Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War : Eva Cockroft

 

Teena George

1124130

Thesis Statement: "Rockefeller, through Barr and others at the Museum his mother founded and his family controlled, consciously used Abstract Expressionism, 'the symbol of political freedom', for political ends."

 

 

Paragraph 1:

Topic Sentence:

"To understand why a particular art movement becomes successful under a given set of historical circumstances requires an examination of the specifics of patronage and the ideological needs of the powerful."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Earlier and during Renaissance – patronage hand in hand with official power.

Ø Post industrial revolution – art became part of general flow of commodities in the market – no direct contact with patrons

Keywords: Patronage; commodities.

 

 

Paragraph 2:

Topic sentence:

"In rejecting materialistic values of bourgeois society and indulging in the myth that they could exist entirely outside the dominant culture in Bohemian enclaves, avant-garde artists generally refused to recognize or accept their role as producers of a cultural commodity"

Supporting ideas:

Ø Rejected materialistic values of bourgeois society – refused to accept their roles as creators of a commercial product

Ø Especially in the United States – abdicated responsibility to their own economic interests and to the uses to which their art is put after entering into the market.

Keywords: rejection of material values

 

 

 

Paragraph 3:

Topic sentence:

"Museums, for their part, enlarged their role to become more than mere repositories of past art, and began to exhibit and collect contemporary art."

Supporting ideas:

Ø United States – came to fulfill the role of official patronage – no accountability, however – primarily a private institution – supported by giants of industry and finance – governed by self-perpetuating boards of trustees – they also control banks and corporations and help in the formulation of foreign policy, which ultimately determine museum policy

Ø Rising success of abstract expressionism post WWII entails consideration of the role of the leading museum of contemporary art – The Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA) – also concerned with the ideological needs of officers (period of virulent anti-communism and an intensifying 'Cold war').

Keywords: Patronage; MOMA; anti-communism

 

 

 

Paragraph 4:

Topic sentence: "In an article entitled 'American Painting During the Cold War', published in the May 1973 issue of Artforum, Max Kozloff pointed out the similarity between 'American cold war rhetoric' and the way many Abstract Expressionist artists phrased their existentialist-individualist credos."

Supporting ideas:

Ø May 1973 – Artforum – Max Kozloff – similarity between 'American cold war rhetoric' and way many Abstract Expressionist artists phrased their existentialist-individualist credos.

Ø However – failed to examine full import of this insight – claimed: 'This was a coincidence that must surely have gone unnoticed by rulers and ruled alike.' – not so.

Keywords: American cold war rhetoric; existentialist-individualist credos

 

 

Paragraph 5:

Topic sentence: Links between cultural cold war politics and the success of abstract expressionism are by no means coincidental, or unnoticeable.

Supporting ideas:

Ø Links between cultural cold war politics and the success of abstract expressionism – forged consciously – by most some of the most influential figures controlling museum policies a

Ø And advocating enlightened cold war tactics to woo European intellectuals.

Keywords: links; forged consciously; enlightened cold war tactics

 

 

Paragraph 6:

Topic sentence: The political relationship between Abstract Expressionism and the cold war can be clearly perceived through the international programs of MOMA

Supporting ideas:

Ø MOMA – major supporter of the Abstract Expressionist movement – huge impact in the sphere of contemporary American art.

Ø MOMA – Rockefeller-dominated institution – also financed by the Whitneys, Paleys, Blisses, Warburgs and Lewisohns to a lesser degree than the Rockefeller's.

Keywords: political relationship

 

 

 

Paragraph 7:

Topic sentence: "The development of American cold war politics was directly shaped by the Rockefellers in particular and by expanding corporations and banks in general (David Rockefeller is also chairman of the board of Chase Manhattan Bank, the financial centre of the Rockefeller dynasty)."

Supporting ideas:

Ø MOMA – founded in 1929 – through the efforts of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Ø 1939 – Nelson Rockefeller became president of MOMA – left in 1940 to become President Roosevelt's co-coordinator of the office of Inter-American Affairs – later, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs – dominated museum throughout 1940s and 1950s – returned to MOMA's presidency in 1946.

Ø 1960s and 1970s – David Rockefeller and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller (the third) – assumed responsibility of the museum for the family.

Ø Almost every secretary of state after the end of World War II – has been trained and groomed by various foundations and agencies controlled or managed by the Rockefellers.

Keywords: controlled; managed; groomed; trained

 

 

Paragraph 8:

Topic sentence: "The involvement of the Museum of Modern Art in American foreign policy became unmistakably clear during the Second World War."

Supporting ideas:

Ø June 1941 – central press wire story – MOMA – 'largest and strangest recruit in Uncle Sam's defense line-up' – quoted Chairman of the Museum's Board of trustees, John Hay Whitney – The museum could serve as a weapon for national defense – to 'educate, inspire and strengthen the hearts and wills of free men in defense of their own freedom'

Ø Whitney – worked for the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA) during the war – in 1967, his charity trust was exposed as a conduit of the CIA

Ø Throughout the early 1940s – MOMA engaged in a number of war-related programs – set the pattern for its later activities as key institution in the cold war.

