Identity as an Embodied Event

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Identity as an Embodied Event

SHELLEY BUDGEON

I always change my mind about how I want to look depending on what Im wearing and thatsort of thing. I wish I had three different bodies I could change into. Sometimes it gets you

down. You get depressed about yourself but in general its just something you have to live withand everyones in the same boat. Its not that much of a major problem. (Emilia, 17 years old,mixed sex comprehensive school)

The nuances contained within this short excerpt reveal aspects of the complexrelationship that embodiment has with identity a problem that this article willengage with via the embodied experiences of young women.1Emilias explanationof the relationship between her sense of self and her body exhibits several featuresthat are of relevance to theorizing embodied identity. There is the suggestion of

fluidity and indeterminacy; the centrality of image and style to the experience ofthe body; and the idea of different versions of the self corresponding to differentbodies. Yet there is also an admission that, in fact, the body cannot simply bealtered or transformed to converge with particular versions of the self as is, norwith the self that Emilia might like to become. There is a recognition of theboundaries of embodiment, accompanied by the experience of the body asunsatisfactory and in need of modification, which is rendered as normal, thusoperating as a strategy of resisting and evading those very forces which seek to

normalize and discipline.Interviews, from which material is excerpted throughout this article, focused

upon identities that young women were constructing within a larger social andcultural context that is characterized by a greater degree of indeterminacy withregard to the constraining aspects of gender relations and increased choice abouthow to live ones life. The self narratives that were produced by the young womeninterviewed raised questions about what bodies mean to those who live in them;the processes through which understandings about self and body arise; and how

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it is that these may transform through embodied practices. All of these questionsare central to understanding womens embodied identities. The aim of this article,therefore, is to elaborate a strategy for engaging with these issues by interrogat-

ing the self/body relation through a careful reading of the narratives produced bythe young women.The point of departure for this analysis will be what Giddens (1991) has argued

is becoming the prevalent relation between bodies and selves that is, the bodyas intrinsic to the reflexive project of self-identity. The limits of Giddenssapproach will be considered by placing particular emphasis on the mind/bodydualism implicit in his theory of identity formation where the mind is privilegedover a body which, by its denaturalization in late modern conditions, he suggests,

becomes an object of choice. The problem of this dualism and its implications,which are of particular relevance to feminism, will be critiqued within the largercontext of how it is that bodies are inherently implicated in the ongoing processof the constitution of self-identity yet never wholly contained with the realm ofrepresentation. I t will be argued that the body serves not simply as a natural foun-dation or passive surface upon which meanings are inscribed by systems of signi-fication, but that there is an irreducibility between the subject and object suchthat, in order to understand the ways in which young women actively live their

embodied identities, we need to develop an approach which can envision a bodybeyond the binary of materiality and representation the body not as an objectbut as an event. As such it will be argued that the recent turn in feminist philoso-phies of the body from a Cartesian framework to one more clearly influenced bySpinoza is a useful strategy and one that should be pursued (Buchanan, 1997;Colebrook, 2000; Gatens, 1996, 2000).2

The Body as Project Reflexivity and ChoiceIn Giddenss theory of structuration the body is of central importance to histheorization of the relationship between agency and social structures because theregularized control and reflexive monitoring of the body by the knowledgeableagent is a necessary condition for action. Beyond this fundamental relationship,however, Giddens suggests that, within conditions of late modernity, reflexivityis accelerated such that the body, once a given aspect of nature, becomes a projectincreasingly open to human intervention and, like nature, is colonized and madesubject to constant revision (Giddens, 1991: 218). The blurring of the boundarybetween what is given and that which is open to choice means that the self can befreed from bodily determination. Through the development of technologies andtechniques such as genetic engineering, reproductive technologies, plastic surgery,

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and health and diet regimes, bodies not only become objects for human manage-ment and reconfiguration but are increasingly central to ones identity. Like otheraspects of identity the body is also the responsibility of the individual who may

cultivate and actively restructure the corporeal through the pursuit of specificbody regimes chosen from a diverse range of lifestyle options. The link made inGiddenss work between the self, the body and image is often identified as acentral feature of the consumer culture said to be coterminous with late/post-modernity where experiences of the self and the body are mediated by theconstant projection by the mass media of a proliferation of lifestyle images andoptions, all of which one may incorporate into ones own project.

Giddenss analysis of the body and self relationship is open to three main criti-

cisms: the conceptualization of the mind and body relationship as a binary; aprivileging of mind over body; and a blindness to the gendered nature of thisbinary. The mind/body dualism places a significant limit on understanding howpeoples experiences of, and responses to, social structures are shaped by theirsensoryandsensual selves (Shilling and Mellor, 1996: 2). Indeed this binary limitsthe possibility of a deeper consideration of how it is that the body is implicatedin the formation of identity. As Shilling and Mellor (1996: 2) argue, in Giddenssanalysis people are essentially comprised as minds because reflexivity is privileged

as the primary mode of engagement with the world. Through this engagementwith the choices and options on offer, the body becomes the material upon whichthe mind acts and, by effectively placing the body outside the actor, the actorbecomes fundamentally a thinking and choosing agent but not a feeling and beingagent (Turner, 1992: 87). This overemphasis on processes of reflexivity producesa social actor whose mind takes over the body a privileging that leads to a viewof the social actor as disembodied (Shilling and Mellor, 1996: 4). The individualis a reflexive self but not an embodied self a disembodied consciousness (Turner,

1992).The critique of a Cartesian approach to the mind/body relationship is a

particularly well-established problematic for feminism. Indeed, a critique of thisbinary has been central to a feminist challenge to Western metaphysics, the foun-dation of which is the equivalence of the mind with the masculine and theprivileging of the mind over the body the devalued realm associated with thefeminine (Bordo, 1986; Braidotti, 1994; Butler, 1990; Flax, 1992; H ekman, 1990;N icholson, 1990).3 It is this founding system of binaries which has served tonegate the feminine and locate women outside the realm of the subject. As aconsequence, the feminine (and the female body) has historically been constitutedas that which must be defined, directed and controlled through the application ofdisembodied, objective, masculine knowledge.

