physical body is socially constructed, bringing society into physiology. When we think of social construction, for the most part we think of intangible phenomena that exist in society such as gender, patriarchy, language, inequality, etc, but Freund’s article rearticulated for me the meaning of “socially constructed” as “constructed socially”, in a corporeal sense.
Vis-à-vis all the enumerated assumptions about human nature and what is understood to be biologically determined in biomedial science, Freund sheds more light on the societal influences on people that cause specific biological factors. Citing nutritional and sanitation changes over the past century which have influence human lifespan and height; the extent to which early childhood socialization and development has on our body’s physiology, and the affect that can have on a species or population on an evolutionary scale seem to put sociology to the fore of evolution and biology.
In the social sciences “revolt against biological imperialism” (as Freund puts it), the dramatic “conditioning” or “lability” of human bodies as a product of history, society and social phenomena explains much about the nature of evolution, or human nature itself. Is there such a thing as human nature apart from our lability to adapt to various social stimuli? Is evolution a social phenomena as much or more than it is a biological one?
I shared a similar concern regarding the language use in the article raised earlier by Nat. The Marxist interpretation speaks of labour under capitalism as crippling, debilitating and retarding work. The use of pejoratives to highlight some positive evidence pointing to social construction of the body is interesting and difficult to interpret at the same time. I appreciate the point which is being made (how a social system can inadvertently influence human physiology and psychology) but the negative language may be a product of the time in which it was written. I’m not sure Marx and Engles were concerned with the socio-physical development of the body as much as the ill effects of an oppressive ideology on humanity. In a way accidentally making the point that Freund is getting at: that social factors have a profound impact on our physiology, negating biological determinism.
Oh yes, the other two articles were interesting as well. I’ve taken too much space with the first to comment on the other two;)
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