BULLET POINTS

• Is there such a thing as feminine writing and if so is it restricted to women authors??
• Cixous’s rejection of the label “feminism” and the preference of “women’s movement.
• Patriarchal binary thought where each opposition abides to an hierarchy that shows the feminine side as the powerless side.
• The notion that each side needs if only to destroy it and thus acquire meaning.
• Difference and “differance” and how each term required the other in order to have meaning through the comparison with its counterpart.
• Derrida and Norris on writing : it is closely related to differance and is “the endless displacement of  meaning which both governs language and places it forever beyond the reach of a stable, self-authenticating knowledge”.
• Both men and women can produce both feminine and masculine texts.
• Cixous’s realms of the gift and the proper: masculinity is structured based on an economy of proper-property-appropriate; it is self sufficient.
• Male fear of castration
• The realm of the gift: a woman gives because castration anxiety is not in her DNA!

PERHAPS TO BE CONTINUED…

QUOTES

“For the moment you receive something you are effectively ‘open’ to the other, and if  you are a man you have only one wish, and that is hastily to return the gift, to break the circuit of an exchange that could have no end… to be nobody’s child, to owe no one a thing.”  –> the need to be in charge, to be the strong and competent one as western society has decided Man is…

“The voice in each woman, moreover, is not only her own, but springs from the deepest layers of her psyche: her own speech becomes the echo of the primeval song she once heard, the voice of incarnation of the ‘first voice of love which all women preserve alive…in each woman sings the first nameless love’  “–> Well it just sounds so pretty…

STAY TUNED FOR SELF PROTRAITS!!

SUMMARY

We have here the two representations of masculinity of the 1980’s.

On the one hand Joe Camel, the macho-man and on the other the passive, beautiful and seductive young man, a portrayal up until then reserved for young women.

Either one can be considered to represent the fact that masculinity, like capitalism, is always in crisis but still manages to be resurrected and assert itself again.

Masculinity and femininity are of a performative nature according to Freud and their relation to biological sex is not to be taken for granted.

Examples of paintings are provided to support this notion.

Finally, questions on the admiration of the male body, misogyny, homoerotic art and homophobia are addressed in a way that generally questions western society’s on the issue of what constitutes masculinity.

QUOTES

“… a colonization of femininity, so that what has been rendered peripheral and marginal in the social and cultural realm, or actively devalued, is effectively incorporated within the compass of masculinity”  –> Masculinity is allowed and appraised in as certain way, so whatever is NOT is passed off as another version of masculinity in order to access the realm of power.

“…the articulation of ‘soft’ masculinities, like the related appearance of a men’s movement concerned to excavate male fears, anxieties and desires, of a discourse in gay male sexuality that celebrates the relinquishment of mastery and control, of the theoretical revision of male masochism, need not necessarily have much to do with the relinquishment of the privileges of patriarchy, and certainly need not have anything ot do with female emancipation, empowerment, or liberation.”  –> in other words, no matter what, men (well those abiding with the norms of society) will always think themselves on top of the world… Well if that makes them happy and less insecure? Let them think it…

STAY TUNED FOR SELF PORTRAITS!!

SUMMARY

In the 1970’s and 1980’s a debate (to put it mildly) took place concerning the limits of sexuality in everyday life but also in art. Gender discrimination was taken into consideration and the fact that male sexuality was encouraged to the point of being glorified while at the same time females where treated as inferior bacame more and more an issue in courts of law.

Feminist lawyers brought forth cases of sex discrimination only to be shut down on grounds that where surreal: i.e in the case of unwed pregnancies and the result those had in women’s’ lives “the justice said that the difference in treatment was okay because it was not based on sex. Instead the discrimination was simply between pregnant and nonpregnant persons!” (?!??!?!?!?!?!!?!?!? show me a pregnant man then…)

Female sexuality reached a point of being considered a “vile aspersion” and homosexuality was censored. Terms such as “healthy lust” popped up and stereotypes of what is male vs female sexuality where supported. All else, residing outside those stereotypes was up for censorship, fear(of emasculation or vulnerability), even condemnation.

QUOTES

” Some women find a penis distasteful, others can take penises or leave them, but many of us find penises rather vulnerable and endearing. It’s the rest of men that scare us.” –> Very well put, it shows that gender does not define identity, personality or even sex… The fact that one is male or female says nothing about their personality as an individual…

“The penis even in sweet repose, appears to be more threatening in this culture than any aspect of the female anatomy”  –> That which has been given power is the scariest… It has been a symbol of power over others for so long in our culture that exposing it brings up the fear of taking away its power, sooo it is labeled threatening in an effort to keep said power…

“It is well-nigh inevitable that censorship of sexual ideas and information will target the expression of women, sexual minorities, racial minorities, all those who have not been in power, have not set the rules.” –> I REST MY CASE… IT SAYS IT ALL.

