Political and Corporeal Violence and the 'Grotesque' Israeli Woman's Body
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Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK) invites everyone interested to the seminar "Political and Corporeal Violence and the 'Grotesque' Israeli Woman's Body" with guest lecturer Karen Grumberg,
Associate Professor of Hebrew Studies at Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin.
Despite the egalitarianism at the heart of its founding socialist ideals, Israel's society has been shaped by a markedly masculine discourse. Some women authors respond to this reality by trying to assert a place for women and their bodies through the representation of women who are strong and independent. Others, however, choose to reject the contours of the discussion altogether, moving beyond them to create a radically new bodily discourse. In my presentation, I shall analyze several works by the contemporary author Orly Castel-Bloom to argue that her use of the Bakhtinian grotesque in constructing her characters' bodies constitutes one such attempt to create a new critical aesthetics of the body. This aesthetics of the grotesque offers interpretive possibilities that acknowledge that the violence of Israeli society -- in its demanding ideal of femininity as well as in its wars and occupation -- is always written on the woman's body.
Wlecome!