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The constant element throughout historical variation is the construction of the body assomething apart from the true self (whether conceived as soul, mind, spirit, will, creativity,freedom . . .) and as undermining the best efforts of that self. That which is not-body is thehighest, the best, the noblest, the closest to God; that which is body is the albatross, the heavy

drag on self-realisation . . . the body is the negative term, and if woman isbody, then womenarethat negativity, whatever it may be: distraction from knowledge, seduction away from God,capitulation to sexual desire, violence or aggression, failure of will, even death. (Bordo, 1993: 5,emphasis in original)

Giddens does not address the specificity of the relationship between the bodyand gender; acknowledge that the mind/body relation is inextricably gendered;or recognize that positing opportunities for freeing the body from the constraintsof modernity has gendered implications. Indeed, women, who have always been

more embodied than men because of the association of the feminine with thebody, have long been aware of the form and appearance of their bodies and theextent to which they are responsible for creating that surface in accordance withcultural ideals and images whose content is far from arbitrary, but is insteadsuffused with the dominance of gendered, racial, class, and other cultural iconog-raphy (Bordo, 1993: 250). These issues have prompted questions about how it isthat bodies come to acquire meaning in the social world and, more specificallyfor feminism, how phallocentric representations of femininity may be resisted

and/or transformed. In this project these questions are of central importancebecause, while the young women recognized the pressure associated withembodied ideals of femininity represented to them in the media, their ownembodiment exceeded the disciplinary force of these representations.

The sociology of the body has been primarily concerned with the question ofwhat bodies mean that is, how is it that the body becomes meaningful withinthe realm of social relations? Answers to this question have relied primarily uponsocial constructionist strategies.4 Constructionist approaches have lent them-

selves well to feminist projects because they undermine the taken-for-grantednaturalness of the body a body which has served as a justification for naturaldifference between the sexes and, thereby, the naturalization of a system ofstructured gender inequality. Deconstructing binaries such as mind/body,subject/object, reason/emotion and culture/nature has effectively led to anunderstanding of how representations work to naturalize that which is sociallyconstructed and deeply political. This critical perspective has been applied torepresentations of the female body to show that the body that we experience andconceptualize is always mediated by constructs, associations and images whichwork to enjoin a particular relation between the self and the body. Feministcritiques have argued that the impact of the cultural upon the material is suchthat:



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. . . [for] women, associated with the body and largely confined to a life centred on the body(both the beautification of ones own body and the reproduction, care, and maintenance of thebodies of others), cultures grip on the body is a constant, intimate fact of everyday life. (Bordo,1993: 17)

But if culture is gripping womens bodies then how tight is this grip and whatdoes this mean for womens agency?

Women, Bodies, Agency

By positing that the body is a medium through which oppressive cultural normsof femininity are expressed5 feminists have effectively employed constructionist

strategies to critically engage with the question of how bodies come to acquireparticular meanings; however, this has often been at the expense of recognizingwomens agency. Too often women are cast as cultural dupes and victims ofcultural constructions of femininity.6 Bordo (1993: 166) attempts to refigurewomen as not simply passive victims but as active producers of the body throughtheir pursuit of continually shifting ideals. However, in her analysis femalebodies become docile bodies . . . whose forces and energies are habituated toexternal regulation, subjection, transformation, improvement via the exacting

and normalizing disciplines of diet, makeup, and dress. The focus in Bordosanalysis is on the ways in which women come to discipline and survey their ownbodies by engaging in practices which produce their own docile bodies accord-ing to the dictates of idealized constructions of feminine embodiment. Thus thedominant relation women are posited to have with their bodies is one which isdiscursively mediated and, it would seem, a significantly over-determined one inwhich women live with a constant sense of the body as being in need of improve-ment.

The issue of embodied agency and disciplinary practices enacted in accordancewith idealized images of femininity arose in the narratives of the young womeninterviewed in response to a question about their desires for self-transformation.Their desires to transform an aspect of their embodied self revealed how the bodyis inhabited partially through its definition by normalizing forces of idealizedbody images.7

Shelley: Do you ever feel pressure to change aspects of yourself?

