Body Parts
Description In many forms of discourse, specific parts of the human anatomy may signify, or act as a substitute for, the whole body/person: the presence of a large gut may render a man effeminate or represent someone who has lost control of his appetites; visible muscles indicate strength of body, but also constitution or will; a hard penis indicates a male body in a state of perfection. In this volume, scholars from a variety of historical and cultural studies disciplines examine scientific, medical, popular, and literary texts, paying special attention to the different strategies employed in order to establish authority over the body through the management of a single part. By considering body parts that are usually ignored by scholars - the skin, blood, the pelvis, the hair - the essays in this volume render the idea of a single, coherent body untenable by demonstrating that the body is not a transhistorical entity, but rather, deeply fragmented and fundamentally situated in a number of different contexts.
Reviews
"This book is an inspiring, open-mouth wonder. The intimate body—penis and pelvis, breast and bum—are dissected in delightful historical detail. A must-read for anyone curious about bodies."— Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck College
"This cosmopolitan collection starts from a simple premise: that our bodies are made up of many parts. By concentrating on the parts rather than simply the whole, the authors expose many fascinating nuances of medical, legal, gender and social history and materially advance the historiography of the body. It deserves a wide readership."— W. F. Bynum, University College London
"This collection of essays takes the body apart in order to inquire into its every nook and cranny. The result is a visceral journey that charts our complex relationship to our own physicality. Fascinating and informative."— D.M. Vyleta, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Introduction: Parts, Wholes, and People
Christopher E. Forth and Ivan Crozier
Part I: Classifying
Blood Will Tell: The Vascular System and Criminal Dangerousness
David G. Horn
Bums in the Time of Cholera: Sex, Sodomy, and Representations of the Fundament
George Rousseau
"All the Appearances Were Perfectly Natural": The Anus of the Sodomite in Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourse
Ivan Crozier
The Primitive Pelvis: The Role of Racial Folklore in Obstetrics and Gynecology during the Twentieth-Century
John Hoberman
Hairy Heine, or the Braiding of Gender and Ethnic Difference
Jay Geller
The Tears of Lacteros: Integrating the Meanings of the Human Breast
Fiona Giles
Enlightened Hands: Managing Dexterity in British Medicine and Manufactures, 1760-1800
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson
Part II: Constructing
Potential Space, Potential Sex: The Value of the Vagina in Transsexual Autobiographies
Dan O'Connor
Phallic Performance: Phalloplasty and the Techniques of Sex
Vernon Rosario
Guts and Manhood: The Cultre of the Abdomen in Modern France
Christopher E. Forth
From Pieces to Whole: The Sexualization of Muscles in Postwar Bodybuilding
Anna Carden-Coyne
Working out the Body's Boundaries: Physiological, Aesthetic, and Psychic Dimensions of the Skin in German Nudism, 1890-1930
Maren Möhring
"I Will Kill Myself ... if I have to Keep My Fat Calves!": Legs and Cosmetic Surgery in Paris in 1926
Carolyn Ward Comiskey