Judith Butler’s idea of gender as performative (introduced in Gender Trouble and now a commonplace in feminist theory) is brought into dialogue with feminist performance art (exemplified by Valie Export, the Austrian media- and performance-artist). Butler’s claim that gender is performative and that it can be changed only through a parodic repetition of performative acts is revisited through the lens of Export’s subversive performance pieces. This “interaction” between theory and art practice shall highlight the political (...) potential of Butler’s work and serve to expand her notion of parody as it pertains more directly to women and the female body. (shrink)

This paper shows how the early feminist pedagogical performance artworks of the Mexican artist Mónica Mayer are example of Connective Aesthetics and Conversational Art.

This interdisciplinary book examines the work of several female artists since 1960 in the areas of dance, music, installation, photography, architecture, poetry, literature, theater, film, and performance art. Each chapter is primarily devoted to an important work by a single artist, seen within its historical context, and with particular attention to how each artist incorporated gender issues or feminist thought into her respective art form. Laurie Anderson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jane Campion, Judy Chicago, Zaha Hadid, Pauline Oliveros, Yvonne Rainer, (...) Cindy Sherman, Amy Tan, and Paula Vogel have each made groundbreaking contributions to their fields. As a group, they represent a tremendous diversity of approaches to art making: from accessible to opaque, from overtly feminist to apolitical, from emotive to cool, from controversial to mainstream. (shrink)

This article describes the short but remarkable sociopolitical life of the Russian rock group Pussy Riot. The group became famous in 2012 not only for the political content of its performances but for its transgressive performativity: its violation of established public settings and its creation of disturbing anti-authoritarianism images of today’s official Russia. The analysis aims to establish Pussy Riot as part of an avant-garde movement and as a radicalization of the very idea of the avant-garde against the familiarity of (...) the public aspect of everyday life. Public ‘normalcy’ reveals itself to be complicit in that what should be criticized is instead taken for granted, and legitimized. Pussy Riot is a new art avant-garde in terms of both how it relates to activism, social justice, feminism, and art, and to the general public, not only to the art world. (shrink)

Connecting identity, broadly defined to recent ‘advances’ in educational research, this paper takes up two different feminist treatments based in pragmatism and poststructuralism. The first is from Charlene Haddock Seigfried on ‘experience,’ and the second is from Peggy Phelan on ‘performance.’ The first is in keeping with a dominant tradition to secure identity through visibility and the second suggests critique through a turn to invisibility. The first arises out of Dewey's naturalism and the second through Lacan, performance (...) art, and anti-representation. At bottom is suggestion that an entire narrative tradition in educational research is potentially self-defeating. (shrink)

What role does race play in the moral judgment of character? None, ideally, philosophers insist, contending that the proper assessment of an action requires that we disregard any social values associated with the body performing it. What rightly comes under evaluation, they assert, is the neutral, abstract deed irrespective of the race of the agent. Only under these conditions, presumably, can we gauge true moral worth. Reading together Immanuel Kant and Frantz Fanon on ethics and race, I propose instead that (...) embodied values such as those accorded by race do not distort the portrait of the ethical subject but rather bring that subjectivity into being. Key Words: blackness • embodiment • ethics • Frantz Fanon • Immanuel • Kant • morality • race • value. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1973) and Elizabeth Manchester’s All My Dresses With All My Shoes (2002) in terms of the differently structured temporalities of making and viewing through which the concept of femininity materializes in each work. Diachronic understandings of post-feminism, as a concept emptied of a former moment of political consciousness, are contested through my readings of artworks that call forth a complexity of tenses. The article argues that the connections and (...) tensions between the two works, which are generationally distinct in terms of the political and cultural climate of their production, require a critical apparatus that suggests the simultaneity of differently valued temporal experiences. The notion of temporal play is further explored in relation to Vanessa Beecroft’s performance and film works VB29 (1997) and VB35 (1998). Here the traces of earlier feminist strategy, in which femininity is cast in relation to loss, are reconfigured in the failure to achieve the stasis of the photographic moment. (shrink)

The paper addresses the work of Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska, who resorts to military equipment as artistic materials and to destruction as an artistic method. In the first section, I contextualize Kulikovska’s performative sculpture within art history, claiming that it can be regarded as Destruction Art. In the second section, I turn to Catherine Malabou’s concept of “destructive plasticity” as a philosophical tool of an aesthetics of war, which offers a sound theoretical framework to further understand the implications of Kulikovska’s (...) artistic activity. In the third section, I focus on the main material adopted by Kulikovska, ballistic soap, showing how the artist materially deconstructs inherited dichotomies that keep informing our understanding of wars. By considering the artistic practice of a feminist artist (M. Kulikovska) through the lens of feminist scholarship (K. Stiles, C. Malabou, J. Butler), the paper investigates the relations between war and the arts from a situated perspective. (shrink)

