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Lesson Twenty-Eight
第二十八课

Susan Bordo
苏珊·博尔多

Unbearable Weight:
难以承受的重量:

Feminism,Western Culture,and the Body
女性主义,西方文化,与身体

I.Attitudes and Views
一、态度和观点

American theorist Susan Bordo (1947- ) has catalyzed a new branch of feminist interdisciplinary studies known as "body studies,"① an increasingly influential perspective of cultural criticism. Bordo studies gender problems with a specific focus on the cultural dimensions of the "constitution of female body" under the strong influence of Michel Foucault2. Her most influential work is Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993);her other major writings include“Anorexia Nervosa:Psychopathology as the Crystallization of Culture" (1985),The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (1987),Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J.(1997),and The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (1999).
美国理论家苏珊·博尔多(Susan Bordo,1947- )催生了女权主义跨学科研究的一个新分支,称为“身体研究”(1),这是一种越来越有影响力的文化批评观点。Bordo 研究性别问题,特别关注在米歇尔·福柯 (Michel Foucault) 的强烈影响下“女性身体构成”的文化维度 2。她最有影响力的作品《无法承受的重量:女权主义、西方文化和身体 》(1993 年);她的其他主要著作包括《神经性厌食症:作为文化结晶的精神病理学》(1985 年)、《 逃向客观性:笛卡尔主义与文化论文 》(1987 年)、《暮光之城: 从柏拉图到 O.J. 的文化图像的隐藏生活》(1997 年)和《男性身体:公共和私人中的男性新视角 》(1999 年)。

Unbearable Weight discusses the political and cultural significances,potential violence and aesthetic phantasm embodied in the "female body," as observed in the detailed cultural phenomena of commercials,politics, sociology, literature, gender studies,psychology and philosophy.Her concerns include: (1) the “constitution of body”;(2)"body/mind dualism”;(3)“hunger as ideology”-the "tyranny of slenderness" causing “eating disorders”;(4)the "tyranny of fashion" for the “reproduction of femininity";and (5) the criticism of gender theory and the proposal for a new direction for postmodern feminism.
“无法承受的重量 ”讨论了“女性身体”所体现的政治和文化意义、潜在的暴力和审美幻象,正如在商业、政治、社会学、文学、性别研究、心理学和哲学等详细的文化现象中所观察到的那样。她关心的问题包括:(1) “身体构成”;(2)“身体/心灵二元论”;(3)“以饥饿为意识形态”——“苗条的暴政”导致“饮食失调”;(4)为了“女性气质的再现”而提出的“时尚暴政”;(5) 对性别理论的批评和对后现代女权主义新方向的提议。

(1)The “Constitution of Body"
(1)“身体的构成”

As a kernel of body studies, Bordo conceptualizes the "body" of a woman as a politicaI and
作为身体研究的核心,博尔多将女性的“身体”概念化为政治家,并且

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Majon Theonists of Modenn and Contemponany Westenn Cuetune

cultural constitution rather than a biological organism:"The body-what we eat,how we dress,the daily rituals through which we attend to the body-is a medium of culture." In the "politics of the body" and “sexist culture"under patriarchy, the gendered body should be read as “a text of femininity" whose "bodily discourse" conveys symboolic political and cultural meanings in its clothes,body shape,facial expression,movements, and behavior. The female body is managed and disciplined by "sexist culture”: “Bodies are not born. They are in fact made by culture." The "politics of the body" is an ideology to guide and control women in multiple relations of gender,ethnicity,race and class. Bordo pays close attention to the crossed political and cultural "axes” in order to explore the factors behind these typical female disorders-hysteria,agoraphobia,anorexia nervosa and bulimia-as "complex crystallizations of culture." She elaborates on the formation and association of the female body with past patriarchal culture and postmodern consumer culture. In her study of the female body, Bordo realizes that various social, political and cultural problems give an “unbearable weight" to the female body and makeit a tough issue to interpret: "Given the differences that race,class, gender,ethnicity, and so forth make to the determination of meaning,'reading' bodies becomes an extremely complex business.”
文化构成而不是生物有机体:“身体——我们吃什么,我们如何穿着,我们关注身体的日常仪式——是一种文化媒介。在父权制下的“身体政治”与“性别歧视文化”中,性别化的身体应该被解读为“女性气质的文本”,其“身体话语”在其服装、体型、面部表情、动作和行为中传达了共融的政治和文化意义。女性的身体受到“性别歧视文化”的管理和约束:“身体不是天生的。它们实际上是由文化创造的。“身体政治”是一种意识形态,在性别、民族、种族和阶级的多重关系中指导和控制女性。Bordo 密切关注交叉的政治和文化“轴”,以探索这些典型的女性疾病背后的因素——歇斯底里、广场恐惧症、神经性厌食症和贪食症——作为“文化的复杂结晶”。她详细阐述了女性身体与过去的父权文化和后现代消费文化的形成和关联。在她对女性身体的研究中,博尔多意识到各种社会、政治和文化问题赋予了女性身体“难以承受的重量”,使其成为一个难以解释的问题:“鉴于种族、阶级、性别、民族等对意义决定的差异,'阅读'身体成为一件极其复杂的事情。