Brenda: Pressure to lose weight. Thats what I really need to do because before I had the babyI was only eight and a half stone and now Ive gone to eleven stone. I feel pressure bypeople being able to walk around with skimpy tops on and little trousers and I cantdo that like Id like to do it. Thats the only pressure really because of role models andwhat they look like. (Brenda, 19 years old, careers guidance centre)



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The young women were asked to identify what they believed to be the sourcesof the problematization of the body and to account for why they thought the waythey did about their own body. Social pressures from peers, parents and society

in general played a part in their experience but a predominant force, which theyfelt often undermined their confidence and ability to feel good about themselves,was the media and the ways in which media representations organized their own,as well as others ideas about how their bodies should look. It could be said inthe following examples that their bodies are problematized through the norma-tive effects of the discursive constructions of femininity or the internalization ofbody images constituted through phallocentric representational economies assumptions that underlie many feminist analyses that rely upon the body as

materiality inscribed by or constituted through representation.Its just about the way you look, like when you look in magazines. It really annoys me actuallywhen theres all these thin people and if lads are watching a film because Ive got loads of boymates and its like they say, Oh look at her. Shes got a really nice body! I t just makes me think,Well theyre not saying that about me because I dont look like that. Im not saying that Imfat and stuff but its just the way youre expected to look in their eyes. (L ianne, 16 years old,careers guidance centre)

Theres lots of pressure from magazines. Everybody reads magazines which might say

something and it comes across as the best way to do things. . . . Theres a kind of pressure thereto keep up with the fashions or to be the ideal person. Youre meant to be really skinny andtheres a lot of pressure for teenagers to look like supermodels. (Mel, 16 years old, all-girlsprivate school)

These young women demonstrate a clear awareness of the mediation of theirown relationship to their bodies and their relationship to others by media imageryand they identify the normative nature of this mediation. H owever, the complex-ity of embodied identity transcends this analysis and it is this problematic, which

requires theorizing beyond the mind/body binary underlying critiques ofrepresentation, that will constitute the remainder of the argument presented here.While representations of ideal femininity affected the embodied selves of theseyoung women it became apparent through the course of the interviews that torely upon a feminist critique of representation that privileges the discursiveconstitution of the body was inadequate.

While feminist critiques of representation, thought and image have been vitalfor bringing materiality, via sexual difference, back into the project of theorizing

female subjectivity and continue to be of great importance, such attempts to doso have often been complicit in reproducing the materiality/representation binarythey set out to challenge in their anti-representational critiques. Where somefeminist strategies emphasize the corporeal origins of femininity and sexual



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difference(Braidotti, 1991, 1994; Irigaray, 1985),8 others focus on the discursive(Butler, 1993),9 but both critiques of representation are haunted to some extentby the maintenance of the mind/body dualism where representation is conceived

as a negation of corporeality.10In the first strategy for theorizing corporeality, representation is critiqued as aspace organized entirely by phallocentric logic. The female body (and subjectiv-ity), therefore, is distorted, objectified and silenced by a repressive and monolithicrealm governed by the masculine (Braidotti, 1991, 1994; Irigaray, 1985). Hererepresentation is seen to be founded upon the negation of the originarymaternal/pre-oedipal/preconscious in order to produce a relation of differencearound which identity is organized. The problem of phallocentrism suggests

corporeality, materiality and sexual difference are radically anterior to thought,that women can only ever be outside of representation, and that within currentrepresentational practices womens bodies can only be negated. Women will,therefore, remain trapped by distorted images until a more gynocentric form ofrepresentation is developed allowing women to see themselves as autonomoussubjects (Bray and Colebrook, 1998).

This strategy tends to reinforce the mind/body dualism of Cartesian thoughtbecause women are explicitly, even authentically positioned as bodieswhile men

are explicitly located within the realm of thought, language, signification, logicand so forth. Ultimately, to pursue this strategy requires feminism to produce orretrieve a pre-representational, authentic body in an illusory search for an uncon-taminated origin. Furthermore, as long as corporeality, materiality and authenticsexual difference are understood as radically anterior to thought, or negated byrepresentation, feminist critique will only be a reaction against dualism ratherthan a project that might embrace more affirmative strategies for theorizing andacknowledging female embodiment (Bray and Colebrook, 1998: 38).

A second strategy for bringing materiality back in to feminist analyses of thesubject has been to explore and demystify the ways in which practices of signifi-cation claim to represent bodies that, in actuality, these very practices work toconstitute. This argument is exemplified in Butlers work where a challenge ismade against the distinction between materiality and discourse (Butler, 1993).Butler asks why the materiality of sex is understood as the irreducible site uponwhich culture constructs gender but is not itself understood as a construction(Butler, 1993: 28). Here, materiality is re-figured as that which is a necessarycondition for its own existence as it is through the very distinction of materialityfrom the linguistic that provides the condition for its construction a constitutiveexclusion. The ontological status given to the body, therefore, is a constitutiveeffect (Butler, 1993: 35).



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While Butler does not posit an authentic, originary body that is negated byphallocentric representations her argument relies upon the idea of the body beinga constitutive outside thus sustaining a binary relation between representation

and materiality. A primary advantage of this argument is that it circumventsbiological determinism or essentialism, but Butlers work, although able to offervaluable insights into the workings of signification and materiality, can be criti-cized for retaining a dualism of discourse and matter where matter is posited asradically anterior. Within the terms of her argument, representation remains anegation of matter posed as an outside upon which the production of meaningdepends (Bray and Colebrook, 1998: 44). Colebrook (2000: 78) suggests thatButler conflates the being of a thing with the mode in which it is known and asks,

The body is, it is true, only thought after the event of discourse. But does thisrender the body itself an effect of discourse?

In summary, both of the strategies discussed above interpret representation asa negation where meaning is made possible through that which is outside,repressed or excluded thereby relying on a binary relation. A mind/bodydualism remains where the body is made subordinate as an object of culture. Oneof the most serious limitations of privileging the realm of representation as theorigin of corporeal meanings is that the underlying assumptions dissolve the

active role of the subject in generating the meanings attached to their ownembodied identity. In many feminist arguments phallocentric representations areseen as thecauseof womens self-image, particularly those generated in the massmedia and advertising, and ultimately this pathologizes womens reading practicesby suggesting a simplistic ingestion of imagery and a resultant incorporation ofthese meanings into the self and onto the surface of the body (Bray and Cole-brook, 1998).11 In short, womens own understandings of their embodied selvesare reduced to an effect of image consumption, while the processes and practices

through which the self and the body become meaningful are left untheorized. Theproblem remains of how to undertake an analysis of female embodiment andsubjectivity that can transcend a mind/body dualism and acknowledge anirreducibility between mind and body, subject and object, culture and nature andso forth. Accordingly McNay argues that:

As the point of overlap between the physical, the symbolic and the sociological, the body is adynamic, mutable frontier. The body is the threshold through which the subjects lived experi-ence of the world is incorporated and realised and, as such, is neither pure object nor pure

subject. I t is neither pure object since it is the place of ones engagement with the world. Nor isit pure subject in that there is always a material residue that resists incorporation into dominantsymbolic schema. (McNay, 1999: 98)

An analytical approach that can incorporate this point would be one which



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questions the idea of the body as an effect of image consumption, proposinginstead that the body is constituted by more than the capacity to be a sign orimage via the internalization of distorted media representations. In short, it is

more than a semiotic problem. Rather, the body is a site of practices, comport-ments, and contested articulations (Bray and Colebrook, 1998).The body is not a prior fullness, anteriority, or plenitude that is subsequently identified andorganised through restricting representations. Representations are not negations imposed onotherwise fluid bodies. Body images are not stereotypes that produce human beings as complicitsubjects. On the contrary, images, representations, and significations (as well as bodies) areaspects of ongoing practices of negotiation, reformation, and encounter. Neither the body northe feminine can be located as the innocent other of (patriarchal) representation. (Bray andColebrook, 1998: 389)

What is required is a problematization of the representation/materialitydualism by regarding the body as the threshold or borderline concept that hoversperilously and undecidably at the pivotal point of binary pairs (Grosz, 1994: 23).This argument is central to understanding that, in the narratives produced by theyoung women in this project, embodied identity was a site where representationsof idealized femininity were resisted and transformations to embodied identitieswere described in ways that suggest that the body is best theorized as a border-line. These processes will be examined in relation to how transformation in themeaning of embodiment can be effected through an engagement in processes andpractices in ways that destabilize the subject/object binary. It will be argued thatto locate young womens discernment of their own embodiment as purely anobject of cultural inscription is to undertake an insufficient analysis. This will firstinvolve a critique of reading practices as the site where womens bodies areinscribed by culture that is, idealized images of femininity.

Representation, Resistance and TransformationWhile cultural representations of womens bodies may work towards discursivelyconstructing bodies in particular ways, such texts were encountered by the youngwomen interviewed in ways that suggested that they engage with these imagesand their own bodies in critical and subversive ways. As stated earlier, mediaprojections of images of thin, fashionable and glamorous women were often citedas contributing to the dissatisfaction they felt with their own bodies, but most ofthe young women were able to negotiate these discursive constructions and theireffects in a way that allowed for strategies of resistance, lending support to thesuggestion that the relationship between self and body is about a process morecomplex than that which involves the inscription of the text upon the surface ofthe body.



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Lynne: Its all too easy to look at a magazine and think how happy peoples lives are then youlook at your life and think youre not that happy until I start thinking about it then Ithink, Oh hold on a minute! But I think its definitely a massive influence on people the media.

Shelley: How do you resist that pressure?

Lynne: Basically I just get a grip on reality because theres no way youre going to be as happyas these people in the magazines with beautiful figures and nice clothes and loads ofmoney. For happiness you need to look at your own self-concept and the people thatare around you. (Lynne, 18 years old, further education college)

Sarah: Theres always like skinny people walking around and well dressed people which themedia has taken too far because people arent like that in real life. Theres no point inchanging to be like them because nobody is like them apart from in the media. Its not

really reality.

While experiences in daily life are mediated by an abundance of images it isalso a context in which these young women engage with those images, their ownembodiment and their positionings within systems of representation in a resistantfashion. For example, one strategy developed by these young women in dealingwith the pressure to make their bodies conform to images of ideal femininity wasto normalize a pathological relationship to their bodies. The discomfort produced

by their desire for what they did not have was dissolved by placing all womenwithin this position. Indeed, having a problem with the way one looks was inter-preted as quite a normal relationship, so, rather than feeling as though onesbody was abnormal and in need of transformation, it was that very feelingwhichwas normalized. Through this manoeuvre their accounts of what actually consti-tuted normality undermined what cultural influences dictated as normal therebycounteracting the homogenizing and disciplinary capacity of these represen-tations.

Theres social pressures that you obviously get as a girl. You know youve got Kate Moss andpeople like that. Theres just that normal type of pressure that you get growing up as a youngwoman feeling like you should be 3 stone lighter and things like that. (L auren, 19 years old,careers guidance centre)

Their comments suggest that representations of idealized femininity whichwork at the level of appearance do not fully determine a self that is able to engagewith the body and these representations as a site of resistance. Therefore,consideration must be given to what embodied agency means. If bodies, as

Giddens (1991) argues, are becoming less of a given by nature and more theproduct of choice, then what does a chosen intervention into the physical mean?One of the ways to explore this question is through an analysis of cosmeticsurgery as the epitome of human intervention into the materiality of the self.



