Critical Perspectives 12: 11/12/14 - The Intersectional Self with Jenny Rintoul

Identities – the way we see ourselves

“Meaning is shared through our common access to language” - Stuart Hall

(visual language + body language)

Circuit of Culture

Consumers, producers and more – we're all part of it

[Gender is] a taste system you're fed

Worth thinking about for your essay

Class – working class is “marked”; through a middle-class lens, it's humorous

"Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class" by Owen Jones

Sexuality - heterosexuality is "neutral"; homosexuality is marked - othered

The Journal of Celebrity Culture

Race and ethnicity - light skinned as "good"; dark skinned as "villainous" (even within the same race)

Whiteness is unmarked

Intersectionality --> the position of marked categories - where we "fit" (e.g. black women have a unique "sphere")

The Guerilla Girls - "conscience of the art world"

Things that appear to be progressive (gender/race) can still be heteronormative or Eurocentric; dehumanising --> how we make sense of the marked categories

Fetishizing --> [for example] romanticising inter-class relationships

Unmarked categories = the dominant circuit of culture

Think about different ways of seeing - not just a specific type of woman (or whatever)

Combinations of identities create new meanings - the visual world is open to exploration of intersectionality

Use it to ask questions about what representations mean

When you present characters, what are you presenting them as?

"Paris Is Burning" - black men performing (an extreme version of) white femininity

Gender is a performance - we use it in our practice

"Men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at" - John Berger, 1972 (Ways of Seeing)

Creative practitioners:

Gillian Wearing, "A Real Birmingham Family" (2014) --> "What counts as a family should not be fixed"

Paula Rego, "The Family" (1989) --> Subversion of power

Lyle Ashton Harris and Renee Cox, "Queen, Alias and Id" (1994)

Ellen Gallagher, "DeLuxe", 2004/5 (ethnicity and gender)

Yinka Shonibare, "Diary of a Victorian Dandy" (1998) Modern black man framed as Victorian gentleman

What is our viewing position? --> e.g. a gay black man empathises with black male figures, but also objectifies them; invitation into a fantasy scenario - becomes the white male

As makers,  we open up different ways of seeing - use intersectionality to critique the visual world