A CAMERA WITH A VIEW JenniCAM, visual representation, and cyborg subjectivity

Hailed as the originator of the digital camera 'homecam' phenomenon, Jennifer Ringley has garnered national media attention for her website, JenniCAM (Ringley 1998c), which offers viewers a constant window into the bedroom of a young woman through internet technology. Using the JenniCAM website as my primary text, I examine how Jenni integrates flesh and machine in the formation and display of a cyborg subjectivity, a hybridized identity (re)presented through the new technology of the digital camera. Towards that end I use feminist film theory to demonstrate how the construction and display of the female body-via the medium of digital camera-transforms our readings of gendered bodies as sites of knowledge production and pleasure. I assert that JenniCAM, a cyborg subject created through the integration of the electronic image and the internet, exposes more than just flesh. JenniCAM reveals cultural tensions surrounding epistemological conceptions of vision, gender, and identity and raises questions for future conversations regarding the role of technology in the representation and construction of gendered subjects.     

Imagining the She/Male: Pornography and the Transsexualization of the Heterosexual Male

This essay explores the emergence of a form of sexual desire that did not strictly exist before the late 20th century—desire for the “pre-op” male-to-female (MTF) transsexual woman—a partially feminized male-bodied person who typically has breasts developed through hormone therapy or breast augmentation and some other female characteristics but who has not yet undergone female-to-male sex-reassignment surgery. The historical development of this new form of sexual desire is documented, in part, by the emergence of the transsexual pornographic video as a heterosexual male genre. The primary focus of this article is on the male spectator, with a secondary emphasis on the “male” performer. It explores how both male performers and consumers self-identify, what concepts of gender that both performers and consumers hold, and how the adult entertainment industry organizes and reflects sex and gender conventions and practices.     

Masculinity as a Gendered Form of Desire: Laplanche and Enigmatic Seduction

Laplanche’s formulation of primal seduction and afterwardsness is employed to theorize masculinity as a gendered form of desire. This formulation is grounded in the notion that gender, sexed difference, and Freudian sexuality are complexly interrelated and mutually determined, forming gendered desire and desirous gender. With Laplanche, identification with a gendered other is understood to be preceded by identification by the other. Masculinity is in this instance constituted by how one translates and retranslates the enigmatic signifiers inscribed by the address of adult caregivers, and by how the untranslated remains of that address inspire and animate the performance of gender. Primal seduction is here further employed, in extended form, to explore and augment understandings of the intergenerational transmission of masculinities through paternal seduction. Masculinities are in this articulation considered to emerge in relation to the vulnerabilities associated with the experience of the enigmatic within relations of power, in the tensions between subjectivity and subjectification. The article privileges the enigmatic, unrepresented experiences of being, and the otherness of self, and while I attempt to apprehend these understandings through the presentation of case material, I do so to demonstrate that the enigmatic is, by definition, elusive and indeterminate, and I invite the perspective that this problematic not be resolved.     

Old Dreams,New Means: an Exploration of Visions and Situated Knowledge in Information Technology

The aim of this article is to explore the tensions and ambivalences of new and old technology and political visions of keeping viable, quality care and services for elderly citizens through the use of new information technologies. The visions of politicians and social service managers of keeping alive the welfare state and retaining its ability to offer quality care and services for elderly citizens are compared with the experiences of female care assistants and their expectations of technology. A feminist figure — the cyborg — will be used in this exploration. We consider how care assistants are integrated in networks of socio‐technical relations between humans and non‐humans, and the extent to which gender or asymmetrical power relations between women and men intervene in their stories.     

