Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

iNTRODUCTION: tOWARDS A POLITICS OF LIVING
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this volume forward as, although not representative of, at least
examples of this kind of work at UP. The chapters taken up here are
of an interdisciplinary nature and range from the visual arts, cultural
studies, sociology, history, social work and engineering. As a result of
this interdisciplinarity, a range of methodologies are employed and
perspectives are put forward.
No attempt will be made to force one central theme on the different
contributions, but to repeat what I have already stated above – all the
contributions clearly illustrate the need for more theoretical
reflections on sex and gender and matters connected to it in exposing
the continuance of binaries, objectification, privatist mindsets,
capitalist consumption and gender insensitive research frameworks,
projects and policies and the need for more attention to the stories
told in order to bring to light Cavarero’s ‘who’ rather than the
‘what’.
In the first section, Continuances: Binaries, objectifications and
capitalist consumption, four authors from a visual arts/ cultural
studies angle contemplate issues concerning transsexuality; the
trangression of gender binaries, pornography and shopping malls as
gendered spaces. The chapters in this section combine abstract
theory and philosophy with lived experiences and phenomena.
Amanda du Preez in ‘Technology and transsexuality: secret alliances’,
addresses the role of new technologies in the creation of new sex/
gender categories, for example transsexuality. Significant is her
observation on how these technologies replicate hierarchy implicated
in the mind/ body split – sex (the body) is seemingly virtual, where
gender is seemingly real. Du Preez states that our concern should not
be with describing sex/gender performances as natural or normal, but
rather with the ‘materially situated and embodied performances of
sex and gender’. Transsexuality, instead of challenging the sex/
gender binary, reinforces it. Rory du Plessis in ‘Exhibiting the
expulsion of transgression’ echoes Du Preez’s concern with an
uncritical continuance of gender binaries. He discusses the
performance art of Steven Cohen as a successful example of a
transgression of gender binaries and challenge to traditional
performances of masculinity. Stella Viljoen in ‘The aspirational
aesthetics of “Gentlemen’s pornography” ’ convincingly argues that
the display of women in so-called gentlemen’s magazines replicates
the objectification of women found in pornographic magazines. She
introduces the connection between sex, money and capitalism taken
further by Jeanne van Eden in ‘Shopping for gender’. Van Eden
illustrates how early department stores and contemporary shopping
malls are attempts at re-creating feminine (private spaces) and how
the myth of gender identity is consequently continued. She also brings
the problematic relation between the feminine and the seeming
agency in the role of consumer and the continued objectification of