Kirsty Shipley B.

A HONS: Acting BAAPPD5

Personal Professional Development five (PPD5) concerns an in-depth research study into a chosen field,

concentrating on feminist performance art because it grasps personal intentions for further academic

study. Theatrical performance revolves around a patriarchal hierarchy in which specific job roles tend to

be dominated by masculinity, they are more logical and linear which relates well to masculinity in society,

whereas performance art subverts this hierarchy providing room for irrationality and non-linearity. This

irrationality is more evident within females as it used to label them in society. Performance art stems from

the Dada movement and visual arts. Performance art, used as a term to describe live performances which

are neither theatre nor art but somewhere in-between, work which is both created and performed by the

artist. Performance art, a phenomenological movement which became popular in the late 1960’s as a

political rebellion against ‘commercialism, assimilation and triviality’ (Forte:1988:1) takes reality as a

subject for performance. Performance Art challenges traditional performance conventions as there is

generally no acting involved, the performer seeks to become a specific self, such as Orlan in

‘Reincarnation of Saint Orlan’ (beginning in 1990), who uses plastic surgery to become an idealized

“beautiful” self. Performances are realized in what Roselee Goldberg (2001) states as ‘alternative space’,

a challenging of traditional spatial conventions in which the body often forms the mise-en-scene. Again

using Orlan as an example, her performances are situated in operating theatres. Performance art provides

a suitable platform in which women can express themselves as Carlson (1996) highlights, performance

artists use

‘their own bodies, their own autographs, their own specific experiences in a culture or in
the world made performative by their consciousness of them and the process of displaying
them for audiences.’ (Carlson: Quoted in Huxley & Witts:1996:150)

By adhering to this form and content feminist artist’s such as Schneeman seek to ‘cut through the

idealized (mostly male) mythology of the “abstracted self.”’ (Schneeman:1991: quoted in Warr &

Jones:2000:89) Carlson (1996) highlights, performance art positions women as a speaking subject,

providing opportunity to form and express female distinction, in opposition to the objectified,

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representational identity forced by a patriarchal society. In this position women highlight personalized

circumstances within intimate situations, directly addressing the audience to form spectator/performer

relationships. The motivating thing about this field of research is the means that women use to destabilise

male representations – the explicit body – a symbol of desire from a masculine perspective. Using a post-

modern and post-structuralist approach with application of feminist theories such as Helene Cixous’s

‘writing the body’(1975), a feminist expression which links to performance art in which both encourage

to express the ‘real’ inner woman’s perspective within a phallogocentric society by implicating the female

explicit body, as a medium. In addition Judith Butler’s theories on gender difference which also seek to

destabilize the binary opposites within society to establish equality. This essay proposes arguments

concerning the expression of the female subject in performance art that uses the explicit body as a form of

language. Feminist performers such as Karen Finley, Orlan and Annie Sprinkle, by using these as a

medium could be further objectifying themselves to the male gaze. In accordance with Franclibine,

feminist performance art which uses the explicit body induces

‘reactivation of primitive autoerotic pleasures, for what most women expose in the field of
art...is just the opposite of a denial of woman as object in as much as the object of desire
is precisely the woman’s own body’ (Franclibine: quoted in Warr & Jones:2000:253)

She states that because the female explicit body is the object of desire from a masculine perspective, by

using it in performance to oppose patriarchal views they are in fact only further objectifying themselves.

Descartes observes the explicit body as ‘a necessary stripping away of presumptions and pre-suppositions

as one attempts to establish the foundations of being’ (Howell: 1999: 19) The naked body implies a

returning to nature which may also leave the performers female body in a vulnerable position, as an

object of the male gaze. The female naked body is stripped of any presumptions that society uses to label

it.

Females are defined by many philosophical discourses as passive, looking back through literary history

the males have always been at the centre with the females endearing their dominance. In accordance with
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Lacanian theory, males are placed in the dominant position, at the centre of the symbolic order, the

signifier of this power is the ‘phallus’ (penis or the representation of a penis), females ‘lack’ of ‘phallus’

places them as a object for the male to dominate. Phallus domination is evident within Vicki Halls

‘Ominous Operation’ (1971) in which the attachment of a representational phallus influences the

performers behavior, making them more superior. Feminist performance artists, display phallus

representations as not to be objectified by the audience but to be seen as equal. In ‘Vagina Painting

(1965)’ Shigeko Kubota paints a picture with a brush that is attached to her vaginal area, thus the vagina

becomes a source of language, the female is no longer ‘lacking’ as the paintbrush becomes a symbolic

representation of ‘phallus’. By displaying the phallus the female is no longer the fetishized phallus, she

becomes a threat to patriarchy, foregrounding herself as both the subject and the object. In Freud’s

psychoanalysis he states that females are a defect, the distinction between the male and female is defined

within the phallus phase (aged between four and six) when the boy begins to have sexual feelings towards

the mother and the female focuses her sexual attention towards her father (Oedipus complex). Freud’s

analysis rejects feminine sexuality as the female is classed as male with a lack of phallus. His analysis is

outdated, however still important, formed in the Victorian era when females were expected to obey their

husbands nurturing the children and home, a time when female expression was minimal. However

modern society is still dominated by the male ‘Nothing exists that has not been made by man- not

thought, not language, not words.’ (Leclerc: Quoted in Kourany, Sterba & Tong: 1992: 392). So where is

the room for female expression?

In feminist performance art, women seek to express the language of the female body in opposition to the

phallogocentric language common in society. Phallogocentric, a term derived by Helene Cixous (1975),

from the combination of Lacanian theory of ‘phallus’ and Derridian theory of logocentrism, is used to

describe the dominance of the phallus in language. Phallogocentrism is centered around binary opposites

in society, (male/female) the first term foregrounds the second as the spoken word foregrounds the written

in logocentric theory, therefore the foregrounding word is the masculine and the devalued term is the
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feminine. Cixous goes on to argue that within the phallogocentric society there is no opening for female

self expression of sexuality because everything is dominated by the ‘Phallus’.

‘Women do not have the cultural mechanisms of meaning to construct themselves as the
subject rather than the object of performance.’ (Case: Quoted in Goodman &
DeGay:2000:61)

This states that women are unable to portray themselves as a subject because society affords only room

for them as an object, to be dominated by all means. It is this phallogocentric society that Cixous seeks to

deconstruct by encouraging females to ‘write the body’, to express the inner qualities of a female and

destabilize the false representation forced by patriarchal society. Does performance art provide a perfect

platform for women to ‘write the body’ to highlight their own opinions? In performance art feminist write

from the unconscious to highlight the truth about women. Cixous identifies women’s own writing as

‘marking, scratching, scribbling, jotting down’ (Kourany, Sterba & Tong:1992:26) which are all non-

linear modes of expression. This form of performance art could be said to defy the phallogocentric

society, as women are speaking autobiographically from experience, expressing the inner woman, but the

spoken language is still always going to be phallogocentric because there is nothing else. In agreement

with Rachel Bowby who criticizes Cixous methods ’If language, the symbolic order, is as they claim,

phallogocentric, then female drives are by definition incapable of representation within it” (Bowby:

Quoted in Forte:1988:226) The linguistics that feminists verbalize within performance art are going to be

phallogocentric because feminists have not discovered a suitable means of expression. "All are struggling

to find a terminology that can rescue the feminine from its stereotypical associations with inferiority"

(Showalter 2000: http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=14023) Gerard Genette (1994) notes ‘the work

of performance ‘proper’ […] is the performance event minus the text’ he also compares his theories to

Roland Barthes ‘theatricality is theatre minus the text’ (quoted in Ince:2000:114) If women in

performance art were to perform physically, without the use of verbal language this would raise issues in

regards to silencing the woman. Judith Butler (1990) also seeks to destabilize the binary opposites within

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Lacanian theory ‘The phallogocentric mode of signifying the female sex perpetually reproduces

phantasms of its own self amplifying desire’ (Butler:1990: quoted in Schneider:1997:179) Therefore

representing females in accordance with binary opposites further places them as an object of desire

adhering to the dominance of the male. It is social circumstance and society that label gender identity,

from birth children are constantly segregated into binary opposites. Butler believes the binary opposite of

male/female is no longer needed within society as there is now so much in-between that society needs to

afford room for. She states that categorized gender belongs to discourse, which exists particularly within

psychoanalytical theories (Freud and Lacan) outside of this discourse there is no gender, it is but a

performative action which is neither ‘true nor false, neither real nor apparent’. She criticizes the way

feminists fight for distinction because they seek to express the differences, not just biologically, which in

turn only further separates the male from the female. Gender is constructed by society and females need

to speak of their ontology, their experiences as oppose to their ‘femaleness’ in order to deconstruct this

feminine representation. Gender in society should be left to the individual, providing opportunity to form

personalized gender despite biological difference and society representations, gender can be reinvented

not fixed therefore it does not determine identity. It is possible to form personalized identity in modern

society, as society opens up more to gender differences such as transsexual (pre-op and post-op). Feminist

theorists who encourage a mode of female expression all fail to define a suitable mode, perhaps because

there is no means of which women can ‘write the body’, there is no female language, therefore women in

performance art can only seek to highlight the flaws that exist within society in hope for change. It is the

body that can and is often used as a tool for female communication, therefore feminist performance art

seeks to expose, a non-linear language of the female body.

