Main idea from Thornham - images of women and women in society - how women are viewed through the lens of the artist (paintings/photography). Woman as spectacle.
The relationship between seeing and power in consumer culture.
- Image - something to be seen in the first place
- Genres: paintings, photography (fashion/porn), advertisements, subversive artists
Thornham - how is the image used as a trope/metaphor/figure of speech in literature, as a linguistic sign (madonna/whore)
Appearance: the specificity of femininity through the image, how can woman be captured in an image
Self-identifying feminist artists that are critical of fixing into images
Thornham begins the chapter by problematising the dominant discourse as it appears in the 1970's which emerges then but hasn't necessarily disappeared.
1. What is wrong with conceptualising the power and seeing relationship as the image of women?
2. How does Thornham represent the dominant way of doing research in the 1970's and what is problematic about that?
The woman has always been a consumer as well as an object. Historical understanding has only ever seen the woman as the object. Positivist/Structuralist approach.
The image of woman is distorted - which is not how women are - articulates empiricist understanding.
Thornham - women see themselves and become subject (aspirational advertisements) - the problem is that is erases the woman as a subject.
A possible solution is that women can recognise inconsistencies between advertisement and lived experience, and rethink the discourse, even if one finds oneself in agreement with the narrative, does not mean one cannot question. This is the space for subversive and alternative discourses.
It is a slippery situation because it doesn't necessarily mean that the image of woman can not be legitimate for many women.
Feminist media researchers - what work does stereotype appeal to: superficial work
Distorted image is capture by concept of stereotype
Problematic because: it is a distortion - not how women are
And the effect of the stereotypes on women - representations are treated as document of life.
This effects women psychologically, stops women for aspiring for progress, effects others perception of women
How is it possible to explain that someone is harmed by the images? Within the logic of truthfulness (actual women and the copy of their lives in distortion accidentally or on purpose), you cannot answer the question: How does the feminist researcher escape the stereotypical distorted representation of women? Research is always within the relations of power.
Methods of the feminist researcher -
Content analysis (this is life/this is about life) as counting - how is it subject to change, not an intersectionality category, lack of reflexibility
Women's life - this is the representation (seen as a container, which means there is no autonomy of signification) e.g. 'wife' has nothing to do with how it is named, it is too contextually.
To be in the discourse pushes one to go along with salient element of meaning of concept and reiterate it
What you count is only what is said = what if the category 'wife' is not literally mentioned = erases positionality on both sides
Thornham - women are meant to be visible, but not to be seen
Visibility is unproblematic when we are in the discourse - we are sufficiently in synchro with the dominant discourse - intersectionality is collapsed into the main element of its meaning.
Universalises a particular discourse as universal
Dominant becomes normal
Within content analysis where truth is what is visible, we enact it as visible. Rep of women: A bodily marker of sexual difference is a way to read gender.
Seeing and power - gender distinctions - empiricist logic where the criterion of truth is visibility, and the marker of visibly different genders is defined as bodily marker of sexual difference
Why does the change in technology of visibility not allow for different understandings of relationship with reality and the image? Visibility as the ultimate criteria of truth.
The medicalisation of women's body and the triumph of man over nature (and therefore man over the feminine): "the woman's body, now pathologised, is dismembered and dissected, rendered transparent and legible." p.36 - technology as subjective and truth - reproduces idea that visibility is truth and power - if something is not visible, it cannot be truth
Why does technology not mean change for the better?
Why should we take about change rather than progress?
With new technology, sphere of visibility was included and included the female body within the same context of power. Turning the female body into the container that has the meaning of pregnancy inscribed as the foetus that is made visible within. Is the foetus healthy and what is its sex?
If visibility is the criteria of truth, and the truth is sex, then sexual difference itself is a universal category, anchored in morphology of self, biologised and essentialised. Technological progress does not change this epistemology.
When will science document the laws of science and nature
To be looking means possessing - gendered distinction in looking and being looked at - how does that logic work when the statement is to be looked at is to be possessed
The looker owns the subjectivity that he makes - male gaze theory (sexualised) Biologised distinction
Gender is anchored in biologised sexual difference
Fiction vs document
Art vs Evidence
Art is not good if it is faithful but if it is aesthetically beautiful
Body/experience/truthfulness
If the work of being looked at is not acknowledged, then the binary of looking at/being looked at is cemented.
Woman as the subject in consumerism.
Specificity of positionality against empiricism.
Woman is positioned as seducer, commodity, consumer (who is expected to be dazed by the spectacle).
Man is positioned as consumer, producer.
Dominant image white, able-bodied, ideal - image bears traces of absence. The absence of black, disabled, fat women. Traces of absence/impossible to obtain/intertextuality. It is impossible to contain femininity in dominant imagery because it literally cannot represent all femininity.
Contradictory and oppositional images.
Our lived experience does not fall in line with the image.