"This book explores the relationship between performance and activism in Chile as a form of political expression and citizen participation during the period 2010-2020. Since the student mobilizations of 2006, the social movements that have taken place in Chile are characterized, in many cases, by the appropriation of public space and the political use of the body. This became particularly evident during the social outbreak of October 2019. The social upheaval was accompanied by a cultural explosion, where the arts (...) in all their dimensions played a crucial role as new strategies of collective action. The research proposes two hypotheses about this cultural revolution. Firstly, that this explosion of artistic activism had been fermenting for at least a decade (2010-2020) within the social movements, using performance and art as expressions of collective action. These artistic drivers, catalysts of this cultural revolution, have been mobilized around three fundamental axes of social demands: human rights, education, and feminism. The second hypothesis is that artistic activism in Chile between 2010-2020 emerged to exercise citizenship and strengthen the diversity of cultural identities. Chilean artistic activism today, unlike other historical moments, is a direct expression of citizen participation. It is no longer just artists who contribute to social and protest movements with their work: now, it is the citizens who use artistic expression as a practice of political participation. From an intersectional and feminist perspective, this book is an invitation to study and reflect on the aesthetic and political dimension of performance and its potential to establish justice and symbolic reparation when the State is absent. Furthermore, it incentivises a conversation about the ritual, pedagogical, and visionary dimension of art and its infinite possibilities of expressive and discursive resources. Performance art reimagines possible futures embodying the political demand, always loaded with memory, reclaiming the public space. Performance as the 'art of action' conquers the realm of non-formal education, permeating public space and shaping a Pedagogy of memory and hope." -/- . (shrink)

Can an ordinary viewer ever experience art---particularly politically charged, socially relevant art--in a neutral, detached, and objective way? The familiar philosophical notion of disinterestedness has its roots in eighteenth-century theories of taste and was refined throughout the twentieth century. In contrast, many contemporary theorists have argued for what I call an "interested approach" in order to expand beyond the traditional emphasis on neutrality and universality. Each group, in effect, has argued for the value of a work of art by excluding (...) the other's approach. This essay will consider the legacy of the concept of disinterestedness for contemporary aesthetic theory in light of challenges posed by postmodern skepticism regarding the possibility of disinterestedness, and by the difficulties involved in appreciating political art with a disinterested attitude. My principle example of political art will be drawn from feminist art--the extraordinary and controversial performance art of the French artist, ORLAN. Unlike traditional philosophers, I will advocate that an interested stance toward art is, at times, inevitable and appropriate. I will also argue not only that feminist art--and by extension political art of all kinds--can be experienced disinterestedly, but that it should be. As a position inconsistent with both traditionalists and feminist critics of tradition, my recommendation of both disinterestedness and interestedness affords what I take to be the fullest and fairest experience of a work of art. (shrink)

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted fantasy, (...) and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This article analyses the representational stakes of queer of colour performance, by taking the case study of the Cocoa Butter Club: queer of colour cabaret night in London. Within a British landscape that has silenced queer subjectivities of colour at the intersection of race, gender and sexuality, I explore the potential of QPOC performance to redress historical erasure. To enact their presence, I argue that the Cocoa Butter Club’s performers showcase their collective disidentification from the scripts pre-assigned to (...) their bodies within the European imagination. By doing so, they disrupt hegemonic representations of queerness and racialised otherness, making room for a multitude of queer of colour becomings kept otherwise invisible from public view. Such disidentifications unleash ‘ghosts’ into the public space, spectres of elided subjectivities and unresolved coloniality within a city that likes to think of itself as a post-racial LGBT haven. Drawing on ethnographic material and interviews with performers, I analyse what happens when such queer of colour hauntings reach the audience’s gaze. I consider their unsettling effects in relation to the white gaze, as well as their empowering function in relation to desiring QPOC subjects, seeking reflections of themselves in spectatorship. (shrink)

