The Explicit Body in Performance

Is it Performance Art or Pornography? The Explicity Body in Performance interrogates the avant-garde precedents and theoretical terrain that combined to produce feminist performance art. Among the many artists discussed are Carolee Scheemann Karen Finley Sandra Bernhard Annie Sprinkle Robbie McCauley Spiderwoman Rebecca Schneider tackles topics ranging across the ‘post-porn modernist movement’, New Right censorship, commodity fetishism, and primitivism. Employing diverse critical theories from Benjamin to Lacanian psychoanalysis Schneider analyses artistic depictions of the explicit body in late commodity capitalism. The Explicit Body in Performance is complemented by extensive photographic illustrations of the performative and artistic productions of postmodern feminist practitioners. The book is a fascinating explorations of how these artists have wrestled with the representational structures of desire.

Author Biography

Rebecca Schneider lectures at Yale University is Visiting Assistant Professor of Drama at Dartmouth College. She is a contributing editor to The Drama Review and has published essays in a range of performance anthologies.