Irony - distancing away from. Irony is a positioned practice. It is not available for everyone.
The relationship between seeing and power in consumer culture.
- Image - something to be seen in the first place
- Genres: paintings, photography (fashion/porn), advertisements, subversive artists
Thornham - how is the image used as a trope/metaphor/figure of speech in literature, as a linguistic sign (madonna/whore)
Appearance: the specificity of femininity through the image, how can woman be captured in an image
Self-identifying feminist artists that are critical of fixing into images
Thornham begins the chapter by problematising the dominant discourse as it appears in the 1970's which emerges then but hasn't necessarily disappeared.
1. What is wrong with conceptualising the power and seeing relationship as the image of women?
2. How does Thornham represent the dominant way of doing research in the 1970's and what is problematic about that?
The woman has always been a consumer as well as an object. Historical understanding has only ever seen the woman as the object. Positivist/Structuralist approach.
The image of woman is distorted - which is not how women are - articulates empiricist understanding.
Thornham - women see themselves and become subject (aspirational advertisements) - the problem is that is erases the woman as a subject.
A possible solution is that women can recognise inconsistencies between advertisement and lived experience, and rethink the discourse, even if one finds oneself in agreement with the narrative, does not mean one cannot question. This is the space for subversive and alternative discourses.
It is a slippery situation because it doesn't necessarily mean that the image of woman can not be legitimate for many women.
Feminist media researchers - what work does stereotype appeal to: superficial work
Distorted image is capture by concept of stereotype
Problematic because: it is a distortion - not how women are
And the effect of the stereotypes on women - representations are treated as document of life.
This effects women psychologically, stops women for aspiring for progress, effects others perception of women
How is it possible to explain that someone is harmed by the images? Within the logic of truthfulness (actual women and the copy of their lives in distortion accidentally or on purpose), you cannot answer the question: How does the feminist researcher escape the stereotypical distorted representation of women? Research is always within the relations of power.
Methods of the feminist researcher -
Content analysis (this is life/this is about life) as counting - how is it subject to change, not an intersectionality category, lack of reflexibility
Women's life - this is the representation (seen as a container, which means there is no autonomy of signification) e.g. 'wife' has nothing to do with how it is named, it is too contextually.
To be in the discourse pushes one to go along with salient element of meaning of concept and reiterate it
What you count is only what is said = what if the category 'wife' is not literally mentioned = erases positionality on both sides
Thornham - women are meant to be visible, but not to be seen
Visibility is unproblematic when we are in the discourse - we are sufficiently in synchro with the dominant discourse - intersectionality is collapsed into the main element of its meaning.
Universalises a particular discourse as universal
Dominant becomes normal
Within content analysis where truth is what is visible, we enact it as visible. Rep of women: A bodily marker of sexual difference is a way to read gender.
Seeing and power - gender distinctions - empiricist logic where the criterion of truth is visibility, and the marker of visibly different genders is defined as bodily marker of sexual difference
Why does the change in technology of visibility not allow for different understandings of relationship with reality and the image? Visibility as the ultimate criteria of truth.
The medicalisation of women's body and the triumph of man over nature (and therefore man over the feminine): "the woman's body, now pathologised, is dismembered and dissected, rendered transparent and legible." p.36 - technology as subjective and truth - reproduces idea that visibility is truth and power - if something is not visible, it cannot be truth
Why does technology not mean change for the better?
Why should we take about change rather than progress?
With new technology, sphere of visibility was included and included the female body within the same context of power. Turning the female body into the container that has the meaning of pregnancy inscribed as the foetus that is made visible within. Is the foetus healthy and what is its sex?
If visibility is the criteria of truth, and the truth is sex, then sexual difference itself is a universal category, anchored in morphology of self, biologised and essentialised. Technological progress does not change this epistemology.
When will science document the laws of science and nature
To be looking means possessing - gendered distinction in looking and being looked at - how does that logic work when the statement is to be looked at is to be possessed
The looker owns the subjectivity that he makes - male gaze theory (sexualised) Biologised distinction
Gender is anchored in biologised sexual difference
Fiction vs document
Art vs Evidence
Art is not good if it is faithful but if it is aesthetically beautiful
Body/experience/truthfulness
If the work of being looked at is not acknowledged, then the binary of looking at/being looked at is cemented.
Woman as the subject in consumerism.
Specificity of positionality against empiricism.
Woman is positioned as seducer, commodity, consumer (who is expected to be dazed by the spectacle).
Man is positioned as consumer, producer.
Dominant image white, able-bodied, ideal - image bears traces of absence. The absence of black, disabled, fat women. Traces of absence/impossible to obtain/intertextuality. It is impossible to contain femininity in dominant imagery because it literally cannot represent all femininity.
Contradictory and oppositional images.
Our lived experience does not fall in line with the image.
Irony - distancing away from. Irony is a positioned practice. It is not available for everyone.
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