CYBORGS OR GODDESSES? Becoming divine in a cyberfeminist age

New digital and biogenetic technologies-in the shape of media such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, genetic modification and technological prosthetics- signal a 'posthuman' future in which the boundaries between humanity, technology and nature have become ever more malleable. We are more aware than ever that what we call 'nature' is open to manipulation by varieties of biotechnology such as gene therapy. Computer-assisted technologies transform perceptions of body, time and space. Dreams of merging humans and machines into new intelligent cybernetic organisms leave the realm of science fiction and enter everyday reality. As the taken-for-grantedness of what it means to be human shifts and blurs, we might consider how myth, literature and popular culture have furnished the Western imagination with a gallery of fantastic and monstrous creatures on the margins of human and non-human. One contemporary example is that of the cyborg, who serves as a metaphor of the various ways in which the contemporary west is currently experiencing the hybridization of human nature. One version of the cyborg popular with cultural theorists-especially feminists- has been the vision articulated in Haraway's 'Manifesto for Cyborgs'. Termed here as Haraway's 'cyborg writing', it expresses important values about gender, politics and technology; but whilst the cyborg subverts many of the dualisms of western culture, Haraway's comment that she would 'rather be a cyborg than a goddess' inadvertently reinforces one final, often unspoken dichotomy of modernity: that between religion and the secular. Therefore the implications for feminist theory and praxis of a recovery of the goddess are explored. To concur with Haraway, such a project is prone to an inversion of traditional gender stererotypes, enclosing women in a realm of unreconstructed 'nature' at the expense of empowering them to engage with new technologies. Other models of 'becoming divine', however, promise more radical reconfigurations of the religious symbolic of western modernity, a symbolic that has sanctioned the equation of technology with the disavowal of embodied finitude in the name of a quest for transcendence. Irigaray's concept of the 'sensible transcendental' refuses the simplistic distinctions between sacred/secular, spiritual/material, divine/human. Far from representing a female version of the patriarchal sky-god, or even a bucolic, romanticized 'mothergoddess', therefore, Irigaray's model of 'becoming divine' offers an exciting addition to the critical and reconstructive resources of cyberfeminism.     

Sense and Segmentarity: Some Markers of a Deleuzian-Guattarian Sociology

Although the focus of their work was rarely explicitly sociological, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed concepts that have important and often profound implications for social theory and practice. Two of these, sense and segmentarity, provide us with entirely new ways to view sociological problems of meaning and structure. Deleuze conceives sense independently of both agency and signification. That is, sense is neither the manifestation of a communicating subject nor a structure of language—it is noncorporeal, impersonal, and prelinguistic, in his words, a "pure effect or event." With Guattari, Deleuze notes that it is not a question of how subjects produce social structures, but how a "machinics of desire" produces subjects. In Deleuze and Guattari, desire is not defined as a want or a lack, but as a machinery of forces, flows, and breaks of energy. The functional stratification we witness in social life is only the molar effect of a more primary segmentation of desire that occurs at the molecular level, at the level of bodies. In Deleuze and Guattari, bodies are not just human bodies, but "anorganic" composites or mixtures, organic form itself being a mode of the body's subjectification. The problem of the subject, and thus of the constitution of society, is first a problem of how the sense of bodies is produced through the assembly of desiring-machines. The subject, we could say, is the actualization of desire on the incorporeal surface of bodies.     

Armed masculinity,Hindu nationalism and female political participation in India

Male and female bodies as well as societal ideas defining cultural interpretations of masculinities and femininities are potent metaphors for expressing nation. This article examines two cultural expressions of nation and manliness – the Hindu soldier and warrior monk – disseminated by Hindu nationalist organizations in India. These images, among others, emerged from India's experience of British imperialism and are defined by values of martial prowess, muscular strength, a readiness to go to battle and moral fortitude. Men and women both respond to the call of a nationalism glorifying muscular warriors radiating an uncompromising moral resolve to defend their nation (us) against an easily recognizable enemy (them).

This article argues that this masculinized vision of nation carries important implications for women. Women enter this masculine environment through roles such as heroic mother, chaste wife and celibate warrior. Although divergent in their articulation at the grassroots, all three models of female behavior articulate two social themes. One, women's bodies represent national honor and two, this embodiment only works if women are chaste and virtuous. Indian feminists view such feminine activism with suspicion because the considerable empowerment women may derive from Hindu nationalist politics ultimately does not challenge the gendered power imbalances within the patriarchal Hindu family.     