The naked body within performance art can be seen as a costume, a stripping of social representation to

present nature, it can also be seen as the object for the male desire. Lacan’s notion of desire notes that it is

‘the moment of revelation’ that prompts the male desire. Female bodies are often displayed as objects for

the male gaze. Males possess the power to look upon the represented female as an object of desire,
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examples of female objectification are prominent in magazines, advertisements, film and sexual

industries. Iragaray (Prammagiore:1992) poses that women are a sign, a collation of signifiers of which

male representation is based upon, particularly in the western culture. These signifiers are based on males

views of women and go together to form the represented female in society. Without this semiotic

reference towards women representation would not be evident because it is the semiotics of the woman

that form the representation. In ‘Sitting still’ (1970) Bonnie Sherk poses in elegant imagery within dress

which is juxtaposed by the surrounding garbage. Motionless and silent for hours she portrays an ideal

representation of femininity, and of what is expected from females in society. Females are represented as

‘others’ without the freedom to express their own opinions and desires. In a similar performance Faith

Wilding ‘Waiting’ (1971) focuses on how feminine life is about waiting for events or happenings to occur,

she highlights the female body as passive. Using a poem written by herself to illustrate a rhythm which is

repetitive therefore reflecting the female life she is illustrating. Teresa de Lauretis (1987) stated ‘Women

is un-representable except as representation.’ (Quoted in Schneider: 1997: 22) Therefore the only way to

portray a woman is to stick to society’s representation. It is difficult to define what makes a real woman,

however it is something that is interior as oppose to exterior, a real woman is not defined by make-up,

hair or clothing, but by how they are on the interior as oppose to the male. This interior is difficult to

express outside the realms of the woman as a virgin or whore which is how the patriarchal society paints

the female, both Wilding and Sherk’s performances express the patriarchal representation. So what modes

of expression are available for women outside of this representation?

Female striptease can be linked to performance art due to the unique, phenomenological,

spectator/audience relationship. Striptease also poses the male in the dominant position reproducing these

‘stereotypical aspects of our cultures sex roles through their intertwined rituals of performer nudity,

spectator gazing and patron tipping’ (Liepe-Levinson:1998:10) This type of performance art poses the

female as both subject of the performance and object to the male gaze, further highlighting the vulnerable

female body, they are semi-naked as oppose to the male who is dressed. This fantasy, in which males can
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buy their gaze but never take it further, rises political issues in terms of feminism, as the woman is seen as

a commodity, objectified by the paying male customers. In this form women are not expressing

themselves but expressing what the patriarchal society paints them to be, they are seen as whores, objects

of the male desire. However within this form both the spectator and the performer are consenting adults

who adhere to strict boundaries, the performance is strictly fantasy based and the male spectator is always

aware of this prohibition. In connection to this Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut piece’ (1964) highlights the

consequences of viewing without responsibility, the audience are invited to cut clothing from Ono’s body,

thus destroying the object. Yoko Ono’s piece provides a direct insight into how females are stripped bare

as objects in society and how vulnerable the female passive body is. She expresses the power spectators

have over performers. In an interview with Jessica Dawson (2007) Ono emphasizes the reason of the

public backlash as being because ‘society was not ready to take a woman as a real woman.’ In

disagreement with this statement, Ono is not representing a real woman she is representing a passive

female and highlighting how males can strip the passive object within society, this is not a form of female

expression but more a form of highlighting female oppression. Kiera O’Reilly’s performances beginning

in 1998 are also similar however they go a step further than Ono’s inviting singular spectators into a space

with an encouraging calm atmosphere she invites them to cut her skin highlighting similar issues.

