This thesis examines, from a feminist perspective, conceptions of the body proposed by poststructuralist philosophy and postmodernist art practice. Within both feminist and postmodern critiques of the humanist subject, the body has come to be understood as a site of cultural inscriptions. In tracing the relationship between postmodernism and feminism, the thesis addresses specifically the shift from celebratory, affirmative female imagery typical of feminist art in the seventies, to the semiotic analysis of images of women which, in the eighties, problematized the question of sexual difference as one of representation. During the eighties women artists generally eschewed figurative representations of the female body in recognition of its over-determined socio-sexual status. Within this historical framework, the tension between the "de-materialized" body of postmodernity and the insistently present body of gendered experience is explored both in the work of feminist theorists and contemporary women artists. In conclusion, three corporeal sites--the cultural, the epistemological and the psycho-sexual--are analysed in the postmodern practices of Jana Sterbak, Nell Tenhaaf and Kati Campbell.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.69635 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Bradley, Jessica |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Graduate Communications Program.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001388903, proquestno: AAIMM91710, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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