I feel pretty

Beauty as an Affective-Material Process

Bibliographic Data

ID4367265
AuthorsToni Ingram (0000-0002-0013-0185, Auckland University of Technology)
Year2022
Volume23
Issue2
Pages285-300
Publication date2022-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/14647001211000015
OpenAlexW3137036007
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited40

This article explores the potential of feminist new materialisms and theories of affect for reframing how we might think about beauty and the body. Through an exploration of girls, beauty and the school ball (prom), the article engages with Karen Barad's concept of intra-action to conceptualise beauty as an affective-material process. This perspective involves an ontological shift in how girls, bodies and beauty are understood; from thinking about beauty and the human as discursively produced, towards a relational approach that conceptualises materiality and affect as co-constitutive forces. The article is interested in how such a framing might invite ways of understanding beauty that avoid binary frameworks, such as good/bad, subject/object and discourse/matter. I consider the potential this might offer feminist analyses of beauty, where the focus is less on what beauty is or what it means, and more on how it comes to be

Aesthetics · Affect (linguistics · Art · Beauty · Cognitive reframing · Epistemology · Framing (construction · Materiality (auditing · Sociology · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Communication · History · Philosophy · Social Psychology

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