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ARTWORDS
A Glossary
of Contemporary
Art Theory

THOMAS PATIN and

JENNIFER McLERRAN

GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Patin, Thomas, 1958-

Artwords : a glossary of contemporary art theory / Thomas Patin
and Jennifer McLerran.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-313-29272-8 (alk. paper)
1 . Art — Philosophy —History —20th century —Terminology.
I. McLerran, Jennifer. II. Title.

N71.P32 1997
70 1'. 09045—dc20 96-29274

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright © 1997 by Thomas Patin and Jennifer McLerran

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be

reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-29274

ISBN: 0-313-29272-8

First published in 1997

Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881

An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the

Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).

10 98765432 1
 CONTENTS

Preface vii

Acknowledgments ix

Entries by Topic xi

The Glossary 1

Selected Bibliography 143

Index 151
 PREFACE

Since the early 1970s the vocabulary used to discuss visual art has expanded radi-
cally. Many teachers, students, artists, and critics have suddenly found them-
selves drowning in a sea of jargon that seems to have descended suddenly from
outer space. A straightforward guide to specialized language is sorely needed.
Without such a guide, readers of contemporary art history, theory, and criticism
often choose either to spend a few years “playing catch-up,” or to dismiss an im-
portant and fruitful discourse on contemporary culture.
This glossary is intended to be a guide into the frontier of current theory and
criticism of visual art and culture. It includes over four hundred terms or phrases
that have recently entered the discourse on the visual arts. Many of the terms in
this glossary are not especially new to the art world. In fact, some terms have
been widely used in discussions on the visual arts or in other cultural contexts

for many years, but have been adapted for use in the contemporary art world with
specific or specialized applications. Where possible and appropriate, we attempt
to cite or demonstrate the application of theoretical terms and phrases to works
of art or some aspect of visual culture. In doing so, we hope to clarify both the
specific definitions and the general connotations of many of the entries and to
avoid the repetition or synthesis of many glossaries that specialize in contempo-
rary literary theory.
While there are a number of dictionaries and glossaries covering the termi-
nology in the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, and related areas, no such
reference book exists for the visual arts. Robert Atkins’ Artspeak and Artspoke
come closest to our glossary, but Atkins concentrates on artistic production in
the visual arts —
artistic movements, styles, and names —
and falls short, in our
opinion, in his explanations of more theoretical terminology. While our glos-
Vlll Preface

sary rarely deals directly with art movements and personalities (Atkins does an
admirable job in that regard), it does seek to be a handbook for anyone studying
the recent visual arts and visual culture in general.
Due to the interdisciplinary nature of recent art criticism, this glossary in-
cludes terms from many interrelated discourses: feminist theory, film and photo-
graphic theory, literary theory, queer theory, discourse analysis, postcolonial and
multiculturalist discourse, cultural studies, revisionist art history or new histori-

cism, Marxist criticism, modernist art theory, postmodernist art and architecture,
structuralist and poststructuralist semiotics (including deconstruction), psychoan-
alytic criticism, abjection, as well as a number of key terms from the writings of
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
In researching this glossary, we found valuable information in many other
glossaries, dictionaries, and anthologies. Among these are Chris Baldick’s, The
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory:
An Introduction, Jeremy Howthorn’s A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Lit-
erary Theory, Maggie Humm’s The Dictionary of Feminist Theory, Frank
Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin’s (editors) Critical Terms for Literary
Study, Irena R. Makaryk’s (editor) Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary The-
ory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms, Madan Sarup’s An Introductory Guide to
Post-structuralism and Postmodernism, Raman Selden’s A Reader’s Guide to
Contemporary Literary Theory, and Raymond Williams’ Key Words: A Vocabu-
lary of Culture and Society. (Full citations can be found in the bibliography.)
These are all excellent works but they do not deal with the visual arts in particu-

lar.

Readers may approach this glossary in one of two ways. As they come across
theoretical terms in reading other texts, they can check those terms in this
glossary, much as they would in any dictionary. In addition, readers may wish to
access the terms thematically, as they are listed by topic in the front matter. Of
course, the contents of this glossary are cross-referenced: we have indicated when
a term appears elsewhere by putting the term in small CAPS.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The entries for this glossary were selected through years of research as students
and years of work as professors teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in

contemporary art history, theory, and criticism. In the mid-1980s Professor E.

Ann Kaplan at the State University of New York at Stony Brook provided one of
the authors with a brief and informal glossary of terms specific to film studies.
That class handout sparked the idea for a full-blown glossary for the visual arts

in general. Students at Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, Washington), Cor-

nish College (Seattle, Washington), Washington
Western University
(Bellingham, Washington), the University of Washington (Seattle, Washington),
and Ohio University (Athens, Ohio) received abbreviated trial runs of this glos-
sary from one or the other of us. We began collecting terms in the form of lists or
note cards years ago, but filed them away for some vaguely envisioned future
project. In 1992 Marilyn Brownstein, an editor at Greenwood Press, gently de-
clined a proposal from one of us for an anthology of recent approaches to the vi-
sual arts which included a glossary. However, she suggested that the glossary it-

self had some potential for publication. We thank her for her vision and confi-
dence. Alicia Merritt, who took over the editorial supervision of our project after
Ms. Brownstein’s retirement, has provided insightful guidance and advice. Jason
Azze, our production editor, has been instrumental in guiding us through the
publication process.
Thomas Patin would like to acknowledge the support of the College Art
Association through the Professional Development Program in American Art.
Jennifer McLerran would also like to acknowledge the support of the College Art
Association through the Professional Development Program in American Art.
w
 ENTRIES BY TOPIC

Abjection:
abject, bassesse, Bakhtinian dialogics, carnival, classical body, dia-
logic/dialogism, grotesque, grotesque body, grotesque realism, informe, material
bodily principle, transgression.

Cultural Studies:
Birmingham School, communication, critical theory, cultural materialism, cul-
tural studies, culture, elite, Frankfurt School, gatekeeping, hegemony, ideolo-
giekritik, ideology, interdisciplinary, legitimacy, media studies, negotiation,
overdetermination, popular, popular culture.

Deleuze and Guattari:

arborescent, body without organs, BWO, D&G, Deleuze/Deleuzian, desiring ma-
chines, Guattari/Guattarian, nomadology, nomads, plateau, postmodern warfare,
rhizomatic and arborescent, rhizome, schizoanalysis.

Discourse Analysis:
archaeology of knowledge, author, author function, bio-power, counter-memory,
death of the author, discourse, discourse analysis, discursive formation, discur-
sive practices, discursive regime, dispositif, docile body, episteme, epistemic
break, Foucault/Foucauldian/Foucaultian, genealogy, heterotopia, intelligible
body, naturalizing/naturalization, normalizing discourse/normalization, panop-
tic/panopticon, power, practical body, surveillance, useful body.

Film and Photographic Theory:

acoustic mirror, active desire, A-film, B-film, apparatus, auteur theory, cinema,
cinema verite, classical cinema, continuity, desire, direct cinema, female gaze,
feminine desire, feminist film theory, fetish/fetishism, film theory, gaze, gen-
Xll Entries by Topic

dered spectatorship, male gaze, masculine desire, object of desire, pornography,

scopophilia, screen theory, spectacle, specular, spegularization, studio era, su-
ture, tableau space, voyeurism.

Gender Theory:
body, central void aesthetic, cultural feminism, drag performance, ecriture femi-
nine, essentialism, Female Gaze, feminine desire, feminine masquerade, feminin-
ity as masquerade, feminism, feminist activist art, first-generation feminism,
gender, gender theory, gendered spectatorship, gendered subjectivity, gyn-ecol-
ogy, gynocentric, gynocritic, heterosexist, heterosexual desire, homosexual de-
sire, identity politics, Imaginary, imaginary body/imaginary anatomy, jouis-
sance liberal feminism, Marxist/socialist feminism, masculine desire, masquer-
ade, mastery, Nature/Culture debate, objectification, object of desire, Other, par-
ody/parodic, passing performance, patriarchy, peinture feminine, perfor-
mance/performative/performativity/performativity of gender, phallic/phallus,
pornoglossia, pornography, positionality, postfeminism, psychoanalytic femi-
nism, radical feminism, second-generation feminism, sex/gender distinction,
sexuality/sexual identity, spiritual feminism, straight-jacket style, sub-
ject/subjectivity, transgression, transgressive strategy, vaginal iconography,
voyeurism.

Literary Theory:
allegory, descriptive, diegesis, exegesis, fiction, free-floating, genre, intertextual-
ity, lacunae, linguistic paradigm, literary theory and criticism, master narrative,
metacriticism, metafiction, metalanguage, metanarrative, metaphor, metonymy,
mimesis, misprision, misreading, narration, narrative, plot, pre-
scribe/prescriptive, reader, reader-response criticism, readerly and writerly texts,

reception theory, representation, subtext, trope, writerly.

Marxist Theory and Criticism:

Althusser/Althusserian, apparatus, base and superstructure, class, commodifica-
tion, dialectical, Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), interpellation, Marxist liter-

ary theory and criticism, Marxist/socialist feminism, materialism, problematic,

Repressive^ tate Apparatus (RSA).

Modernist Art Theory:

abstract, aesthetic emotion, anti-art, art for art’s sake, autonomy, avant-garde,
central core imagery, central void aesthetic, content, expression, expressionist,
form, formalism, genre, goddess art, instrumentalism, modernism, objecthood,
originality, performance art, self-reference, self-reflexive, self-sufficiency, signif-
icant form, theatricality, work.

Postcolonial Discourse/Multiculturalism:
alterity, colonial(ism)/colonialized, diversity, dominant culture, ethnicity, Euro-
centric, hegemony, hybridization/hybridity, hybrid poetics, imperialism,
Entries by Topic xiii

marginality, multicultural(ism), oppositional reading. Orientalism, Other, plu-

rality/pluralism, postcolonial/postcolonial discourse, race/racism, radical alterity,
subaltern, stereotype.

Postmodernist Art and Architecture:

anti-aesthetic, appropriation, copy, deconstructionism/deconstructivism, expres-
sionist fallacy, interference, October Group, paraliterary, pastiche, plural-
ity/pluralism, postmodernism, quotation.

Poststructuralist Semiotics (including Deconstruction):

always already, aporetic(al), aporia, Barthes/Barthesian, Baudrillard/Baudrillardian,
center, closure, decentered, deconstruction, deja-lu, Derrida/Derridean, differance,
dissemination, doxa, echolalia, effet du reel, erasure, figures/figurative lan-
guage/figuration, freeplay, gram, grammatology, grapheme, hierarchical theory,
hierarchy, hinge, hyperreal, hypertextual, intersubjectivity, jouissance, logocen-
trism, mise-en-abyme, myth, oppositional reading, orders of representation,
phallogocentrism, pharmakon, phonocentrism, play, pleasure, polysemy, post-
structuralism/poststructuralist, punctum, reality effect, rhetoric, rupture, semio-
clasm, semiurgy, simulacra/simulacrum, simulation, site, slippage, studium and
punctum supplement,
,
textualist, theory, trace, transcendental signifier/signified/

subject, truth (in the), unfolding.

Psychoanalytic Theory & Criticism:

abject, desire, fantasmatic, fantasy, hommelette, Lacan/Lacanian, maternal body.
Mirror Stage, object relations theory, Symbolic, phallic/phallus, phantasmatic,
psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theory and criticism, Real, repressive hypothe-
sis, scopophilia, unconscious.

Revisionist Art History/New Historicism:

frame, influence, New Art History, New Historicism, New Museology, New
Western History, neo-conservative, revisionism, revisionist art history, scopic
regime, teleology, telos, vision/visuality.

Semiotics, Semiology:
absence, ambiguity, aniconic, arbitrary, binary difference, binary opposition,
bricoleur code, codification, connotation, convention, denotation, diachronic and
,

synchronic, difference, dualistic, encode, hermeneutics, icon, iconography, iden-

tity, index/indexical sign, langue and parole, literary theory and criticism, logos,
meaning and significance, mediation, metaphor, metonymy, mimesis, moti-
vated/unmotivated, multivalent, opaque, open and closed texts, parole, presence,
referent, seme, sememe, semic code, semiosis, semiotician/semiologist, semi-
otics/semiology, sign, signified, signifier, signifying practice, speaking subject,
structuralism/structuralist, structure, symbol, synchronic, syntagmatic and
paradigmatic, text, transparent/opaque, voice.
A

ABJECT The specific idea of the abject explored in recent art practice has been
that theorizedby French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva; (born in Bulgaria in 1941,
educated in Paris under Barthes, Lacan, and others beginning in 1965), especially
in her book Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection 1980 (translated in ,

1982). Kristeva is interested in the abject as a cultural category that distinguishes

self from OTHER on the level of individual IDENTITY and, on the cultural level,
the undesirable from that which is culturally privileged. She describes the abject
as that which disturbs IDENTITY and order and does not respect borders or rules.
Kristeva concerns herself with distinctions between the BODY’S outside and in-
side as establishing distinct boundaries between subject and object. SUBJEC-
TIVITY is dependent upon a discrete sense of the limits of the BODY. Any viola-
tion of the boundaries of the BODY is perceived as a threat to the self. She ex-
plains that the individual attempts to retain a sense of selfhood by rejecting those
things in the environment that are considered impure. Because the BODY itself
(especially the female BODY) produces matter deemed socially impure, the sense
of a discrete, pure self is constantly threatened. SUBJECTIVITY or self-identity is

consequently also constantly threatened. What Kristeva calls the experience of

abjection arises from the individual’s awareness that the BODY is never imper-
meable and the self is thus never fixed and stable. Objects and substances that
cross the body’s boundaries, such as tears, feces, menstrual blood, urine, and so
on, produce abjection. The abject defines the space between the SUBJECT and the
object as a space of both danger and DESIRE. Kristeva draws heavily on the ideas
of anthropologist Mary Douglas regarding the importance of concepts of the pure
and impure in cultural practices and social distinctions.
Building on Kristeva’s ideas, film theorist Barbara Creed has further explored
the realm of the abject. Creed concerns herself with Kristeva’s exploration of
how abjection, through evoking horror, functions in patriarchal CULTURES (see
PATRIARCHY) human from the nonhuman, separates the
to separate the
SUBJECT that is fully constituted from the SUBJECT that is partially formed.
Creed’s greatest concerns are with how SUBJECTIVITY is structured through the
processes of abjection as they occur in religious and cultural contexts through
2 Artwords

ritual and language and with how monstrous as conceived

the conception of the
in the horror TEXT finds its basis in such contexts in the ancient world. Creed
explains that horror films illustrate abjection in three ways: (1) through an abun-
dance of images of abjection; (2) through the function of a border that is threat-
ened; and (3) through maternal FIGURES constructed as abject.
Philosopher Judith Butler has also recently explored the category of the abject.
Butler explores how homosexuality comes to be positioned as abject through the
workings of a normative heterosexuality (see HOMOSEXUAL DESIRE and
HETEROSEXUAL DESIRE). She explains that those practices of exclusion through
which individual SUBJECTS are formed simultaneously require the production of
a category of abject beings who are “not yet ‘subjects,’ but who form the
constitutive outside to the domain of the subject.” In such a cultural CONTEXT,
the category of the abject serves to define those social positions and spaces that
are regarded as unlivable and uninhabitable and to mark those “whose living un-
der the SIGN of the ‘unlivable’ is required to circumscribe the domain of the ab-
ject” (Butler, Bodies that Matter p. 3). Butler goes on to explain that
,
GENDER
equals the social significance that SEX assumes in a CULTURE. SEX is replaced
by the social meanings it takes on. It is replaced (displaced) by GENDER. Gender-
ing is necessary to the formation of the “The ‘I’ neither precedes nor fol-
self:

lows the process of this gendering, but emerges only within and as the matrix of
GENDER relations themselves” (p. 7). The matrix of GENDER relations is neces-
sary to (prior to) human will and agency. The contention among radical social
constructivists that everything is discursively constructed refuses the abject as a
constitutive force.
Butler proposes a return to the idea of matter “as a process of materialization
that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we
call matter” (p. 9). The construction of a sexed self takes place over time through
a process or repetition and reiteration of norms. But this process of reiteration
also offers the possibility for the opening up of gaps and fissures formed by that
which exceeds or escapes the norm, as that which cannot be accommodated by
the repetition of the norm. This instability is where we may find what Butler
terms a “^constituting possibility.” Butler explains that to refer to that which
cannot be signified requires prior delimitation of the extra-discursive. The extra-
discursive is formed by the DISCOURSE from which it attempts to free itself.
This process of SIGNIFICATION (or delimitation) can construct only by erasing.
The disruptive return of the excluded is necessary to call into question the
BINARY HETEROSEXUAL MATRIX.
By way of an explanation of her own project, Butler tells how recent artists
and have attempted to harness the abject’s potential
theorists for TRANSGRESION
for political ends. She suggests that “the contentious practices of ‘queerness’
might be understood. as a specific reworking of abjection into political
. .

agency. . . . The public PERFORMATIVITY as

assertion of ‘queerness’ enacts
citationality for the purposes of resignifying the abjection of HOMOSEXUALITY
into defiance and LEGITIMACY” (p. 21; see PERFORMATIVE). She further
explains that this politicization of the abject constitutes an effort to “rewrite the
history of the term, and to force it into a demanding resignification” (p. 21).
Examples of abjection can be found in the contemporary WORK of perfor-
mance artist Karen Finley and photographers Cindy Sherman and Andres Ser-
rano, and in numerous horror films, such as Aliens. Finley explores the abject
Glossary 3

through smearing her body’s orifices with foods and other materials that replicate
bodily fluids. Cindy Sherman immerses herself in the abject in a series of self-
portraits inwhich her form appears in an advanced state of decay, nearly engulfed
by the earth. Andres Serrano employs bodily fluids in acts of defilement of reli-
gious images. An example can be found in his highly controversial work Piss
Christ a photograph of a crucifix bearing a figure of Christ and immersed in a
,

pool of Serrano’s urine.

ABSENCE The problem of absence has become important to THEORY and crit-
icism only recently, especially since the work of Jacques DERRIDA and other
POSTSTRUCTURALISTS. According DERRIDA, absence has usually been ig-
to
nored in the history of Western philosophy in favor of PRESENCE. Gaps, pauses,
rests, emptiness, and what is not found or depicted in a WORK are all examples
of absences. A POSTSTRUCTURALIST approach to TEXTS, however, shows that
seemingly stable arguments or categories are actually dependent upon certain ex-
clusion, or absences, for their stability. Louis ALTHUSSER and other critics op-
erating in a more explicitly political mode argue that what is left out of a TEXT
points to otherwise hidden IDEOLOGIES.

ABSTRACT For all practical purposes synonymous with “non-objective,”

this term is widely used in the visual arts of MODERNISM to refer to an inten-
tional abandoning of mimetic REPRESENTATION. The early twentieth century
saw the birth of abstract art. Extreme abstraction is found in the mature work of
Vassily Kandinsky, a Russian painter who is often cited as the first producer of
truly abstract art. Less extreme abstraction is found in the WORK of Spanish
painter Pablo Picasso, whose Cubist abstractions retained reference to FIGURES
and objects. This strategy offers two advantages. The first is that it enables the
artist to paint those things that are of ultimate importance but are invisible. The
WORK becomes a SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION or a parallel of the SUBJECT.
Examples range from the Constructivists to the Abstract Expressionists. The
second advantage is that this mode of working allows the artist to focus on the
physical and material properties of the medium being used. Such a formalist po-
sition was exemplified by critics like Clement Greenberg.

ACOUSTIC MIRROR Drawing on the ideas of Guy Rosaloto, Kaja Sil-

verman uses the idea of an acoustic mirror extensively in her 1994 analysis of
contemporary film. The acoustic mirror refers to the mirroring effect created
when one hears oneself talk. The speaker’s VOICE is simultaneously emitted and
received by him/herself. Because the VOICE so conceived can be internalized and
externalized at the same time, it carries the potential to destabilize individual
SUBJECTIVITY.

ACTIVE DESIRE In their explorations of representations of women in

film, Laura Mulvey and Marianne Doane use the term “active desire” to refer to a
type of DESIRE that involves an active, rather than a passive, SUBJECT position
(see FEMINIST FILM THEORY). They pose this form of DESIRE as opposite to
the passive DESIRE in which they believe women film viewers typically engage.
In her 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey theorizes
that Hollywood conventions of cinematic practice construct the GAZE as male.
4 Artwords

The female BODY in classical NARRATIVE cinema is the “SITE of sight.” A

male spectator is constructed both within the film and the audience. The female
BODY acts as the FETISHIZED object of the MALE GAZE, and those in the audi-
ence necessarily take on the role of masculine VOYEUR. Further, the combina-
tion of NARRATIVE and SPECTACLE (the functions of telling and showing) re-
flects a system of SEXUAL imbalance in which the male is the active SUBJECT
and the female is the passive object. Since within her framework women can
only function as the objects of SPECTACLE, not as spectators, Mulvey’s
THEORIES leave little room for nonobjectifying representations of women or for
expression of feminine as opposed to MASCULINE DESIRE. Feminist DIS-
COURSE subsequent to Mulvey’s “seminal” article calls for exploration of the
development of forms of REPRESENTATION that can embody and convey wom-
en’s DESIRE.
In The Desire to Desire : The Woman's Film of the 1940s Doane extends ,

Mulvey’s THEORIES, asserting that the female viewer as constructed in classical

Hollywood film can only “desire to desire.” She explains how the filmic image
operates as a shop window for the female viewer: “The cinematic image for the
woman is both shop window and mirror, the one simply a means of access to
the other. The mirror/window takes on then the aspect of a trap whereby her
SUBJECTIVITY becomes synonymous with her subjectification” (Doane, The
Desire to Desire p. 33).
,

The path of resistance to the subjugation of women Mulvey

thus produced — as
—
and Doane see it involves development of forms of film and other visual media
that offer women the active instead of the passive role. Contemporary artist
Mary Kelly explores the possibility for development of active DESIRE by
women Western commodity culture in a mixed-media installation, Interim.
in
Kelly proposes that an examination of hysteria might lead us to new formula-
tions of possible alternative SUBJECT positions for women. According to
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY, the female hysteric is characterized by an excess of
identification with the male VOYEUR’S DESIRE. Through her process of identifi-
cation with the masculine VOYEUR, she comes to DESIRE
be the object that to
the male spectator desires her to be, and postures herself in a sort of THE-
ATRICAL REPRESENTATION of that object. Kelly utilizes in her installation het-
erogeneous and ANICONIC imagery (REPRESENTATION not based on resemblance
or analogy) because, she can have the effect of displacing the female
tells us “it

spectator’s ‘hysterical’ identification with the male VOYEUR.” (Kelly, Interim p. ,

?) The hysteric’s inability to DESIRE is paradigmatic of the inability to DESIRE

by women in general. If women cannot actively DESIRE, they can only DESIRE
to DESIRE. As Doane says, “In female spectatorship, it is a capitulation to the
image, an overinvestment in and overidentification with the story and its charac-
ter. Unable to negotiate the distance which is a prerequisite to DESIRE and its

displacements, the female spectator is always, in some sense, constituted as a

hysteric” (Doane, The Desire to Desire, p. 67)

AESTHETIC EMOTION According to Clive Bell, it is the distinction of

art that it is able to produce this particular emotion. Aesthetic emotion is the re-
Form, which is in turn produced by a certain use of the ele-
sult of Significant
ments of design. There is no particular combination of formal elements that is
required to produce Significant Form. Any combination that moves the viewer
Glossary 5

aesthetically will qualify as SignificantForm. The elements of design, according

to Bell, work on viewers via “certain unknown and mysterious laws” (see Clive
Bell, “The Aesthetic Hypothesis.’’) It is the job of the critic to point out how
particular works of art do or do not produce aesthetic emotion.

A-FILM A term from the American STUDIO ERA, signifying a major produc-
tion, usually with important stars and a generous budget. A-Films were usually
shown as the main feature on double bills.

ALLEGORY In the usual sense, the second, hidden, or “merely rhetorical’’

meaning of a TEXT or visual image, as opposed to any literal or apparent mean-
ing. Techniques of allegory include personification, METAPHOR, and SYM-
BOLISM. In the visual arts, Craig Owens, in his article “The Allegorical Im-
pulse,’’ argues that modernist formalist art THEORY and production suspended the
allegorical possibilities of visual REPRESENTATION in favor of Kantian SELF-
REFERENCE. This FICTION, as Owens refers to it, could not be maintained after
Minimalism. POSTMODERNIST art works to problematize the activity of picto-
rial reference not to proclaim the AUTONOMY and SELF-SUFFICIENCY of art, but
to point out art’s contingency partly through the use of ambiguously allegorical
imagery.

ALTERITY Alterity describes the condition of an individual who, due to race,

class, gender, age, and so on, is marginalized, and placed in the position of
OTHER (see MARG1NALITY, OTHER, and RADICAL ALTERITY).

ALTHUSSER/ALTHUSSERIAN Having similarities to the writings of

French social theorist Louis Althusser, especially a concern with INTER-
PELLATION, SUBJECTIVITY, and REPRESSIVE and IDEOLOGICAL STATE
APPARATUSES.

ALWAYS ALREADY A phrase used by Jacques DERRIDA and many subse-

quent writers of literature and art to describe an imminent and immanent contra-
diction in a TEXT. This contradiction is made more obvious through DE-
CONSTRUCTION, but is not brought to a TEXT from the outside. It is already
there, and has always been there, lurking in the TEXT.

AMBIGUITY The quality that allows a WORK to have different interpreta-

tions. This is achieved, intentionally or not, through a use of visual, spoken, or
written language that has an uncertain significance. While such a condition has
been considered a flaw of a TEXT, it has been seen in more recent art
traditionally
as an important rhetorical device that makes the processes of SIGNIFICATION
more readily apparent.

ANICONIC A kind of REPRESENTATION that does not include a resemblance

to a REFERENT. In some recent FEMINIST art and THEORY, aniconic REP-
RESENTATION has been exemplified by an avoidance of pictorial REPRE-
SENTATION of the female BODY. The advantage of this type of reference is in al-
lowing “woman” to be represented without being identified with the female
BODY, which has often been taken as the definition and limit of “woman.”
6 Artwords

ANTI-AESTHETIC As Hal Foster explains in The Anti- Aesthetic: Essays

on Postmodern Culture this term refers to the general shift from MODERNISM
,

to POSTMODERNISM. Foster indicates two ways in which “anti-aesthetic” can be

understood to describe this shift. First, the anti-aesthetic can be seen as a critique
that destructures the order of REPRESENTATIONS in order to reinscribe them.
Second, the anti-aesthetic can be understood as an extreme doubt and skepticism
of the notion of the aesthetic, especially of the idea that the aesthetic exists
“apart,” almost beyond historical and social The anti-aesthetic,
specificities.
however, is not intended as a negation of art or REPRESENTATION, but rather as
a re figuring and rethinking of REPRESENTATION and the aesthetic. Foster’s un-
derstanding of the anti-aesthetic must be distinguished from the idea of ANTI- ART
found in modernity.

ANTI-ART This term is often linked to artists associated with Dada, because
of their aggressive opposition to bourgeois cultural values, and their emphasis
on chance, nonsense, and absurdity. Since such activities and attitudes have en-
raged some in the art world while inspiring others, the term has been used as
both an epithet and an accolade.

APORETIC(AL) Having the qualities of an APORIA.

APORIA From the Greek meaning “impassable path,” an aporia is a contra-

diction of the logic (or sense) and the RHETORIC in a TEXT. This should not be
confused with a simple logical contradiction that may be found in an argument.
The recognition of a contradiction of logic and RHETORIC is crucial to recogniz-
ing and understanding a DECONSTRUCTION.

APPARATUS In film studies, the term “cinematic apparatus” or “filmic ap-

paratus” refers to several interconnected aspects of the production and the viewing
of film, including the technical components of film production, e.g., camera and
projector; the conditions of film projection, e.g., the darkened room, seating that
limitsand directs the viewers’ field of vision, light projected from the viewers’
heads, and a SCREEN in front of the viewers; and the film itself, using various
devices to create the impression of a continuous reality.
In Louis ALTHUSSER’S THEORY of state POWER, this term refers not only to
a collection of the mechanical means of production in a society, but more gener-
ally to the means of producing cultural and social norms. They are of two types:
Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs).
RSAs include governments, administrations, armies, police, courts, prisons, and
so on. To ALTHUSSER, RSAs function ultimately (but not always) through the
real or perceived threat of violence. Combining SEMIOTICS, LACANIAN
PSYCHOANALYSIS, Marxist THEORY, ALTHUSSER describes
and, most of all,

ISAs, on the other hand, as functioning through IDEOLOGY by representing the

“IMAGINARY relationship” of individuals to their “real conditions” of existence.
ISAs are the means through which ideologies form individuals: religions, fam-
ily, professions, schools, museums, courts, film and television, newspapers and
magazines, advertising, and so on. They are typically the nonviolent, cultural,
and often seductive means by which ideologies are distributed. IDEOLOGY consti-
Glossary 7

tutes SUBJECTS within ISAs through INTERPELLATION or “hailing,” that is,

through the ways in which IDEOLOGY addresses itself directly to a SUBJECT.

ISAs are the material systems of have effects
social practices that upon individu-
als, providing them, for example, with their social identities and positions. Such

workings of IDEOLOGY “naturalize” ARBITRARY DISCOURSE and social ar-

rangements.

APPROPRIATION Influenced by THEORIES of both SEMIOTICS and

SIMULATION, appropriation refers to the practice of reproducing or copying as
accurately as possible in one WORK
of art all or part of another from a WORK
different CONTEXT (most commonly from art history or mass media). In
MODERNISM and “found objects” into
earlier periods, artists often incorporated
artworks and also paid homage to the great artists of the past by borrowing im-
ages and compositions. This kind of activity was rarely a highly valued activity.
In the late 1970s, however, shifts in art criticism allowed for more positive
evaluations of appropriation. It has been viewed as a critical method on the part
of some artists within POSTMODERNISM interested in questioning notions of
ORIGINALITY and of progress of the history of art.
A second meaning of the term, with very different connotations, is found in
more recent issues connected to multiculturalism. Here, to appropriate is akin to
“stealing” some aspect of a CULTURE that has been put into a marginal position
or a position of “OTHER.” This sort of appropriation has met with a great deal
of criticism, as it is seen as a form of colonization and cultural domination.

ARBITRARY In SEMIOTICS, the relationship of a SIGNIFIER to a SIGNIFIED

and of a SIGN to a REFERENT is considered to be arbitrary. This indicates that
semiotic relations are unmotivated, not necessary, not natural, in short, deter-
mined by CONVENTION.

ARBORESCENT See RHIZOMATIC AND ARBORESCENT.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE This phrase is taken from the title

of one of Michel FOUCAULT’S books, The Archaeology of Knowledge, origi-

nally published in France in 1969. (Later FOUCAULT added “The Discourse on
Language” as an appendix to the main TEXT of the book.) In general usage, the
phrase refers to any analysis of DISCOURSE that is concerned with the processes
by which statements are generated and regulated within a system. More figura-
tively, the phrase is commonly used to refer to any layering of ideas upon other
ideas, or to a historical search for the sources of ideas.

ART FOR ART’S SAKE A phrase used most commonly to refer to

FORMALISM, a critical position on art that flourished within MODERNISM.
From the formalist perspective, art be done and appreciated for its own
is to
sake, and not for any reason extraneous to the WORK of art, such as the imita-
tion of nature, political purposes, or even expressive purposes. Art has an
AUTONOMY that makes it valuable in and of itself.

AUTEUR THEORY A THEORY of film popularized by the French journal

Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s, primarily with reference to Hollywood. This
8 Artwords

THEORY emphasizes the director as the major source of meaning. A strong direc-
tor (an auteur i.e., AUTHOR) stamps the material with his or her personal vi-
,

sion, characteristic themes, STRUCTURE, or style, even when working with an

externally imposed script or GENRE, or other restrictions inherent in the studio
system.

AUTHOR Until relatively recently, the concept of the author was an untrou-
bled one. With Roland BARTHES’S “The Death
of the Author” (1977) and
Michel FOUCAULT’S “What is an Author?” (1977), the idea of the author has
become more PROBLEMATIC. BARTHES’S challenge of the idea of the author is
part of his larger challenge of bourgeois values. The author and the living person
who wrote the TEXT should not be seen as identical. A TEXT, to BARTHES, is
not a collection of statements originating from a creative, godlike individual, but
a collection of “quotations” from the wider CULTURE. The author then is not so
much a PRESENCE no longer the
as a location or an interstice. If the author is

origin of a TEXT, the author no longer has control of the range of meanings of
that TEXT. The author as usually understood is “dead,” but at that same time the
READER is “born,” because without the author to limit the interpretation of the
TEXT the READER can exert more control over the meanings of the TEXT. The
TEXT becomes as much the product of a READER as of an author. We can cer-
tainly add to that combination all those others who work on texts but are not
seen as authors: editors, publishers, friends, critics, students, and so on.
FOUCAULT, DISCOURSE ANALYSIS and the
consistent with his interests in
POWER that accompanies INSTITUTIONS, sees the author not so much as the
person who writes, but as a category of person who writes that which is deemed
a special category of writing. Authors then perform a “classificatory function,”
allowing certain types of writing to be organized in some categories, while other
forms of writing are placed into other categories. Grocery lists are not usually
seen as having authors, but poetry is. Part of the function of an author is to pro-
vide a grounding for the distinction of different types of utterances, as well as dif-
ferent individuals. The usual idea of writing poetry is different from the notions
we usually have about grocery shopping. To FOUCAULT, the historical rise of
the author as an individual emerges together with the rise of modern concepts of
the individual human being. Authors possess certain characteristics that are seen
as important for authors in specific historical periods. For FOUCAULT, the rise
of the author, together with shifts in his/her expected characteristics, demon-
strates the artificial and contingent nature not only of authors but of all human
SUBJECTS.

AUTHOR FUNCTION See AUTHOR

AUTONOMY According to some of the more extreme positions of the

FORMALIST THEORY of the arts, the WORK of art does or should exist in a sepa-
rate spherefrom that of everyday life. This allows art to develop to some degree
independently from the pressures of the marketplace or politics. One way of
achieving a position of autonomy is through complete abstraction, a strategy en-
dorsed by Clement Greenberg and Theodor Adorno. This critical strategy goes by
many other names: independence, self-criticism, SELF-SUFFICIENCY, SELF-
REFERENCE, self-reflection. See also FORMALISM and ART FOR ART’S SAKE.
Glossary 9

AVANT-GARDE The first use of the term was a military phrase in French
strategic textbooks, meaning a scouting party that goes ahead of the main force,
initiates a skirmish without taking part in a battle, and then reports back to the
main column. The use of the term in the arts was in 1825 by the utopian
first

socialist Henri de Saint-Simone, who said of the arist Gustave Courbet and oth-
ers, “it is you artists who will serve as our Avant-Garde ” (Saint-Simon was us-
ing the term analogously to refer to the more general idea that it is the role of
artist to lead society into a better future). The term was later adapted to indicate
the “leading edge” or “advanced” developments in the arts, and eventually came to
refer to anything new or unusual.
,
BAKHTINIAN DIALOGICS See DIALOGIC/DIALOGISM.

BARTHES/BARTHESIAN Having similarities to the writings of French

SEMIOLOGIST and literary critic Roland Barthes. He was especially concerned
with the SEMIOTICS of a large range of cultural phenomena, from the visual arts
to stripping and professional wrestling.

BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE According to Marxist cultural

THEORY, the term “base” designates the means of industrial production and in-
cludes natural resources as well as the control of those resources by the ruling
CLASS. The “superstructure” includes religion, philosophy, and cultural produc-
tion such as literature, theatre, and visual art. Marxist theorists and critics are es-

pecially concerned with how superstructural activities produce IDEOLOGY that

prevents workers from seeing the true conditions of their existence. Therefore,
criticism of art is at the same time a criticism of IDEOLOGY and is an important
social and political activity.

BASSESSE The French novelist, philosopher, and art critic Georges Bataille
(1897 — 1962) has had an impact on recent CRITICAL THEORY through such writ-

ings as The Accursed Share (1949, trans. 1988), The Tears of Eros (1961, trans.
1989), and Georges Bataille: Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927 — 1939
(1988). Bataille regards the INFORME (“unformed”), which he likens to spit, as

capable of subverting rational, categorical thinking. He further develops this

concept through the idea of bassesse (baseness), the mechanism by which he be-
lieves the INFORME can be achieved.
One of the ways Bataille feels that formlessness can be achieved is by rotating
the “proper” vertical axis of a human from the upright posture to the horizontal
axis. He explores this baseness in his essay “The Big Toe” (1929), which was
12 Artwords

accompanied by photographs of feet and toes produced by the French Surrealist

Jacques- Andre Boiffard. Bataille offers the lowliest of all appendages, from which

this essay derives its name, as that which connects us to the most base, the most
earthly elements of human existence, since it is literally our connection to the
earth. Positing two orders of seduction, the
and the base, Bataille presents
ideal
the big toe as a reminder of the side of human existence which we, as humans,
are drawn to but attempt to deny. Bataille says:

Since by its physical attitude the human can from

race distances itself as much as it

terrestrial mud —
one can imagine that a toe, always more or less damaged and humili-
ating, is psychologically analogous to the brutal fall of a man in other words, to —
death. The hideously cadaverous and at the same time loud and proud appearance of the
big toe corresponds to this derision and gives a very shrill expression to the disorder
of the human body, that product of the violent discord of the organs. (Bataille, Vi-
sions of Excess , p. 22)

Contemporary critic and art historian Rosalind Krauss asserts that Bataille’
influence on surrealism resulted in “the production of images that do not deco-
rate, but rather structure the basic mechanisms of thought” (Krauss, L’ Amour
Fou, p. 64). The concepts of the INFORME and bassesse are central to Bataille’
concern with the structuring of these mechanisms. Bataille critiques the depen-
dence on negativity of forms of thought which derive from the Hegelian dialec-
tic.He views DIALECTICAL thinking as positing the master/slave relationship as
fundamental to POWER STRUCTURES. The slave inhabits the negative pole of a
relationship of BINARY OPPOSITION. In his desire to transcend such oppositional
forms of thought, Bataille proposes that the oppressed, the “slave,” effects an act
of TRANSGRESSION through strategic employment of that regarded as most base,
those characteristics of human existence which most closely resemble those of
animal existence. Allan Stoekl explains: “the slave gains essential mastery over
the master through his constructive use of the dead matter the master would fly
above” (Stoekl, Georges Bataille Visions of Excess, p. xvi).
in ,

In a contemporary reworking of Boiffard’ s photographs of the same subject,

John Coplans explores the bassesse in a series of photographs of his own feet
and toes. These works form part of a larger body of work in which Coplans ex-
plores the TRANSGRESSIVE potential of display of the GROTESQUE BODY. (See
GROTESQUE.)

BAUDRILLARD/BAUDRILLARDIAN Having similarities to the writ-

ings of French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, especially those concerned with
SIMULATION, SIMULACRA, mass media, and the general spread of copies, dupli-
cates and other SIGNS of the REAL that threaten to replace the REAL.

B-FILM A low-budget movie usually shown as the second feature during the
American STUDIO ERA. B-films rarely included important stars and mostly took
the form of POPULAR genres, like westerns, thrillers, horror films, and so on.
Glossary 13

The major studios used them as testing ground for the “raw” talent under contract
and as their filler product.

BINARY DIFFERENCE See BINARY OPPOSITION.

BINARY OPPOSITION Central to dialectic logic, a bringing together of

two terms into exclusive oppositional relationship with one another. This ar-
rangement of terms is common to the European traditions of philosophical and
scientific discourses. Some prominent examples are positive and negative, male
and female, good and evil, and mind and BODY. In SEMIOTICS, the binary oppo-
sition is one of the limits to the ARBITRARY relationship of SIGNIFIERS to
SIGNIFIEDS and SIGNS to REFERENTS. At any one point in time, a SIGN signi-
fies what it does because it does not signify something else. For example, the

spoken word “hat” means what it does in part because, at the moment of its ut-
terance, “hat” does not mean the same as the spoken word “boat.”

BIO-POWER See DISCIPLINE.

BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies,

Birmingham, England, includes writers such as Stuart Hall. It is especially inter-
ested in studying mass media, GATEKEEPING, HEGEMONY, and elitism, and is
generally influenced by, but not limited to, Marxist THEORY.

BODY DISCOURSE on the body as a SITE of regulation and control has com-
prised a significant portion of recent feminist THEORY. In contemporary
CULTURE, the attributes of a normative femininity are conveyed predominantly
through the visual CODES of the POPULAR media. The construction of individual
feminine SUBJECTIVITY depends upon a visual presentation of the self that con-
forms to such CODES. The body, the SITE for presentation of this self, is thus of
primary importance.
Much contemporaryTHEORY that deals with the BODY finds its source in the
ideas of Michel FOUCAULT. As FOUCAULT writes in A History of Sexuality,
Volume 1: An Introduction, the body in the modern CONTEXT is a primary SITE
of regulation and control. In his discussion of how disciplinary POWER operates
as a form of social control, FOUCAULT explains how the body is configured
within disciplinary practices that make individuals both more powerful and more
productive. Such practices, however, also make individuals more docile. Bodies
constructed through disciplinary practices, “docile bodies,” can, according to
FOUCAULT, be broken down into two types: the INTELLIGIBLE and USEFUL
BODIES. The INTELLIGIBLE BODY is constructed of our normative cultural con-
ceptions of the body, how it is represented in the DISCOURSES of science, phi-
losophy, and norms of beauty and health. Such REPRESENTATIONS serve to
formulate a set of practices that function to regulate the body and produce USE-
FUL BODIES. USEFUL BODIES (also known as practical bodies) are well-adapted
to their social function and, at the same time, ill-adapted to perform actions not
14 Art words

deemed socially useful or socially fit. These USEFUL BODIES are valued and
deemed aesthetically pleasing because they are perceived as well-adapted to their
function. The USEFUL BODY, which is not shaped or determined by nature, is
culturally mediated. It produces meaning through real use and function. In con-
trast, the INTELLIGIBLE BODY produces meaning through appearance and sym-
bolic function.Susan Bordo, a cultural theorist who has productively applied
Foucault’s conception of the body to a feminist critique of contemporary
CULTURE, points out that the INTELLIGIBLE BODY and the USEFUL BODY grow
out of the same DISCOURSE and are mutually supportive. She asserts that, if
FEMINISM is to have any effect on women’s lives, it must examine the connec-
tions between the INTELLIGIBLE BODY (the body as represented in culturally
dominant discourses) and the USEFUL BODY (the body as it functions in practical
terms in the everyday world) (See Bordo, “The Body and Reproduction of Femi-
ninity: A Feminist Appropriation of Foucault”).
The work of a number of cultural theorists who focus on the body has had a
particularly strong impact on the field of visual art. The influence of most major
theorists, such as LACAN, Kristeva, FOUCAULT, and DERRIDA, has been for the
most part indirect, exerted through writers of lesser stature who have interpreted
their THEORIES and thus made them accessible and applicable to the work of vi-

sual artists. Such interpreters include Laura Mulvey, who has had a major impact
on FEMINIST FILM THEORY through her application of Freudian and LACANIAN
THEORY to film; Barbara Creed, whose THEORIES regarding the “monstrous fem-
inine” have served to more widely disseminate the ideas of Julia Kristeva; Mary
Russo, whose work on the female GROTESQUE has stimulated feminist theorists’
interest in Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas regarding CARNIVAL and the GROTESQUE;
Susan Bordo, who has productively applied FOUCAULT’S ideas to contemporary
cultural phenomena, such as eating disorders like anorexia nervosa Australian ;

theorists Moira Gatens and Elizabeth Grosz, who have drawn on a wide range of
cultural THEORY but have made perhapsmost significant contribution to
their
FEMINIST understanding in their discussion and applications of PSYCHO-
ANALYTIC THEORY; and Judith Butler, who has served as a major elucidator of
the ideas of a number of cultural theorists, including FOUCAULT, LACAN, and
the French feminist theorists Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray, and Helene Cixous.