Keywords: Recruit in Uncle Sam's line-up

 

 

Paragraph 9:

Topic sentence: "Primarily, MOMA became a minor war contractor, fulfilling 38 contracts for cultural materials totaling $1,590,234 for the Library of Congress, the Office of War Information, and especially Nelson Rockefeller's Office of the Co-coordinator of the Inter-American Affairs"

Supporting ideas:

Ø For Nelson's Office of Inter-American Affairs – mother's museum put together 19 exhibitions of contemporary American painting – shipped around Latin America – area in which Nelson R. developed his most lucrative investments – for example, Creole Petroleum

Ø Creole Petroleum – a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey – single-most important economic interest in oil-rich Venezuela.

Keywords: Creole petroleum; contemporary American painting

 

 

Paragraph 10:

Topic sentence: "After the War, staff from the Inter-American Affairs Office were transferred to MOMA's foreign activities."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Rene d'Harnoncourt – expert in the organization and installation of art exhibits – helped American Ambassador, Dwight Morrow cultivate the Mexican muralists – at the time when Mexico's oil nationalism threatened Rockefeller oil interests – was appointed head of art section of Nelson's Office of Inter-American Affairs in 1943 – Vice President in charge of foreign activities, a year later – became MOMA's director in 1949.

Ø Porter A. McCray – 1950s – worked in the Office during the War.

Keywords: Mexican muralists

 

 

Paragraph 11:

Topic sentence: "McCray is a particularly powerful and effective man in the history of cultural imperialism."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Trained as an architect at Yale University – introduced to the Rockefeller circuit through their architect, Wallace Harrison.

Ø After the war – Brought to MOMA by Nelson Rockefeller – as director of circulating exhibits

Ø 1946 to 1949 – served as member of MOMA'a coordinating committee

Ø 1951 – a year's leave of absence – to work for exhibitions section of the Marshall plan in Paris

Ø 1952 – MOMA's international program – five year grant of $ 625,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund – McCray became its director

Ø 1956 – Led the programs expanded division – international council of MOMA – crucial years of the cold war.

Ø According to Russell Lynes – Good Old Modern: An Intimate Portrait of the Museum of Modern Art – purpose of MOMA's international program – to 'let it be known especially in Europe that America was not the cultural backwater that the Russians, during that tense period called the "cold war", were trying to demonstrate that it was.'

Keywords: architect; international council of MOMA; cultural backwater

 

 

Paragraph 12:

Topic sentence: "It [MOMA] assumed a quasi-official character, providing the 'United States representation' in shows where most nations were represented by government-sponsored exhibits"

Supporting ideas:

Ø MOMA's international program – provided exhibitions of contemporary American art for international exhibitions in London, Paris, Sao Paulo and Tokyo – primarily Abstract Expressionists

Ø Assumed a quasi-official character – provided 'United States representation' – In shows where representations were mostly government-sponsored.

Ø United States government – had trouble in handling delicate issues of free speech and free artistic expression – generated by McCarthyist hysteria of the early 1950s – made it necessary and convenient for MOMA to assume this role of international representation for the United States.

Ø For example – the State department – refused to take responsibility for the United States representation at the Venice Biennale – one of the most important of international-cultural-political art events – all European countries, including the Soviet Union competed for cultural honors.

Ø MOMA – bought the United States pavilion in Venice – took sole responsibility for the exhibitions from 1954 to 1962

Ø Only case of a privately owned pavilion at the Venice Biennale – generally, government-owned.

Keywords: Quasi-official; representation; biennale

 

 

Paragraph 13:

Topic sentence: "The CIA, primarily through the activities of Thomas W. Braden, also was active in the cold-war cultural offensive."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Braden – represents the important role of MOMA in the cold war.

Ø Before joining the CIA in 1950 to supervise its cultural activities, from 1951 to 1954 – was MOMA's executive secretary from April 1948 to November 1949.

Ø Published an article in defense of his political cultural activities – 'I'm glad the CIA is "Immoral"' – in the 20 May 1967 issue of Saturday Evening Post. – According to Braden – enlightened members of the governmental bureaucracy recognized in the 1950s that 'dissenting opinions within the framework of agreement on cold-war fundamentals' - an effective propaganda weapon abroad.

Ø Rabid anti-communists – in Congress and the nation as a whole – made official sponsorship of many cultural projects impracticable.

Ø Braden: "… the idea that Congress would have approved many of our projects was about as likely as the John Birch Society's approving Medicare."

Ø 1967 exposes – revealed – CIA funded a host of cultural programs and intellectual endeavors – from the National Student Association (NSA) – to Encounter magazine and innumerable lesser-known 'liberal and socialist' fronts.

Keywords: Immoral; dissenting opinions; liberal and social fronts

 

 

Paragraph 14:

Topic sentence: "As this example suggests, CIA's purpose in supporting international intellectual and cultural activities were not limited to espionage or establishing contact with leading foreign intellectuals."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Cultural field – CIA – funded a Paris tour of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1952.

Ø Done, according to Braden, to avoid severe security restrictions imposed by the United States Congress – required security clearance for every last musician in order to procure funds for the tour to ensure no left-wing connections.

Ø Money was well-spent – said Braden – 'the Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the United States in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight d. Eisenhower could have brought with a hundred speeches.'

Keywords: Boston Symphony Orchestra; acclaim

 

 

Paragraph 15:

Topic sentence: " The functions of both the CIA's undercover aid operations and MOMA's international programs were similar."