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Body Practices: Doing Versus Looking

Cosmetic surgery is often cited as the exemplar of body project practices and, inthe postmodern world, a practice whose prevalence is on the increase (Bordo,1993; Shilling, 1993).12 What does the increased popularity and acceptance of thistechnology reveal about the ways in which women live their bodies? What issuesare raised for womens embodied agency by these practices? In her analysis ofwomen who undergo cosmetic surgery Davis (1995) emphasizes that womensagency must be central to any account of the relationship between identity andthe decision to alter ones body because to disavow womens agency would meanthat cosmetic surgery becomes a strangely disembodied phenomenon, devoid of

womens experiences, feelings, and practical activities with regard to their bodies(Davis, 1995: 57). Furthermore, an argument that treats women who have theirbodies surgically altered as compliant to a system that serves mens interests andreproduces the conditions of their own oppression relies upon a faulty concep-tion of agency that women could not possibly make an active and knowledge-able choice.13These practices, Davis concludes, are not about women wanting tobecome physically beautiful, but about womens relationships to their bodies and,through the body, the world around them. In short it is about embodied subjec-

tivity where the body is situated in culture rather than determined by it (1995:169). Her study provides insight into how women live their bodies and suggeststhat subjectivity and the material body are aspects of the self which are irreduciblylinked such that bodies are never just objects but part of a process of negotiatingand re-negotiating self-identity.

The complex issue of body modification was explored with the young womenin this study by asking them how they would respond to a scenario in which adecision to undergo cosmetic surgery was being negotiated.14 Responses were

equally split between those who advocated surgery, those who advised against itand those who were ambivalent that is those whose answers (whether approv-ing or disapproving) were reached only after a lengthy, and often contradictoryprocess of analysing the intricate set of considerations implicit in the scenario.Most of the young women defined the dilemma as being inherently aboutconstructing an identity. Here emphasis was not placed on dominant ideals buton individualized intentions, needs and desires and, accordingly, a prevailingresponse involved the assessment of the surgery in terms of whether it could boost

ones confidence a way of being in the world. But it did not follow that thesurface of the body could be so readily altered to fit with a narrative about confi-dence. For example, both of the young women quoted below felt that confidenceis not just about how ones body looks.



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I dont think I could do it myself . . . but I think a lot of people now seem to be doing it sopeople think, Oh I could do with this changing or that changing and really theyre justchanging their outside appearance and when theyve had it done I think in the long run theywont feel the confidence inside. Itll still be lacking. (Mel, 16 years old, all-girls private school)

Probably would boost your confidence for a while but then youd find something else that youwant to change and it would be never ending. And youd think I wont look good until I getthis done and it would just go on forever. (Alice, 16 years old, all-girls private school)

These responses suggest that the surface of the body is not simply reducible tothe self or vice versa, and that changing the surface appearance of the body doesnot correspond to a transformation of the self in and of itself. Thus, the youngwomen spoke about their bodies and self-identities in ways that challenge the idea

that a body can be chosen or transformed through interventions enacted upon itssurface and draws into question Giddenss suggestion that the body is increas-ingly a project (an object) that is made and remade according to the definitionof the narrative of self that is under construction. Neither the self nor the bodycan be chosen because they are very often lived as though they are already there.The body is already the self. The self is already the body. The following ways inwhich these young women speak about their embodied selves give cause toquestion that there is a separation in embodied identity a mind/body split in

which the body is separated out from self as an object.I think everyone can learn to live with something they dont like because everyone has a flaw.But having surgery, thats just being thick having a nose thats not you. Its just part of her andshes got to learn to live with it. (L ianne, 16 years old, careers guidance centre)

Its not that it isnt right but I dont think its something I would do.This is my face. (Lucy, 16years old, all-girls private school)

The suggestion that embodied selves exceed a culturally inscribed surface isalso apparent in instances where the solution to the cosmetic surgery dilemmawas resolved by the conclusion that the surgery should be chosen. Yet, again inthese cases altering the body was about more than a modification of surfaceappearance. Instead it was suggested that undergoing cosmetic surgery was abouttransforming the way in which the body was lived not how it looked. In mostcases the underlying concern was about confidence and how changing ones bodywould allow the self to enter into situations with an increased sense of efficacy.Even when a pronounced sense of ambivalence was expressed it was held that if

cosmetic surgery allowed the young woman in question to live her embodied selfdifferently then it would be an acceptable choice for her to make.

Lynne: If shes got a lack of self-confidence then if she has the surgery then psychologicallyshell be able to feel good about herself so whatever she wants to do.Thats going toaffect her whole life isnt it?



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Shelley: What do you think about her friends telling her that she should just be self-confidentanyway?

Lynne: Yeah, I can see the point because I say that to people but you keep on telling people

that, giving them compliments, and if they dont end up feeling a bit happier then thatswhat they need to do. I mean I dont agree with cosmetic surgery for stupid reasonsbutif thats what she wants then she should do it. (Lynne, 18 years old, further educationcollege)

Here Lynne makes clear the point that a uniform position for or againstcosmetic surgery is too simplistic, and that ones evaluation must take intoaccount more that just appearance for the sake of appearance. She states that thereare stupid reasons for undergoing surgery but if the decision to have surgery is

about feeling good about oneself a feeling that would have ramifications for thewholeness of her life then it would be okay. The significance of the lived body the body as a process was also apparent in the young womens responses tothe questions pertaining to their own desires to change their bodies if they could.The modifications desired were about transforming the ways in which theembodied self lived relations within which the individual is embedded. Theseresponses suggest a basis for the relation between self and body that goes beyondthe surface appearance of the body. For example, many of the young women

stated that the changes they would like to make would result in them having moreimpact or an enhanced sense of agency. The emphasis is not on looking but ondoing.