PurposeTo explore the mindfulness practice, its long-term effects, facilitators and barriers, in clinical clerkship students 2 years after participation in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction training.MethodA qualitative study was performed by semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 clinical clerkship students selected by purposive sampling. Students had participated in a MBSR training 2 years before and were asked about their current mindfulness practice, and the long-term effects of the MBSR training. Thematic analysis was conducted using the constant comparison method. Data saturation was (...) reached after 16 interviews.ResultsMost interviewees were still engaged in regular, predominantly informal, mindfulness practice, although some discontinued mindfulness practice and reported an “unchanged lifestyle.” Three main themes came forward; “focused attention and open awareness” during daily activities as core elements of long-term mindfulness practice; “changes in behavior and coping” that resulted from taking a pause, reflecting, recognizing automatic behavioral patterns and making space for a conscious response; “integration in personal and professional life” by enhanced enjoyment of daily activities, improved work-life-balance and making different career choices. Barriers and facilitators in starting and maintaining mindfulness practice were understanding and intention as “pre-conditions”; practical, personal, and professional factors of students in maintaining practice.ConclusionTwo years after participation in a MBSR training, many interviewees were still engaged in mindfulness practice contributing to both personal and professional changes. In light of the high clerkship demands, MBSR training could be a valuable addition to medical curricula, supporting medical students in developing necessary competencies to become well-balanced professionals. (shrink)

Women, Modernism, and Performance is an interdisciplinary 2004 study that looks at a variety of texts and modes of performance in order to clarify the position of women within - and in relation to - modern theatre history. Considering drama, fiction and dance, as well as a range of performance events such as suffrage demonstrations, lectures, and legal trials, Penny Farfan expands on theatre historical narratives that note the centrality of female characters in male-authored modern plays but (...) that do not address the efforts of women artists to develop alternatives both to mainstream theatre practice and to the patriarchal avant garde. Focusing on Henrik Ibsen, Elizabeth Robins, Ellen Terry, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Edith Craig, Radclyffe Hall and Isadora Duncan, Farfan identifies different objectives, strategies, possibilities and limitations of feminist-modernist performance practice and suggests how the artists in question transformed the representation of gender in art and life. (shrink)

This collection of original essays examines innovations in both the theory and practice of classical philology. The chapters address interdisciplinary methods in a variety of ways. Some apply theoretical insights derived from other disciplines, such as folklore studies, performance theory, feminist criticism, and the like, to classical texts. Others examine the relationships between classics and cultural studies, popular literature, film, art history, and other related disciplines. Others, again, look to the evolution of theoretical methods within the discipline of (...) classics. Taken together, the essays offer a spectrum of new approaches in the classics and their place within the profession. (shrink)

The verb “to conjure” is a complex one, for it includes in its standard definition a great range of possible actions or operations, not all of them equivalent, or even compatible. In its most common usage, “to conjure” means to perform an act of magic or to invoke a supernatural force, by casting a spell, say, or performing a particular ritual or rite. But “to conjure” is also to influence, to beg, to command or constrain, to charm, to bewitch, to (...) move or convey, to imagine, to visualize, to call to mind, or to remember. —Rachael DeLue 2012, para 1. When we create with our Brown hands, feminine energy, and full spirits, we conjure. To exist, survive, and thrive in these bodies is a continuous act of conjuring. Our walks conjure. Our smiles conjure. Our tears conjure. Our laughs conjure. Our words conjure. Our artworks are conjurings. We, a Black/Filipina-American woman, a Dominican-American, and a Black-American woman, are guided by our solidarity with one another and all other Black and Brown female identifying persons whose raced and gendered subjectivities exist both inside and outside of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We bring to life our colored imaginations and curiosities, and share them with the world. We are united by our need for safety, autonomy as beings, dissolution of trauma, and desire to ask, “What would happen if I…?” Imaginative, curious Women of Color (WoC) founded the underground railroad, guided captured Africans and Tainos to the mountains, ignited the Civil Rights Movement, organized laborers and immigrants, birthed the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, conceived the #MeToo Movement, and so much more. Like our kindred counterparts, we have an unrelenting urge to examine, question, wonder, desire, speak to, lead, be curious, and “conjure.” As practicing artists and art educators, our critical arts-based practices are grounded in intersectional feminisms like Womanism, Black Feminist Theory, and Chicana Feminist Theory, which allow us to do these very things. (shrink)