Supporting ideas:

Ø No pressure in the form of unsubtle red-baiting and super-jingoism applied to official government agencies, such as the United States Information Agency (USIA)

Ø CIA and MOMA cultural projects – could provide well-financed and more persuasive arguments and exhibitions – necessary to sell the rest of the world on the benefits of life and art under capitalization

Keywords: capitalization; red-baiting; super-jingoism

 

 

Paragraph 16:

Topic sentence: "In the world of art, Abstract Expressionism constituted the ideal style for these propaganda activities."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Contrast to 'regimented, traditional and narrow' nature of 'socialist realism' – new, fresh and creative – artistically avant-garde and original

Ø Abstract Expressionism – could show the United States as culturally up-to-date in competition with Paris.

Ø Possible since Pollock and most of the other avant-garde artists no longer interested in political activism.

Ø Change – manifested in the organization of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors in 1943. – Included several of the Abstract Expressionists. – Kozloff: "interested more in aesthetic values than in political action."

Ø Formed in opposition to the politically motivated Artists Congress.

Ø Earlier political activism of some of the Abstract Expressionists – liability in terms of attaining congressional approval for government-sponsored cultural projects.

Ø Cold Warrior's point of view – such linkages to controversial politics – heighten the value of these artists as a propaganda weapon in demonstrating the virtues of 'freedom of expression' in an 'open and free society'.

Keywords: regimented, traditional and narrow; freedom of expression; open and free society

 

 

Paragraph 17:

Topic sentence: "Heralded as the artistic 'coming of age' of America, Abstract Expressionist painting was exported abroad almost from the beginning."

Supporting ideas:

Ø William de Kooning – work was included in the United States representation at the Venice Biennale – 1948

Ø 1950 – Arshile Gorky and Pollok

Ø From 1951 – United States representation at the Biennales in Sao Paulo – featured an average of 3 Abstract Expressionists per show.

Ø Abstract Expressionists – also represented at shows in Venezuela, Japan, India, etc.

Ø By 1956 – MOMA show – 'Modern Art in the U.S.' – included works of twelve Abstract Expressionists (Baziotes, Gorky, Guson, Hartigan, de Kooning, Kline, Motherwell, Pollock, Rothko, Stamos, Still and Tomlin) – toured eight European cities, including Vienna and Belgrade.

Keywords: artistic coming of age

 

 

Paragraph 18:

Topic sentence: "In terms of cultural propaganda, the functions of both the CIA cultural apparatus and MOMA's international programs were similar and, in fact, mutually supportive."

Supporting ideas:

Ø 1950s – Porter McCray – director of MOMA – in effect, also carried out government functions.

Ø Braden and the CIA served interests of the Rockefellers and other corporate luminaries in the American ruling class.

Ø McCray – on of the Rockefeller's main agents – furthering programs for the export of American culture to areas considered vital to Rockefeller interests – Latin America during the War, Europe just after, Asia during the 1950s and 1960s.

Ø 1962 to 1963 – McCray – year's travel – Asia and Africa – under the joint auspices of the State Department and MOMA.

Ø October 1963 – Asia became a particularly crucial area for the United States – McCray left MOMA – became director for the John D. Rockefeller 3^rd Fund – newly created cultural exchange program directed towards Asia, specifically.

Keywords: corporate luminaries; mutually supportive; cultural apparatus

 

 

Paragraph 19:

Topic sentence: "The United States government simply could not handle the needs of cultural imperialism alone during the cold war, at least overtly."

Supporting ideas:

Ø 1956 art-show scandals of the USIA – illustrative of the problems faced by the government – solution provided by MOMA.

Ø May 1956 – show of paintings by American artists called Sport in Art – organized by Sports Illustrated for USIA – scheduled to be shown in conjunction with the Olympic Games, Australia.

Ø Cancelled – due to strong protests in Dallas, Texas, where the shoe toured before being sent abroad.

Ø Right-wing group in Dallas – the Patriotic Council – objected on grounds that four of the included artists had once belonged to communist-front groups.

Keywords: cultural imperialism; Patriotic Council

 

 

Paragraph 20:

Topic sentence: "In June 1956, even more serious case of thought censorship hit the press."

Supporting ideas:

Ø USIA abruptly cancelled a major show of American art – '100 American Artists'

Ø 21 June issue of New York Times – show had been planned as 'one of the most important exhibits of American painting ever sent abroad'.

Ø Show – organized for USIA – by American Federation of Arts – non-profit organization, based in New York – refused to cooperate with USIA's attempt to force it to exclude about ten artists considered by the information agency to be 'social hazards' and 'unacceptable' for political reasons.

Ø Federation's trustees – voted unanimously – not to participate in the show – if any paintings were barred by the government – cited a 1954 resolution that art 'should be judged by its merits as a work of art and not by the political or social views of the artist.'

Keywords: censorship; social hazards

 

 

Paragraph 21:

Topic sentence: "Objections against censorship were also raised by the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (which was revealed as receiving CIA funds in the 1967 exposes).

Supporting ideas:

Ø Theodore Streibert, Director of USIA – testified before Senator Fulbright's Foreign Relations Committee – acknowledged that USIA had a policy against the use of politically suspect artist's works in foreign exhibitions.

Ø USIA – as a government agency – handcuffed by the virulent the noisy speeches of right-wing congressmen like Representative George A. Dondero (Michigan) – regularly denounced from the House floor abstract art and 'brainwashed artists in the uniform of the Red art brigade'.

