Sex, Gender, Becoming: Post-apartheid ReflectionsKarin Van Marle About the publicationAll the chapters in this volume in one way or another reflect on change and transformation and how these changes/ transformations affect our sexed and gendered lives. The continuance of binaries, and objectifications and the maintenance of patriarchy notwithstanding these changes are teased out in various themes by the different authors. The contributions expose also how new approaches to how we live sex and gender do not necessarily manage to break or even radically challenge the old.From new technologies that can 'transform' gender, to new forms of pornography, freedom of sexual orientation, the creation of shopping malls, attempts to understand reproductive choices, restorative justice as response to sexual violence, women's testimonies, and women's mobility - all attempts are still hindered by conventional frameworks, structures and thought. A central call that emerges from all the contributions is one for more theory and more gender sensitive research and more listening to previously silenced voices.Comments from the reviewers:From the discussion of 'gentleman's pornography' to the consideration of women's travel needs in a development context, and Stephen Cohen's performance art, the contributions are firmly anchored in our own context and frame of reference.- Louise du Toit, University of JohannesburgI would like in conclusion to remark that the standard and academic merit of the contributions to this book bodes well for gender research in South Africa in future.- Irma Kroeze, UnisaAbout the editor:Karin van Marle is Professor at the Department of Legal History, Comparitive Law and Jurisprudence, at the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. |
Common terms and phrases
activities aesthetic argues associated behaviour Berlin Beuster Blauberg BMG Gegen Stech body Boer Brooklyn Mall Cavarero child constructed consumer consumption contemporary context conventional pornography department stores developing countries discourses domestic violence economic Eeden embodied empowerment erotic female feminine feminist fertility transition flâneur gender analysis gender binaries gentlemen's pornography girl glossy men's magazines heterosexual homosexual households identity interventions Interview Krause Lesthaeghe living London male male-to-female transsexuals Mashiri Massey missionary mobility modernity Moser framework nineteenth century patriarchal politics pornography postmodern poverty practices Preez reassignment surgery relations relationship representation reproductive response restorative justice role Routledge rural Sassen in Carman sex and gender sex reassignment surgery sexual sexualised shopping malls significant social society South Africa Soutpansberg space spatial Steven Cohen strategic studies theory Tini Tini's tool transgender transport Transvaal University of Pretoria University Press urban victims visual culture Waal Winterveld woman women
Popular passages
Page 39 - drag plays upon the distinction between the anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed. But we are actually in the presence of three separate dimensions of significant corporeality: anatomical sex, gender identity and gender performance. If the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from the gender of the performer, and both of these
Page 33 - abjected beings who do not appear properly gendered; it is their very humanness that comes into question. Indeed, the construction of gender operates through exclusionary means, such that the human is not only produced over and against the inhuman, but through a set of foreclosures, radical erasures, that are, strictly speaking, refused the possibility of cultural articulation.
Page 47 - Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth, it is a trifle too strong for any place but a public art gallery.
Page 39 - distinct from the gender of the performance, then the performance suggests a dissonance not only between sex and performance but between sex and gender, and gender and performance.
Page 47 - I saw a young girl stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gazing long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest
Page 47 - There, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses - Titian's Venus.
Page 37 - The bodily pain caused to [the penis] is the real purpose of circumcision. None of the activities necessary for the preservation of the individual is harmed thereby, nor is procreation rendered impossible, but
Page 44 - One feels, one knows, one lives and at need, one dies for one's cause, but one cannot name it. It is the problem of this time to classify things and men... The world has jumbled its catalogue'.
Page 33 - involves turning homosexuality inside out, exposing not the homosexual's abjected insides but the homosexual as the abject, as the contaminated and expurgated insides of the heterosexual subject.
Page 72 - W Leach Transformations in a culture of consumption: women and department stores, 1890-1925