the Female Body GOVERNING

“It’s Down To You” 31
particular practices of self-decipherment (you have the power within),
self-reliance, self-management, and self-discipline that they argue
produce particular kinds of “biographical biologies” (p. 126) and
fantasies of a “pan-humanity” (p. 125).
Self-health narratives and practices are therefore linked to the kinds
of narratives of progress and redemption authorized within scientifi c
discourse. Rather than the schizophrenic-overload Fredric Jameson
viewed as salient to postmodern subjectivities, Franklin et al. (2000)
explore how those metaphors and narratives that structure science as the
liberator of humanity have increasingly become individualized and lived
as part of individual’s own practices of the self. 4 Their focus on “modes of
subjective commitment” (p. 97) and the forms of embodied subjectivity,
fantasy, and desire created through the cultural discourses and narratives
that tend to characterize global cultures intersects with the concerns of
critical psychology. As a discipline, critical psychology focuses on the
cultural and scientifi c production of subjectivity and identity, and pays
particular attention to how cultural narratives and practices shape and
construct embodied experiences (Blackman, 2001). As we have seen in
my discussion of magazine culture, there is a particular concern with
how individuals live and embody the contradictory ways in which they
are positioned as individuals (cf. Walkerdine et al., 2001). However,
although there is a concern with embodiment and modes of subjective
commitment within Franklin et al.’s thesis on global cultures, there is
much less attention in this work to the translation of these injunctions
across race, class, sexuality, and gender. The analytic attention is mainly
focused on consumer markets and the kinds of systematization and
signifi cations, which underpin the strategies of global brands such as
Benetton and The Body Shop.
Taking Care of Yourself
Franklin et al. (2000) suggest that these kinds of fantasies of self-control
and practices of body management enable individuals to manage the
increasing global risks that science can no longer guarantee safety and
salvation from. The fantasy of science as protector and guardian has
mutated and converged with a proliferation of narratives and practices
of self-management that construct individuals as the agents of their own
change, transformation, and redemption. Stacey (1997) argues that these
kinds of narratives have a potency and cultural purchase because of
our familiarity with their structures through fi lmic and cultural narratives.
Narratives such as the action movie or melodrama genre are
organized through codes and devices, which fi ctionalize the storytelling