Ø Reported on 28 June 1956 – New York Times – Fulbright: 'unless the agency changes its policy it should not try to send any more exhibitions overseas.'

Keywords: Foreign Relations Committee; speech; Red art brigade

 

 

Paragraph 22:

Topic sentence: "The Rockefellers promptly arranged a solution to this dilemma (see previous paragraph regarding sending of exhibitions overseas)

Supporting ideas:

Ø 1956 – international program of MOMA – greatly expanded in financial base and in its aims.

Ø Reconstituted as the International Council of MOMA – officially launched six months after the censorship scandal of USIA's 100 American Artists show.

Ø MOMA's newly expanded role – explained in New York Times article: "government – leery of anything so controversial as art – hampered by interference on the part of certain politicians – imminent projects overseas include United States participation in three major international art exhibitions and a show of modern painting to travel in Europe."

Keywords: controversial

 

 

Paragraph 23:

Topic sentence: "This major show of American painting was produced two years later by MOMA's International Council as The New American Painting, an elaborate traveling exhibition of the Abstract Expressionists."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Exhibition – included a comprehensive catalog by prestigious Alfred H. Barr Jr. – toured eight European countries – 1958-59.

Ø Barr's introduction to the catalog – exemplified the cold-war propaganda role of Abstract Expressionism: "existentialists – their 'anxiety', commitment, 'dreadful freedom' concern their work, primarily – defiantly reject the conventions of society around them – paintings are expressions of freedom – in a world where freedom connotes political attitude, they do not enter into politics.

Keywords: anxiety, commitment and dreadful freedom; defiant rejection

 

 

Paragraph 24:

Topic sentence: "As the director of MOMA from its inception until 1944, Barr was the single most important man in shaping the Museum's artistic character and determining the success or failure of individual American artists and art movements."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Barr – even after leaving directorship at MOMA – continued to serve as the agency's reigning tastemaker – his support of Abstract Expressionist art – played an influential role in their success.

Ø Barr was also artistic advisor to Peggy Guggenheim – Surrealist-oriented Art of this Century Gallery – gave some of these artists their first important shows – mid-1940s.

Ø For example – Guggenheim's gallery – offered one-man shows to Jackson Pollock – 1943, 1945, 1947. – Hans Hoffman, 1944 – Mark Rothko, 1945

Ø Barr – enthusiastic about work of the Abstract Expressionist – attended their informal meetings – chaired some of their panel discussions at their meeting place – The Club, New York City.

Keywords: Guggenheim

 

 

Paragraph 25:

Topic sentence: "Barr's 'credentials' as cultural cold warrior, and the political rationale behind the promotion and export of Abstract Expressionist art during the cold-war years, are set forth in a New York Times Magazine article Barr wrote in 1952, 'Is Modern Art Communistic?', a condemnation of 'social realism' in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Supporting ideas:

Ø Barr – argued – totalitarianism and Realism go together

Ø Barr - Abstract art – feared and prohibited according to Hitlers and Stalins (as well as the Donderos of the world, who would equate abstraction with communism).

Ø In the battle against ignorant right-wing McCarthyists at home – Barr reflected the attitudes of enlightened cold warriors like CIA's Braden and MOMA's McCray.

Ø In the case of MOMA's international policies – subterfuge not necessary – unlike in the CIA

Ø Aims similar to those of the CIA – can easily be followed with support of Nelson Rockefeller's millions.

Keywords: Communistic; social realism

 

 

Paragraph 26:

Topic sentence: "Especially important was the attempt to influence intellectuals and artists behind the 'iron curtain'."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Post-Stalin era – 1956 – Polish government was under Gomulka – became more liberal – Tadeusz Kantor, an artist from Cracow – impressed by Pollock's works and other abstractionists seen during an earlier trip to Paris – led movement away from socialist realism in Poland.

Ø This kind of development was seen as a triumph for the Non-communists – 'the American side'

Ø 1961 – Kandor and fourteen other non-objective Polish painters – given an exhibition at MOMA.

Ø This example - reflects the success of political aims of the international programs of MOMA.

Keywords: The American side; socialist realism

 

 

Paragraph 27:

Topic sentence: "Having succeeded so handsomely through MOMA in supporting the cold war, Nelson Rockefeller moved on, in the 1960s, to launch the council of the Americas and its cultural component, the Center for Inter-American Relations."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Funded almost entirely by Rockefeller money and that of other American investors in Latin America – Council advises the United States government on foreign policy.

Ø The Centre for Inter-American Relations – thinly veiled cultural attempt to woo back respect from Latin America in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs and missile crisis incidents.

Ø In its Park Avenue office – offers exhibitions of Latin American art and guest lectures by leading Latin American painters and intellectuals.

Ø The Centre – yet another link in a continuing and expanding chain of Rockefeller-dominated imperialism – like the john D. Rockefeller 3^rd Fund.

Keywords: woo back respect from Latin America

 

 

Paragraph 28:

Topic sentence: "The alleged separation of art from politics proclaimed throughout the 'free world' with the resurgence of abstraction after the Second World War was part of a general tendency in intellectual circles toward 'objectivity'.

Supporting ideas:

Ø Idea of political commitment – foreign to the newly developing milieu of the 1950s.

Ø Daniel Bell – proclaimed the post-war period as 'the end of ideology'.

