Body Politics and the Fictional Double

In recent years, questions concerning "the body" and its place in postmodern discourses have taken center stage in academic disciplines. Body Politics joins these discussions by focusing on the challenges women face when their externally defined identities and representations as bodies--their body fictions--speak louder than what they know to be their lived experience or true selves. Instead of telling a story of the self, racialized, gendered, or homophobic body fictions disfigure individuals by concealing them beneath a veil of invisibility and political, emotional, or spiritual suffocation. The individual lives and relationships affected by the distorting stories these fictions tell are usually female and often ethnic while the interpreters and empowered authorities are not. As the object of interpretation, "female bodies" in search of health care, legal assistance, professional respect, identity confirmation, and financial security must first confront their fictionalized doubles in a collision that, in many cases, ends in disappointment, distress, and even suicide. We are in crisis. It is for these reasons that "Body Politics" concerns itself with women's bodies as well as the difference race and ethnicity makes. The moments of collision this volume examines include reflections on women's day to day lives as well as the cultural productions (literature, MTV, film, etc.) that give body fictions their power and influence. By exploring how these fictions are manipulated politically, expressively, and communally, contributors offer reinterpretations that challenge the fictional double while theorizing the discursive and performative forms it takes.