BODY WITHOUT ORGANS DELEUZE

Originating in the ideas of Gilles
and Felix GUATTARI, the idea of a BODY WITHOUT ORGANS (BWO) is a BODY
without “organization” and outside any determinate state. The lack of organiza-
tion means that the BODY has regained its potentiality and is outside the socially
articulated, disciplined, semiotized, and subjectified state in which BODIES have
been in modernity. The BWO has become disarticulated, dismantled, and deterrito-
rialized, and hence is able to be reconstructed in new ways. DELEUZE and
GUATTARI’ S articulation of the BWO includes the description of how some
BWOs tend toward a more limited, organized, and disciplined state, and toward
remaining in existence or a returning to existence. This tendency, or DESIRE,
turns the BWO into a DESIRING MACHINE, constantly moving toward that which
Glossary 15

it cannot fully possess or become. A DESIRING MACHINE, also called an assem-

blage at times by DELEUZE and GUATTARI, is both a tendency in humans and a
machine. The BWO and the DESIRING MACHINE are parts of the larger movement
in recent cultural thought that attempts to reconceive and reposition the human
SUBJECT and SUBJECTIVITY in social, cultural, and historical contexts. See also
NOMADOLOGY, and RHIZOMATIC and ARBORESCENT. (See DELEUZE AND
GUATTARI, 1987.)

BRICOLEUR A term borrowed from the writings of French structuralist lin-

guist Claude Levi-Strauss, bricoleur indicates one who makes do with whatever
material odds and ends are available at any given time. What is constructed from
these materials is a bricolage, or a kind of improvisational and makeshift handi-
work slapped or collaged together from found materials. Levi-Strauss used the
term to describe the processes by which primitive societies construct language
and MYTH. Jacques DERRIDA widened the concept to include the activity of bor-
rowing from one’s own textual heritage whatever is needed to produce new and
different TEXTS, with the emphasis on intertextual borrowing for the purposes of
textual construction.

BWO See BODY WITHOUT ORGANS.

c

CANON A canon is a “list” of great works or masterpieces. Literally, of

course, there is no official single and unchanging list. Rather, a canon is a gen-
erally recognized set of works that are repeatedly discussed, taught, read, repro-
duced, or exhibited with regularity over a period of time. To locate a canon, one
need only look at anthologies of literary works or art history survey textbooks.
Canons are by necessity exclusive and confer value on some works and not oth-
ers. In recent years, the processes by which canons have formed, as well as the
socio-political effects on the contents of canons, have been the topic of great
discussion and debate.

CARNIVAL Carnival figures prominently in the writings of Russian linguist

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975). Interested in folk CULTURE of the late medieval
and early Renaissance periods of European history, Bakhtin makes the collective
ritual of carnival the SUBJECT of much of his writing. He sees the imagery and
ritual of carnival as characterized by a “MATERIAL BODILY PRINCIPLE,” which
finds expression in “GROTESQUE REALISM.” In GROTESQUE REALISM all

things bodily become grossly exaggerated, exceeding all normal and proper lim-
its. In the carnival, the “high” and the “ideal” are lowered through laughter linked
to the “bodily lower stratum” and lower bodily functions. GROTESQUE REALISM
celebrates all those aspects of material existence that are commonly regarded in
Western CULTURE as base or degraded.
Peter Stallybrass and Allon White use Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World
(1940, trans. 1968 and 1984) to study carnival as a cultural DISCOURSE and as a
SITE of TRANSGRESSION, from which political change may be effected through
a rearrangement of the relations of “high” and “low” across a social STRUCTURE.
The subversive potential of carnival is characterized by a diffuse and humorous
heterogeneity, by of inversions, mockery, and degradation. Laughter
all sorts

figures prominently in the carnivalesque. Comedic reenactments of ritual

SPECTACLE that PARODY such practices of high CULTURE, THEATRICAL verbal
PLAY, and GROTESQUE display of the BODY make up the major components of
carnival as conceived by Bakhtin. Such theatrics of carnivalesque PER-
18 Artwords

FORMANCE are believed to produce a leveling of CLASS distinctions; as a conse-

quence, they are regarded as potentially subversive of the existing social order
with its established distinctions of high and low.
Stallybrass and White maintain major
that only those actions that challenge
cultural SITES of DISCOURSE —
acts of defiance that normally originate from
those occupying low or marginalized positions such as found in carnival can —
hold the TRANSGRESSIVE POWER necessary to effect true political transforma-
tion. They regard carnival as a DISCURSIVE FORMATION that provides a model
of resistance through its function as a SITE of TRANSGRESSION that derives its

subversive potential from the crossing of limits, the violation of boundaries, and
the joining of opposites. GROTESQUE display of the BODY, a significant ritual
element of carnival, transgresses the socially determined proper limits of the
BODY. In such display somatic SYMBOLS function as producers of social classi-
fication. Through employment of HYBRID forms that function as somatic
METAPHORS for such crossing of limits and joining of opposites, social limits
are transgressed and, at the same time, established.
Tracing the development of carnival from medieval to nineteenth-century Eu-
rope, Stallybrass and White maintain that the carnival came to signify for the
nineteenth-century European bourgeoisie “the culture of the other” (Stallybrass
and White, p. 178). The carnival carried, in SYMBOLIC FORM, all that members
of polite bourgeois society strove to eliminate from their lives. The breaking
down of boundaries and abandonment of social hierarchies in carnival violated
those distinctions between self and other that were necessary to the sense of a
discrete individual self. The GROTESQUE BODY as displayed in carnival, in its
corpulence and excess, threatened to overflow the limits of the discretely bounded
CLASSICAL BODY.
Stallybrass and White describe the ritual inversions of carnival as involving
degradation of those representing authority in the CULTURE (kings, government
officials, and so on.) through conferring GROTESQUE qualities upon them. Such
GROTESQUE making up the bottom half of the
attributes involve those features
BODY (the toes, feet, buttocks, anus, and genitals), which are displayed in
comic, mocking fashion. The GROTESQUE BODY may thus be effective in
strategies of resistance, “may become a primary, highly-charged intersection and
mediation of social and political forces, a sort of intensifier and displacer in the
making of IDENTITY” (Stallybrass and White, p. 25). Display of the
GROTESQUE BODY in carnival as discussed by Bakhtin can be “rediscovered as a
governing dynamic of the BODY, the household, the city, the nation-state in- —
deed a vast range of interconnected domains” (Stallybrass and White, p. 19).
The main weakness pointed out by various critics of Bakhtin’s conception of
carnival as oppositional is that, as an officially sanctioned event, carnival may
serve as a controlled form of opposition. Such opposition, because contained,
may serve to consolidate rather than subvert the positions of those in POWER.
Literary critic Terry Eagleton voices this opinion, noting that carnival is “a li-
censed affair in every sense, a permissible RUPTURE of HEGEMONY, a contained
popular blow-off as disturbing and relatively ineffectual as a revolutionary work
of art” (Eagleton, Walter Benjamin, p. 148).
Mary Russo notes that anthropologists Mary Douglas and Victor Turner also
see rituals, such as carnival, that involve status reversals as basically conserva-
tive social forces. In their view, they reinforce existing social structures, thus
Glossary 19

consolidating that which they oppose. Temporary loss of social differentiation

and HIERARCHY found in carnival function as brief periods of collective disorder
that, in invoking chaos and danger, cause the status quo to appear safe and desir-
able. Dissenting from this view, Russo argues for the subversive potential of
carnival. She describes carnival as characterized by a diffuse heterogeneity, by
“all manner of recombination, inversion, mockery, and degradation,” and argues
for the capacity of carnival to serve as the SITE of political change:

The political implications of this heterogeneity are obvious: it sets carnival apart
from the merely oppositional and reactive; carnival and the carnivalesque suggest a
redeployment or counterproduction of culture, knowledge, and pleasure. In its multi-
valent oppositional play, carnival refuses to surrender the critical and cultural tools
of the dominant class, and in this sense, carnival can be seen above all as a site of in-
surgency, and not merely withdrawal (Russo, “Female Grotesques,” p. 218).

Stallybrass and White believe that, although carnival may be a normally stable
officially sanctioned ritual, in cases of already heightened political unrest it may
function as both catalyst to and SITE of actual conflict (Stallybrass and White, p.
14). They point out that one can find many instances in European history when
violent uprisings occurred during carnival.
Russo asserts that recent DISCOURSE on carnival, or the carnivalesque, has
“translocated the issues of bodily exposure and containment, disguise and
GENDER MASQUERADE, abjection and MARGINALITY, PARODY and excess, to
the field of the social constituted as a SYMBOLIC system” (Russo, “Female
Grotesques,” p. 214). This DISCOURSE has led CULTURAL STUDIES to seek out
models for transformation and social change in those phenomena operating sym-
bolically at the margins of CULTURE. Asserting that one of the dominant con-
cerns of recent FEMINISM has been to reestablish the BODYSITE of contes-
as a
tation within the political realm, Russo feels that, at this point, it would be pro-
ductive to assess “how the relation between the SYMBOLIC and cultural con-
structs of femininity and Womanness and the experience of women (as variously
identified and SUBJECT to multiple determinations) might be brought together
toward a dynamic model of a new social SUBJECTIVITY.”
In the contemporary CONTEXT, Bakhtin’s conception of the carnivalesque is
often applied to POPULAR CULTURE, to those “low” cultural forms that are ex-
cluded from the realm of “high” CULTURE. Consequently, carnival THEORY has
played a central role in much recent CULTURAL STUDIES focusing on film, tele-
vision, and other commercial forms. In addition, a number of contemporary
artists have explored the realm of the carnivalesque in attempts to subvert the ex-
clusionary practices of high CULTURE. One recent example is the “Bad Girls”
exhibition held simultaneously at the Museum of Contemporary Art in New
York and the UCLA Wight Art Gallery in Los Angeles in 1994. Curator Marcia
Tucker acknowledges the carnivalesque as a basis for the exhibit’s premise and
the relevance of Bakhtin’s THEORIES to recent artwork that deals with FEMINISM
and GENDER She finds the carnivalesque particularly relevant to those
issues.
artists who are “trying to effect positive social change by being both transgres-
sive and funny (hoping to kill more flies with honey than with the fly-swatter)”
(Tucker, Bad Girls, p. 23). She sees the “Bad Girls” show as, like carnival,
“characterized by an inordinate ability to mix disparate elements with wild aban-
don and to confound categories, social positions and hierarchies of space, lan-
20 Artwords

guage and CLASS; to provide both a ‘festive critique’ and an extreme utopian vi-
sion of society at the same time; and to reconfigure the world through laughter”
(P- 23).

CENTER In the STRUCTURALIST SEMIOTIC THEORY of Saussure, the center

is that which governs and SIGNIFICATION, but that is
limits the arbitrariness of
at the same time outside REPRESENTATION. As part of his development of
DECONSTRUCTION, Jacques DERRIDA such a notion of the center by
criticized
—
arguing that it cannot be represented that is, posed as a fundamental component
of a THEORY of REPRESENTATION —
and at the same time exist outside
REPRESENTATION.

CENTRAL CORE IMAGERY See CENTRAL VOID AESTHETIC.

CENTRAL VOID AESTHETIC Lucy Lippard was perhaps the

Art critic
most vocal proponent of what has become known as first-generation FEMINIST
art. Writing about such WORK in the early 1970s, Lippard described it as charac-
terized by a number of features that she believed expressed an innate feminine
aesthetic sense. Such features include soft veils of color, high tactility, and a
composition structured around a central void. The centralized void she described,
which had been previously labeled by artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro
as“CENTRAL CORE IMAGERY” and by others as “VAGINAL ICONOGRAPHY,” be-
came the object of much debate. Some believed such imagery was the product of
women’s bodily experience, of their sense of the vaginal orifice and womb as an
empty bodily space located at the core of their physical being. In the catalog es-
say that accompanied the 1973 exhibition “Women Choose Women,” Lippard
describes how she has observed in women’s art “a uniform density, or overall
and repetitive to the point of obsession; the pre-
texture, often sensuously tactile
ponderance of circular forms and central focus (sometimes contradicting the first
aspect). a new fondness for the pinks and pastels and the ephemeral cloud-
. .

colors that used to be taboo unless a woman wanted to be ‘accused’ of making

‘feminine’ art” (Lippard, “A Note on the Politics and Aesthetics of a Women’s
Show, pp. 6-7).

CINEMA VERITE (French, literally “cinema truth”.) A style of filmmak-

ing that claims that methods do not interfere with the way events take place
its

in “reality.” Cinema verite depends upon lightweight equipment (hand-held cam-

era and portable sound APPARATUS) and usually involves very small (two-per-
son) crews. Originally associated with the work of the French ethnographer Jean
Rouch (late 1940s, 1950s), cinema verite inspired the American movement of
“direct cinema,” which became the dominant style of documentary in the early
1960s.

CLASS Most commonly, a class refers to a particular economic group. The

term comes out of MARXIST THEORY and has been used to designate those parts
of a society that are, or may eventually be, locked in a struggle with one another
over the control of the means of production. More recently Pierre Bourdieu has
extended the economic conception of class to develop his idea of “social habi-
tus.” One’s habitus or position is determined by income, but also by education,
Glossary 21

taste, profession, and leisure Bourdieu’s conception of class has been

activities.
especially attractive to cultural criticism in general, since it emphasizes the im-
portance of the arts in determining class and class interests.

CLASSICAL BODY The classical body plays an important role in the writ-
ings of two major twentieth-century cultural theorists. Russian linguist Mikhail
Bakhtin (1875-1975) develops concepts of the classical (or classic) and
GROTESQUE BODY in Rabelais and His World a study of the sixteenth-century
,

French writer Rabelais. He distinguishes the classical BODY, which is clearly de-
lineated and distinguished from its surroundings and possesses no open orifices,
from the GROTESQUE BODY, which is typified by prominently displayed orifices
and a lack of distinction from its environment. The SUBJECT possessing the
classical body is delimited and contained. Bakhtin explains that the GROTESQUE
BODY, which is always in the process of metamorphosis and always unfinished,
transgresses its limits and overflows into its environment. It is not a discrete
whole completely differentiated from its surroundings like the classical BODY.
French theorist Michel FOUCAULT also speaks of a classical BODY. As he ex-
plains in Discipline and Punish, “protocols of the classical body” were integral
to the rationality that became the guiding principle of eighteenth-century Euro-
pean CULTURE and resulted in a proliferation of INSTITUTIONS such as prisons,
hospitals, asylums, barracks, and schools designed to assure reason and order
within a clearly established HIERARCHY (FOUCAULT, Discipline and Punish, p.
22). Like the classical BODY, which was defined by what it excluded through a
process of rigid control, the Age of Reason was defined by what it excluded.
Anything irrational, anything “low,” anything impure, anything GROTESQUE
was pushed to the margins.
In The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, Peter S tally brass and Allon
White explain Bakhtin’s concept of the classical body as denoting “the inherent
form of the high official culture” and as suggesting that “the shape and plasticity
of the human BODY is indissociable from the shape and plasticity of discursive
material and social norm in a collectivity” (p. 21). They point out that the clas-
sical body structured the DISCOURSES CULTURE such as philosophy,
of “high”
theology, law, and literature, in which were ENCODED discursive systems charac-
terized by regulation, limits, and CLOSURE.
Bakhtin points out that the GROTESQUE BODY — the aged BODY, the pregnant
—
BODY, the deformed BODY is noncanonical in the artistic traditions of Western
CULTURE. It was excluded from Renaissance high art and aesthetics and conse-
quently from the subsequent tradition of high art in Western CULTURE, which
developed out of the artistic ideal and CANONSof the Renaissance. The canoni-
cal, or classical BODY, which was central to the CANON, is described by Bakhtin
in the following passage:

As conceived by these canons, the body was first of all a strictly complete, finished
product. Furthermore, it was isolated, alone, fenced off from all other bodies. All
signs of its unfinished character, ofgrowth and proliferation were eliminated; its
its

protuberances and offshoots were removed, its convexities (signs of new sprouts and
buds) smoothed out, its apertures closed. The ever unfinished nature of the body was
hidden, kept secret; conception, pregnancy, childbirth, death throes, were almost
never shown. The age represented was as far removed from the mother’s womb as from
the grave, the age most distant from either threshold of individual life. The accent was
22 Artwords

placed on the completed, self-sufficient individuality of the given body (Bakhtin,

Rabelais and His World, p. 29).

In contrast, GROTESQUE images by ambivalence and contradic-

are characterized
tion. By the standards of classical aesthetics (what Bakhtin calls “the aesthetics
of the readymade and completed”), GROTESQUE images are ugly, even mon-
strous, carrying “all the scoriae of birth and development.” (Bakhtin, Rabelais
and His World, p. 25)
Within this canonical tradition, the female BODY is doomed to always fall
short of the ideal. Characterized by orifices and uncontrollable BODY fluids, and
prone to states, such as pregnancy, when boundaries between self and OTHER
cannot be clearly delineated, it always retains an element of the GROTESQUE. In
The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality, Lynda Nead argues that
traditionally the female nude as a CONVENTION of visual REPRESENTATION has
served to contain and regulate the female BODY. The practices and
CONVENTIONS of visual art have worked to produce a female SUBJECT that is
impenetrable and that serves to maintain distinctions between self and OTHER.
She further asserts that, if the boundaries of the BODY are inseparable from the
boundaries structuring the social and cultural, then TRANSGRESSION of the lim-
its of the BODY in REPRESENTATION is also TRANSGRESSION of social limits.
Nead explains that the classical ideals of order and symmetry that permeate
Western aesthetics extend from art criticism and art education into the juridical
realm, where they STRUCTURE ethical standards and legal discourses on obscen-
ity and on art that work to produce a coherent, rational individual. She explains

further that the idea of unified FORM is integral to our conception of selfhood
and individual SUBJECTIVITY. Such an idea of the self can be seen in PSY-
CHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE, in which SUBJECTIVITY is constructed in terms
that emphasize boundaries and fix the limits of the BODY. She cites a passage
from Freud’s “The Ego and The Id” as evidence:

The ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiefly those springing from
the surface of the body. It may thus be regarded as a mental projection of the surface of
the body, besides. . . representing the superficies of the mental apparatus (Freud,
“The Ego and the Id,” p. 26).

Nead proposes that we view the classical female nude as a METAPHORIC expres-
sion of processes that separate and order, that produce clear differentiations be-
tween self and OTHER. She sees the female nude as a “discourse on the subject,
echoing structures of thinking across many areas of the human sciences” (Nead,
P- 7).
Nead discusses Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of Lisa Lyon, winner of
the first World Women’s Bodybuilding Championship in 1979 ,
as images re-
flective of the control and containment typical of the classical body
(Mapplethorpe, Lady: Lisa Lyon, fig. 33). Lyonn’s BODY work and Map-
plethorpe’s manipulation of the photographic medium work together to create
what Samuel Wagstaff, in his foreword to Mapplethorpe’s book calls
“straitjacket style,” or “the world reinvented as logic, precision, sculpture in ob-
vious light and shadow” (p. 8). Hard-edged FORM and stark lighting create a
sculptural FORM that is accentuated by application of graphite to the model’s
BODY. Paradoxically, an image intended to cross GENDER lines, to blend mas-
Glossary 23

culinity and femininity, ends up only reinforcing the bodily containment cultur-
ally PRESCRIBED for the female FORM. Thus, as Nead points out, “the act of
representation is itself an act of regulation” (Nead, p. 9).

CLASSICAL CINEMA A term referring to the feature-length NARRATIVE

film type made and distributed by the Hollywood studio system, roughly from
1925 through 1960. Central to classical cinema are conventions of film practice
that are repeated from film to film and that the audience relies upon and expects.
The characteristics of classical cinema can be determined by the terms of produc-
tion (GENRE, stars, directors, producers); NARRATIVE (tightly organized PLOTS
with clearly defined conflicts and resolutions, and a focus on individual charac-
ters); and editing (alternation and repetition of shots, camera set-ups, angles,
editing patterns). Overall, there is in classical cinema a tendency toward balance,
symmetry, and resolution so that the film appears to move from beginning to
CLOSURE. The typical film from this era is designed to produce a “REALITY
—
EFFECT” to create the illusion of reality for the spectator. Laura Mulvey further
describes classical cinema as having a NARRATIVE STRUCTURE that produces a
polarity between an active/male and passive/female position. In such a film the
male SUBJECT acts and the female SUBJECT provides the passive object of the
viewer’s visual PLEASURE (See Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin-
ema”).

CLOSURE A characteristic trait of classical NARRATIVE STRUCTURE where

we expect every element to be MOTIVATED,
every event to have a cause (which
will be explained in the course of the NARRATIVE), every conflict, ENIGMA and
contradiction that the NARRATIVE sets up in the beginning to be resolved by the
end.

CODE A term used in SEMIOTICS SEMIOLOGY) to indicate a SIGNIFIER or

(or
SIGN, the use of which has become so common and so repeated that it fails to be
recognizable as ARBITRARY. The term also describes a set of rules or CONVEN-
TIONS that STRUCTURE a particular DISCOURSE. Film production, for example,
employs a complex system of codes of REPRESENTATION, such as editing, act-
ing, NARRATIVE, video and audio special effects, music, and dialogue. Some of
these codes — for example, editing — are unique to film, while some are shared
with other arts-— for example, codes of lighting are shared with photography, and
NARRATIVE codes with novels.

CODIFICATION The process through which a word, term, image, or any

other SIGNIFIER or SIGN becomes a CODE.

COLONIAL(ISM)/COLONIALIZED In “The Economy of Manichean

Allegory,” Abdul R. JanMohamed describes colonialist literature as exploration
of a realm lying edge of civilization. Since this uncivilized world has not
at the
yet been “domesticated” by European CODES, it “is therefore perceived as uncon-
trollable, chaotic, unattainable, and ultimately evil.” In his drive to dominate,
the colonizer regards this realm of the OTHER as a SITE of “confrontation based
on differences in RACE, language, social customs, cultural values, and modes of
production” (JanMohamed, p. 18). Colonialist literature ultimately affirms an
24 Artwords

ethnocentric view, codifying the realm of the uncivilized in terms of the coloniz-
mental constructs. JanMohamed asserts that “such literature is essentially
er’s
SPECULAR: Instead of seeing the native as a bridge toward syncretic possibility,
it uses him as a mirror that reflects the colonialist’s self-image” (JanMohamed,
P- 19).
Another major concern in studies of colonialism is with how the colonizer’s
destruction and “rewriting” of the history of the colonized functions as a mecha-
nism of dominance and control. A concomitant concern centers on the question
of whether, in such a situation of dominance, the colonized may achieve agency.
This is one of the major concerns of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who has dis-
cussed the question of whether it is possible for the colonized to find a “VOICE”
that expresses anything other than an “essentialist fiction” (Spivak, “Can the
Subaltern Speak?,” p. 26).
In “Signs Taken Wonders,” Homi Bhabha discusses how the colonizer con-
for
trols the colonized and how the colonized uses mimicry and imitation as coping
strategies in a constantly oppositional atmosphere. Bhabha deals, as well, with
the idea of hybridity, asserting that HYBRIDITY may constitute the colonized’
most common and most effective means of subversion, because it exhibits the
“necessary deformation and displacement of all sites of discrimination and domi-
nation” (p. 9).
Much as in literature, in visualconcerns with colonialism focus on ways
art,

in which TEXTS produced by colonial POWERS function as sites of dominance

and control, fixing the colonized in the position of OTHER. Historically, this has
operated in part through ORIENTALISM, as explained by Edward Said. Artists
who have made such destruction and rewriting their SUBJECT include Jimmie
Durham and Elaine Reichek.

COMMODIFICATION The process by which an object or activity is rei-

fied and converted into something that can be bought and sold, that is, a com-
modity. Many cultural theorists, such as Theodor Adorno and Clement Green-
berg, see the commodification of art as a threat to its possibilities as a creative
and revolutionary activity. As a result, the analysis and critique of the processes
by which art becomes commodity has had a long history, especially in
MODERNIST cultural criticism. See also FRANKFURT SCHOOL and FORMAL-
ISM.

COMMUNICATION In general, the transferal of information and/or ideas

from one SITE to another, usually through a medium of transmission and in the
form of SIGNS, CODES, or SYMBOLS. In more recent years, the problems of
communication have been taken up in SEMIOTICS, the study of SIGNS, and in
other fields of cultural analysis and criticism.

CONNOTATION The suggestive, associative, figurative sense of a word,

image, or SIGN that extends beyond its strict literal definition or DENOTATION,
beyond what appears to be its “natural” meaning. In practice, denotative and con-
notative meanings cannot be that easily distinguished, especially when we are
dealing with images.
Glossary 25

CONTENT A term used to identify the intention, idea, interpretation, or con-

cept of the WORK of art. In common usage content is often placed in opposition
to the FORM or strictly material aspect of a WORK. Content is not always iden-
tical to SUBJECT matter, that is, what a WORK depicts. For example, the
SUBJECT matter of a painting may be a woman holding a baby, but the content
would be something else, for example, the Madonna and Child.

CONTEXT Also called the “background,” the idea of context is often used as
a way to derive meaning from a WORK. WORKS are often “put into context” so
as to give an interpretation more credence. Such credence is possible because of
the usual understanding of context as the historical, personal, or cultural situa-
tion out of which the WORK of art comes. Recent POSTSTRUCTURALIST
THEORY has challenged the traditional idea of context —which had long been ac-
cepted unquestioningly as natural background — with the notion that since con-
text is available only through interpretation of other works and texts, it is itself
a kind of artificial construction. Thus the strategy of using context to settle dis-
agreements among differing interpretations meets with a complicating factor.

CONTINUITY In NARRATIVES of all sorts, the achievement of continuity is

an important aid to the creation of a “REALITY EFFECT.” Continuity is the re-

sult of the suppression of the differences between separate NARRATIVE seg-
ments. In film production, for example, continuity is often the result of editing
that bridges the gaps that results from different camera setups, so that the specta-
tor ignores the edits. Major CONVENTIONS of continuity editing include the
180-degree rule, the shot/reverse shot and point of view constructions, eyeline
match, match on action, the 30-degree rule, and an overall pattern of establish-
ing shot/breakdown/reestablishing shot.

CONVENTION See SEMIOTICS.

COPY See SIMULATION.

COUNTER-MEMORY A term used by FOUCAULT in his book Language,

Counter-Memory, Practice to designate any DISCOURSE that runs counter to or
in a different direction from the dominant or controlling DISCOURSES or —
—
METANARRATIVES at a given time. Counter-discourses uncover forgotten his-
tories (thus, they are sometimes called counter-memories), as well as produce al-
ternative explanations of the present.

CRITICAL THEORY Once a term used to designate the FRANKFURT

SCHOOL in particular, it now refers to a CULTURE
wider range of THEORIES on
and society, such as SEMIOTICS, FEMINIST THEORY, POSTSTRUCTURALIST
THEORY, CULTURAL STUDIES, and many others.

CULTURAL FEMINISM Over the past several decades different forms of

FEMINISM have developed. Initially united by a dominant concern with the op-
pression of women, feminists have more recently perceived a need for recogni-
tion of their significant differences in viewpoint. Cultural feminism is a variety
of feminist thought that has often been characterized as “ESSENTIALIST,” since
26 Artwords

it is primarily concerned with definition and celebration of an essential feminin-

ity with which cultural feminists believe all women are naturally endowed.
Some, including feminist theorist Linda Alcoff, believe that the ESSENTIALIST
aspect of cultural feminism grew out of the need for valorization of “positive at-
tributes under oppression” (Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism Versus Post-structural-
ism,” p. 418). (See POSTSTRUCTURALISM and POSITIONALITY.) Cultural fem-
inism is often contrasted to POSTSTRUCTURALIST FEMINISM. Those holding a
POSTSTRUCTURALIST view believe that femininity is culturally produced, and
that GENDER is not fixed or stable but is, rather, amenable to infinite variation.

CULTURAL MATERIALISM A kind of catch-all phrase, cultural materi-

alism describes a number of approaches, including Marxist, POSTSTRUC-
TURALIST, and SEMIOTIC, to studying the arts, humanities, and mass CULTURE.
After originating in Britain in the late 1970s as a more discrete approach, cul-
tural materialism as practiced by Raymond Williams, Jonathan Dollimore, and
Alan Sinfield was rooted in Marxism and stressed the relationships between cul-
tural creations and economic, social, political, and historical contexts. Williams
seems to have coined the phrase cultural materialism and used it to emphasize
the material INFLUENCES on cultural activities. He revised the traditional Marx-
ist idea that the economic BASE (industrial production) determines the character

of the SUPERSTRUCTURE (the arts). Williams redescribed economics as a social,

political, and cultural process rather than as a mechanical event or fixed state.
Likewise, he envisioned cultural creations as more like economic and material
production. In that way, both economic BASE and cultural SUPERSTRUCTURE
gain the POWER of constituting one another.

CULTURAL STUDIES The phrase “cultural studies” is often seen as

vague and amorphous. This understanding is taken as an advantage to those in-
volved in the practice of cultural studies, since it allows for a DIVERSITY of
methods and topics used in the study of CULTURES. Cultural studies as we think
of it now emerged in Britain with the founding of the Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in 1964. Originally part of the En-
glish Department, the Centre eventually became its own department and included
such scholars as Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart. Cultural studies orig-
inally favored an approach to CULTURE termed CULTURAL MATERIALISM, but
has since developed into an area of study, if not a DISCIPLINE, that incorporates
the methodologies and topics of study from many different fields. Cultural stud-
ies has ushered in the current era of INTERDISCIPLINARY studies with its use of
MARXIST, FEMINIST, SEMIOTIC, POSTSTRUCTURALIST, and other critical
schools of thought.

CULTURE Although the term “culture” has traditionally had the CON-
NOTATION of “high culture” — the fine arts such as Renaissance painting and
sculpture, classical music, Shakespearean theatre, and so on — the term has been
used in recent years to indicate a much wider sphere of social life. This sphere
includes beliefs, practices, rituals, gestures, artificial production, spatial divi-
sions, in short, the way of lifeof a people. The task of CULTURAL STUDIES is

to come to terms with this sphere through a wide variety of methodologies.

D&G Abbreviation for (Gilles) DELEUZE and (Felix) GUATTARI (see DELEUZE
AND GUATTARI).

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR See AUTHOR

DECENTERED According to Jacques DERRIDA’S notion of DECONSTRUC-

TION, a theory or argument becomes decentered upon the occurrence of a
DECONSTRUCTION. The CENTER around which all SIGNIFICATION would be
governed is lost and so the argument loses its grounding and its POWER to con-
vince or persuade.

DECONSTRUCTION Deconstruction was introduced by Jacques DERRIDA

in his writings and lectures 1960s and has come to occupy an impor-
in the late
tant position in the English-speaking intellectual world. One of the most mis-
used and misunderstood terms in recent THEORY, deconstruction is most often
taken at face value and confused with an analysis in which one “takes apart’’ an
argument. In the broadest sense, deconstruction is a radical and devastating cri-
tique of structuralist SEMIOTICS, especially of such key concepts as CENTER and
STRUCTURE. The resulting body of work, which is a SEMIOTICS without
STRUCTURE, is called POSTSTRUCTURALIST SEMIOTICS, or POSTSTRUC-
TURALISM.
Deconstruction is more of an event than a method, move-
best understood as
ment, or philosophy. A deconstruction often revolves around a renewed interest
in the RHETORIC of an argument, THEORY, or REPRESENTATION. While
RHETORIC has long been seen as secondary to the logic of philosophical argu-
ment, the POSTSTRUCTURALIST sees RHETORIC as giving an argument the
POWER to convince. Indeed, logic and rationality may be rhetorical devices.
Through a “close reading,” a crucial point in a TEXT is located where its logic
and RHETORIC (or what it says and how it says it) contradict one another. This
point is APORIA, or “impassable path,” the point beyond which the ar-
called an
gument cannot be followed. Through such a conflict, an argument becomes sus-
28 Artwords

pect, de-structured, or “de-centered,” and loses its POWER to convince. A new

argument must then be reinscribed, since there is no assertion from POST-
STRUCTURALISTS that RHETORIC can be done away with altogether. The extent
to which philosophy, architecture, art, and other practices are fields of discursive
struggle, while posed as disinterested scholarship or reflection, is made obvious.
This predicament is often the concern of “deconstructive writing,” along with
DIFFERANCE, S UPPLEMENT ARITY FREE-PLAY, and DISSEMINATION,
,
or the
conditions of SIGNIFICATION after a deconstruction.
DERRIDA’S STRUCTURALISM in his famous article “Structure,
critique of
Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (originally published in
1967) is an example of a POSTSTRUCTURALIST reading for a deconstructive
event. Derrida sees in STRUCTURALIST THEORY that the idea of “CENTER” is ac-
The CENTER, he argues, while ostensibly governing a
tually a rhetorical device.
STRUCTURE, at the same time must be positioned within STRUCTURALIST
THEORY as if it were “outside” of STRUCTURE and REPRESENTATION. The
CENTER cannot both limit and stabilize REPRESENTATION and be a mere product
of REPRESENTATION. For DERRIDA, however, this notion of CENTER is

“contradictorily coherent.” If the CENTER truly existed outside of REPRE-

SENTATION, we would not be able to speak or write of it. The CENTER would
seem be the organizing principle of SIGNIFICATION, yet it is, for DERRIDA,
to
also a product of SIGN usage rather than something that exists “outside” of
REPRESENTATION. It becomes possible, even necessary, to think that
STRUCTURE was a FICTION, that there is no CENTER, and, more devastating,
that CENTER has other names in European thought: “‘essence,’ ‘being,’ ‘TELOS,’
‘substance,’ etc.” (Derrida, p. 249).
A more straightforward example can be found in DERRIDA’S essay “Plato’s
Pharmacy.” concerns Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, in which there is a discussion
It

regarding the nature of speech and writing and the implications for epistemology
and the search for TRUTH. In the dialogue, Socrates states that speech is preferred
to writing, which is speech’s opposite and SUPPLEMENT. Speech, the “living
word,” has a “soul,” while writing is “no more than an image,” like a painting.
A four-termed METAPHOR is developed: remedy is to poison as dialectic (speech)
is to RHETORIC Elsewhere Plato states that speech is to writing as
(writing).
FORM (TRUTH) is to painting (illusion/image/REPRESENTATION). The HINGE
that DERRIDA finds in Phaedrus is the repeated use of METAPHOR and analogy
throughout the dialogue. For DERRIDA, it is precisely here that the fabric of Pla-
to’s argument unravels. Even though the logic of the dialogue would have us be-
lieve that speech is preferable to writing, since writing distances the READER
from the TRUTH, the dialogue uses METAPHOR extensively to argue the point.
Since METAPHOR substitutes one thing for another, it functions just as writing
(and painting) does: it distances, spaces, or displaces one thing from or for an-
other. The use of METAPHOR to argue the primacy and immediacy of speech,
then, is more than a little DERRIDA. The logic of the dialogue contra-
ironic to
own use
dicts itself with its of RHETORIC, and simultaneously reveals its depen-
dence upon RHETORIC for its POWER to convince. This dialogue is not only one
example among many for DERRIDA, but it is a prominent one, since it repre-
sents and perhaps begins the whole tradition in European philosophy (and those
practices based upon or derived from it, like aesthetics) of a preference for
Glossary 29

PRESENCE and immediacy over REPRESENTATION and ABSENCE (Derrida,

Des semination, pp. 108-112).
Recent art theorists and critics have used POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY in
their examinations of the history of art, most notably in critiques of expression-
ism and FORMALISM. DERRIDA’S mode of reading has been applied to the gen-
eral DISCOURSE of aesthetic AUTONOMY
by Hal Foster, Stephen Melville, and
other art critics and historians. Late modernist artists, operating under the influ-
ence of the FORMALIST THEORIES of Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, and
others, were developing art to an extreme and contradictory position. Color-Field
and Minimalist works effaced literary and pictorial reference while emphasizing
what was argued to be the “essence” of art: the processes of the medium and the
qualities of materials. At the same time, however, it was clear from their modes
of presenting their works that these objects were to be understood as art, and not
as a “mere” or “ARBITRARY” objects. By the mid 1960s it eventually became
increasingly difficult for American artists to produce WORK that further devel-
oped this neither/nor DISCOURSE (neither reference nor mere object) without at
the same time finding that they had already exceeded the limits, or parameters, of
that DISCOURSE.
From a DERRIDEAN and FOUCAULDIAN perspective, the logic of the stress on
the “essence” of the WORK of art is contradicted by the specific RHETORIC (use
of materials) of Minimalist This RHETORIC includes the complete lack of
art.

pictorial reference, of decorative embellishments, and of the “hand of the

artist,” —in other words, all the traditional SIGNIFIERS of “art” in favor of an—
object that refers only to itself, has a “simple gestalt,” favors industrial tech-
niques, and has a simple, unified whole. Ironically, the more art objects seemed
to approach their essences through the use of this RHETORIC the more object-
like they became. The logic of “aesthetic AUTONOMY” seemed to conflict with
the RHETORIC used to present that AUTONOMY. This conflict marks an APORIA
or deconstructive event, a RUPTURE
EPISTEMIC BREAK, that signals a shift
or
from one dominant EP1STEME to another. This new EPISTEME has tentatively
been called “POSTMODERNISM,” but the term is not adequate, since FOR-
MALISM is not categorically equivalent to MODERNISM.

DECONSTRUCTIONISM/DECONSTRUCTIVISM Used very loosely

and imprecisely, Deconstructionism and Deconstructivism refer to the body of
literature surrounding DECONSTRUCTION, as well as to what some scholars see
as a “movement” of like-minded POSTSTRUCTURALIST scholars.
and a few other design professions, Deconstruction-
In the field of architecture
ism and Deconstructivism have been opposed to POSTMODERNISM and refer to a
particular style of architectural design produced in the late 1980s and in the
1990s. Some characteristics of DECONSTRUCTION in LITERARY THEORY, un-
derstood in a figurative sense, have been combined with some stylistic features
of Russian Constructivism to develop into a design style that has been labeled
“Deconstructivism.”

DECOUPAGE (From the French decouper “to cut up.”)

,
In film studies, the
breakdown of a dramatic action into its constituent shots.
30 Artwords

DEFAMILIARIZATION A strategy used especially by radical modernist

artists in various fields to challenge our habitual ways of seeing and understand-
ing, allowing or forcing us to “see afresh.” The key technique for artists at-
tempting to “make it strange” or to create an “alienation effect,” as defamiliariza-
tion is also called, is to “foreground” the various devices of artistic language in
such a way as to bring attention to the language itself and prevent habitual ways
of seeing and reading. Pioneered by the Russian Formalists of the early twentieth
century, defamiliarization was meant to disturb life’s habitual IDEOLOGIES.
FORMALIST art criticism pushed the attention to technique to such an extent,
however, that its potential relationship to political strategies was lost. More re-
cent artistic practice has recovered the strategy of defamiliarization, also called
“INTERFERENCE,” but with an emphasis on the more or less semiotic processes
of the production of SIGNIFICATION, rather than on “baring the devices” of artis-

tic production.

DEFERRAL According to the POSTSTRUCTURALIST writings of Jacques

DERRIDA, meaning, or SIGNIFICATION, never finds a firm grounding or resting
place after the occurrence of a DECONSTRUCTION. One result of a DECON-
STRUCTION is a distancing or spacing of SIGNIFIERS from SIGNIFIEDS and
SIGNS from REFERENTS. Even though we may DESIRE that our spoken, written,
or graphic REPRESENTATIONS be linked directly and firmly to their REFERENTS,
such connections are never quite achieved, but are constantly deferred.
A V

DEJA-LU Roland BARTHES coined the phrase deja-lu to assert the idea that
—
WORKS of literature — indeed, all art are more textual rearrangements and adap-
tations of SIGNS already in circulation in society than pure inventions of creative
genius. This is often hinted at when readers have the feeling that they have al-
ready read some part of a TEXT. Indeed, BARTHES’S very coinage of the phrase
deja-lu (from the French borrowed from the common phrase deja-vu
lire, to read),
(already seen), both demonstrates and explains his idea. In the visual arts this
idea was taken up in discussions of the strategies of APPROPRIATION and
QUOTATION.

DELEUZE/DELEUZIAN Having to do with the philosophy and writing of

BODY WITHOUT ORGANS, BWO, D&G, DESIRING MA-
Gilles Deleuze. See
CHINES, GUATTARIAN, NOMADOLOGY, PLATEAU, RHIZOMATIC AND
ARBORESCENT, RHIZOME, AND SCHIZOANALYSIS.

DENOTATION The literalmeaning of a word, image, or SIGN, as opposed to

its CONNOTATION. In practice, denotative and connotative meanings cannot be
easily distinguished, especially when we are dealing with images. What passes
itself off as denotative, “natural” meaning may already carry a number of implicit
CONNOTATIONS; this is how IDEOLOGY works, for instance, in photographic
media. It is possible that one image is both denotative and connotative.

