Historically, women have been associated with the flexible body, with softness, impressionability, permeable surfaces, with an enclosed secrecy that perversely becomes an ability to be opened up to the male medical gaze. Several speakers traced the archeology of the flexible feminine body or antibody through Early Modern texts. Full size 73K presented us with the artist's multiple selves drawn individually and unsmilingly in pencil in pointed contrast to one of the most famous icons of postmodernism, Andy Warhol's mass-produced and highly colored images of Marilyn Monroe. It's not that I'm trying to figure out everything in advance. Sometimes I just don't listen to myself.
Antibodies accept the body's infection and then turn the virus's own weapons back on itself.
The first wave of feminists desired legal and political equality but did not question the institutions they sought to join. Antibodies also leave behind traces of the virus for which they function as antidote. We test for the presence, not of a virus, but of its antibody. Readers may use portions of this work in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. In addition, subscribers and members of subscribed institutions may use the entire work for any internal noncommercial purpose but, other than one copy sent by email, print, or fax to one person at another location for that individual's personal use, distribution of this article outside of a subscribed institution without express written permission from either the author or the Johns Hopkins University Press is expressly forbidden.