Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)As the manager of several websites dealing with the fascination that many people -- both men and women -- have with gynecology, I was very much looking forward to reading this book, and I was not disappointed. The insight that Ms. Kapsalis brings to the subject, using both her scholarly studies and her actual experience in the field, gives her a very informed perspective on the unique dynamics inherent in this medical speciality. Her committment to women's health and the free flow of information from doctor to patient is commendable and really comes through.
From the traditional world of gynecology to taboo-bending performance art, Ms. Kapsalis explores the attitudes and advances being made in the way we think about this intimate invasion of the female body. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to explore the psychological, sociological, psychosexual, and historical underpinnings of gynecology. Don't come here looking for stimulating pictures or cheap thrills -- this is a text-heavy serious book, but rewarding reading for those motivated and interested.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum
In Public Privates, a book about looking and being looked at, about speculums, spectacles, and spectators, about display, illumination, and reflection, Terri Kapsalis makes visible the practices and representations of gynecology. The quintessential examination of women, gynecology is not simply the study of women's bodies, but also serves to define and constitute them. Any critical analysis of gynecology is therefore, as Kapsalis affirms, an investigation of what it means to be female. In this respect she considers the public exposure of female "privates" in the performance of the pelvic exam.From J. Marion Sims's surgical experiments on unanesthetized slave women in the mid-nineteenth century, to the use of cadavers and prostitutes to teach medical students gynecological techniques, Kapsalis focuses on the ways in which women and their bodies have been treated by the medical establishment. Removing gynecology from its private cover withinclinic walls and medical textbook pages, she decodes the gynecological exam, seizing on its performative dimension. She considers traditional medical practices and the dynamics of "proper" patient performance; non-traditional practices such as cervical self-exam; and incarnations of the pelvic examination outside the bounds of medicine, including its appearance in David Cronenberg's film Dead Ringers and Annie Sprinkle's performance piece "Public Cervix Announcement."Confounding the boundaries that separate medicine, art, and pornography, revealing the potent cultural attitudes and anxieties about women, female bodies, and female sexuality that permeate the practice of gynecology, Public Privates concludes by locating a venue from which challenging, alternative performances may be staged.
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