種族／性相的身體與視覺性
Date Issued
2004-07-31
Date
2004-07-31
Author(s)
DOI
922411H002039
Abstract
This research project, exactly as its title
proclaims, aims at exploring the body and
visuality of race and sexuality. It is now
generally agreed that the modern
constructions of race and sexuality, as two
discrete categories as they seem, actually
share some common origins in the cultural
configurations known as modernity. And
one of the most significant origins shared by
the two is science, along with its inbuilt
visual paradigm. For not until the modern
put so much emphasis on visuality had race
as we know it today—as a “scientific”
system of human classification based on
scrupulous attention to such physical
features as skin color, hair, and facial
characteristics—emerged and became
established as one of the most common
conceptual schemes. And sexuality, ever
since its modern appearance, has also been
an idea very much focused on the visual
aspect of body. This is why the body may
act as a perfect site for a particularly
em-bodied exploration of the complex but
interesting issues arising at the intersections
of race and sexuality.
However, the critical concerns of the
present project are not so grand as the above
framework suggests; instead, they are very
concentrated and specific. Namely, the body
as both racial and sexual stands as the main
focus of the project in the following two
lines of exploration. First, how do the racial
inscriptions of body become sexualized and
assume erotic valences as either desirable or
repulsive? And second, how do the sexual
body contain racial implications in its
linking of (sexual) desirability with (racial)
superiority? These questions have as much
to do with the body ideals (i.e. aesthetics) as
with real bodies either on the dominant or the subordinate sides. Yet at the same time,
the visual aspect of all this cannot be
over-emphasized. For none of the bodies
that figure in our daily activities of racial
differentiation and sexual interactions exist
in a transparent world of “reality”: they are
always already mediated, especially through
such visual media as sculpture, painting,
photography and cinema (in the
comprehensive sense of moving images, so
including TV and video). Therefore, the
issue of visuality is actually the project’s
constant concern throughout its critical
examination of the racial/sexual body.
Subjects
race
sexuality
body
visuality
aesthetics
Publisher
臺北市：國立臺灣大學外國語文學系暨研究所
Type
report
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