DERRIDA/DERRIDEAN Having
do with the work of French philoso-
to
pher Jacques Derrida, most often associated with any of the issues surrounding
DECONSTRUCTION.
Glossary 31

DESCRIPTIVE A way of writing, painting, or otherwise arranging signify-

ing material so as to create a strictly denotative and TRANSPARENT reference to a
SUBJECT. See also PRESCRIPTIVE.

DESIRE In LACANIAN terms, the post-SPECULAR, post-MlRROR STAGE

or
child experiences a desire for the feelings of unity and harmony that characterize
the idealized IMAGINARY (which is formed by the child’s recollection of an ear-
lier state of total identification with the mother, and a perceived lack of bodily
separation from her). The child experiences a longing for this idealized prior
stage when confronted with the necessity for adaptation to those cultural demands
and constraints that are a necessary part of entry to, and existence in the
SYMBOLIC. The child becomes driven by desire, constantly seeking out re-
placements for what has been lost in separation from the mother and entrance
into the SYMBOLIC realm, which is characterized by the Law of the Father. (See
IMAGINARY, SYMBOLIC, MIRROR STAGE, SPECULAR.)

DESIRING MACHINES See BODY WITHOUT ORGANS.

DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC Ferdinand de Saussure, in his

SEMIOTIC THEORY, made the distinction between diachronic and synchronic to
explain the DIFFERENCE between those aspects of a language that develop over
time (diachronic) and those that are in operation at a given moment (synchronic).
For Saussure, the study of linguistics would never be truly scientific unless it
studied languages synchronically.

DIALECTICAL The term had a number of related but different

dialectical has
meanings over the centuries. Traditionally, it describes a procedure of reasoning
or logic through debate, discussion, or continuous argument, as in the Platonic
dialogues. In the Hegelian and Marxist tradition, however, this term describes the
interplay of contradictory or opposed principles or forces. In such a scheme, a
unification of opposites, thesis and antithesis, is possible in a higher synthesis.

DIALOGIC/DIALOGISM Current critical use of the terms dialogic and di-

alogism derives from the writings of Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin
asserts that all language carries with it a history and that the user of language in-
teracts with that history in a dialogue, or a dialogic exchange. According to
Bakhtin, PARODY, which involves “double-voicing,” is a prime example of the
dialogic. Parody takes on the history of the language employed and joins in a di-
alogue with it.

Peter Hitchcock asserts that the multiple voicing of the dialogic “fractures the
monolithic and monologic DISCOURSE of POWER (whether, for instance,
through a feminist intervention against the Law of the Father, or perhaps a cri-
tique of the naming of COLONIALISM)” (Hitchcock, p. xvi). The dialogic VOICE
has recently been the SUBJECT of much discussion in POSTCOLO-
NIAL/multicultural and women’s studies. Henry Louis Gates has productively
applied Bakhtin’s conception of the dialogic to the study of African-American
literature. Gates views PARODIC double-voicing in African-American literature
as offering READERS and writers a means of distancing themselves from domi-
32 Artwords

nant cultural traditions and, at the same time, a means of incorporating and cri-

tiquing elements of each other’s writing.

Dale Bauer and Susan Jaret McKinstry apply Bakhtin’s dialogic to FEMINISM.
They regard feminist dialogics as a method of analysis of contemporary
CULTURE that both stresses the cultural agency of oppressed groups and chal-
lenges a unified position. The heterogeneity of VOICES recognized within a dia-
logic approach to CULTURAL STUDIES offers the possibility of many SITES of
discursive resistance to hegemonic INSTITUTIONS and STRUCTURES of POWER.
In particular, they see feminist dialogics as bringing masculinized public lan-
guage and the private (female) VOICE together in a productive act of resistance
which bridges public and private spheres, subverting the splitting that often oc-
curs between the alienated, rational public sphere and the nurturing, but often
perceived as incomplete, private sphere. Feminist dialogics views monologism
(speaking with one VOICE) as deriving from a position of dominance and, con-
trastingly, NARRATIVE as multivocal. NARRATIVE is recognized as “inherently
multivocal, as a form of cultural resistance that celebrates the dialogic voice that
speaks with many tongues, which incorporates multiple voices of the cultural
web” (Bauer and McKinstry, p. 4). Feminist dialogics affords realization of the
productive potential of recognizing conflicting VOICES.
Diane Price Herndl argues that Bakhtin’s dialogism bears important similari-
ties to what is commonly referred to as the “feminine language” found in the
writing of women. Bakhtin did not include women in his literary studies. Herndl
posits that this may be because women did not fit into his THEORY she sug- ;

gests, however, that an alternative explanation may be found in the possibility

that women “fit too well” (Herndl, p. 8). Bakhtin described dialogism as the
speech of an OTHER in the other’s language, expressing authorial intent but in a
refracted manner. Herndl feels this may be exactly what the female AUTHOR is
doing, because the woman writer must use speech originating in and reproducing
a masculine signifying system.
A particularly good example of the use of dialogism in contemporary art is
found in Mary Kelly’s Interim. In this WORK Kelly juxtaposes the VOICES of
many women through incorporation of lines of TEXT women’s con-
that record
versations regarding their daily lives and their experience of FEMINISM.

DIEGESIS (Greek for “recital of facts.”) The DENOTATIVE material of film

NARRATIVE, including the fictional space and time dimensions implied by the
NARRATIVE; the fictive space and time into which the film works to absorb the
spectator; the self-contained fictional world of the film.

DIFFERANCE Neither a word nor a concept, differance is a sort of ever ex-

panding pun. Differance was coined by Jacques DERRIDA to demonstrate the limits
of logocentric understandings of linguistic (spoken) SIGNS, while introducing his
idea of GRAMMATOLOGY. Differance, spelled with a lower case “a,” is not the
correct French spelling of difference. However, differance and difference are
pronounced the same. In spoken form the difference remains unnoticed until it is
put into written form, when the difference between the two is recognizable.
Therefore, Derrida’s “term” combines the two senses of the French verb differer
(to defer, and to differ). On the one hand, it demonstrates Saussure’s remarks on the
differential nature of SIGNS, since the “term” has no meaning outside of a
Glossary 33

set of constant differentiations from other SIGNS and DEFERRALS outward to

other discourses ongoing in CULTURE. On the other hand, differance demon-
strates DERRIDA’S ideas of DEFERRAL by spacing itself away from other SIGNS
and from a firm grounding, thus producing an unstable term.

DIFFERENCE In addition to the principle of BINARY DIFFERENCE

used in
SEMIOTICS, this term has developed a particular set of connotations in
THEORIES of GENDER and ETHNICITY. The definition of DIFFERENCE has been
a major preoccupation of second-generation FEMINIST theorists. Early feminist
writers and first-generation feminist artists made SEXUAL differences a major pre-
occupation. They were interested in locating and venerating biologically based
sources of differences of women from men and, at the same time, asserting the
universality of an essential female nature.More recent feminist theorists have
recognized the EUROCENTRIC and RACIAL bias of such assumptions and argue
for the recognition of differences, rather than universal similarities, among
women. Although THEORIES of difference owe something to SEMIOTICS and
POSTSTRUCTURALIST thought, difference should not be confused with
DIFFERANCE.

DIRECT CINEMA See CINEMA VERITE.

DISCIPLINE According to Michel FOUCAULT, discipline is an effect of

POWER resulting from various DISCURSIVE PRACTICES of INSTITUTIONS. One
straightforward result is the creation of “disciplines,” in the sense of academic
fields. Architectural structures can be used by INSTITUTIONS of POWER to pro-
duce discipline in the usual sense. Individual IDENTITY or SUBJECTIVITY can be
formed through DISCOURSE. FOUCAULT’S most famous example of the disci-
plinary effect of material DISCOURSE on the individual is his discussion of
Jeremy Bentham’s 1791 design for a “Panopticon Prison.” In Discipline and
Punish, FOUCAULT tells us that the Panopticon was designed to be a multisto-
ried, ring-like building with a tower erected in the CENTER (pp. 200-228). From
the tower watchmen could observe the cells, which were located in the periphery
of the circular STRUCTURE, without being seen themselves. Everything in each
cell was open to clear and constant SURVEILLANCE, which, for FOUCAULT, as-
sured an automatic functioning of POWER, even if the PRESENCE of a watchman
was unknown. The Panopticon exercised POWER over bodies through an efficient
organization of space. Eventually, the effect of this prison design was to relocate
the constraining force of POWER from the watchtower to the prisoner himself.
The prisoner was to become his own best keeper, keeping himself under
SURVEILLANCE and disciplining himself at all times.
FOUCAULT used this prison design as a model for and example of the episte-
mological relations between the logic of SURVEILLANCE and MODERNIST disci-
plinary knowledge. For him, the Panopticon can be understood as a general
model, defining POWER relations in everyday life. Here, POWER must be under-
stood as both repressive and productive. The ultimate effect of power relations is

to regulate the DISCOURSES that produce two

behavior of individuals through
types of “docile bodies.” The INTELLIGIBLE BODY and the USEFUL BODY (also
known as the practical BODY) are produced by the same discourses, and they are
mutually supportive. The INTELLIGIBLE BODY produces meaning through sym-
34 Artwords

bolic function. Its REPRESENTATIONS on normative concepts of the

are based
BODY found in discourses of wide cultural currency, such as medical and scien-
tific discourses. The USEFUL BODY produces meaning and regulates behavior in a

different way. It operates through practical use and function. The USEFUL BODY
is one capable of performing certain functions deemed socially useful.

FOUCAULT calls technologies of discipline and domination that operate upon the
BODY “BIO-POWER.” BIO-POWER centers on the BODY as an object to be ma-
nipulated.

DISCOURSE Any social relation involving language or other SIGN systems

as a form of exchange between real or IMAGINARY participants. Discourse can
take any form, be it spoken or written words, architecture, medical practice, vi-
sual art, or law, to name a few of FOUCAULT’S favorite topics. (See DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS.)

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS The historian-philosopher Michel FOUCAULT,

as part of his general interest in DISCOURSE, developed a method of analyzing
DISCOURSE so as to reveal its relationship with POWER. Discursive exchange
includes the conditions of expression, a source of articulation, as well as an ad-
dressee. These “positions” are not necessarily explicit, but are always implied by
the DISCOURSE. FOUCAULT, through what he called “discourse analysis,” at-
tempted to account for the ways in which discourses are produced, regulated, and
limited by its participants. At the same time, FOUCAULT was interested in how
discourses produce, regulate, and limit their participants.
To FOUCAULT, ideas are extremely powerful things, but need some sort of
dispositif or APPARATUS to have results. More often than not, this APPARATUS
is INSTITUTION of some sort. An INSTITUTION is not limited to a building
an
and a number of people who work in it, but also includes a number of rules and
conditions for the production of DISCOURSE. A university is an example of an
INSTITUTION. Universities are made up of a number of people producing dis-
courses on many topics in many DISCIPLINES, such as art history. Art history
as we usually think of it is characterized both by the topics it attends to and the
methods used to study those topics. The DISCOURSE of art history includes
statements made by professionals and students in the field. Statements in the
field of art history are regulated or “DISCIPLINED” by (usually) unspoken rules
and regulations, or methods. One of the results is a particular DISCURSIVE
REGIME, that is, a number of statements generally agreed upon as legitimate that
deal with legitimate topics by legitimate professionals. In FOUCAULDIAN terms,
the DISCURSIVE FORMATION of art history is disciplined by the DISCURSIVE
PRACTICES commonly accepted by that profession. In the field of art history,
one result has been the creation of a CANON, an unofficial but generally agreed
upon set of works of art discussed in art history courses. Recent “REVISIONIST
ART HISTORY” has challenged both the SUBJECTS and the methods of art histor-
ical practice.

DISCURSIVE FORMATION See DISCOURSE ANALYSIS.

DISCURSIVE PRACTICES See DISCOURSE ANALYSIS.

Glossary 35

DISCURSIVE REGIME See DISCOURSE ANALYSIS.

DISPOSITIF See DISCOURSE ANALYSIS.

DISSEMINATION A term that describes the condition of SIGNIFICATION

after a DECONSTRUCTION has occurred. SIGNS, no longer limited by processes
at the structural level as described by STRUCTURALIST SEMIOTICS, have a po-
tentially limitless growth of new meanings.

DIVERSITY A term —often used as roughly equivalent to PLURALISM in

some CONTEXTS — ongoing debate over multiculturalism. Di-
that is part of the
versity as a positive social value has been the SUBJECT of much recent discus-
sion. Achievement of heterogeneity, rather than homogeneity, in INSTITUTIONS
of POWER, in professions, in educational DISCOURSE, and in REPRESEN-
TATIONAL practices has been the goal of those who favor diversity. Cultural di-
versity is one of the major goals of those who work to foster MULTICUL-
TURALISM. (See COLONIALISM and POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE.)

DOCILE BODY See DISCIPLINE and BODY.

DOMINANT CULTURE A dominant culture is one that holds greatest

POWER in a given social CONTEXT. INSTITUTIONS that are invested
Cultural
with greatest POWER, as well as behavior and practices deemed socially “correct”
further the maintenance of the dominant culture. As Stuart Hall explains, “Any
society/culture tends, with varying degrees of closure, to impose its classifica-
tions of the social and cultural and political world. These constitute a dominant
cultural order, though it is neither univocal nor uncontested” (“Encoding, Decod-
ing,” p. 98). (See COLONIALISM and POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE.)

DOXA A term used by Roland BARTHES to refer to the rule of certain ideas at
the expense of OTHER. Often posed as “TRUTH,” doxa allows no terms that are
significantly different from the sanctioned ones to enter intellectual debate. The
concern with doxa in POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY has been to show how it is

vulnerable to critique.

DRAG PERFORMANCE In drag, or cross-dressing, an individual dresses

in the clothingconsidered appropriate to the opposite SEX. Such a
“denaturalizing” of GENDER, unlinking PERFORMANCE of GENDER from sex-
based gendered IDENTITY, may be seen as a TRANSGRESSIVE, and potentially
subversive, PERFORMATIVE act (see PERFORMANCE/ PERFORMATIVE/
PERFORM ATI VITY/ PERFORMATIVITY OF GENDER). A number of contemporary
including American photographer Cindy Sherman and Japanese photogra-
artists,

pher Yasunari Morimura, have engaged in selfportraiture which includes drag.

DUALISTIC In the European philosophical and scientific tradition, argu-

ments and THEORIES are characteristically organized on a distinction between
two opposing terms. As a consequence, some of the most influential ideas in the
European tradition are centered around such oppositions as male and female, high
and low, and good and evil. In the visual arts, a few of the more common du-
36 Artwords

alisms have been FORM and CONTENT, inside and outside, and linear and
painterly. It has been the explicit goal of many critics and theorists influenced by
POSTSTRUCTURALIST thinking expose the use of dualisms as a RHETORICAL
to
device that unnecessarily limits the terms of debate in such a way as to allow for
one of the terms to be in a more powerful position than the OTHER, thus prede-
termining the outcome of debate.
ECHOLALIA A term used by many writers of LITERARY THEORY to indi-
cate the echoing back and forth of possible SIGNIFICATIONS between different
SIGNS. See also DIFFERANCE and SEMIOTICS.

ECRITURE The French word for writing, this term has also gathered a num-
ber of other CONNOTATIONS, including printed words, handwriting, the appear-
ance of on surfaces, and graphic imagery or pictures. The term has more
letters
generally and more vaguely been used to refer to the material aspects of SIGNS
—
whether handwriting or paint or architectural materials and their usage in com-
bination.

ECRITURE FEMININE Ecriture feminine refers to women’s writing as

formulated by French feminist theorists. Those employing this formulation re-
gard women’s writing as reflecting a greater emphasis on certain aspects of expe-
rience than writing by men. These aspects include bodily experience, the emo-
tions, and other forms of experience that are difficult to capture in words. The
best-known proponents of this view include Helene Cixous, Monique Wittig,
and Luce Irigaray. In “Reinstating Corporeality: Feminism and Body Politics”
Janet Wolff discusses how feminist strategies of resistance based on Irigaray and
Cixous ’s premise that “writing from the BODY” can offer an appropriate expres-
sion of female experience are presumed viable because they exist outside of a
male-defined signifying economy.
Jeanie Forte posits that a form of PERFORMANCE ART that utilizes the female
BODY as its instrument can function similarly to ecriture feminine. Noting that
Cixous has recommended to feminists that “anything having to do with the body
should be explored,” Forte says that “Cixous ’s mandate for women is therefore
to terrorize patriarchal DISCOURSE by writing from the locus of the inscription
of difference, i.e,, female sexuality” (“Women’s Performance Art,” p. 218). See
also PEINTURE FEMININE.

EFFET DU REEL French for “REALITY EFFECT.”

38 Artwords

ELITE A term referring to a social distinction or ranking, elite has a number

of negative CONNOTATIONS, most usually indicating an arrogant and self-serv-
ing CLASS. Once referring primarily to economic CLASS, the term now includes
the sense that some groups are in possession of specialized and/or secret knowl-
edge or information.

ENCODE To make something into a CODE. See CODIFICATION.

ENIGMA Greek used in film studies to

for “riddle” or “mystery,” the term is

designate an element in the process by which classical NARRATIVES ensure the

spectator/reader’s absorption. The enigma is crucial information that is withheld
early on in the NARRATIVE, thus creating suspense and AMBIGUITY, but will
eventually be supplied, after a series of delays, so as to effect CLOSURE.

EPISTEME Michel FOUCAULT uses the term episteme to indicate the total
set of relations that unite a given period. These can be DISCURSIVE PRACTICES
that result in sciencesand other formalized systems of DISCOURSE, like philoso-
phy. An episteme is not a form of knowledge, but is the totality of relations be-
tween the sciences or between other discourses. In an essay on Velazquez’s Las
Meninas, FOUCAULT adapts the idea of the episteme into an investigation of co-
existing and interrelated discourses on techniques of painting, scientific CONVEN-
TIONS, and aristocratic HIERARCHIES. His analysis of the painting concerns the
problem of what can or cannot be put into a picture when an artist tries to paint
within a particular episteme. FOUCAULT’S essay revolves around REPRESEN-
TATION and the rise of what he calls the “Classical Episteme .” To FOUCAULT,
Velazquez depicts in classical taxonomic fashion three different categories of
REPRESENTATION: the artist representing, the objects represented, and the spec-
tator who views the REPRESENTATION. In short, Velazquez is highly successful
in producing a REPRESENTATION of the episteme that existed in what
FOUCAULT calls the “Classical Age.”

EPISTEMIC BREAK As an extention of his interest in EPISTEME Michel ,

FOUCAULT was fascinated by those accidents, unexpected reversals, entangled

events, and “RUPTURES” in DISCOURSES that are the result of long-term prac-
tices in a field. These breaks occur in spite of the plans and desires of the people
producing those discourses. In many ways this is roughly similar to Jacques
DERRIDA’S description of deconstructions. The significance to FOUCAULT is
that the RUPTURES or breaks in discursive structures make more readily apparent
that things like social organizations, history, or the conception of the human be-
ing are artificial, have a history, and can be sustained only through great effort.
Therefore, critical histories of such discursive organizations can be written, and
they can be undone.

ERASURE Jacques DERRIDA designates certain words he uses in his writings

as being “under erasure.” This means that while he is using a term he sees it as
being PROBLEMATIC but indispensable. He indicates this by leaving the word in
the TEXT, but imposing a large X over the term. The crossing out of the term
Glossary 39

works like scare quotes, indicating the insufficiency or PROBLEMATIC nature of

a term while using the term at the same time.

ESSENTIALISM See CULTURAL FEMINISM.

ETHNICITY A term used to describe a cultural or social continuum. Ethnic-

ity is distinguished from RACE by a concentration upon the cultural consisten-
ciesbetween members of a group, rather than an explanation of such consisten-
cies based upon biological or physiological terms. (See OTHER, POST-
COLONIAL, COLONIALISM/ COLONIALIZED, HYBRIDIZATION, DIVERSITY,
RACE/RACISM.)

EUROCENTRIC The term eurocentric describes a preference for all cultural,

scientific, religious, and philosophical WORKS in the European tradition. This
preference is based on a presumption of the superiority of peoples of European
descent.

EXEGESIS An explanation or interpretation of a TEXT or WORK of art.

EXHIBITIONISM A PSYCHOANALYTIC term referring to the gratification
derived from showing one’s BODY — or part of — to another person, a gratifica-
it

tion of erotic origin. It also refers to the PLEASURE of being seen or seeing one-
self on SCREEN, which is related to narcissism. As a clinical perversion, exhibi-
tionism is the passive counterpart of VOYEURISM.

EXPRESSION The notion, popular in MODERNISM, that one can somehow

convey an idea or emotion through a medium such as an art object is the basis of
expression. The very possibility of expressing emotions has in recent years
come under criticism by a number of critics, such as Hal Foster, working from a
roughly POSTSTRUCTURALIST position. See also DECONSTRUCTION and
EXPRESSIONIST FALLACY.

EXPRESSIONIST One who is a practitioner of the idea of EXPRESSION,

or, used as an adjective, something that expresses.

EXPRESSIONIST FALLACY The art critic and historian Hal Foster, in

his article “The Expressive Fallacy” (pp. 59-77), criticizes Neo-Expressionist
painters active at the time through the application of POSTSTRUCTURALIST
THEORY, most notably DECONSTRUCTION. Foster discusses expressionism in
general as a specific language, but a language that is so “obvious” that its con-
ventionality is forgotten. Expressionist art asserts the PRESENCE of the artist.

But this is a paradox for Foster, since in the assertion of the artist’s PRESENCE
through the mark or the gesture, the PRESENCE of the artist is displaced in favor
of the SIGN. In other words, since the mark is a REPRESENTATION of the artist,
it is also a SIGN of the ABSENCE of the artist, for if the artist were truly present

“in” the WORK there would be no need to signify that PRESENCE. Ostensibly, a
type of transparency is operative in EXPRESSION, that is, material elements are
secondary to and revelatory of what the painting expresses, that is, “subjective
reality.” But to Foster, EXPRESSIONIST painting makes use of CODES that are
40 Artwords

based upon a substitution of paint for feeling. Foster’s point in criticizing ex-
pressionism is to show how it is constructed rhetorically, that is, through
ARBITRARY and culturally based SIGNIFYING systems. For him, the EX-
PRESSIONIST self and SIGN both belong to a preexistent image repertoire. Jasper
Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Gerhard Richter create works that demonstrate this
paradox. For Foster, expressionism is more than just a style or technique. It is
an example of a specific language, that which makes painting an “ideological
SITE,” where the social DISCOURSE on the “authentic” human being is to be
found, a SITE he found especially important in the NEO-CONSERVATIVE 1980s.
FANTASMATIC In The Language of Psycho-analysis, Jean Laplanche and
Jean-Bertrand Pontalis define the fantasmatic as a cluster of UNCONSCIOUS fan-
tasies that produces an individual’s general psychic life, including dreams, and
structures the formation of individual IDENTITY and the character and quality of
one’s life as a whole (p. 317). The fantasmatic produces the individual’s inner
FANTASY life, in which he or she plays the lead role. In Kaja Silverman’s words,
it provides the individual’s “scenario for passion, be more precise, the
or, to
‘scene’ of authorial desire” (Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror, p. 216). For Freud
the most common FANTASY scenarios, which involve the primal scene, seduc-
tion, and castration, derive from the Oedipus complex (See Freud, The Standard
Edition, vol. 14, p. 269).

FANTASY Discussions of fantasy have played a major role in recent FILM

THEORY, in which fantasy theory has been explored as offering the potential for
development of modes of spectatorship that do not participate in a BINARY
STRUCTURE aligning the male viewer with the active and dominating role and
the female viewer with the passive and objectified position. The goal of such ex-
ploration is and articulate alternate positions for the male and female
to locate
viewers that do not rely upon fixed, SEX-based GENDER positions.
Such THEORY finds its basis in Freud’s outline of three primal fantasies, each
of which plays a vital role in the formation of the individual SUBJECT. The first
of such fantasies is that of the primal scene, which deals with the child’s physi-
cal conception; the second is that of seduction, which plays a role in the origin
of DESIRE in the child; and the third is the castration fantasy, which plays a part
in the recognition of SEXUAL DIFFERENCE and thus acts as a constitutive force
in the development of GENDERED IDENTITY.
In “Fantasia,” an influential essay on fantasy published in the British feminist
journal m/f in 1984, Elizabeth Cowie explains how fantasy functions as a struc-
turing force. She asserts that it operates “as the mise-en-scene of DESIRE, the
putting into a scene, a staging, of DESIRE” (p. 149). Cowie summarizes how the
discussion of fantasy has developed as a feminist issue over the last decades.
42 Artwords

First appearing as an issue in early FEMINISM, which was driven by the asser-
tion that “the personal is political,” it was discussed not only in terms of male
SEXUAL fantasy and how it functions to objectify women, but also in terms of
how women’s greater awareness of their own SEXUAL fantasies could facilitate
consciousness-raising and thus play a role in resistance to domination. Early
feminist debate, tended to polarize on the issue of fantasy. Some
Cowie tells us,

viewed SEXUAL fantasy as inherently dehumanizing, as unavoidably involving

the treatment of another human being as an object, while others saw fantasy as
an incontrovertible fact of human existence, the exploration of which might
prove valuable in an understanding of its function in the exercise of SEXUALITY
and in the formation of GENDERED IDENTITY.
More have explored ways in
recently, feminist theorists such as Judith Butler
which fantasy can function as a means of escape from, and resistance to, SEX-
based GENDER constraints. Viewing GENDER as PERFORMATIVE, Butler posits
that the fantasy realm can act as the rehearsal space for the PERFORMANCE of
SUBJECT positions that free one from enactment of GENDER roles deemed the
normal and proper expressions of one’s SEXUAL INDENTITY. Fantasy can, in this
view, play a productive role in the unfixing of GENDER from SEX. In an inter-
view published in Artforum in 1992, Butler asserts that, though fantasy is not
free of social relations of POWER, it can “in its various rehearsals of the scene of
social power, expose the tenuousness, moments of inversion, and the emo-
. . .

tional valence —
anxiety, fear, desire —
that get occluded in the description of
‘structures’.” Butler feels it is important to explore the process whereby fantasy
“orchestrates and shatters relations of power” (Butler, “The Body You Want,” p.
87). She disagrees with those, such as Andrea Dworkin, who believe that visual
representations dictate DESIRE and produce a determined response. Butler sees
this as reductive and evidence of a behaviorist view. When such views are ap-
plied to the debate on PORNOGRAPHY, the danger exists that they will be enlisted
to support regulation of people’s desires and fantasies and may “obliterate the
ethical distinctions between fantasy, representation, and action” (p. 87). Butler
goes on to discuss PORNOGRAPHY as offering resistance because it “ replays
relations of power” in a PHANTASMATIC rather than a mimetic way. She discusses
the limits of FEMINIST FILM THEORY, which has failed to take into account cross
GENDER identifications. She feels that visual forms of REPRESENTATION (visual
art, film, and so on) can destabilize normative modes of identification and thus

offer a challenge to, and a reconfiguration of, the existent limited range of
SUBJECT positions that our CULTURE offers.
— —
Images and ideas or fantasies of the artist’s own invention have always
been the constitutive elements of visual art. Recent artists have used this tradi-
tional function in a more SELF-REFLEXIVE way than earlier artists. Exploration
of how fantasy functions in the formation and maintenance of GENDERED
IDENTITY has been a major concern of many such artists who deal with SEX and
GENDER issues, including Silvia Kolbowski, Cindy Sherman, and Victor Bur- .

gin.

FEMALE GAZE Since the publication of Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual

Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in the British film journal Screen in 1975, the
idea of a MALE GAZE, constructed through the filmic practices of mainstream
NARRATIVE cinema, has been the SUBJECT of much speculation by feminist
Glossary 43

cultural theorists. Mulvey theorizes that Hollywood conventions of cinematic

practice construct the GAZE as male. Speculation
on the possibility of a female
gaze, of a female SUBJECT position that is not passive but is active and actively
desiring, has played a significant role in feminist discourse subsequent to Mul-
vey’s article. (See ACTIVE DESIRE, MALE GAZE, and FEMINIST FILM THEORY.)

FEMININE DESIRE FEMINIST FILM THEORY has exerted a profound influ-

ence on recent art criticism and practice (see FEMINIST FILM THEORY). Laura
Mulvey’ s writings spawned much debate among feminist theorists, visual
artists, and art writers regarding whether it was possible to produce representa-

tions of the female BODY that could embody and convey women’s DESIRE.
Other theorists who have written much on this topic include Victor Brugin,
Mary Ann Doane, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, and Annette Kuhn.

FEMININE MASQUERADE Much

has been written recently about
“femininity” as masquerade. This concept has taken a prominent role in the de-
velopment of FEMINIST FILM THEORY, and has been seen as a significant feature
of the WORK of a number of contemporary artists, including Cindy Sherman.
—
Recent discussions of femininity as masquerade such as those of Mary Ann
Doane in “Film and Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator,” Judith Butler
in Gender Trouble and Steven Heath in “Joan Riviere and the Masquerade”
, find —
their source in the classic TEXT on this SUBJECT, Joan Riviere’s “Womanliness
as a Masquerade,” originally published in 1929. In Riviere’s Freudian explana-
tion of masquerade, woman assumes a feminine masquerade (taking on exagger-
ated feminine qualities) as an attempt to mask her wish to have the PHALLUS.
She does so to avoid the wrath of those from whom the PHALLUS has been ac-
quired through (SYMBOLIC) castration. Riviere says the fear of retribution comes
from the woman’s wish to take the place of the father. The woman’s rivalry with
the father is not over the mother, but over the father’s position as active partici-
pant in public DISCOURSE SIGNIFYING PRACTICES such as writing,
and in
speaking, and visual REPRESENTATION. According to this view, the masquerade
that women assume and we see in the WORK of such artists as Cindy Sher-
that
man, conceals the woman’s DESIRE to occupy a SUBJECT rather than an object
position. As Judith Butler explains,

the rivalry with the father is not over the desire of the mother, as one might expect,
but over the place of the father in public discourse as speaker, lecturer, writer — that
is, as a user of signs rather than a sign-object, an item of exchange. This castrating
desire might be understood as the desire to relinquish the status of woman-as-sign in
order to appear as a subject within language. ( Gender Trouble, p. 51)

Riviere goes on in her essay to assert that masquerade is central to being a

woman:

The reader may now ask how I draw the line between
define womanliness or where I

genuine womanliness and the “masquerade.” My suggestion is not, however, that

there is any such difference; whether radical or superficial, they are the same thing.
(Riviere, p. 38)
44 Artwords

In this view,womanliness is masquerade. That is, no essential femininity exists.

Rather, female-ness is produced through PERFORMANCE of femininity, through
taking on those qualities and actions deemed feminine.
Cindy Sherman’s project has been to work within the DISCURSIVE
PRACTICES of REPRESENTATION that serve to produce and reproduce “the femi-
nine” in our CULTURE. Sherman’s APPROPRIATION of works by male artists
and her APPROPRIATION of the role of male artist may be seen, according to
Laura Mulvey, as evidence of her wish, at one and the same time, to be the
PHALLUS (to be the female OBJECT OF DESIRE, the artist’s model) and to have
the PHALLUS (to be the maker of SIGNS, the male artist).

As Judith Butler explains in Gender Trouble, according to LACAN, woman ap-

pears to be the PHALLUS through masquerade (Butler, p. 46). LACAN writes:

Let us say that these relations will revolve around a being and a having which, be-
cause they refer to a signifier, the phallus, have the contradictory effect of on the one
hand lending reality to the subject in that signifier, and on the other making unreal
the relations to be signified (Lacan, “The Meaning of the Phallus,’’ pp. 83-85)

Because womandoes not possess a penis, it is necessary to mask her lack, so as

to avoid evoking a fear of castration. (See PHALLUS, and FEMINIST FILM
THEORY.)

FEMININITY AS MASQUERADE See FEMININE MASQUERADE.

FEMINISM most general sense, feminism consists of an acknowledg-

In the
—
ment of a historical devaluation of women indeed the whole category of the
—
feminine and a corresponding demand for equal rights and status for women.
Early in the twentieth century the feminist struggle focused on women’s voting
and reproductive rights. In the resurgence of feminism experienced in Europe and
the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, reproductive rights were again at is-
sue, as were new concerns and demands involving equal access to education, em-
ployment, and other opportunities that were often denied women on the basis of
their SEX.
The expression of feminist demands for change can be broken down into four
positions, each of which is informed by a different theoretical framework. These
RADICAL,
four positions, as outlined by cultural theorist H. Leslie Steeves, are
LIBERAL, MARXIST/SOCIALIST, and PSYCHOANALYTIC- and CRITICAL-
THEORY-influenced feminism. RADICAL FEMINISM is based on the assumption
that men and women possess innately different natures. Radical feminists see
male control over women’s reproductive processes as the major means by which
PATRIARCHY is maintained, and some believe that a total separation of the sexes
is necessary for change. Many, such as Mary Daly, also feel that it is necessary
for women develop a language separate from that of the PATRIARCHY. In the
to
realm of art practice, those adhering to this separatist viewpoint have worked to
develop forms of visual expression, such as PEINTURE FEMININE, that are
uniquely expressive of women’s essential nature.
The second position, LIBERAL FEMINISM, finds its basis in the tenets of lib-
eral political philosophy and holds that the best means to alleviate the oppres-
Glossary 45

sion of women is to ensure women equal opportunity. Such equal opportunity is

to be ensured by laws that find their basis in rational argument. Liberal feminists
are sometimes referred to as equity feminists, since their basic belief is that
women’s oppression can be eliminated through the equal treatment of all indi-
viduals, regardless of their SEX. They do not hold that existent INSTITUTIONS or
social structures need to be
changed. Rather, they feel that the freedom and op-
portunities those INSTITUTIONS and structures provide must be offered to all. In
the field of art, liberal or equity feminism finds expression in attempts to assure
equal REPRESENTATION of women artists in museums, galleries, universities,
and so on, and in the demand that the art historical CANON be augmented so that
women artists are equally represented.
The third type includes both MARXIST and SOCIALIST FEMINISM. Both Marx-
istand socialist feminists regard CLASS oppression under capitalism as the pri-
mary problem. Socialist feminists find PATRIARCHY an equally oppressive
force. Both differ from radical feminists in that they reject the idea of an innate or
essential femininity. They also disagree with liberal feminists, in that they be-
lieve that the social structures of a capitalist society prevent AUTONOMY of ac-
tion; this view of capitalism causes them to believe in the necessity of revolu-
tionary social change. One of the social structures that both Marxist and socialist
feminists find most oppressive to women is the family. They feel that, if
women are ever to achieve equal status with men, the family STRUCTURE must
undergo radical change. But, when it comes GENDER,
Marxist and socialist
to
feminists differ significantly. Socialist feminists see Marxists as GENDER-blind.
They feel that, in their concern with oppression due to CLASS, Marxists over-
look oppression due to GENDER. Notable Marxist art historians include Griselda
Pollock, T. J. Clark, and John Berger.
The fourth type of feminism, which is influenced by PSYCHOANALYTIC and
CRITICAL THEORY, has had perhaps the greatest influence on contemporary art
THEORY and practice. Feminists holding this view believe that changes neces-
sary to eliminate the oppression of women must be achieved through changes in
behavior that will significantly alter existent social and psychological structures
which have worked to produce existent beliefs and patterns of behavior. Study of
the social processes that work to produce individual beliefs is the necessary first

step toward an understanding of necessary changes. FEMINIST FILM THEORY,

which has had a profound effect on contemporary art THEORY and practice, finds
its basis in this position. (See FEMINIST FILM THEORY.)
In the fields of contemporary art THEORY and practice, one can see the devel-
opment of these four basic types of feminism. The tenets of RADICAL
FEMINISM can be seen most clearly in the earliest of such WORK. Much femi-
nist art of the 1960s and 1970s took as its goal expression of an innate and in-
controvertible femininity with which women were presumed uniquely endowed.
During this period, feminists and feminist artists granted privileged status to
those things they perceived as common to all women. Common SUBJECTS were
female (hetero)SEXUALITY, childbirth, and motherhood. Women’s common ex-
perience was seen as the source of a unifying strength that was believed neces-
sary to fight PATRIARCHAL oppression. The work of Judy Chicago illustrates
best the typical concerns of feminist artists of this period. Like a number of
other women of the 1970s, Chicago was concerned with exploring the
artists
possible existence of a uniquely feminine aesthetic and a uniquely feminine way
46 Artwords

of working. Finding a VOICE for their concerns in art critic Lucy Lippard,
Chicago and a number of other feminist artists of the 1970s posited that wom-
en’s art was characterized by certain physical properties, including a central void
(what later became known as “VAGINAL ICONOGRAPHY”), a preference for soft
veils of color, and tactility. Such qualities were believed to be expressive of the
bodily experience of women. They also felt that women
could employ to best
advantage their presumed natural predilection for cooperative effort through col-
laborative projects. Throughout her critical practice, Lippard has maintained the
position that, if feminist art and art criticism is must
to succeed, its practitioners
not be content merely with incorporation of their WORK into those INSTI-
TUTIONS and systems of reward that culturally validate art and artists. It must be
a separatist practice. Most important, the goal of feminist artists and critics must
be to change art.
A large installation piece of 1974-79, The Dinner Party produced through the
,

collaboration of Chicago and scores of other women whom she supervised,

serves as a particularly good example of feminist art of this period. Chicago’s
installation consists of a triangular table bearing thirty-nine different place set-
tings. Each woman from history and includes a round ce-
setting is dedicated to a
ramic plate bearing a REPRESENTATION of female genitalia sculpted in high re-
lief, which sits on a fabric runner embroidered with the woman’s name and with
SYMBOLS associated with her and/or her historical period. Intended as a feminist
variation of Leonard da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Chicago’s WORK drew much
critical attention to the concerns of what has become known as “first-generation”
feminist art.

