Body Politics and the Fictional Double
Debra King, ed.
Indiana University Press, 2000
ISBN: 0253214092
In recent years, questions concerning “the body” and its place in postmodern discourses have taken center stage in academic disciplines. Body Politics joins these discussions by focusing on the challenges women face when their externally defined identities and representations as bodies – their body fictions – speak louder than what they know to be their true selves.
Racialized, gendered, or homophobic body fictions disfigure individuals by concealing them beneath a veil of invisibility and political, emotional, or spiritual suffocation. As objects of interpretation, “female bodies” in search of health care, legal assistance, professional respect, identity confirmation, and financial security must first confront their fictionalized doubles in a collision that, in many cases, ends in disappointment, distress, and even suicide.
The moments of collision this volume examines includes reflections on women’s day-to-day lives and the cultural productions (literature, MTV, film, etc.) that give body fictions their power and influence. By exploring how these fictions are manipulated politically, expressively, and communally, they offer reinterpretations that challenge the fictional double while theorizing the discursive and performative forms it takes.