Ø Abstract Expressionists – gave their paintings an individual emphasis – eliminated recognizable subject-matter – succeeded in creating an important new art movement – also contributed to a purely political phenomenon – divorce between politics and art, which so perfectly served the needs of America during the Cold War.

Keywords: political commitment; end of ideology; divorce between politics and art

 

 

Paragraph 29:

Topic sentence: "Attempts to claim that styles of art are politically neutral when there is no overt political subject-matter are as simplistic as Dondero-ish attacks on all abstract art as 'subversive'."

Supporting ideas:

Ø Braden and his followers – intelligent and sophisticated – recognized that dissenting intellectuals who believe themselves to be acting freely could be useful tools in the international propaganda war.

Ø Rich and powerful patrons of art – like Rockefeller and Whitney – control museums and help oversee foreign policy – recognize the value of culture in the political arena

Ø Artist creates freely – his work is promoted and used by others.

Ø Rockefeller – through Barr and others at his museum – used Abstract Expressionism, 'the symbol of political freedom', for political ends.

Keywords: subversive; useful t

Mobilizing Pasts: Ground Zero, Representation and 'Outrageous Art' : Francis Franscina

Gurekta Sethi

1124110

1.Topic sentence: Almost four years after the production of the pragmatic image of American urban

devastation, caused by suicide hijackers who turned passenger aircrafts into missile loaded with

human captives, media and political commentators continued to turn to a comparison with this

official sign of national unity.

The spectacles of the culture industries, film fictions and television framed reports from embedded

journalists in Afghanistan and Iraq were symbolic screens through which representation of the

effects of Katrina Hurricane were first made.

Critical analyses of slow federal and state rescue responses to the hurricane uncovered domestic

realities disregarded in the aftermath of September 11th by a media complaint with the ideological

agenda of the Bush administration in its pursuit of a global 'war on terror'.

Key word: war on terror

2. Topic sentence: In 2001 the immediate rhetoric of trauma and disaster had human agents to

denounce as representatives of a fundamental attack on 'our freedom' and the 'American way of

life'.

In 2005 there were, initially, no obvious outside human agents to condemn, leaving terror and

disaster to be characterized as 'neutral 'or in the word of Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld 'stuff

happens'.

Soon, however , human agency was identified as a negative contribution to the 'stuff' that 'happens'

and the inequalities of the ' American way of life' were revealed in vivid images and reports

on rescue delay, the awful conditions endured by the survivors, and budget cuts in domestic

infrastructure to fund the Iraq invasion.

The realities of domestic inequalities – class, economical and racial- had been overshadowed

by patriotic promotions of '9/11'images, which accompanied increased expedition on military

intervention, empire building and homeland security under a neo- conservative 'war on terror'.

Key word: semiotic clash

3. Topic sentence: At a concert for Hurricane Relief on 2 September, claimed that the 5 day rescue

delay was 'because most of the people are black' and that the President 'does not care about black

people'.

He argued that America is 'set up to help the poor, the Black people, the less well off' as slow as

possible.

Although acknowledging the extensive activities of the Red Cross , he drew attention to the negative

effects of the administration's foreign war on this domestic crises and the states readiness to use

violence on its own citizens..

Key word: Domestic crises.

4. Topic sentences: African Americas were the majority of citizens unable to evacuate the city before

the Hurricane Katrina struck.

Drawing upon the historical references o the status of New Orleans as a major port in the slave

trade, Jackson ( a civil rights leader) described his experience of seeing 5000 African Americans on

the 1-10 causeway: desperate, perishing, dehydrated, babies crying-it looked like the hold of a slave

ship.

Jacksons metaphor was made more poignant by the extensive floodwater caused by breeches in the

defensive levees.

Key Word: issue of race.

5.Topic Sentence: Critics drew attention to the negative effects of the Bush's administrative policies

and actions particularly the budget cuts in federal that made such breeches more possible.

In early 2001, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ranked a hurricane hitting New

Orleans as one of the three likeliest and most catastrophic disasters facing America: the other two

being an earthquake in San Francisco and a terrorist attack on New York City.

In June 2004, the New Orleans district of the army corps of engineers budget for levee construction

to protect the city was cut by more than 80% .

The budget was cut again in June 2005 by a record $71.2 million

Key Word: price we pay.

6.Topic sentence: President Bush attempted to bypass negative reports about federal responses to

the Hurricane Katrina by invoking the administrations preferred image of September 11 as a signifier

of militarized national unity.

Key word: Justice.

Ground Zero: preserving an image

7. Topic sentence: In 2001, images of "disaster" and military metaphors were combined in contrast

between the symbolic meanings of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Centre on one side and the

Pentagon on the other; tough the attacks on the twin towers became the media signifier in the USA.

To focus equally on the burning Towers and the Pentagon would have created a possible semiotic

dialogue between the signifiers of a double global dominance: American capital and military Power.

Key Word: Double Global Dominance.

8. Topic sentence: A criticism of this line of argument is that both the buildings had more powerful

multiple association and memories.

Andreas Huyssen claimed in early 2002 that the symbolic meaning of the Twin Towers 'is not that of

the terror of globalization and hegemonic power, as the blowback theorist argue and as it seems to

focus in the terrorists imaginary.

He privileged the representation of the Twin Towers as simple " home in the metropolis" and their

afterimage as "monumentally".