The division of feminist art and artists into first and second generations was
first made by art historians Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Patricia Matthews in

“The Feminist Critique of Art History,” an published in Art Bulletin in

article
1987. In this influential article, the authors provide a summary and analysis of
writings that are the product of feminist art history and criticism. They begin
with the 1970s, when the first writings resulting from this new area of scholarly
inquiry were produced, and proceed to shortly before the date of their study’s pub-
lication. The authors’ division of those works into first and second generations
does not simply serve to locate artists, writers, and their ideas chronologically;
more significantly, it designates two dominant bodies of THEORY that bear sig-
nificant conceptual differences. In their comprehensive study, Gouma-Peterson
and Matthews analyze the nature and implications of these differences and offer
speculations on the practical effects of art historical and critical practices that find
their basis in the assumptions of each.
As Gouma-Peterson and Matthews explain, documentation of women artists
previously ignored and neglected was the major accomplishment of first-genera-
tion feminist art historians. Such writers’ attempts to position their SUBJECTS
as qualitative equals of their male contemporaries, however, did little to analyze
and critique those INSTITUTIONS and configurations of POWER that have worked
to exclude women. This position does not question these very conception of
“genius,” which finds its basis in a necessarily masculine model and thus func-
tion to exclude women from art practice. Further, it propagates the view that
there actually were many women of high artistic accomplishment in the past,
and that the art historian’s task is simply to uncover and document their
PRESENCE, thus rescuing female artists from obscurity so that their “genius”
Glossary 47

may shine forth unobstructed. Far from illuminating those structures of POWER
that have worked to marginalize women artists, such an approach in fact seems
to generate the view that such exclusionary constructions were not of major im-
port, since there were presumably many women artists who developed and flour-
ished despite the limitations they imposed. Gouma-Peterson and Matthews ex-
plain that such an approach, which fails to realize the practical effects and impli-
cations of its methodology, may lead to a simple duplication of the exclusionary
practices of traditional art history. That is, it may simply produce another
CANON, one of “white female artists (primarily painters), a CANON that is al-
most as restrictive and exclusionary as its male counterpart” (p. 327). Authors
who engaged in this scholarship include Germaine Greer, Eleanor Tufts, Hugo
Munsterberg, Karen Peterson and J. J. Wilson, Elsa Honig Fine, Josephine
Withers, and Wendy Slatkin.
As an alternative to such approaches, Gouma-Peterson and Matthews offer
Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock’s Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideol-
ogy published
,

,
in 1981. This WORK is not a compendium of women artists,

nor is it an attempt to rescue women artists of previously unrecognized high

quality from obscurity; instead, as its authors state, it is “an analysis of the rela-
tions between women, art and ideology” (pp. 132-133). Such an approach,
which employs strategies of DECONSTRUCTION, has provided a model for a po-
litically feminist art historical practice that aims to bring change through analy-
sis of those culturally dominant practices and forms of REPRESENTATION that

serve to marginalize and oppress women. U. S. publications that were central to

the dissemination of the ideas informing first-generation art practice and criticism
include Womanspace Journal Feminist Art Journal, Women and Art, Women
,

Artists Newsletter, Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women’s Culture, Heresies, and

Women’s Art Journal. British periodicals such as Spare Rib, Block, and Art
History were also significant to the development of such DISCOURSE.
More recently, feminist art practice and THEORY has explored how images of
women work to subjugate them. This includes iconographic analysis that seeks
to reveal how images of women in Western CULTURE commonly function to
position them as the passive objects of an active MALE GAZE. Carol Duncan and
Griselda Pollock offer methodological models for this form of visual analysis.
Another mode of inquiry that Gouma-Peterson and Matthews regard as offering
great potential for feminist historians employs historical images of women as
sources for the study of women’s history. Margaret Miles is an art historian who
has productively employed such an approach.
Instead of concentrating on discrimination in the art world and advocating
greater inclusion of women into the CANON, second-generation feminists have
adopted a different strategy, one that is informed by literary POSTSTRUC-
TURALISM, SEMIOTICS, PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY, and MARXIST THEORY.
Gouma-Peterson and Matthews divide second-generation art criticism and
methodology into two dominant strands, noting that Lippard uses “CULTURAL
FEMINISM” as a label for the first group, and “SOCIALIST FEMINISM” as a name
for the second. Those in the first group, which has existed since the beginning of
feminism, are concerned with what it is to be female and tend to diminish
DIFFERENCE from men, because DIFFERENCE is equated with inequality and
thus, they believe, with oppression. Their primary strategy lies in documenta-
tion of women’s experiences. Often labeled as “ESSENTIALIST,” those in the first
48 Artwords

group regard the category of woman as fixed, as determined by social and cultural
forces, and, according to some, as characterized by an inherent female nature.
They take a separatist position, celebrate what is uniquely female, and attempt to
uncover and document the oppression of women.
Second-generation feminists, on the other hand, view the category of woman
as unfixed, always in process, and most properly investigated through her ideo-
logical construction and REPRESENTATION within a male-dominated system.
Rather than defining GENDER itself, they are interested in CULTURE as the field
that produces definitions of femininity and within which such definitions are
contested. They are concerned with, “an interrogation of an unfixed femininity
produced in specific systems of signification” (Tickner, “Sexuality and/in Repre-
sentation,” p. 28). In short, first-generation feminists attempt to investigate
those varied historical REPRESENTATIONS of women that find their basis in the
fixed category of “woman” and are expressed through the fixed SIGNS of feminin-
ity. They discern and celebrate CONTINUITY. In contrast, second-generation fem-
inistsexplore those signifying systems that construct the feminine in order to
discern strategies for unfixing the feminine, thus undermining patriarchal con-
structions of dominance. They seek to expose discontinuity and disjunction.
Gouma- Peterson and Matthews contend that art historical methodologies have
shown equally dramatic differences from first-generation to second-generation
practice. Whereas first-generation art historians were engaged in a project of re-
covery and attempts to integrate women into the CANON, second-generation
writers have been interested in deconstructing and critiquing the DISCIPLINE.
Noting a marked contrast between British and American feminist art historical
methodologies, Gouma- Peterson and Matthews cite Elaine Showalter’s descrip-
tion of dominant British contributions to feminism: “an analysis of the connec-
tion between gender and class, an emphasis on popular culture, and a feminist
critique of Marxist literary theory” (Showalter, p. 8). Gouma-Peterson and
Matthews also quote Lisa Tickner’ s explanation of the major difference between
American and European feminism: “The crucial European component in the de-
bate has been the theorization of the gendered subject in ideology [based on Al-
thusser and Lacan in particular]” (Lisa Tickner, “Sexuality and/in Representa-
tion,” p. 19). While European CRITICAL THEORY has had a profound impact on
the field of art criticism in America, it has had decidedly less influence on the
field of art history in the United States. Reasons given for this DIFFERENCE are,
first, that the education of American students of art history, unlike that of their

British counterparts, does not generally include CRITICAL THEORY. Second,

within the highly conservative field of art history, the use of social history as a
method of investigation seems radical. First-generation feminist art historians
employed such a methodology from the beginning: given the limitations of the
field, they have found an approach that is and therefore have
sufficiently radical
seen no reason to change methodology. The last reason Gouma-Peterson and
Matthews give is that there exists in the United States a distrust of methodolog-
ical approaches of European origin; when such approaches are utilized by Ameri-
can scholars, they are often “unsynthesized models” that “tend to turn away po-
tential advocates as well” (Gouma-Peterson and Matthews, p. 351).
Gouma-Peterson and Matthews go on to assert that one of the main contribu-
tions feminist theorizing has made to the field of art history is that it has caused
questions to be raised about the field that would otherwise not have been asked.
Glossary 49

Questions raised by feminist art historians have caused a reevaluation of the ex-
clusionary practices of the DISCIPLINE as a whole. After making this initial ob-
servation, Gouma-Peterson and Matthews present and briefly critique a number
of recent revisionist art historical studies, including the WORK
of Ann Suther-
land Harris, Diane Russell, Mary Garrard, Norma Broude, Whitney Chadwick,
Carol Duncan, Linda Nochlin, Eunice Lipton, Anthea Callen, and Griselda Pol-
lock. Anthea Callen’ s Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement 1870- ,

1914 and Griselda Pollock’s “Women, Art and Ideology: Questions for Feminist
Art Historians” are cited as superior examples of such scholarship. Gouma-Pe-
terson and Matthews refer to Pollock as “the figure who now most comprehen-
sively and consistently illustrates the most radical positioning feminist art his-
tory,” and admire her WORK because it demonstrates a synthesis of PSY-
CHOANALYTIC, MARXIST, and DECONSTRUCTIVE THEORY and “informed by
is

contemporary philosophical and critical notions of society, class, gender, and

ideology, understood as historical processes rather than static and ‘manageable
block[s] of information’ to be applied to artworks, or that artworks might be
used to illustrate” (Gouma-Peterson and Matthews, p. 355). Pollock is lauded for
demonstrating through her WORK that “art is constitutive of IDEOLOGY, it does
not merely illustrate it” (p. 355). Her WORK is further praised for fully situating
her SUBJECTS within their historical contexts. For example, in “Modernity and
the Spaces of Femininity,” in which she examines how SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
structured the products of artists Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, she “offers a
model of feminist which examines not the positions in which
art history,
women have been placed through male stereotypes (still a valid undertaking,
especially as carried out by Duncan and others), but rather a map of the territory
that was available to them and that they occupied as women, outside of the male
world” (Gouma-Peterson and Matthews, p. 356). In thus situating her
SUBJECTS, Pollock shows a marked divergence from first- generation feminists.
As Gouma-Peterson and Matthews explain, “Pollock’s ideological stance towards
the nature of feminist research thus stands in opposition to the methodologies of
feminist writers of the 1970s who sought to discover, uncover, and assert the
importance of women artists either within a male structure or separate from it”
(p. 356).
Since the publication of Gouma-Peterson and Matthews’s article, the field of
feminist art criticism has seen a number of significant changes. Such changes
have resulted from a number of INFLUENCES, including the rising prominence
and combinatory and extensions of psychoanalytically based
effects, refinements,
CRITICAL THEORIES; FOUCAULDIAN-derived THEORIES regarding the BODY and
its role in the construction of SUBJECTIVITY; POSTCOLONIAL THEORY and its

popular manifestation in MULTICULTURALISM; and QUEER THEORY. It has

appeared to some that feminist art theorists and practitioners have recently re-
treated to first-generation feminist concerns, observable in a renewed concern
with SEX- as opposed to GENDER-based IDENTITY, a profusion of static and
PERFORMANCE ART that showcases all variety of SEXED BODY parts, and a pre-
occupation with ways in which the BODY functions to produce SEX-based gen-
dered IDENTITY (see Kolbowski and Nixon, eds., “Feminist Issues”). When such
presumed “symptoms” of regression are closely examined, however, they reveal a
more complex trajectory.
50 Artwords

Gouma- Peterson and Matthews’s article provides a convenient point of depar-

ture for an analysis of the changes in art critical practice of the last ten years.
The main line of their argument finds its foundation in a system of rigid bina-
ries: first generation and second generation; ESSENTIALIST and constructionist;

British and American; even East Coast and West Coast. Considering that the au-
thors are well-trained art historians, the oppositional STRUCTURE
of a DI-
ALECTICAL approach is not surprising. In their eagerness to simplify their argu-
ment, however, Gouma-Peterson and Matthews have unwittingly duplicated the
sort of BINARY thinking that has produced the sorts of exclusionary practices
they laud second-generation feminist practices in art history and criticism for
working to subvert.
An awareness of the negative effects of systems of belief that categorize indi-
viduals on the basis of BINARY models (positioning them as male or female,
black or white, self or other, straight or gay, young or old, and so on) is one of
the major shifts in critical thinking that have occurred since the publication of
Gouma-Peterson and Matthews’s article. POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY had de-
veloped to a large degree by the time of their article’s publication. In the field of
art history and criticism — —
whether feminist or not however, it had made few in-
roads. This has since changed. Of course, this shift in thinking is not restricted
to cultural THEORY; it is CRITICAL THEORY, however, which has most directly
influenced art critical writing. The changes in cultural THEORY that have proba-
bly had the most profound effect on visual art writing and practice are those that
have occurred based CRITICAL THEORY. Other areas of cul-
in psychoanalytically
tural study that have dramatically impacted art and art writing include SUB-
ALTERN studies and THEORIES of the cultural “OTHER,” QUEER THEORY, and at-
tempts to explore Kristeva’s conception of ABJECTION.
As Gouma-Peterson and Matthews contend, one of the most valuable contribu-
tions that feminism has made to art history is an awareness of the exclusionary
bases of the DISCIPLINE. Once the feminist critique revealed those elements of
the field that worked to exclude women, the ways they worked to exclude other
groups became apparent, as well. Art criticism and art practice of the last ten
years have tried to reveal similarly exclusionary biases in the contemporary art
world, most evident in attempts to include individuals and SUBJECTS formerly
excluded from critical art DISCOURSE. This is one of the primary reasons why
we have recently seen such a profusion in galleries and museums of SUBJECTS
previously considered “beneath” art —excrement, urine, and a whole array of other
human detritus.

FEMINIST ACTIVIST ART Groups of feminist artists have banded to-

gether to fight discrimination against womenworld at
in the large, and in the
art

world in particular. The most recent of such groups include The Guerrilla Girls
and the Women’s Action Coalition (WAC).
The Guerrilla Girls make discriminatory practices in the art world the
SUBJECT of their PERFORMANCE. Agroup of women who dress up in gorilla
suits to hide their IDENTITY, they engage in actions carefully orchestrated so as
to draw media attention to their cause. They are perhaps best known for the
posters they post in and around New York City’s gallery and museum districts.
Their posters employ subtle IRONY and humor to convey facts regarding discrim-
inatory practices against women in the art world. For instance, a 1989 poster
Glossary 51

critical of the acquisition practices of New York’s Metropolitan Museum poses

the question, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” The
reply, which appears next to an image of a nude female wearing a gorilla head,
tells us “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but

85% of the nudes are female.” At the bottom of the poster they identify them-
selves, listing their name along with the identifying tag they always provide. It
reads: “Guerrilla Girls, Conscience of the Art World.”
The Women’s Action Coalition has engaged in similar dissemination of facts
regarding sexism in the art WAG,
however, does not limit its criticism to
world.
the realm of art. Organized in January 1992 by a group of New York women, by
1993 WAC had over two thousand members in New York, and chapters had
formed in twenty cities throughout the United States, in London, Paris, and
Toronto. Their tactics include public demonstrations, staging of media events,
and the publication of a fact book, WAC Stats: The Facts About Women which ,

includes sections providing statistics on AIDS, abortion, cosmetic surgery, eating

disorders, rape, menopause, SEXUAL harassment, and other issues concerning the
welfare of women. The section of the book on art listed such facts as: “5% of
works in museums are by women,” “17% of works in galleries are by women,”
“26% of artists reviewed in art periodicals are women,” and “Women artists’ in-
come is 30% that of male artists” ( WAC Stats, p. 14).

FEMINIST FILM THEORY PSYCHOANALYSIS has recently undergone a

period of intense scrutiny. As a “master DISCOURSE” of Western CULTURE, it
has been the object of much critical analysis by POSTSTRUCTURALISTS and
other contemporary theorists who are interested in deconstructing and otherwise
analyzing culturally dominant discourses. The recent critique of PSYCHO-
ANALYSIS as a cultural DISCOURSE has had an impact on feminist art THEORY
in a number of ways. Psychoanalytically based feminist film theory has yielded
especially fruitful applications to art.Foremost among feminist film theorists
who have had an influence on art critical writing is British theorist Laura Mul-
vey.
Beginning in the 1970s, a number of cultural theorists interested in
PSYCHOANALYTIC explanations of behavior engaged in a lively debate produced
by application of psychoanalysis to film. Mulvey, whose now-famous essay,
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” was first published in England in 1975,
was at the CENTER of this debate. Mulvey theorized that Hollywood conventions
of cinematic practice construct the GAZE as male. The female BODY acts as the
FETISHIZED object of the MALE GAZE,
and those in the audience necessarily take
on the role of masculine VOYEUR. Further, the combination of NARRATIVE and
SPECTACLE (the functions of telling and showing) reflects a system of SEXUAL
imbalance in which the male is the active SUBJECT and the female is the passive
object.
Mulvey ’s essay has had a dramatic impact on art critical writing in North
America. Its most widely disseminated female SUBJECTS in Western
idea, that
film function as the passive objects of an active MALE GAZE, has been fruitfully
applied to art critical and art historical writing.
By the early to mid-1980s, a number of studies and exhibitions that used
Mulvey ’s THEORIES as their basis had appeared. Probably the most influential in
terms of their impact on visual art were Kate Linker’s “Representation and Sexu-
52 Artwords

ality,”published in 1983, and an exhibit at New York City’s New Museum of

Contemporary Art in 1984, Difference: On Representation and Sexuality, which
was cocurated by Linker and Jane Weinstock. This exhibit and the catalog pub-
lished to accompany it, which includes essays by Linker, Weinstock, and Victor
Burgin, made a significant impact on subsequent art writing and practice. The
WORK of several feminist artists of the 1980s served as the focus of much art

criticism that found its basis in feminist film theory. Among these artists are
Cindy Sherman, Silver Kolbowski, Barbara Kruger, and Victor Burgin.
Since within her framework women could only function as the objects of
SPECTACLE, not as spectators, Mulvey’s THEORIES left little room for nonob-
jectifying representations of women in visual art forms or for expression of fem-
inine as opposed to MASCULINE DESIRE. Feminist DISCOURSE subsequent to
Mulvey’s seminal article has called for exploration of the development of forms
of REPRESENTATION that can could embody and convey women’s DESIRE. Mul-
vey herself responds to such criticism and somewhat revises her THEORIES in the
light of the debate that follwed the publication of Visual and Other Pleasuress.
A collection of responses to Mulvey’s article is contained in The Female Gaze:
Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, edited by Lorraine Gamman and Mar-
garet Marshment. Other recent publications in which the authors attempt to
reconceptualize the GAZEterms less polarized along a male/female axis in-
in
clude: “Ex-Changing the Gaze: Re-Visioning Feminist Film Theory,” by Gertrud
Koch, “Rethinking Women’s Cinema: Aesthetics And Feminist Theory,” by
Teresa de Lauretis, Hard Core: Power Pleasure and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible’,
by Linda Williams, Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film, by
Richard Dyer, and “The Color Purple Black Women as Cultural Readers,” by
:

Jacqueline Bobo.

FETISH/FETISHISM In Freudian terms, the fetish is a SIGNIFIER that

stands in for the PHALLUS, and which thereby allays the male fear of castration
that is attendant upon sight of the female genitals. Operating through the pro-
cesses of METAPHOR and METONYMY, it does not necessarily involve vision,
since it can operate through smell and hearing as well as sight. In contemporary
art, however, the visual aspects of fetishism figure most prominently. A concern

with fetishism is most commonly seen in artistic efforts which involve interro-
gation and examination of discourses of SEXUALITY, such as much recent femi-
nist art.
The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, Michel FOUCAULT
In
asserts that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen a “multiple implan-
tation of ‘perversions’” (p. 37). He explains how, in an attempt to repress those
undesirable SEXUAL behaviors they observed as spreading through their environ-
ment, medical experts of this period have engaged in identifying and naming
such perversions. The effect of such naming, however, has been to stimulate
their proliferation rather than to eliminate or repress their expression.
FOUCAULT identifies fetishism as the “master” or “model perversion” of this pe-
riod. He believes that fetishism “from at least 1877, served as the guiding thread
for analyzing all the other deviations” (p. 154). In large part due to FOUCAULT’S
discussion of fetishism, and perhaps in equal measure due to feminist film theo-
rists’ and cultural theorists’ explorations of PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE,
Glossary 53

fetishism has been the SUBJECT of much recent cultural DISCOURSE. It has also
served as the SUBJECT of WORK by number of contemporary artists.
a
In her 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey
outlines a THEORY of mainstream cinema that has formed the basis for much
subsequent theoretical writing on the SUBJECT. Mulvey uses Freud’s concept of
the fetish as one of her main precepts, basing her ideas on the premise that
fetishism involves a disavowal that women lack a penis (see Freud, “Fetishism,”
in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, vol. 21). Accord-
ing to Freud, a fetish disavows the physical reality of SEXUAL DIFFERENCE.
Knowledge of women’s lack is acquired by the sight of female genitals and is re-
tained by the infant. But, Freud tells us, conscious awareness of such knowledge
is denied through substitution of that which is seen immediately prior to the fe-

male genitals. The DESIRE that she have a penis is assuaged by transfer to a par-
ticular BODY part or an object such as shoes, fur, and so on. Knowledge of
women’s lack is retained while, at the same time, the fetish object maintains the
belief that she has a penis.
What is really at issue such disavowal of lack is the operation of the penis
in
as PHALLUS. The penis is only the physical stand-in for the PHALLUS, which

actually serves as the SIGNIFIER of SEXUAL DIFFERENCE, which sets into mo-
tion the PLAY of DIFFERENCE and SIGNIFICATION. The DESIRE for woman to
have a PHALLUS is what gives the FETISH such force. Fetishism’s disavowal of
SEXUAL DIFFERENCE is disavowal of the PHALLUS through substitution of
something that woman does possess. Because such disavowal does maintain the
PHALLUS, it also maintains the necessary precondition for DIFFERENCE and thus
for language.
Mulvey regards cinema by three relationships of looking. First
as characterized
is the spectator’s GAZE at the SCREEN; second is the camera’s look, which cap-

tures the event filmed; and third is the GAZE that the actor directs toward other
actors. Mulvey contends that, in classic cinema, such GAZES do not meet. For
instance, the camera does not look at the audience, and the actors do not look
into the camera. This guarantees the controlling distance necessary to the
PLEASURE Mulvey sees as inherent to the GAZE. It allows satisfaction of the
SCOPOPHILIC which derives PLEASURE from satisfaction of a voyeuristic
drive,
DESIRE. In addition, such VOYEURISM demands a NARRATIVE and, thus, tempo-
ral element. In Mulvey ’s words, it “demands a story, depends on making some-

thing happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength,
victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and an end”
(Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” p. 29). However, fetishism
involves fixation, which stops the flow of NARRATIVE, and demands abolish-
ment of the distance between REPRESENTATION and viewer that is necessary to
voyeuristic PLEASURE. Fetishism reinstalls an immediate relationship that car-
ries promise of satisfaction of DESIRE.
Because, in Freudian terms, fetishism must involve SEXUALITY, fetish objects
and fetishized BODY parts are those that are already prone to sexualization within
a CULTURE. In “‘You Don’t Know What Is Happening, Do You, Mr. Jones?”’
Laura Mulvey develops further her ideas regarding the operation of the fetish in
contemporary visual CULTURE. Finding in the WORK of British artist Allen
Jones the operation of the fetish as disavowal of women’s lack and thus as de-
fense against male fear of castration, Mulvey describes his WORK as exhibiting
54 Artwords

the three aspects of fetishistic images of women that are found in POPULAR vi-
sual CULTURE. She describes these as: “woman plus phallic substitute,”
“woman minus phallus punished and humiliated, often by woman plus phallus,”
and “woman as phallus” (p. 128).
Mulvey model for the workings of the fetish in the WORK of contem-
finds a
porary photographer Cindy Sherman. Over the past two decades Sherman has
produced a series of photographs for which she serves as both model and artist.
When posing for her WORK, she is always in disguise and sometimes in DRAG.
In “A Phantasmagoria of the Female Body: The Work of Cindy Sherman,” Mul-
vey describes Sherman’s work from 1977 to 1987 as providing a “narrative of
the feminine,” which develops chronologically but also spatially, from the exte-
rior of the BODY to the interior. She theorizes that Sherman’s WORK operates
like a fetish. Sherman-the-model conceals, while Sherman -the-artist reveals, the
MASQUERADE that constructs femininity. Sherman reveals, Mulvey contends,
femininity as all surface; and, since the existence of surface presupposes
existence of an interior, an interior space is produced. Sherman’s WORK, para-
doxically, opens up what femininity as MASQUERADE works to conceal. (See
FEMININE MASQUERADE.) Sherman makes visible the MASQUERADE of femi-
ninity. We know Sherman under the disguise. The illusion draws attention to
is

itself. By making artifice obvious, by FOREGROUNDING the illusion, Sherman

undercuts it. Mulvey explores the sources of Sherman’s NARRATIVE of disinte-

gration and decay. She explains how femininity acts as a veil, concealing
(through MASQUERADE) a threatening interior “enchantress-turned-hag.” Mul-
vey believes that the interior space that lies beneath woman’s surface allure often
functions as METAPHORIC expression of essence beneath appearance, TRUTH be-
neath falsehood, reality beneath FICTION, plain speech beneath cosmetic
RHETORIC. FEMININE MASQUERADE echoes the fetish in that it both confirms
and denies the threat of castration. Sherman’s images operate like the fetish,
which operates semiotically through “the deceit of artifice” (Mulvey,
“Phantasmagoria,” For Freud fetishism involves a simultaneous con-
p. 147).
firmation and denial. The possibility of castration is recognized through the
fetish, but it is also simultaneously denied through the fetish. The oscillation
involved in this operation of the ego is seen by Mulvey as similar to the view-
er’s experience in POSTMODERN art of an oscillation between credibility and in-
credibility. The fetish provides protection against a traumatic memory (castration
anxiety). It memento, a reminder of something that occurred
also functions as a
in the past and of what may potentially happen in the future. Sherman’s
MASQUERADE both asserts and conceals the female BODY as the SITE of anxiety.
Another contemporary artist who uses fetishistic imagery is Mary Kelly. In
Post-Partum Document, an installation of 1983, she explores how the male
child serves as a PHALLIC substitute and, thus, as a form of female fetish. She
interrogates ways in which mothers’ collections of memorabilia of their chil-
dren’s infancy, which, she asserts, are prompted by fear of the “empty nest,”
serve as PHALLIC substitutes through their function as fetish objects that dis-
avow “Corpus” section of Interim, a four-part installation completed
loss. In the
in 1990, Kelly employs fetishistic images of clothing in an attempt to expose
the workings of COMMODITY fetishism and female DESIRE.
Glossary 55

FICTION In traditional terms, a work of a fabricated work, a work

fiction is

of imagination and invention, and as such, associated with deceit, falsity, and
lies. In more recent usage, the term fiction has come to indicate all “messages,”

“worldviews,” or “points” embodied in and created by texts and it has lost

CONNOTATIONS of falsity. Many arguments in favor of this view point to the
Latin root fictio meaning something made or constructed, but without any nega-
,

tive CONNOTATION. This can be a disconcerting definition of fiction for those

who have invested greatly in the truth of especially important historical docu-
ments like the Constitution or the Bible. The point of this redefinition of fic-
tion, however, is not to designate all types of writing “false,” but to underline
the productive and constructive nature of all SIGNIFYING activities.

FIGURES/ FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE/ FIGURATION See

RHETORIC.

FILM THEORY Film theory comprises a number of technical and theoretical

concerns. Some technical areas of interest to film theorists are art direction,
composition, special effects, camera angles, cropping, editing, eye-line match,
match on action, reaction shots, relational editing, lighting, flashbacks, flash-
forwards, and —
NARRATION in short, all those techniques that are used to create
CONNOTATIONS through the filmic medium. Theoretical concerns are more var-
ied and are indicated by such terms as ACOUSTIC MIRROR, ACTIVE DESIRE,
ACTIVE/PASSIVE, APPARATUS, AUTEUR THEORY, CINEMA VERITE,
CLASSICAL CINEMA, DESIRE, FEMALE GAZE, FEMININE DESIRE, FETISH/
FETISHISM, GAZE, GENDERED SPECTATORS HIP, MALE GAZE, MASCULINE
DESIRE, OBJECT OF DESIRE, PORNOGRAPHY, SCOPOPHILIA, SCREEN THEORY,
SPECTACLE, SPECTATORS HIP, SPECULAR/SPECULARIZATION, SUTURE,
TABLEAU SPACE, and VOYEURISM.

FIRST-GENERATION FEMINISM First-generation feminist art practice

and writing developed in the early 1970s in the United States and Europe and was
most influential throughout that decade. Although it has been largely displaced
by SECOND-GENERATION FEMINISM, in the case of some artists and writers,
such as Judy Chicago and Lucy Lippard, it has extended into the present. First-
generation FEMINISM is characterized by an interest in REPRESENTATION of the
female anatomy in general and female genitalia in particular, attempts to identify
and employ a uniquely “feminine” aesthetic, the identification of a central void
construction as a prominent compositional feature of women’s artwork, the
production of pieces that required the collaboration of large groups of women,
the revival of traditional women’s art and craft forms such as needlework and
china painting, a belief in the existence of prehistoric matriarchal CULTURES, a
belief in a universal “female-ness,” the production of WORK intended to celebrate
the “feminine,” and a belief that women artists of the past and present should be
located and added to the existing art historical CANON. GODDESS ART and work
two characteristic forms
that is regarded as expressive of feminine spirituality are
of first-generation feminist art. (See GODDESS ART and SPIRITUAL FEMINISM.)
First generation feminist artists include Judy Chicago, Rachel Rosenthal,
Carolee Schneeman, and Mary Beth Edelson. (See FEMINISM.)
56 Artwords

FOREGROUNDING See DEFAMILIARIZATION.

FORM The term “form” has usually been used with two different but interre-
lated ideas in mind. First and foremost, form refers to the “formal elements,” or
“visual elements” — line, color, shape, mass, and so on —
used by the
that are
artist in the creation of the WORK of art. The arrangement of these elements
gives the WORK an overall form, a less precise idea that is often used inter-
changeably with anything from composition to overall visual appearance. Form
in this second sense refers to both the elements used in the WORK and the overall
result of their use. Ideas of form are especially important to FORMALISM, a crit-

ical position taken by formalist historians, critics, and theorists.

FORMALISM Any position on art that concentrates exclusively on the for-

mal properties of an art object is called formalism. Formalism as a critical posi-
tion was first identified with the writings of Clive Bell and Roger Fry. In their
attempts to understand how art exerts power over viewers, they theorized that the
power of art was the result of a certain combination and organization of formal
—
elements within the WORK. In its more extreme versions found in the writings
—
of Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried great attention was given to the vi-
sual FORM of a WORK, while little or no consideration was given to any possi-
ble expressive intentions or political functions. Formalist critics, especially in
postwar America, were primarily concerned with the AUTONOMY and SELF-
SUFFICIENCY of the WORK of art (the ability of art to depend upon nothing but
itself for its definition as art) and with the SELF-REFERENCE or SELF-RE-
FLEXIVE ability of art (the ability of art to become so abstract that it makes no
pictorial reference to other objects in the world). Formalism was so dominant af-
ter World War II that it has often been identified with MODERNISM.

FOUCAULT/FOUCAULDIAN/FOUCAULTIAN Having to do either

directly or indirectly with the WORK of Michel Foucault, especially his writings
on DISCOURSE, DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, and POWER.

FRAME The idea of the frame has become more central to considerations of
visual art in recent years, especially after the decline of formalist influence, the
full impact of Michael Fried’s ideas of THEATRICALITY, and a reconsideration of
by POSTSTRUCTURALIST thinkers like Jacques DERRIDA.
the idea of the frame
Ostensibly, a frame functions to separate a picture from the rest of the world.
This function, however, can be, and often is, accomplished not by a literal frame
but by architectural spaces, art historical texts, and philosophical argument.
What allows a museum, as an example, to function as a frame is its ability to
remain “invisible” while at the same time delimiting a literal and figurative
space that constitutes art or CULTURE. Ironically, the “pure interiority” of a mu-
seum or any frame, following DERRIDA, is always pressed upon by the excess
of its “OTHER,”which has been excluded. Art historian John Tagg, bor-
that
rowing from FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS and from DERRIDEAN DE-
CONSTRUCTION, describes the frame in this general sense as a space in which a
legitimized DISCOURSE — for example, the DISCOURSE of art history — is al-

lowed. From this point of view, the frame becomes a margin of certainty, sur-
rounding its contents with value, ordering and delimiting the field of visuality,
Glossary 57

regulating and positioning the viewing SUBJECT, whose PLEASURE of looking

isexercised only within the authority of the frame (see John Tagg, “A Dis-
course (With the Shape of Reason Missing),” Art History 15, no. 3
(September, 1992): 360-364).
In FILM THEORY, “frame” has four meanings: (1) Any single image on
at least
the film strip; (2) the size and shape of the image as projected onto the SCREEN;
(3) the dividing line between SCREEN space and darkened theater space; (4) the
compositional unit of film design, involving the graphic dynamics of the image
as well as the utilization of off-SCREEN space.

FRANKFURT SCHOOL The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research was

founded in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany, and was loosely associated with the
University of Frankfurt. The Institute was originally conceived as a center for the
study of social sciences and the humanities that would be autonomous of public
financing and so allow its members some freedom in the topics of study and in
the conclusions drawn from their studies. The Institute moved to Zurich in 1934
to escape the Nazis, and eventually found its way to New York by the late
1930s. After World War II the Institute returned to Frankfurt. The Frankfurt
School, as the Institute eventually came to be known, has included such mem-
bers as Felix Weil, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and
Leo Lowenthal. Walter Benjamin was not officially a member, but did receive
financial support and was a close associate with many members of the Frankfurt
School. In the 1950s and 1960s a new generation of students trained at the Insti-
tute, including Jurgen Habermas and Peter Burger.
In the 1930s, heavily influenced by MARXIST THEORY, Horkheimer and others
at the Frankfurt School developed the concept of “CRITICAL THEORY,” which in
this case should not be confused with “New Criticism” or with a label for all

critical thinking or THEORIES. Ideologiekritik, or the critique of social interests

that underlie systems of ideas or IDEOLOGIES, is the term applied to CRITICAL
THEORY and it assumptions are borrowed from Marx’s writings. The basic idea
is that all forms of cultural production, including the arts, are rooted in ideologi-
cal interests, be they CLASS, ETHNIC, or GENDER interests. Many members of
the Frankfurt School saw cultural production as an instrument for protecting
those interests, and so aesthetics and the arts became central to the Frankfurt idea
of CRITICAL THEORY.
Theodor Adorno, in Aesthetic Theory (1970) and in essays later collected in
The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (1991), developed a
CRITICAL THEORY of art consistent with Frankfurt School principles. Adorno
argues that behind the world of appearances lies the TRUTH of the
“phantasmagoria” of capitalism: despite what they think, people are not free, but
live in a world that is a kind of prison. They have restricted forms of thought and
action imposed upon them by the existing social forces of capitalist production.
Consequently Adorno rejects the mimetic tradition of artistic REPRESENTATION
of “the real,” which he sees as the reification of the superficial world of appear-
ances and a reinforcement of existing IDEOLOGICAL interests. This mimetic tra-
dition includes both the straightforward practice of copying nature, and the idea
that a WORK of art can accurately represent society. Adorno argues for the valid-
ity of an has the ability to reject MIMESIS and defy the effects of com-
art that
mercialism. AVANT-GARDE art should attempt to escape the CULTURE industry
58 Artwords

and continually resist themarketplace by asserting the essentially radical

AUTONOMY of art and by developing new art forms that are at odds with existing
social conditions (e.g., “difficult” music and theatre, abstract painting and sculp-
ture, and so on). In many ways Adorno and the formalist American art critic
Clement Greenberg echo one another.

FREE-FLOATING See FREEPLAY.

FREEPLAY According to POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY, a SIGN is no

longer tied or anchored to its REFERENT in any necessary way, a fact especially
noticeable after a DECONSTRUCTION. In such a condition, the SIGN is said to be
in freeplay or “free-floating.” However, POSTSTRUCTURALISTS realize and —
this is especially true —
with Michel FOUCAULT that SIGNS are never truly in
freeplay or free-floating. SIGNS are still tied firmly to their REFERENTS, but
these ties are established and maintained through INSTITUTIONAL practices with
political effects.
G

GATEKEEPING In CULTURAL STUDIES, a phrase referring to the activity

on the part of ELITE groups that results in restricted or limited access to high
CULTURE. Gatekeepers are exemplified by journal editors, college professors, and
gallery and museum directors.

GAZE See MALE GAZE and FEMALE GAZE.

GENDER Gender is defined as a complex of culturally acquired characteristics

that are attributed to individuals of a certain SEX. See GENDER THEORY.

GENDER THEORY Gender theory involves the study of how the processes
of gendering, of acquisition and maintenance of a “masculine” or “feminine”
IDENTITY, operate in a CULTURE. Gender studies arose out of women’s studies
along with the growing conviction that SEX, but not gender, is linked to biol-
ogy. Intense scrutiny has been given to the processes of formation and —
marginalization — of gendered IDENTITY of individuals occupying gender posi-
tions, including those who identify themselves as HOMOSEXUAL, bisexual,
trans-sexual, prepubescent, postmenopausal, and so on. Recent prominent gender
theorists include Judith Butler, Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Kobena Mercer,
Craig Houser and Victor Burgin. Individual artists who have made exploration of
gender central to their WORK include Barbara Hammer, Harmony Hammond, and
Robert Mapplethorpe.
Since the 1990 publication of her first major study, Gender Trouble: Femi-
nism and the Subversion of Identity, philosopher Judith Butler’s THEORY regard-
ing the PERFORMATIVITY OF GENDER has been the SUBJECT of much discus-
sion and debate. Butler has brought into the gender debate, and served as a major
number of cultural theorists, including Michel
elucidator of the ideas of, a
FOUCAULT, Jacques LACAN, Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray, and Helene
Cixous. (See PERFORMANCE/ PERFORMATIVE/ PERFORMATIVITY/
PERFORMATIVITY OF GENDER.)
 60 Artwords

GENDERED SPECTATORSHIP Gendered spectatorship refers to the idea

developed in FEMINIST FILM THEORY that filmic practices found in classic
NARRATIVE cinema construct the viewer as male, crating an objectifying MALE
GAZE and producing and reproducing cultural constraints that position men as ac-
tive and women as passive. A gendered spectator, then, is a viewer who is con-
structed as the occupant of a particular gendered position (“masculine,”
“feminine,” and so on) by the filmic practices of the cinematic form. (See
FEMINIST FILM THEORY, MALE GAZE, and FEMALE GAZE.)

GENDERED SUBJECTIVITY Gendered subjectivity refers to the GENDER

IDENTITY one takes on, to the SUBJECT position, or role, one assumes in rela-
tionship to expression of one’s GENDER.

GENEALOGY Included in Michel FOUCAULT’S DISCOURSE ANALYSIS is a

concern with the material techniques by which persons are made into SUBJECTS.
FOUCAULT calls his task “genealogy,” and describes it as trying to arrive at an
analysis that can account for the constitution of the SUBJECT within a historical
framework. FOUCAULT’S discursive approach to the problem concentrates on the
methods and effects of institutionalized discourses
and the knowledge they circu-
late throughout society (see Michel Foucault. The Archaeology
of Knowledge
and the Discourse on Language ). Like Louis ALTHUSSER, FOUCAULT pays par-
ticular attention to how
these discourses eventually aid in producing both con-
trolled and productive individual citizens. The individual is the SITE of struggles
of and for POWER, as well as a surface upon which institutionalized discursive
battles for the meaning of IDENTITY and SUBJECTIVITY take place. As Paul
Bove describes FOUCAULT on this point, the SUBJECT comes to be whatever or
whoever he or she is within these sets of institutionalized fields (see Paul Bove,
Mastering Discourse: The Politics of Intellectual Culture ).

GENRE In the visual arts, the term “genre” has two very different meanings.
First, it means something roughly equivalent to “category.” There can be many
genres of painting, including landscape, still life, portraits, and so on. Second,
the term can be used to refer to a specific category, that of scenes of everyday
life, a type of painting especially POPULAR from the eighteenth
century well
into the nineteenth century.

GODDESS ART A significant number of feminist artists of the 1970s made

one of major concerns an exploration of the role that goddess worship
their
played in ancient CULTURES. They hoped to find a source of MYTH and imagery
that was woman-centered and that celebrated a presumed universal femininity.
They “unearthed” and utilized images of women from CULTURES that they felt
identified a feminine animating force in nature and that engaged goddess
in ritual
worship. Many
used the female BODY as SYMBOLIC of the generative, animat-
ing force of nature. Others constructed altars and/or staged elaborate rituals
in-
tended to invoke or celebrate the POWER of the goddess that, they believed,
resided in every woman. Mary Beth Edelson was among the most vocal of such
“goddess artists.” Photographing her nude BODY in natural settings, and thus
expressing an identification of woman with nature, she inscribed the resulting
prints with spirals, horns, moons, and other forms she felt expressed the
spiri-
Glossary 61

tual power residing in the woman. Edelson explains her conception of the god-
dess as an internalized, sacred metaphor for an expanded and generous under-
standing of wisdom, power, and the eternal universe.” Contending that she is
“alive and evolving in contemporary psyches as well as being an ancient, primal,
creative force,” Edelson says that the goddess “embodies the unity of mind-body-
spirit, and a wholeness that includes our dark sides” (Mary Beth Edelson,

“Objections of a ‘Goddess Artist’,” Speaking of Goddess Head, a ritualis-

p. 34).
tic PERFORMANCE piece of hers from the 1970s, Edelson explains that “like ear-

lier private rituals in which I used my own body as a stand-in for a primary sa-
cred being (Goddess), [this performance piece] broke the STEREOTYPE in our
CULTURE that women do not have direct GENDER IDENTITY with the sacred” (p.
36). She maintains that such “creative ritual” affords her “direct access to meta-
physical experience” and undermines “the stereotype that the male gender is the
only gender than can identify in a firsthand way with the body and, by extension,
the mind and spirit of a primary sacred being.” Work containing such ritual and
imagery was, Edelson contends, specifically feminist because they “connected di-
rectly to Goddess as an expanded image of woman as a universal being and not
limited to the stereotype of woman as
‘
other ’” (p. 36).
Another prominent artists of this GENRE was Ana
Mendieta. Mendieta con-
structed small-scale earthworks in the FORM of a female BODY’S outline and
filled them with the earth-altered photographs of her nude BODY, which she in-
scribed with spirals, horned moons, wings, and other marks of female spiritual
POWER, and Ana Mendieta’ s archetypal female forms, made from earth, covered
in tiny white flowers, or seared with gunpowder, are powerful examples of con-
temporary spiritual art. The pioneering WORK of many women artists has also
had a decisive influence on the politics and practice of the American Green and
ecofeminist movements, both of which have incorporated the issues of women’s
bodily and SEXUAL AUTONOMY into their agendas.

GRAM An alternative term for DIFFERANCE.

GRAMMATOLOGY Grammatology is the term used by Jacques DERRIDA

to designate his general study of and theorizing on writing, alphabets, reading,
and graphic marks. This interest is opposed to the SEMIOLOGY of Saussure and

others, the science of SIGNS, and the traditional subordination in SEMIOLOGY of

writing to speech. See ECRITURE.

GRAND NARRATIVE See METANARRATIVE.

GRAPHEME Jacques DERRIDA, as part of his THEORY of GRAMMATOL-

OGY, posed the grapheme as the smallest unit of written language. DERRIDA
was especially concerned pose the grapheme in relationship to the SEME, or
to
the smallest unit of (usually) spoken SIGN as understood by SEMIOLOGY.

GROTESQUE Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), Russian philosopher of lan-

guage and literature, made the grotesque and the CARNIVAL, the collective ritual
characterized by grotesque display of the BODY, the subjects of much of his writ-
ing. Bakhtin developed concepts of the CLASSICAL and grotesque BODIES in Ra-
belais and His World, a study of the sixteenth-century French writer Rabelais.
62 Artwords

Bakhtin regards Rabelais’s images as deriving from an aesthetic of folk

CULTURE, which is characterized by a “MATERIAL BODILY PRINCIPLE” that
finds expression in “GROTESQUE REALISM.” In the tradition of GROTESQUE
REALISM all things bodily become normal and
grossly exaggerated, exceeding all

proper limits. In CARNIVAL,” as conceived by Bakhtin, the “high” and the

“ideal” are lowered through laughter linked to the “bodily lower stratum” and
lower bodily functions. GROTESQUE REALISM celebrates all those aspects of ma-
terial existence that are commonly regarded in Western CULTURE as base or de-
graded.
Bakhtin describes traditional grotesque images as depicting their SUBJECT in
the process of metamorphosis. Such images typically involve dismemberment,
disintegration, pregnancy, birth, and old age. They are characterized by ambiva-
lence, since they usually contain, in one image, both the beginning and the end
of the life course, both birth and old age verging on death. Bakhtin explains that
in images of the grotesque body the SUBJECT is close to either birth or death,
but the two are united into one. He says that the grotesque body, which is al-

ways of metamorphosis and always unfinished, transgresses its

in the process
limits and overflows into the environment. It is not a discrete whole completely
differentiated from its surroundings like the CLASSICAL BODY. Images of
GROTESQUE REALISM stress those parts of the BODY that are open, allowing
penetration. Bakhtin explains how the unfinished BODY, the open BODY, lacks
definite boundaries that separate it from its surroundings. It is merged with its

surroundings.
Using Bakhtin’s ideas as her basis, Mary Russo has noted the importance of
the grotesque to FEMINIST THEORY. Because women are associated with the
“quintessentially grotesque events” of SEXUAL intercourse, birth, and menstrua-
tion, they are most closely associated with Those characteristics
the grotesque.
that define the female BODY as grotesque can be employed in exaggerated form in
caricature as a critique of social norms.
Examples of the grotesque in contemporary art can be found in the photogra-
phy of Joel-Peter Witkin, whose SUBJECTS include aborted fetuses, sideshow
freaks, and dwarves. Another photographer who employs the TRANSGRESSIVE
potential of the grotesque is John Coplans. Photographing his aging nude FORM
and often concentrating on the most “base” element of his physique, his toes and
feet, Coplans’s WORK shows the influence of early twentieth-century photogra-
pher Jacques-Andre Boiffard, who, in turn, found a basis for his grotesque im-
agery in “The Big Toe,” an essay by surrealist writer Georges Bataille.
The WORK of photographer Cindy Sherman also displays elements of the
grotesque. Serving as both model and master artist in her Master Model series,
Sherman problematizes traditional portraiture, which, in Western CULTURE,
bases its POWER
on the assumption of a unitary individual “essence” that the
“master” artist or photographer can capture and preserve. Sherman interrogates
the processes whereby culturally dominant practices of visual REPRESENTATION
construct individual SUBJECTIVITY. Such practices work to produce in the
viewer the sense of a coherent, delimited self, which is always clearly distin-
guished from others. These practices work to produce the CLASSICAL BODY, as
opposed to the grotesque body. In the FOREGROUNDING of artifice, in the addi-
tion of obviously fake BODY
such as breasts, noses, and bulging bellies,
parts,
Sherman seems to suggest that the classical Cartesian SUBJECT has come apart.
Glossary 63

The practices of REPRESENTATION work

produce a coherent self distinct
that to
from its surroundings have become obvious and have thus failed their function.

GROTESQUE BODY See GROTESQUE.