Caroline: I mean I only have to exercise a couple of days and I feel better within myself. I ts notabout my body having changed but you feel different because youve done somethinginstead of lying in bed and eating a lot of sweets.

Shelley: So it isnt about the way your body looks?

Caroline: Yeah, yeah. (Caroline, 19 years old, further education college)

Shelley: If you were taller, how do you think that would affect who you are or how you feelabout yourself?

Prea: I think it would help my confidence. I dont know why it would. I just feel it wouldbecause, like with some people I meet, like with the guys I meet theyre always a lotmore taller and I feel that if I were taller I could, I dont know, be more in control.(Prea, 19 years old, further education college)

As discussed earlier the desire for control15 expressed here could be read asevidence of the discipline and normalization of the female body and an amaz-ingly durable and flexible strategy of social control in which preoccupation withappearance still affects women far more powerfully than men (Bordo, 1993: 166).



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Certainly, for some of the young women in this study, a dissatisfaction with thebody was experienced as a need to be more self-disciplined and individuallyresponsible for the size and shape of the body thereby indicating that bodily disci-

pline can be about the development of a relation to the body in which agencybecomes constrained through repetitive and obsessive practices such as dietingand exercise. But it is important to avoid the total conflation of desire for confi-dence with a disciplinary form of control because, for many of these youngwomen, an expression of desire for control translated into a desire for bodilytransformation which would alter ones way of being.

I d be taller. I dont know why. No I dont think it is because I actually want to be taller. I thinkits just that I want to be taller in my personality than I am and with a bit more weight on me.

I know it sounds strange but if I were taller Id be cautious towards people and their ulteriormotives. (Lynne, 18 years old, further education college)

Im sure that Im meant to be taller than I am. I mean I would like to be taller but I know thatsone thing I cant change so Im not even going to worry about it but I would like to be taller.

You know so that I could make myself be heard and seen. (Prea, 18 years old, further educationcollege)

These expressions of a desire to change the body suggest that the meanings ofbody modification can transcend their implementation as disciplinary technolo-

gies. By offering the opportunity to renegotiate embodiment, as Davis suggests,cosmetic surgery, for example, can be one of the many technologies employed inself-formation through a transformation in how the body is lived. It can be partof an active strategy undertaken in a context in which embodied identity is theoutcome of an individuals interaction with her body and through her body withthe world around her (Davis, 1995: 169). By theorizing bodies and selves asongoing, multiple, processes we can begin to understand how each is implicatedin the other and this is particularly significant if we are to understand that the

critical task of engagement is to ask not what do bodies mean, but what can bodiesdo?16 For it is in asking this question that we can begin to explore how embodiedselves are processes that give rise to new understandings, experiences and signif-icances that operate beyond the effects of representational practices.

In the final example the ways in which the set of relations which constituteembodied identity are reconfigured is brought about not through actually alteringthe bodys surface or the surface inscription of meanings but through anembodied process involving particular experiences and engagements in certainpractices which allow the body to make new, transformative connections.

When I was younger I really wanted to be slimmer but as Ive got older I ve come to terms withmyself as a person and Im not striving to be somebody that Im not whereas a couple of yearsago I was striving to be that slim person in the magazine. The thing that stopped me was friends



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talking it through, growing up and realizing that it is the media looking around you andthinking, Well there are people like that but not everybody and in college everyone is theirown personality. You dress the way you want to. N o one criticizes what you say. Youve gotyour own opinions that you can say. Not like at school where your teachers say, No thats

wrong and where youre not allowed to speak. You can speak out more and be the person youare really rather than the person you were trying to be. I did want to be slim because of themedia but now I dont want to beso I really can think about me as person and my body as beingwhat I am. (Shannon, 18 years old, further education college)

Shannons relation to her body is partially affected by fashion magazine imageswhich she admits used to intensely mediate, and define, her relation to her body.However, because the body is never purely an object inscribed by cultural textsin that there is always a material residue that resists incorporation into dominant

symbolic schema (McNay, 1999: 98) Shannons embodied self moves from theinscription of culture via her reading practices towards new meanings whichemerge from her active involvement in practices such as talking with friends andgoing away to college where she begins to live her body in a different way as aresult of being able to speak and be heard. She moves from experiencing her bodyas object to a relation in which the body is lived in terms of what it can do.

As has been argued throughout these examples, if the accounts of the relationbetween self and body rendered in the narratives of the young women in this

project are to be more fully understood then the starting point for such an analysismust break free from the constraining influence of the mind/body dualism andthe Cartesian tradition. As argued here this is a problem which continues todisturb many of the attempts made by feminists to think about embodied identityin critical yet non-deterministic or reductionist ways and in ways which grantwomen agency. One possibility for a feminist reconfiguration of these problemsis to begin from a radically altered ontological position. The deployment of suchan ontology would deliver a strategy for exploring the mind and body, represen-

tation and materiality, narrativity and corporeality in non-dichotomous and non-reductive ways. What are required are models and metaphors that implicate thesubject in the object and lend insight into the constitutive articulation betweenthe inside and the outside of the body (Grosz, 1994: 23). Grosz argues that apotential source of such metaphors is the work of Deleuze and Guattari for intheir philosophical framework:

Subject and object can no longer be understood as discrete entities or binary opposites. Things,material or psychical, can no longer be seen in terms of rigid boundaries, clear demarcations;nor, on an opposite track, can they be seen as inherently united, singular or holistic. Subject andobject are series of flows, energies, movements, strata, segments, organs, intensities fragmentscapable of being linked together or severed in potentially infinite ways other than those whichcongeal them into identities. Production consists of those processes which create linkagesbetween fragments . . . (1994: 167)



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Within this framework the subject, the social order and the natural world arereconfigured as microprocesses; as a myriad of intensities and flows withunaligned or unalignable components which refuse to conform to the require-

ments of order or organization. Bodies then can be thought not as objects, uponwhich culture writes meanings, but as events that are continually in the processof becoming as multiplicities that are never just found but are made and remade.This is a fluid process of transformation that Shannon, in the example above,explains a process of connections, extensions, reformations a process ofbecoming.17Because the body connects it is reconstituted as an active and produc-tive force not merely an effect produced through the repression of some essen-tial origin. Indeed, one of the advantages of this approach is that it allows the

female body to be thought in affirmative terms or as a positive event rather thanas a negated origin, a lack, or the disqualified other of phallocentric represen-tations.

Theorizing embodied identity as productive in this way also endorses womensagency because questions regarding the body shift away from asking What dobodies mean? to What can bodies do?18This is a particularly useful strategicresponse to feminist evaluations of body practices which seek to appraise prac-tices in terms of whether they are either liberatory or repressive. The framing of

such questions within this framework relies upon the possibility of a freeconsciousness that could precede, and be revealed beneath, representations (Brayand Colebrook, 1998: 57). However, if action is seen as positive or productivethen evaluations of that action can be made on the basis of its force within anetwork of other acts and practices, and not in reference to a putative origin(Bray and Colebrook, 1998: 57). Understanding the body means examining whatthings it performs; what transformations and becomings it undergoes; the connec-tions that it forms; and the capacities that it can proliferate (Grosz, 1994: 165).

Theorizing from this position allows the body to be seen as more than a limitand suggests that the body itself might have effects and modes of being that arenot reducible to its status as image (Bray and Colebrook, 1998: 41). This is not tosay that representation does not in some way work to constitute the body as wasevident in the examples explored here but these examples also show that represen-tation is only one space of negotiation among others and as such is not determi-nate.

Conclusion

The aim of this argument has been to critically engage with the self/body relationand, in particular, tendencies to privilege representational practices in the



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constitution of the body a problematic tendency which results in the disappear-ance of the material body behind layers of representation, becoming only thatwhich can be spoken or readily put into words rather than a lived body (Radley,

1995: 7). Consequently, the body tends to be conceptualized as an inert masscontrolled by the mind, which is seemingly abstracted from an active human body(Shilling, 1997: 79). Bodies, however, cannot simply be treated as though they arethe natural foundation or passive surface upon which culture overlays a disci-plinary system of meanings. Yet various forms of social constructionism deny thebody as a lived entity by capturing the body only insofar as they show how itsfunctions, its movements, its inner and outer workings, have been shaped bysocial structures and discourse and leave the body as flesh marginalized (Radley,

1995: 7).If the relationship between self-identity and the body is one in which both are

increasingly indeterminate and open to choice then it becomes important to askwhat choicemeans in relation to ones body and, therefore, the processes whichconstitute embodied identity (Giddens, 1991; Shilling, 1993: 5). The positiontaken here, namely that the body must be conceptualized as an event instead ofan object challenges Giddenss theorization of an instrumental relation to thebody where the body is brought into the self-reflexive biographical project as an

object of choice. Theorizing materiality from this perspective is particularlyurgent for feminist projects as attempts to bring materiality back into the termsof analysis of subjectivity have constituted a significant part of feminist critiquesof metaphysics. What has been argued here is that feminist critiques, whileeffectively engaging with economies of representation, remain constrained intheorizing womens embodied agency and the choices women make about theirembodiment because these critiques too often remain within a binary logic andconsequently fail to acknowledge that the embodied self exceeds representation.

To think outside or beyond representation is a problem which underlies the moregeneral question of what it means to live the body within and across multiple sitesof connections and negotiations. I t has been demonstrated here, through engagingwith young womens accounts of their embodiment, that this demands theinitiation of a different ontological strategy one that can accommodate thepossibility of thinking beyond a division between materiality and representation.The movement advocated here is towards a way of thinking, not about what thebody means, but how it becomes through a multiplicity of continuous connec-tions with other bodies.19

This is not to argue that textuality cannot be implicated in the relation betweenself and body but that it does not provide a wholly sufficient strategy. A refusalof a single explanation or a point of causal origin is made in favour of locating the



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body, as an event, within the context of a multiplicity of practices and regimes; anetwork of activities through which a body becomes. It is these practices andconnections which work to form the event of the body. Analysis of bodily prac-

tices, therefore, requires an examination of the specific historical and politicallocations within which they occur while also recognizing unintended effects andthe impossibility of predicting in advance the nature of or distribution of align-ments.

The implication of these suggestions is that attempts to theorize embodiedidentity do away with notions of an authentic female body or identity and therhetoric of alienation that accompanies many feminist anti-representationalcritiques. Being cannot be reduced to an effect of the consumption of images but

instead is the result of various forms of self-inventions which occur withinembodied practices which also are not effects of representation but sites ofproduction. The self/body configuration is one which is lived via its immersionin a multiplicity of sites, knowledges and processes, therefore, understanding thechoices women make in doing embodied identity requires a move beyondreductionist accounts, away from questions about what womens bodies mean toquestions about what womens bodies can do.