(2)Body/Mind Dualism
(2)身体/心灵二元论

Body/mind duaism refers to the contradictory conditions of the body and the mind of women involved in "a variety of cultural currents" which Bordo defines as "the Dualist Axis,""the Control Axis,"and "the Gender/Power Axis." This "axes of continuity" first converges in “anorexia,”①which guides women to control their appetite against their bodily needs for food in order to build a body image regulated by the male criteria of sexism:"Willed control brings about a sense of duality in the organism, of consciousness in conflict with appetite." A woman's body and mind have to fight between appetite and hunger:"These two selves are perceived as at constant war." Almost every woman becomes an anorectic who kills her appetite and conducts self-starvation. The female body is made “alien, as the not-self”; it is confined in “a prison, a swamp, a cage"; it becomes "her own worst enemy";and it is "a site of political struggle."
身体/心灵双胞胎主义是指女性身心的矛盾状况,涉及“各种文化潮流”,博尔多将其定义为“二元轴”、“控制轴”和“性别/权力轴”。这个“连续性轴”首先汇聚在“一个 norexia 中,“(1)它指导女性控制自己的食欲与她们的身体对食物的需求,以建立一种由男性性别歧视标准调节的身体形象:”有意的控制在有机体中带来了一种二元感,意识与食欲相冲突。女人的身体和心灵必须在食欲和饥饿之间斗争:“这两个自我被认为一直在战争。几乎每个女人都会变成厌食症患者,这会扼杀自己的食欲并导致自我饥饿。女性身体被“作为非我”变得“异物化”;它被关在“监狱、沼泽、笼子”里;它变成了“她自己最大的敌人”;它是“政治斗争的场所 ”。

