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ETD Abstract Container

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Rethinking the Ill Body in Phallocentric Western Culture: A Critical Engagement with Luce Irigaray

Kahn, Sarah E
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1432299178

Abstract Details

2015, BA, Oberlin College, Religion.
This capstone critically engages with the work of prolific, contemporary continental philosopher Luce Irigaray on subjectivity and the body in order to challenge widely held notions of the ill body in phallocentric culture. Within my project, phallocentrism means the privileging of an erect, rational, individually autonomous body with defined boundaries. Using sociologist Ken Plummer's journal during his liver disease, I extend Irigaray's critique of phallocentrism to the experience of illness in Western culture. Ill bodies occupy a space analogous to that of female bodies within Irigaray's theory, because phallocentrism subordinates ill bodies to the normative phallic body that is functional, bounded, and under control. I read Plummer's text as an example of Irigaray’s "sensible transcendental": a non-religious transcendence grounded in the body's sensibility. I argue for the potential of a sensible transcendental in the mode of "speaking the sick body" to disrupt troublesome phallocentric bodily ideals, and further that the sensible transcendental may be an especially useful model for ill bodies because these bodies are in an immediate state of change.
Margaret Kamitsuka (Advisor)
37 p.
Ethics; Gender; Philosophy; Religion
Irigaray; Illness; Phallocentrism; Body; Divine; Sensible; Transcendental;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kahn, S. E. (2015). Rethinking the Ill Body in Phallocentric Western Culture: A Critical Engagement with Luce Irigaray [Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1432299178

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kahn, Sarah. Rethinking the Ill Body in Phallocentric Western Culture: A Critical Engagement with Luce Irigaray. 2015. Oberlin College, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1432299178.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kahn, Sarah. "Rethinking the Ill Body in Phallocentric Western Culture: A Critical Engagement with Luce Irigaray." Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1432299178

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

oberlin1432299178
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© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Rethinking the Ill Body in Phallocentric Western Culture: A Critical Engagement with Luce Irigaray by Sarah E Kahn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Oberlin College Honors Theses and OhioLINK.
Release 3.2.12