GROTESQUE REALISM Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin develops the

concept of GROTESQUE realism in Rabelais and His World his study of the six-,

teenth century French writer Rabelais. Bakhtin cites degradation, the debasement
or lowering of those things and ideas normally positioned as high and ideal, as
the primary principle of GROTESQUE realism. In its PARODIC character and its
basis in humor, the GENRE of GROTESQUE realism employs laughter that mate-
rializes and degrades. This laughter brings its SUBJECT down to the earthly level,
gives its SUBJECT corporeal existence. The degrading laughter characteristic of
GROTESQUE realism according to Bakhtin, linked to the “bodily lower stra-
is,

tum.” In its association with things earthly, GROTESQUE realism participates in

all those aspects of material existence that are commonly regarded in Western
CULTURE as base or degraded.

GUATTARI/GUATTARIAN Having to do with the philosophy or writing

BODY WITHOUT ORGANS, D&G, DELEUZIAN,
of Felix Guattari. See also
DESIRING MACHINES, NOMADOLOGY, PLATEAU, RHIZOMATIC AND AR-
BORESCENT, RHIZOME, and SCHIZOANALYSIS.

GYN-ECOLOGY Mary Daly coined the term “gyn-ecology,” making it the

title of her 1978 book on the subject. Arguing for complete rejection and separa-
tion from PATRIARCHY, even to the extent of refusing to use the same language
as men, Daly theorized that the cooperative efforts of women-only groups could
result in whole new bodies of knowledge and ways of understanding the world, or
whole new “ecologies” of meaning.

GYNOCENTRIC First-generation feminists such as Elaine Showalter, Mary

Daly, and Adrienne Rich called for the development of gynocentrism. Gynocen-
and activities are those that are believed to exhibit uniquely
tric characteristics

feminine strengths and that could, through their fostering and encouragement, fa-
cilitate women’s resistance to PATRIARCHY.

GYNOCRITICS LITERARY THEORIST Elaine Showalter first used the word

“gynocritics” in 1979 to describe feminist criticism that focuses on the woman
writer. She contends that gynocritics generates interest in the study of the experi-
ence of women as a means to develop new models that are not simply modifica-
tions of male THEORY. Showalter explains: “Gynocritics begins at the point
when we from the linear absolutes of male literary history, stop
free ourselves
trying to fit women between the lines of male tradition, and focus instead on the
newly visible world of female culture.” (Showalter, “Toward a Feminist Poet-
ics,” p. 28). As a form of RADICAL FEMINISM that advocates a separate artistic
practice and development of an artistic FORM that is the exclusive product of
women’s experience, gynocritics may
be seen as the literary equivalent to first-

generation feminist art practices which focused on cognate issues.

1
HEGEMONY The WORK of Antonio Gramsci has been instrumental in es-
tablishing the meaning of hegemony currently in use. Gramsci extended the
meaning of the term beyond its CONNOTATIONS of dominance and control to in-
clude ways in which humans perceive their relationship to the world. It is differ-
ent from IDEOLOGY in that it is not limited to a concern with the interests of the
ruling classes, but also focuses on an acceptance of “normal reality” and
“common sense” by those subordinated to the ruling classes. Thus hegemony is
broader than IDEOLOGY, because it includes the control of CULTURE as a cen-
trally important element in the continuing domination of the ruling classes, as
important as the Marxist conception of the BASE.

HERMENEUTICS Another word for interpretation.

HETEROSEXIST Something or someone exhibiting a bias in favor of the

heterosexual over the homosexual, bisexual, trans-sexual, or any form of sexual-
ity other than heterosexual.

HETEROSEXUAL DESIRE Heterosexual desire occurs in an individual

who experiences a SEXUAL attraction to an individual who is identified as of the
opposite SEX.

HETEROSEXUAL MATRIX In Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Sub-

version of Identity, philosopher and GENDER theorist Judith Butler explains the
“heterosexual matrix” as a “grid of cultural intelligibility” that naturalizes DE-
SIRES, BODIES, and GENDERS. Butler derives her idea from two other theorists
of GENDER, Monique Wittig and Adrienne Rich. Wittig developed the idea of a
“heterosexual contract” in her WORK; and, in a 1980 essay, “Compulsory Het-
erosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Rich used the term “compulsive heterosex-
uality” to describe the hegemonic processes that produce GENDER and that require
that individuals conform to the patriarchally defined notion of GENDER as an ex-
pression of a fixed and stable SEX. In Rich’s view, GENDER is oppositionally
66 Art words

produced through the hierarchical and compulsory practices of heterosexuality,

which maintain male dominance, through what Butler terms the “heterosexual
matrix” (Butler, Gender Trouble , p. 151).

HETEROTOPIA According to the writings of Michel FOUCAULT, hetero-

topias are understood best in opposition to utopias. While utopias are rhetorical
and idealist, heterotopias are those real spaces that exist outside of and in opposi-
tion to the ideals of a community. Examples of heterotopias are hospitals, nurs-
ing homes, cemeteries, prisons, and sometimes Indian reservations. FOUCAULT
sees heterotopic spaces as elements of larger discursive organizations used in the
production of disciplined SUBJECTS in society.

HIERARCHICAL THEORY Any THEORY that uses a HIERARCHY as its

basis.

HIERARCHY Much attention has been given in POSTSTRUCTURALIST

THEORY to thearrangement of “self-evident” BINARY OPPOSITIONS or concep-
tual pairs that are used as the basis of an argument or THEORY. Jacques
DERRIDA, in a key TEXT on DECONSTRUCTION, wrote extensively on Plato’s
positioning of the terms “speech” and “writing” in the dialogue “Phaedrus” (see
DECONSTRUCTION). DERRIDA understood such an arrangement as written into
an argument so as to give one term a privileged or ruling position over the other
from the very start. The first term is presented as primary and ontologically prior
(usually coming first, both in the presentation of the pair, as well as being seen
as having existed first), while the other term is secondary and serves as a
—
SUPPLEMENT to the first e.g., male/female, high/low, young/old, na-
ture/CULTURE, and civilized/savage. A hierarchy is thus established. This hierar-
chy controls the meaning of the argument and restricts its possible direction and
outcome. A DECONSTRUCTION can produce a reversal, whereby the ruling term
becomes governed by the other term. Due to the potential critical contribution of
this POSTSTRUCTURALIST conception of hierarchies, hierarchical constructions
have formed a major concern for feminist theorists. Feminists have attempted to
demonstrate the historical bias within European CULTURE that is based upon and
continued through hierarchical strategies. At the same time, partly due to
DERRIDA’S critique of hierarchies, feminists have demonstrated the possibilities
of an overturning or outright rejection of hierarchies.

HINGE See PLAY.

HOMMELETTE The term HOMMELETTE derives from a PLAY on words by

JacquesLACAN. LACAN uses the word to describe the pre-Oedipal stage of early
childhood development, when the child is unable to differentiate itself from its
surroundings. The very young child has not yet developed an ego, which relies
on the sense of a circumscribed self that, in the PSYCHOANALYTIC scheme, ac-
companies the development of an awareness of bodily containment and limits; so
his/her sense of self is like the runny, undifferentiated mass of an omelette. The
PLAY on words relies on the French word for “man,” which is “homme,” and the
suffix “-ette,” which serves as a diminutive. Thus, an “homme[l]ette” would
Glossary 67

mean “little man,” which is how a young child (either male or female) may be
regarded.

HOMOSEXUAL DESIRE Homosexual desire occurs in an individual who

experiences a SEXUAL attraction to an individual who is identified as of the same
SEX.

HYBRIDIZATION/HYBRIDITY In POSTCOLONIAL studies hybridization

refers to the mixing of CULTURES and peoples that occurs as the result of colo-
nization. In The Location of Culture Homi K. Bhabha asserts that “the margin
,

of hybridity, where cultural differences ‘contingently’ and conflictually

touch. . resists the binary opposition of racial and cultural groups.
.
as . .

homogeneous polarized political consciousnesses” (p. 207). Bhabha explains that

hybridity challenges assumptions regarding cultural purity and authenticity. In
challenging such cultural distinctions, it may operate as an effective form of
opposition and subversion, because it makes visible the “necessary deformation
and displacement of all sites of discrimination and domination” (Bhabha, “Signs
Taken Wonders,” p. 9). In the field of MULTICULTURAL studies, hybridity
for
has been discussed by Henry Louis Gates as offering the possibility for a com-
plex and dynamic common American CULTURE.

HYBRID POETICS According to Andre Lefevere, hybrid poetics occurs

when two cultural traditions meet and elements from a historically dominated
CULTURE mix with those from the historically DOMINANT CULTURE. This in-
teraction constrains the production of literature produced by individuals in the
dominated CULTURE, but leaves the literature of the dominant tradition unaltered.

HYPERREAL According SEMIOTIC THEORY of Jean BAUDRILLARD,

to the
the term “hyperreal” describes a condition of reality when that reality has been
displaced by a SIMULATION. In other words, when the use of simulations be-
comes so convincing that one cannot tell the DIFFERENCE between the SIGN and
the real, a condition of hyperreality exists.

HYPERTEXTUAL See INTERTEXTUALITY.

ICON In Charles Sanders Pierce’s semiotic THEORY, a SIGN that represents its
object mainly by way of similarity or ICONICITY, e.g., a map or a portrait.

ICONICITY An analogous relationship between image and object or

REFERENT.

ICONOGRAPHY A long-standing tool of interpretation used by art histori-

ans, iconography has taken on a different specific meaning in FILM THEORY in

recent years. Patterns of imagery in relation to NARRATIVE, MISE-EN-SCENE
and other cinematic structures; visual CONVENTIONS attached to a body of
TEXTS, whether defined by GENRE, star, or director (AUTEUR).

IDENTITY The term identity has two interrelated meanings in contemporary

critical thinking. First, it refers to the relationship ofSIGNS for their referents.
When SIGN is taken to be the REFERENT, that is,
a when the DIFFERENCE be-
tween a SIGN and its REFERENT is not recognized, it is said that there isan iden-
tity between the two. The second meaning of the term identity is subsumed un-
der the phrase IDENTITY POLITICS.

IDENTITY POLITICS Identity politics refers to the idea that individuals

tend to form their opinions on political issues on the basis of their GENDER,
RACE, ETHNICITY, and SEXUAL orientation. A variety of identity politics can be
seen in the art WORK of individuals who favor artistic expression based on issues
regarding the artist’s RACE, GENDER, ETHNICITY, and so on, over forms that
strive toward presumably universal or strictly aesthetic concerns.

IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS (ISA) See APPARATUS.

IDEOLOGIEKRITIK See FRANKFURT SCHOOL.

 70 Artwords

IDEOLOGY In Marxist THEORY, ideology plays in important role in the

continued domination of the working classes by the ELITE ruling classes. Ideol-
ogy is most commonly referred to as a kind of “false consciousness” that pre-
vents workers from defining their problems and solutions. These ways of “false
thinking” are produced especially by INSTITUTIONS that have a vested interest in
maintaining the relationships of workers and the ruling CLASS, such as religions
and educational INSTITUTIONS. This conception of ideology, generally equivalent
been supplemented by recent theorists so as to include almost
to illusion, has
any form of SIGN usage, even that by Marxists, since no textual formation is ac-
tually disinterested or free of illusion in some sense.

IMAGINARY French psychoanalysis Jacques LACAN (1901-1981) revised

Freud through SEMIOTIC THEORY by centering his THEORIES of the SUBJECT
and PSYCHOANALYSIS on language. Since an analyst works with a patient’s
statements and repeated (ENCODED) behaviors, SIGNS are really all that is avail-
able to him/her. As a child develops the ability to use language (SIGNS), the
child becomes socialized. In his “rewriting” of Freud, LACAN introduced several
important concepts into PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE, which are useful to
those interested in the processes of socialization, especially GENDER formation.
One such concept is the Imaginary. The Imaginary in LACANIAN terms is the
prelinguistic stage of development. It is prior to self-awareness and is character-
ized by a child’s direct experience of the mother without any sense of separate
IDENTITY. At this stage, the child’s IDENTITY is interchangeable with that of the
mother.
Mary Kelly is a contemporary artist who has used LACANIAN THEORY in her
WORK. Most notable is her use of LACAN’S concepts of the Imaginary, the
REAL, the SYMBOLIC, and the MIRROR STAGE in Post-Partum Document an ,

installation which deals with the birth and early childhood of her son and her re-
lationship to him.

IMAGINARY BODY/IMAGINARY ANATOMY When Sigmund

Freud formulated his ideas regarding hysteria, he theorized that an understanding
of the hysteric’s symptoms was crucial to an understanding of the relationship
between the libido and the BODY. Such theorizing was extended by French psy-
choanalyst Jacques LACAN, especially in WORK dealing with the development of
the ego. LACANspeaks of an “imaginary anatomy” that the hysteric mimics and
that displays an “astonishing somatic compliance.” He says that hysterical
symptoms

follow the pattern of a certain imaginary anatomy which has typical forms of its own.
In other words, the astonishing somatic compliance which is the outward sign of the
imaginary anatomy is only shown within certain definite limits. I would emphasize
that the imaginary anatomy referred to here varies with the ideas (clear or confused)
about bodily functions which are prevalent in a given culture. (Lacan, “Some Reflec-
tions on the Ego,’’ p. 13)

In “A
Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction,” Australian feminist theorist
Moira Gatens discusses LACAN’S THEORIES regarding the imaginary body.
Glossary 71

Gatens’s basic assertion is that, if feminists are to employ an effective strategy

of resistance to PATRIARCHY and capitalism, they must first develop “a coherent
account of the construction of male and female subjectivity” (Gatens, p. 154).
Gatens builds her argument on LACAN’S ideas regarding the imaginary body, as-
serting that “‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ correspond, at the level of the imagi-
nary body to ‘male’ and ‘female’ at the level of biology.” Her argument, how-
ever, “does not imply a fixed essence to ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ but rather an
Gatens speaks of hysteria as described by
historical specificity” (Gatens, p. 155).
LACAN and “phantom limbs” as proof of a libidinal or narcissistic relationship
of the individual SUBJECT to the BODY that defies rationalist and behaviorist ex-
planation. She invokes Schilder’s assertion that all healthy individuals have both
a material BODY and a “BODY-phantom” or imaginary body. The latter of these,
the interiorized image of the BODY, Schilder theorizes, is a necessary condition
for intentionality (Paul Schilder, The Image and Appearance of the Human Body,
passim).
Gatens notes further that the consistency with which certain hysterical symp-
toms, such as anorexia nervosa, are enacted from one patient to another within a
given CULTURE attests to the “social character of the imaginary body” (Gatens,
p. 152). She explains that the imaginary body is specific to the social and histor-
ical CONTEXT of the individual SUBJECT and is constructed through the BODY
by the combined effects of a number of factors, including a shared cultural lan-
guage, a privileging of particular areas of the BODY (the genitals, mouth, and so
on), and INSTITUTIONS and DISCOURSES on the BODY such as medicine, educa-
tion, and legal DISCOURSE. Gatens further asserts that an understanding of the
imaginary body is crucial to finding a CODE to decipher the personal meaning of
biological maleness and femaleness, of the cultural experience of masculinity and
femininity. An understanding of the ways in which the imaginary body functions
is key to the realization that the behaviors regarded as SEX-specific that is,—
—
“masculine” or “feminine” are reactions to and/or manifestations of our shared
UNCONSCIOUS and conscious conceptions of biology. Such awareness, Gatens
contends, leads to an understanding that there is not an arbitrary connection be-
tween SEX and GENDER, that “masculinity and femininity as forms of SEX-ap-
propriate behaviours are manifestations of an historically based, culturally shared
phantasy about male and female biologies” (Gatens, p. 152).

IMPERIALISM Imperialism, which forms the SUBJECT of much COLONIAL

and POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE, dominance of one em-
consists of the political
pire or nation over a foreign country or the act of acquiring and ruling over
colonies or dependencies (see COLONIALISM, POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE).

INDEX/INDEXICAL SIGN In Charles Sanders Pierce’s SEMIOTIC

THEORY, a type of SIGN that has an existential —
bond with its object a ther-
mometer, for example. Film participates in that category of SIGNS to the degree
that it depends on photochemical processes.

INFLUENCE See REVISIONIST ART HISTORY.

INFORME The French novelist, philosopher, and art critic Georges Bataille
regarded the informe (“unformed”), which he likened to spit, as capable of sub-
72 Artwords

verting rational, categorical thinking. He further developed this concept through

the idea of BASSESSE (baseness), the mechanism by which the informe could be
achieved. (See BASSESSE.)
From 1929 to 1930 Bataille published a magazine, Documents ,
in which he
developed the concept of the informe. Rather than assigning a definite quality to
the informe, Bataille ascribed a function to it: to subvert formal categories and to
thereby undermine categorical thinking. In the “dictionary” published in Docu-
ments in serialized form, he wrote under the entry for informe “to affirm that the
:

universe resembles nothing and is formless comes down to saying that the uni-
verse is something like a spider or a blob of spit” (Bataille, Documents 1, no. 7,
p. 382). Further explaining the concept, he said “to make the academics happy,
the universe must take on form. The whole of philosophy has no other aim but to
put what is into a frock coat” (p. 382).

INSTITUTION A term used by Michel FOUCAULT

and others to designate an
APPARATUS that regulates DISCOURSE, with powerful effects. (See DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS.)

INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE A criticaltendency in recent art and art crit-

icism, inspired to an extent by the WORK of Michel FOUCAULT, to articulate
the relationships of cultural INSTITUTIONS to politicaland economic POWER.
Championed by critics of the so-called OCTOBER GROUP, such as Rosalind
Krauss, Douglas Crimp, and Benjamin Buchloh, the artists involved in this pro-
ject include, among others, Louise Lawler, Hans Haacke, Michael Asher, Daniel
Buren, and Andrea Fraser.

INSTRUMENTALISM A critical position on the arts that expects or re-

quires art tobe a means for some end other than itself is called
“instrumentalism.” Prominent examples of art as an instrument include art ther-
apy and art used for religious purposes. In MODERNISM the instrumentalist posi-
tion often took on a more PRESCRIPTIVE tone, and specifically required art to
document the living and working conditions of a society and/or to incite a
change in those conditions. In other words, instrumentalism became in
MODERNISM the view that art should have a social function, inspire revolution
or radical social change. This position on the arts, in many ways exemplified by
Meyer Schapiro’s “The Social Bases of Art” (1936), stands in contrast both to
the FORMALIST position and to the more common EXPRESSIONIST position,
since exclusive attention to FORM and overly self-centered SUBJECT matter dis-
tract attention from social problems.

INTELLIGIBLE BODY See DISCIPLINE.

INTERDISCIPLINARY There are two ways in which a study can be said

to be interdisciplinary: first, when it includes methodologies from other disci-
plines, and second, when it includes topics of study from various disciplines. In-
terdisciplinary approaches to the history of art came to be common in the late
1970s, with the application of LITERARY THEORIES of various stripes to the
study of art. Another result of interdisciplinary studies was the gradual realization
that POPULAR CULTURE was worthy of serious consideration by scholars. This
Glossary 73

was partly because of the ways in which SEMIOTIC THEORY, as one example,
could be applied to any SUBJECT without altering its principles in any signifi-
cant way.

INTERFERENCE See DEFAMILIARIZATION.

INTERPELLATION The French social theorist Louis ALTHUSSER com-

bines SEMIOTICS, LACANIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS, and Marxist THEORY in his
examination of IDEOLOGY. To ALTHUSSER, IDEOLOGY is not merely the “false
shadow’’ of material-economic processes, but a necessary social function in ev-
eryday life. IDEOLOGY, ALTHUSSER claims, represents the “imaginary relation-
ship’’ of individuals to their “ real conditions of existence.” IDEOLOGICAL STATE

—
APPARATUSES (ISAs) the family, the professions, schools, museums, the
courts, film and newspapers and magazines, and advertising consti-
television, —
tute individuals as SUBJECTS through “interpellation” or “hailing,” through
which IDEOLOGY SUBJECT. In this “hailing” we
addresses itself directly to a
recognize ourselves as SUBJECTS by acknowledging our interpellation.
IDEOLOGY operates through what ALTHUSSER calls a “mirror-STRUCTURE”;
that is, IDEOLOGY is aimed at and centered on the SUBJECT. IDEOLOGY is more
than mere “falsities” masking the “real.” It is also a material system of social
practices that have effects on individuals, providing them with their social identi-
ties and positions. In this way IDEOLOGY “naturalizes” otherwise ARBITRARY
social arrangements.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY A term used to describe something similar to in-

terpersonal, that is, social. The specific CONNOTATIONS of this term for con-
temporary theorists include the notion that the SUBJECTIVITY of many individu-
als is produced by common forces.

INTERTEXTUALITY A between two or more TEXTS in which one

relation
TEXT is echoed or included in another TEXT. This is accomplished by a repetition
of part of one TEXT in another. In literature intertextuality is exemplified by
Shakespeare’s use of common songs and limericks in his plays. Intertextuality is
more commonly called QUOTATION and/or APPROPRIATION in the visual arts.
In Picasso’s famous painting Guernica, for example, there is a repetition of
FIGURES from Goya’s Third of May, 1804.

IRONY Usually, irony is the perception of an inconsistency between the os-

tensible meaning of an otherwise straightforward statement and the rhetorical
FORM or contextual conditions of the statement. The result is often humorous.
Sarcasm, for example, uses verbal language in such a way as to produce a con-
flict between what is said and what is really intended. Other methods of produc-

ing irony include the use of certain FIGURES of speech, a conflict between the
narrator and the events narrated, or a feigning of ignorance for the eventual pur-
pose of persuasion. The inconsistencies of ironic language are related to DECON-
STRUCTION. As such, DECONSTRUCTION, or POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY in

general, is often described as META-IRONY.

JOUISSANCE Brought into widespread use in literary and CULTURAL
STUDIES by Roland BARTHES, jouissance has been understood as signifying
PLEASURE, joy, and enjoyment, with SEXUAL overtones. In addition, the term
signifies a reader’s pleasurable involvement with a TEXT that becomes so intense
that the READER loses all self-awareness, as well as all objective distance from a
TEXT.
LACAN/LACANIAN Lacanian THEORY has been informed by the ideas of
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). Lacan’s ideas have proved par-
ticularly influential in women’s studies, especially in French feminist THEORY
as practiced by Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray and in FEMINIST FILM THEORY.
Adding the SEMIOTIC THEORY of Ferdinand de Saussure to the ideas of Freud,
Lacan posits that STRUCTURES of the UNCONSCIOUS manifest themselves
symbolically in language. But Lacan differs from Saussure, the father of
SEMIOTIC THEORY, in his belief that the SIGNIFIER and the SIGNIFIED do not
bear a fixed relationship, but instead shift. He differs from Freud in that he does
not view DESIRE as a sexually driven biological force, but instead as expression
of a drive toward a unity of being that is ultimately unattainable. Lacan’s
THEORY of the MIRROR STAGE has proved particularly influential in the area of
FEMINIST FILM THEORY and in much visual art that has drawn on FILM THEORY
(see MIRROR STAGE, and FEMINIST FILM THEORY). Visual artists who have
produced WORK with a basis in FILM THEORY include photographers Cindy
Sherman, Sylvia Kolbowski, and Victor Burgin.

LACUNAE Any missing element or gap in a TEXT or argument. This term is

often used literally, to indicate a missing part of a written or printed manuscript,
but is also used figuratively to refer to missing elements in an argument or a gap
produced by a DECONSTRUCTION.

LANGUE AND PAROLE Ferdinand de Saussure made a distinction be-

tween langue and parole that was to become important in the formulation of
STRUCTURALIST SEMIOTICS in France. Langue which is roughly translatable
,

into English as “language,” was considered by Saussure to be the total abstract

system and shared rules of a language. Parole roughly translatable as “speech,”
,

is any actual use of the rules of language in particular utterances. Instances of pa-

role can be various, but they are made possible by langue and are confined to the
limits it sets up. To Saussure, langue is the social bond between members of a
given community, existing both within the brains of individuals and within the
 1
78 Artwords

collectivity. It represents the various CONVENTIONS of the use of language at

work in a society, and so has been considered by many theorists as an IN-
STITUTION. Langue is to Saussure the proper object of the study of linguistics.
In the visual arts, langue finds a rough equivalent in some FORMALIST no-
tions of art. According to this view, the total systematic use of a few conven-
tionalized formal elements — line, color, shape, mass, and so on —can result in a
great variation of specific art objects. Another example of an equivalent of
langue in the visual arts is that of various artistic CONVENTIONS, like perspec-
tive. A particular system of perspective — for example, one-point perspective
can be used in many different paintings to depict a great number of different
scenes. Some art critics and art historians study various art objects with an eye
to explaining the workings or origins of what has been called “visual language.”

LEGITIMACY Michel FOUCAULT and other recent theorists have investi-

gated the ways in which some actions and discourses gain the status of valid,
true, and permissible, while others do not. Those INSTITUTIONAL qualifications
that confer legitimacy are important to critiques of the arrangements of POWER
in society because they can be used as tools in rearrangements of POWER rela-
tions.

LIBERAL FEMINISM See FEMINISM.

LINGUISTIC PARADIGM In general, this term refers to a number of the-

oretical developments in the SEMIOTICS of have also been ap-
linguistics that
plied to other areas in the arts and humanities as if they were another system of
linguistic SIGNS. Examples include BARTHES’S analysis of fashion and
LACAN’S claim that the UNCONSCIOUS is structured like a language.

LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM The phrase “literary theory”

refers to a much larger set of ideas than those dealing with literary works in a
strict sense. Literary theory refers to a large area of THEORY that may have had
itsbeginnings in literary studies in a strict sense, but that eventually came to be
applied to cultural production in general and to problems like GENDER, politics,
and even music. Literary theory in this broad sense can be understood
art objects,

as SEMIOTICS, DECONSTRUCTION, DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, PSYCHOANALYTIC

THEORY, MARXIST THEORY, CULTURAL STUDIES, FILM THEORY, RECEPTION
THEORY, and theories of GENDER and ETHNICITY.

LOGOCENTRISM A term used by Jacques DERRIDA to indicate a traditional

preference in European thought, exemplified by STRUCTURALIST SEMIOTICS,
for the Logos PRESENCE or CENTER
, —
that which fixes meaning but is at the
same time outside of REPRESENTATION. Logos can simply mean “word,” but it
also often denotes an ultimate principle of TRUTH or meaning, such as The Word
of God, TRUTH, Man, and so on. Logocentrism, also called “the metaphysics of
presence” by DERRIDA, has resulted in the subservient position of writing to
DIFFERENCE in favor of sameness. See also DE-
speech and a repression of
CONSTRUCTION, PHONOCENTRISM, PHALLOCENTRISM, and PHALLOGO-
CENTRISM.
Glossary 79

LOGOS See LOGOCENTRISM.

MALE GAZE The idea of a male gaze that is constructed through the filmic
practices of mainstream NARRATIVE cinema has been the SUBJECT of much
speculation by feminist cultural theorists. The phrase is used extensively by
Laura Mulvey in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” published in
1975 in Screen an influential British journal on contemporary CULTURE. The
,

term designates the tendency of Hollywood film toward a REPRESENTATION of

women in such a way as to heighten the SEXUAL or erotic aspects of the wom-
en’s bodies. Further, the combination of NARRATIVE and SPECTACLE (the func-
tions of telling and showing) reflect a system of SEXUAL imbalance in which the
male is the active SUBJECT and the female is the passive object. The female
BODY acts as the FETISHIZED object of the male gaze, and those in the audience
necessarily take on the role of masculine VOYEUR. Mulvey theorizes that Hol-
lywood conventions of cinematic practice construct the GAZE as male. As Mul-
vey phrases it, the appearance of the woman’s BODY is CODED for visual and
erotic impact so as to connote a “to-be-looked-at-ness.” Typically, the implied
view of the male spectator is provided to all viewers via the lens of the camera,
with examples often cited in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window Birds, and Ver- ,

tigo, among others. (See FEMALE GAZE and FEMINIST FILM THEORY.)

MARGINALITY Its LITERARY THEORY, marginality

use originating in
refers to the position of those individuals who are excluded from majority
CULTURE. In its early usage in MODERNIST LITERARY CRITICISM, it referred to

individuals whose nationality or social status made them outsiders and, thus, of-
fered them a position from which a critique of DOMINANT CULTURE was most
More recently it has been used by
feasible. feminists to describe the position of
women, who have traditionally been forced from the margins of those
to operate
CULTURES of which they are members. It has also found currency in the writings
of scholars working in POSTCOLONIAL THEORY and MULTICULTURAL studies
as a term DESCRIPTIVE of the social and cultural status of COLONIALIZED peo-
ples, minorities, and those of the lower classes.
 82 Artwords

MARXIST LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM Different but

be roughly grouped under the heading of Marxist liter-
interrelated positions can
ary theory and criticism. In general Marxism is a form of MATERIALISM, and is
therefore concerned with the historical problem of the struggle for the control of
the material conditions on which life depends. To Marxists, the ways in which
problems of individuals are defined, as well as the ways in which solutions are
formed, are all limited by IDEOLOGIES that develop through such struggles and
IDEOLOGIES mask the true nature of the struggles. To Marxist theorists,
—
IDEOLOGIES (superstructure) which includes mental images, imagination,
—
and literature are secondary to material condi-
ideas, beliefs, philosophies, art
tions (BASE). As a result, many Marxist critics have sought to understand the
formative POWER of the material conditions of a society on literary and artistic
products.
One way of grappling with the relation between material conditions and the
arts is to show how the economic and industrial BASE of a society is “reflected”
in the arts of that society. In addition, critics have approached the arts in order to
gain a greater understanding of, as well as to criticize, how the arts have been
used as apparatuses that mask the true nature of the conditions of existence. In
that vein, much Marxist THEORY and criticism takes a DIALECTICAL or op-
positional stance to existing social arrangements, leading many Marxist writers
and critics to use literature and its history as a means to change the ARBITRARY
arrangements of social CLASS and the control of the material conditions of exis-
tence. Marxism and Marxist THEORY and criticism have generally neglected var-
ious topics that are not strictlyeconomic in nature, such as GENDER, age, ethnic
differences, indigenous peoples, and environmental degradation. Marxist
FEMINISM has been one of the responses to that neglect.
In the practice of art history, there have been several writers working from
this generally Marxist vein. Meyer Schapiro had a long history as an investiga-
tor into the relationships of CLASS and the arts, as have other historians like T. J.
Clark and Griselda Pollock. Although not usually considered art historians,
Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton have also dealt with the problem of
aesthetics and CLASS in their WORK.

MARXIST/SOCIALIST FEMINISM See feminism.

MASCULINE DESIRE Masculine desire has played a role in recent cultural

THEORY, primarily through debate engendered by FEMINIST FILM THEORY.
Feminist film theorists regard mainstream cinematic practices as expressive of
masculine desire because they produce an active masculine viewer whose
voyeuristic GAZE positions women as passive objects. (See FEMINIST FILM
THEORY, MALE GAZE, FEMALE GAZE, and DESIRE.)

MASQUERADE See feminine masquerade.

MASTER NARRATIVE A master narrative is any MYTH or set of MYTHS that

is constitutive of the story —or history —a CULTURE creates regarding its origins,
beliefs, social structures, and so on. Master narratives tend to naturalize such
social conditions and beliefs, that is, they make dominant social structures seem
natural and necessary. In addition, master narratives always reflect the be-
Glossary
83

and concerns of majority CULTURE, of those groups that hold greatest

liefs
POWER. With the rise of MULTICULTURALISM, the art world has served as a
SITE of resistance to master narratives, a SITE for the intervention of “little
NARRATIVES” that tell the stories of groups marginalized
by majority CUL-
TURE. Artists of color and ethnic minorities have produced counter-NAR-
RATIVES, which work to expose the contingent, rather than necessary and natu-
ral, nature of master narratives.

MASTERY Recent feminist critiques of psychoanalysis have taken up the is-

sue of mastery. Freud attempted to cure neurosis by leading the patient to formu-
lation of a unified, coherent life’s story. He
believed in the healing capacity of
storytelling —
the “talking cure.” Through talking, through bringing the con-
tents of the unconscious to the conscious level, normalcy is achieved. Defining
the sign of neurosis in individuals as the “inability to give an ordered history of
their life,” Freud’s goal in the treatment of hysteria waas to achieve
“an intelli-
gible, consistent, and unbroken case history” (Freud, Dora p. 32). Freud felt that
,

he had failed in the case of one of his patients, Dora (the object of analysis in his
publication of 1905, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria), because she left
treatment befor he had achieved resolution. Freud felt that this failure was due to
his inability to master the process of transference (the transfer of the pataient’s
feelings about a parent to the analyst). As pointed out by recent criticis of
Freud’s methods, however, his feelings of failure may have resulted from his in-
ability to “master” Dora’s story, to find one coherent interpretation of her experi-
ence.
Susan Rubin Suleiman gives a summary and analysis of related ideas concern-
ing women and psychoanalysis in “Love Stories: Women, Madness and Narra-
tive.” She covers a number of the most interesting recent analyses of Freud’s
treatment of Dora, including Donald Spence’s Narrative Truth, Historical Truth:
Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis, Steven Marcus’s “Freud and Dora:
Story, History, Case History,” and the articles collected by editors Charles Bern-
heimer and Claire Kahane in In Dora ’s Case: Freud-Hysteria-Feminism.
In her installation of 1984-89, Interim, Mary Kelly incorporates psychoana-
lyticdiscourse through reference to early formulations of hysteria in a critique of
the foundations of psychoanalysis and its definition of individual identity and
subjectivity. Commenting on Freud’s attempts to cure neurosis through assist-
ing the patient in forumlating a coherent life’s story, Kelly presents women’s
lives as fragmented and lacking in overall coherence. She presents the formation
of self-identity as a process akin to intertextuality. There is no single, coherent
“text” to an individual life —
there are, rather, many stories in each individual
case. Kelly’s work constitutes a feminist critique of a culture that is constantly
telling women who they should be, what they should be, and that the stories of
their lives should cohere and conform to preconceived ideas.

MATERIAL BODILY PRINCIPLE Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin

developed his concepts of the CLASSICAL and GROTESQUE BODIES in Rabelais
and His World, a study of the sixteenth-century French writer Rabelais. Bakhtin
regards Rabelais’s images as deriving from an aesthetic of folk culture, which is
characterized by a “material bodily principle” that finds expression in grotesque
84 Artwords

realism. In the tradition of grotesque realism all things bodily become grossly
exaggerated, exceeding all normal and proper limits. (See GROTESQUE.)

MATERIALISM Usually associated with Marxist theory and criticism, ma-

terialism is a predisposition to the study of the arts that stresses economic and
productive activities rather than subjective or idealistic concerns.

MATERNAL BODY In the psychoanalytic theory of Julia Kristeva the ma-

ternal body is given up when the child takes up the position of speaking
SUBJECT and enters the SYMBOLIC. In Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjec-
tion, Kristeva posits that the maternal body in the state of pregnancy threatens
fundamental distinctions between subject and object, self and OTHER. Conse-
quently, it is identified as ABJECT.

MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE The terms meaning and significance

have become important ones in recent criticism. Meaning was once thought to
be a property of an object or literary work, as in the phrase “that painting has
meaning.” It was widely assumed and even theorized that meaning somehow
“resided in” a work or “belonged to” a work in some important way. In more re-
cent theory, especialy SEMIOTIC theory and discourse analysis, “meaning” has
been replaced by “significance,” and is considered as the result of a social process
rather than as a property of an object, albeit bestowed upon it by an artist.

MEDIA STUDIES An imporant activity for recent theorists, especially

those operating at the BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL OF CULTURAL STUDIES, the
study of mass media and popular culture in general isguage the
seen as a way to
ways in which power is distributed throughout society. Taking a generally Marx-
ist view, mass media, an apparatus of illusion, is the means by which idelogy is

distributed.

MEDIATION According to traditional thought, the experience of an object is

said to be mediated if one experiences a REPRESENTATION of that object. It is as
if the REPRESENTATION comes between the object and the viewer. Immediate

experience has always been preferred to mediated experience, with the implicit
value placed on the “real” or “original” object. Recent THEORIES of REP-
RESENTATION such as POSTSTRUCTURALIST SEMIOTICS have put into question
the preference of immediate experience, primarily by demonstrating that what we
take to be immediate experince is not representable to others without mediating
it somehow, and therefore contradicting the value of immediate experience. Some

theorists, like Jean Baudrillard, have gone so far as to suggest that immediate
experience is not possible.

METACRITICISM Very simply, a criticism of criticism. In recent years,

the criticism of past criticism has been an important contribution to literary
studies. Many and theorists have written lengthy responses to previous
criticis
scholarship on various topics in order to demonstrate tye shortcomings of some
scholars and the advantages of thier own approach. In this way a whole genre of
critical studies has developed, consisting of the study of the history of criticism.
Glossary 85

METAFICTION See MISE-EN-ABYME.

META-IRONY See IRONY.

METALANGUAGE Technically, metalanguage refers to the ability to use

language to speak about language. Similar to metacriticism, it is the function of
language that allows for the study of language, as exemplifieed by SEMIOTICS.

METANARRATIVE A narrative that refers to another narrative or other narra-

This has a similar relationship to language usage as do METACRITICISM and
tives.
METALANGUAGE and is criticial for the study of language.

METAPHOR A figure of speech or TROPE consisting of two parts

(traditionally called tenor and vehicle) expressing and creating a relation of com-
parison between two similar but ordinarily unrelated elements —
for example,
“life is an adventure.” As such, metaphor operates through paradigmatic substi-
tution, unlike metonymy. In the visual arts, critics often speak of art objects in
metaphorical terms when they say make statements like “that painting is
strong,” or “it stands on its own.” These phrases are ususally not meant literally
(although we usually do not give them a second thought), but refer to qualities
such as the formal organization of the work or the emotional impact on the
viewer.

METONYMY A figure of speech or trope that substitutes the name of one

thing with the name of another thing closely asociated with it — for example
“hand” instead of applause and “suit” instead of banker or businessperson. As
such, metonymy operates through syntagmatic substitution, unlike metaphor.

MIMESIS A term referring to the practice of representation that seeks to cre-

ate a likeness of an original as accurately as possible. The mimetic approach to
painting and sculpture was attacked fiercely by MODERNISTS in favor of a more
abstract mode of REPRESENTATION, which they viewed, in a quasi Platonic
vein, as more appropriate to the REPRESENTATION of TRUTH.

MIRROR STAGE French psychoanalyst Jacques LACAN (1901-1981) re-

vised Freud through SEMIOTIC THEORY by centering his THEORIES of the
SUBJECT and PSYCHOANALYSIS on language. Since an analyst works with a pa-
tient’s statements and repeated (ENCODED) behaviors, signs are really all that is
available to him/her. As a child develops the ability to use language (SIGNS), the
child becomes socialized. In his “rewriting” of Freud, LACAN introduced several
important concepts into PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE, which are useful to
those interested in the processes of socialization, especially GENDER formation.
On such concept is the Mirror Stage.
The Mirror Stage of early life, as theorized by LACAN, can be briefly ex-
plained as follows. Typically, between the ages of six and eighteen months, the
human infant becomes fascinated with its own mirror image. Self-recognition as
well as recognition of the OTHER through the mirror occur in three stages. First,
the child, held by an adult in front of the mirror, confuses its image with that of
the OTHER person. Second, the child comes to understand the nature of images;
 86 Artwords

it comes to recognize the difference between the mirror’s reflection and the ob-
jects or persons reflected. Third, it recognizes not only the reflection as its own
image, but also the DIFFERENCE between its image and the image of the
OTHER. The child comes to view its BODY as a totalized whole; it also experi-
ences, however, a sense of alienation (or what some characterize as fragmenta-
tion) because the image is This process, whereby the child comes
external to it.

to perceive itself as distinct from others, need not literally involve a mirror.
Various social conditions and processes function as “mirrors” and serve to facili-
tate the Mirror Stage. These include other people’s voices, their reactions to the
child’s voice or actions,
and so on In the Mirror Stage as described by Lacan the
dhild makes transition from the realm of the IMAGINARY to the SYMBOLIC.
Passage through the Mirror Stage acompanies entry into the realm of language.
Mary Kelly is a contemporary artist who has used LACANIAN THEORY in her
work. Most notable is her use of LACAN’S concepts of the IMAGINARY, THE
REAL, THE SYMBOLIC, and the Mirror Stage in Post-Partum Document an,
in-
stallation that deals with the birth and early childhood of her son and her rela-
tionship to him.

MISE-EN-ABYME From the French, meaning “throwing into the abyss.”

Also called METAFICITON, this term refers to the infinite regress created by the
internal reduplication of a TEXT, that is, the repetition of part of the TEXT inside
itself.

MISE-EN-SCENE In French, literally: “having-been-put-on-stage.” In

FILM THEORY and criticism, this usually refers to that part of the cinematic pro-
cess that takes place on the set (as opposed to editing or MONTAGE
which takes
place afterwards). It also refers to the director’s control over what appears within
the film FRAME. Cinematic mise-en-scene includes aspects that overlap with the
artof theatre: setting, props, costumes, make-up, lighting, the movement of the
FIGURES, and spatial coordinates.

MISPRISION See MISREADING.

MISREADING Also called misprision, misreading describes an intentional

distortion of a TEXT for the purposes of criticism. The purpose is not to make a
certain type of criticism more tenable, but to show that it is possible for all
TEXTS be misread and “misunderstood,” thereby proving the inability of lan-
to
guage to operate in ways that can secure meaning once and for all. Misreading,
intentional or otherwise, can be a productive way to create new understandings.

MODERNISM Traditionally, “modern” meant current, up-to-date, and new.

Recent changes in art THEORY and criticism, however, have been so extensive
—
and so fundamental and the resulting significant differences so outstanding
that it now seems to many critics and theorists that “modern” is best replaced
by
“modernism,” and best understood as a particular era or epoch of history, the vi-
tal development of which has ceased or culminated. Dates used for
the beginning
of modernism vary— from the 1400s in Italy, 1789, 1848, or the 1860s in
France, and 1918 throughout Europe —
but there is more general agreement on
the dates of the end, culmination, or zenith of modernism — the 1960s and 1970s.
Glossary 87

It is generally agreed that modernist CRITICAL THEORY in the visual arts was
based on the assumption that art is a creative and expressive activity, resulting in
unique and original objects. Critical positions, however, are more specific and
are often understood as requirements or expectations of art. There are three major
critical positions now seen as especially modernist: the EX-
on art that are
PRESSIONIST, INSTRUMENTALIST, and FORMALIST positions. EXPRES-
SIONISM expects communicate in some fashion the feelings and emotions
art to

of the artist and to evoke feelings in the viewer. INSTRUMENTALISM requires art
to be a tool or instrument for some other end, most commonly social change.
Finally, FORMALISTS attend exclusively to visual and technical aspects of the
art object, sometimes requiring be produced in such a way that it refers to
art to
nothing other than itself. Most statements on art can fit into one or another of
these three categories, although most people understand art from a combination
of them. Within each of these positions many other themes or topics enter dis-
cussions on art. Primitivism, for example, is often involved in discussions of
EXPRESSIONST painting and sculpture. Progress is implicitly or explicitly
linked to a TELEOGOCIAL model of the history of art from the FORMALIST point
of view. Taken as a whole, modernist CRITICAL THEORY, joined with not too
dissimilar art historical methodologies and many unspoken restrictions and prej-
udices, was in large part responsible for the shape of the modernist CANON.