‘Have You Got a Boyfriend or are You Single?’: On the Importance of Being ‘Straight’ in Organizational Research

The article focuses on heterosexuality as a covert feature of organization studies as well as of organizational research. In fact, while organization studies have discussed the gendered and the gendering aspects of organizational practices and organizational theory, the implication of heterosexuality has yet to receive intensive analysis in these fields. And while the mutual and reflexive constitution of the observer and the observed has been the topic of a considerable amount of research, the dimension of (heterosexual) desire in this process of mutual constitution is still largely unexplored. Referring to three different episodes that occurred while the author was doing organizational ethnography, the article suggests that a heterosexual model of desire is called into action both in organizational and research activities and that focusing on it can be an occasion to question not only the gender (and heterosexual) biases of organizational practices but also the way in which gender and sexuality are mobilized while doing research. In particular, on the basis of the concept of cathexis, the article shows how heterosexuality is learnt and enacted as a situated practice and through a variety of processes: performing power, negotiating and displaying that one belongs to an organizational culture, obscuring the hetero‐normativity of professional identities and neglecting the emotional engagement that characterizes research activities and that exposes the researcher to an otherwise vulnerable position.     

Bisexuals Making Out with Cyborgs: Politics, Pleasure, Con/fusion

This article considers the appeal of the figure of the cyborg for bisexuals, offering bisexual readings of both Donna Haraway's cyborg, and of the cyborg self created within text-based virtual reality. The writer argues that understanding bisexuality as part of a web of meanings and material realities can lead to a new political awareness, and suggests ways to make some of these connections. Through her analysis, she emphasises the role of technology in creating and developing contemporary bisexuality.     

Cyborg Writing as a Political Act: Reading Donna Haraway in Organization Studies

Extending the works of scholars who have elucidated writing as the quintessential site for social transformation, the aim of this article is to locate the myriad possibilities for actualizing Donna Haraway's concept of cyborg writing in the field of organization studies. I contend that cyborg writing functions as a discursive mechanism by which to disrupt Enlightenment ideals of Cartesian duality, objectivity and rationality. These ideals inform the very structure of masculine privilege that emerge from having a society that is organized along androcentric values. Situating the scholarship of Jo Brewis, a contemporary scholar in the field, I illuminate how cyborg writing can be practised effectively, whereby greater richness is imparted into conceptualizations of, and theorizing on, organizational and management phenomena. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of cyborg writing, and with the identification of two trajectories that scholars can pursue in future studies. Progress along these two paths will move towards actualizing the feminist project for gender egalitarianism.     

Index of Volume 4, 2002

This article links a theoretical debate within poststructural feminisms – whether feminist politics can be pursued without hegemonic representations of women and gender – to the practice of transnational feminist organizing in the World Conference against Racism (WCAR) in Durban in 2001. It goes beyond the traditional analysis of ‘adding’ gender to a mega world conference and asks the critical question of what

gender signifies in this instance of UN politics. The article argues that feminists’ strategic use of the concept of ‘gender as intersectionality’ marks a paradigm shift from the predominant monolithic representation of gender as women, being equal to or different from men, in international human rights frameworks. It puts the issue of diversity among women at the forefront of the intergovernmental WCAR. Far from entailing an abandonment of feminist politics, as some poststructuralist feminists have suggested, it is argued that opening up ‘gender’ for unlimited signification in

the case of WCAR marks the beginning of a new phase of transnational feminist mobilization.     

