Feminist Perspectives on the Body – Kathleen Lennon
by Anna Kärtner
Feminist Perspectives on the Body is a reference text that traces the historical lineage of philosophical thought on embodiment, and specifically female embodiment. The author, Kathleen Lennon is professor of Philosophy at the University of Hull in England. Her areas of research include gender theory and embodiment within the context of contemporary analytical and continental philosophy (19th and 20th century philosophical traditions from Europe).[1] This text was published as part of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is, as noted in its title, an encyclopedia. It is intended as a resource for academics as well as laymen on philosophical thought and it is edited, written, and maintained by experts in the field. Since it is intended as a comprehensive index, a dictionary of philosophy, it is a source whose objective it is to maintain a high degree of objectivity when presenting philosophers, their work, and contributions. The intention of this publication is to present, “feminist perspectives on the body”. On the most basic level it traces the development of awareness towards the body in philosophical thought, and the resulting relationship to feminist thought. Lennon traces these developments and explains the philosophical frameworks that have been constructed on the topic of embodiment and their relationship and lineage to each other.
The philosophy of embodiment is a relatively recent domain of study within western philosophy. In order to deconstruct frameworks of “sexed difference” feminist theorists first had to disentangle the relationship between the self, the body, and identity. “Women are somehow more biological, more corporeal, and more natural than men” (Grosz 1994 14). The body represented a physical marker of difference so initially the self needed to be separated from the body as a separate inquiry. Therefore, early feminists were then able to argue that women had equal mental faculties to men (Lennon, 1). This division of the self from the corporal body set the framework that allowed for future arguments about the control of these bodies as directed by the “self”. “The body was seen as something owned by, and thereby separate from, the self, something over which the self had rights” (Lennon, 2).
In the second section Lennon discusses mainly Simone De Beauvior and her book The Second Sex. For it is Beauvoir’s work that elaborates on the development of the self and its relationship to the body. More specifically that there is at once a “material” point of view that is developed by the physical existence within the body, but there is also an experience of this body that is dictated and shaped by the world. There is a bodily existence, at once material but also a point of view towards the world, and this is different for men and for women. “One is not born but becomes a woman” (Lennon, 3). In fact Beauvoir argues that there is no biological truth to nature but instead our understanding of “biological facts” is always shaped by society. This seems to represent a connection to Haraway as well, which is that the idea of “nature” or “natural” is a societal construction, and the construction depends on what nature needs to reflect in order to support certain societal ideals or instruments of power. What came to mind was that even the terms by which we choose to compare the “natural” female body to the male body (ie as in strength or size) already reflects an ideological pruning that exhibits what traits are deemed superior and that can support existing power structures. The mode and method of comparison already rehearses a formed ideology about sex. As Beauvoir describes them, “cultural myths” and “metaphors”. This is later picked up by Iris Marion Young who wrote “Throwing Like A Girl” (1977) in which she describes the difference between female and male attempts to throw a ball. Girls tend to not know how to physically use their body. Young argues that this is because women and girls experience their bodies as objects. This again similar to Beauvoir, who describes that women experience their bodies as objects that are acted on where as males experience the bodies through actions.
After the separation of the self from the corporal body, and the development of understanding the corporal body in relation to the self and its lived experience, there develops a celebration of this bodily sexual difference. Specifically, Lennon cites Susan Bordo and Luce Irigaray as two influential writers on this topic. Bordo uses Beauvoir as a way to suggest envisioning a positive female experience that celebrates the female body through for example its sexuality and maternity. Even with the critique that this has the potential to homogenize the female experience, Bordo argues that creating a positive vision like this has the potential to create change. This is interesting because though it has the potential to exclude females by creating a “normative” ideal it could be the first necessary step to combat negative images of domination and once a new positive ideal is created it could again be shattered into a larger complex image that is more inclusive. However, it could of course also become a new form of control and domination. For example, the liberation of the female body as something to celebrate and even show off has also often become a tool to objectify and continue an ideal image of the female sexual body.
The policing of individual bodies by the self in order to comply with and satisfy these societal standards and expectations develop two lines of inquiry. Firstly, how it physically alters the body, and secondly what this alteration displays, and what kind of social messaging it implies. Judith Butler expands that the way we perform our genders through our bodies is policed by us, and that this is how sexed and gendered bodies come into existence. Gender is a performance, and in turn we naturalize certain aspects of gender so that they seem as though they are a biological fact, which returns to lines of argumentation used by Beauvoir and Haraway about the construction of the natural.
Lennon concludes that feminist, critical race and (dis)ability theorists have crucially contributed to philosophy through their work on embodiment and that they have shed light on the crucial role the body plays in both constructing and performing social and political thought of society. What seems most interesting in digesting this lineage of thought is how circular many of the ideas become. Somehow the fundamental problem of the separating the self from the body then eventually leads again to the body informing the self. The chosen image, which captures the movement of a woman walking down steps from three different vantage points reflects a kind of scientific documentation of a meaningless task. I like this image in comparison to this article because it reflects on a specific understanding of the female body but it also hints at the entanglement of the self and the body as a subject of understanding. The female body trapped within frames that replicate her menial task.
Sources:
[1] “Kathleen Lennon Staff in Philosophy”, Hull University, accessed March 1, 2019, http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/humanities/philosophy/staff-in-philosophy/lennonkathleen.aspx
[2] Kathleen Lennon, “Feminist Perspectives on the Body”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2014, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-body/
Image Source:
Eadweard Muybridge, Nude woman descending stairs and stooping (Animal Locomotion, 1887, plate 149), USC,