There are two problems with this claim. First, huyssen conflates both the ' terrorist' and the

theorists of 'blowback' as suffering from the same single casual error: ' no single nor even twin twin

corporate tower could ever represent the nature of global capital, nor could its destruction equal

capital's collapse'. A second problem is that he makes no distinction between his own personal

memory, the memories of others, and conventions of the media.

Key word: 'Infantile symbolism'

9. topic sentence: for many supporters of President Bush's "war on terror" critical references to

American foreign policies, particularly after September 11 , were regarded as incompatible with

desires to preserve "Ground Zero" as hallowed ground, as the site of an attack on the ideals of

American freedom and democracy.

Example – was a fierce campaign during the summer of 2005 to oppose the selection of particular

institutes to operate in the planned Memorial Centre and Culture Complex at the World Trade

Centre. Opponents claimed that these institutions were associated with criticism of the American led

invasion to Iraq, the internment at Guantanamo Bay camp and the Abu Gharib scandal.

Key word: neo-conservative culture criticism

10. Topic sentence: On June 10th 2004 the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced

the four selected institutions: the Joyce International Dance Centre and the Signature Theatre to

occupy the Performing Arts Centre, and The International Freedom Centre (IFC) and The Drawing

Centre to occupy the Museum Complex.

A year later the institutions selected for the Museum Complex became a focus of attack that

combined two previous conservative campaigns (First being the attack on freedom of expression

of visual culture, during the culture wars of the 1980's and 1990's. Second the condemnation of

the critics of the "war on terror" and the USA patriotic act as Un – American and siding with the

terrorists.

Key Word: Conservative Campaigns and cultural wars.

11 . Topic sentence: The IFC was created specifically for the WTC site as an educational resource

devoted to an examination of the enduring struggle for freedom, including its contested definition

and suppression, through exhibitions and interactive presentations

Clearly historical examination of America's failures and success in quests for freedom in, for

example, domestic civil rights struggle and interventions in processes of self determinations in other

countries risked upsetting political patriotism and binary definition of terrorism.

For those for whom art could have the potential for transgression and cultural critique, the role of

the Drawing Centre could either be embraced as a resource for creative freedom or rejected as a

possible site of renewed culture wars.

Key Word: Patriotic politics

Mobilizing Pasts

12. Topic Sentence: On June 7 2005, The Wall Street Journal published an attack on the suitability of

the IFC for the WTC memorial that unleashed further press attacks.

Burlingame (sister of the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the pentagon, who wrote a

book ' The Great Ground Zero Heist') predicted that when the marines return to the opening of the

WTC Memorial in 2010 expecting ' a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss ' they

will get instead ' a slanted history lesson , a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post 9 /11

world.

To the IFC's organizers, it's not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures.

key word: memorial.

13. Topic Sentence: She objected to the funds being used to support the IFC, which she regarded as

being shaped and influenced by people critical of the USA patriot attack and 'whose inflammatory

claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining the country's effort to

foster freedom elsewhere in the world.

Burlingame criticized five named members of the IFC, without mentioning that there were 89

advisors and board members and repeated concerns that claimed about torture at Guantanamo

Bay and Abu Gharib would detract from the positive post September narrative of enduring freedom

being fought for by U.S marines in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If such references and images were to be a part of the display at the IFC, she feared that this

freedom centre "will not use the word 'patriot' the way our Founding Fathers did ".

Key word: patriot

14. Topic Sentence: This and other publications explored acts and images that cast doubt on the

official agenda of national unity, heroism, patriotism and freedom, which justified the invasion of

Iraq as a logical development of the post September 11 " war on terror".

For Burlingame , discussion of 'freedom' at Ground Zero must be related solely to those who died on

September 11, 2001.

Key word: state terrorism.

15. Topic Sentence: Just over seven months before Burlingame article's, the emotions of mourning

and remembrance after September 11 were central to President Bush's campaign speech at

Manchester, New Hampshire, 29th October 2004.

The President described 'the enduring character of this great nation' in men and women: " I have

seen the character in people like Cheryl McGuiness ,Debra Burlingame and Elizabeth Kovalcin, who

are with us today".

These individuals were at the rally to support President Bush's re-election.

Burlingame also spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden,

which controversially played on the emotions of "9/11" to defend the presidents "war on terror"

and invasion of Iraq.

Key word:' Sacrifice of our freedom'

"Outrageous Art"

16. Topic sentence: After Burlingame's article in The Wall Street journal a major media campaign to

resist the selection of the IFC began.

The website 'Take Back the Memorial' issued a petition supporting a WTC Memorial to 'stand

as a solemn remembrance of those who died on September 11th 2001, and not as a journey of

history's "failures" or as a debate about domestic and foreign policy in the post 9/11 world.'

The front page of the Daily News on 24th June proclaimed '9/11 Outrage. Draw the line, now! Gov.

Pataki is allowing a museum that exhibits anti American art to display its work at ground zero. This is

a disgrace, and The News demands action.'

Key words: Media attack

17. Topic sentence: Feiden's article included the results of the review by the Daily News of 'Dozens'

of The Drawing Centre's catalogues since September 11, 2001, which 'revealed numerous politically

charged works tough only three were cited.