Explicit bodies in feminist performance art sit on the threshold between art and pornography. Annie

Sprinkle, prostitute, stripper and porn star who has gained a Ph. D in human sexuality uses performance

art to express female sexuality and pleasure. Sprinkles performances use pornographic imagery to display

her personal sexual persona. However are Sprinkles performances truly feminist or are they just further

enhancing pleasure for males? Elinor Fuchs (1989) states that when Sprinkle, performing at Franklin

Furnace’s ‘Deep inside porn stars’(1984), invites spectators onto the stage to inspect her genitals ‘only

males volunteer’. Sprinkles show, governed by a male (Richard Schechner) and observed by a mostly

male audience, for the pleasure of males places Sprinkle as an object for desire, a fetishized female

however Sprinkle does use the opportunity to highlight sexual education on the feminist part. Unlike
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other performance art discussed in this essay Sprinkle uses a Brechtian alienation technique which

provides opportunity for the spectator to reflect his/her position. Schechner highlights that this technique

‘distances the action from its own sexual possibilities – making it antiporn or a send-up of porn.’ (Quoted

in Dworkin: 1992) Sprinkle’s performance can not be classed as pornographic, highlighting the female

position in sex, prompts women to consider their sexuality. In her performance ‘Public Cervix

Announcement’ (1990) Sprinkle again invites the spectator to view her cervix, she makes reference to the

way the patriarchal society represents the female genitilia and seeks to demonstrate the true female

genitillia, her intentions are to make spectators aware as oppose to becoming an object of fetishization.

This performance can be linked to Orlan’s ‘Head of Medusa’ (1978), in which she displays her sexual

organs through a magnifying glass whilst menstruating, using a Freudian text which highlights the female

as a Medusa ‘At the sight of the vulva even the devil runs away’. She is going against this analysis

proving that the display is not as frightening as anticipated. Medusa being the woman with the many

snakes (penis’s) in her hair who turns males to stone. This piece aims to destabilise phallogocentric

attitudes, by giving the male an insight into the female body, in order to prove that the ‘medusa’ in

Freudian terms should not mean a fear of castration. Males are only aware of the exterior of the female

form (the naked body), what is actually inside the female vagina is a taboo subject. In an interview (1990)

Sprinkle expresses ‘Sex magazines don’t give the whole picture, the whole woman. They don’t tell about

the person.’ She also states

‘I'm not really interested in being erotic. I'm not trying to turn these people on at all. I
worked for years turning people on. Now, I'm not interested in that, artistically. That's the
goal of porno movies, the goal of stripping, the goal of writing stories for sex magazines.
Now, I'm more interested in looking at sex in all the other ways it can be looked at.’

Following this performance Sprinkle presented a ritualized masturbation in which she was in full control

of her sexual pleasure, whilst the audience observed. Again it was the alienation technique that denied

intimacy with Sprinkle. The phenomenological setting also makes it difficult for males to express their

true sexual feelings towards the performance. This is a mode of female expression but it is males who
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take the most interest in the sexual nature of the performance. Another performance that uses similar

alienation and masturbation techniques is Elke Krystufek’s ‘Satisfaction’ (1996) in which she lies naked

in a bath, and pleasures herself in front of an audience, the audience is placed at a distance from the

performer, there is again no room for the spectators to fetishize the naked female body. The performances

provide an insight into the ‘real’ female. This exploration of the female body is what Cixous highlights as

the most disruptive ‘Women are not permitted or even conceived of as having or owning their own desire’

(Forte:1988:225) so by displaying this sexual desire Sprinkle and Krystufek are using a form of ‘writing

the body’ which poses a threat to patriarchy as the male is no longer needed for sexual pleasure. By

constructing her own sexuality she is reclaiming her body and asserting her own desire.

Analysing an article concerning Karen Finley’s ’The constant state of desire’ (Pramaggiore:1992) which

highlights the control men have over female representation within society. Finley works with performance

art in order to underline violence towards women linking this to Iriagaray’s strategy which states that

women should project themselves as ‘magnified proportions’ of the image that males represent them as.