Moreover, body/mind dualism is "a double bind that legislates contradictory ideals and directives" to a woman's body and mind. The "duality of active spirit and passive body" is a most influential and pervasive ideology which affects temperament, gender role, law, and ethnicity. The mind/body duality reflects the “resilient inequality" between men and women. On the one hand,women are taught traditional “feminine virtues" to have fragile feminine bodies of slenderness and tenderness,so they hardly have physical strength to sustain their mental power for social work.On the other they are forced to display masculine strength, language and look in the men-dominated arena of profession,showing determination,decisiveness, self-control, cool discipline, and even men's wear in order to compete with men. Women have double shifts of workload both inside and outside famnily.Outside women must shoulder career responsibility; inside they are cultivated as food feeders and men as eaters. In “a rigorously dualistic sexual division of labor," women are split under the double pressures from the men-dominated world. Furthermore, mind/body dualism constructs men as sober,logical and dignified while women are seen as ignorant, illogical and carnal. Thebody and mind of a woman are demonized as "distraction from knowledge, seduction away from God and capitulation to sexual desire,violence or aggression, failure of will, even death." This dichotomized view of women produces a prevailing misunderstanding that the female body is potentially inviting and luring.Women internalize this male-dominant ideology,holding themselves to blame for unwanted sex, and this guilt fetters women into unease and "self-loathing" of their femaleness-a cause of women's anorexia nervosa after sexual abuse. In more complicated cross-gender ethnicity,black men are pervasively demonizedas“oversexed animals" and "potential rapists by nature"; black women are abused as closer to animals "who can never be truly rapedI" due to their "animalism." Lastly Bordo expands the concept of "body" to "pregnant bodies" to criticize men-centered law which bestows "super-subject"status to fetus and father but negates the body and mind of the woman. Pregnant women are regarded as nobody but "fetal incubators" for babies, so they are often ruled to accept the bodily intrusion of the fetus in law cases.
此外,身体/心灵二元论是“一种双重束缚,将相互矛盾的理想和指令立法化”,对女性的身体和心灵。“主动精神与被动身体的二元性”是一种影响气质、性别角色、法律和种族的最有影响力和最普遍的意识形态。身心二元性反映了男性和女性之间的“弹性不平等”。一方面,女性被教导传统的“女性美德”,拥有纤细温柔的脆弱女性身体,因此她们几乎没有体力来维持她们从事社会工作的精神力量。另一方面,他们被迫在男性主导的职业舞台上展示阳刚的力量、语言和外表,展示决心、果断、自制力、酷酷的纪律,甚至男装,以便与男性竞争。女性在家庭内部和外部都有双班倒的工作量。外部女性必须承担起职业责任;在里面,它们被培养为食物食者,而人则被培养为食者。在“严格的二元性别分工”中,女性在男性主导世界的双重压力下被分裂。此外,身心二元论将男性构建为清醒、合乎逻辑和有尊严,而女性则被视为无知、不合逻辑和。女人的身体和思想被妖魔化为“对知识的分心、对上帝的诱惑和对的屈服、暴力或侵略、意志的失败,甚至死亡”。这种对女性的二分法产生了一种普遍的误解,即女性身体可能具有吸引力和诱惑力。女性内化了这种男性主导的意识形态,将自己归咎于不想要的性行为,这种罪恶感使女性陷入对女性身份的不安和“自我厌恶”——这是女性在性虐待后神经性厌食症的原因。 在更复杂的跨性别种族中,黑人男性普遍被妖魔化为“过剩的动物”和“天生的潜在强奸犯”;由于她们的“兽性”,黑人女性更接近“永远不会被真正强奸”的动物。最后,博尔多将“身体”的概念扩展到“怀孕的身体”,以批评以男性为中心的法律,该法律赋予胎儿和父亲“超级主体”地位,但否定了女性的身体和思想。孕妇被视为婴儿的“胎儿培养箱”,因此在法律案件中,她们经常被裁定接受胎儿的身体侵入。

Patriarchal body/mind dualism "has been deployed and socially embodied in medicine,law,literary and artistic representations, the psychological constitution of self,interpersonal relationships,popular culture, and advertisements." Bordo argues that this body/mind dichotomy is responsible for the negation of female subjectivity and the consequential social,economic and political inequality
父权制的身体/心灵二元论“已被部署并体现在医学、法律、文学和艺术表现、自我的心理构成、人际关系、流行文化和广告中。博尔多认为,这种身体/心灵二分法是否定女性主体性以及随之而来的社会、经济和政治不平等的原因

(3)"Hunger as Ideology": the "Tyranny of Slenderness" and“Eating Disorders"
(3)“饥饿即意识形态”:“苗条的暴政”和“饮食失调”

Bordo focuses on "hunger as ideology"-the "tyranny of slenderness"? and the "eating disorders" that women suffer from. She observes that body and food are complicated cultural problems:"if we survey cultural attitudes toward women's appetites and body size, we find great variety-a variety shaped by ethnic, national, historical, class, and other factors." The female body has to carry two symbolic functions constructing official status and feminine charm in its shape and size:"(1)the designation of social position, such as class status or gender role; (2) the outer indication of the spiritual, moral, or emotional state of the individual.""The tyranny of sle derness" is "the Thin Standard of Bodily Attractiveness for Women" set by patriarchal culture, which is the greatest cause of women's self-conducted starvation. This "ideaI of slenderness" causes “BIDS”2 which is a misguided size awareness of women. Women always feel fat and worry about their "Waist Land"②under men's watch "in the popular imagination" by men's criteria. Few women ask:"Whose Body Is This?”Every woman believes: "Shape your body, shape your life." The tyranny of slenderness is an obsession of the "perfect" body image imposed by men and internalized by women themselves in the "sexist culture" of media, arts,garment industry and fashion industry. It is "a culturaI formation that expresses ideals,anxieties,and social changes much deeper than the merely aesthetic,"which leads to "a discontinuity between anorexic and 'normal' attitudes toward weight and body image."
Bordo 专注于“以饥饿为意识形态”——“苗条的暴政”?以及女性所患的“饮食失调”。她观察到身体和食物是复杂的文化问题:“如果我们调查对女性食欲和体型的文化态度,我们会发现差异很大——一种由种族、国家、历史、阶级和其他因素塑造的多样性。女性的身体必须承载两个象征功能,即构建官方地位和其形状和大小的手臂:“(1)社会地位的指定,如阶级地位或性别角色;(2) 个人的精神、道德或情感状态的外在指示。“sle derness”的暴政是父权文化设定的“女性身体吸引力的瘦弱标准”,是女性自我挨饿的最大原因。这种“苗条的想法”导致了“BIDS”2,这是对女性的错误尺寸认知。按照男性的标准,女性总是觉得自己胖,担心自己的“腰部土地”(2)在男性的“大众想象中”。很少有女人问:“这是谁的身体?每个女人都相信:“塑造你的身体,塑造你的生活。苗条的暴政是对男性强加的“完美”身体形象的痴迷,也是女性自己在媒体、艺术、服装业和时尚业的“性别歧视文化”中内化的。它是“一种表达理想、焦虑和社会变革的文化形态,比单纯的审美要深刻得多”,这导致了“厌食症患者和'正常'对体重和身体形象的态度之间的不连续性”。

