seminar sociology 2: Young

questions 1:

• what does each thinker contribute to Young’s essay?

  • Strauss: that women throw differntly is an inherent female ‘essence’

    • + description of sex differences → not anatomical

    • - mysterious female essence

  • de Beauvoir: you aren’t born a women, but become a women

    • + situation as women: how women live through life, they learn they learn to be the second sex (there are real differences, not essential or innate but it becomes a difference)

    • + particular feminist angle → contradiction

    • - female body as burden

  • Merleau-Ponty

    • object vs subject (actions happening to you vs you doing things)

    • primary way we live is preconscious, with our body, experiencing life

    • body = initial meaning-giving act

    • + embodied subjectivity

    • + in relation to the world

    • - general human existence (men, upper middle-class…)

  • Young

    • + feminine bodily existence

    • + phenomenological description of feminine body style

    • + feminist essay

• what are their weaknesses?

• what does Young herself bring into the mix?

• Young coins three concepts to discuss feminine motility. Explain what motility means and discuss these concepts by using concrete examples: inhibited intentionality, ambiguous transcendence, discontinuous unity

  • motility: the effectiveness of the movement, mobility is the ability of movement

  • inhibited intentionality: possibilities opened up in the world depend on the mode and limits of the bodily ‘I can’. Feminine existence, however, often does not enter bodily relation to possibilities by its own comportment toward its surroundings in an unambiguous and confident ‘I can’. woman usually doesn’t trust the capacity of her own body but wants to do things.

    • example: when throwing, guys think their limit is the horizon, but girls will self-impose their restrictions, Peter and his estimation of grades on test, always thinking you’ll fail and underestimating yourself

  • ambiguous transcendence: transcendence (= existence beyond the physical) laden with immanence (=the state of being present as a natural and permanent part of something), to be touched as well as touching, locating subjectivity not in mind or consciousness but in the body. The most primordial intentional act is th emotion of the body orienting itself with respect to and moving within its surroundings

    • example:

  • discontinuous unity: body has unifying and synthesizing function. By projecting an aim toward which it moves, the body brings unity to and unites itself with its surroundings, surrounding space as continuous extension of its own being. Feminine bodily existence in discintinuous unity with both itself and its surroundings

  • answerss:

    • motility: the subjective ability to move

    • inhibited intentionality: intentionality is how the world exists for us, different for different people

    • ambiguous transcendence: imminant (experience the limits of our bodies), transcendent (not having your physical body stop you), ambiguous (vague, not certain, not only 1 meaning), wanting to transcend, but your body is holding you back, you’re highly aware of your body

      • example transcendence: praying or getting into the zone

      • example: picking something up but then being self conscious about your behind so doing gymnastics to pick the thing up

    • discontinuous unity: only using one body part for an action

• young coins 3 concepts to discuss feminine spatiality? Explain what lived space means and discuss these concepts by using concrete examples: enclosed space, double spatiality, positioned in space

  • objective space: impersonal, classroom has dimensions, has lights and stuff

  • subjective space: how you perceive the space: some people experience elevators as claustrophobic

  • enclosed space: the psace women confine themselves to, how women tend to live space, but in this space they have a lot of freedom (sitting in a million ways

  • double spatiality: women experience their bodies in 2 ways, here is something you can interact with and we can see there, but they can’t reach it (the metro, guys manspreading and women making themselves small)

  • being positioned in space: susbject/object, women are often objectified and feel like billiard balls in open space, they can’t move themselves (man sits next to woman and manspreads, woman makes herself small, teachers in kindergarten letting boys move and moving girls)

  • roots of these modalities: patriarchical society makes women conscious that they’re living in a male world, women feel that they’re not completely free