A Feminist Genealogy of Posthuman Aesthetics in the Visual Arts

Abstract

This article reconstructs a feminist genealogy of the posthuman in the arts with specific focus on visual works conceived by female artists after the rise of what has been retrospectively defined as first-wave feminism. Even before the theoretical framework for cyborgs had been conceived and the term “posthuman” popularized, posthuman esthetics featured techno-mythologies, versions of cyborgs and rhizomatic bodily performativity. From its beginnings in the main avant-garde movements of the first half of the twentieth century (Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism) this genealogy analyses the second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s and its integral exploration of the body highlighted by performance art. The next stage was the third-wave feminism of the 1990s and its radical re-elaboration of the self: from Cyberfeminism and its revisitation of technology to the artistic insights offered, on the one hand, by critical techno-orientalist readings of potential futures, and on the other, by the political and social articulations of Afrofuturism and Chicanafuturism. Lastly, this genealogy covers the ways contemporary female artists are dealing with gender, social media, and the notion of embodiment, and it touches upon elements that will become crucial in fourth-wave feminism. This article is published as part of a collection dedicated to multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives on gender studies.