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Radical Intimacy in Contemporary Art: Abjection, Revolt, Objecthood

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Radical Intimacy in Contemporary Art: Abjection, Revolt, Objecthood Maine State Library Digital Maine Academic Research and Dissertations Maine State Library Special Collections 2019 Radical Intimacy in Contemporary Art: Abjection, Revolt, Objecthood Keren Moscovitch Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalmaine.com/academic RADICAL INTIMACY IN CONTEMPORARY ART: ABJECTION, REVOLT, OBJECTHOOD Keren Moscovitch Submitted to the faculty of The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy August, 2019 ii Accepted by the faculty of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. COMMITTEE MEMBERS Committee Chair: Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, PhD Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature and Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, University at Buffalo; Senior Research Fellow, Philosophy, Western Sydney University Committee Member: Silvia MaZZini, PhD Teaching Fellow (Aesthetics, Continental Philosophy) at the University of Groningen (NL), Faculty of Philosophy Committee Member: George Smith, PhD Founder and President; Edgar E. Coons, Jr. Professor of New Philosophy, Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts iii © 2019 Keren Moscovitch ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iv it is not only the biological but being itself that is heard in the intimate. —Julia Kristeva To my grandfather אסלב לש יל אל v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee, particularly my dissertation director and mentor, Dr. Ewa Plonowska Ziarek for her commitment to this project and her generosity of spirit. Thank you as well to Dr. George Smith for leading the way and for so many great talks. Much gratitude to Dr. Silvia MaZZini for joining me on this journey. I would like to thank my professors Dr. Howard Caygill, Dr. Sylvere Lotringer, Dr. Simonetta Moro and Dr. Christopher Yates; and writing fellows Dr. Connie Bogaard, Dr. Michael Smith and Dr. Louise Carrie Wales for their guidance, patience and vision. A special nod of love and gratitude to VG5! Angelalynn Padua, Gabriel Reed, Jennifer Rissler, Jeffrey Siemers, without whose friendship, support and camaraderie I would not have made it. Much appreciation to Ofri Cnaani, Dr. Curlee Holton, and Dr. Tom Huhn for looking into the future and believing in me. My time at IDSVA was deeply supported by the School of Visual Arts Division of Continuing Education staff: Sarah Grass, Nika LopeZ, Georgette Maniatis, Stephanie McGovern, William Patterson, Isabel Reinhold, Eric Sutphin, and especially Joseph Cipri, for making it all possible. Thank you to my buddy Tanya Summers. And to TirtZah Bassel, my hevrutah partner. Love to Allison White, Christina Berkeley, Maxine Krenzel, Milos Zahradka Maiorana and Miriam Elhajli for keeping the home front alive and well. Deep love and gratitude to Tina Fruchter and John Kelsey, dear friends and creative partners who have been behind the scenes all along. To Dr. Marcus Coelen for listening. To Dr. Marianna Olinger, who inspires and supports me daily, as an artist, scholar and friend. To my amaZing family: My beautiful and brilliant Mom to whom I owe the greatest gratitude, my loving and supportive brother Ben, Rob, Mirelle, Jacky, the kids, and everyone in Israel. To my grandparents Ilana and Mordechai whose strength and courage brought us all here, and who both passed away while witnessing me fulfill this dream. This dissertation is dedicated to my Saba, who always reminded me that the most important thing in life is to expand your mind. In loving memory of my father, whose title I do not inherit lightly. To Tom, my love, for everything. Gratitude to my students, who taught me more than they’ll ever know. Finally, special thanks to the artists without whose bravery, creativity and interiority this project would have never been. vi ABSTRACT Keren Moscovitch RADICAL INTIMACY IN CONTEMPORARY ART: ABJECTION, REVOLT, OBJECT-HOOD This dissertation argues that intimacy has the capacity to operate as a radical disruption of ideological constructs, and therefore possesses political agency. Furthermore, contemporary art that employs radical intimacy may be deployed as ideological-political activism. Grounded in the psychoanalytic-poststructuralist theories of Julia Kristeva, particularly her research on abjection, intimacy and revolt, the project examines intimacy as an ambivalence of subjectivity and borders, inside and outside. The project explores the practices of several contemporary artists, namely: Leigh Ledare, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Ellen Jong, Joseph Maida and Lorraine O’Grady. Beginning with Freud’s erotic and unconscious-oriented discourse, and continuing into Lacan’s split subjectivity and desire, the theoretical arc follows Kristeva’s poetics into a discourse of ambivalence between subject and object. Engaging Althusser’s theories on interpellation of subjectivity and ideology, I situate radical intimacy in contemporary art practice as a rejection of oppressive ideological constructs, particularly, subjectivity itself. Kristeva’s notion of revolt as a return to the individual’s singular truth supports a philosophy of intimacy grounded in speech and the perpetual questioning of identity, and a radical reconsideration of subjectivity. The project concludes with an introduction to object-oriented feminism, a new school of feminist praxis, grounded in the limits of subjectivity, and the radical ontology of vii objecthood. This final step situates radical intimacy in contemporary art within the political arena of activist practices, demonstrating the ways that abjection, revolt and the dissolution of categories catalyzed by intimate practice, effect an ontological shift from subjectivity to object- hood. Thus, radical intimacy disrupts the modern hegemony of subjectivity, suggesting a new language for the contemporary philosophical era that equaliZes the ontological status of humans and non-human entities, inviting new modes of ecological thinking. Keywords: Intimacy, Radical Art, Contemporary Art, Sexuality, Ideology viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 0.1 Intimacy in Revolt ................................................................................................................. 1 0.2 From Subject to Object ......................................................................................................... 5 0.3 Intimacy .............................................................................................................................. 16 0.4 Ideology .............................................................................................................................. 23 0.5 Radicality ............................................................................................................................ 26 0.6 Arc ....................................................................................................................................... 32 0.7 Moving forward .................................................................................................................. 35 1. Ideology .................................................................................................................................... 37 1.1 Imagining Intimacy ............................................................................................................. 37 1.2 Leigh Ledare: Intimacy Constitutes Subjectivity ............................................................... 38 1.3 The Primal Scene ................................................................................................................ 47 1.4 Sacrifice: Sophocles and the Oedipal Cycle ....................................................................... 56 1.5 Rupture: Situated Intimacies and Ethics ............................................................................. 66 1.6 The Destitute Subject .......................................................................................................... 80 2. Abjection .................................................................................................................................. 83 2.1 Leigh Ledare: Intimacy on the Other Side .......................................................................... 83 2.2 Pretend You’re Actually Alive ........................................................................................... 85 2.3 Intimacy and Instability—Ledare’s Poetics of Abjection ................................................. 119 2.4 The Phantasmatic Mother: Breaking the Subject .............................................................. 124 2.5 Transference/Countertransference: Poetic Rifts in Discourse .......................................... 139 2.6 Recoding Modernity ......................................................................................................... 145 3. Sensibility ............................................................................................................................... 147 3.1 Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Radical Sensibility ................................................................. 147 3.2 Coum Transmissions / Cease to Exist ..............................................................................
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