This essay examines an aesthetics of disgust through an analysis of the work of Scottish painter Jenny Saville. Saville's paintings suggest that there is something valuable in retaining and interrogating our immediate and seemingly unambivalent reactions of disgust. 1 contrast Saville's representations of disgust to the repudiation of disgust that characterizes contemporary corporeal politics. Drawing on the theoretical work of Elspeth Probyn andJulia Kristeva, I suggest that an aesthetics of disgust reveals the fundamental ambiguity of embodiment, allowing us to critically attend to the aesthetic and cultural objectification of the female body. The contemplation of beauty and pleasure are deeply embedded in the Western tradition of aesthetics. Despite their marginal position within this tradition, many women artists have continued with the practice of contemplating beauty and pleasure and their multiple and contested meanings. Scottish painter Jenny Saville (b. 1970) falls squarely within this tradition. Her work interrogates assumptions about beauty by depicting bodies that are not at all beautiful in any conventional sense. The bodies she depicts are not the refined and evenly proportioned nudes of classical art. Saville's enormous canvases, Plan and Hybrid, included in the 1997 show of young British artists, Sensation, depict distorted, fleshy, and disquieting naked female bodies. As with most of the work displayed in Sensation, Saville's paintings are sensational in both senses of the word: not only do they provoke the excitement and interest of the artworld, they also elicit sensual-even visceral-reactions. These bodies are rendered by way of surprising combinations of color. A mottled arrangement of mauves, yellows, browns, and blues seem to seep out from underneath the surface of the flesh. The unexpected use of color and fine brushstrokes compel Hypatia vol. 18, no. 4 (Fall/Winter 2003) 0 by Michelle Meagher

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This article explores post-cesarean shame to understand how normative birthing ideals are tied to neoliberal and popular feminist expectations of what it means to be a “good” mother. Drawing on narratives shared on motherhood blogs, we note that feelings of shame associated with cesareans are tied to social pressures for unmedicated, vaginal birth. Rather than critique nonmedical or “natural” birth, this article explores the affective implications of approaching birth as a curated and controllable process. We conclude with suggestions for practitioners, moms, and their supporters on how to make room for births that are not good.

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Responding to a recent surge of interest in feminist art, its futures, and its history, this article considers the nature and function of the dominant narratives that circulate and structure the field. Specifically, I explore the persistent story of inter-generational strife in which a first generation of artists and historians is understood to have been naïvely mired in an essentialism of which a second, more theoretically savvy generation has been subsequently cleansed. Although one would be hard pressed to identify contemporary scholars who promote this sort of generationally bound progress narrative, the story persists. Its persistence, I argue, has less to do with its truth telling ability and more to do with its ability to perform the function of disidentification.