Young: Modalities of Feminine Motility Flashcards
what are the three modalities?
ambiguous transcendence
inhibited intentionality
a discontinuous unity with itself and surroundings
what are the modalities derived from?
from the woman’s experience of her body as a thing at the same time as a capacity
compared to men who can experience their body as solely a capacity
in this essay I will..
s1: explain the three modalities
s2: usefulness of account
s3: issues
ambiguous transcendence: the feminine bodily experience involves a _______________ to the world and _________, but is laden with ___________, making it an ambiguous transcendence
transcendence (openness)
to possible action
immanence
ambiguous transcendence: what is immanence?
the possibility to be acted upon
ambiguous transcendence: explain immanence (moving to transcendence)
all bodies begin in immanence, but moves towards transcendence when performing an action – feminine bodies remain partly rooted in the immanence, so only half move towards a task
‘only a part of the body, that is, moves out toward a task while the rest remains rooted in immanence’
how does ambiguous transcendence explain observation of females refraining from putting whole body into action?
they concentrate the motion in only one part of the body, the rest remaining still, because not all of the body moves towards transcendence, some remains rooted in immanence
inhibited intentionality is a limitation on the body’s movement due to the _____-___________ involved in feminine bodily existence
self-underestimation
inhibited intentionality: Merleau-Ponty suggests there is intention in motility - explain
possibilities we are open to depend on the ‘mode and limits of the bodily ‘I can’
inhibited intentionality: explain how women move in contradictory way (reference to ‘I can’/’I cannot’)
the feminine body tends not to go towards its surrounds with a confident ‘I can’ – instead, it ‘underuses its real capacity’
simultaneously reaches toward a projected end with an ‘I can’ and withholds full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed ‘I cannot’
project an aim but stiffen against its performance
the intentionality of ‘I can’ is inhibited by the self-underestimating ‘I cannot’, leading the body to _______________________________
the ‘I can’ a woman projects when entering a task with inhibited intentionality is more of a ‘__________ ___’, resulting in an ‘I cannot’
withhold its own motile energy
‘someone can’
explain feminine body’s discontinuous unity with surroundings
women don’t fully take up the space around them the way men do
e.g. when a ball is thrown towards them, women have a tendency to stay still and wait to catch it; men move towards the ball to meet it and catch it in motion
explain feminine body’s discontinuous unity with itself
the part of the body that is transcending towards an aim is discontinuous with the parts of the body that remain immobile (when a women isolates her movement to one part of the body)
Merleau-Ponty on discontinuous unity + existing as an object
for the body to exist as a transcendent presence to the world and enactment of intentions, it cannot exist as an object
BUT for feminine existence, the body is often both subject and object for itself within the same act
ways that feminine bodily existence is self-referred (4)
- woman takes herself to be the object of the motion, rather than its originator
- in the woman’s uncertainty of her body’s capacities
- woman doesn’t feel her motion is entirely under her control
- she is conscious of how the action is looked upon
how is Young’s account useful?
can be applied to other issues
who applies Young’s account to other issues + what issues?
Steele - applies it to fatness
what was Steele’s study and what did it show?
study on social exclusion showed all subjects felt negatively when excluded, but shame was dominant in fat people
give the two examples to illustrate how Steel relates to Young
e.g. a) susie strong swimmer but reluctant to go swimming because of how others look at her
e.g. b) Mariah Carey’s baseball pitch
in sexist society, women treated as mere bodies; same said for fat people in fatphobic society - neither is allowed to forget they’re always being judged on how they look, so both treat themselves as mere bodies (objects), which affects their movement
Steele applying Young’s account - difference between women and fat people in experiencing their bodies as needing protection
women might experience body as fragile, needing protection from physical harm
fat people might experience body as needing protection from shame
issues with account: not universal
Sojourner Truth (born into slavery) speaks of how she has done the same work and more whilst enslaved as males could do – when given the chance she could eat and work as much as a man, and ‘bear the lash as well’
response to ‘not universal’ criticism and response to this
Young does make point of saying ‘not all women, some women may escape this’
response: this seems to imply escaping this fate makes a woman better off (clearly not the case for Sojourner Truth)
issues with account - ‘not incorrect but incomplete’
Craig
Young fails to recognise differences between different women and how this might affect their feminine motility and bodily experience
the woman Young talks about is unmarked, of no specific class or race, implicitly heterosexual
conclusion to essay
account is useful, but is perhaps too unspecific – more specificity in how different women experience their feminine existence differently would help to avoid the universality problem and make the account more complete as Craig asks
important names to remember of this essay (besides Young) (4)
Merleau-Ponty
Steele
Sojourner Truth
Craig
title of Young’s paper
On female body experience: “Throwing like a girl” and other essays
title of Craig’s paper
Race, beauty, and the tangled knot of a guilty pleasure
title of Steele’s work
Weight-Based Shame as an Affective Determinant of Health