Women are starved or stuffed for men's sake when their bodies are "disciplined" by patriarchal culture.Anorexia (restricted eating) and bulimia (overeating and vomiting) are two common eating disorders for women. Bordo believes that there are more ideological and sociological factors in"female hunger" than biological or psychopathological causes. In the “ubiquitous configuration of woman-food-man," there are different interpretationas of male and female appetites based on male/female dualism as the double standards. For men, eating is "natural and lovable" and they "are supposed to have hearty, even voracious,appetites" as a mark of manliness; for women, life is a fight to kill appetite because food is "dangerous and frightening" to their body image. Female eating ought to be a "private,secretive,illicit"act;female indulgence to the full satisfaction of hunger is "transgression”and thus commonly denied. Female eating manners should be cautiously controlled since women's craving is metaphorized as "dirty" and "shameful." A slender body becomes "the beautiful other"to food in their "cool relation." In addition1,men eat and women prepare, which is a governing rule of ancient and contemporary femininity, so a woman acts as a chief nurturer feeding her family but starving herself. Moreover, eating is sexualized when sexual metaphors involving women permeate commercial ads. Food is constructed as "a sexual object of desire" for men to enjoy like an erotic experience particularly when women are made to serve the food or embody the food. Hunger for food becomes hunger for sex and gratification from food is turned into sexual indulgence related to women.
当女性的身体受到父权文化的“管教”时,她们会挨饿或为了男人而吃饱。厌食症(限制进食)和贪食症(暴饮暴食和呕吐)是女性两种常见的饮食失调。博尔多认为,“女性饥饿”中的意识形态和社会学因素比生物学或精神病理学原因更多。在“女人-食物-男人的普遍配置”中,基于男性/女性二元论作为双重标准,对男性和女性的食欲有不同的解释。对男人来说,吃是“自然而可爱的”,他们 “应该有丰盛的、甚至贪婪的胃口”作为男子气概的标志;对于女性来说,生活是一场扼杀食欲的斗争,因为食物对她们的身体形象来说是 “危险和可怕的”。女性饮食应该是一种 “私人的、秘密的、非法的 ”行为;女性放纵以完全满足饥饿是“越界”,因此通常被否认。女性的饮食习惯应该谨慎控制,因为女性的渴望被比喻为“肮脏”和“可耻”。纤细的身体在他们的“凉爽关系”中成为食物的“美丽的他者”。此外 1,男人吃饭,女人准备,这是古代和现代女性气质的主导规则,因此女性充当首席养育者,养家糊口,但自己却挨饿。此外,当涉及女性的性隐喻渗透到商业广告中时,饮食就被性化了。食物被构建为男性享受的“望对象”,就像一种色情体验,尤其是当女性被迫提供食物或体现食物时。对食物的饥饿变成了对性的饥饿,而食物的满足变成了与女性有关的性放纵

Bordo opposes female hunger for body control guided by patriarchal ideology:"the social bodies in the knowledge of their limits and possibilities. Denying oneself food becomes the central micro-practice in the education of feminine self-restraint and containment of impulses."
博尔多反对由父权意识形态指导的女性对身体控制的渴望:“社会身体了解自己的极限和可能性。拒绝自己的食物成为女性自我克制和遏制冲动教育的核心微观实践。