Notes

1. Interviews were conducted in a city in northern England with 33 young women aged 16 to 20across five sites: a private all-girls school, a mixed sex comprehensive school, a careers guidance centre,a further education college and a youth outreach programme. All names are pseudonyms.

2. Buchanan (1997: 76) summarizes Spinozas rejection of Cartesian dualism for a mind/bodyparallel via Deleuze (1988: 18): an action in the mind is necessarily an action in the body as well, andwhat is a passion in the body is necessarily a passion in the mind.

3. Many feminist epistemologies challenge norms of disembodied reason and objectivity byasserting the centrality of the role the body performs in the production and evaluation of knowledge(see Bordo, 1986; Grosz, 1993). H araway (1988: 589) makes a similar point about the impossibility ofknowledge production from a position of objectivity in arguing for a politics and epistemologies oflocation, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition for beingheard to make rational knowledge claims. This argument relies upon the view from a body, always acomplex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere,from simplicity.

4. In constructionist theories the body is conceived in various ways. For example, the body as anobject of control and scrutiny, governed through relations of power and knowledge (Foucault, 1977,1979); the body as a medium through which meanings are transmitted and social categories reproduced(Bourdieu, 1984); and/or in a third approach, influenced by semiotics, physical existence is overruledby the primacy of discourse and language (Barthes, 1972). For a discussion of constructionist theoriessee Radley (1995).

5. For feminist critiques of beauty practices as a system of domination through which women areoppressed see Bovey (1991); Brownmiller (1985); Chapkis (1986); and Wolf (1990).



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6. Alternatively Dorothy Smith (1990) makes the useful argument that women actively producetheir bodies in relation to textual constructions. As such femininity is a practice of everyday life.

7. For example eating disorders are of central importance in many feminist critiques of represen-tation because they implicitly demonstrate a negation or repression of the body according to a limited,

reified, or dominant body image (Bray and Colebrook, 1998: 41). For studies of eating disorders seeBruch (1979), Chernin (1983), MacSween (1993) and Orbach (1986).

8. In this argument sexual difference is treated as ontological and constitutive of the subject and asa condition for representation.

9. In this strategy sexual difference is theorized as an effect of representation (see critiques in Brayand Colebrook, 1998 and Colebrook, 2000).

10. This argument is developed effectively in Bray and Colebrook (1998), which the followinganalysis substantially draws upon.

11. See Probyns (1987) analysis of anorexia. She makes the important point that the subject ofanorexia is located at the intersection of multiple and intersecting discourses, thus her argument chal-

lenges reductionist analyses of the relationship between eating disorders and representations.12. The relationship between technologies and body transformation has become a growing object of

study for the social sciences often throwing into question the distinction between subject and object.For discussions of the implementation of technologies for the modification of bodies and the impli-cations of these practices see Balsamo (1995), Featherstone and Burrows (1995) and Wendell (1996).

13. Davis draws on the work of Bartky (1990), Smith (1990) and Young (1990) to construct a theoryof female agency in relation to the practices of cosmetic surgery. This approach avoids reducingwomens actions to the effects of male oppression or phallocentric discourses.

14. The scenario presented was: Anne has always been self-conscious about the size and shape of hernose. Her best friend says that she should just try to feel good about herself rather than focusing on

what she doesnt like about herself. Recently, Annes aunt gave her some money to put towards visitingher cousins in Australia. She is really excited about having the opportunity to travel but recently shehas considered using the money for cosmetic surgery instead so that she can finally feel more self-confident and better about herself. She thinks that a trip will only last for one month but a nose job isfor ever. On the other hand, she is disappointed in herself for wanting to have the surgery. What shouldshe do?

15. In some feminist critiques of the relationship women have with their bodies the notion of controlis seen to represent the logic of the masculine while the body as the disorderly feminine becomes theobject of regulation (MacCanell and MacCanell, 1987; Szkely, 1988; Turner, 1996: 12642).

16. Buchanan (1997: 75) articulates this point in his argument that the body must be reconfigured as

a sum of its capacities.17. For a discussion of becoming and the invention of a new self through a capacity to connect with

other bodies see Buchanan (1997), Bray and Colebrook (1998) and Grosz (1994: 173).18. Drawing upon the work of Deleuze, Buchanan (1997) argues that what a body can do is

articulated in terms of its affects. Affects refer to the capacity of the body to form specific relationswhere relations refer to the virtual (potential) links between bodies that a body can form.

19. Where bodies are not just restricted to other humans or organic entities but opened out to thepossibilities of connections with the inorganic as well.

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Shelley Budgeon is a research fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at theUniversity of Leeds. She is currently researching friendship, non-conventional partner relationshipsand emergent cultures of intimacy in post-war Britain. Recent research has focused upon the formationof identity by young women within the context of social transformations which allow for greater

choice and autonomy in creating a self, Choosing a Self: Young Women and the Individualisation ofI dentity (Praeger, 2003). She has also published on the meaning and relevance of post-feminism bothas a recuperative discourse and as a way to rethink the feminist project inWomens Studies InternationalForumand theEuropean Journal of Womens Studies. Previous research has addressed the constructionof femininity in fashion magazine advertising. Her research interests include feminist theory, culturaltheory, the body, feminist epistemology and theorizing subjectivity.


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Identity as an Embodied Event