The original extended mind theory propagated by Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998) refers to the idea that our minds do not simply live within our brains or bodies but extend into the material world. In other words, the extended mind refers to the externalization of cognitive processes into technology. Through the case study of the artistic performance of the android Alter inspired by the Japanese Shintoist ritual of Kagura this paper reconceptualizes the extended mind from a technological act (...) of transfer towards the relational, spatial, and performative ontologies of the intersubjective encounters between humans and non-humans. In an effort to decolonize performance and curatorial practice the paper draws upon indigenous scholarship, feminist STS, and performance studies to overcome preconceived conceptualizations of affect, perception, and relationality. The fundamental question the paper explores is how does intersubjective relationality unfold through performance in space? Based upon a critique of the android Alter’s past performance the paper concludes with a re-envisioned event score that employs a reconceptualized theory of the extended mind and aimed at a different kind of intersubjective relationality to emerge. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine alternative feminist activism and social movements in Egypt by analyzing BuSSy. BuSSy is a performance art group that hosts storytelling workshops and monologues of taboo and “shameful” personal stories that challenge societal and state-sanctioned normative discourses on femininity/womanhood and masculinity/manhood. Drawing on transnational feminist scholarship and queer theory and using collective memory as a lens, I argue that BuSSy’s storytelling is an act of airing Egypt’s dirty laundry, queering normative discourses to enable (...) feminist counter-memorializing. Based on content analysis of secondary data including BuSSy’s published interviews, YouTube videos, website and Facebook images, and testimonies from 2006 to 2020, my analysis reveals BuSSy as curating an “archive of feelings” centralizing gendered narratives of shame. I examine how BuSSy’s affectively contagious storytelling leads to feminist social change by empowering storytellers and listeners. BuSSy’s works create cathartic experiences to shed stigma and shame. Finally, I reconceptualize feminist activism and collective memories outside of the 2011 Egyptian revolution and contribute to the literature on shame by analyzing how BuSSy identifies and counters shame’s silencing power. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thou Art Translated! The Pull of Flesh and MeaningKarmen MacKendrickIn A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare offers us a particularly comic instance of translation. In the first scene of the third act, the mischievous fairy Puck has set into motion all manner of havoc, including the substitution of a donkey’s head for the ordinary head of poor Nick Bottom, a weaver who had been innocently engaged in rehearsing a (...) play that he and other “rustics” intended to perform for visiting royalty. Bottom is, understandably, a little cranky and confused about this buffoonish substitution—he had offered to play the far nobler part of a lion (Shakespeare 2004, Act 1, scene 2, 68–70)—and he does not react happily to the responses that it generates among other members of his company. The first to see him is the tinker Tom Snout, who declares, “O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?” (Act 3, scene 1, 114). And Snout is followed by Peter Quince, a carpenter and the author of the ill-fated play that had been in rehearsals, who will give us our relevant line, as he exclaims in surprise, “Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art translated” (Act 3, scene 1, 118).Indeed he is. Bottom, when he declares the events a dream, proposes that Quince shall write a ballad of this transformation (Act 4, scene 1, 224–26).1 This ballad might be seen as a further translation, of the sort Umberto Eco calls “intersemiotic”—a translation across forms, rather like that of interpretive dance, which is sort of famous for translating badly. What is not quite clear, though, is how layered this translation may already be just in Nick Bottom’s appearance. The use of “ass” for buttocks—that is, for the bottom—is first attested only in 1860,2 more than two and a half centuries after A Midsummer [End Page 36] Night’s Dream was written (sometime in the 1590s). But there is some speculation that the pun may already have been current, even if cutting-edge, when Shakespeare translated Bottom to ass, and certainly such a pun would not have been out of character for the author—after all, we also find a snout among the would-be actors, and Shakespearean brilliance is hardly incompatible with crude punning. The translation of the flesh is in this instance also a translation of the word, not just in parallel but somehow of one another, and the visible head of the indignant ass betrays the indignity of the rustic weaver sporting the name of Bottom.We don’t so often think of bodies being translated, but before turning to more abstract considerations here, let me offer one further instance, one a little closer to the main current of my own research. The translation of relics (that is, of pieces or close possessions of saints) is their movement from one location—specifically, from one church congregation—to another. This sounds markedly unexciting, I grant, but that’s only if you don’t know that throughout the Middle Ages the relics were sometimes said to have translated themselves, moved of their own volition. This was held to demonstrate the desire of the relevant saints for the newly privileged location—which means their desire to patronize and to bless the new church or congregation. This happened especially often when those of us with less devotion would more likely say that the relics had been stolen by members of their new communities.In the translation of relics, an original—a whole, unified original in the form of an intact body—is the very source of meaning. The relic matters because it belonged to the body of a saint, and each fragment is held to contain, somehow, the wholeness of saintly power and sancitity (for more detail on this very complex subject, see MacKendrick 2008, 102–31). But as a rule, that original is impossible to find; the meaningful pieces are only ever fragments. (In fact, studies of older relics often show that they are not even fragments of humans.) Now the relic means what it is translated to mean: the saint’s blessing upon... (shrink)

