Rather than an examination or paper, we will have a review and synthesis exercise.
Aiming for Friday, March 23, please go back and read any pieces you did not read the first time through and/or review any pieces you did not understand or have time to read well. Make notes on any pieces you need to reread or review. Possible aspects to note: major arguments, methods, assumptions, theoretical orientation. Engage in critical thinking about what is not addressed, what biases or assumptions tilt the arguments or limit them, about the type of discourse and its audience or goals. Above all, think about what kinds of contributions the article, story, or effort makes in your own thinking. What discoveries do you make about how to study, examine, make use of "bodylore," as knowledge about the body, but also bodylore as knowing through the body?
Please bring in printed-out notes. If you have read everything and kept up, note that, but bring in some notes about syntheses you could make between several pieces.
Based on your notes about articles you didn't read or understand well during the first half of the term and notes you produce for review, and based on your position papers, pose one good question for synthetic discussion and review. Please email Phyllis this question by Thursday, March 22, 6 p.m.
Here are some sample synthetic questions (but please feel free to dream up some of your own that may not follow these models!) from Phyllis:
1. It would be fun to consider Foucault's notion of surveillance and panopticism in terms of "the gaze," as discussed by Judith Butler. Then to think about several articles and stories and question who sees who, and how it is connected to subjectivity and knowledge/power, as well as constructions of possession and value. We could discuss pieces such as "Fat and Culture," "Why Jewish Princesses.....," "Sealskin, Soulskin," the essays by Wendy Doniger and Molly Levine, "Cupid and Psyche," and "Beauty and the Beast." Who gets to look at whom; who is required to look at whom; whose sight is limited, and whose voice is silenced? How do issues of power of knowledge get tied up with beauty secrets? Who controls the gaze and knowledge? Who is given subjective desire in the tales, despite the privileges of gaze and knowledge?
2. Mary Douglas's ideas of pollution, boundaries, violations, and the relation of body symbolism to social organization and notions of danger come up in many articles. Discuss how her ideas might be used in discussing some of the narratives or other folklore in a variety of cultures. Note prohibitions and violations, ideas of the sacred and the obscene, the healthy and the dangerous in stories and essays, considering at least three (especially ones that we could do more with, such as the Foi myths and the Navaho stories).
3. Several articles, such as the ones on Navaho ideas, Foi beliefs, Paiela worldview, and early Greek, Roman, and Hebrew ideas, pose very different notions of the body and mind than the conventional Western Cartesian notions of their separations. Different cultures have different notions about reproduction, about the formation of the body, or about relationships between the mind and body. Discuss how some of these differing ideas relate to ideas about the relationship between the body and the land, the body and death, the body and valued resources and wealth. How does gender figure in these ideas?