The ‘Ribbed Liver’ and Victorian Body Parts

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This post was contributed by Emma Curry, a PhD student in the Department of English and Humanities, working on Dickens’s representations of objects and body parts and Beatrice Bazell, a second year PhD student, working on representations of the female body in art and literature.

Credit: Barts Pathology Museum

Credit: Barts Pathology Museum

Barts Pathology Museum in West Smithfield is an absolute treasury of fascinating bodily bits. Of all the grisly bodily curiosities on display, however, one of the most compellingly Victorian has to be Specimen N.192: the ‘tight-lacer’s liver’ (right). Caused by the constant wearing of a corset, the liver on display in the museum collection has been deformed to the extent that it has a deep groove within it, caused by the impression of the owner’s ribs.  Further information (and some more rather grisly pictures!) can be found on the exhibit on the museum’s blog.

This liver is a fascinating indication of the extent to which body parts both impressed and were impressed upon in nineteenth-century culture, and provided part of the impetus for the Victorian Body Parts Conference, held on 14 September at Barts Pathology Museum. The conference was organised by Beatrice Bazell and Emma Curry, two PhD students in the English department at Birkbeck, who are both working on representations of the atomized body in Victorian culture. The event sought to uncover the significance of these meticulous approaches to bodily form in the nineteenth century, exploring them from a range of different perspectives, in everything from medical reports to art and film.

The day left no part unprobed: Katharina Boehm (Regensburg) discussed the body of the child as a tool within Victorian medico-psychical discourses; Kate Hill (Lincoln) reflected upon the skull’s potency in nineteenth-century museum culture; and Tiffany Watt-Smith (QMUL) considered the mutual fascination of the theatre and science in analysing Victorian ideas about imitation and mimicry. Ellery Foutch (Courtauld) discussed legendary Victorian bodybuilder Eugen Sandow’s famously muscular arm; Ryan Sweet (Exeter) uncovered the surprisingly frequent appearance of the wooden-leg-as-weapon in sensation fiction; and Ally Crockford (Exeter) discussed the portrayal of diphallicism in medical literature on congenital birth defects.

The event uncovered the burgeoning critical field of body-part-studies in this period, and fostered some fascinating conversations on the various ways in which the Victorians shaped their bodies from within and without. All the while, the tight-laced liver floated serenely on a shelf in the background, a timely reminder of the extent to which these debates remain arresting today. In an age of extreme cosmetic surgery and television programmes that fascinatedly document unusual parts for our entertainment, such as Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies, the parallels with the Victorian period are clear. Here’s hoping, however, that the ‘ribbed liver’ remains a historical curiosity!

What might feminist policy look like?

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This post was contributed by Mayur Suresh, an Intern at the Birkbeck Institute of Social Research

On 5 July 2013 the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research hosted the third meeting of the Feminist Policy, Politics and Practice Forum. Janet Newman, Professor of Social Policy and Criminology at the Open University, opened the meeting and tracked the linkage between feminist activism and policy change. Is there an alignment between feminist debates that occur in non-state spaces and policy changes that are introduced by governments? What do these alignments look like, and how do they happen?

She tracked four different moments in the linkage between activism around feminist issues and governmental policy. The first period she argued was from soon after the Second World War till the Thatcher years. This was a period of the early equality campaigns around causes that we would now describe as liberal feminist issues. The policy changes introduced by the governments at the time were a result of people in government who were sympathetic to feminist causes.

The second period was in the ’80s during the Thatcher years, when politics acquired a certain charge, and became more confrontational and aggressive. The feminist campaigns at the time, perhaps responding to governmental attacks on the welfare state, also acquired this confrontational edge. By and large, feminist policy came to a standstill during this period.

The third period, with the New Labour government, saw the expansion of some kinds of state practice. There was a focus on partnerships with non-governmental organisations, and other forms of public participation, and as a result policy formation became dispersed. But with New Labour, the assumption was that the problem of gender inequality had been solved – meaning that one could do feminist policy, but one couldn’t use the word ‘feminist’.