The verb “to conjure” is a complex one, for it includes in its standard definition a great range of possible actions or operations, not all of them equivalent, or even compatible. In its most common usage, “to conjure” means to perform an act of magic or to invoke a supernatural force, by casting a spell, say, or performing a particular ritual or rite. But “to conjure” is also to influence, to beg, to command or constrain, to charm, to bewitch, to (...) move or convey, to imagine, to visualize, to call to mind, or to remember. —Rachael DeLue 2012, para 1.When we create with our Brown hands, feminine energy, and full spirits, we conjure. To exist, survive, and thrive in these bodies is a continuous act of conjuring. Our walks conjure. Our smiles conjure. Our tears conjure. Our laughs conjure. Our words conjure. Our artworks are conjurings. We, a Black/Filipina-American woman, a Dominican-American, and a Black-American woman, are guided by our solidarity with one another and all other Black and Brown female identifying persons whose raced and gendered subjectivities exist both inside and outside of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We bring to life our colored imaginations and curiosities, and share them with the world. We are united by our need for safety, autonomy as beings, dissolution of trauma, and desire to ask, “What would happen if I…?” Imaginative, curious Women of Color founded the underground railroad, guided captured Africans and Tainos to the mountains, ignited the Civil Rights Movement, organized laborers and immigrants, birthed the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, conceived the #MeToo Movement, and so much more. Like our kindred counterparts, we have an unrelenting urge to examine, question, wonder, desire, speak to, lead, be curious, and “conjure.” As practicing artists and art educators, our critical arts-based practices are grounded in intersectional feminisms like Womanism, Black Feminist Theory, and Chicana Feminist Theory, which allow us to do these very things. (shrink)

Au tout début des années 1990, Annie Sprinkle présente, à l’Harmony Theater de New York, sa performance la plus célèbre A Public Cervix Announcement dans laquelle elle invite le public à observer son col de l’utérus. Prônant la réappropriation féministe du sexe féminin, cette performance subvertit les codes andro et hétérocentrés de l’iconographie pornographique. Cet article montre de quelle manière les images de sexualité mises en scène dans cette performance contribuent, dans le sillage des démarches pro-sexe et (...) post-porn, à élaborer de nouvelles monstrations des corps et des sexualités minorisés. (shrink)

In early 2020, as the first of many COVID lockdowns began across Australia, a collective of feminist and queer performance scholars and artists embarked on the research project Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism and Socially Engaged Art. Our aim was to document contributions of womxn theatre makers, while conducting a feminist analysis of strategies used to deal with gender inequality and oppression, on stage and off. While pivoting to the digital and the virtual, we recognised a (...) need to support womxn theatre makers whose lives and livelihoods are thrown into further precarity by the pandemic. This paper speaks to our commitment to bringing together critical theory, arts practices and everyday life in ethical forms and encounters that make visible, recognise and express care for one another and for the work. (shrink)