MONTAGE French for “assembling” or “putting together.” In film editing,

this usually refers to traditions outside the CONTINUITY system (for example,
the Soviet cinema of the 1920s). In Hollywood films, montage sequences
(sequences compressing historical events, newspaper headlines, and so on) usu-
ally stand out by contrast to the dominant CONTINUITY style of editing.

MOTIVATED/UNMOTIVATED See SEMIOTICS.

MULTICULTURAL(ISM) Multiculturalism concerns indigenous, ETH-
NIC, and minority CULTURES that have been marginalized by other, DOMINANT
CULTURES. Its foremost task encouragement of cultural DIVERSITY. In the
is

United States, multiculturalism developed as a reaction and a form of resistance

to cultural HEGEMONY, which naturalized the dominance of Euro-Americans
over all other cultural groups. Heterogeneity and the transformation of constrain-
ing INSTITUTIONAL structures and practices are among the goals of multicultur-
alism.
THEORIES regarding the cultural OTHER have
formed a major concern of mul-
ticultural studies in the United States, most commonly concentrating on African
Americans, but also on Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. One
sees a concern with visual REPRESENTATION of African American women as
early as 1987, in the writing of Michele Cliff. But is is not until the early 1990s
that such writing begins to flourish, as seen in the criticism of Lorna Simpson’s
work by bell hooks and the art criticism and cultural THEORY of Michele Wal-
lace.Although hooks had been a frequent contributor to Artforum throughout the
early 1990s, her first book devoted to critical writing on visual art, Art on My
Mind: Visual Politics was not published until 1995. Trinh T. Minh-ha’s
,

Woman, Native, Other one of th few art critical writings on Asian American
,

women, appeared in 1989 and was followed by the same author’s When the
88 Artwords

Moon Waxes Red in 1991. Critical writing on Hispanic artists and/or by His-
panic writers has been minimal, but it shows signs of growing vitality in the
writings of Amalia Mesa-Bains and Coco Fusco, particularly significant are
Fusco’s recently published English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in
the Americas (1990) and her essay “Passionate Irreverence: The Cultural Politics
of Identity” for the catalog to accompany the highly controversial 1993 Whitney
Biennial Exhibition. Native American artists who work in a contemporary rather
than a traditional vein have received relatively little representation in the multi-
cultural surge of the 1990s. Mention of Native American women artists and
writers is even more difficult to find. Kay Walkingstick, an artist and writer of
Cherokee descent, has written on contemporary Native American art for Art-
fourm, while Jaune Quick-to-See Smith co-authored an exhibition catalog,
Women of Sweetgrass, Cedar, and Sage, to accompany what remains the best
known and most highly regarded show of work by Native American women. A
number of native artists are represented in Lucy Lippard’s Mixed Blessings: New
Art in a Multicultural America, a 1990 publication that has proved the most
comprehensive source to date on contemporary American artists of color. (See
OTHER, POST-COLONIAL, COLONIALISM/COLONIALIZED, HYBRIDIZATION,
DIVERSITY, and RACE/RACISM)

MULTIVALENT When a WORK of art has a number of possible interpreta-

tions it is said to be multivalent.

MYTH According SEMIOTIC THEORY of Roland BARTHES, a myth is a

to the
particular type of speech. Myth arranges SIGNS so that they become signifiers in
a larger system of SIGN usage. Thus myth is a kind of dense and compounded
SIGN that is so far removed from its existence as a SIGN that it takes on the
POWER of TRANSPARENT and naturalized DISCOURSE. The extent of the use of
SIGNS as SIGNIFIERS constitutes a layering of myth, what BARTHES calls
ORDERS OF REPRESENTATION.
NARRATION The act of telling a STORY, or the description of action, by a
character or a narrator.

NARRATIVE The representation of a chain of events in cause-effect relation-

ship, occurring in time. A narrative has two basic aspects: STORY and PLOT.
NATRURALIZING/NATURALIZATION A DISCOURSE is said to be
natural or naturalized when the producer of that DISCOURSE appeals to nature (or
the “real”) in some way so as to lend persuasiveness to that DISCOURSE. To use
nature as a foundation for an argument is a powerful strategy, since the existence
and solidity of the natural world is difficult to deny. Recent LITERARY THEO-
RISTS such as Roland BARTHES, Jacques DERRIDA, and Michel FOUCAULT, and
many feminist critics, however, have noted that the rhetorical strategy of appeal-
ing to nature often has the unexpected and contradictory effect of exposing the
ways in which nature becomes a figure of speech in a TEXT rather than the firm
reality assumed to exist outside the TEXT. As such, a TEXT can produce its own
semse of estrangement from nature, defeating its original purposes. Attempting
to point out the incongruities between DISCOURSES and “the real world” can be
a very effective tool for the criticism of powerful INSTITUTIONALIZED
DISCOURSES.

NATURE/CULTURE DEBATE In her influential essay of 1974, “Is Fe-

male to Male as Nature is to Culture?” Sherry Ortner posits that women are uni-
versally identified with nature and men with CULTURE. This identification is

seen as the source of women’s oppression and inferior status, since nature is as-
sociated with beings at lower levels of existence, who have not altered their envi-
ronment through the agency of CULTURE. Women’s reproductive function, in
Ortner’ s view, causes them to be involved in species-level functions, and thus
CULTURE. Recent responses to
causes their identification with nature rather than
Ortner’ s THEORY have criticized her tendency to engage in BINARY distinctions,
excluding from consideration those CULTURES (such as some Native American
90 Artwords

CULTURES) that show concern with differentiating and classifying individu-

less
als along the clearcut lines of a male/female BINARY division. Those who have
been most critical of her argument include Catherine Lutz, Nicole-Claude Math-
ieu, Jane Fishbume Collier, and Sylvia Yanagisako.

NEGOTIATION The idea of negotiation as used in recent CULTURAL

STUDIES denotes action that takes place within the structural constraints of
POWER but, at the same time resists such constraints. Negotiation involves both
acting within the parameters set by social constraints and simultaneously devel-
oping and using strategies to subvert domination and control.
In the field of MEDIA STUDIES, Stuart Hall has developed the idea of the nego-
tiated CODE. He asserts that the majority audience views and understands televi-
sion via a set of CODES that derive from the GRAND NARRATIVES of majority
CULTURE. The viewers’ interpretation of what they see and hear is consonant
with the HEGEMONIC viewpoint, which “defines within its terms the mental
horizon, the universe, of possible meanings, of a whole sector of relations in a
society or culture” and “carries with it the stamp of legitimacy it appears —
coterminous with what is ‘natural’, ‘inevitable’, ‘taken for granted’ about the so-
cial order” (Hall, p. 102). The viewers’ decoding of what they view via a negoti-
ated CODE combines oppositional and adaptive elements. It “acknowledges the
legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations
(abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its
own ground rules — it operates with exceptions to the rule” (Hall, p. 102).
The WORK of a number of contemporary visual artists who have incorporated
mass media imagery and TEXT into their artwork, such as Barbara Kruger and
Jenny Holzer, may be seen as exploration of the functioning of such negotiated
CODES. Both Kruger and Holzer incorporate reference to the GRAND NAR-
RATIVES of Western CULTURE, while, at the same time, they resist by mixing
up and slightly altering the CODES, both visual and verbal, that operate in media
CULTURE.

NEO-CONSERVATIVE In the visual arts the term neo-conservatism has a

meaning not dissimilar to its use outside the art world. In general, neo-conser-
vatism in the arts refers to an artistic and/or critical position that is consistent
with MODERNIST cultural values, for example, EXPRESSION, ORIGINALITY, and
FORMALIST The rise of American Neo-Expressionist painting in
critical criteria.
the late 1970s and early 1980s, coming along as it did with the rise of a general-
ized political neo-conservatism, prompted many critics writing from a more or
less Marxist viewpoint to wonder about the ideological consistencies between
the two. Hal Foster, in his critique of what he termed “the expressionist fallacy,”
asserted that the resurgence of EXPRESSIONIST figurative painting was a result of
the neo-conservative trend in the nation as a whole.

NEW ART HISTORY See REVISIONIST ART HISTORY.

NEW HISTORICISM See REVISIONIST ART HISTORY.

NEW MUSEOLOGY See REVISIONIST ART HISTORY.

Glossary 91

NEW WESTERN HISTORY See REVISIONIST ART HISTORY.

NOMADOLOGY See NOMADS.

NOMADS In the writings of Gilles DELEUZE and Felix GUATTARI, the figure
of the nomad used to describe how the BODY WITHOUT ORGANS (BWO), the
is

SUBJECTITIVITY that remains after the POSTSTRUCTURALIST disorganization of

the body, keeps moving and circulating in a constant process of reforming and
transforming itself. The nomad is free of all roots —
preferring RHIZOMATIC to
—
ARBORESCENT models of thought all identities, and can therefore resist and
perhaps even subvert the state and all normalizing powers and fixed forms of fas-
cist subjectivity found in modernity (see Deleuze and Guatarri, A Thousand
Plateaus 1987).
,

NORMALIZING DISCOURSE/NORMALIZATION Normalizing dis-

courses work to induce individuals to conform to a social standard. In the
THEORIES of Michel FOUCAULT, normalizing discourse operates through disci-
plinary power. FOUCAULT conceives of disciplinary POWER not as a form of re-
pression that imposed from the top down, on one group by another, but as a
is

force operative through a network of discourses —

INSTITUTIONS, practices, tech-
nologies, and so on —
that serves to produce positions of dominance and subordi-
nation within specific contexts.
An example
of normalizing discourse is fashion photography, which operates
through images of women that produce a normative femininity to which
SUBJECTS feel constrained to conform. One artist who deals with such normaliz-
ing discourse Jana Sterbak. In publicity photographs and art magazine repro-
is

ductions of Vanitas: Meat Dress for an Albino Anorectic (1987), a sculpture

consisting of sixty pounds of uncooked flank steak sewn together to form a
dress, Sterbak invokes the DISCOURSE of fashion photography. In such pho-
tographs the dress is worn by an attractive young model in a post characteristic
of high fashion imagery so as to evoke the DISCOURSE of fashion photography,
inwhich the female BODY is offered as the SPECULAR object of the MALE
GAZE.
\
o

OBJECTHOOD According to the American art critic Michael Fried, object-

hood is the condition of non-art, since a WORK of art is in some essential respect
not a mere object. To Fried, minimal art is a prime example of objecthood, since
if not for the THEATRICAL circumstances in which minimalism finds itself,

much of could be mistaken for an object. Minimal art has a

it PRESENCE, like
all objects do, but lacks the PRESENTNESS of MODERNIST art.

OBJECTIFICATION In terms of FEMINIST FILM THEORY, the cinematic

GAZE objectifies the female BODY. In classical Hollywood cinema, WOMAN, is
denied the status of SUBJECT, functioning as the passive object of the active
MALE GAZE. (See FEMINIST FILM THEORY.)

OBJECT OF DESIRE According to feminist film theorists, Hollywood

conventions of cinematic practice construct the GAZE as male. The female BODY
acts as the FETISHIZED object of THE MALE GAZE, and those in the audience nec-
essarily take on the role of masculine VOYEUR. Further, the combination of
NARRATIVE and SPECTACLE (the functions of telling and showing) reflects a
system of SEXUAL imbalance in which the male is the active SUBJECT and the
female is the passive object of desire. (See FEMINIST FILM THEORY, MALE
GAZE, FEMALE GAZE, and DESIRE.)

OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY Child psychologist Melanie Klein’s

Object Relations Theory positions the child’s relationship to the mother’s breast
as central to childhood development. This puts Kleinian THEORY at odds with
traditional PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY, which regards the relationship to the fa-
ther,enacted in the Oedipal drama, as central to development. In a 1992 photo-
graph titled Version. Canadian artist Kati Campbell shows a child breastfeeding.
An adult male hand intrudes from the upper register of the image, marking the
mother’s breast, the child’s source of gratification, as a point of contestation.
Campbell’s interest in Klein’s THEORIES is also apparent in a video installation
of the same year, titled Battle of the Titans. This WORK is composed of two
94 Artwords

parts. The first consists of a wall-size projection of a 9-1/2 minute continuous

loop video of Campbell dressing her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Two large
cutout photo reproductions of Surrealist Hans Belmer’s poupees, or dolls, re-
volve around the SCREEN on a metal track. In the second part of the installation,
three video monitors mounted in a low, curved enclosure show tapes of
Campbell’s daughter watching the recording being played back on a studio
first

monitor. In the first tape the daughter’s determined resistance to her mother’s at-
tempts to dress her serves as a METAPHOR for the child’s difficult entry, via the
mother, into the social realm. In the second, the child’s obvious enjoyment at
watching her resistance to her mother, alternating with her attempts to blot out
her mother’s image on the SCREEN, convey the feelings of ambivalence toward
the mother that Klein has described as central to healthy development.

OCTOBER GROUP A term used to refer to a number of historians, theo-

rists, and critics published in the American journal October, including the found-

ing editors Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson, as well as others like Hal
Foster, Douglas Crimp, Laura Mulvey, Joan Copjec, Yve- Alain Bois, and Homi
Bhabha. October is widely regarded as one of the primary vehicles for the
introduction of contemporary THEORY and criticism to the American art world.

OPAQUE See TRANSPARENT/OPAQUE.

OPEN AND CLOSED TEXTS “Open texts” and “closed texts” are those
TEXTS that are open (unlimited) or closed (limited) an inter-
to interpretations. In
esting turn of events, the Italian theorist Umberto Eco reverses these understand-
ings. To him, open TEXTS are, ironically, those that aim at eliciting a precise in-
terpretation. They are the TEXTS that will invariably provoke “aberrant” interpre-
tations. The TEXTS that are usually considered “open,” on the other hand, are not
truly open. Their interpretations seem unlimited, but are actually closed, in the
sense that there is a limit to their interpretation (even if that limit is unknown
as yet).

OPPOSITIONAL READING A critical mode of reading. In this mode, the

READER reads a TEXT with skepticism, reading “against the grain,” or resisting
the ostensible flow of the TEXT. (See NEGOTIATION.)

ORDERS OF REPRESENTATION See MYTH

ORIENTALISM Orientalism is a technique of defining and asserting on the
part of Europeans, through art, their cultural DIFFERENCE and superiority. Al-
though many Europeans and Americans today think of China, Japan, Korea, or
other countries in east Asia when they hear “the Orient,” the term was applied in
the nineteenth century to any peoples east of Europe, especially the what we
now call the “Middle East.” Orientalism is one of a large number of techniques
involved in colonizing other lands and peoples. Orientalist WORK employs
highly realistic REPRESENTATION, the presumed result of objectively accurate
observation, in order to achieve an effect of truthful depiction of its SUBJECTS.
Literary critic and POSTCOLONIAL theorist Edward Said originated the idea of
Orientalism as used in contemporary THEORY in his 1978 book, Orientalism.
Glossary 95

Art historians, such as Linda Nochlin, have recently made use of Said’s ideas. In
her “The Imaginary Orient,” Nochlin examines the WORK of nineteenth-century
French painter Jean-Leon Gerome and explains how conventions of realistic
painting contributed to various justifications of European IMPERIALISM.

ORIGINALITY One of the highest-held values of MODERNIST CULTURE

was originality. The term is generally used to designate two interrelated ideas.
First, originality describes uniqueness, newness, and the “first.” In that sense, to
be original means to be different and on the cutting edge. The term “AVANT-
GARDE” is often used in this sense. The second sense of originality concerns the
origin or source of the WORK of art and refers to the creator-artist-genius. In this
sense, the value of originality is the value of the individual creative human
SUBJECT.
Recent POSTSTRUCTURALIST or POSTMODERNIST art historians, theorists,
and critics have questioned the status of notions of originality. Rosalind Krauss,
in her essay “The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition,”
published in October in 1981, questioned the originality of MODERNIST AVANT-
GARDE artists. Krauss noted the repeated use of the grid format among many
MODERNIST artists throughout the twentieth century. Although many of these
artists —such as Piet Mondrian, Joseph Albers, Ad Reinhardt, Sol Lewitt, and
—
Agnes Martin have been praised as “original,” the repeated use of the grid is
paradoxical, if not contradictory.

OTHER In recent cultural THEORY, the concept of the Other differs signifi-
cantly depending on whether the CONTEXT is Western CULTURE in general or
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY THEORY informed by PSY-
in particular. In
CHOANALYSIS, the idea of the Other is drawn from LACAN and is used to desig-
nate those who are other than oneself and as such are necessary to the construc-
tion of the individual SUBJECT. In “On a Question Preliminary to any Possible
Treatment of Psychosis,” LACAN describes the Other as “the locus from which
the question of [the individual subject’s] existence may
be presented to him”
(Lacan, Ecrits, p. 172). The idea of the psychoanalytic Other is also commonly
found in recent LACANIAN-based feminist THEORY, including that of French
theorists Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, who offer affirmation and celebration
of woman’s Otherness as a feminist strategy.
In The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir explains that Otherness is “a funda-
,

mental category of human thought” and that “no group ever sets itself up as the
One without at once setting up the Other over against itself’ (p. xxiii). Within
this CONTEXT, woman is who, by her SEXUAL DIFFERENCE, serves
the Other,
to define the male as the universal SUBJECT. Speaking of those systems of be-
lief that STRUCTURE Western philosophy and religion, de Beauvoir explains that
“humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him;
she is not regarded as an autonomous being.” She explains further that woman
is “defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to

her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the
subject, he is the Absolute —
she is the Other” (p. xxii).
In the study of Western history and CULTURE in general the idea of the Other
is applied to both the SEXUAL “Other,” woman, and the cultural Other, the non-

European or the person of color. The cultural Other has been taken up specifi-
96 Artwords

cally by those working in the fields of POSTCOLONIAL THEORY and MUL-

TICULTURAL studies. Much as woman is identified in traditional Western sys-
tems of thought as Nature in contrast to man as CULTURE, non-Westerners are
identified as uncivilized, as existing closer to nature and thus at a lower evolu-
tionary level than Westerners (see NATURE/CULTURE DEBATE). Such position-
ing has served in many cases as a convenient justification for colonization. It has
served to support the reasoning of the colonizers, who believe that those peoples
they have conquered are the fortunate recipients of their benevolent care. As bear-
ers of the“White Man’s Burden,” they feel obligated to impose upon the inferior
cultural Other systems of thought, technologies, and ways of living that will, in
Western eyes, ultimately benefit them.

OVERDETERMINATION This term was introduced in its current meaning

by French philosopher and social theorist Louis ALTHUSSER in the late 1960s.
ALTHUSSER added a social and political CONNOTATION to the Freudian concept
of a SYMBOL that is the result of several separate or related causes. For
ALTHUSSER, a social event, such as a revolution, can be understood as overde-
termined if it is the result of a range of social forces. This use of overdetermina-
tion is an alternative to simpler cause and effect explanations of social change.
PANOPTIC/PANOPTICON See DISCIPLINE

PARALITERARY In visual art, a term used by Rosalind Krauss in the

journal October to describe those artists and critics whose works reflect in some
way the concerns presented by LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM. She did not
claim that artists and art critics were the same as their literary counterparts, but
that some members in the art world were trying to deal with some parallel issues
to those in the world of letters.

PARODY/PARODIC A mock imitation of style or technique, especially as

part of a larger critique, parody often takes theform of an exaggerated mimicry.
Parody has historically been seen as a parasitic form of creation, dependent as it
is on previous and well-known literary, THEATRICAL, or artistic works and per-

sonalities. As such, parody in MODERNISM was often ignored by serious critics

and artists. In more recent years, however, parody has come to be recognized as a
new NARRATIVE type with a critical edge.
In recent GENDER THEORY, parody has taken on a particular significance, es-
pecially in the writing of philosopher Judith Butler. In Gender Trouble: Femi-
nism and the Subversion of Identity, Butler develops a THEORY of GENDER as a
PERFORMATIVE act. She explains how parodic PERFORMANCE can function as
a form of resistance to culturally dominant SEX-based GENDER distinctions.
Parody can be particularly valuable, she contends, in emphasizing and drawing
attention to the DIFFERENCE between culturally dominant configurations of
GENDER that are regarded as natural and ones that are flawed copies. Repetition
of GENDER in parodic form reveals the illusory belief that IDENTITY based on
GENDER originates from an inner depth or core of being.

PAROLE See LANGUE AND PAROLE.

98 Artwords

PASSING PERFORMANCE In terms of GENDER study, a passing per-

formance occurs when an individual successfully creates the illusion that he/she
is of a GENDER which is contrary to his/her biological SEX.

PASTICHE A term used primarily in criticism of POSTMODERN architecture

to describe the ways in which a number of different styles and/or ornamental el-
ements are combined in the design of a single building. Referring especially to a
lack of unification of disparate parts, the term is meant to call attention to the
“pasted together” look of the overall design.

PATRIARCHY Patriarchy designates a system governed by men in which

POWER and authority are invested in the father. In feminist and CRITICAL
THEORY usage, it denotes the set of IDEOLOGICAL constructs that work to main-
tain the authority of men and to propagate the oppression of women. It is impor-
tant to note, however, that patriarchy is not identical to “male.” Not all men
participate equally in patriarchy and, historically, women have played important
supporting roles in patriarchal systems.

PEINTURE FEMININE Peinture Feminine, a variant of ECRITURE

FEMININE, has developed ECRITURE FEMININE). This label has
in visual art (see
been used to describe the WORK of feminist artists, such as Nancy Spero, who
believe that a uniquely feminine FORM of painting, based generally on women’s
unique experience of the world and specifically on women’s bodily experience,
can be developed.

PERFORMANCE/PERFORM ATI VE/PERFORM ATI VITY/PER-

FORMATIVITY OF GENDER The idea of the performative has gained
wide currency in contemporary GENDER THEORY. It should not be confused
with PERFORMANCE ART, which emerged in the 1960s as a form of EX-
PRESSION that incorporates music, theater, and dance and takes place before a
live audience. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity Ju-
dith Butler develops a THEORY of GENDER as a PERFORMATIVE act (see
GENDER and GENDER THEORY). She regards GENDER as something that is pro-
duced by the individual’s PERFORMANCE, which conforms to cultural expecta-
tions of GENDER. In this view, GENDER is not SEX-based; rather, it is dependent
upon the GENDER one performs.
Butler posits PARODIC PERFORMANCE as a form of resistance to culturally
dominant SEX-based GENDER distinctions. Parody can bring emphasis and atten-
tion to the DIFFERENCE between culturally dominant configurations of GENDER
that are “naturalized” and the ones that are flawed copies. Repetition of GENDER
in PARODIC form reveals the illusory belief in IDENTITY based on GENDER as
springing from an inner depth or core of being. As Butler explains: “As the ef-
fects of a subtle and politically enforced performativity, gender is an ‘act,’ as it
were, that is open to splittings, self-parody, self-criticism, and those hyperbolic
exhibitions of ‘the natural’ that, in their very exaggeration, reveal its fundamen-
tallyphantasmatic status” (Butler, Gender Trouble p. 147).
,

Butler proposes that a subversive strategy, if it is to be effective, must operate

within the processes of SIGNIFICATION by participating in the repetitive prac-
tices that construct IDENTITY. She says:
Glossary 99

To enter into the repetitive practices of this terrain of signification is not a choice,
for the ‘I that might enter is always already inside; there is no possibility of agency
or reality outside of the discursive practices that give those terms the intelligibility
that they have. The tasknot whether to repeat, but how to repeat or, indeed to re-
is

peat and, through a radical proliferation of gender, to displace the very gender norms
that enable the repetition itself (Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 148).

PERFORMANCE ART Performance art as a major GENRE developed in the

1960s in both the United States and Europe. The 1970s, however, is the era
most associated with performance art because it is the decade when it flourished.
In fact, as H. H. Arnason asserts, it is regarded by many as the art FORM that
most characterizes the 1970s (Arnason, History of Modern Art p. 566). Now a ,

very broad category that has come to include any art PERFORMANCE before a
live audience, performance art developed out of the early twentieth-century influ-
ence of Dada.
Still a viable GENRE today, performance art is an effective FORM for artists in-

terested in social protest. Most recently, it has proved an especially effective ve-
hicle for artists’ commentaries on PORNOGRAPHY and censorship. Among con-
temporary performance artists who have dealt with issues of PORNOGRAPHY are
Karen Finley and Annie Sprinkle.
Linda Williams suggests that Annie Sprinkle’s performance work, which blurs
distinctions between PORNOGRAPHY and art, may offer a resistant position from
which women can act. Williams explores the possibility that Sprinkle’s strategy
may offer the same sort of agency that has been proposed by a number of recent
GENDER theorists. The agency such theorists, most prominently Judith Butler,
have proposed stems from resistance to assumption of a fixed and stable gendered
IDENTITY. The agency Sprinkle offers stems from resistance to assumption of
fixed gendered positions as established by the CONVENTIONS of PORNOGRAPHY
(See Linda Williams. “Provoking Art: The Pornography and Performance of An-
nie Sprinkle.”)

PHALLIC/PHALLUS The phallus is the SYMBOLIC expression of male

POWER. As a SYMBOLIC stand-in for the penis, it represents the biological base
of PATRIARCHAL POWER.

PHALLOCENTRISM used in feminist THEORY to de-

Phallocentrism is

scribe those cultural structures, norms, and systems of belief that work to sup-
port and naturalize PATRIARCHAL POWER. This POWER is invested in the
PHALLUS as the SYMBOLIC expression of male POWER. French psychoanalyst
Jacques LACAN’S essay “The Signification of the Phallus,” delivered as a lecture
and published in 1966, explores the signifying capacity of the PHALLUS.

PHALLOGOCENTRISM In the writings of Jacques DERRIDA, a neolo-

gism combines the implications of PHALLOCENTRISM and LOGOCEN-
that
TRISM. For DERRIDA, the traditional Western privileging of PRESENCE over
ABSENCE in philosophical DISCOURSE actually repeats systems of POWER rela-
tions and is analogous to the preference or even the DESIRE for the PHALLUS. In
Western philosophy, the PHALLUS is implied through structuring principles like
unity, wholeness, and order. Examples of phallogocentrism are to be found in
100 Artwords

the classic “MASTER NARRATIVES” of Western civilization, thereby implicating

them in a systematic but not necessarily conspiratorial support of PATRIARCHY.

PHANTASMATIC See FANTASMATIC.

PHARMAKON Greek“pharmacy,” “poison,” or “drug,” the term is often

for
used to refer to Plato’s discussion, through Socrates, of the importance of speech
and the evils of writing and REPRESENTATION in general. In the dialogue Phae-
drus Plato refers to writing as a poison, while designating speech as a cure. This
,

general arrangement of FIGURES of speech in the dialogue was called “Plato’s

Pharmacy” by Jacques DERRIDA in his reading of it. See DECONSTRUCTION.

PHONOCENTRISM See VOICE, PRESENCE, and LOGOCENTRISM.

PLATEAU Gilles DELEUZE and Felix GUATTARI use the term “plateau”
(borrowed from Gregory Bateson’s essay on Balinese CULTURE and libidinal
economy) to describe the situation when circumstances combine to bring activi-
of intensity that is not automatically dissipated in a climax lead-
ties to a pitch
ing to a state of rest. The term also refers to the technique employed by
DELEUZE and GUATTARI of randomly juxtaposing different NARRATIVE seg-
ments and arguments within the “same TEXT.” These random juxtapositions of
conceptual “flows” are “plateaus” along an otherwise horizontal or RHIZOMATIC
organization of an exposition. In fact, plateaus are connected to other plateaus,
and create wider rhizomes.

PLAY The term “play” has been used widely by a number of theorists. In gen-
eral, the term designates the essentially unstable quality of TEXTS and carries
with it three interrelated meanings. First, TEXTS “have play,” in the sense that
they have the potential to give or break apart at a particular spot, like a weakened
piece of metal or a gate on a bad HINGE. Second, once readers find weaknesses in
TEXTS, they can “play” with elements, creating new, enjoyable, and unexpected
meanings. Third, readers can “play” a TEXT in the sense that one “plays” a fish:
through grappling with a TEXT, they can come to some position of authority
over it.

PLEASURE See JOUISSANCE.

PLOT The discursive organization of a NARRATIVE, that is, the filmic actual-
ization of NARRATIVE events. In contrast to the mental reconstruction of events
that comprises a film’s story, plot refers to the order and manner in which events
are presented in the film itself. Story and plot can coincide, but they usually dif-
fer; the plot may alter the sequence (e.g., flashback), duration (e.g., a lifetime),
and frequency (e.g., a repeated action) of events as they have presumably occurred
in the story.

PLURALITY/PLURALISM A cultural condition in which no critical

school of thought or model of operation is dominant. It is often linked to
POSTMODERNISM, especially in some of its earlier definitions. See also
DIVERSITY.
Glossary
101

POLYSEMY See MULTIVALENT.

POPULAR See MEDIA STUDIES and INTERDISCIPLINARY.

POPULAR CULTURE See MEDIA STUDIES and INTERDISCIPLINARY.

PORNOGLOSSIA Pornoglossia is a word coined by Deborah Cameron in

Feminism and Linguistic Theory to designate language that works in much the
same way that visual imagery works in PORNOGRAPHY. So conceived,
pornoglossia refers to language used to describe women in exclusively SEXUAL
terms.

PORNOGRAPHY Exploration and discussion of pornography in art practice

and art critical writing of the past decade or so has centered on issues of censor-
ship.Opinions on censorship in the art world are deeply divided. Most argu-
ments tend to align with one of two positions, which find their basis in ideas re-
garding how the pornographic image is read, whether such reading leads the
viewer to act, and whether such actions as it stimulates are harmful or oppressive
to those being acted upon.
Those on the anticensorship side see pornographic imagery as a meaningful
and socially valuable REPRESENTATION of the SEX act. Many see such
REPRESENTATION as offering the potential for a greater understanding of
SEXUALITY and for a more complex —and, thus, more valuable —understanding
of how visual images function within a male-dominated, capitalistic economy
that is driven by DESIRE. In addition, those who value art for its expressive po-
tential seepornographic REPRESENTATIONS as significant expressions of an im-
portant aspect of human behavior. Among those who hold anti-censorship views
are Judith Butler and Linda Williams. In an interview published in Artforum in
1992, Judith Butler expresses her disagreement with those, such as Andrea
Dworkin, who believe that visual REPRESENTATIONS dictate DESIRE and pro-
duce a determined response, saying that censorship disallows exploration of the
processes whereby FANTASY “orchestrates and shatters relations of POWER”
(“The Body You Want,” 87). Butler feels that, when views such as Dworkin’s
are applied to the debate on pornography, the danger exists that they will be en-
listed in support of regulation of people’s DESIRE and FANTASIES. This may
lead to obliteration of “the ethical distinctions between fantasy, representation,
and action.” (p. 87) Butler further asserts that PORNOGRAPHY may offer resis-
tance because it “replays relations of power” in a FANTASMATIC instead of a
MIMETIC way. Butler feels that visual forms of REPRESENTATION such as art
and film, which operate on the level of FANTASY, can destabilize normative
modes of identification, and thus challenge and reconfigure the existing limited
range of SUBJECT positions available to individuals in our CULTURE. (See
FANTASY.)
Those who favor censorship tend to adhere to the assertion that
pornography is
the THEORY and rape is the practice. That is, they see pornography as enabling
the act of domination it represents. Most prominent among them are Catharine
MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and Robin Morgan. Among contemporary artists
who have dealt with issues of pornography are performance artists Karen Finley
102 Artwords

and Annie Sprinkle, and photographers Cindy Sherman and Robert Map-
plethorpe. (See PERFORMANCE ART.)

POSITIONALITY In “Cultural Feminism Versus Poststructuralism: The

Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” Linda Alcoff contrasts cultural and struc-
turalist feminist viewpoints (see CULTURAL FEMINISM). She offers an alterna-
tive to both the ESSENTIALISM believed characteristic of CULTURAL FEMINISM,
which she regards as resulting from valorization of “positive attributes developed
under oppression,” and the paralyzing effects on social activism of POST-
STRUCTURALIST feminists, which she sees as resulting from the lack of a fixed
position of self-IDENTITY from which the individual can act. Alcoff views
CULTURAL feminism as limited by a definition of woman formed under condi-
tions of oppression. This definition reinforces that which formed the basis for
such oppression: the belief in an essential, innate womanhood to which all
women must adhere. She views FEMINISM based on POSTSTRUCTURALIST
THEORY as equally limiting because such FEMINISM “could only be a wholly
negative feminism, deconstructing everything and refusing to construct any-
thing” (p. 418). Alcoff believes that an effective feminist politics cannot be mo-
bilized on such a negative basis: positive alternative for action must be offered in
order to motivate people. Alcoff sees a feminist politics based on positionality,
on the idea that individual SUBJECTIVITY is “an emergent property of a histori-
cized experience,” as offering a fruitful alternative (p. Those holding such a
431).
view would recognize IDENTITY as a construction, but also as a point from
which action can be taken. A positional definition of woman makes IDENTITY
relative to ever-changing contexts and does not define “woman” by the posses-
sion of certain attributes, but instead defines her by the position(s) she occupies.
These positions can be utilized as locations for the construction of meaning and
IDENTITY and can become loci from which effective political action can be initi-
ated.

POSTCOLONIAL/POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE Those working in

the area of postcolonial studies have taken as their task the subversion and
APPROPRIATION for an oppositional purpose of COLONIAL texts that position
the COLONIALIZED as OTHER. By recognizing and locating in COLONIAL art,

writing, and other cultural productions the BINARY constructions

(civilizer/savage, self/OTHER, and so on) that are the tools of the colonizer, post-
colonial artists and writers have attempted to rewrite and subvert such TEXTS.
JanMohamed addresses this strategy of resistance in “The Economy of
Manichean Allegory,” labeling the postcolonial writer’s APPROPRIATION and
subversion of the COLONIAL TEXT “writing back.”
Postcolonial critics and writers generally agree that the most important issue
in such theoretical WORK involves the problem of how the postcolonial
SUBJECT may achieve agency (Bhabha, p. 9), which remains PROBLEMATIC.
Homi Bhabha has offered HYBRIDITY as a possible strategy. He explains that
HYBRIDITY challenges assumptions regarding cultural purity and authenticity. In
challenging such cultural distinctions, it may operate as an effective form of
subversion, because it makes visible the “necessary deformation and displace-
ment of all sites of discrimination and domination” (Bhabha, p. 9). In her devel-
opment of THEORIES of the SUBALTERN Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has dealt
Glossary
103

with social factors that are especially PROBLEMATIC for women in this
CONTEXT. The work of Trinh T. Minh-ha, who as both a writer and a filmmaker
deals with problems specific to women, has had a particularly strong impact
on
visual art.

POSTFEMINISM In the postfeminist view, women’s goals have been

achieved, equality has been attained, and it is no longer necessary to advocate for
social change. In Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a
‘Postfeminist Age Tania Modleski asserts that the MYTH of postfeminism
’

stems from a major conservative backlash, which, while operating under the
guise of a profeminist stance, is undermining what progress has been made by
feminists.Modleski finds the origin of much postfeminist RHETORIC in the
POPULAR media. She also sees it operating in recent scholarly DISCOURSE re-
garding GENDER, in what has become know as “gender studies,” which forgoes
issues that necessarily pertain specifically to women and thus, in her opinion,
may simply be PATRIARCHY operating through a different VOICE.

POSTMODERNISM According to some historians and theorists, we may

be leaving MODERNISM and entering a different cultural epoch tentatively called
postmodernism. Through the past two decades, however, there have been several
conflicting definitions of the term. Early definitions of Postmodernism in art
stressed a DIFFERENCE or even a straightforward opposition to the FORMALISM
of “high MODERNISM.” As a result, PERFORMANCE, figurative painting, pho-
tographic or video WORK,
Earth Art, and mixed media objects and installations
were seen as especially Postmodern. The situation was described as
“PLURALISM,” which indicated an acceptance of a DIVERSITY of styles,
SUBJECTS, and FORMS.
In architecture“postmodernism” was defined in terms of style and exemplified
in designs that include a mixture of past and present styles, a technique called
“double-coding.” This early definition of postmodernism as a style was so suc-
cessful that its application quickly spread to the other visual arts and critics were
eagerly trying to find double-coding in painting and sculpture. At the same time
such an understanding so “set in concrete” the definition of postmodernism in ar-
chitecture that when architectural designers and theorists turned to the works of
Jacques DERRIDA, a new and distinct style called “DECONSTRUCTIVISM” had to
be designated, while in the rest of the world of the arts and humanities DE-
CONSTRUCTION was generally associated with postmodernism as a whole.
These early definitions of postmodernism have more recently been replaced
with a view that does not concentrate so much on style and materials, but look
for ways in which artistic production is both different from MODERNIST practice
and shares some important similarities with POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY.
Such an understanding of postmodernism is heavily influenced by recent
THEORIES of language, CULTURE, GENDER, ETHNICITY, and history. For art,
this has resulted in a concern with how visual forms function as a language that,
in large part, shapes CULTURE, GENDER, and ETHNICITY, among other things.
For art history, postmodern approaches have resulted in an investigation into the
techniques and motivations of the INSTITUTIONS that produced MODERNISM.
Postmodern art history, sometimes called REVISIONIST ART HISTORY, also in-
vestigates how art has functioned in the production of CULTURE, personal
104 Artwords

IDENTITY, GENDER, ETHNICITY, and relationships of POWER in society. Art

produced from this POSTMODERN viewpoint may not look any different than
previous art, but its regarded as radically different. This is
function or purpose is

due primarily to a shift away from both the object and one’s personal experience
of the object to a POSTSTRUCTURALIST examination of the social and cultural
processes of which art is a part.

POSTMODERN WARFARE See RHIZOMATIC AND ARBORESCENT.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM/POSTSTRUCTURALIST A term desig-

nating a general set of theoretical concerns occupying many intellectuals after
STRUCTURALIST SEMIOTICS was problematized by critics such as Roland
BARTHES, Michel FOUCAULT, and especially Jacques DERRIDA. As a result of
an emphasis on the ARBITRARY nature of SIGNIFICATION, many theorists be-
came concerned with the general processes by which meaning becomes estab-
lished and controlled. In short, meaning was radically politicized through a series
of demonstrations of the relationship of CULTURE and POWER.

POWER The term power has come be a central one in recent discussions
to
on the arts and humanities, mostly due to a reappraisal of the notion of power by
Michel FOUCAULT. Power is perhaps FOUCAULT’S least clear concept, yet it is
a key to understanding his later WORK.
FOUCAULT’S conception of power is not simply negative and repressive. On
the contrary, for FOUCAULT, power “a making possible,” an opening up of
is

fields in which certain kinds of action and production are being brought about,
using pleasurable techniques as often as repressive ones. For him, power is exer-
cised rather than possessed, decentralized and dispersed rather than top-down. To
FOUCAULT, DISCOURSE INSTITUTIONS
‘‘makes possible” DISCIPLINES and
which in turn sustain and distribute DISCOURSES and the effects of power
throughout a social system. DISCOURSE is linked to social INSTITUTIONS that
“have power,” in the sense that INSTITUTIONS are part of a wider control of bod-
ies, actions, and understandings. As power is dispersed, it opens up specific pos-

sibilities; new domains of action, knowledge, and social being can be consti-
tuted, shaped by various INSTITUTIONS and DISCIPLINES. It is in these IN-
STITUTIONS and DISCIPLINES that the SUBJECT and IDENTITIES (of self or of
others, social and national) are formed. We come to be whatever or whoever we
are only within this set of discursive and nondiscursive fields.
FOUCAULT’S notion of power should not be taken fatalistically, however, for
“to say that there cannot be a society without power relations is not to say,” he
cautions, “that those which are established are necessary.” TRUTH, according to
FOUCAULT’S formulation, has an economy characterized by economic and polit-
ical incitement, an immense diffusion and consumption, the production and
transmission under the control of a few political and economic APPARATUSES,
and the fact that it is the issue of political debates. Because of this, FOUCAULT
does not examine a mere history of power, but develops a series of methods he
generally calls “DISCOURSE ANALYSIS” for examining the TRUTH-effects of
knowledges.

PRACTICAL BODY See BODY.

Glossary
105

PRESCRIBE/PRESCRIPTIVE Literally “to write in advance,” an at-

tempt to set rules, instructions, and standards of excellence or correctness in the
arts and in the criticism of the arts.

PRESENCE The “metaphysics of presence,” as it is called by Jacques

DERRIDA, has been a central logocentric assumption in the European philosoph-
ical tradition since the ancient Greeks. Presence, especially as opposed to
ABSENCE, has been considered an invariable point of reference and has had vari-
ous names, including God, TRUTH, essence, existence, being, origin, and con-
sciousness. These points of reference have been understood to exist outside hu-
man systems of meaning and have therefore been used as grounds for argument
and understanding. An argument based upon one of these TRAN-
that is
SCENDENTAL reference points is assured to be a powerful one. As DERRIDA ex-
plains, however, one result of a DECONSTRUCTION is the exposure of these
seeming absolutes as contingent human values.

PRESENTNESS According to the American art critic Michael Fried, the ex-
perience of true MODERNIST an experience of presentness. Presentness is
art is
an effect of that single, infinitely brief instant in which an artwork is experienced
in all its depth and fullness. Since there is no duration in the experience of MOD-
ERNIST painting, MODERNIST painting “defeats” theatre (temporal duration is

necessary to theatre, literature, and music). To Fried, all art forms aspire to the
condition of MODERNIST painting, purified of THEATRICALITY, that is, of dura-
tion, exhibition CONVENTIONS, and mixed media, or what lies “in between” the
arts. Fried is usually considered as having extended the FORMALIST ideas of
Clement Greenberg.

