From stone to cloud

Mary Kelly’s Love Songs and feminist intergenerationality

Bibliographic Data

ID4914807
AuthorsSusan Richmond (0000-0001-5378-3828, Georgia State University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume11
Issue1
Pages57-78
Publication date2010-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700109355214
OpenAlexW2113881947
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited25

This article analyses Mary Kelly's Love Songs, 2005-07, which was exhibited in 2007 at Documenta 12. The series of artworks addresses the political and ideological legacies of early Anglo-US feminism through the perspectives of two generations of women. Drawing on oral and photographic archives, as well as historical re-enactments, Kelly indicates how her work does not simply record a feminist legacy but, rather, keenly intervenes in the process. I propose that this intervention is an ethical one. Drawing on Luce Irigaray's writings on the maternal gift, I demonstrate how Kelly's project may be understood to enact an ethical relationality that I find is fundamental for thinking about the vexing issue of feminist intergenerationality. I conclude that while Love Songs maps no specific course of action, nor indicates exactly why or how a current generation of feminists should proceed, it nonetheless generates a space in which to imagine the radical futurity of the maternal gift

Aesthetics · Art · Feminism · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology

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