This article explores the potential applications of feminist pedagogy to the lived experience of weekly preaching from the perspective of a young, white, cis female, heterosexual faith community leader. When privilege is both obvious, but authority is simultaneously presumed and challenged based on historical constructs of theological role and presentation of gender, the act of preaching becomes a site of resistance. This article then discusses the act of homiletics – the art of interpretive storytelling, history teaching, persuasive speech, and (...) spiritual performance – as informed by a feminist perspective. Does the pulpit present a bridge or barrier where gender is concerned? The physical act of preaching can represent an in-moment incarnating of a role, a historical step in a long-flowing river, and a psychological break point of self-erasure. This article posits that a thoughtful application of feminist pedagogy might dismantle these unspoken rules of the trade and create an opportunity for preaching as an act of resistance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aesthetics in Feminist PerspectiveJulie Van CampAesthetics in Feminist Perspective, edited by Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer; xv & 252 pp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, $39.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.Has feminism been hijacked by one lock-step agenda, suppressing all dialogue and debate? Far from it, judging from this collection of seventeen essays on feminist aesthetics. The first such collection in English, it includes eleven essays previously (...) published in Hypatia (1990).This well-organized volume offers both broad theoretical considerations and applications to specific art forms, diverse methodological perspectives, and healthy debate among the contributors. The section on “The Nature of Art: Some Feminist Alternatives” considers feminist perspectives as alternatives to traditional concepts of art, motivated by considerations of the art of women. Skepticism abounds in the section on “Interpretation and Point of View” concerning a “universal” or “paradigmatic” female voice in literature, film, and visual art. “Philosophical and Critical Legacies” reveals diverse feminist readings of Kant, Nietzsche, Cartesian metaphysics, and postmodernism.Co-editor Hilde Hein proposes that aesthetics provides a promising road map for feminist philosophy and indeed philosophy generally. Aesthetics has learned to reject foundationalism and essentialism in favor of pluralism, a necessity in the face of the astonishing diversity and ever-changing landscape in contemporary art. This theoretical transition in aesthetics shows how philosophy could fruitfully shed the false security of essentialism to embrace the sometimes raucous pluralism of methods, races, cultures, and genders assaulting all humanities disciplines in recent decades. As co-editor Carolyn Korsmeyer notes, feminist scholarship challenges “the mask of universality and gender-neutrality” (p. vii). [End Page 178]The myth that feminist scholarship is merely thinly veiled political action, devoid of intellectual integrity, is shattered by this collection. Well-represented is the diversity of analytic and European methodologies that enrich contemporary philosophical dialogue. Many of the articles scrutinize the nature of “feminism” itself, as well as appropriate methodologies and questions. The interdisciplinarity of feminist research also is in welcome evidence, with seven essays by scholars from English, African-American studies, music, and psychology.Should feminist art and aesthetics be “nondominative”? Should it “endorse” female experience? Do proposals for “ideal” feminist artistic expression inadvertently retreat to the essentialism and uniformity that feminists have sought to dispel? Should feminists reject the tradition of “formalism” in favor of an approach that re-integrates art with the community and the concerns of daily life? This perspective is widespread today in postmodern thought, but feminist considerations bolster the case made elsewhere for the fall of the so-called elite object.Are there distinctive features that mark the work of female artists, such as group participation, rather than performances for passive audiences? This feature is pervasive in contemporary art, from the happenings of Andy Warhol in the 1960s to the “Messiah” sing-alongs popular for decades. Is feminist art marked by a melding of aesthetic and erotic elements? Surely that is also a trait of the art of most cultures, by men as well as women.These explorations reveal a paradox in today’s feminism. In highlighting female traits (such as the virtues of being caring and nondominating), are women being celebrated, liberated, and freed? Or are they frozen into roles which not all women consider their most important attributes as persons?Female artists and theorists deserve enormous credit for encouraging a re-thinking of the ways in which art is created and understood, but many other forces drive these developments as well. Indeed, some of the harshest critics of analytic philosophy are analytic philosophers steeped in that tradition, both male and female. It seems a pointless chicken-and-egg exercise to wonder if feminists caused this re-thinking or were one of several groups in a happy confluence of re-examination from various perspectives. Fortunately, the issue need not be resolved for scholars and students to appreciate this outstanding volume.Julie Van CampCalifornia State University, Long BeachCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This book provides an accessible yet sophisticated introduction to the significant philosophical issues concerning the performing arts.

In this article, I take up Uri McMillan’s work in Embodied Avatars to rethink the subject–object relationship in women’s preaching. In performance art, the subject fashions herself into an object. I stretch the performance art genre to include preachers Rachel Baker, Jarena Lee, and Florence Spearing Randolph, arguing that these women have strategically performed objecthood to navigate gendered and racialized constraints in Christian proclamation. Examining these three women preachers through the lens of performing objecthood opens up theological understandings (...) of how the Spirit works in a world marked by social sin. Contrary to theologians who describe submission to the Spirit as self-effacement, I show how submission to the Spirit can counter worldly authorities, while enabling women preachers to transform perceptions of gender and race in a liberative way. (shrink)

This article discusses Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha’s theories on multiculturalism and diaspora as alternative epistemological references to confront racist revivals across Europe. Edward Said’ s defence of inclusive academic curricula is equally revisited as a parallel strategy to deconstruct Eurocentric ideas. These three thinkers also represent nationalism as an obsolete paradigm, inadequate to perceive a globalized world. The point of this article is to revisit established postcolonial thinkers and see how their discourses have been reinterpreted by committed artists/writers whose (...) works seem to share with the invoked thinkers the aim of challenging their audiences to think differently about race, cultural difference, invisibility of oppression and right of ‘belonging’. The invoked theoretical discourse is used as a platform to discuss four artistic interventions – a poem by Eunice de Souza, Raimi Gabdamosi’s performance in Cadiz, the collective installation Return to Hansala at MUSAC museum and a sculpture by Portuguese visual artist Ana Vieira. Two of the selected works address gender issues in articulation with domesticity and patriarchal genealogies while the other two pieces address race and marginalization without any particular gender inflection. The choice is deliberate. Feminist discussions cannot be isolated from other discourses that expose related forms of oppression and marginalization even if they are not primarily formed by feminist awareness. (shrink)