STAY TUNED FOR SELF PORTRAITS!!

SUMMARY

We are dealing here with an artist’s personal take on what is performance art, through both a theoretical and a practical perspective but on a personal note.

We see the authors point of view as to how performance artists regard, use and portray their body, their relation to other artists and their social conduct.

We have examples through personal experience, real or in dreams (!!) of how performance artists view time, how they archive their work (according to the author, BADLY) and interview excerpts.

All very concise and engaging.

So “summary”???

Hell NO! (pardon my french!). This is a paper that should be read from start to finish! For one, it is actually interesting on a more everyday level and also it is one of the few that are so easy to read and enjoy. The style of writing is lovely and the format nice and clear. And to me it spoke on a very personal level that I could realy relate to…

So I will skip ahead to the quotes since there are a few that give a clear image of the personality and content of the paper!

QUOTES

“…cut me some extra slack: I am a contradictory vato, and so are most performance artist I know”  –-> I actually loved this quote because inner (and outer actually) conflict- of ideas, emotions, wants, needs etc- is the story of my life… Does that make me a (potential) performance artist?????? HAHA 🙂

“We theorize…. different from …academic theorists. They have binoculars; we have radars.”  –> It is very interesting to read that from someone else because it is something I have had to deal with for a very long time…  The way I interpret it academics see, explain, analyze; performance artists sense/feel,show, act.

“We are what others aren’t, we say what others don’t and we occupy cultural spaces that are often overlooked or dismissed. Because of this, our multiple communities are composed of esthetic, political, ethnic and gender rejects.”  –> It really says it all on its own… The feeling of not quite fitting in… And isn’t that something that the same society we (yes I’ll throw myself in there) don’t quite fit in, needs in order to define the boundaries of “normal”?

And in relation I add:

“It is a lonely and largely misunderstood journey, but most performance artists…love it”  –> the notion of being different, the illusion perhaps of being unique!

“In the act of crossing a border, we find temporary emancipation.” –> Well this I found extremely interesting since my last paper was on whether or not emancipation can be achieved thorugh transgression! It is an issue that has is really bugging me lately…

“Though we treasure our bodies, we don’t mind constantly putting them at risk.”  –> Pain is a reminder that we are still alive 😉 And taking a risk and overcoming it is simply exhilarating!!!

STAY TUNED FOR SELF PORTRAITS!

The Conquest of Autonomy

This chapter describes the journy artists had to travel in an effort to gain autonomy.

We go though the history of art, and maily literature and painting in Europe in the second half of the 19th century discussing the “bourgeois” and the effect of industrialists and businessmen as well as aristocracy had on the arts.

The high society that holds the influence and power choses which form of art to promote and which not.

There is an in between rank in society during that time, that of those powerful enough to be taken seriously by the artists but not so powerful so as to pose a threat to the actually powerful ones… The salons choose who to include and promote and who to exclude and it is actually who they exclude that defines them and distinguishes them.

Power is also held by the directors of the papers since publication creates a certain reputation and opens doors.

Bohemia is the new way and the art of living is invented. Not all those seeking a post can be given one of the positions offered and so all those who have qualifications but no jobs turn to the arts. Bohemia defies classification, it shifts in time, absorbs more and more people and there is a point where two bohemias coexist: the proletaroid intellectuals and the penniless bourgeois.

A society of artists forms that favours transgressions and rewards artists who introduce it in there art and lifestyle. On the other hand, “Imagination, like courage, was singularly flattened, and the public was not disposed, any more than the powers that be, to permit independence of any kind”.

We have a whole section on Baudelaire as a lead figure in his time mostly because he made a difference by defying the whole established literary order.  He becomes a symbol, challenging mental structures and overturning the set scale of values.

A comparison between Flaubert and Baudelaire is made to point out that unlike Flaubert, Baudelaire makes a point of placing both his work and his entire way of life “under a banner of defiance and rupture”.  He sees being deprived as the road to freedom and inspiration.

However competition arises and all artists who until then where being compensated for their work in one way or the other, are now up against newcomers, there to contest authorities.

It becomes more and more clear that the context, the sociopolitical circumstances during the time a work of art is created reveal more about its value than the work in itself.

The artists that survived time did so BECAUSE of their contemporaries that did not, and because of the comparison between them.

I will stop here because I feel I am not contributing anything by my writing… These last two papers where a little too much for me, I would have to study them again and again and there is no time now for that… Alot has sunk in but in a level that I cannot put into words yet…

I feel that there is so much detail that I am losing the bigger picture…

Kind of these picures of my face… Can anyone tell what I look like through them?!?!?!?!?!