Abstract
This thesis offers, with a poststructuralist informed social-constructionistic discoursepsychological perspective, an empirical study of young people's narratives about the body.
The ambition has been to investigate, what narratives about the body the young people produce, and which possibilities of subjectivation these create.
The empirical material of the study consists of essays and group interviews produced in a Danish eighth grade class in Bakkeskolen and of notes from time spend with the young people.
Throughout the analyses it is shown how the young people ‘tell the body’ as a complex and diffuse phenomenon, that is difficult to grasp and that is linked to many other factors such as personality, style and biology. The analyses lead to a splitting into three different kinds of body narratives:
Predictable body narratives that contain narratives about ultra thinness, thinness, appropriateness, thickness and overweightness. Unpredictable body narratives that contain narratives about prettyboys, popgirls, emo and normality. Personal body narratives, where experienced feelings sneek into the narratives, while it becomes clear that subjectivation is also about power and
positions of the given subjects.
The most important analytical discovery is the discovery of the narration about thin appropriateness, which can be understood as a locally constructed thin version of the recognized health discourse appropriateness, implying a shift in what is understood as an appropriate subjectivation in this eighth grade class. Also the discovery of double normality is seen as central, since normality
is understood as something everyone is (sameness), or as something no one is (ideal).
With this thesis, I believe that I am able to present a theoretically informed analysis of how narratives about the body are not about an isolated biological body, but about feelings, personality, appearance, familiarity, styling, hierarchy, disease and attention. And that these narratives, that are both discourse reproducing and predictable, and local and unpredictable, offer many - particularly inconvenient - conditions for subjectivations.
The ambition has been to investigate, what narratives about the body the young people produce, and which possibilities of subjectivation these create.
The empirical material of the study consists of essays and group interviews produced in a Danish eighth grade class in Bakkeskolen and of notes from time spend with the young people.
Throughout the analyses it is shown how the young people ‘tell the body’ as a complex and diffuse phenomenon, that is difficult to grasp and that is linked to many other factors such as personality, style and biology. The analyses lead to a splitting into three different kinds of body narratives:
Predictable body narratives that contain narratives about ultra thinness, thinness, appropriateness, thickness and overweightness. Unpredictable body narratives that contain narratives about prettyboys, popgirls, emo and normality. Personal body narratives, where experienced feelings sneek into the narratives, while it becomes clear that subjectivation is also about power and
positions of the given subjects.
The most important analytical discovery is the discovery of the narration about thin appropriateness, which can be understood as a locally constructed thin version of the recognized health discourse appropriateness, implying a shift in what is understood as an appropriate subjectivation in this eighth grade class. Also the discovery of double normality is seen as central, since normality
is understood as something everyone is (sameness), or as something no one is (ideal).
With this thesis, I believe that I am able to present a theoretically informed analysis of how narratives about the body are not about an isolated biological body, but about feelings, personality, appearance, familiarity, styling, hierarchy, disease and attention. And that these narratives, that are both discourse reproducing and predictable, and local and unpredictable, offer many - particularly inconvenient - conditions for subjectivations.
| Originalsprog | Dansk |
|---|---|
| Status | Udgivet - 2012 |