At the present moment, in which there are significant welfare cuts, there is significant feminist activism outside government, but very little of it gets translated into governmental policy, according to Prof. Newman.

Joining the discussion were Anna Coute, who worked on issues relating to child poverty, and Lisa Harker, who worked on healthcare policy. Both these speakers reflected on their work inside and outside government, and the challenges and pressures they both faced while framing policy.

The meeting was opened for discussions and questions. The comments ranged from concerns over everyday issues of working mothers, to bigger questions about how to ensure that feminist policy continues to happen even in times of government-imposed austerity. Several of the participants reflected on their own experience of working in between government and campaigns. Others spoke of their disappointments with certain feminist allies in the political parties, while some spoke about the need to build links with emerging feminist players within party structures.

While, this was the last official meeting of the forum, Prof. Newman hoped that more conversations and spaces to push for feminist policy would emerge from this meeting.

Voluntary Sector in Transition

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This post was contributed by Ceren Yalcin, an Intern at the Birkbeck Institute of Social Research.

As a Birkbeck student you sometimes end up going to events that are not related to your subject of study whatsoever (either because a friend has dragged you there or you are desperate for free wine after a hard day’s work at the library). But you always take away something that actually is relevant for your study. This was the case when I went to Linda Milbourne’s book launch last week. Two researchers and colleagues were invited to offer their thoughts on Linda’s book Voluntary Sector in Transition: Rob Macmillan, Research Fellow at the Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham and Mike Aiken, Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University and an associate at the Institute for Voluntary Action Research.

Rob Macmillan began his introductory talk by pointing out the major shifts that the voluntary sector has undergone in the last few years and thus the importance of Linda’s book. The speaker stressed that the financial situation post-2008 has massively altered the operating environment for the sector, not only economically but also ideologically. As Rob maintained, “there is an ideological project going on at the moment which involves massive changes in the role of the State, and in consequence, the role of civil society”. The third sector, he maintained, is going through a process of “unsettlement”: the understanding of what the State is, what its role entails, what it can do has been uprooted with the present coalition. This is a very unsettling experience and has knock-on effects on third sector organisations. However, he also stressed that these unsettling experiences are not entirely new: “Linda’s book alerts us to the need to look for continuities as well as for change. So the May 2010 election might not be the most important date in terms of the third sector’s position.” So, some of the processes and trends affecting the voluntary sector were established before then (e.g. outsourcing of welfare services), although some of these things were intensified at the moment. Rob praised Linda’s book as a piece of work that addresses highly important questions about organisations’ survival and resilience. One of the key questions the book discusses, he said, is how organisations negotiate a fraud line between the idea of being autonomous and independent and therefore being able to speak up and developing new services and ideas in response to social needs and problems. As he said repeatedly, autonomy and survival are really important features in the book.

Mike Aiken stressed the empirical value of Linda’s book. In nine chapters, he said, the book goes through the key issues every student, researcher, activist or practitioner is facing in the field: “It is a seriously grounded book, grounded in theory and empirical work alike”. Two theories that are being used by the author are Institutional Theory and Resource Dependency Theory with some other theoretical considerations in each chapter. The reader, he said, will highly benefit from the three case studies that are being introduced relatively at the beginning of the book and referred to in each chapter. He described Linda’s book as a political and a critical book: “Linda sets out some of the key debates in the field without pretending that there are easy solutions. She shows the complexity and gives some hints here and there about what she thinks without being polemical.”

