Hysterical Together: Feminist Activist Performance Arts Practices
- Submitting institution
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University of Greenwich
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- MCO-UOA32-CM1
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- A multi-component output
- Open access status
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- Month
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- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- I explore ways of subverting the usual representation of the hysteric through my practice- based research, firstly by challenging the clinical (male) gaze in relation to Charcot’s photographic documentation of ‘hysterical’ women at the Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital, Paris (Huberman 2004). One can say that when knowingly witnessed, the hysteric produces hysterical acts; I take-up this method in my performance practice. Secondly, I explore hysteria in relation to the history of spiritual practices and traditions beyond a Eurocentric perspective. In many ways the tradition of the hysteric epitomises the notion of the incomprehensibility of ‘women’ the world over, the systemic patriarchal positioning that perpetuates the mythologisation of feminised expression as being ‘too much/too emotional’ (Irigaray 1985). I counter this through my arts practice by exploring alternative histories of women in outsider economies, communities and life practices. A central question that leads the practice-research is: how can the usual representation of the hysteric be subverted, empowered and reappropriated as a positive feminised form of communication that might afford a different access to feminist performance arts practices? My research question is guided by explorations of performative ways to acknowledge and understand hysterical acts as meaning-making (that are usually determined as incomprehensible/ungraspable by patriarchal models of intelligibility). I experiment with gesture, voice and sound rather than leaning on the domineering lexica of the visual, and argue that these hysterical performative acts are understandable acts in a sensible feminised register (Merleau-Ponty 1968). The performance artworks represented in this submission have been developed in response to political crises, psychic crises, artistic and spiritual crises, in the clinical and therapeutic environments, and in a culture of research and arts community-making. My performance arts practice progresses the championing of feminine subjectiv-ities’ hysterical behaviour to shape new feminised alliances towards a practice of renegotiating and cultivating sisterhoods (Irigaray 2008).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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