Women's Performance Art: Feminism and Postmodernism

Abstract

Limiting one's critical focus to a particular group of performance artists or their performances has always seemed inappropriate, since that project would appear to perpetrate the very act of defining and categorizing that anything called performance art actively resists. Nevertheless, the overtly political nature of much women's performance art since the 1960s has invited just such a critical distinction, treating feminist performance as a recognizable sub-genre within the field. Through the lens of postmodern feminist theory, women's performance art (whether overtly so or not) appears as inherently political. All women's performances are derived from the relationship of women to the dominant system of representation, situating them within a feminist critique. Their disruption of the dominant system constitutes a subversive and radical strategy of intervention vis a vis patriarchal culture. The implications of this strategy may be understood through readings of feminist theory-especially in relation to performance during the 1970s. Whether or not such considerations must change for the 1980s is taken up at the end of the essay.