PROBLEMATIC A term derived from the writings of Marxist theorist Louis

ALTHUSSER and used to designate theoretical and/or IDEOLOGICAL formations.
It can also be used to refer to rather large and wide-ranging belief systems, resem-

bling Michel FOUCAULT’S EPISTEME. The term has come into wide usage
among Marxist theorists, as well as CULTURAL STUDIES.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Psychoanalysis
an interpretive science of the hu-
is

man mind and human development founded by Sigmund Freud. The basis of its
methodology lies in a THEORY of the UNCONSCIOUS, which, for Freud, is that
part of the human psyche that is repressed and contains what does not reach the
conscious level, but is instead expressed in the disguised form of dreams,
FANTASY, FETISHES, art, and other SYMBOLIC forms. The repressive mecha-
nism of the UNCONSCIOUS prevents its contents from being revealed to the con-
scious mind, allowing their expression only in disguised form (see UN-
CONSCIOUS).
Freud used his own observations of Western CULTURE, mostly literature, to
formulate his ideas. Consequently, his WORK, in many ways, may be seen as an
explanation and critique of Western cultural traditions. The most notable of his
THEORIES of human development that draw on
Western literary tradition is
the
the Oedipus complex. Using Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex as his source, he
theorized that the child desires the parent of opposite SEX and thus develops a ri-
106 Artwords

valry with the parent who is of the same SEX as the child. Resolution of this ri-

valry is, in Freud’s view, crucial to development of the child’s SEXUAL orienta-
tion and personality. In psychoanalytic practice, the analyst serves as parental
substitute while the person being analyzed reworks traumatic incidents revolving
around the Oedipal conflict through his or her relationship with the analyst. The
analyst’s task is to use methods devised for accessing the UNCONSCIOUS so that
its contents may be revealed to the patient. Thus drawn up to the conscious

level, UNCONSCIOUS, conflicts may be resolved.

A number of artists have recently made PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY the focus
of their WORK, including Mary Kelly, Katy Campbell, Victor Burgin, and
Sylvia Kolbowski. Mary Kelly critiques the foundations of psychoanalysis in In-
terim an installation of 1984-89, through incorporation of psychoanalytic
,

DISCOURSE and reference to early formulations of hysteria. She divides the Cor-
pus section of her four-part installation, the section that deals with the BODY,
into five sections: Extase (ecstasy), Erotism (eroticism), Supplication
(supplication), Menace (menace), and Appel (appeal). These titles are drawn from
the five “passionate attitudes” of hysteria identified by the nineteenth-century
French neurologist and colleague of Freud, J. M. Charcot. Charcot, who was in-
strumental in forming psychoanalytic approaches to treatment of female patients,
has been criticized for emphasizing the visual and theatrical manifestations of
hysteria, reflecting a view of the female patient as object rather than SUBJECT.

PSYCHOANALYTIC FEMINISM See FEMINISM

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY AND CRITICISM Psychoanalytic

theory and criticism have been used as a tool of literary and artistic analysis for
some time. Early forms of this use analysis consisted of an analysis of the
artist’ s personality via their artwork, supplemented by whatever biographical in-
formation was available. Examples of such analysis include Freud’s essay of
1910, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood.” More recently,
psychoanalytic theory has been used in one of two ways. Some, including Kate
Linker in “Representation and Sexuality” and Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure
and Narrative Cinema,” have used it as a tool to critique cultural practices of vi-
sual REPRESENTATION. Others, including Mary Kelly in Interim and Jana Ster-
bak in Seduction Couch, have employed a psychoanalytic method to perform a
critique of PSYCHOANALYSIS itself and its reliance on the REPRESSIVE
HYPOTHESIS, the “talking cure,” and THEORIES of the female SUBJECT, includ-
ing hysteria.
Contemporary have used psychoanalytic concepts as formulated by a
artists
number of individuals. FEMINIST FILM THEORY has drawn heavily on both
Freud’s and LACAN’S THEORIES regarding VOYEURISM, SCOPOPHILIA, and
DESIRE; this THEORY has, in turn, influenced the WORK of a number of con-
temporary artists, including Victor Burgin, Sylvia Kolbowski, and Cindy Sher-
man. Julia Kristeva’s THEORIES regarding the ABJECT and the MATERNAL
BODY have recently received much attention have found their way into the
WORK of Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Robert Gober, Robert Mapplethorpe,
Joel-Peter Witkin, and Andres Serrano. Melanie Klein’s OBJECT RELATIONS
THEORY has informed the WORK of a number of artists, including Katy Camp-
bell.
Glossary
107

PUNCTUM SeeSTUDIUM ANDPUNCTUM.

Q

QUEER THEORY A relatively new area of scholarly inquiry, commonly re-

ferred to as queer theory, has received increasing attention by artists and art crit-
ics since themid-1990s. The central concerns of queer studies are GENDER and
SEXUALITY. The issue of self- representation has become a prevalent strategic
problem in the WORK of a number of lesbian filmmakers, artists and art writers,
including Barbara Hammer, Harmony Hammond and B. Ruby Rich. The
REPRESENTATION of gay male SEXUALITY has been a major theme in the writings
of Craig Houser and Kobena Mercer.
Judith Butler’s PERFORMATIVE THEORY of GENDER, as presented in Gender
Trouble: Feminism and The Subversion of Identity, has been particularly influ-
ential in the field of queer theory (see PERFORMANCE/ PERFORMATIVE/
PERFORM ATI VITY OF GENDER). In an interview with Liz Kotz that appeared in
Artforum in 1992, Butler says that, when she began Gender Trouble, she was in-
terested in questioning the heterosexist presumption of the a majority of feminist
theorists. The book however, in a criticism of the IDENTITY politics of
resulted,
lesbian feminists. Butler perceived a too great investment in a fixed IDENTITY by
gays, which replicated the social regulation operative in compulsory heterosexu-
ality. She offers the theatrics of ACT UP and Queer Nation as exemplary of a

strategic use of IDENTITY, “a certain performative production of identity” (“The

Body You Want,” 82-89). which is effective in resistance to cultural constraints.
Queer studies, Butler feels, can offer a challenge to FEMINISM similar to that of-
fered by women of color in the 1980s, which resulted in radical reformation of
feminist studies.

QUOTATION one WORK of a style (or stylistic technique) of

The reuse in
another period. For example, Neo-Expressionism, as exemplified by George
Baselitz, has general stylistic similarities with early twentieth-century German
EXPRESSIONISM.
RACE/RACISM Racial and racist discourses of Western CULTURE have
formed the focus of the WORK of a number of contemporary artists. Through
such works, artists such as Lorna Simpson, Robert Colescott, and Adrian Piper
have examined common attitudes toward race, including the idea that cultural
DIFFERENCE is the product of some “essence” possessed by individuals of com-
mon descent or heredity and the idea that this essence is observable in, and can be
signified by, some visible characteristic shared by that group, such as skin color,
head shape, hair texture, or posture. They have explored how racial DISCOURSE
and REPRESENTATION have been used to justify European domination and how
they have served to “demonstrate” the presumed racial superiority of Europeans.
Taking a POSTSTRUCTURALIST approach, Lorna Simpson has dealt with the
racist view that characteristics like skin color, hair texture, and so on are to racial
“essence” as the SIGNIFIER is to the SIGNIFIED. Such a POSTSTRUCTURALIST
approach also allows for a radical critique of racism.

RADICAL ALTERITY In the THEORY of Jacques DERRIDA “radical alter-

ity” refers to the alienation of the SIGNIFIED from itself. Because a SIGNIFIER
always requires a SIGNIFIED to function, it can never exist alone in a self-suffi-
cient, self-referential state. DERRIDA explains:

The representamen [or signifier] functions only by giving rise to an interpretant that
itself becomes a sign and so on to infinity. The self-identity of the signified conceals
itself unceasingly and is always on the move. The property of the representamen is to
be itself and another, tobe produced as a structure of reference, to be separated from
itself. (Derrida, Of Grammatology pp. 49-50)
,

Recent POSTCOLONIAL such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, have used

critics,
this idea on a larger scale to designate those peoples (for example, Hindu and
Muslim in India) in semiological opposition to which the REPRESENTATION of
the imperial SUBJECT (for example, the British) is constructed.

RADICAL FEMINISM See FEMINISM.

112 Artwords

READER In recent criticism of literary and artistic TEXTS, great attention has
been placed upon the activity and role of the reader or viewer. This shift away
from the artist as CENTER of the study of TEXTS and toward the reader is aimed
at investigating the contributions of the reader to the meanings of TEXTS. This
is part of a larger shift away from so-called “inherent” or “legitimate” mean-

ings —
meanings that “belong” to TEXTS as a result of AUTHORIAL actions to- —
—
ward a study of “artificial” meanings the meanings produced through consump-
tion and circulation of SIGNS throughout social contexts.

READERLY AND WRITERLY TEXTS Originally brought into com-

mon critical usage by Roland BARTHES, DIFFERENCE
these terms describe the
between two modes of writing and reading literary TEXTS. The readerly TEXT is a
TEXT in which the READER and writer share a number of CONVENTIONS about
TEXTS so as to allow for unproblematic and TRANSPARENT use of language.
Writerly texts challenge readers through a number of devices aimed at DE-
FAMILIARIZATION, them to become actively engaged in the process of
forcing
writing through reading. These terms are also commonly used to indicate a
WORK that lends itself to written commentary or lends itself to be read.
READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM A type of criticism that takes the
reader’s response to a literary TEXT or a viewer’s response to a WORK of art
as the primary focus. This is in contrast to the more
approaches to
traditional
texts and art objects that explore the qualities of the works themselves or the in-
tentions of the artist. Reader-response criticism is not a formalized movement or
school, but a set of concerns on the part of many critics from different and oth-
erwise conflicting viewpoints. See also RECEPTION THEORY.

REAL In LACANIAN terms, the Real is that which is in excess of the

IMAGINARY and the SYMBOLIC. It is unrepresentable. (See IMAGINARY and
SYMBOLIC.)

REALISM The term “realism” has a number of different and sometimes con-
flicting meanings. can be used to indicate a general quality of a WORK of art
It

that seems to match our expectation of the visible world. In that sense realism
strives to be mimetic REPRESENTATION, marshaling material so as to produce a
“REALITY EFFECT.” In film studies, realism refers to the ways in which an au-
dience accepts certain modes of REPRESENTATION and NARRATIVE as “faithful
to reality.” This implies a belief in the SEMIOTIC TRANSPARENCY of the mate-
rials used and the use of various cinematic devices authentic locations
in film —
and details, long shots and lengthy takes, eye-level placement of the camera, a
—
minimum of editing and special effects that allow viewers to partake of the
PLEASURE of film and forget that they are watching an arrangement of flickering
shadows.
A second understanding of realism includes a number of literary and artistic
CONVENTIONS that have their origin in the nineteenth century and deal with the
social reality of their times. As such, realism is a political attitude that does not
necessarily include a mimetic requirement.
Glossary 113

REALITY EFFECT According to Roland BARTHES, certain arrangements

of SEMIOTICmaterial result in their seeming TRANSPARENCY and so allow
mimetic reading. In other words, one can arrange material like paint so that the
arrangement prompts the viewer to implicitly accept the depiction as “REAL.”

RECEPTION THEORY A position taken by a relatively small group of

primarily German critics, such as Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, on the
reception of WORKS
by their consumers. With a special concern for the
READERS of literary TEXTS, reception theorists study the ways in which WORKS
have been received historically, as well as the ways in which the history of re-
ception of TEXTS has shaped the production of writers. Reception theorists are
especially concerned with a reader’s “horizon of expectation,” that is, the familiar
ways in which WORKS are consumed, and how this horizon may expand.

REFERENT See SEMIOTICS, SEMIOLOGY.

REPRESENTATION This term has undergone great changes in recent

years, especially in the visual arts, and has come to be one of the central issues
in contemporary art theory and criticism. Traditionally, representation referred to
TRANSPARENT and mimetic representation, that is, a WORK’S ability to “match”
the visible qualities of its SUBJECT. More recently, however, our understanding
of representation has been challenged by POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY. As a
result, representation can indicate any usage of material that has the ability to re-
fer to something else, actual or imagined, visible or invisible. This can include
—
both traditionally “realistic” painting with portraits, landscapes, and still-life as
subject matter —
abstract painting. All are seen to have the potential to represent
in some way, if not strictly mimetically.

REPRESSIVE HYPOTHESIS In The History of Sexuality, Volume 1:

An Introduction Michel
, FOUCAULT asserts that, since the advent of the Age of
Reason, we have seen an incitement to SEXUAL DISCOURSE dispersed in multi-
ple forms from multiple centers. He discusses the “speaker’s benefit,” explaining
that, when SEX is repressed, speaking about it becomes a deliberately
TRANSGRESSIVE act. Our DESIRE to rebel against oppression, he asserts, pro-
duces our need to see SEX as repressed. Rebellion against SEXUAL oppression (or
repression) provides the opportunity to espouse a DESIRE for a “garden of earthly
delights.” FOUCAULT states that his goal is to explore the DISCOURSES that
work produce an impression of repression (which acts to produce DIS-
to
COURSES of SEXUALITY) and the will and intention that produce and support
them. He wishes to explore not why we are repressed, but why we insist so ve-
hemently and so profusely that we are repressed (thereby generating DISCOURSES
of SEXUALITY).
FOUCAULT raises three doubts regarding the repressive hypothesis: (1) Is the
repression of SEX actually historically established? (2) Does POWER
in our so-
ciety function through repression (through prohibition, censorship, and so on)?
(3) Did critical DISCOURSE regarding repression function to obstruct the work-
ings of POWER that was, up to then, unchallenged? Or is such critical
DISCOURSE actually part of that same “historical network” as denounces and la-
bels it as repression? FOUCAULT attempts to explore the “discursive fact” of
 114 Artwords

SEX and the manifold techniques of POWER. He primary aim is to

states that his
investigate the “will to knowledge” that functions as the support and instrument
of such discursive productions. He wishes to locate and write the history of
“instances of discursive production. of the production of POWER.
. . of the . .

propagation of knowledge” ( The History of Sexuality, pp. 11-12). He tells us

that, since the end of the 1500s, DISCOURSE regarding SEXUALITY has not been
repressed but has, instead, “been subjected to a mechanism of increasing incite-
ment.” This has produced manifold forms of SEXUALITY; and the “will to
knowledge” has constituted a “science of sexuality” ( The History of Sexuality,
pp. 12-13).
In order to control SEX and SEXUALITY, it became necessary to control its cir-

culation in language, to “subjugate it at the level of language” ( The History of

Sexuality, p. 17). However, FOUCAULT points out, over the last three-hundred
years there has been an explosion of DISCOURSE on SEX. There developed a pro-
fusion of discourses on SEXUALITY, “an institutional incitement to speak about
it” explicitly and in great detail. Such DISCOURSE, propagated by the Church

through the confessional, was intended to modify DESIRE ( The History of Sexu-
ality, p. 18).
SEX became something that was administered. It management directed
required
by analytical DISCOURSES. In the eighteenth century, governments became con-
cerned with population problems. SEX became important because, through it,
population increased or decreased. SEXUAL behavior came to be viewed as an ap-
propriate point for state intervention to control population. INSTITUTIONS of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that produced DISCOURSES on SEX were
schools, medicine, and the criminal justice system. The three CODES (canonical
law, the Christian pastoral, and civil law) that, up until the end of the 1700s,
controlled SEXUAL practice involved matrimony, sothat constraints on behavior
(and thought) were mostly focused on marital relations. The system based on le-
gitimized (marital) relations was modified in two ways by the “discursive explo-
sion” of the 1700s and 1800s. First speech related to normative SEXUALITY be-
came more Second, those whose behavior did not conform to
discreet, quieter.
the HETEROSEXUAL norm of reproductive SEXUALITY were compelled to confess
their “unnatural” acts. Those who confessed to such acts were set apart, and this
marking of DIFFERENCE, of the non-normative, the “perverse,” worked (by dis-
tinguishing itself from the norm) to constitute what was regarded as “natural”
behavior. It became necessary to separate such individuals, and this gave rise to
techniques of separation and SURVEILLANCE that focused on the BODY
(Foucault, A History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction pp. 3—49).
,

One of a number of contemporary artists who draw on FOUCAULT’S ideas re-

garding the repressive hypothesis and incitement to SEXUAL DISCOURSE is Jana
Sterbak. In Seduction Couch ,
a sculpture from 1987-88, Sterbak presents us
with an object that is most meaningful when viewed within modern DISCOURSE
on SEX and SEXUALITY as discussed by FOUCAULT. This sculptural installation
consists of a chaise lounge constructed of perforated metal which, lit by a spot-
light, casts an enormous and sinister shadow on the wall behind it. A Van de
Graaff generator sits at the foot of the metal couch. Building up a charge from
the electrostatic energy in its environment, the generator sends out an arc of blue
light every so often when the charge crosses the gap to the metal couch. The
generator, steadily building an electrostatic charge that is periodically and dramat-
Glossary 115

ically released, acts as a TROPE for the buildup of energy deriving from SEXUAL
attraction.
The conjunction of attraction and repulsion found in Sterbak’s Seduction
Couch is characteristic of seduction as an exercise of POWER. The one wielding
the POWER of seduction controls both the attraction and the repulsion of the one
being seduced. Sterbak’s couch carries an electric charge. The thrill produced by
anticipation of the charge seduces the viewer into touching it. The anticipated re-
pulsion produces the attraction because it produces the thrill. Since, upon touch-
ing the couch, the viewer repulsed by the electric charge, the attraction of re-
is

pulsion is what causes the viewer to touch it.

The chaise lounge is associated with PSYCHOANALYSIS. It serves as the SITE
forPERFORMANCE of Freud’s “talking cure.” It is the point at which the female
SUBJECT is constructed in and through PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE.
Through reference to both the psychoanalyst’s couch and SEXUAL seduction,
Sterbak clearly conveys that this piece is intended as a commentary on
SEXUALITY, seduction, and DESIRE as conceived within PSYCHOANALYTIC
DISCOURSE. Sterbak concerns herself with the central role PSYCHOANALYSIS
has played in the production of SEXUAL DISCOURSE. PSYCHOANALYSIS is one
of the primary DISCOURSES through which the repressive hypothesis
FOUCAULT describes has operated. The core assumptions of PSYCHOANALYSIS
are built upon the presumed existence of repressed SEXUAL DESIRE. Through the
“talking cure,” the psychoanalyst attempts to bring awareness of such repressed
DESIRE to the conscious level. The patient is made to verbally express his or her
DESIRE. The psychoanalyst’s couch, thus, serves as the SITE of generation of
DISCOURSE on SEXUALITY. It signifies those processes, through which the in-
citement to SEXUAL DISCOURSE and the deployment of SEXUALITY have oper-
ated, Sterbak shows us how DESIRE stimulates “the injunction to know” and
lead us to believe that, through participation in SEXUAL DISCOURSE, we may
liberate ourselves. Through incitement to DISCOURSE, through talking about
SEX, we are provided the illusion of individual agency. We think we are liberat-
ing ourselves from a repressive social injunction; however, we are only serving
to further generate what we seek to subvert.

REPRESSIVE STATE APPARATUS (RSA) See APPARATUS.

REVISIONISM See REVISIONIST ART HISTORY.

REVISIONIST ART HISTORY The terms “revisionist,” “New

Art His-
tory,” or “New Historicism,” when applied to historical matters, conjure up a
Stalinesque scene of coconspirators in a dark room rewriting history textbooks.
In the arts and humanities, however, these terms have come
be used in two in- to
terrelated senses. The first sense is derogatory, reminiscent of the Cold War days
of “red-baiting” and perceived communist conspiracy. This first sense sees recent
historical and critical research as far too influenced by Marxist thinking, too in-
terested in so-called “extra artistic” matters like GENDER and ETHNICITY, and
generally disturbing in its criticism of traditional and accepted histories. The sec-
ond sense of the term is used by its supporters. Whether they call themselves re-

visionists or not, many and historians have incorporated a wide

critics, theorists,

variety of previously unused or seldom used theoretical positions in their writ-

116 Artwords

ings, including SEMIOTIC, Marxist, POSTSTRUCTURALIST, FEMINIST,

MULTICULTURAL or POSTCOLONIAL, and DECONSTRUCTIONIST positions.
As a result of incorporating various methodologies into their research, many
historians and theorists have begun to question traditionally accepted ideas on
such topics as INFLUENCE, EXPRESSION, ORIGINALITY, the idea of a direction
of history, stylistic change, iconographic interpretation, and FORMALIST criteria.
Radically different histories of the arts have been written, and sometimes disturb-
ing (to some) critical positions on the arts have been taken. Art critic Hal Fos-
ter, for example, has used a combination of Marxist THEORY and POSTSTRUC-

TURALIST analysis to critique what he calls “the EXPRESSIONIST FALLACY.”

Other historians associated with the “New Art History” are Keith Moxey, Donald
Preziosi, Norman Bryson, and Griselda Pollock. “New Museology” is the term
assigned to the incorporation of THEORY into museological practices. An exem-
plary result has been the attention to the museum as a REPRESENTATIONAL
medium with the POWER to write history and to shape the perception that indi-
viduals and groups have of themselves. “New Western History,” which stems
from new directions in the writing of the history of the American West has im-
pacted art historical practices by providing some analytical tools for the investi-
gation into the relationship of visual REPRESENTATION to the history of west-
ward expansion, environmental degradation, and the near total genocide of Native
Americans. A few of the historians writing in this vein are Richard White, Patri-
cia Nelson Limerick, and Glenda Riley. One result of this renewed attention to
the art of the West has been the controversial 1991 exhibition “The West as
America,” which paid special attention to historical topics not common to art
exhibitions, and disturbing to many visitors.

RHETORIC The way that a statement is put, especially as it differs from the
sense or intentional meaning of the statement. Traditionally, the art of rhetoric
examined the ways in which DISCOURSES were constructed in order to achieve
certain effects. Rhetoric was traditionally regarded as a deliberate exploitation of
eloquence for the most persuasive effect in speaking or writing. It included the
study of the uses of FIGURES of speech— METAPHOR, METONYMY, simile,
IRONY, synecdoche, personification, analogy, and so on —and the arts of mem-
ory,and oratory.
Rhetoric has been taken up again as an important of study due to the
field
widespread acceptance by many theorists, writers, and artists of the idea that the
material aspect of REPRESENTATION is of utmost importance. Preoccupations
on the part of recent theorists and critics with analyzing rhetoric often stems
from an understanding of DISCOURSE as a form of POWER and DESIRE. One of
the more important uses of rhetorical analysis has been its ability to look upon
DISCOURSES with an eye to understanding how they produce certain effects,
shape understanding, or maintain existing systems of POWER. One result has
been to show that criticism, THEORY
and knowledge are “interested,” that is,
“invested” in arrangements of POWER. Another result has been that rhetoric is
now seen by many critics and theorists as an unavoidable instrument in the es-
tablishment of “TRUTH effects” and in the implementation of “TRUTH-values.”
In that vein, philosopher Jacques DERRIDA
has called into question the attempt
by some writers throughout history to separate rhetoric from philosophy. In
DERRIDA’S view, it is rhetoric that gives statements their POWER to convince.
Glossary
117

Ironically, however, it is sometimes the same rhetoric that undermines that

statement s ability to convince, as DERRIDA explains in his writings on
DECONSTRUCTION.
In the criticism of the visual arts, a great deal of attention has
been paid to
rhetoric as a strategy for artistic production. Critic Hal Foster, in his
essay on
EXPRESSION and the EXPRESSIONIST FALLACY, investigates the similarities of
the rhetorical devices (or painterly techniques) used in early twentieth-century
EXPRESSIONIST painting and in the Neo-EXPRESSIONIST painting of the late
1970s and early 1980s. (See EXPRESSIONIST FALLACY.)

RHIZOMATIC AND ARBORESCENT Gilles DELEUZE

and Felix
GUATTARI use the terms “rhizomatic” and “arborescent” to distinguish between
two modes of thinking. The arborescent mode is tree-like and refers to the tradi-
tional European disciplinary organization of knowledge based upon a “depth
model,” a vertical or HIERARCHICAL arrangement. This model includes branches
of knowledge with its roots supplying a firm foundation. The rhizomatic mode
is based upon the model of a horizontally spreading root system, like strawber-

ries, bamboo, or mint. This model indicates a horizontal network organization,

which is more dynamic, heterogeneous, and non-hierarchical than the arbores-
cent. Rhizomatic thinking often affirms those modes of thought excluded from
Western tradition, in an attempt to displace essentialized and totalized thinking
and disciplinary organization. Horizontality can be a part of rhizomes, since they
can have roots and stems that form “PLATEAUS.” Rhizomes and PLATEAUS are
connected to other rhizomes and PLATEAUS, and can therefore create wider rhi-
zomes. Rhizomatic thinking is a form of “nomadic thought,” as opposed to
“state thought”; the application of nomadic thought in critiques of the state and
state APPARATUSES is, for D&G, a form of “POSTMODERN WARFARE” (see
Deleuze And Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus ).

RHIZOME See RHIZOMATIC AND ARBORESCENT.

RUPTURE DERRIDA’S THEORY of DECONSTRUCTION, a rupture

In Jacques
is a moment in reading a TEXT when certain insurmountable conflicts are made

obvious to a READER. For Michel FOUCAULT, a rupture is an EPISTEMIC

BREAK, that is, a historical event in which whole systems of thought reveal
themselves as artificial, inadequate, and so are replaced by other modes of
thought.
s

SCHIZO ANALYSIS According to Gilles DELEUZE and Felix GUATTARI, a

schizophrenic is someone who attempts to escape from IDENTITY-undifferentia-
tion, in order to become a “NOMAD,” for example, but is prevented from doing
so by capitalist society. To DELEUZE and GUATTARI, schizophrenia is not an
illness but a potentially liberatory process of becoming something some-
else,
thing “OTHER.” Schizoanalysis is the analysis of capitalism and the
mechanisms by which it prevents or otherwise limits the possibilities of
becoming. (See also BODIES WITHOUT ORGANS and NOMADS.)

SCOPIC REGIME See VISION/VISUALITY.

SCOPOPHILIA Feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey applies the Freudian

concept of scopophilia to classic NARRATIVE film in her highly influential es-
say, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” She describes scopophilia as one
of the PLEASURES offered by cinema, where looking is the source of enjoyment.
Freud develops this concept in Three Essays on Sexuality and defines it as an in-
normal SEXUAL behavior. As described by Freud,
stinctual drive that is part of
scopophilia involves regarding of others as objects and making them the
SUBJECT of a controlling GAZE. He associates it with pre-genital autoeroticism,
with the PLEASURE of looking transferred to others at a later stage of the child’s
development. For Freud, normal scopophilic behavior is an active form of
VOYEURISM. It may become so extreme, however, as to become a form of per-
version involving the limitation of SEXUAL PLEASURE to situations in which
looking functions as a controlling and objectifying behavior and finds expression
in obsessive VOYEURISM and Peeping Tom behavior.
Mulvey sees mainstream film as characterized by scopophilic behavior. It pro-
duces a sense of distance in the viewer, thus providing a necessary condition for
the satisfaction of voyeuristic DESIRE. The CONVENTIONS of NARRATIVE film
provide the spectator with the sense that he or she is viewing a private world
from the safe, obscuring distance and darkness of the movie theatre. Cinema sat-
isfies this DESIRE for voyeuristic PLEASURE; at the same time, it provides the
120 Artwords

opportunity for the exercise of the narcissistic aspect of VOYEURISM, which

Mulvey finds in the viewer’s identification with the film’s protagonist. This
identification recapitulates the narcissistic process of the MIRROR STAGE as de-
scribed by psychoanalyst Jacques LACAN. During the MIRROR STAGE, which is
pre-linguistic, the child perceives its own reflected image as superior to its

BODY, because the reflected image appears more complete and perfect than the
image of self produced by the child’s experience of its own BODY. Recognition
of perceived superiority results in the formation of an ideal ego that is rein-
this
trojected, providing the basis for the child’s future identification with other per-
sons. Mulvey views film as similarly involving a simultaneous loss and rein-
forcement of the ego. It involves a reinforcement of the ego through a voyeuris-
tic separation of the viewer from the objectified OTHER on the SCREEN, while,

at the same time, it provides the conditions necessary for a narcissistic identifica-
tion with the OTHER. It produces a tension between instinctual SEXUAL drives
and the drive for self-preservation, which results in PLEASURE.

SCREEN In his application of Ferdinand de Saussure’s SEMIOTIC THEORY to

PSYCHOANALYSIS, Jacques LACAN develops the idea of the screen. In LACAN’S
explanation of the MIRROR STAGE of early childhood development, vision plays
a major role in the attainment of individual subjecthood. In The Four Fundamen-
talConcepts of Psychoanalysis LACAN discusses how the alienation of the
SUBJECT from itself, which occurs through its awareness that it serves as the
object of the GAZE of others is relevant to the visual arts. Asserting that humans
assume masks so as to manipulate the GAZE of others, he explains that this pro-
cess of manipulation operates through the screen. LACAN explains: “Man, in ef-
fect, knows how to play with the mask
beyond which there is the gaze.
as that
The screen is here the locus of MEDIATION” (Lacan, Four Fundamental Con-
cepts p. 107). LACAN provides a schematic model for the operation of the
,

screen, which consists of two intersecting triangles. The GAZE, as the visual
version of the SYMBOLIC through which the SUBJECT locates itself, is found at
the base of one triangle and the SUBJECT of REPRESENTATION lies at the other
base. LACAN locates the “image screen” at the point of intersection of the two
triangles.

In his discussion of LACAN’S idea of the screen, art historian Keith Moxey ex-
plains how the screen may also be seen as the WORK
can be regarded
of art: “It

as the subject’s personal mask insofar as it incorporates the unique qualities of

his or her individuality in a form that can be reconciled with the impersonal oth-
erness of the gaze, or it can be viewed as the way in which the artist expands or
supplements the gaze’s control of the real. by offering it that which it cannot
. .

see.” The artist’s individual SUBJECTIVITY, Moxey explains, “has the capacity to
extend the gaze’s power to define the real by offering it images or visions of that
which escapes purview, by developing means to capture that which the gaze
its

cannot encode.” The artist’s image, thus conceived, seems to “transcend the
visual CODES by which our approach to the real is mediated by the concept of the
gaze.” The REPRESENTATION of what escapes the
visual image, as the artist’s
GAZE, “momentarily appeases its search for meaning” by providing a substitute
for what always escapes it (Moxey, The Practice of Theory, pp. 52-54).
 Glossary
121

Theorist Kaja Silverman has developed and applied LACAN’S

idea of the
SCREEN to film studies. Visual artists who have used LACANIAN THEORY to
explore how visual processes form individual SUBJECTIVITY include
Sylvia
Kolbowski and Victor Burgin.

SCREEN THEORY Another term for FILM THEORY written by various

AUTHORS published in the British film journal Screen. The journal has been in
publication for over two decades, publishing criticism and THEORY
from various
perspectives, including POSTSTRUCTURALIST, PSYCHOANALYTIC, Marxist,
and
FEMINIST positions. Perhaps the single best-known WORK appearing in Screen
was Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” published in 1975.

SECOND-GENERATION FEMINISM Second-generation feminist art

and art writing originated in the early 1980s in the United States and Europe as
an outgrowth of and a reaction to first-generation FEMINISM. has extended into
It
the present. Second-generation feminists reject their predecessors’ presumption of
a universal female experience and an identifiable feminine aesthetic. Their
primary concern is with how visual REPRESENTATION influences the develop-
ment and maintenance of GENDERED IDENTITY. They often incorporate TEXT
WORK; they use images drawn from POPULAR CULTURE and often use
into their
POPULAR CULTURE venues to present their WORK; and many utilize electronic
media in production and presentation of their WORK. First-generation feminists
worked to unearth forgotten women artists of the past and to bring them and
their contemporary counterparts prominence by gaining them admission to ei-
to
ther the art historical CANON or major art INSTITUTIONS such as museums and
galleries. Second generation feminists have instead worked to change INSTI-
TUTIONS that exclude women. For them, adding women to the CANON is not
enough. One should first explore how INSTITUTIONS have functioned to exclude
women and then work to change them. Second-generation feminist artists include
Mary Kelly, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, and the Guerrilla
Girls. (See FEMINISM.)

SELF-REFERENCE See AUTONOMY and FORMALISM.

SELF-REFLEXIVE See AUTONOMY and FORMALISM.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY See AUTONOMY and FORMALISM.

SEME See SEMEME.

SEMEME SEMIOTICS, the sememe is the smallest possible component of

In
SIGNIFICATION. It can be a sound, a grunt, a brushstroke, a pencil mark, or a
broken twig. STRUCTURALIST SEMIOTICS, especially in the linguistic
paradigm, stresses the spoken utterance as the prime example of the sememe or
seme. Roland BARTHES describes the sememe as being more or less interchange-
able with the SIGNIFIER. Jacques DERRIDA had to invent his own equivalent to
the seme for the written SIGN, which he called the GRAPHEME.

SEMIC CODE See CODE.

122 Artwords

SEMIOCLASM The literal or figurative activity of breaking apart some-

thing made of SIGNS. can also be understood as a break
It in a chain of SIGNS
brought about by an event such as a DECONSTRUCTION.

SEMIOSIS According to SEMIOTIC THEORY, the process of SIGNIFICATION

through the use of SIGNS.

SEMIOTICIAN/SEMIOLOGIST One who practices SEMIOTICS or

SEMIOLOGY.

SEMIOTICS, SEMIOLOGY From Greek root seme-, meaning SIGN, a

the
DISCIPLINE devoted to the study of SIGNS and the process of articulating and
—
conveying meaning. Semiology or semiotics depending on whether the particu-
lar approach is derived from the model of structural linguistics of Ferdinand de
Saussure or from that of the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Pierce stud- —
ies the systems of SIGNS, the basic unit in the process of SIGNIFICATION, that
enable human beings to communicate, to enter into discursive relations.
According to semiotic THEORY, all cultural utterances (in a broad sense, not
just verbal utterances) are enabled as well as limited CODES that
by systems or
are shared by all who make andunderstand them. The goal of STRUCTURALIST
semiotics is to describe the underlying patterns that structure those utterances.
Semioticians study how SIGNS come to mean what they do and how they func-
tion in society, that is, the processes of SIGNIFICATION, or the material and so-
cial operations of the production of meaning. Strictly speaking, semiotics is not
a method of interpretation.
According to Saussure’ s semiology, all SIGNS are made up of two parts, the
— —
SIGNIFIER (the material shape sound, image that carries meaning) and the
SIGNIFIED (the concept SIGNIFIED, which in turn may refer to a potentially infi-
nite number of referents). The SIGNIFIER can be an object, a mark, or a sound,
and should be understood as separate from any possible meaning it may have.
The SIGNIFIED, the conceptual component of the SIGN, is without FORM and
independent or transcendent of any specific materiality. The REFERENT is that to
which the SIGN, made of the combined SIGNIFIER and SIGNIFIED, refers. For ex-
ample, the (spoken or written) word for the idea of rain in English is “rain,”
while in French it is “pluie.” Both SIGNS refer to the same thing, which exists
separately from the spoken or written words, but use different material terms to
do it. In each case the sound or graphic component of the SIGN for rain is the
—
SIGNIFIER, while the general idea of rain the “essence” of rain, if you will is —
the SIGNIFIED (see Saussure, The Course in General Linguistics, 65-98).
A semiotic analysis artificially splits the relationship of the SIGNIFIER and
SIGNIFIED in order to show how the SIGNS and SIGNIFIERS differ from CULTURE
to CULTURE, and to determine what transhistorical feature of CULTURES can ex-
plain those differences. The relationship of SIGNIFIERS to SIGNIFIEDS, as well
as between SIGNS and REFERENTS, are “ARBITRARY,” that is, not natural or
necessary, but determined by CONVENTION. There are, however, some limits to
the arbitrariness of SIGNS, some structures to language. One limit is that there is
some “essential aspect” of the REFERENT that limits the usage of SIGNS. An-
other limit is the STRUCTURE of BINARY DIFFERENCE, that is, that at any one
 Glossary
123

point in time a SIGNIFIER relates to a SIGNIFIED due to the

opposition of the
SIGNIFIED to one other SIGNIFIED. For example, the SIGNIFIER “rain”
signifies
what it does in part because at one point in time, what is signified with “rain” is
not what is signified with the signifier “shoe.”
Wecould use Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates
(1787), as an ex-
ample of a SIGN. The particular arrangement of stains of paint on a canvass,
in-
dependent of their possible meanings, can be understood as a collection of
SIG-
NIFIERS making up a larger SIGN. These stains signify human male bodies,
clothing, furniture, architecture, a cup, and other objects. Taken as a whole, and
on a denotative level, the painting as a SIGN refers to a prison cell,’ due
strictly
to its resemblance of human bodies in a space recognizable as a prison cell. On a
connotative level, however, we can see the painting of human bodies in a prison
cell as signifying something much more. Keeping in mind that the
relationship
of the SIGN to its REFERENT is determined by CONVENTION, and that the men
in this painting were understood by David’s French contemporaries to be
Greek — Socrates and his followers in particular —
the REFERENT of this painting-
as-SIGN could be seen as self-sacrifice for the good of the State, or as a SIGN of
revolution and progress.
In recent art THEORY and criticism, Saussure’s THEORY of the SIGN has been
far more discussed than that of Pierce. This is probably because semiotic
THEORY did not enter the art world in any significant way (with the important
exception of Roland BARTHES on photography) until the introduction of POST-
STRUCTURALIST THEORY, which had as a primary concern the critique of Saus-
surean-derived semiotics. Nevertheless, Pierce’s semiotic THEORY has received
some attention, primarily by art historians. Pierce’s THEORY consists of three
types of SIGNS, INDEX, ICON, and SYMBOL, each distinguished by a particular
relationship to REFERENT. The INDEXICAL SIGN is caused by its REFERENT;
its

for example, smoke is caused by fire. The ICON resembles its REFERENT in the
way that a photograph shares some features of its SUBJECT. The relationship of
a SYMBOL to its REFERENT
highly conventional and not at
is all natural; for ex-
ample, the image of a light bulb has come to refer to an idea.

SEMIURGY The process of constructing something from SIGNS. This no-

tion of construction from SIGNS was propagated especially by the French sociol-
ogist Jean BAUDRILLARD.

SEX/GENDER DISTINCTION In “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinc-

tion,” originally published in 1983, Moira Gatens responds to an increased use
in feminist scholarship of the distinction between SEX and GENDER. Prominent
among those employing this distinction are Nancy Chodorow in The Reproduc-
tion of Mothering Dorothy Dinnerstein in The Mermaid and the Minotaur, and
,

Michele Barrett in Women’s Oppression Today. Gatens’s purpose in responding

to this scholarship is threefold. First, she
hopes to clarify the theoretical base of
the distinction between SEX and GENDER. Second, she wishes to determine if the
sex/gender distinction is a coherent and valid one. Third, she attempts to examine
the political effects of the employment of the sex/gender distinction by groups of
varied political persuasion.
Gatens tells us that the idea of GENDER has been found predominantly in An-
glo-American feminist THEORY of the mid- to late- 1980s. Theorists who favor
 Artwords
124

use of the category “GENDER” over “SEX” generally do so, she tells us, in order
to avoid biologism or ESSENTIALISM. They argue that one must see GENDER as
a social category and SEX as a biological one. She feels that, given the wide cur-
rency of the distinction by diverse groups in the 1980s (including Marxists,
gays, and equity feminists, whom she calls “feminists of equality”), its use and
“credentials” warrant critical reassessment.
Gatens asserts that SEXUAL DIFFERENCE— and thus SEXUAL politics— has
been neutralized through the use of the sex/gender distinction. She takes issue
with the assertion that the newborn’s mind is a blank slate upon which
CULTURE inscribes its norms, values, and so on, and that the BODY passively
mediates such inscription. She wants to challenge the presumption of an
ARBITRARY connection of femininity with the female BODY and masculinity
with the male BODY, as well as the naive idea that, through re-education, the pa-
triarchal CODES of one’s can be unlearned. What she posits as the
CULTURE
“central issue at stake” and as “what appears to be one of the most burning is-
sues in the contemporary women’s movement” is the issue of “Sexual Equality
vs.Sexual Difference” (Gatens, “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction,” p.
144). Gatens hopes to clarify the position of feminists who favor SEXUAL
DIFFERENCE (a position that equity feminists commonly misrepresent) and to
respond to and hopefully quash charges of ESSENTIALISM and biologism against
DIFFERENCE feminists. Equity feminists, she contends, tend to position theoret-
ical stances at one pole or the other of a BINARY OPPOSITION, regarding views
as either constructionist or ESSENTIALIST. As she sees it, the task is to reopen
the debate and argue for a politics of DIFFERENCE. This is her goal. But, first,

she feels it necessary to critique the position of those who support

“degendering.”
Gatens proceeds with her critique via a short summary of the ideas of psycho-
analyst Robert J. Stoller, author of Sex And Gender (1968). Stoller’s project was
to study nonnormative biological and psychological states to illuminate the rela-
tionship of SEX and GENDER. As a result of his research, he purports to have ac-
counted for the origins of the behavior of transvestites and transsexuals. He
views transsexualism as wholly the result of social forces, with the primary
cause being the way that the mother relates to the child resulting in the inability
of the male child to separate from the mother and develop a sense of his own in-
dividuality. The child identifies with the mother to such a degree that he comes
to see himself as a woman trapped in a man’s BODY. Gatens notes that a number
of feminist theorists, including Kate Millet in Sexual Politics and Germaine
Greer in The Female Eunuch, have used Stoller’s research and conclusions as the
basis of a social constructionist view that posits masculine behavior as arbitrar-
ily ascribed to the biological male and feminine behavior as arbitrarily ascribed

to the biological female. She finds the acceptance of Stoller’s ideas unsurprising,
given the liberal humanist CONTEXT of the late 1960s and early 1970s. How-
ever, by the early 1980s it had become increasingly less tenable to accept such
assertions as based in scientific fact and more and more apparent that they were
the products of a specific historical CONTEXT, that of eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century liberal humanism.
In order to adopt the view that degendering is possible, Gatens contends that
one must accept two assumptions. First, one must adopt the ahistorical rational-
ist view that the BODY has no influence on the formation of consciousness. The
 Glossary
125

BODY must be seen as and passive” and consciousness as “primary and

neutral
determinant (Gatens, A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction,”
pp. 146—147).
Second, one must think that, by changing the material practices of a CULTURE,
“the important effects of the historical and cultural specificity of one’s
‘lived ex-
perience,’ able to be altered, definitively” (Gatens, p. 147). If these assump-
is

tions are accepted, she tells us, then one could claim that both the consciousness
and the BODY it acts upon are initially neutral; and, further, one could contend
that “masculine and feminine behaviours are arbitrary forms of behaviour, so-
cially inscribed on an indifferent consciousness that is joined to an indifferent
body” (Gatens, p. 147). Gatens then goes on to analyze these two assumptions.
Gatens contends that the sex/gender distinction is situated in the nature versus
nurture debate (or, in her terms, “heredity vs. environment”) and the “confused
terminology” and concepts that characterize it (Gatens, “A Critique of the
Sex/Gender Distinction,” p. 147). Socialization theorists, she explains, under-
stand the sex/gender distinction as a distinction between BODY and conscious-
ness, thus committing themselves to a series of historically untenable assump-
tions. Theorists who adopt a mind/BODY distinction consistently align them-
selves with one side or the other of the equation. They adopt either a wholly so-
cial constructionist view or a wholly biologist Gatens points out
orientation.
that both positions “posit a naive causal relation between either the body and the
mind or the environment and the mind which commits both viewpoints, as two
sides of the same coin, to an a priori neutral and passive conception of the sub-
,

ject” (Gatens, p. 147). This leads to a behaviorist conception of the human

SUBJECT; and, as Gatens points out, there is no proof that the behaviorist con-
cept of conditioning can be validly applied to human, as opposed to animal,
SUBJECTS. A behaviorist model assumes a consistent response by a SUBJECT to
a particular stimulus. PSYCHOANALYSIS, Gatens points out, “read as a descrip-
tivetheory of the constitution of subjectivity in (Western, industrialized) patriar-
chal society,” does not support such a behaviorist view of the human as a pas-
sive SUBJECT consistently and predictably amenable to such conditioning
(Gatens, p. 148).The PROBLEMATICS of mind/BODY interaction are one of the
factors out of which PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY arose. Freud’s preoccupation
with hysteria given as evidence of his concern with this problem. What the
is

behaviorist view does not account for is the non-passive nature of perception.
Freud argues that perceptual processes are active rather than passive and cannot
be equated wholly with either consciousness or the BODY. Further, most of what
the individual perceives does not enter consciousness but exists, instead, at the
UNCONSCIOUS The activity of perception is the activity of an individual
level.
SUBJECT and cannot be accommodated in the behaviorist’ s account. Gatens adds
that, if behaviors and social practices are located in the SUBJECT, instead of in
the BODY or in consciousness, “then this has important repercussions for the
subject as always a sexed subject” (Gatens, p. 148). All of this leads Gatens to
conclude that the behaviorist notion of a passive SUBJECT that is central to the
idea of degendering “is demonstrably inadequate account for human behavior
to
and, in particular, the activity of signification” (Gatens, pp. 149-150).

