This thesis examines contemporary cosmetic surgery within a multidisciplinary feminist framework and is particularly interested in anti-ageing cosmetic surgery. It looks at many discursive and concrete examples of cosmetic surgery and casts a net that is inclusive of a wide variety of voices. These discourses are analysed in relation to the idea of ‘makeover culture’. Makeover culture is shown to be an increasingly important part of everyday life that is not confined to – but is particularly evident within – cosmetic surgery. For my purposes ‘makeover culture’ describes the set of cultural logics – the landscapes – in which cosmetic surgery is embedded. In these environments cosmetic surgery is an important part of a socio-cultural paradigm that values endless remaking, improving, renovating, importing and rejuvenating. The thesis’ theoretical cauldron contains cultural studies, media studies, feminist philosophy, actor-network theory, feminist theories of space, and psychoanalysis. I analyse cosmetic surgery as it appears in many media-scapes. The public narratives of some famous ‘extreme practitioners’ of cosmetic surgery are reviewed, as well as the stories of those celebrities who are secretive about cosmetic surgery and aim for a more ‘natural’ look. Also carefully analysed are the cosmetic surgery experiences told to me by more everyday recipients and doctors in interviews. I aim to develop a feminist understanding of contemporary cosmetic surgery that is beyond ideas of agent and victim, that goes further than the rhetoric of ‘just don’t do it’, that sees more similarities than differences between women who choose cosmetic surgery and women who don’t, and that positions the doctor/patient relationship inside a network of technologies and assemblages that includes many actors. The thesis offers suggestions about how people – especially women – may live critically and constructively with cosmetic surgery in all its contradictory, concrete, discursive, and imaginary forms. It acknowledges that there are complex pleasures and desires associated with cosmetic surgery, intertwined with its offensiveness and terrors. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis examines the use and function of the human body as a surface that is inscribed with a number of socially significant meanings and how these inscriptions operate in the specific late medieval cultural production. Drawing on Jauss's notion of the social and political significance of medieval narrative, I seek to determine how specific texts contribute to a regulatory practice by thematizing bodies that are perceived as "other," that resist or defy an imagined social norm or stereotype. Each of the dissertation's four chapters treats a different set of notions about the human body. The first one examines Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and The King of Tars as representations of ethnographic difference. I argue that the late Middle Ages did not have the notion of "race" as a signifier of ethnic difference: instead there is a highly unstable system of positions that place an individual in relation to Christian Salvation History. Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid is at the centre of chapter two that examines the moral issues surrounding leprosy as a stigmatized disease. Reading the text as a piece of medical historiography, I argue that one of the purposes of the narrative is to establish the link between Cresseid's sexual behaviour and her disease. A discussion of the homosocial underpinnings of late medieval feudal society, particularly in light of Duby's notion of "les jeunes," forms the basis of the final two chapters. Chapter three discusses Chaucer's Legend ofLucrece and the narrative function of rape as a pedagogical instrument with the aim to ensure the availability of untouched female bodies for a "traffic in women" between noblemen. Chapter four examines transgressive sexual acts as the objects of jokes in fabliaux, such as Chaucer's Miller's Tale. By using shame and ridicule as their main strategy, these texts, I argue, fulfil an exemplary function and act as a warning to young noblemen to maintain an erotic discipline as future heads of feudal houses and as an upcoming political elite.

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The influence technology has on human subjectivity has been the occupation of philosophy for some time. Recent technological advance has re-motivated the speculation on subjectivity where a bodily dimension of subjectivity becomes necessary to understand the complexities of subjectivity as it is formulated in contemporary society. In this thesis subjectivity has been schematized according to its states relative to the body to demonstrate how technology and its mythologies influences and define individual subjectivity and the larger constructive factors that shape that subjectivity. Various examples are used to show the contemporary postmodern response to technological subjective imposition as subjectivity both negotiates and responds to the four orders of subjectivity: dormant, active, material, and terminal. As shall be demonstrated, each subjective form is constituted by a series of technologies and mythologies that form a reciprocal and continuous pattern illustrated by individual, cultural, bodily, and communicative models.

This thesis examines the use and function of the human body as a surface that is inscribed with a number of socially significant meanings and how these inscriptions operate in the specific late medieval cultural production. Drawing on Jauss's notion of the social and political significance of medieval narrative, I seek to determine how specific texts contribute to a regulatory practice by thematizing bodies that are perceived as "other," that resist or defy an imagined social norm or stereotype. Each of the dissertation's four chapters treats a different set of notions about the human body. The first one examines Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and The King of Tars as representations of ethnographic difference. I argue that the late Middle Ages did not have the notion of "race" as a signifier of ethnic difference: instead there is a highly unstable system of positions that place an individual in relation to Christian Salvation History. Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid is at the centre of chapter two that examines the moral issues surrounding leprosy as a stigmatized disease. Reading the text as a piece of medical historiography, I argue that one of the purposes of the narrative is to establish the link between Cresseid's sexual behaviour and her disease. A discussion of the homosocial underpinnings of late medieval feudal society, particularly in light of Duby's notion of "les jeunes," forms the basis of the final two chapters. Chapter three discusses Chaucer's Legend ofLucrece and the narrative function of rape as a pedagogical instrument with the aim to ensure the availability of untouched female bodies for a "traffic in women" between noblemen. Chapter four examines transgressive sexual acts as the objects of jokes in fabliaux, such as Chaucer's Miller's Tale. By using shame and ridicule as their main strategy, these texts, I argue, fulfil an exemplary function and act as a warning to young noblemen to maintain an erotic discipline as future heads of feudal houses and as an upcoming political elite. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2006. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Apr. 15, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-122).

The prevailing metaphysics of modern medicine and bioethics have been largely dualistic and materialistic in nature. The person is conceived of as a duality of mind and body, where the body is treated simply as a material object. In taking such a perspective, the background is set from which people can come to feel distanced from their bodies and believe it acceptable to alienate and sell their body parts. This thesis argues that the dualistic (and to a lesser extent the materialistic) conceptions of the person have contributed significantly to the objectification and commodification of the body. A most disturbing example of this is the patenting of human genetic material. / In place of the dualistic metaphysic, an embodiment perspective is proposed that treats the person as a unique individual who is inseparably unified in mind, body, and soul. This view can help address the problem of patenting and commercialisation as it avoids the difficulties raised by the application of property language to the body. The body is not simply an object that can be bought or sold, but is an integral part of a person's identity. This does not mean that medical research must be prohibited, but simply that an individual's cells and any derivative cell lines should not be subject to patents. Above all, an embodiment perspective forces the medical and technological establishment, and society in general, to accept that people are unique unified individuals who cannot be objectified, commodified, or alienated from their bodies and selves.

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