By considering the position of education as a pharmakon, highlighting its potential positive and negative effects on societies by its technical unfolding, the article proposes to explore the political and pedagogical role that public and collective performances can have within the public sphere as political devices for promoting and enacting radical democracy. To this end, it analyzes a contemporary collaborative artistic practice, the performance ‘Un Violador en Tu Camino’ (‘A rapist in your path’) by the feminist collective LASTESIS (...) from Chile, through two main philosophical perspectives: Bernard Stiegler (1952 – 2020), and his approach to technology, to art, and education in human societies; and Oliver Marchart, coming from his conceptualization of art and activism through the notion of conflictual aesthetics. (shrink)

In turning to the language of freedom, I am not automatically freed from the dangers of reduction and self-privileging. "Freedom" as a term is at least as ambiguous as "power" . When I say that for me all questions about the politics of interpretation begin with the question of freedom, I can either be saying a mouthful or saying nothing at all, depending on whether I am willing to complicate my key term, "freedom," by relating it to the language of (...) power. The best way to do that is to get power in from the beginning, by making a distinction taken for granted by many earlier thinkers and too often ignored today: freedom from as contrasted with freedom to; freedom from external restraints and the power of others to inhibit our actions, and freedom to act effectively when restraints disappear.All the freedom from in the world will not free me to make an intellectual discovery or to point a picture unless I have somehow freed myself to perform certain tasks. Such freedoms are gained only by those who surrender to disciplines and codes invented by others, giving up certain freedoms from. Nobody forbids by interpreting the original text of Confucius' Analects or the Principia Mathematica, yet I am not free to do so, lacking the disciplines—having not been disciplined—to do so. The distinction can lead to troublesome complexities, but in its simple form here it cuts through some of the problems that arise in power language.Every critical revolution tends to speak more clearly about what it is against than about what it seeks. The historicists against impressionism, the New Critics against historicism, the new new critics against intentionalism and the authority of canons, the feminists against misogynous art and criticism–clearly one could write a history of modern criticism as a glorious casting off of errors. But it is rightly a commonplace among intellectual historians that all revolutionaries depend on their past far more than they know. Revolutionary critics are enslaved by a nasty law of nature: I can say only what I can say, and that will be largely what I have learned to say from the kings I would depose.Everyone who tries to forge any kind of ideological criticism must struggle with these complexities. Nobody ever knows just what powers have been rejected and what voices heard. But at the moment it seems clear that what follows here, both in its emerging clarities and remaining confusions, results from my somewhat surprised surrender to voices previously alien to me: the "Mikhail Bakhtin" who speaks to me, muffled by my ignorance of Russian, and the feminist criticism" that in its vigor and diversity and challenge to canonic views has—belatedly, belatedly—forced me to begin listening.Wayne C. Booth's most recent work, Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism, won the Laing Prize in 1982. He is working on a book about ethical and political criticism of narrative. A new edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction will appear in 1983. (shrink)

Abstract:“Feminist Graphic Art” reviews recent feminist scholarly work on comics alongside several new feminist comics titles themselves, suggesting through a focus on theory and practice that the medium of comics is an expanding realm of possibility for feminist expression, particularly around issues of subjectivity, embodiment, and collectivity.

In the present political and socio-cultural situation in Slovakia, it is natural and necessary even to ask “what position do the arts occupy in this country?” and “what role do they play within the complex global atmosphere?” Art and culture should mirror the nation. Are we aware of that? Do we realize that art has the ability and the power to move? Not many of us realize this. This is a consequence of the permanent scepticism, apathy and resentment caused by (...) the fact that this voice has never been heard. And this is not just the case in Slovakia. Yet even today there are certain groups of artists who still believe in the arts and their power. I think that giving up on this faith is the easiest thing to do. The decision whether to fight, rebel or actively participate is extremely complex and in many cases doing so may even threaten the freedom of the person. In this article I address the issue of whether art has the power and ability to change things. I draw attention to those socially engaging activities that could be described as performance art, which occur beyond enclosed areas and in public spaces; and in order to achieve change, they openly and nakedly attack individual consciousness and the subconscious. (shrink)