Feiden's was troubled by Wilson's use of figure that he read as a hooded Iraqi figure photographed

at Abu Gharib on 5th November 2003 standing on a box with electrodes dangling from each hand

and arms outstretched in a crucifix pose. The electrodes from Wilsons figure , whose arms are not

outstretched , fall downwards and spell out the word "liberty".

The figure and word described above is what Feiden described as a 'field peopled with dancing

skeletons'. However an inspection of the actual work reveals a landscape of fighting skeletons with

many holding swords.

Key word: Fighting skeletons.

18 . Topic sentence: Feiden and neo- conservative editorial emphases of the Daily News were

oblivious to the multiplicities of allegory.

No Key word.

19. Topic sentence:The Daily News was also critical of Mark Lambardi's Global Networks: George W

Bush, harken energy and Jackson Stephen ca 1979- 90, 1999, displayed in an exhibition of the artists

work at " The Drawing Centre, Fall 2003.

Although completed in 1999 , it draws on evidence of suspected insider dealing and cronyism

between 1979- two years after George Bush set up "Arbusto" his own oil and gas company – and

22 June 1999 when Bush bailed out Harken energy with a 200 percent profit just two weeks before

Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the price of Harken Energy's stock plummeted.

Key word: conspiracy theorists

20. Topic sentence:Lombardi's drawing is a part that stands for the whole of the exhibited works

These make uncomfortable viewings for those supporters of the "war of terror" and the invasion of

Iraq who were hostile to historians and theorists of 'blowback'.

Key Words: US covert operations

21. Topic sentence: His work engaged with dialogues between values of precision, elegance and

beauty in drawing and those of archival evidence for scandalous corporate, financial and political

activities.

Hence, the possibilities of such visual critique at the sight of ground zero had to be prevented so as

to guarantee that particular images and definitions of freedom were maintained through a narrow

representation of the meaning of ' 9/11' and the ' war on terror'.

Key word: Historicize the concept of freedom

22. Topic sentence: The New York Post joined the negative campaign against the IFC and The

Drawing Centre, and was more explicit about precedents for their objectives.

The newspaper was dubious that such 'outrageous art '' could be 'banned from the site': Defenders

of trash, and complaint judges would surely block any effort to" censor" works

Key word: outrageous art

23. Topic sentence: In response to media pressure, on 24th June, Governor George E Pataki issued an

ultimatum to the IFC and The Drawing Centre demanding 'an absolute guarantee' that they would

not mount particular types of exhibition at the re developed Ground Zero.

Objectors to Pataki's demand argued that it was a violation of the First Amendment but by

September both the IFC and The Drawing Centre had been driven from the project prompting The

New York Times to ask 'is culture gone at ground zero?'

Key word: violation

24. Topic sentence: A few weeks earlier, Caryn James in The New York Times reported attacks , by

newspapers and web sites , on an exhibition and conference organised by the Lower Manhattan

Cultural Council.

The Exhibition explored the effects of the USA Patriotic Acton artists including works ' already

targeted by the Secret Services', that had began as early as 7 November 2001 when federal

agents visited the 'Secret Wars' touring show at the Artcar Museum in Houston Texas because of

complaints of " anti American activity"

The exhibition in 2005 aimed 'to show how, with no accountability required of the federal

government, any cultural activity could come under investigation.

Key Word:" threathening" or "un – American art "

25. Topic sentence: The Daily News and the New York Post attacked the exhibition before it opened.

Caryn James argued that the anger directed toward the exhibition reveals some chilling trends:

the devaluing of art as a proper response to 9/11, and the persistent, wrongheaded idea that to

question the government is to dishonour the memory of those who died.

Key word: gooey sentimentality

26. Topic sentence: Early instances of what James described as 'chilling cultural trends 'are the

hostile responses to an essay by Sontag in September 2001.

Sontag identified a ' disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality ' and the '

unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media

commentators ' in the days after September 11.

Key word: 'reality television'

27. Topic sentence: Sontag argued that there seemed to be a 'campaign to infantilize the public'

by licensed voices, which systematically avoided acknowledgement that this was 'an attack on the

worlds self proclaimed superpower, undertaken as consequences of specific American alliances and

action".

Not surprisingly, Satong's essay was unwelcomed to readers for whom the agenda of American

response was set by different texts.

Key Word: infantilize the public

28. Topic sentence: On 7th October the bombing of Afghanistan began, on 8 October Governor

Tom Ridge was sworn in as head of a newly created Department of Homeland Security, and on 26th

October the USA Patriot Act became Law.

Many Americans, including academics and intellectuals, were critical of such government responses.

No key word.

29. Topic sentence: Even before the publication date of Satong's essay in The New York , Charles

Krauthammer , in The Washington Post, Published an attack criticizing her intellectual ' moral

obtuseness'.

Charles Krauthammer argued that there was no other choice in America's response to 9/11.

Key word: Global Power.

30. Topic sentence: For years later, at Ground Zero and beyond , visual culture was still at the centre

of struggles between those who wished to critique or to ' wield ' American 'Global Power'.

In Neo –conservative attempts to mobilize particulars pasts, pragmatic representation of '9/11' as

national unity filter and manage the reception and dissemination of images such as those of torture

at Abu Gharib and abandoned survivors inn New Orleans.

