The Explicit Body in Performance

The Explicit Body in Performance interrogates the avant-garde precedents and theoretical terrain that combined to produce feminist performance art. Among the many artists discussed are: * Carolle Schneemann * Annie Sprinkle * Karen Finley * Robbie McCauley * Ana Mendieta * Ann Magnuson * Sandra Bernhard * Spiderwoman Rebecca Schneider tackles topics ranging across the 'post-porn modernist movement', New Right censorship, commodity fetishism, perspectival vision, and primitivism. Employing diverse critical theories from Benjamin to Lacan to postcolonial and queer theory, Schneider analyses artistic and pop cultural depictions of the explicit body in late commodity capitalism. The Explicit Body in Performance is complemented by extensive photographic illustrations and artistic productions of postmodern feminist practitioners. The book is a fascinating exploration of how these artists have wrestled with the representational structures of desire.

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.

Introduction; Chapter 1 Binary terror and the body made explicit; Chapter 2 Logic of the twister, eye of the storm; Chapter 3 Permission to see; Chapter 4 The secret's eye; Chapter 5 After us the savage goddess; Chapter 6 Seeing the big show; Epilog;