‘Through her acceptance of what is in any case as ineluctable mimicry, Irigaray doubles it
back on itself, thus raising the parasitism to the second power…miming the miming
imposed on women, Irigaray’s subtle specular move (her mimicry mirrors that of all
women) intends to undo the eddects of heliocentric discourse simply by overdoing them
(Moi: Quoted in Kourany, Serba & Tong:1992:27)

Therefore by mimicking the male representations females seek to destabilise the phallogocentric

domination by foregrounding it. Hannah Wilkes in her piece ‘Through the large glass’ (1976), performed

a strip tease out of a male suit, in a robotic, emotionless fashion through a glass behind Marcel

Duchamp’s ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors’(1934). Throughout this performance Wilkes

sought to highlight the portrayal, objectification and representation of women in society. Bodies are

displayed by means of self expression to oppose the oppressive male society. Finley, by using her body is

highlighting the physical differences between men and women but furthermore expressing that the

patriarchal ideal does not exist. The ideal subject (in order for it to be objectified for the male gaze) would

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be a representation of the female which is emphasized in the media. Finley represents what females really

are, instead of what the patriarchal society paints them to be. Like many of the other performances within

this essay her style is appealing for political debate because the objectified female becomes the object

which is absent within feminist discourses, such as Butler and Cixous Theories, a physical being which

can express what discourse has been highlighting, therefore providing feminist theorists with an object for

discussion. She, like Cixous and Butler, seeks to oppose Freudian analysis, believing that representation

exists because of this branch of psychoanalysis and it is this discourse which oppresses women. Finley

identifies her performance is intended to shock males by showing them how they use their power to

dominate society and objectify females. By constantly reinstating the spectators position whilst also

instigating the spectators to show sexual gratification, she makes it difficult for her to be seen as an object

for the male desire.

‘I think this destroys pornography for many men. Usually you look at porn and jerk off.
Here there’s a disgust and many straight men don’t want to associate their sexual fantasies
with something disgusting. (Finley: 1986: Quoted in Pramaggiore: 1992)

Males desire a “media” woman and Finley poses everything against that image.

‘Rather than offering her body as a sadistically unaccessable commodity and idea for…
spectators to consume in a masochistic exchange, Finley offers herself as already
consumed. (Dolan: quoted in Schneider:1997:104)

Finley’s female body has already been subjected, therefore abolishing room for desire. However audience

members can perceive this performance differently depending on their sexual preferences, some males

could be aroused by this form of grotesque imagery. Finley has been criticized for some of these

performances, had public backlash including verbal abuse, as people believe the performance degrades

females. However Finley states that women are degraded in this society anyway, they constantly live in

fear of male dominance, she wants the audience to empathize with this to stress female feelings within the

patriarchal society and to do so uses her body as a medium. Schechner states in an interview with Finley

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‘What you are presenting is a woman who is a subject expressing sexual violence and
humor that women are still supposed to be objects of, or ignorant of, or excluded from.
You don’t just show it, you talk about it - the shock is in the words you use more than the
gestures.’ (Schechner: 1988: Quoted in Pramaggiore: 1992)

What Schechner highlights is that the linguistics in Finley’s performance are more shocking than using

her body. She uses language that signifies authority, therefore linguistically, phallogocentric language.

Finley also worked as a stripper before she became a feminist performance artist, a position in which

males can buy their gaze however as a performance artist this is what she is going against, she doesn’t

afford opportunity for males to “gaze at her”. I would agree that Finley’s performances are an attempt to

‘write the body’ because she tries to present the language from the body ‘uses body with text and body as

text’ (prammagiore:1992:283) and according to the article succeeds in speaking as a female body which is

not objectified by the male gaze due to the unique language.

In conclusion feminist performance art which uses the female explicit body is a projection of female

perspective which seeks to destabalize the semiotic sign system in which women are represented in

collation with signifiers. It is the physical presence, the phenomenological setting and the reality of the

performance that often seek to threaten the male hierarchy. Often these displays are in line with male

representation in order to highlight women’s passive status. The female mode of expression poses the

female body as a woman’s own without the extra baggage of representation that society adds; it goes

against the male way and poses a female way which is based on the real woman. Due to the

phenomenological setting, performance art affords little room for males to fetishize. The primary aim

within these types of performance is for action to be taken, in this case the content is not as important as

long as they get the point across. Nude separate from the desire, naked body is natural, therefore stripped

of representation. The true feminine identity exists within the body, internally, and the performance artists

discussed, use this explicit body to foreground the true interior of a woman a form which I conclude is

very similar to Cixous’ notion of ‘writing the body‘, against the usual exterior representation forced by a

male society. ‘Our embodiment is a necessary requirement of our social identification’ (Turner: Quoted in
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Warr & Jones: 2000) There is a suitable mode of expression out there for females it is just finding it that

is proving difficult. Performance art provides a stepping stone to find this ideal mode, in which females

will be able to express themselves without controversy.

The realm of this research study is enormous, with so many further things to observe. Proposing to

continue with my analysis of feminist performance art which uses the explicit body, defining my research

to focus on Orlan, particularly ’The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan‘ (1990), because she has arguably

pushed the boundaries further than any other feminist performance artist to date, in her search to become

an idealized beautiful woman which has transformed her into both goddess and cyborg. She displays

more than her naked body casting doubt as to whether the explicit body is really a ‘true’ image. In ‘The

Reincarnation of Saint Orlan’ she embraces cosmetic surgery, through canal art she seeks to become the

feminist ideal not for vanity but because of the interesting concept of surgical procedures being

performed. She is highlighting the lengths women will push towards in order to achieve the perfect image

of beauty, this ideal beauty is impossible to achieve. The features she chooses, such as the forehead of the

Mona Lisa, are chosen because of the masculine traits they suggest. She presents her own body as both

subject and object of art. Her performances have caused shock and debates from many angles, she inflicts

pain on her own body through plastic surgery alike other performance artists such as Franko B and

Stelarc. Orlan’s works also blend binary opposites such as subject/object, dominant/passive art/medicine

and interior/exterior. Like many other feminist performance artists discussed within PPD5 Orlan’s

performances seek to establish her body as her own expressing how difficult it is to succumb to

patriarchal ideals, becoming the representation and also how lengthy the plastic surgery procedure can be.

She is challenging her exterior in addition to her interior, using plastic surgery as a way of ’writing her

body’ opposing Lacanian theory. Whilst under the surgeons knife she is a passive female object. Aiming

to focus on theories by Donna Harraway and Peggy Phelan to highlight Orlan’s uses of technology and

phenomenology, highlighting her as an artist and the debates surrounding this status. By using plastic

surgery and her explicit body as a medium is Orlan portraying a more ideal form of ‘writing the body’?
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

Goldberg, R (1979) Performance Art: From Futurism to Present (C.S Graphics: Singapore)

Goodman, L., & Gay, J. (2000) The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance (Routledge:London)

Goodman, L., & Gay, J. (1998) The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance (Routledge: London)

Howell, A. (1999) The Analysis of Performance Art (OPA (Overseas Publishers Association):Amsterdam)

Huxley, M., & Witts, N (ed)., (1996) The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader (2nd Edition).
(Routledge: Oxon)

Ince, K. (2000) Orlan: Millenial Female (Oxford International Publishers Ltd: New York)

Jones, A (1998) Body Art: Performing the Subject. (University of Minnesota Press: USA)

Kourany, J., Sterba, J. & Tong, R (1992) Feminist Philosophies (Prentice Hall inc: New Jersey)

Phelan, P (1993) Unmarked: The Politcs of Performance Art (Routledge: USA & Canada)

Schneider, R. (1997) The Explicit Body in Performance (Routledge: London)

Warr, T. & Jones, A (ed) (2000) The Artists Body (Phaidon Press Limited: New York)

JOURNALS

Dolan, J (1991) The feminist spectator as critic (university of Michigan press)

Faber, A (2002) Saint Orlan Ritual as Violent Spectacle and Cultural Criticism (The MIT Press)

Forte, J (1988) Women’s Performance Art: Feminism and Postmodernism (John Hopkins University
Press: Theatre Journal, Vol 40, No 2)

Liepe-Levinson, K (1998) Striptease: Desire, Mimetic Jeopardy, and Performing Spectators (The MIT
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Press: TDR, Vol 42, No 2, pp9-37)

O’Bryan, J (1997) Saint Orlan Faces Reincarnation (College art association)

Pramaggiore, M (1992) Resisting/Performing/Femininity: Words, Flesh, and Feminism in Karen Finley’s

‘The Constant State of Desire’ (John Hopkins University Press: Theatre Journal, vol 44, No.3)

Williams, L (1993) A provoking agent: The pornography and performance art of Annie Sprinkle (Duke
university press)

WEBSITES

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/27/arts/art-in-review-532533.html?fta=y [accessed 22nd November

2009]

http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/cixous.html (Klages:1997) [accessed 15th

November 2009]

http://www.jmu.edu/writeon/documents/2006/Wilson.pdf (Wilson) accessed 16th November 2009

Cixous's The Laugh of the Medusa Against Showalter's Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness."
123HelpMe.com. <http://www.123HelpMe.com/view.asp?id=14023>. [accessed 25th November 2009]

http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/1992fall/fall1992_Dworkin.php Dworkin 1992 [accessed 22nd

November 2009]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042000410.html [accessed
22nd November 2009]

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