Material Girl: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture

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Material Girl The Effacements of Postmodern
Culture

• Susan Bordo

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• Plasticity as postmodern paradigm
• Body as manipulable, not determined.
• Body as machine technology to replace parts
  generated industry of transformation
• Popular culture encourages fantasy of
  self-transformation, but ignore inequality of
  access, limits to possibility, and negative
  aspects (desperation, what is ideal?)

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• Homogenizing images dominant race/class/gender
  as ideal
• Fashion as fun, no political/cultural value
  ignores social inequality and historical origin
• Pursuit of beauty as normalizing discipline, not
  playful/creative self-invention.
• Postmodern equal difference, historical/cultural
  criticism ignored, defeats political critique.

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PoMo

• Critical generalization refuted by specific
  counter-example
• No patterns of most
• Seen as totalizing and invalidating difference
• False coherence w/o active subject

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Fiske

• Critical of view of TV as homogenizing power as
  ignoring audience reading
• Doesnt account for power differential between
  producer and reader
• All power as equal, misappropriation of
  Foucaults non-centralized power
• No one, but still different positions w/in
  power relations, unstable but real.
• Ignores difficulty of asserting value of
  difference against dominant meanings
• Historical reality just as damaging as lack of
  attention to difference

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• Power of difference won through political
  struggle
• Body as battleground, not playground
• Plasticity as power w/o concern over resistant
  vs. normalizing changes
• Confusion of resistance to any positioned
  subjectivity w/ resistance to dominance lack of
  positioned resistance leads to objectifying
  difference
• Disembodied freedom ignoring social reality of
  dominance and subordination
• Normalizing power of cultural images.

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