An Aesthetic Disposition: Art, Social Reproduction, and Feminist Critique by Shannan Lee Hayes Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Michael Hardt, Advisor ___________________________ Kathi Weeks ___________________________ Mark Hansen ___________________________ Pricilla Wald Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2020 i v iv ABSTRACT An Aesthetic Disposition: Art, Social Reproduction, and Feminist Critique by Shannan Lee Hayes Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Michael Hardt, Advisor ___________________________ Kathi Weeks ___________________________ Mark Hansen ___________________________ Pricilla Wald An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2020 Copyright by Shannan Lee Hayes 2020 Abstract This project focuses on the question: how might we understand the politics of contemporary art? Grounding my research in feminist political theory, I argue that art’s most critical function—in the US-based context of neoliberalism—may be found in art’s ability to perform the work of social reproduction. I draw the concept of social reproduction from feminist and critical theory to mean two things. First, regarding social reproduction as a paradigm for social change, I ask how works of art participate in building subjects and structures that prefigure alternative, life sustaining worlds. Second, regarding social reproduction as the labor of care, I develop a theory of art as a source of critical hope and sensible rejuvenation. My work thus complicates the common belief—held for example in critical theory—that sensible stimulation obscures critical awareness and encourages apolitical escape. To the contrary, I find art to offer needed resources for critical world- building precisely through the aesthetic dispositions that artworks prompt. I build this argument through close attention to the work of three US-based women artists: Simone Leigh, Roni Horn, and Mika Rottenberg. By foregrounding the work of these artists in conversation with recent feminist thinking on affect and political economy, my research reorients the discourse on aesthetics and politics away from an emphasis on knowledge and subject representation, toward the undervalued work of somatic care and subject formation. iv Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my dear friend, Kelly Rae. v Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................................... viii Introduction.................................................................................................................................................... 1 Social Reproduction: Three Connected Definitions ........................................................................... 4 Social Reproduction and Feminist Theory ........................................................................................... 6 Affective Labor ..................................................................................................................................... 15 Social Reproduction and Art ............................................................................................................... 19 An Aesthetic Disposition ..................................................................................................................... 22 Chapters ................................................................................................................................................. 24 Affective Mapping ....................................................................................................................................... 27 Representations of the Real ................................................................................................................. 28 Women’s Work ..................................................................................................................................... 33 - NoNoseKnows - ................................................................................................................... 43 - Cosmic Generator - .............................................................................................................. 48 - Affect - ................................................................................................................................. 56 The Crisis in Care ................................................................................................................................. 61 - Neoliberalism’s Dual Logic of Gendered Labor - .................................................................. 68 Returning to Rottenberg’s Work ......................................................................................................... 81 - ASMR - ................................................................................................................................. 85 - Spaghetti Blockchain -........................................................................................................... 89 Realism in the Balance .......................................................................................................................... 94 vi This Work Was Needed ............................................................................................................................ 101 “1990: L.A., ‘The Gold Field’” .......................................................................................................... 102 - Contraction, Dilation - ........................................................................................................ 108 Horn’s Art ........................................................................................................................................... 113 - Material Presence - .............................................................................................................. 118 - The Paradox of Androgyny - ............................................................................................... 123 - Doubling/Twinning - ......................................................................................................... 126 - Water Doubles - .................................................................................................................. 127 The Historical Sensorium................................................................................................................... 136 - Phantasmagoric Technoaesthetics - ..................................................................................... 138 - Neoliberal Contraction: Mania and Depression -................................................................. 147 The “New Aesthetics” of Dilation .................................................................................................... 161 Wanting More ............................................................................................................................................. 170 Feminist Art ........................................................................................................................................ 171 The Waiting Room ............................................................................................................................. 177 Institutional Intersectionality ............................................................................................................. 192 Utopian Desire .................................................................................................................................... 206 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 212 Bibliography................................................................................................................................................ 217 vii Acknowledgements I joked with my friend and grad colleague, Carolyn Laubender, that I would dedicate this dissertation to the now-over one hundred thousand dollars of student loans that it has taken me to put myself through school from when I started undergraduate studies in 2001. Some part of me had the strong desire to render visible and put on public record the cost of being a not-independently-wealthy student of higher education within our current social structure. But I reconsidered. It is an ongoing practice of subject-formation to refuse the tempting, individualizing affects of resentment and indebtedness. I frame these acknowledgements instead as an expression of deep appreciation for the joy, growth, endurance, and power that has been enabled by the many new, short-term, and lasting relationships that animate the pages of this dissertation. I would like to first thank Duke’s Graduate Program in Literature (GPL), the Gender, Feminist, and Sexuality Studies certificate program (GSFS), the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and the Thompson