“Wangechi Mutu: The Grotesque Female Body, Despised and Desired” Abject Assemblages: Grotesque Women, Rednecks, and the Undead (Panel), National Women's Studies Association Conference, Milwaukee, WI. – November 2015
Abstract: Panel: Abject Assemblages: Grotesque Women, Rednecks, and the Undead (Panel), National Women's Studies Association 2013 Conference, Milwaukee, WI. – November 2015 "Wangechi Mutu: The Grotesque Female Body, Despised and Desired" Wangechi Mutu’s ambiguous representations of grotesque female bodies produce uncertainty as well as visceral reactions such as offense, horror, or outrage. Such strong, visceral responses become opportunities to examine why representations of grotesque bodies affect one so deeply, leading to the examination of cultural assumptions and master narratives implicated in the figuration. I assert that spaces in between overt meanings and covert assumptions of her figural collages are where the visceral responses emerge and intertwine with conscious interpretations; such experiences can provide an opportunity to examine larger systematic privileges and injustices prevalent in our local, national, and global worlds. Panel: "Abject Assemblages: Grotesque Women, Rednecks, and the Undead" Writing of the “Seductiveness of Horror” in Romero’s Dead trilogy, Steven Shaviro argues that horror achieves an overwhelming affective ambivalence by displacing, exceeding, and intensifying the conventional mechanisms of spectatorial identification, inflecting them in the direction of a dangerous, tactile, mimetic participation. Perception itself becomes infected, and is transformed into a kind of magical, contagious contact (95) In this panel, we explore the precarious relationship of this “affective ambivalence” to social justice, asking what potentialities and what dangers lie in our “dangerous, tactile, mimetic” participations? What might be gained or lost in our various abject “machinic assemblages” where “organic and machinic technologies. . .interface to the points of mutual dissolution” (Puar 175)? Drawing together diverse texts across genres and forms, we utilize a “method of disjunctive alignment” (Ngai 8) to expand theoretical consideration of the borders of the human and the savage, the civilized and the grotesque. Attuned to the ambivalence inherent in monstrous and grotesque forms that can destabilize institutions as well as reify their categories, we focus especially on the ways in which these representations define, challenge and exclude particular kinds of bodies from the category of agential subject. From the disruptive racialized bodies in Wangechi Mutu’s art to the lurching anti-oppressive potential in Romero’s zombies to the gothic horrors of so-called redneck bigotry, the panelists consider what how and why such “magical, contagious” zones of contact have such power, and where their limits lie. Works Cited Harpham, Geoffery Galt. On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature. Aurora, CO: Davies Group Publishers, 2006. Print. Newitz, Annalee. “White Savagery and Humiliation, or A New Racial Consciousness in the Media.” White Trash: Race and Class in America. Eds. Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz. New York: Routledge, 1997. 131-154. Print. Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Print. Oguibe, Olu. "Art, Identity, Boundaries: Postmodernism and Contemporary African Art." Reading the Contemporary. Ed. Okwui Enwezor and Olu Oguibe. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999. 16-29. Print. Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007. Print. Next Wave: New Directions in Women’s Studies. Russo, Mary J. The female grotesque: risk, excess, and modernity. London: Routledge, 1994. Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. Print. Theory Out of Bounds.
Abstract: Panel: Abject Assemblages: Grotesque Women, Rednecks, and the Undead (Panel), National Women's Studies Association 2013 Conference, Milwaukee, WI. – November 2015 "Wangechi Mutu: The Grotesque Female Body, Despised and Desired" Wangechi Mutu’s ambiguous representations of grotesque female bodies produce uncertainty as well as visceral reactions such as offense, horror, or outrage. Such strong, visceral responses become opportunities to examine why representations of grotesque bodies affect one so deeply, leading to the examination of cultural assumptions and master narratives implicated in the figuration. I assert that spaces in between overt meanings and covert assumptions of her figural collages are where the visceral responses emerge and intertwine with conscious interpretations; such experiences can provide an opportunity to examine larger systematic privileges and injustices prevalent in our local, national, and global worlds. Panel: "Abject Assemblages: Grotesque Women, Rednecks, and the Undead" Writing of the “Seductiveness of Horror” in Romero’s Dead trilogy, Steven Shaviro argues that horror achieves an overwhelming affective ambivalence by displacing, exceeding, and intensifying the conventional mechanisms of spectatorial identification, inflecting them in the direction of a dangerous, tactile, mimetic participation. Perception itself becomes infected, and is transformed into a kind of magical, contagious contact (95) In this panel, we explore the precarious relationship of this “affective ambivalence” to social justice, asking what potentialities and what dangers lie in our “dangerous, tactile, mimetic” participations? What might be gained or lost in our various abject “machinic assemblages” where “organic and machinic technologies. . .interface to the points of mutual dissolution” (Puar 175)? Drawing together diverse texts across genres and forms, we utilize a “method of disjunctive alignment” (Ngai 8) to expand theoretical consideration of the borders of the human and the savage, the civilized and the grotesque. Attuned to the ambivalence inherent in monstrous and grotesque forms that can destabilize institutions as well as reify their categories, we focus especially on the ways in which these representations define, challenge and exclude particular kinds of bodies from the category of agential subject. From the disruptive racialized bodies in Wangechi Mutu’s art to the lurching anti-oppressive potential in Romero’s zombies to the gothic horrors of so-called redneck bigotry, the panelists consider what how and why such “magical, contagious” zones of contact have such power, and where their limits lie. Works Cited Harpham, Geoffery Galt. On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature. Aurora, CO: Davies Group Publishers, 2006. Print. Newitz, Annalee. “White Savagery and Humiliation, or A New Racial Consciousness in the Media.” White Trash: Race and Class in America. Eds. Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz. New York: Routledge, 1997. 131-154. Print. Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Print. Oguibe, Olu. "Art, Identity, Boundaries: Postmodernism and Contemporary African Art." Reading the Contemporary. Ed. Okwui Enwezor and Olu Oguibe. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999. 16-29. Print. Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007. Print. Next Wave: New Directions in Women’s Studies. Russo, Mary J. The female grotesque: risk, excess, and modernity. London: Routledge, 1994. Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. Print. Theory Out of Bounds.