Abstract
This article confronts the notion of intersectionality with its conditions of materiality and embodiment. Understanding intersectionality as an overarching framework for analyzing power imbalances, we locate the body at the core of intersectionality as the site or situation where intersectional identities emerge and are made manifest. Our point of departure is that identities are always embodied, socially, culturally, spatially, and historically situated, and in continuous relational becoming. Considering the relevance of the body in intersectional structures of domination, our analysis aims to elaborate on the ways in which categories of identity are inscribed precisely as bodily markers and reinforced through embodiment.
We discuss and develop the notion of intersectionality in light of lived embodiment. To facilitate our discussion, we use cultural representations, namely, the two contemporary films Mammoth by Lukas Moodysson (2009) and Antichrist by Lars von Trier (2009). The films serve as a particular lens through which intersections of power and dominance are brought to light as embodied, relational, and dynamic. By analyzing scenes from Mammoth and Antichrist, we highlight how intersectional identities are conditioned by and condition embodiment. Our analysis underlines how identity categorizations are inscribed on and in the body and how lived embodiment constitutes the very site in which seemingly stable identity categories intersect and have the potential of being both reproduced and transformed. This theoretical position not only brings to light bodies already marked by intersecting strands of oppression and marginalization but also makes visible the intersectional embodiment of privileged and seemingly unmarked bodies—it marks the unmarked.
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Notes
- 1.
Dual conceptualizations of the body are further developed by Ingvil Hellstrand (Hellstrand 2011: 13), particularly in relation to bodily representations in fiction.
- 2.
According to Merleau-Ponty, the intercorporeal being of bodies is the very condition and ground of their singularity. Lived bodies/embodied selves continuously emerge in mutual interrelation in what has been termed a process of selving and othering in which the boundaries between bodies are continuously drawn and redrawn (Käll 2009a). See also Rosalyn Diprose (2002) and Gail Weiss (1999).
- 3.
See Moira Gatens for a discussion on how conceptualizations of the concrete, corporeal, and biological body rely on historically, culturally, and socially specific identity categories (1996: 8–10).
- 4.
For more detailed analyses of the film’s representations of social and gender inequities, see Anna Westerståhl Stenport (2010) and Nilsson (2014). For a discussion of spatial and material dimensions of the film, see Björklund (forthcoming).
- 5.
The interaction between subjects and places is of key importance also in other films by Moodysson (Björklund 2010).
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this article. We are indebted to the University of Stavanger, Norway, the Sven and Dagmar Salén Foundation, and the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Sweden, for financial support, and to Stiftsgården Breidagård.
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Björklund, J., Hellstrand, I., Käll, L.F. (2016). Marking the Unmarked: Theorizing Intersectionality and Lived Embodiment Through Mammoth and Antichrist . In: Bull, J., Fahlgren, M. (eds) Illdisciplined Gender. Crossroads of Knowledge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15272-1_6
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