Maso and Miso in the Land of Men's Rights, e-flux journal n. 92, June 2018 (original) (raw)
Related papers
#MeToo, Representation & the Cleansing of the Image. The Role of Gender Studies in Media, Art and Culture., 2019
The call to clean museums of faulty works of art, to purge films of patriarchal stereotypes, is based on a collective ignorance of the difference between fiction and reality and is related to the rise of gender and cultural studies which - through reference to work by Laura Mulvey [1975] and John Berger [1972] - propagate this one-dimensional worldview. The result is polarization and the destruction of culture.
Transnational Artistic Responses: #MeToo and the Creative Coalition
2020
Using a feminist mapping methodology to contextualize artmaking activities that challenge patriarchal and oppressive viewpoints of women, in this study I examine ways in which artists have responded to the #MeToo movement in locations outside the United States. Through intersectional and transnational lenses, I investigate creative responses toward ending gender-related violence. My goal is to provide a resource of cultural production that encourages wakefulness of both researchers and educators to the particular contexts and strategies artists use to stop gender-based violence. Derived from scholarly articles, digital newspapers, Facebook, Instagram and personal interviews, the artist responses that I selected for this study demonstrate situated creative reactions to the #MeToo movement, highlighting the prevalence and particularities of harassment, domestic violence, rape and femicide in many regions of the globe. Inspired by a climate of feminist activism, artists respond pedagog...
The shifting terrain of sex and power: From the 'sexualization of culture' to #MeToo
It is an honour to be part of the 20 th anniversary celebrations for Sexualities and to have the opportunity to express appreciation for the space the journal has opened up. It has become a key site for interesting, critical and challenging work; indeed, it is hard to imagine what sexuality studies, queer theory, examinations of sex in the media and popular culture, and studies of intimate life would look like without the journal. We would like to express our gratitude to the editors over the last two decades – and to staff and assistants – for all their work in developing this vibrant and crucial space. In this short article we will aim to do three things. First, we want to use this opportunity to reflect on some of the changes we have seen in the scholarly field of gender, sexuality, and intimacy over this period, and on new emerging directions. Second, we want to discuss the move away from discussions of 'sexualization' to a more critical and political register interested in a variety of ways in which sex and power intersect. Thirdly, we will discuss MeToo as an example of this shifted form of engagement, and raise some questions about its possibilities and limitations.
Some Problems with Gendered Subjectivity and Representation: Baise Moi and Hard-Core Pornography
CineJ Cinema Journal, 2021
Based on a theoretical framework developed by the works of critical theorists Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, this article questions the role of gendered representation in the discourse around the film Baise Moi (Despentes and Trinh Thi, 2000). The film has been criticized, due to its engagement with pornography and trash aesthetics as well as its "bad ending", and associated with a reaffirmation of patriarchal power practices on screen. This article argues that such readings remain within the limited territory of seeking an ideal representation of femininity based on the gender/sex binary which Butler's early work on gender has critiqued. The first section of the article explores the discourse of "extremity" and "illegality" that surrounds Baise Moi by way of situating the concept of "screen representation" within the Foucauldian territory of power. Following this trajectory, the article discusses how Baise Moi conveys a layered audiovisual organization and negativity that attest to the attainability of non-conforming sexualities through an ironic adoption of pornography. It is argued that the film's ironic and referential negative aesthetics exploits and overwrites the narrative-the narrative that provides the means through which the film can overturn gender norms associated with the genres it adopts from, such as hard-core porn's idealism around female sexuality.
Cultural translation, politics of disempowerment and the reinvention of queer power and politics
This article addresses the task of describing the flows and trends of cultural translation of queer between the USA and Europe, particularly France. Firstly, it demonstrates how queer groups located in France re-translated 'queer made in the USA', inspired by continental philosophy, back into a French idiom in the mid-1990s. It then seeks to explain their contemporary responses to new trends and agendas in queer studies and politics that sound more and more compliant with 'logics of disempowerment'. The re-sexualization and re-politicization of French post-structuralist philosophers and psychoanalysts such as Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida and Lacan, made possible by American queer theory and cultural studies, have been succeeded by a phase in which American theorists seem to crave the traditionally European privilege of being lauded as public intellectuals. At the beginning of the new century, a violent recodification by straight scholars and institutions took place and is still taking place in France: queer and post-colonial studies are dismissed or banned as subjective, unscientific agit prop. Today's benevolent researchers reaffirm their power through powerlessness and 'identify' with the victims they defend. In this context, recent American queer theory and politics can give the impression of being driven by a logic of disempowerment. To illustrate this, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is compared with her Undoing Gender. Thus where Gender Trouble promoted strategies of resignification and resistance for both gender expression and hate speech, Undoing Gender displaces the strategy of resignification from hate speech to what could be called 'master words' such as 'the universal' and 'the human', and this 'neo-universalism' is linked to a politics of vulnerability. Moreover, whereas in Gender Trouble, textual or discursive performativity is impersonal and reversible, in Undoing Gender, the continental European figure of the philosopher is back. To counter this development, to pursue a strategy of dis-identification with the nation state and the United States, to quit the politics of
Proceedings from the Summer School for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics 2014
2015
The following texts have been written by a range of talented young scholars, artists and activists. We consider the first issue of the SSSCP Proceedings a great contribution to a wider body of research conducted within the field of cultural studies overall, but also to queer theory/politics/practice, gender studies, media and studies of the body. What differentiates this collection from others is a delicate balance between personal journeys and academic adventures that authors have taken upon. The first edition is also of invaluable importance and an immensely relevant input to a regional political and cultural struggle to embrace otherness. We would even go as far as to claim that the present collection represents a fresh and daring contribution to the inert regional academic production and a useful, empowering tool for various sorts of activist and artistic endeavors. Stanimir Panayotov and Ana Koncul (Eds.), Proceedings from the Summer School for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics 2014, Belgrade: IPAK.Center, 2015. Stanimir Panayotov and Ana Koncul Note from the Editors Steph Schem Rogerson Queer Archives Claire Finch Mutating France’s Queer Territories Antonina Anna Ferrante In Drag We Trust: Normative Drives and Homonationalism in RuPaul’s Drag Race Thomas Muzart Pornography Must Be Defended: Rethinking Pornography with Lionel Soukaz Marius Henderson Tentative Heretical Notes on Queer “Necro” Practices and Sensibilities Jennifer Vilchez Hard to Swallow: Porn Star James Deen’s Arousing Work and Young Women’s Fandom france rose [ the space in between ]: The Power of Contemporary Art to Reimagine Gender Mónica Guerreiro Intense, Animal, Imperceptible: Vera Mantero’s a mysterious Thing, said e. e. cummings* as a Queer Dance Solo Anna Wates Grieving as Political Action: Contesting Austerity Politics through Narratives of Loss in the Disabilities Rights Movements Melisa Slipac When a Woman Loves a Woman: Lesbian Love and Homosexual Desire in Ajla Terzić’s Novel Mogla je biti prosta priča (Could Have Been a Simple Story)