Desiring nature: Identity and becoming in narratives of travel

Abstract

This paper explores the cultural value of desiring nature through reading the travel narratives of Val Plumwood and Alphonso Lingis with the writings of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). As Game (1991) suggests this textual practice produces different ways of writing the social that undoes the nature/culture opposition informing popular discourses and much cultural theory. Rethinking the value of nature/culture relations has tended to be the domain of environmental philosophy. Yet a cultural analysis also has much to contribute to current debates around value and identity, embodiment and representations of desire. Such a shift requires rethinking the sensory relation between self and nature through the mediation of language. Two quite distinctive experiences of awe provide texts for this analysis. In the desire to know non‐human nature as other, Lingis and Plumwood are moved by a wish to become nearer, to move beyond the bounds of an identity premised on a cultural relation of mastery over nature. These are compelling narratives, for they do not simply indulge the reader in a romantic appreciation of nature's wildness, as if nature was simply an object of aesthetic contemplation and background to the unfolding drama of human identity. These journeys involve disturbing transformations of self; Plumwood travels into the dangerous waters of the crocodile's territory in Kakadu National Park, Australia, while Lingis encounters the uninhabitable terrain of the Antarctic. The reverberating effects of awe produce a movement of becoming ‐ becoming‐animal, becoming‐nature, which contests the Hegelian desire for mastery of nature and the teleological structure of desire itself aimed at unity. Awe as a profoundly disturbing relation, threatens to undo the dominant fantasy of human identity as pure culture, separate from the realm of nature, body and materiality.     

Gender and the state

The article argues from a Nordic, feminist and poststructuralist position that feminist state theories need to be developed methodologically. This claim is based on both theoretical arguments as well as empirical arguments arising from a case study on care politics in Denmark. In contrast to answering questions about the essence of the state, the aim of the article is to provide some analytical tools for studying the state. First, it focuses on two paradigms of feminist analyses of the state: differences between states (Nordic feminists), and differences within states (poststructural feminists). The article argues that each of the approaches has its merits and problems in terms of feminist engagements with the state. The second part explores an empirical case study on care politics in Denmark. The study illustrates the inadequacies of feminist approaches to the state to date. State discourses and policies on home-helpers are shown to have both empowering and disempowering effects on the women concerned. The third part of the article suggests a framework of three concepts believed to be helpful when analysing gender and the state: hegemony, contradictory effects and boundaries. The concepts are generated from the case study.     

Practising Gender at Work: Further Thoughts on Reflexivity

In an effort to make visible the subtle and seldom acknowledged aspects of gendering dynamics, Martin focuses on unreflexive practices that both communicate and constitute gender in paid work settings. She reviews the distinction between practices that are culturally available to ‘do gender’ and the literal practising of gender that is constituted through interaction. While acknowledging that agency is involved in any practicing of gender, she considers how intentionality and agency intersect, arguing that people in powerful positions routinely practise gender without being reflexive about it. Defining practising as emergent, directional, temporal, rapid, immediate and indeterminate, Martin shows how these qualities affect men as well as women in unexpected and often harmful ways. She concludes with a call for innovative ways to ‘catch gender in practice’ and for attention to reflexivity's role in the ongoing constitution of gender at work.     

Friendships with benefits? Examining the role of friendship in semi-structured interviews within music research

This article explores the ‘methodology of friendship’ and its wider potential within music research. Drawing on two research examples that made use of ‘friendship’ in distinct fashions – one that explores music listening practices in everyday life and the other, music as a site for racialisation – the article discusses how friendship can be incorporated within semi-structured interviews. The case studies act as examples of how to negotiate alterity in music research and how friendship represents a potential for gathering more detailed data. The notion of ‘alterity’, at the core of research relationships is critical to shift the conversation to an informal tone and improve the depth of the discourses gathered from informants. Consequently, this article addresses debates within qualitative (music) sociology by reconsidering friendship as an axis of power and examines the nature of the data gathered in semi-structured interviews through the methodology of friendship.     

Professional feminists: Challenging local government inside out

Gender equality work in local government carried out during the 1980s presents a valuable site to explore the interaction between professional and feminist working. In the history of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) and feminist organizing more broadly in the UK, professional working has often been positioned as antithetical to feminist working, and relatively little scholarship has examined the interface between the two. This article argues that the individuals involved should be considered ‘professional feminists’ as opposed to ‘femocrats’, drawing from across feminist, social movement and organizational theory, and interviews carried out in 2011 and archival texts from three UK councils. It also suggests their work (undertaken between the beginning of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s) serves to blur the boundaries usually marked between social movement and state. This contributes to the existing literature by exploring the specific understandings and practices put to work by those working on gender equality professionally, but not in an elected capacity, within local government, and how their work can be positioned in relation to feminist organizing more broadly.     