The last speaker of the evening was Linda herself. She too emphasized the rapid change of the welfare state and its consequences for the voluntary sector. As she informed the audience, some of the recent changes are mapped in the later chapters of the book whilst earlier chapters look at the transformations in the third sector over the last thirty years. Quite a lot of the book deals with the relationship between the State and the voluntary sector, and consequently with autonomy and dependency. So, a recurring theme that runs through the chapters is independence. To what extent does the voluntary sector loose autonomy when it gets incorporated into the State’s purposes and goals? Are alternatives to the current forms of organization possible in the current political environment? Her first two chapters look backwards as well as forwards, discussing the changing history and the ways in which voluntary organisations have adapted over time. The author stressed that when she was writing her book, she was very much concerned with the micro as well as the macro level. Hence what one will find in Linda’s book are the ways in which change, resistance and adaptation take place in the everyday-life of organizations. Her book contains field studies of small voluntary organizations, providing services for children and young people, but also membership organisations, advocacy and campaign groups as well as some bigger national charities. In her book, Linda looks at how organisations are dealing with the dilemmas they are facing, how tensions between professional and organisational autonomy are played out, how the emphasis on measurable performance shapes and reshapes services and, ultimately, our understanding of what welfare means. Overall, her book shows that there is a pressure towards growth, capacity building, entrepreneurism and diversification. Failure to survive as an organisation is seen to be a failure to adapt so-called ‘resilient’ behaviours. What I personally found most intriguing in Linda’s talk was that the fact that resistance can actually mean resilience. Linda’s case studies, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, show that those organisations that show resistance are in a stronger position to survive.

I am sure that this book will not just be relevant to those interested in the voluntary sector. But it will attract a wider, critical readership interested in the current socio-political changes that redefine our understanding of democracy and the role of the State.

Exploring psychoanalysis with Dr David Bell

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This post was contributed by Ceren Yalcin, an intern at the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research.

Following his popular lecture series about psychoanalysis, Dr David Bell, Visiting Fellow in the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research (BISR) and the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities (BIH), answered questions at a special session for students and the wider public. The event was designed to address issues that might have remained unclear, and it generated a lively discussion with participants from various academic and professional backgrounds.

The following account does by no means provide an exhaustive summary of the event – it is rather a selection of questions and answers that I personally found most insightful.

Question 1: Did psychoanalysis retreat to the clinic?

Answer: It should be emphasised that psychoanalysis is a body of knowledge about the  mind and not “just” a form of treatment. Treatment is the application of psychoanalysis within a clinical context. The British Psychoanalytic Society, for example, has created an outreach committee in the last ten years. It is involved in the annual Psychoanalysis and Film programme. The Society also has an applied section with psychoanalysts, academics, and literary critics. Over the last ten years, the Society has put a lot of emphasis on showing that psychoanalytic thinking can be very relevant to understanding other spheres of social and cultural life.  (Those interested in this question, might find Stephen Frosh’s (2010) book “Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic” useful).

Question 2: How does psychoanalysis understand the ‘the normal’ as opposed to ‘the abnormal’?

Answer: Psychoanalysis finds the normal in the abnormal. It sees abnormality as a perversion of normality, as revealing what is immanent inherent (is this right?)  in all of us. As Freud beautifully puts it, a breakdown is like a crystal smashing. If you drop a crystal it fragments but it does not fragment along random lines. It sheers along the lines of force that are already within the crystallized structure. In other words, the shattering shows inherent(?) immanent forces within the crystal like the breakdown.

Question 3: What is transference and why is it important in psychoanalytic treatment?

Answer: The concept of transference is not just relevant for the psychoanalytic setting (i.e. the consulting room). As Freud states, it occurs in classrooms when students develop feelings about their teachers or their peers who become like their siblings. The original metaphor Freud used to describe transference was that of a template.

We carry around templates and mould the objects around us to fit into templates. All of us have our particular tendencies. Some of us tend to idealise people, some of us tend to denigrate people, some of us tend to see things in people that other people do not see. We all invest significant people around us with powerful feelings that have their origin in our past.

These templates, called internal objects, exist within us and we project them on to other people. In the clinical setting the patient projects onto the analyst. The analyst tries to maintain neutrality without asking ‘why are you treating me like this?’. On the contrary, the analyst lets transference develop in order to understand the patient’s internal objects. Those interested in transference might want to read Freud’s papers “On Transference Love” and “The Dynamics of Transference”.