Seeing the vulva: adopting strategic essentialism
as a means of disrupting phallogocentrism, finding a
subjective voice, and picturing difference
f-word 2: the second feminist
interdisciplinary research symposium hosted by the Faculty
of Arts for University of Plymouth staff, postgraduate
students, and guests; room 105 Scott Building, University
of Plymouth 9 March 2010
Abstract
This paper takes as its starting point the statement made
by Luce Irigaray in 1987: “I am a woman. I write with who I
am”.
That year I made a 16mm animation The Internal
Voice, a film without a soundtrack 'directed' by
dreams and automatic drawing. I was at the beginning of my
career as an artist film-maker. For over twenty years I
have supported myself through my creative work; but, unlike
Irigaray, 'alphabetical writing' is not my principle means
of communicating.
I propose that the phallogocentric may be disrupted through
deployment of an array of essentialist tactics and
strategies; and, by critically reflecting on my own
doctoral practice-as-research, I examine the ways in which
'making as a woman animator’ creates ‘a language of the
body’ that allows the vulva to be seen, pictured in the
psychological space of difference on the moving image
screen.
References
Irigaray, L. (1985) This sex which is not one. New
York: Cornell University.
Irigaray, L. (1993) 'Writing as a woman', interview with
Alice Jardin and Anne Menke, September 1987; chapter six in
Irigaray, L. Je, tu, nous: toward a culture of
difference, translated by Alison Martin. London:
Routledge. pp. 51 - 59.
Nelson, R. (2009) ‘Modes of practice-as-research knowledge
and their place in the academy‘ in Allegue, L. et al.
(eds.) Practice-as-research in performance and
screen. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 112 -
130.
Robinson, H. (2006) Reading art, reading Irigaray: the
politics of art by women. New York: I.B. Tauris.