Conclusion

Abstract

The conclusion foregrounds the claim that the artists whose artwork is the focus of Addressing the other woman – Adrian Piper, Nancy Spero, and Mary Kelly – deployed texts and images of writing to create an address that calls to viewers and asks them to participate in the project of deconstructing the sign woman. The conclusion also underscores that this artwork not only attests to the attention women artists paid to visual and textual appearance language in the late 1960s and 1970s, but also suggests feminism’s wide and rich historical impact. The writings of Angela Davis, Valerie Solanas, and Laura Mulvey help to highlight this impact, as they provide detailed historical frames for seeing the artwork’s interventions. Pointing to the work of psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell and feminism’s struggles against the longevity of patriarchy, this last chapter argues that the artists’ and writers’ shared attention to language underscores the possibility and difficulty of reconfiguring the sign woman in the linguistic structure of the patriarchal unconscious..