SEXUALITY/SEXUAL IDENTITY Recent feminist theorists have cri-

tiqued the necessary linking of SEX and GENDER. They have attempted to show
how sexuality, or expression of one’s sexual identity, is not a natural and neces-
126 Artwords

sary expression of one’s biological SEX. Noteworthy among such theorists is

Judith Butler (see PERFORM ANCE/PERFORM ATI VE/PERFORMATIVITY).

SIGN See SEMIOTICS/SEMIOLOGY.

SIGNIFICANT FORM See AESTHETIC EMOTION.

SIGNIFICATION From the SEMIOTIC perspective, the construction of

meaning through the use of SIGNS. These SIGNS can be spoken or written
words, but can just as well be painting, sculpture, PERFORMANCE, pho-
tographs, or any of the materials or methods common to the visual arts.

SIGNIFIED See SEMIOTICS/SEMIOLOGY.

SIGNIFIER See SEMIOTICS/SEMIOLOGY.

SIGNIFYING PRACTICE Any activity that uses SIGNS and produces

MEANING or significance on a cultural or interpersonal SCALE.

SIMULACRA/SIMULACRUM See SIMULATION.

SIMULATION A COPY orREPRESENTATION. In the mid 1980s, some crit-

ics were asserting that there was a style or movement in artistic practice called
“Simulationism” or “Simulation Art.” This activity, exemplified by the WORK
of Peter Halley and Haim Steinbach, was influenced by the theoretical writings
of French sociologist Jean BAUDRILLARD. To BAUDRILLARD, simulacra are
COPIES, or REPRESENTATIONS. These COPIES are the result of the use of SIGNS
in REPRESENTATIONS that are so convincing they threaten to replace that which
they ostensibly represent.

SITE Another term for location, usually used figuratively in contemporary

THEORY to indicate a set of particularly embattled themes or topics.

SLIPPAGE A term used to indicate the moment within a TEXT when the
conventional relationships of SIGNS and REFERENTS become questionable and
begin to appear conventional rather than natural and a matter of course. (See
HINGE and PLAY.)

SPEAKING SUBJECT Building on the ideas of Freud, French psychoana-

lyst Jacques LACAN developed a THEORY of human development in which the
acquisition of language is central to the development of individual SUBJEC-
TIVITY. LACAN replaces the Cartesian privileging of thought, of man as think-
ing being, with the speaking SUBJECT, which is defined in and by language.

SPECTACLE In FEMINIST FILM THEORY, woman is the object of

SPECTACLE Hollywood cinema. In “Visual Pleasure and Narra-
in the classical
tive Cinema,” Mulvey theorizes that Hollywood CONVENTIONS of cinematic
practice construct the GAZE as male. The female BODY acts as the FETISHIZED
object of the MALE GAZE, and those in the audience necessarily take on the role
 Glossary
127

of masculine VOYEUR. Further, the combination of NARRATIVE and spectacle

(the functions of showing and telling) reflect a system of SEXUAL imbalance in
which the male is the active SUBJECT and the female is the passive object (see
FEMINIST FILM THEORY).

SPECULAR/SPECULARIZATION The concept of the specular, or

specularization, which literally referring to the properties of a mirror, has taken
on a particular meaning in contemporary FILM THEORY and in feminist
cultural
DISCOURSE. It has come to denote the to-be-looked-at-ness” of the woman in
Hollywood cinema, who
classical serves as the object of the dominating MALE
GAZE (see FEMINIST FILM THEORY and MALE GAZE). Feminist film theorists
often refer to the operations of the MALE GAZE and itsmale/female AC-
TIVE/PASSIVE BINARY STRUCTURE, which works to produce and maintain
GENDER distinctions as the “specular regime” of film.
Film theorist Kaja Silverman asserts in The Acoustic Mirror: The Female
Voice Psychoanalysis and Cinema that the history of film has “coincided with
in
the ever-increasing specularization of woman.” She states further that
she
“would argue that cinema has contributed massively to what might be called the
‘revisualization’ of sexual difference” (Silverman,The Acoustic Mirror p. 24). ,

This increased specularization of women, she asserts, was accompanied by a de-

creased specularization of men. Silverman cites J. C. Flugel’s assertionin The
Psychology of Clothes, that this “Great
Masculine Renunciation” involved more
than apparel. It involved, as well, the collapse of CLASS distinctions and of visi-
ble designation of social rank and status. According to Flugel, such visible
SIGNS of distinction were replaced by a SYMBOLIC order, through which POWER
was more dispersed, less material, and thus less easily identified and located.

SPIRITUAL FEMINISM See GODDESS ART.

STAR SYSTEM The commercial and aesthetic exploitation of the charisma

ofPOPULAR actors, combining the appeal of both their on-SCREEN and their off-
SCREEN personas. The star system was developed in the United States and has
been one of the pillars of the American film industry since the mid-teens.

STEREOTYPE In the late 1700s, a new printing process was developed

called the stereotype. The process duplicated letters, numbers, and SYMBOLS
onto a metal plate, bypassing the tedious process of “setting” moveable blocks
of type. Soon “stereotype” came to mean anything in an edition, or a series of
copies. In the nineteenth century the word acquired a meaning similar to the cur-
rent one: an image that is repeated, fixed, perpetuated, or continued without
—
change a formula.
Producing and reproducing convincing images of ethnic groups is an unchal-
lenged ability of the POPULAR media. Perhaps this is due to their technological
nature: photography, film, and television are assumed to share a basic ability to
directly and immediately “COPY” images from nature. But these media, whether
in the service of science, advertising, or entertainment, have also provided us
with numerous stereotypical representations of ethnic DIFFERENCE. The stereo-
typical image isolates prominent visual characteristics of its object and substi-
128 Artwords

tutes those for the object itself. As such, the stereotype is a kind of one-dimen-
sional COPY.
A vague resemblance to historical fact is an important aspect of all stereo-
types. Just as the first stereotypes were copies of an original, media stereotypes
of ethnic groups “resemble” their origins. The important difference is that these
stereotypical representations of ethnic groups also have origins in the often un-
spoken and invisible political attitudes and historical events that belong to the
populations producing and consuming these images. Stereotypes do not simply
“reflect” African Americans or Native Americans as ready-made realities. In all
categories of image production, whether “mass media” or “fine art,” stereotypes
also create meanings about what they are used to depict. To a great extent, the
production and reproduction of stereotypical imagery are an expansion of the
mechanisms of colonization, control, and social exclusion of particular ethnic
groups. One ominous meaning produced by the stereotype is that the original,
which it ostensibly depicts, is dispensable and can be erased by its COPY.
A number of contemporary artists have drawn on stereotypical images from
the POPULAR media in their WORK. They include Native American artists Jim-
mie Durham, James Luna, and Harry Fonseca, African-American artists Betye
Saar, Lorna Simpson, and Robert Colescott, and Chicana/o artists Ester Hernan-
dez and Rupert Garcia.

STRAIGHTJACKET STYLE The phrase “straightjacket style” was coined

by Samuel Wagstaff to describe the controlled and contained nature of the female
BODY as seen in Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of body-builder Lisa Lyon.
In her analysis of Mapplethorpe’s WORK, Lynda Nead contends that such
qualities as Wagstaff observes in the photographer’s portraits of Lyon are typical
of all of Mapplethorpe’s WORK. She further observes that such images may be
seen as examples of how REPRESENTATION can act as a form of regulation of
the female BODY. Such contained, controlled images of women, Nead contends,
pose no threat to patriarchal order and serve to reinforce a view that the female
BODY must be constantly controlled (Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity
and Sexuality, pp. 8-10).

STRUCTURALISM/STRUCTURALIST See STRUCTURE, SEMIOTICS,

and DECONSTRUCTION.

STRUCTURE The notion of structure is not unique to STRUCTURALIST

SEMIOTICS, with its insistence on certain operations that limit the arbitrariness
of SIGNIFICATION. The term is also used more generally and loosely in a num-
ber of other contexts. Structure seems at times to indicate organization, as when
we say that a painting’s composition achieved through the structure of the el-
is

ements of visual FORM. Structure can also indicate some general force or law
that limits and organizes a large number of cultural phenomena. As the term
structure implies, this law or force is often understood to lie, figuratively, be-
neath the surface appearances or beyond the abilities of humans to perceive. Ex-
amples include the general notions of the subconscious and the UNCONSCIOUS,
as well as the idea of a historical spirit. Any theoretical position that implies
such a “depth model” can be loosely termed STRUCTURALIST. (See also
SEMIOTICS, DECONSTRUCTION, and POSTSTRUCTURALISM.)
 Glossary
129

STUDIO ERA The period (roughly from 1925 to 1955, but especially the
1930s and 1940s) when most American NARRATIVE films were
produced under
the auspices of the big studios, such as MGM, Paramount, and Twentieth Cen-
tury Fox. (See also FILM THEORY.)

STUDIUM AND PUNCTUM Roland BARTHES claims that our fascina-

tion with photographs stems from two distinct qualities of the photographic im-
age. Studium and Punctum. Studium is that which is CODED in the
photograph.
It is that very wide field of unconcerned DESIRE,
various interest, and inconse-
quential taste, exemplified by phrases like “I like it” and “I don’t
like it.”
Studium mobilizes a “half DESIRE,” the vague, irresponsible interest one takes
in people, entertainment, books, and clothes. Punctum is an element
of surprise,
the aspect of the photograph that “pricks” the observer, getting his or her
atten-
tion. Punctum also produces a lingering impression, evoking a “subtle
beyond”
and causing us to speculate about the SUBJECT beyond the photograph.

SUBALTERN The word “subaltern” is often used as a label for individuals

who have been marginalized (see MARGINALITY. and RADICAL ALTERITY).

SUBJECT/SUBJECTIVITY Recent use of the term “subject” refers to the

individual’s sense of self. With the questioning of the concept of AUTONOMY
and of the liberal humanist conception of individuality in recent cultural
THEORY, the term “subject,” which designates one possessed of subjectivity, has
come to replace “individual” and the accompanying term “individuality.”
THEORY regarding the subject and subjectivity has arisen out of the ideas of
ALTHUSSER and the WORK of other French philosophers, including Jacques
LACAN, Michel FOUCAULT, and Jacques DERRIDA. Many of their concerns
found their basis in Marxist THEORY and in existential philosophy as practiced
by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Within this theoretical CONTEXT
the subject is the product of INTERPELLATION, which is described by Marxist
philosopher Louis ALTHUSSER as a process that operates through ideological
mechanisms produced by the state (see INTERPELLATION). Using a
BASE/SUPERSTRUCTURE model of Marxism, ALTHUSSER discussed the role of
IDEOLOGY in the formation of individual subjects. He described the functioning
of REPRESSIVE STATE APPARATUSES (police, the military, penal systems, and
so on) and IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES (the family, religion, the educa-
tional system, and so on) as mechanisms that work together to produce
SUBJECTS who act in harmony with society.
Also important to the development of THEORIES of subjectivity have been
LACAN’S psychoanalytically based THEORY, which takes the infant’s establish-
ment of a sense of self through recognition of its own mirror image as one of
the central events of human development; and FOUCAULT’S conception of the
individual as both subject to and subject of DISCURSIVE REGIMES of POWER.
Particularly relevant to subject formation are FOUCAULT’S archaeological and
genealogical methods, his conception of POWER as produced by SUBJECTS
through self-SURVEILLANCE, and the role of the BODY as locus of POWER in
such processes. DERRIDA’S critique of REPRESENTATION and his idea of
 130 Artwords

DIFFERENCE have also proved crucial to the development of such THEORIES (see
DIFFERENCE).
A number of recent feminist have made the processes of subject for-
theorists
mation the focus of their WORK. Philosophers Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz
have concerned themselves with the production of GENDERED subjectivity. In
“Contemporary Theories of Power and Subjectivity,” Australian philosopher
Elizabeth Grosz argues that, if feminist theorists are to be effective in the strate-
gies they develop and deploy, they need an understanding of how subjects are
produced. This will necessarily involve an examination of how POWER operates
in contemporary CULTURE because, if feminists are to use constructions of
POWER against themselves and against each other, if they are to develop new
THEORIES and methodologies regarding the operations of POWER, they must
first understand how constructions of POWER are formulated and how they func-

tion to produce subjects. Feminist artists who have produced WORK that exam-
ines those processes of REPRESENTATION that go into the formation of subjec-
tivity include Barbara Kruger, Jana Sterbak, and Cindy Sherman.

SUBTEXT Based on the implicit spatial model in PSYCHOANALYTIC

THEORIES of the relationships of the conscious and the subconscious, a subtext
refers to the story or stories that may be implied in a TEXT in addition to the os-
tensible one.

SUPPLEMENT One of Jacques DERRIDA’S main

concerns is the habitual
rhetorical operation in Western philosophy of opposing terms in an argument.
According to DERRIDA, the terms are positioned in such a way as to suggest
that the first term of the pair is ontologically prior to and philosophically pre-
ferred to the second term, which acts as a supplement to the first. He finds ex-
amples of this in important texts in European philosophy, such as the Socratic
dialogues, where Socrates opposes speech and writing as part of his argument on
his preference for speech over writing. To DERRIDA, the outcome of Socrates’
argument is determined in advance by the opposition of speech and writing.
Speech finds support in the argument, while writing is clearly not preferred, and
in fact is seen as a mere supplement to speech. Other conceptual pairs of signifi-
cance throughout European CULTURE include male/female, CULTURE/nature,
good/evil, light/dark, and rational/irrational. In the visual arts, examples are fig-
ure/ground, positive space/negative space, linear/painterly, color/design, and, of
course, FORM/CONTENT.

SURVEILLANCE See DISCIPLINE.

SUTURE In his explanation ofhuman development, which relies on the piv-

otal concept of the MIRROR STAGE, Jacques LACAN uses the
idea of suture, the
stitching up of the sides of a wound, to describe the meeting of the IMAGINARY
and the SYMBOLIC. (See MIRROR STAGE, IMAGINARY, and SYMBOLIC.)

SYMBOL In the SEMIOLOGY/SEMIOTICS of Charles Pierce, a symbol is a

SIGN that demands neither resemblance to its object nor an existential bond with
it, ARBITRARY, UNMOTIVATED, and operates by CONVENTION. In its
but is

more common, literary usage, SYMBOL refers to a figurative device or TROPE,

 Glossary
131

an image that means something more or something

else, than its literal mean-
ing, usually referring to something immaterial
such as an idea or conception.

SYMBOLIC French psychoanalyst Jacques LACAN (1901-1981)

revised
Freud through SEMIOTIC THEORY by centering his THEORIES
of the SUBJECT
and PSYCHOANALYSIS on language. Since an analyst works
with a patient’s
statements and repeated (ENCODED) behaviors, SIGNS are
really all that is avail-
able to him/her. As a child develops the ability to use language (SIGNS),
the
child becomes socialized. In his rewriting” of Freud, LACAN introduced
several
important concepts into PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE, which are useful to
those interested in the processes of socialization, especially GENDER formation.
One such concept is the Symbolic. The Symbolic is a linguistic stage of devel-
opment. It includes social order and law, symbolically embodied by the
father,
and is characterized by a mediated experience of the world and development
of an
IDENTITY of the self that is separate from the mother.
The development of the
UNCONSCIOUS occurs during this stage, due to the repression of the sense of
loss of the mother.
Mary Kelly is a contemporary artist who has used LACANIAN THEORY in her
WORK. Most notable is her use of LACAN’S concepts of the IMAGINARY, the
REAL, the Symbolic, and the MIRROR STAGE Post-Partum Document, an
in
installation that deals with the birth and early childhood of her son and her rela-
tionship to him.

SYNCHRONIC See DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC.

SYNTAGMATIC AND PARADIGMATIC According to Ferdinand de

Saussure’s SEMIOTIC THEORY, the relationships of SIGNS can be described us-
ing these two terms. A
paradigmatic relationship describes the relationships of
SIGNS that can replace one another in a sentence. For example, in the sentence
“The girl kicked the ball,” “girl” could be replaced with “boy,” and “ball” could
be replaced with “cat,” with a significant change in the meaning of the sentence.
A syntagmatic relationships describes the relationship of SIGNS in sequence and
in combination. These relationships are sometimes understood in more visual
terms as vertical (paradigmatic) and horizontal (syntagmatic). These relationships
are handy in understanding film and video in SEMIOTIC terms, that is, as a series
of image-SIGNS that have relationships to one another in a series and that can be
substituted for one another to obtain different meanings.
TABLEAU SPACE (from the French tableau, meaning picture, painting,
scene). Historically tableau space refers to the conception of cinematic space
prevalent in the so-called primitive period, before the invention of editing caused
the image to be broken down into a series of shots varying in distance, height,
and angle. Closest and perception of space in theater, thus
to the construction
usually a static long shot, this type of image contains everything that is relevant
to the NARRATIVE, that is, a rather complex MISE-EN-SCENE.

TELEOLOGY Teleology is a variant of the older idea of a design or purpose,

also called a telos, in nature. Any THEORY that sees history as progressing to-
ward a particular point or goal as a matter of necessity is called a teleology. In
the history and criticism of art, a particularly good example of teleology can be
found Clement Greenberg’s understanding of art history, which he presents as
in
gradually progressing toward “pure” modernist painting. The development and
eventual dominance of abstract painting, then, is not simply a choice or prefer-
ence of artists, but is seen by Greenberg and others as a matter of historical ne-
cessity.

TELOS See TELEOLOGY.

TEXT Traditionally, the term “text” refers to written material. However,

largely as a result of the writing of literary theorist Roland BARTHES, the term
has taken on new CONNOTATIONS with the application of SEMIOTICS to all
manner of cultural production. The application of the word “text” to a WORK of
visual art does not mean that the WORK of art is being
“reduced to” a text, or is
being seen as a text in any literal fashion. It simply means that the art object,
—
once seen as a WORK a term that stresses the materiality of the object and the
—
hand of the artist is now often seen as an organization of signifying material in
the SEMIOTIC sense.

TEXTUALIST Having the character of a TEXT.

134 Artwords

THEATRICALITY term has been associated almost

In the visual arts, this
exclusively with the writing of Michael Fried. In his “Art and Objecthood,” pub-
lished in Artforum in 1967, theatricality enters the DISCOURSE on contemporary
art, along with OBJECTHOOD and PRESENTNESS. Fried used these terms to de-

scribe problems he saw with minimal art. Minimal art is theatrical, that is, it re-
quires a “stage PRESENCE,” more aggressively establishing its “public character”
as art. This theatricality is produced by the size of the WORK relative to the
viewer, or its scale. Large-scale WORK distances the viewer, creating a space in
which it is not clear whether the artwork remains the CENTER of attention. As
many such as Hal Foster, later pointed out, theatricality also allows the
critics,
relationships of art to INSTITUTIONS to be seen —
literally and figuratively
more readily, thereby threatening notions of the AUTONOMY and SELF-SUF-
FICIENCY of art.
Fried also understood theatricality as a threat to the concept of artistic excel-
lence. Excellence, in fact the very concept of art, is meaningful only within the
individual arts. What
between the arts is theatre, and art degenerates as it ap-
lies

proaches the condition of theatre. Using minimal art as an example, monochro-

matic paintings constructed with very thick stretcher frames verge upon being
seen as sculpture. Similarly, modular sculptural forms mounted on walls can be
mistaken for paintings. The success of modernist art depends on its ability to de-
feat theatre.

THEORY In recent DISCOURSE on the visual arts, the term has come to des-
ignate any number of critical positions that may or may not be “theoretical” in a
narrow sense. These positions include concepts from one or more disciplines
such as GENDER THEORY, FILM THEORY, LITERARY THEORY, DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS, POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE, CULTURAL STUDIES. BAKHTINIAN
DIALOGICS, REVISIONIST ART HISTORY/NEW HISTORICISM, MARXIST
LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM, and PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY and
CRITICISM.

TOTALIZING DISCOURSE A totalizing discourse is one that attempts

to occupy the total ground of the argument, thereby eliminating the possibility
of any opposition from those it excludes.

TRACE Jacques DERRIDA has used writing in general as an example of trace,

although, strictly speaking, trace does not exist. As part of his critique of the
preference in Western thinking for PRESENCE over ABSENCE, DERRIDA intro-
duces “trace” as a way to argue that what seems to be PRESENCE is actually de-
pendent upon ABSENCE. Extending Saussure’s THEORIES on SIGNS, DERRIDA
argues that no SIGN is fully present, since it is dependent upon the ABSENCE of
that to which Although the SIGN, as exemplified by a brushstroke, is
it refers.
present, that PRESENCE is complicated by the fact that the SIGN is a only a trace
of that which is absent, the artist.

TRANSCENDENTAL SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED/SUBJECT The

term “transcendental” indicates something that it is thought to lie beyond
REPRESENTATION. Two prominent examples of transcendental SUBJECTS are
 Glossary
135

God and The term “transcendental” has developed another CONNOTATION,

nature.
stemming from Jacques DERRIDA’S critique of STRUCTURALIST
SEMIOTICS.
To DERRIDA, SEMIOTIC THEORY depends upon the notion of the
CENTER to
stabilize any possible arbitrariness of the meaning
of REPRESENTATIONS. This
implies that the CENTER itself is not a mere REPRESENTATION,
but transcends
REPRESENTATION. However, as DERRIDA points out in his explanation of
DECONSTRUCTION, problem, since “CENTER,” for
this is a all practical pur-
poses, is itself first and foremost a REPRESENTATION.

TRANSGRESSION Transgression involves surpassing the limits of oppo-

sitional thought. A transgressive strategy constitutes an attempt to
denaturalize, that is, to reveal the contingent foundations of what is culturally
regarded as necessary and natural. An artist employing a transgressive
strategy
regards the art WORK
as a TEXT that exists at the intersection of various
DISCOURSES. Much recent visual art has taken as its task an analysis of those
discursive STRUCTURES that have traditionally made up the culturally privileged
category of fine art. These discursive STRUCTURES include traditional CON-
VENTIONS for REPRESENTATION of the nude, particularly the female nude. Such
CONVENTIONS in Western art, like many other cultural CONVENTIONS, tend to
reproduce a male/female polarity, constructing the viewer as active and male and
the SUBJECT as passive and female. A transgressive act fails to align itself
along
this male/femaie, ACTIVE/PASSIVE, positive/negative axis. An example
can be
found in the WORK of contemporary photographer John Coplans, who portrays
his aging BODY in various characteristically “feminine” poses in his exper-
male
iments with CONVENTIONS of REPRESENTATION of the female nude. For
Coplans, the photographic REPRESENTATION of the BODY functions as a TEXT.
The language he transgresses is the visual language'constituted by the CONVEN-
TIONS developed in Western art for REPRESENTATION of the BODY. Coplans de-
naturalizes these CONVENTIONS produce a naturalized female
that serve to
SUBJECT, a female SUBJECT that is necessarily and naturally “feminine.”
Cultural theorists Peter Stallybrass and Allon White assert in The Politics and
Poetics of Transgression that cultural IDENTITY is determined by limits:
[cultural identity] is always a boundary phenomenon and its order is always
constructed around the FIGURES of its territorial edge” (Stallybrass and White,
p.
200). They draw on the THEORIES of French philosopher Michel FOUCAULT,
who describes a transgressive act as “an action which involves the limit, that
narrow zone of a line where it displays the flash of its passage, but perhaps also
its entire trajectory, even its origin; it is likely that transgression has its entire

space in the line it crosses” (FOUCAULT, “A

Preface to Transgression,” pp. 33-
34). However, FOUCAULT says further that transgression does not partake of the
Hegelian dialectic, that is, it does not involve the opposition of one thing to an-
other. According to FOUCAULT, in a transgressive act “what is in question is the
limit rather than identity of a culture” (FOUCAULT, “Preface to Transgression,”
p. 33).
Stallybrass and White define a transgressive act as one that undoes the hierar-
chical and stratifying cultural DISCOURSES constructed by those in POWER as
mechanisms of dominance and that function through the BODY as SITE of in-
scription. They say further that this “hierarchy of sites of discourse” must be
challenged and control of such sites assumed if any cultural transformation is to
136 Artwords

occur. Such contestation, they point out, usually comes from classes and groups
in subordinate or marginal positions. In their argument, which is formed in
terms of the THEORIES of Russian linguist and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin
regarding CARNIVAL, the camivalesque (displayed in its many cultural forms, in-
cluding Mardi Gras, medieval folk festivals, and numerous communal rituals of
Western CULTURE) constitutes the SEMIOTIC realm of inquiry. The
“GROTESQUE BODY’’ as displayed in CARNIVAL constitutes the SITE of
DISCOURSE. Bringing the “low” (represented by the GROTESQUE BODY) high
constitutes an act of transgression within the CONTEXT of CARNIVAL. Such a
structural inversion, which subverts the HIERARCHY that establishes cultural or-
der, effects an act of resistance.

TRANSGRESSIVE STRATEGY See TRANSGRESSION.

TRANSPARENT/OPAQUE When a REPRESENTATION is constructed in

such a way that it draws little or no attention to itself as a REPRESENTATION, it
is said to be “transparent.” This especially useful in mimetic REPRESENTA-

TION, when one is trying to produce a convincing duplication of a SUBJECT.

When a REPRESENTATION is constructed in such a way that it draws so much at-
tention to itself as a REPRESENTATION that it no longer functions well as a
REPRESENTATION, it is These terms work through an im-
said to be “opaque.”
plicit reference to a pane of glass in a window. The glass is usually not notice-
able, unless it is constructed in such a way that it cannot be seen through.
Opaque use of REPRESENTATIONAL devices is a key technique of DEFAMIL-
IARIZATION.

TROPE A figure of speech in RHETORIC (e.g., METAPHOR, SYMBOL, synec-

doche, or ALLEGORY); a connotative twist of meaning that relies on a tradition,
a historical awareness of diction or, in painting and film, ICONOGRAPHY.

TRUTH, IN THE Michel FOUCAULT makes a distinction between “Truth”

and “being in the truth.” He does this to describe how INSTITUTIONS regulate
discursive production by testing all utterances against sets of criteria commonly
accepted in each DISCIPLINE. When a statement is acceptable to a DISCIPLINE, it

may be said to be true. In such an event, the statement gains great POWER. To
FOUCAULT, however, statements are not necessarily true; they are “in the truth,”
that is, they are acceptable to members of an INSTITUTION as valid statements,
and so they take on the POWER of truth. FOUCAULT does not deny there is
truth — at least not exactly —but affirms that truth is “of this world,” a product of
discursive DISCIPLINE.
UNCONSCIOUS The unconscious is a common subject of discussion when
viewing and interpreting visual art, since artistic expression is often seen as an
expression of the individual artist’s unconscious. Often at issue is the discrep-
ancy between what an artist asserts is his/her conscious intent and what is pro-
duced. The artist’s product may appear to the viewer to contradict the meaning
the artist ascribes to the WORK. In a PSYCHOANALYTIC view, this discrepancy
results from the fact that the unconscious is not under the artist’s control; as a
consequence, he/she may produce works that express unconscious feelings,
drives, wishes, and so on.
For Freud, the unconscious is that part of the human psyche that is repressed,
and does not reach the conscious level, but is instead expressed in dreams,
FANTASY, FETISHES, art, and other SYMBOLIC forms. Building on Freud’s
ideas, French psychoanalyst Jacques LACAN developed his idea of the uncon-
scious on a linguistic model. LACAN defined the unconscious as “that part of the
concrete discourse, in so far as it is trans-individual, that is not at the disposal of
the subject in re-establishing the continuity of his conscious discourse” (Lacan,
Ecrits, p. 49). LACAN also used Claude Levi-Strauss’s ideas regarding the un-
conscious as operating through a SYMBOLIC function and acting as a matrix
through which CODED messages operate.
In The Political Unconscious Fredric Jameson applies the Freudian conception
of the unconscious to an analysis of CULTURE as a system of SIGNS and as a
system that exhibits the same features of the unconscious as the individual
SUBJECT, such as censorship and repression. Jameson’s work has influenced a
number of artists who have been seen to express facets of POSTMODERN
POPULAR CULTURE, such as Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, and Jenny Holzer.

UNFOLDING A term used by many theorists to indicate the qualities of a

TEXT that allow one to access, enter, or “unpack it” in a figurative sense.

USEFUL BODY See DISCIPLINE.

'
I
 V

VAGINAL ICONOGRAPHY See CENTRAL VOID AESTHETIC.

VISION/VISUALITY and THEORY of visual REP-

In recent criticism
RESENTATION a distinction has been made between vision and visuality. While
vision suggests sight as a physiological operation and visuality suggests
a social
operation, the two are not opposed as Nature and CULTURE. Vision is also his-
torical, and visuality also involves the BODY. The use of these terms,
however,
seeks to distinguish between the mechanism of sight and the data of vision on
the one hand, and the historical and discursive determinations of vision on the
other. Writing primarily about MODERNISM,
philosopher Martin Jay developed
the concept of the “scopic regime” in his 1988 “Scopic Regimes of Modernity.”
Each scopic regime seeks to eliminate the differences between vision and visual-
ity in order to place all socially produced visualities into one HIERARCHY
of
natural sight. The ultimate purpose of this rhetorical activity in the European
tradition has been
produce powerful and persuasive REPRESENTATIONS
to
REPRESENTATIONS based upon “the REAL.” Jay points out many different
scopic regimes, with “Cartesian” perspectivalism being a particularly prominent
example. He speculates on the relationship of scopic regimes and IDEOLOGY,
suggesting that the “perspectivalist regime” may be complicitous with the bour-
geois IDEOLOGY of the isolated and self-sufficient SUBJECT, a SUBJECT that
fails to recognize both its INTERSUBJECTIVITY and
embeddedness in the his-
its
torical world of SIGNIFICATION. Based primarily on Michel FOUCAULT’S idea
of a DISCURSIVE REGIME, a “scopic regime” describes certain regularities of the
arrangement of materials within otherwise quite different forms of visual
REPRESENTATION. Just as an analysis of various DISCOURSES may reveal simi-
larities through the common uses of FIGURES
of speech, and so be part of the
same EPISTEME, so the repetition of certain visual CONVENTIONS may be used
to link visual REPRESENTATIONS to the same EPISTEME.

VOICE The how and under what circumstances those positioned as

issue of
OTHER by a DOMINANT CULTURE may be allowed a “voice” has become a cen-
140 Artwords

tral concern of recent FEMINIST, MULTICULTURAL, and POSTCOLONIAL theo-

rists. The concern is whether individuals who are members of oppressed groups

are allowed to voice their opinions and communicate their needs to those in
POWER. Also at issue is whether it is possible to rewrite the history of such
who have been effectively
groups, written out of history as formulated by the
DOMINANT CULTURE. In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Chakravorty Spi-
vak questions whether it is even possible for a SUBALTERN voice that is not an
ESSENTIALIST FICTION to develop. Spivak’s conclusion is that, since “the colo-
nized subaltern subject is any unified voice repre-
irretrievably heterogeneous,”
sentative of the SUBALTERN may prove impossible (p. 26). Related to Spi-
vak’s idea is the thorny question of whether the very value placed on voice is not
ultimately a PHALLOGOCENTRIC value conferred by EUROCENTRIC CULTURE.

VOYEURISM PSYCHOANALYTIC parlance, the voyeur

In is one who derives
PLEASURE from looking. The PLEASURE derives from satisfaction of the
SCOPOPHILIC drive which objectifies the one being watched (see SCOPOPHILIA,
and FEMINIST FILM THEORY). In FEMINIST FILM THEORY, voyeurism is seen as a
particularly masculine form of PLEASURE, because it enables dominance. The
viewer’s GAZE, which is constructed as male in the classic Hollywood cinema,
allows the spectator the distance necessary to an empowering sense of control
over the female who is being viewed. Christian Metz describes how the voyeur
must maintain distance between himself and what he views, since a gap is nec-
essary for the generation of DESIRE: “If it is true of all desire that it depends on
the infinite pursuit of itsabsent object, voyeuristic desire, along with certain
forms of sadism, is the only DESIRE whose principle of distance symbolically and
spatially evokes this fundamental rent” (Metz, “The Imaginary Signifier,” p. 61).
Metz asserts that such “meta-DESiRE” is characteristic not only of film, but of
other visual arts such as painting.
w
WORK See TEXT.

WRITERLY See READERLY and WRITERLY TEXTS.

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 INDEX

abjection, 1-2, 19, 50, 84, 106 deconstruction, 5-6, 20, 27-30, 35,
Adorno, Theodor, 8, 24, 57-58 38-39, 47-49, 51, 56, 58, 66, 73,
Althusser, Louis, 3, 5-6, 48, 60, 73, 77, 102-103, 105, 116-17, 122,
96, 105, 129 128, 135
Deleuze, Gilles, 14-15, 27, 30, 91,
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 11, 14, 17-19, 100, 117, 119
21-22, 31-32, 61-63, 83, 134, Derrida, Jacques, 3, 5, 14-15, 20,
136 27-30, 32-33, 38, 56, 61, 66, 78,
bassesse, 11-12, 72
89, 99-100, 103-105, 111, 116-
Bataille, Georges, 11-12, 62, 71-72 17, 121, 129-30, 134-35
Baudrillard, Jean, 12, 67, 84, 123, discourse analysis, 8, 34, 56, 60, 84,
126 104, 134
Beauvoir, Simone de, 95, 129 Doane, Mary Ann, 3-4, 43
Bell, Clive, 4-5, 56
Bhabha, Homhi K., 24, 67, 94, 102 feminism, 3-5, 13-14, 19-20, 25-
Birmingham School, 13, 26 26, 31-33, 37, 39, 41-55, 59-66,
Bourdieu, Pierre, 20-21, 82 70-71, 77-78, 81-83, 89, 93, 95,
Bryson, Norman, 116 97-99, 101-103, 106, 109, 115,
Butler, Judith, 2, 14, 42-44, 59, 65- 119-21, 123-27, 130, 140
66, 97-99, 101, 109, 126, 130 film theory, 3, 14, 41-45, 51-52, 55,

57, 59, 69, 77-78, 81-82, 86, 93,

Cixous, Helene, 14, 37, 59, 77, 95 106, 121, 126-27, 129, 134, 140
Creed, Barbara, 1-2, 14, Foster, Hal, 6, 29, 39-40, 90, 94,
cultural studies, 13, 19, 25-26, 32, 116-117, 134
59, 75, 78, 84, 90, 105 Foucault, Michel, 7-8, 13-14, 25,
33-34, 38, 52, 56, 58, 60, 66, 72,
Daly, Mary, 44, 63 78, 89, 91, 104-105, 113-15,
de Lauretis, Teresa, 43, 52 117, 129, 135-36, 139
Frankfurt School, 24-25, 57-58
152 Index

Freud, Sigmund, 14, 22, 41, 43, 52- Metz, Christian, 140
54, 70, 77, 83, 85-86, 96, 105- Millet, Kate, 124

106, 115, 119, 125-26, 131, 137 modernism, 3, 5-8, 13-14, 24, 29-
Fusco, Coco, 88 30, 33, 39, 49, 51, 56, 72, 81, 85-
87, 90-91, 93, 95, 97-98, 103,
gender, 2, 5, 19, 22, 26, 33, 35, 41- 105, 114, 133-34, 139
45, 48-49, 57, 59-61, 65-66, 69- Modleski, Tania, 103
71, 78, 82, 85, 97-99, 103-104, Moxey, Keith, 116, 120
109, 115, 121, 123-25, 127, 130- multiculturalism, 7, 31, 35, 49, 67, 81,
31, 134 83, 87-88, 95-96, 115, 139-40
Gouma-Peterson, Thalia, 46-50 Mulvey, Laura, 3-4, 14, 23, 42-44, 51-
Greenberg, Clement, 3, 8, 24, 29, 56, 54, 59, 81, 94, 106, 119, 120-21,
58, 105, 133 126-27
Greer, Germaine, 47, 124
Grosz, Elizabeth, 14, 130 Nead, Lynda, 22-23, 128
Guattari, Felix, 14-15, 27, 30, 63, Nochlin, Linda, 49, 95
91, 100, 117, 119
Guerrilla Girls, 50-51, 121 Owens, Craig, 5

Hall, Stuart, 13, 35, 90 Parker, Rozsika, 47

hooks, bell, 87 Pierce, Charles Sanders, 69, 71, 1 22—
23, 130
informe, 11-12, 71-72 Pollock, Griselda, 45, 47, 49, 82, 116
Irigaray, Luce, 14, 37, 59, 77, 95 postcolonial theory, 31, 49, 67, 71,

81, 94, 96, 102-103, 111, 116,

Jameson, Fredric, 137 134, 140
Jay, Martin, 139 postmodernism, 5-7, 29, 54, 95, 98,
100, 103-104, 117, 137
Krauss, Rosalind, 12, 72, 94-95, 97 poststructuralism, 3, 25-30, 33, 35-
Kristeva, Julia, 1, 14, 84 36, 39, 47, 50-51, 56, 58, 66, 73,

84, 91, 95, 102-104, 111, 113,

Lacan, Jacques, 1, 6, 14, 31, 44, 48, 116, 121, 123, 128
59, 66, 70-71, 73, 77-78, 85-86, psychoanalysis, 1, 4, 6, 14, 22, 39,
95, 99, 106, 112, 120-21, 126, 44-45, 47, 49-52, 66, 70, 73, 77-
129, 130-31, 137 78, 83-85, 93-95, 99, 105-106,
Linker, Kate, 51-52, 106 115, 120-21, 124-27, 129-31, 134,
Lippard, Lucy, 20, 46-47, 55, 88 137, 140
literary theory, 29, 37, 48, 78, 81,

97, 134 Revisionist Art History, 34, 49, 71,

103, 115-116, 134
Marxist theory, 6, 11, 13, 20, 26, Rich, Adrienne, 63, 65
31, 44, 45, 47-49, 57, 65, 70, 73, Riviere, Joan, 43
78, 82, 84, 90, 105, 115-16, 121, Russo, Mary, 14, 18-19, 62
124, 129, 134
Matthews, Patricia, 46-50 Said, Edward, 24, 94-95
 Index

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 20, 31-32, 61,

77-78, 120, 122-23, 131, 134

Schapiro, Meyer, 72, 82

semiotics, 6-7, 1 1, 13, 20, 23-27, 30-

31,33,35,37, 47, 54,61,67, 69-71,
73, 77-78, 84-85, 88, 104, 1 1 1-13,
116, 120-23, 126, 128, 130-31, 133,
135-36
Showalter, Elaine, 48, 63
Silverman, Kaja, 3, 41, 43, 59, 121,
127
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 24, 102,

111, 140

Stallybrass, Peter, 17-19, 21, 135-36

Suleiman, Susan Rubin, 83

Tagg, John, 56-57

Tickner, Lisa, 48
Trinh T. Minh-ha, 87-88, 103
Tucker, Marcia, 19

Wallace, Michele, 87
White, Allon, 17-19, 21, 135-36
Williams, Linda, 52, 99, 101
Williams, Raymond, 26
Wittig, Monique, 14, 37, 59, 65
Women's Action Coalition (WAC), 50-51
About the Authors

THOMAS PATIN is a historian and critic specializing in contemporary art. He has

taught numerous courses in contemporary art history, theory,
and criticism, as well
as nineteenth- and twentieth-century art history.
He has published extensively as
an art critic and historian on topics ranging from architecture
to Native American
art to the teaching of semiotics in undergraduate art history courses.
He is cur-
rently Assistant Professor of the History, Theory, and
Criticism of Art and Visual
Culture at Ohio University.

JENNIFER McLERRAN is an art historian and critic specializing in

contempo-
rary art and aging studies. She is a contributor to Modernism and Beyond: Women
Artists of the Pacific Northwest 1993), co-author with
( Patrick McKee of Old Age
in Myth and Symbol: A Cultural Dictionary
(Greenwood, 1991), and author of
numerous published articles on visual art.
 ISBN 0-31 3-29272-8
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