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Kim Q. Hall Associate Professor of Philosophy Appalachian State University |
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I am currently working on a paper titled “Queer Feminist Embodiment and Breasts.” In many attempts to reclaim the female body breasts operate as a sign of feminist embodiment and subjectivity. However, I argue that these attempts establish a relationship between breasts and feminist embodiment that ultimately reinscribe (albeit unintentionally) systems of patriarchy, compulsory heterosexuality, and ableism. In making this argument, I discuss how conceptions of gender and embodiment that have emerged from breast cancer narratives and the experiences of transsexual and intersexual people provide theorists and activists in feminist, queer, and disability communities an opportunity to understand how power operates in both dominant discourses that degrade breasts and strategies of feminist resistance that seek to reclaim and celebrate them. I presented a version of this paper at the Queer Theory conference at King’s College in London in May 2004. The paper is part of a book I am working on currently titled Making Our Bodies Ourselves. The book approaches the topic of gender identity and embodiment through feminist theory, disability studies, and queer theory and seeks to answer the question: to what extent are our bodies ourselves? In addition to the above project, I am working on an expanded book
version of Feminist Disability Studies, which was first published
as a special issue of NWSA (National Women’s Studies Association)
Journal in 2002. Publications |
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