The Armpit--"a hugely undertheorized zone"--and Armpit Studies
In "Reading Like an Alien," Kelly Hurley notes that the armpit is "a hugely undertheorized zone," a throw-away comment that surely raises the question: what would an adequate theorization of the armpit look like?
To that effect, some notes on what Armpit Studies might look like:
It's easiest to imagine Armpit Studies following a cultural studies model, meaning that it would concern itself primarily with the cultural articulations surrounding the armpit, from the history of deodorant to the representations of armpits in literature.1 It is, however, possible to imagine a biological component to the field; so, in addition to studying the historical shift in deodorant, one could study the evolutionary shift in the armpit itself, or the shift in the armpit-ecology as different microorganisms colonize or die off. (The biological underpinnings of the armpit would be interesting from a medical-historical standpoint as well, since the glands under the arm have had a number of diagnostic roles to play, as in the buboes of the Black Death.)
As Armpit Studies centers a number of disciplines on a particular area, it offers a new avenue into the discussion over the construction (both cultural and biological) of the human body and the subject by an exhaustive study of that area.
Why the armpit, when more work has already been done on other parts of the body (cf. Freud on oral/anal stages)? In part, armpit studies is needed because it has been an often ignored area and because of its formative role in the construction of the subject. (Instead of saying "The boy is father to the man," we could say that "The armpit is father to the body." Or, to put it another way, who doesn't remember the first time someone said "you smell"?)
Given its wide approach and the prospect of synthesizing a number of disparate disciplines, it would be impossible to say beforehand what the methods or objects of study would be for Armpit Studies; that is, close-reading of texts as well as close-reading of DNA sequences would be useful, as would cultural anthropology's seriation charts and historical econometric's statistics (to figure out when different deodorant technologies came into use and how fast they spread).
Now: am I joking?
1 For instance, one could study the armpit-injector/mouth of David Cronenberg's Rabid (1977); though I'm more drawn to comedic references, like Nathanael West's joke in The Dream Life of Balso Snell about Saint Puce, a flea that lived in the armpit of Jesus Christ and who was the first to drink of His blood.
Works Cited
Kelly Hurley, "Reading Like an Alien" in Posthuman Bodies, Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston, eds. Indiana University Press, 1995.
To that effect, some notes on what Armpit Studies might look like:
It's easiest to imagine Armpit Studies following a cultural studies model, meaning that it would concern itself primarily with the cultural articulations surrounding the armpit, from the history of deodorant to the representations of armpits in literature.1 It is, however, possible to imagine a biological component to the field; so, in addition to studying the historical shift in deodorant, one could study the evolutionary shift in the armpit itself, or the shift in the armpit-ecology as different microorganisms colonize or die off. (The biological underpinnings of the armpit would be interesting from a medical-historical standpoint as well, since the glands under the arm have had a number of diagnostic roles to play, as in the buboes of the Black Death.)
As Armpit Studies centers a number of disciplines on a particular area, it offers a new avenue into the discussion over the construction (both cultural and biological) of the human body and the subject by an exhaustive study of that area.
Why the armpit, when more work has already been done on other parts of the body (cf. Freud on oral/anal stages)? In part, armpit studies is needed because it has been an often ignored area and because of its formative role in the construction of the subject. (Instead of saying "The boy is father to the man," we could say that "The armpit is father to the body." Or, to put it another way, who doesn't remember the first time someone said "you smell"?)
Given its wide approach and the prospect of synthesizing a number of disparate disciplines, it would be impossible to say beforehand what the methods or objects of study would be for Armpit Studies; that is, close-reading of texts as well as close-reading of DNA sequences would be useful, as would cultural anthropology's seriation charts and historical econometric's statistics (to figure out when different deodorant technologies came into use and how fast they spread).
Now: am I joking?
1 For instance, one could study the armpit-injector/mouth of David Cronenberg's Rabid (1977); though I'm more drawn to comedic references, like Nathanael West's joke in The Dream Life of Balso Snell about Saint Puce, a flea that lived in the armpit of Jesus Christ and who was the first to drink of His blood.
Works Cited
Kelly Hurley, "Reading Like an Alien" in Posthuman Bodies, Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston, eds. Indiana University Press, 1995.