I just got back from a wonderful late afternoon spent at the Tate Modern, where I spent the majority of my time in the “Poetry and Dream” exhibit (Do exhibit titles go in quotes or are they underlined? Perhaps one of the numerous English professors who read this can help me out). This exhibit, which was largely a surrealist exhibition, was absolutely fascinating in the way it discussed the connection between writing and the physical body, something I am particularly interested in. In this way, the exhibit might have been better termed “Discourse and Materiality” (a la Judith Butler).
Painting, in particular, is an interesting arena in which to engage this discussion because of the medium’s ability to capture (or possibly imagine) the process of bodily materialization; in the real world, we are only able to get at this discussion by way of either fully materialized human bodies (resting at the “matter” end of the spectrum) or via writing (which falls firmly at the “discourse” end of the debate). Dorthea Tanning’s A mi-voix, pictured here,is quite wonderful in the way it captures partially formed human bodies, frozen part-way through the process of materialization. The wonderful thing about this painting (as Michael pointed out of the Francis Bacon paintings) is that, because the bodies are frozen, the viewer cannot tell whether they are being constructed or deconstructed. In this way, painting might be seen to capture the inscription of a body without evaluating it.
These partially formed bodies raise a number of questions: If discourse informs materialization, what sort of discourse might result in partially formed bodies? Conversely, what sort of language or discourse might cause a body to unravel? In contemplation of Jeanette Winterson’s use of the body in Written on the Body, how can physical embodiment be a point of communication that is independent of language, when language is inscribed on the body? I can imagine an exchange between Jeanette Winterson and Judith Buther: “There is a ‘language written on the body,’” Judith might exclaim while beating Jeanette in the head with her copy of Bodies that Matter. “Language is the language written on the body!” she would yell with each blow. The scene might end with Butler standing over Winterson’s unconscious body, head cocked to the side. She would then wipe her brow and whisper “It’s discourse, dummy...” Fade to black.
This Winterson/Butler smack-down aside (guest directed by Quentin Tarantino, of course), the Tate exhibit was particularly fascinating in the way it traced the process of materialization. The penultimate room, the last room that contained paintings, was one dedicated to a sect of twentieth century realists (where the rest of the rooms were abstract in some capacity). Meredith Frampton’s Portrait of a Young Woman, when placed in conversation with the rest of the exhibit, seems to articulate the exhibition’s conclusion in the way it projects the plainest, most uptight-looking white woman into what has (until this point) been quite a queer space. The gallery seems to highlight the idea that bodies are themselves policed and ultimately normalized institutions; by the time bodies are fully materialized, the chaff has already been picked from the wheat, as it were, which is especially problematic because the process/moment of materialization seems largely inaccessible. In Butler’s words, this moment becomes “retroactively installed at a prelinguistic site to which there is no direct access,” and, as a result, pointing to a moment of materialization outside the theoretical seems impossible (Just as a heads up, this Butler quote is taken quuuiiiite out of context. I feel the need to apologize out of fear of Tarantino-esque retribution from Butler. I might become the inadvertent star of Wrath of Judith II: No Exit, which I read somewhere they’ve started production on). Where, then, is there room for a queer body? What about a disabled body, a body which was normative but has been broken? This exhibit might suggest that because bodies are normalized structures, there isn’t any room for a queer body, which seems sort of troubling.
Also, I’ve read that Judith Butler does all her own stunts.
I want to make a Triumph of the Will joke, but I'm so traumatized by the vision of Judith Butler beating up on Jeanette Winterson that I can't do it! Regarding the punctuation of exhibit titles, the Post puts them in quotation marks, but that may by AP/newspaper style -- which would work for a blog post, but might not for, say, an honors thesis written under the direction of an English department punctuation freak. Best check MLA when you are stateside again. Good luck!
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