Safety in Objects
Discourses of Violence and Value-The Rokeby Venus and Rhythm 0
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5339650 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kristen Renzi (Michigan State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 120-145 |
| Publication date | 2013-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | SubStance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0049-2426 • E-ISSN: 1527-2095 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/sub.2013.0007 |
| OpenAlex | W1967286078 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 9 |
Safety in Objects:Discourses of Violence and Value—The Rokeby Venus and Rhythm 0 Kristen Renzi (bio) Is it better for women to be valued as subjects or as objects in the eyes of society? Most feminist critics would answer almost automatically with the former, as much feminist philosophy and criticism has worked to free women from a condemnation to "object" status and win for them a "subject" status equal to that of men. In light of historical, oppressive, gender-biased treatment of both women and representations of women in art and literature, feminist theorists and critics have used the term "subject" to designate an agent or self who is licensed to full participation and rights within society, including the right to observe and use "objects"; in doing so, they have pointed out the means by which legal, social, and linguistic systems have constructed this "subject" as male.1 In contrast, the term "object" within feminist criticism often signifies an individual whose agency, social participation and rights, and even "selfhood" is not licensed or guaranteed; this "object," which society recognizes as "female," is, moreover, seen not as a full self with both mind and body but rather as reducible to her body alone. Even as modernist criticism has given way to postmodern considerations of multiple, fractured, and unstable subjects and selves, feminist theorists have continued to draw attention to the systematic inequalities between men and women that still make distinctions between subjects and objects useful when speaking about the material, social, and physical discrimination women face.2 Thus, by posing its opening question, this piece may at first seem to query one of the key assumptions that has governed feminist theory in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I hope, however, to show how such a question— and giving the latter, "object," as its answer—does not contradict feminist aims but rather highlights the ways in which these aims have not yet been reached. To do so, I will show how one particular tradition of feminist criticism, feminist art criticism, has distinguished between subjects and objects along gendered lines, and I will investigate and trouble the faith that this tradition has placed in performance art to rectify subject/object inequalities [End Page 120] for female subjects. I will then turn to two feminist "performances"— Mary Richardson's 1914 protest slashing of the Rokeby Venus and Marina Abramović's 1974 performance piece Rhythm 0—which I argue do not rectify women's relegation to objecthood but rather emphasize the precarious power of women's objecthood. My argument largely counters the critical treatment of these pieces, treatments that have tended to obscure this negative power of objectification in favor of more romantic accounts of not only women's ability to be seen as subjects but also the positive impact their subject status has had on female safety in the face of violence. The temporal diversity of these performances is not incidental, but instead is crucial to my argument that this negative counter to a feminist theoretic, which urges us to see women as subjects for their increased safety, continues to haunt feminist texts throughout the twentieth century in ways that feminist politics and critics have often ignored.3 The treatment of such diverse sources alongside one another may initially jar the reader; however, treating the two together seems especially pertinent given that, despite a gap of over half a century (particularly a century in which women have made large strides in terms of securing political and social rights), we have not yet managed to fully exorcize the "object" from the woman. As feminist politics have attempted to create better and better realities for individuals and citizens of all genders, Richardson's and Abramović's texts seem audaciously, even blasphemously, to reject these attempts. This essay's re-reading of Richardson's and Abramović's performances meditates on these texts' significant rejections of the notion that women's tenuous "subjecthood" is what women need more of, and it does so not to question these texts' feminism but instead to reincorporate their excluded position into feminist notions of the subject and self. By gaining access to these performances through visual and textual traces of
Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy) · Art · Criticism · Epistemology · Feminism · Linguistics · Literature · Object (grammar) · Pornography · Postmodernism · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Value (mathematics) · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |