"As it emerges transformed from this intellectual contact zone, American studies has addressed how collective and impersonal forms of political agency are routinely embodied in propertied, white men, whose political privilege depends on the association of other genders, races, and classes with corporealized identities. The circulation of such 'overembodied' identities as public icons and spectacle has been crucial to the protection of established political privilege." - Eva Cherniavsky,
Keywords for American Cultural Studies, ed. Bruce Burgett & Glenn Hendler, 2007
...There is something crucial in this word, "overembodied." Can one ever be too much in their body, too physical, too corporeally defined? Yes, in caricature, in exaggeration, in stereotype. And since the image (all kinds of media, "moving pictures," celebrities on pedestals, etc.) is such a driving force in society, this "overembodiment" of certain identities naturally (perhaps an unhappy choice of words) comes to be expected and assumed (in both senses of the word). As Cherniavsky writes, to reveal and perhaps alter these iconic, corporealized identities, we must examine "the physical body as a social text rather than a given form...there are no bodies without culture, since the body as a kind of material composition requires a cultural grammar of embodiment." Within that format, perhaps, the politically powerful, white men she points to can gain an embodied, socially iconic identity, and those of the marginalized identities won't be hyper-visible, overembodied, too corporeal.
And at the same time, as a mover, a dancer, and dance-maker, why is it a negative to be overembodied? I strive to become more within my body every day as a performer, but to escape stereotypes and expectations that I assume are made every day based on my body and image.
Do these conflict?