Abstract:AbstractOne of the most recognized playwrights and stage directors on the African continent today, Werewere Liking is the Cameroonian founder of the Village et Fondation Panafricaine Ki-yi Mbock in Abidjan. A 2000 Prince Claus Award laureate for her contributions to culture and development, Liking has also produced impressive works of literature and art. From the beginning of her career in the late 1970s, Liking has always promoted and expanded her project of elite theater for development, with her productions of the (...) last decade bringing to the masses theater and performance as a form of resistance to the surrounding conflict and chaos in the West African nations of Cote-d'Ivoire and, most recently, Mali. The ability of Liking and the Village to carry out their projects to fruition both in times of relative prosperity as well as in periods of conflict is a testament to Liking's successful matriarchal style of African feminist leadership and shared governance made possible by the espousing of traditional African values necessary for tackling problems of a contemporary world. (shrink)

The seventies period in Australia is often referred to as the “anything goes” decade. It is a label that gives a sense of the profusion of antiestablishment modes that emerged in response to calls for social and political change that reverberated around the globe around that time. As a time of immense change in the Australian art scene, the seventies would influence the development of art into the contemporary era. The period‟s diversity, though, has presented difficulty for Australian art historiography. (...) Despite the flowering of arts activity during the seventies era—and probably also because of it—the period remains largely unaccounted for by the Australian canon. In retrospect, the seventies can be seen as a period of crucial importance for Australia‟s embrace of contemporary art. Many of the tendencies currently identified with the contemporary era—its preoccupation with the present moment, awareness of the plurality of existence, rejection of hierarchies, resistance to hegemonic domination, and a sense of a global community—were inaugurated during the seventies period. Art-historically, however, it appears as a “gap” in the narration of Australian art‟s development which can be explained neither by the modernism which preceded it, nor by postmodernism. In Australia, the seventies saw a rash of new art “movements” emerge almost simultaneously. Feminist, Pop, Conceptual art, Performance, Protest, Craft, and Aboriginal art as fine art are some of the forms that emerged as part of the concerted questioning and revolt that were characteristic of the period. Art practice changed radically at this time—with challenges both to the art object mounted by conceptualism, and to its hierarchical traditions prompted by feminism and other historically marginalised groups. While no style dominated the period, most of the art-making shared tendencies and concerns, and was driven by a common vision that had its roots in the era‟s politically charged milieu. The focus of this paper is the importance for many artists of working collectively and collaboratively in their pursuit of a new cultural paradigm. Often it was only through joint endeavour that recognition of the multiple valid alternatives, through which many began to define themselves, was possible. However, the embrace of the idea of collective enterprise in itself also facilitated new ways to think about art and the manner and meaning of its production. The purpose here, therefore, is to draw attention to the important ways in which organisational collectivism and collaboration contributed to the seventies as a period of revolutionary transformation in art practice that would propel Australian art into the contemporary era. (shrink)

This critical analysis is to addresses the implications about emerging design approaches in Human Computing Interfaces (HCI), and Human Interface Devices (HID). A reflection about custom-built interfaces invigorates a wider discussion about the meaningful contexts in which their use is activated. The specific aim is to re-imagine, redefine and explore the potentiality and limitations of electronic performance tools, namely, how the choice of this tool and interface nearly always gives rise to new situations that must be tackled. Therefore, addressing (...) the material aesthetics of performance tools used in contemporary electronic performance, by artists who engage with such technologies, this article aims to critically analyse and historically place artistic engagement with tools and interfaces in contemporary performance settings and to indicate where there is room for new design approaches and hence new (and forgotten) modes of engagement to unfold. To amplify the relationship between performer and the spectator when using the emerging technologies of real-time performance tools, I refer to ‘Ode to Paraphernalia’, a set of self-crafted electronic performance tools and a performance. This project opens a pathway for a larger proposal that asks: what are the ways in which we can engineer interfaces that validate the circulation of subjugated knowledges in meaningful sets and settings? (shrink)

_An exploration of the uncomfortable connections among performances in life, art, and politics_ “All the world’s a stage,” declares the melancholy Jacques in Shakespeare’s_ As You Like It._ Today that’s an unhappy thought. A cluster of demagogues has recently dominated the public realm through their powers as actors; they are brilliant performers. More unsettling, the demagogue, the dancer, and the musician all share the same nonverbal realm of bodily gestures, lighting and blocking, costuming, and stage architecture. So, too, the roles (...) and rituals of everyday life and everyday acting can be malign or sublime, repressive or liberating. Performing constitutes one art—an ambiguous art. In this book, the acclaimed sociologist Richard Sennett explores uncomfortable connections among performances in life, art, and politics. He draws on his own early career as a professional cellist as well as histories both Western and non-Western. He is not a pessimist; at the end of his study, he shows how this ambiguous art might become more ethical. (shrink)