October 2010
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3.5 Baby!
July 2010
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“One day I wanted to explain myself to myself…and it struck me with a sort...”
– Simone de Beauvoir
March 2010
1 post
November 2009
20 posts
“It follows from Bourdieu’s understanding of the social effects of gender...”
– Toril Moi
note: applies to the men in recuerdo…
brooks: “any attempt to improve the condition of women by ignoring or obliterating the intellectual differences between them and men must result in disaster to the race”
——> while beauvoir would agree and not ignore the differences between men and women, she wouldn’t go so far as to say it will be disastrous to do so, and definitely not insinuate that men and...
TO MYSELF
YOU ARE FUCKING NOT ALLOWED TO FUCKING SLEEP UNTIL YOU FUCKING FINISH YOUR THESIS, DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND????
Love, you
Field and Habitus Notes (from Moi)
Field & Habitus - Bourdieu’s key terms, deeply interdependent
Field - competitive system of social relations which functions according to its own specific logic or rules.
Bourdieu: “an area, a playing field, a field of objective relations among individuals or institutions competing for the same stakes,
Habitus - Bourdieu: “a system of dispositions attuned to the game of...
More notes on Moi's "Appropriating Bourdieu
Aim of essay: to show that a Bourdieuian approach enables us to reconceptualize gender as a social category in a way which undercuts the trad’l essentialist/non-essentialist divide.
Bourdieu’s originality - his dev’t of a microtheory of social power: will show exactly how one can analyse teacher’s comments on student’s papers, rules for examinations, students’...
“Just as it is absurd to try to reduce the enonce to the enonciation (for...”
– Toril Moi, Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture
“I believe that as feminists, we struggle to transform the cultural traditions of...”
– Toril Moi
Notes on Moi's "Appropriating Bourdieu"
Appropriation = critical assessment of a given theory formation with a view to taking it over and using it for feminist purposes
Critique = theoretical exercise which, by “explaining the source in reality of the cognitive shortcomings of the theory under attack, calls for changes in the reality itself”
“appropriation” and “crtiqiue” as key feminist activities...
Beauvoir's Claims (accdg. to Moi)
Biological facts only take on meaning when they are situated within economic, social and psychological contexts
Biological facts are nevertheless important elements in women’s situation
Biological facts alone cannot define a woman
The body alone does not define a woman, on the contrary, she needs to make it her own, turn it into a “lived reality,” a process that is always...
Checklist
Background of the Study + RRL
Statement of the Problem
Objectives
Scope and Limitations
Significance of the Study
Theoretical Framework
Methodology
Note: MUST FINISH EVERYTHING BY TONIGHT, TOMORROW MORNING AT THE LATEST
“Everything is both manufactured and natural in man, as it were, in the sense...”
– Maurice Merleau-Ponty
“For Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, the human body is fundamentally ambiguous: it is...”
– Toril Moi
The body is a culmination of both biology and culture/society. To say that sex is more important and more powerful would be biological determinism. To say that sex is nothing, that it doesnt define us at all would be idealistic. We are as determined by society as we are by our anatomy.
“Although our biology is fundamental to the way we live in the world, biological...”
– Toril Moi
In relation to Recuerdo
The body as situation
The body as being in a situation
Race and class (not just sex) being other situations
“Our subjectivity is always embodied, but our bodies do not only bear the mark of...”
– Toril Moi
Race and Class are bodily situations too.
“To claim that the body is a situation is to acknowledge that the meaning of a...”
– Toril Moi
EMPHASIS ON “THE WAY SHE USES HER FREEDOM”
back to what Gayle Rubin said…one’s sexual anatomy could be irrelevant to what one does, who one loves, but it can not be irrelevant to HOW one does things, HOW one loves…
“But man is defined as a being who is not given, who makes himself what he...”
– Simone de Beauvoir
“The dream I find most compelling is one of an androgynous and genderless (though...”
– Gayle Rubin
So far, what I understand from Toril Moi’s analysis of this quote, Simone de Beauvoir probably won’t agree with Rubin. Rather, she would contest that while one’s sex should not completely define how one is treated in society, the body is still important as it is the...
“The body is our general medium for having a world.”
– Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as quoted by Toril Moi
Thus, according to Beauvoir, the body, while it should not define one to the point of oppression, still determines to a certain extent how one functions in the world.
“What we need today more than ever is a feminism committed to seeking justice and...”
– Toril Moi, What is a Woman? Sex, Gender and the Body in Feminist Theory