WMST 100 Unit 2

1
WMST 100 Unit 2

• 1. Introduction
• ideology
• interpellation (Louis Althusser)
• 3 modes of objectification (Michel Foucault)
  dividing practices scientific classification
  mediation of subjectivity
• the discourse of medicine

2
WMST 100 Unit 22. What is Woman? Renaissance
and early Modern Medical Discourse

• 2.1 Brief History of Medicine
• sympathetic and contagious magic,
• like produced like - strong (bad or good) smell
  could drive a strong smell away
• act on something of the person to effect a change
  on the person - part and the whole

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.1 Cont...
• Hippocratic and Galenic medicine
• physiology/biology of ancient Greeks thinkers
• e.g., Aristotle
• 12th century university as a legitimate
  institution
• adherence to Greek masters

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.1 Cont.
• Several important aspects to the development
  medicine.
• 1. Control of knowledge disseminated
• 2. Heresy and then witchcraft trials
• delegitimation of folkloric medicine and
  midwifery

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.2 Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen
• Hippocratic corpus- or a large group of medical
  writings - library of Alexandria
• foundation of medicine in the ancient Greco-Roman
  world
• Galen - Rome late second century C.E.
• science of medicine based on empirical knowledge

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.2. Cont
• inductive-deductive reasoning connect to rational
  thought
• Hippocratic Corpus the idea of a female and male
  seed
• notion of humors could be found
• one of the bases of the natural supremacy of
  the male over the female in European medicine

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WMST 1-- Unit 2

• 2.3 Aristotle
• inductive-deductive reasoning
• rediscovered through contact with the Arabs of
  the Middle East, Spain, Sicily

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.4 Aristotles World View
• operation of natural law
• Causes (reasons, explanations)
• The four Causes are
• The Final Cause
• The Motive (or efficient) Cause

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.4 Cont...
• The Formal Cause (or form)
• The Material Cause (or Matter)
• The Final Cause of paramount importance
• dominates every process (teleology)
• true nature or natural final cause
• final cause- reason in man
• woman unable - misbegotten male

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.5 Aristotles view of the Human Soul and the
  form of the body
• Soul is the realization of the animal body
• first and second realizations
• body is for the sake of the soul

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.5 cont.
• Faculties of Soul
• 1. Nutritive and generative Soul, in all plants
• 2. Sentient soul
• 3. Appetitive soul in all animals
• 4. Locomotive soul in some animals
• 5. Rational soul in man (men) only

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WMST 100 Unti 2

• 2.5 Cont..
• Rational Soul
• rational soul does not require a body
• soul is pneuma (fire and air)
• male hot-female cold
• analogous to fifth element--aither--element of
  the upper Cosmos

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.6 The Discourse of Science Ontology and
  Teleology
• great chain of being
• natural subordination of groups of people
• movement toward telos or final realization of
  natural (divine) destiny

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.7 Woman as Other and Man as Normative Body
  Talk
• subordination naturalized via recourse to
  discourse of the body
• womens bodies as problematic and in need of
  control

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.7 Cont
• Woman as
• (high Middle Ages thru to early modern 12-16th
  century)
• 1. misbegotten male
• 2. inverted male
• 3. produces no seed (Aristotle)

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.7 Cont...
• early modern thru Victorian (16th century thru to
  19th century)
• 4. Woman as subject to wandering and voracious
  uterus - an animal within an animal
• 5. Woman as weak, fragile, a child
• 6. Woman produces seed, but lesser than the
  males (Galen)

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• 2.7 Cont
• Victorian era (1837-1901)
• 1.Woman as reproducer, maintainer of Christian
  morals and ethics - angel of the house