The Politics of Selfhood

by Brown, Richard Harvey

• ISBN13: 9780816637553
• ISBN10: 0816637555
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

Looks at the ways social change is expressed through debates over identities and bodies. In bodies and selves, we can see politics, economics, and culture play out, and the tensions and crises of society made visible. The women's movement, lobbies for the elderly, pro-choice and pro-life movements, AIDS research and education, pedophilia and repressed memory, global sports spectacles, organ donor networks, campaigns for safe sex, chastity, or preventive medicine--all are aspects of the contemporary politics of bodies and identities touched on in this book. Three broad themes run through the collection: how the body is constructed in various ways for different purposes, how the electronic media and its uses shape selves and sensualities and contribute to civic discourse, and how global capitalism acts as a direct force in these processes. By taking a distinctly cross-cultural and comparative approach, this volume explores more fully than ever the political, economic, institutional, and cultural settings of corporeality, identity, and representation.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Theorizing the Body/Self in Global Capitalism	vii
Richard Harvey Brown
The Illness of Global Capitalism: Female Employees on ``Sick Leave'' and the Social Meaning of Pain	1	(16)
Margaret J. Tally
The Problematics of Democratic Action within Disciplinary Liberalism: The Norplant Case and the Postmodern Body	17	(25)
Philip W. Jenks
Genocide or Assimilation: Discourses of Women's Bodies, Health, and Nation in Guatemala	42	(22)
Antonella Fabri
The Ludic Body: Ritual, Desire, and Cultural Identity in the American Super Bowl and the Carnival of Rio	64	(23)
Lauren Langman
From Body Politics to Body Shops: Power, Subjectivity, and the Body in an Era of Global Capitalism	87	(22)
Timothy W. Luke
Reinventing the Liberal Self: Talk Shows as Moral Discourse	109	(38)
Eva Illouz
Reflections in an Unblinking Eye: Negotiating the Representation of Identities in the Production of a Documentary	147	(20)
Timothy McGettigan
From Subject to Citizen to Consumer: Embodiment and the Mediation of Hegemony	167	(22)
Lauren Langman
Narration and Postmodern Mediations of Western Selfhood	189	(38)
Richard Harvey Brown
Contributors	227	(2)
Index	229