Week 11
Unfortunately, I’m operating through a haze of nausea, but I’m going to take a whack at some of what I thought were connections between the readings and my own work. Apologies for lateness and/or a lack of clarity.
- How do bodies function as or in representational spaces? It’s more clear to me they function in representational spaces, but I’m really intrigued as to whether or not bodies can be representational spaces. Specifically in terms of my work with weight-loss participants, it would appear that their bodies function as stand-ins for something.
- Alternately, how do weight-loss bodies engage in what Baudrillard terms “dissimulation,” or the “feign[ing] not to have what one has,” in this case, a fat body?
- Finally, I’d like to connect Arlene Davila’s recent book and talk to Sassen’s “Why Cities Matter.” Davila argues that the global flows of capital can be seen to center specifically in malls in Latin America, Puerto Rico in particular. As these malls develop, they essentially become global mini-cities in which capital and ideas about cultural authenticity become realized. So then, what is role of authenticity in the creation of global cities and how does its construction reflect flows of capital, ideas, and bodies?