The Personal is Linguistic: Personal Pronouns in the Art of Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca

Abstract

Personal pronouns occur repeatedly in the works of Italian artists Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca. Both artists were significantly shaped by visual poetry in the late 1960s, and continued their exploration of language in the visual arts throughout the 1970s. Notably, their engagement with personal pronouns centered the first-person singular “I.” As the key site of subject-constitution in language, this linguistic category is crucial to a great number of early feminist writings. In recourse to these writings, I argue that Bentivoglio and La Rocca negotiate the personal pronoun “I” as a predetermined linguistic category and make use of it to introduce alterity into the constitution of the gendered subject. They do so by engaging with public signs. Considering the works of these artists as cornerstones of a feminist critique of language in the visual arts, the article explores the critical potential of personal pronouns for this very critique.