I Want a Dyke for President: Sounding out Zoe Leonard’s manifesto for art history’s feminist futures
- Submitting institution
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Glasgow School of Art
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 4592
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Feminism and Art History Now: Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice
- Publisher
- I. B. Tauris
- ISBN
- 9781784533250
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2017
- 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
- This book chapter is part of the collection edited by Victoria Horne and Lara Perry, Feminism and art history now: radical critiques of theory and practice (I.B. Tauris 2017). The book itself is the outcome of a sustained enquiry through ongoing yearly seminars (Writing Feminist Art Histories) and addresses the ‘unfinished revolution in art historiography’; re-engaging with key feminist art writings from around 1970 by evaluating and contesting feminism’s own histories, while recognising developments in global politics, artworld institutions, and local cultures that continue to reshape this field of criticism.
Laura Guy’s chapter examines a sequence of presentations and re-enactments of the artist Zoe Leonard’s 1992 manifesto ‘I want a dyke for President,’ for example as a live address to a feminist gathering in London on the eve of the 2015 General Election; one of many similar protests and iterations worldwide that have re-purposed Leonard’s statement in a performative way. These case studies are presented to illustrate the notion that multiple temporal registers — described by Guy as ‘the time of the manifesto’— function as a political and experiential state of mind that energises past, present and future simultaneously, prompting action.
In the context of the book, this chapter demonstrates how historiography, via the vehicle of the manifesto, can address the political intersection of art history and queer-and-feminist politics. Leonard’s manifesto is exemplary in this context, insofar as it makes an ‘impossible demand’ – both to be included in the structures of power while simultaneously undermining its own claim. Guy’s research is based on close textual analysis and archival research, mapping out ephemeral and alternative print cultures that depend on active, mobile readers and proceeding onwards to build a network of critique and analysis though similar social circuits.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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