- Title
- Gender studies and gendered mortality: an exploration of human finitude
- Creator
- Hart, Bethne
- Relation
- Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Vol. 9, Issue 1, p. 41-61
- Relation
- http://www.newcastle.edu.au/centre/jigs/issues/volume9number1.html#hart
- Publisher
- University of Newcastle, Faculty of Education and Arts
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2004
- Description
- As social theory recognises that social life is gendered, so too gender studies should recognise that social life is mortal. However, key social theorists have noted the absence of feminist contributions to understandings of human mortality. Others have noted the presence of gendered scholarship surrounding women and human mortality. Both of these positions seek further theoretical and research explorations of the finiteness of human life. This paper arises from a study of the social management of human finitude, through explorations of breast cancer as a life-threatening illness. In this study, women's experiences of life-threatening illness brought to consciousness the finiteness of human life: an awareness in finitude. However, these experiences of human finitude were powerfully shaped and disrupted through the social management of human mortality. Yet there were also patterns of living and healing that resisted these prevailing social processes, and acknowledged the limitations of lifetime. This paper concludes with reflections upon the significance of gender to human finitude, and of gender studies to understandings of life and mortalitys.
- Subject
- social theory; social life; mortality; feminist
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/34768
- Identifier
- uon:3693
- Identifier
- ISSN:1325-1848
- Language
- eng
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