The F Word: College Students' Definitions of a Feminist

Research indicates that most people espouse feminist ideologies, yet very few self-identify as feminists. This article examines the discrepancy between agreement with feminist principles and lack of identification with feminism by analyzing 270 female and male college students' definitions of feminists. We explored similarities and differences in definitions provided by self-identified feminists and nonfeminists. The results indicate that feminists and nonfeminists are equally likely to define a feminist as one who actively promotes gender equality in society and, less commonly, rejects traditional gender roles and burns bras. Feminists were more likely to define a feminist as one who supports gender equality, is female, and has positive personal characteristics. Nonfeminists were more likely to define a feminist as one who supports female superiority, dislikes men, discriminates based on gender, has negative personal characteristics, and is lesbian or butch. These results are discussed in the broader contexts of feminist identity and movement mobilization.     

Performance and Performativity: Undoing Fictions of Women Business Owners

This article explores the representation of women small business owners in three contemporary novels; Chocolat, The Shipping News and Back When We Were Grownups. The primary contribution is to demonstrate how fiction can both challenge and collude in dominant constructions of entrepreneurship, which is more generally gendered as male and masculine. Judith Butler's thinking on performativity with regard to gender and sexual desire is applied to women's identities and extended to include their behaviour as entrepreneurs. The article demonstrates that these novels both ‘do’ and ‘undo’ gender and business ownership. They portray women who are successful in business while displaying culturally accepted norms of femininity but who are set apart from other female characters. However, their partial and conflictual identification with norms of gender and entrepreneurship could lead a reader to question those norms and through the undoing of the protagonists, the novels offer alternative performances and performativities of doing gender and of doing business.     

Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in "Masculine" Roles

Women's military service is the focus of an ongoing controversy because of its implications for the gendered nature of citizenship. While liberal feminists endorse equal service as a venue for equal citizenship, radical feminists see women's service as a rei•cation of martial citizenship and cooperation with a hierarchical and sexist institution. These debates, however, tend to ignore the perspective of the women soldiers themselves.
This paper seeks to add to the contemporary debate on women's military service the subjective dimension of gender and national identities of women soldiers serving in "masculine" roles. I use a theory of identity practices in order to analyze the interaction between state institutions and identity construction. Based on in-depth interviews, I argue that Israeli women soldiers in "masculine" roles shape their gender identities according to the hegemonic masculinity of the combat soldier through three interrelated practices: (1) mimicry of combat soldiers' bodily and discursive practices; (2) distancing from "traditional femininity"; and (3) trivialization of sexual harassment.
These practices signify both resistance and compliance with the military dichotomized gender order. While these transgender performances subvert the hegemonic norms of masculinity and femininity, they also collaborate with the military androcentric norms. Thus, although these women soldiers individually transgress gender boundaries, they internalize the military's masculine ideology and values and learn to identify with the patriarchal order of the army and the state. This accounts for a pattern of "limited inclusion" that reaf•rms their marginalization, thus prohibiting them from developing a collective consciousness that would challenge the gendered structure of citizenship.     

Rodlach,Alexander. (2006). Witches,Westerners, and HIV: AIDS & Cultures of Blame in Africa. CA: Left Coast Press, (232272 pp., $29.95-pb,ISBN-978-1-59874-034-9)

This research explores the parental relationship (or lack thereof) between young adults in long-term care facilities and their children. The study explores not only the ecological impediments presented by the medical disposition of the parent but the psychosocial schism between parent and child, notwithstanding the redefinition of their role as parent and acceptance of the concept of interdependence. The article qualitatively addresses how such breaches are bridged through external parental substitutes and how the structural obstructions might be logistically addressed in the face of a parental inclination and desire to remain involved. Implications for practice, policy development, and future research are discussed.