(4)The “Tyranny of Fashion" and the "Reproduction of Femininity"
(4)“时尚的暴政 ”和“女性气质的再现”

Women are inclined to yield to the "tyranny of fashion" for reproducing more femininity.Bordo explores the causes of women's dissatisfaction with their body image in the cultural root of age-old and contemporary Western and Eastern aesthetics. Women spend much time on their body management to acquire sexuality regulated by patriarchal culture. The "discipline and normalization of the female body" is “an amazingly durable and flexible strategy of social control" exercised in different forms. Bordo criticizes the practices of femininity reproduction throughout pre-modern and postmodern imagination, such as minute rules for feminine manners, media imagery, fashion shows,beauty pageants, girdles, makeup, high heels, Chinese foot-binding, rib removal for a small waist,removal of female genital organs, cosmetic surgery to make a “material girl" with a plastic, simulated orgasm to please men. All those fashionable behaviors are tyrannical measures of “sculpting"the female body to the meanings of patriarchal culture, which results in limiting their mobility,silencing their opinions, and whittling down the space and status their bodies take up before men.Women pursuing a feminine fashion will find their bodies as "distracted, depressed, and physically ill” in dependency, domesticity, and delicacey under men's requirements for “perfection." Men's eyes pick every "defect" of women and shape them into a "cultural image." Consequently femnale perfection becomes a forever-pursued unattainable myth:"This obsession with perfection reaches to such a degree that the ideal image is no longer human, but some computer-generated torso." This ideal "Postmodern body” is not a “real” figure but a product out of the "fantasies of rearranging,transforming,and correcting,limitless improvement and change, defying the historicity, the mortality,and, indeed, the very materiality of the body." The tyranny of fashion creates a "reality" and a delusion of ideal models, which is a great temptation to women,although they know that femininity reproduction is not a medical treatment and the image of pop stars is a mere product of cosmetic procedures.
女性倾向于屈服于“时尚的暴政”,以再现更多的女性气质。Bordo 在古老和当代东西方美学的文化根源中探讨了女性对自身身体形象不满的原因。女性花费大量时间进行身体管理,以获得受父权文化调节的性行为。“女性身体的纪律和正常化”是“一种以不同形式实施的非常持久和灵活的社会控制策略”。Bordo 批评了贯穿前现代和后现代想象中的女性气质复制实践,例如女性礼仪的微小规则、媒体图像、时装秀、选美比赛、腰带、化妆、高跟鞋、中式缠足、小腰肋骨切除、女性生殖器官切除、整容手术制造“物质女孩”,用塑料模拟性高潮取悦男性。 所有这些时髦的行为都是将女性身体“雕刻”到父权文化含义的暴虐措施,这导致限制了她们的行动能力,压制了她们的观点,并削弱了她们的身体在男性面前占据的空间和地位。追求女性时尚的女性会发现,在男性对“完美”的要求下,她们的身体在依赖、家庭生活和精致方面“分心、抑郁和身体不适”。男人的眼睛会挑出女人的每一个 “缺点 ”,把她们塑造成 “文化形象”。因此,女性的完美成为一个永远追求无法实现的神话:“这种对完美的痴迷达到了这样的程度,以至于理想的形象不再是人类,而是一些计算机生成的躯干。这个理想的“后现代身体”不是一个“真实”的形象,而是“重新排列、转化和纠正、无限改进和变化的幻想,无视历史性、死亡,以及身体的物质性”的产物。时尚的暴政创造了“现实”和理想模型的错觉,这对女性来说是一个巨大的诱惑,尽管她们知道女性气质的复制不是一种医学治疗,流行歌星的形象仅仅是整容手术的产物。

Bordo warns women against any idealized and romanticized fashion because all has “political meaning" of gender control. In addition, a popular obsession with female beauty greatly promotes profitable businesses selling weight-control pills, bodily correction procedures and plastic surgery. In this sense, the female body becomes a “gendered body" and a commercialized body.
Bordo 警告女性不要任何理想化和浪漫化的时尚,因为所有这些都具有性别控制的 “政治意义”。此外,人们对女性美的痴迷极大地促进了销售减肥药、身体矫正手术和整形手术的盈利企业。从这个意义上说,女性身体变成了“性别化的身体”和商业化的身体。