Unmarked: The Politics of Performance - Softcover

Phelan, Peggy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415068223 ISBN 13: 9780415068222

Publisher: Routledge, 1993

Synopsis

Unmarked is a controversial analysis of the fraught relation between political and representational visibility in contemporary culture. Written from and for the Left, Unmarked rethinks the claims of visibility politics through a feminist psychoanalytic examination of specific performance texts - including photography, painting, film, theatre and anti-abortion demonstrations.

About this title

Review:

"Phelan's explorations are grounded in . . . trenchant readings of specific artworks and events."
-Alisa Solomon "The Women's Review of Books

Synopsis:

Feminist film theory has made the psychic and political limitations of representational visibility abundantly clear. Yet the Left continues to promote visibility politics as a crucial aspect of progressive struggle. Unmarked examines the fraught relation between political and representational visibility and invisibility within both mainstream and avant-garde art. Suggesting that there may be some political power in an active disappearance from the visual field, Phelan looks carefully at examples of such absences in photography, film, theatre, the iconography of anti-abortion demonstrations, and performance art. A boldly specultative analysis of contemporary culture, Unmarked is a controversial study of the politics of performance. Situating performance theory within emerging theories of psychoanalysis, feminism, and cultural studies, Phelan argues that the non-reproductive power of performance offers a different way of thinking about cultural production and reproduction more generally.

Written from and for the Left, Phelan's readings of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Mira Schor, Yvonne Rainer, Jennie Livingstone, Tom Stoppard, Angelika Festa and Operation Rescue radically rethink the politics of cultural representation.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0415068223
• ISBN 13: 9780415068222
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220