1. Why does the writer use the word "difference" in her discussion of the concept of Gender?
Sex was a category that was too easily misinterpreted by the layman. Which is why Gender was a concept to criticise something, introduced as a category to reflect upon XXX in disagreement. Gender is a category of feminist critique.
Opening line - importance of 'gender' because it is now an assumed category
"I think of social relations not as fixed relations between statuses but as an organization of actual sequences of action in time." p.121 - Lived experience
Temporality in dynamism with femininity
Relations change throughout time
She calls for a dynamic methodology - how you conceptualise it
What difference does the relative openness mean to the meaning of gender itself?
How do we transform our social relations to be more than just accepting what the texts say that we read?
Gender throws a wrench into the fixed idea of what sex is
Instead of using gender as the lens, she wants to look at lived experience to see how gender is produced.
Sex was a category that was too easily misinterpreted by the layman. Which is why Gender was a concept to criticise something, introduced as a category to reflect upon XXX in disagreement. Gender is a category of feminist critique.
Opening line - importance of 'gender' because it is now an assumed category
"I think of social relations not as fixed relations between statuses but as an organization of actual sequences of action in time." p.121 - Lived experience
Temporality in dynamism with femininity
Relations change throughout time
She calls for a dynamic methodology - how you conceptualise it
What difference does the relative openness mean to the meaning of gender itself?
How do we transform our social relations to be more than just accepting what the texts say that we read?
Gender throws a wrench into the fixed idea of what sex is
Instead of using gender as the lens, she wants to look at lived experience to see how gender is produced.
But what happened to the use of Gender? It became essentialised as much as sex. Characteristic features were attributed to men and women.
The principle of differentiation is what she calls gender. Making sense is mobilising of understanding discursive experience. Smith doesn't want us to produce a list of features attributable to women and men, but rather explaining how distinctions come about. Smith does this in relation to the fashion industry. Looking at particulars to see how they function as a type. Smith argues for an explanation - what is happening that results in gendering and therefore a gendered distinction. It is a category of explanation, not description. Smith wants to discuss the conduct literature of Victorian England - the example shows how many different sites and relations are brought into conflict with one another.
What does being overpowered mean? Over (to transcend) but also spilling over - a set of people expressing a discourse that is beyond them. The systems are overdoing similar distinctions, resulting in coherent patterns but not closed structures.
Something is happening that turns out to mean something else
Subject is not synonymous with the particular individual
Why is wearing make-up perceived as a mistake but also as an act of disagreement/criticism/resistance on behalf of those girls? Why does the make-up mean class disagreement? How do you explain that now school children are able to dictate appearance more?
Inappropriate, over-sexualised, resistance integration. When one is already an outsider, one might as well visualise the difference. Also sets town for school - bad association.
In relation to their peers, the working-class girls wear make up to differentiate themselves from the middle-class girls.
How do people organise their life in relation to texts? (i.e. socially organised communicative practices)
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What do the concept of subject-in-discourse do for research that wants to do away with victimhood?
Subject-in-discourse - if femininity was individual, you would see multiple versions, however there is a pattern. Victims tell the same stories, however subject-in-discourse allows for more expressions of stories - the subject at work. It is not just a mindless workless thing that happens to you, but there is a lot invested in subject-in-discourse. It is not recognised as work (and it mustn't, because if it is, it will be seen as activity, even if it is the activity of the subject-in-discourse because it is enacting the expectation of work). As soon as something falls outside, it is criticised, policed, restricted.
SID in relation to fashion industry - subjects who believe they are unique. Through coming into textually mediated relationship by coming into contact with the market - the commodity becomes the meaning of the self, a matter of styling.
All examples of SID are subversive and at work, an activity that isn't recognised - what does it result it: reiteration of the norm or subversion of the norm (they are still within the options)
Difference between subversion and transformation - how do we criticise the mediation of profit-making, commodified self that goes beyond the logic of fashion
Presentation - Background of author, clarification of key terms, breakdown text, bring in example, ask questions throughout
Text: material medium through which discourses are symbolically conveyed, but also. Texts rendered into a pattern are genres. Genres that are about different interfaces of media in a matter of time (women's magazines in 90's, conduct books in 18th century). Peoples sequences of action in time.
Discourses in text, text is always articulated out of any discourses, rendered into a dominant perspective - that is why they come across as one and the same (exhausting themselves)
Discourse has a material presence and present themselves through text.
What we learn is how to relate to discourse on different sites (text). Who can enter texts, with different effects (social regulation) - it is not an individuals choice to do it one way and not another way. Learning how to relate to others through textual mediation.
Discourses mediated by texts provide a fixed point of reference for everyone
Diverse individuals in completely different settings come to a shared process of self-interpretation.
Diverse individuals in completely different settings come to a shared process of self-interpretation.
Femininity is social relations organised by a textually mediated discourse. The material presence of discourse in text is integral to social relation.
Documentary method of interpretation - if women are using text to construct appearance - they are transforming themselves into a text that can be read - what women wear is a document of femininity
- Women are full agents in the making of their appearance, but the underlying meaning of this appearance is outside her control.
-Subjects in the making, objects (of the masculine heterosexual desire) in the interpretation - transference of agency to the man
Doctrines of femininity - Heterosexual society
How do texts of femininity create desire?
- Gap between the actual appearance of a body and the desired body
- Women's bodies are converted into an object that needs to be constantly worked on
- The textual images of the discourse of femininity convey what kind of bodies are desirable in heterosexual sociality
- "And for some special women, it is a project of producing themselves as sources of textual ideality" (Smith, 1993, p.146)
- Texts of femininity are indexical - their meaning is not fully contained in them, but it's completed with the prior knowledge, skills, time and effort and work done by women
- But the texts of femininity also provides a connection to the market in order to achieve a look
Women are agents of their appearance (work hard) but are also objects (who interprets their appearance)
The fashion industry are the active produces of the doctrine of femininity
Women are constantly resisting, manipulating, recreating, reframing and opposing the doctrines of femininity pictured in the media.
The standardisation of the ideal of femininity responds to a need for mass consumption.
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