Imogen Tyler
Current Research
My research lies in the interdisciplinary
fields of cultural theory, feminist theory as well as cultural and
media studies more generally. My work is concerned with disrupting
the reproduction of social and cultural norms. It is the aim to create
a critical dialogue between popular cultural forms, politics and cultural
theory that links my research interests. In my research, I am concerned
with tracking theoretical concepts across a range of different cultural
sites in order to put theory into dialogue with a diverse range of
material and textual forms of cultural practice and hence develop
new critical and theoretical vocabularies for the study of culture
and relationships of power.
I have written on a number of topics,
the maternal body, the cultural politics of asylum, body image, beauty
myths, US culture in the 1970s, masculinity and national identity.
Current research
I have recently completed an article
on The Cultural Politics of Asylum, a critique of the work
of Giorgio Agamben, a version of which I will be presenting at the
Centre for Mobilities at Lancaster University research day on the
2nd of March 2005:
Abstract:'Welcome to Britain': The Cultural Politics of Asylum
Questions of asylum, migration and immigration
have taken centre stage in national and international debate and figure
prominently in the domestic political agendas of wealthy states and
nations. In the US, Australia and Europe harsh and punitive asylum
and immigration laws are being incrementally enacted and asylum seekers
are increasingly subject to detention. Within political and cultural
theory, there has been `a turn` to the figure of the asylum seeker
(and the refugee) as a trope for theorising the political constitution
of the present. For instance,Giorgio Agamben has argued that we must
`build our political philosophy anew, starting from the one and only
figure of the refugee'. This paper argues that the desire for the
figure of the asylum seeker, a desire evident in current theoretical
fascination with this figure, is a desire for a figure that will represent
to `us` our own contemporary sense of displacement. As the figure
of the asylum seeker becomes increasingly theoretically legible, what
(and who) is foreclosed? Social exclusion is not, as Judith Butler
notes, a place 'where one can choose to hang out'. Seemingly political
acts (of solidarity), which pursue figures of exclusion and imagine
they are speaking from the site of, or for, the other, foreclose the
political possibilities of those precarious subjects. I will argue
that in order to contest the politics of asylum we need to understand
how the asylum seeker is made to figure across multiple cultural sites.
That is we need to understand how the asylum seeker has been produced
as a figure, who then comes to figure 'our' political desires, both
normative (from `the left` and `the right`) or counter-hegemonic.
Alongside theoretical accounts of asylum, I will draw on humanitarian
reports in order to open up a critical dialogue between humanitarian
and abstract(ed) theoretical accounts of immigration detention. In
attempting to make theory 'speak with' rather `than for` asylum seekers,
I aim to produce a critique of the ways in which theory appropriates
the potentiality of the abject figure of the asylum seeker. For if
analogy and abstraction take the place of listening and translation
in theoretical accounts of the politics of asylum then what is forgotten
are the bodies from whose suffering such accounts take their cue.
I have recently completed an article
entitled Being Abject: Mothers as Objects of Theory, which
offers a critique of the use of Julia Kristeva's in theoretical work
on motherhood.
Abstract: Being
Abject: Maternal Bodies as Objects of Theory.
This article is about the politics of
being abject. Focusing on Kristeva's theoretical concept of
the maternal abject and the theoretical and public life of this concept,
I will ask what it means to be the subject designated as maternal
and abject. This article rereads the abject(ed) maternal as thoroughly
cultural, both in terms of how it is produced within theory and in
terms of the social effects of being interpellated as abject. New
empirical research has made visible for the first time the scale of
the violence enacted against pregnant women by their male partners.
Drawing on this research, alongside testimonies of violence from an
Internet discussion site, this article argues that feminist theory
needs to question the material effects of theory, resist the compulsion
to abject and rethink the maternal subject in ways that vigorously
contest the dehumanising effects of the social abjection. Abjection,
I will argue has effects on actual bodies; abjection hurts.
I am in the final stages of an article
entitled 'The Me Decade': masculinity, narcissism and social criticism
1970-1980 which forms part of my book project Global Narcissism
:The Cultural Politics of Self-Love.
I am currently finishing a new article
on `Pregnant Beauty' which returns to an on-going research interest
in the maternla body and visual culture, and work I have previously
published on the philosophical, theoretical and cultural representation
of the maternal body.
