Vulva Moulding. Contact Image as a Feminist Practice Producing Knowledge

Abstract

Vulva moulding is a militant and ordinary practice representative of the genital turn of feminism. It lies at the crossroads between genitals invisibilisation in patriarchy and moulding marginalisation in art history. The article shows that vulva moulding, as a contact image, produces knowledge. Its process goes beyond inherited binaries such as inside/outside and passive/active that were misogynistically associated to feminine/masculine. After describing the anti-patriarchal purposes of militant, artistic and ordinary practices of vulva moulding, the article links them to Irigaray’s and Laqueur’s accounts on gender constructed binaries, and to the etymology of vulva and vagina. In a last part, Didi-Huberman’s analysis of Duchamp’s Feuille de vigne femelle is stripped of its misogynist tendency. Vulva moulding goes beyond the mere reversibility of the convex and the concave. It relies rather on the advent of difference though contact. By adhering in order to produce the same, vulva moulding shows the infinite diversity of genitals shapes. By taking into account militant and ordinary practices, whether public and private, the article adds vulva moulding to the agenda of visual studies and to the comprehension of contact images as producing knowledge.