The Becoming of Bodies

Abstract

The relations between women's bodies and images have long interested and occupied feminist theoretical and empirical work. Recently, much feminist research has focused on the relations between girls' and young women's bodies and images in "the media." Underpinning much of this research, I argue, is an oppositional model of subject/object onto which bodies and images are mapped. Developing Deleuze's concept of becoming and exploring my own research with a small number of white British teenage girls, I develop an alternative model of the relations between bodies and images. I suggest that while the subject/object model relies upon a notion of media effects, an understanding of bodies as becoming opens up feminist research to consider the ways in which bodies are not separate to images but rather are known, understood and experienced through images. If feminist research takes seriously this conception of bodies as becoming, its task is to account for how bodies become through their relations with images; what becomings of bodies do images limit or extend?An ongoing area of concern in feminist research is the relations between women's bodies and images. Feminist theory, for example, has long been occupied with the relations between women's bodies and mirror images (de ). Recently, much feminist empirical work has focused on the relations between girls' and young women's bodies and images in "the media." 1 This article considers some of this research, and its limitations, through an exploration of my own research with a small number of white teenage British girls. My aim in this article is to open up the possible ways in which the relations between girls' bodies and images might be conceived. In particular, I argue that existing feminist empirical and theoretical work is underpinned, usually implicitly and to greater and lesser extents, by an oppositional model of body/image, subject/object. In contrast, by developing Deleuze's concepts of becoming through my research, I propose an alternative model grounded not in oppositions but in process, relationality, and transformation. Such a model understands bodies and images not as separate and separable entities (subjects and objects, for example) between which relations operate, but as constituted through their relationality. I consider the ways in which bodies are known, understood and experienced through images, that is, the ways in which bodies become through their relations with images.My argument here is four-fold. First, in discussing some of the existing empirical research on the relations between girls' bodies and images, my concern is to explicate the

The Cyndi Lauper Affect: Bodies, Girlhood and Popular Culture

“…The collaborative writing of this paper took place in the months following the workshop. One of our key readings was Rebecca Coleman's (2008a) article "The becoming of bodies: Girls, media effects, and body image"…”

“…Understanding bodies and popular culture through Deleuzian notions of 'becoming' and 'assemblage' opens possibilities for feminist researchers to consider the ways in which bodies are not separate to images but rather, are 'becomings' that are known, felt, materialized and mobilized with/through images (Coleman 2008a(Coleman , 2008b(Coleman , 2008c(Coleman , 2009(Coleman , 2011Ringrose and Coleman 2013). We tease out the implications of this new approach to media affects through three memories of girls' engagements with media images, reconceived as moments of embodied being within affective flows of popular culture that might momentarily extend upon ways of being and doing girlhood.…”

“…The problem as we see it is that the idea of a theory of the image, a theory of the body, and a theory of the girl subject, tends to imply liberal humanist notions of the image, the body, gender and age, and the related oppositional or binary models of body/image, subject/object (Bray and Colebrook 1998;Coleman 2008aColeman , 2008cColeman , 2009Coleman , 2011Ringrose and Coleman 2013). With an aim to rejecting modes of critique that take an antirepresentational stance towards popular culture as primarily passive, repressive and negating, much feminist media criticism suggests that audiences read popular culture images and media in multiple and generative ways 'against the grain'.…”

“…In this approach to analysis we move beyond an impasse in some feminist cultural studies where studies of popular culture have been understood through theories of representation and reception that retain a sense of discrete subjectivity and linear effects. In these approaches, analysis focuses respectively on decoding and deciphering images in terms of their normative and ideological baggage, and, particularly with moving images, on psychological readings.Understanding bodies and popular culture through Deleuzian notions of 'becoming' and 'assemblage' opens possibilities for feminist researchers to consider the ways in which bodies are not separate to images but rather, are 'becomings' that are known, felt, materialized and mobilized with/through images (Coleman 2008a(Coleman , 2008b(Coleman , 2008c(Coleman , 2009(Coleman , 2011Ringrose and Coleman 2013). We tease out the implications of this new approach to media affects through three memories of girls' engagements with media images, reconceived as moments of embodied being within affective flows of popular culture that might momentarily extend upon ways of being and doing girlhood.…”

Art Practice as Possible Worlds

“…The BwO is not literally an empty body: It is a body without organization or categorization (Grosz, 1994). The BwO is not necessarily the human body (Coleman, 2008): It can refer to a plant, an idea, a paintbrush, a sound (Davies, 1999). It can refer to any body.…”