Synopses & Reviews
Building Bodies is an exciting collection of articles that strive toward constructing theoretical models in which power, bodies, discourse, and subjectivity interact in a space we can call the "built" body, a dynamic, politicized, and biological site. Contributors discuss the complex relationship between body building and masculinity, between the built body and the racialized body, representations of women body builders in print and in film, and homoeroticism in body building. Linked by their focus on the sport and practice of body building, the authors in this volume challenge both the way their various disciplines (media studies, literary criticism, gender studies, film and sociology) have gone about studying bodies, and existing assumptions about the complex relationship between power, subjectivity, society, and flesh. Body building--in practice, in representation, and in the cultural imagination--serves as an launching point because the sport and practice provide ready challenges to existing assumptions about the "built" body.
Synopsis
In the last decade, "the body" has become almost an obsession to academics in a multitude of disciplines. But despite much discussion of "the body", actual bodies -- muscles, nerves, genes, and blood -- are often absent from academic debate.
Linked by their focus on the sport and practice of body building, the authors in this volume challenge both the way their various disciplines (sociology, media studies, literary criticism, film) have gone about studying bodies, and existing assumptions about the complex relationship between power, subjectivity, society, and flesh.
The essays in Building Bodies strive toward models in which power, bodies, discourse, and subjectivity interact in a space we can call the "built body", a dynamic, politicized, and biological site. Body building serves as a launching point because the sport and practice provide ready challenges to the ruling binaries of body studies.
-- First academic collection on body building.
-- Incorporates gender studies, queer studies, and film criticism.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-259) and index.