Published work
My research lies in the interdisciplinary fields of cultural theory, feminist theory as well as cultural and media studies more generally. My work is concerned with disrupting the reproduction of social and cultural norms. It is the aim to create a critical dialogue between popular cultural forms, politics and cultural theory that links my research interests. In my research, I am concerned with tracking theoretical concepts across a range of different cultural sites in order to put theory into dialogue with a diverse range of material and textual forms of cultural practice and hence develop new critical and theoretical vocabularies for the study of culture and relationships of power.
I have written on a number of topics, the maternal body, the cultural politics of asylum, body image, beauty myths, US culture in the 1970s, masculinity and national identity.
Current research
I have recently completed an article on The Cultural Politics of Asylum, a critique of the work of Giorgio Agamben, a version of which I will be presenting at the Centre for Mobilities at Lancaster University research day on the 2nd of March 2005:
Abstract:'Welcome to Britain': The Cultural Politics of Asylum
Questions of asylum, migration and immigration
have taken centre stage in national and international debate and figure
prominently in the domestic political agendas of wealthy states and
nations. In the US, Australia and Europe harsh and punitive asylum
and immigration laws are being incrementally enacted and asylum seekers
are increasingly subject to detention. Within political and cultural
theory, there has been `a turn` to the figure of the asylum seeker
(and the refugee) as a trope for theorising the political constitution
of the present. For instance,Giorgio Agamben has argued that we must
`build our political philosophy anew, starting from the one and only
figure of the refugee'. This paper argues that the desire for the
figure of the asylum seeker, a desire evident in current theoretical
fascination with this figure, is a desire for a figure that will represent
to `us` our own contemporary sense of displacement. As the figure
of the asylum seeker becomes increasingly theoretically legible, what
(and who) is foreclosed? Social exclusion is not, as Judith Butler
notes, a place 'where one can choose to hang out'. Seemingly political
acts (of solidarity), which pursue figures of exclusion and imagine
they are speaking from the site of, or for, the other, foreclose the
political possibilities of those precarious subjects. I will argue
that in order to contest the politics of asylum we need to understand
how the asylum seeker is made to figure across multiple cultural sites.
That is we need to understand how the asylum seeker has been produced
as a figure, who then comes to figure 'our' political desires, both
normative (from `the left` and `the right`) or counter-hegemonic.
Alongside theoretical accounts of asylum, I will draw on humanitarian
reports in order to open up a critical dialogue between humanitarian
and abstract(ed) theoretical accounts of immigration detention. In
attempting to make theory 'speak with' rather `than for` asylum seekers,
I aim to produce a critique of the ways in which theory appropriates
the potentiality of the abject figure of the asylum seeker. For if
analogy and abstraction take the place of listening and translation
in theoretical accounts of the politics of asylum then what is forgotten
are the bodies from whose suffering such accounts take their cue.
I have recently completed an article entitled Being Abject: Mothers as Objects of Theory, which offers a critique of the use of Julia Kristeva's in theoretical work on motherhood.
Abstract: Being Abject: Maternal Bodies as Objects of Theory.
This article is about the politics of being abject. Focusing on Kristeva's theoretical concept of the maternal abject and the theoretical and public life of this concept, I will ask what it means to be the subject designated as maternal and abject. This article rereads the abject(ed) maternal as thoroughly cultural, both in terms of how it is produced within theory and in terms of the social effects of being interpellated as abject. New empirical research has made visible for the first time the scale of the violence enacted against pregnant women by their male partners. Drawing on this research, alongside testimonies of violence from an Internet discussion site, this article argues that feminist theory needs to question the material effects of theory, resist the compulsion to abject and rethink the maternal subject in ways that vigorously contest the dehumanising effects of the social abjection. Abjection, I will argue has effects on actual bodies; abjection hurts.
I am in the final stages of an article entitled 'The Me Decade': masculinity, narcissism and social criticism 1970-1980 which forms part of my book project Global Narcissism :The Cultural Politics of Self-Love.
I am currently finishing a new article on `Pregnant Beauty' which returns to an on-going research interest in the maternla body and visual culture, and work I have previously published on the philosophical, theoretical and cultural representation of the maternal body.
Published work
Tyler I., "'Who put the 'Me' in feminism?' : the sexual politics of narcissism'". Feminist Theory forthcoming, 2005.
Tyler I, 'Reframing Pregnant Embodiment' in Ahmed, S., Kilby, J., Lury, C., McNeil, M., and Skeggs, B., (eds). Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism (Routledge: London and New York, 2000) pp. 288-301
Imogen Tyler
Lecturer in the Institute for Cultural Research
UG Admissions, (American Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Film Studies).
B34 County South
County College
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YD
i.tyler@lancs.ac.uk
01524 594186