Key Word: Pragmatic representation

Subversive signs: Hal Foster

Nitya Santosh

1124115

Thesis Statement: This work does not bracket art for formal or perceptual experiment but rather

seeks out its affiliations with other practices (in the culture industry and elsewhere); it also tends

to conceive of its subject differently.

Paragraph 1

Topic sentence: The most provocative American art of the present is situated at such a crossing –

of institutions of art and political economy, of representations of sexual identity and social life.

Supporting sentences: >Assumes its purpose to be so sited, to lay in wait for these discourses so

as to riddle and expose them or to seduce and lead them astray.

>Its primary concern is not with the traditional or modernist properties of art; nor is it involved

with an epistemological investigation of the object or a phenomenological inquiry into subjective

response.

Key words: affiliations with other practices - conceive of its subject differently.

Paragraph 2

Topic sentence: The artists active in this work use many different forms of production and modes

of address, and yet they are alike in this: each treats the public space, social representation or

artistic language in which he or she intervenes as both a target and a weapon.

Supporting sentences: >The artist becomes manipulator of signs more than a producer of art

objects, and the viewer an active reader of messages rather than a passive contemplator of the

aesthetic or the consumer of the spectacular.

>This shift remains strategic if only because even today few are able to accept the status of art as

a social sign entangled with other signs in systems productive of value, power and prestige.

Key words: a target and a weapon - manipulator of signs - active reader of messages.

Paragraph 3

Topic sentence: The situational aesthetics of this art – its special attention to site, address

and audience – is prepared by the varied institutional critique of such artists as Daniel Buren,

Michael Asher, Dan Graham, Hanms Haacke, Marcel Broodthaers, Lawerence Weiner, John

Baldessari and Joseph Kosuth.

Supporting sentences: >Yet if Kruger, Holzer et al. Inherit the conceptual critiqueof the given

parameters of art production and reception, they do so not uncritically.

>Just as conceptual artists extended the minimalist ananlysis of the art object, so too these

later artists have opened up the conceptual critique of the art institution in order to intervene in

ideological representations and languages of everyday life.

Key words: contemporary rejection of all istitutional critique.

Paragraph 4

Topic sentence: As is well known the investigation of Buren, Asher, Haacke and Broodthaers

focuses primarily on the instituional frame, and secondarily on the economic logic, of the

modern art object.

Supporting sentences: >These four artists sought to reveal -ways in which production and

reception of art are instituionally predetermined, recuperated, used.

>Since 1965 Buren has stressed the spatiotemporal predisposition. - Since 1969 Asher has

foregrounded the functional delimitation. - In 1976 Broodthaers allegorically doubled the ways

in which the museum acculturates heterogeneous objects and activities as art. - Since 1970

Haacke probed the material bases of the fine art apparatus which, repressed, allows for its

pretenses of social neutrality and cultural autonomy.

Key words: instituional frame - economic logic.

Paragraph 5

Topic sentnence: It was the need to expose this false idealism of art that initially led these artists

to its "mystical body", the modern museum, for it became clear that its supposedly supplemental

role of "preservation, enclosure and refuge" (Buren) actually preconditioned art production,

predisposed it to an ideologyof transcendence and self-sufficiency.

Supporting sentences: >As opposed to the argument - ' avant-garde practice had attempted to

destroy the instituion of art' – these practioners held that modern artists had not comprehended it

– its conditions of production, exhibition and exchange.

Key words: exposing of its "alibis" - Foregrounding of its "framework".

Paragraph 6

Topic sentence: Clearly this is an important intervention, but it is a necessarily (de)limited one.

Supporting sentences: >Firstly, by its very attention to institutional frame; secondly, posed within

the gallery/museum, it is often referenced to the given forms of art; however residual, these

categories are sustained even as they are demonstrated to be logically arbitrary, ideologically

laden and/or historically obsolete.

Paragraph 7

Topic sentence: This is not to suggest that these artists neglect the exhibition framework.

Supporting sentences: >Lawler and McCollum collaborated on an installation 100 hydrocal

sculpture pedestals.

>Here the abstraction of modern sculpture, its passage from sited, figurative monument to

siteless, autonomous sign, was decoded as its "abstraction" by the commodity-form.

Key words: passage from sited, figurative monument to siteless, autonomous sign.

Paragraph 8

Topic sentence: This displacement of art by its own support, by its own spectacle, is both a

characteristic strategy and a historical demonstration of Lawler and McCollum.

Supporting sentences: >Functional indifference of art objects produced in the studio/gallery/

museum nexus is shown by McCollum to be no less determined by the market.

>"empty surrogates" – reduction of content.

Key words: Empty surrogates.

Paragraph 9

Topic sentence: Other artists, no less influenced by conceptual work, have sought to reflect

critically on representations outside the art apparatus – and from there to turn back to address

discourses within it.

Supporting sentences: >For these artists, ideology cannot be reduced to one language, then

critiqued, or the institution of art to one space, then charted.

>The position of the subject must be taken into account, and it is at the point of production of the

subject rather than of the art object that this work intervenes.

>This art cannot afford to take the demonstrations of institutional critique for granted.

Key words: "situationist" strategy .

Paragraph 10

Topic sentence: Both Kruger and Holzer are concerned with the power at work in social

representations; Holzer's site of intervention is language.

Supporting sentences: >Barthes wrote – Language is legislation, speech is its code... To utter a

discourse is to subjugate... The performance of a language system – is neither reactionary nor

progressive; it is quite simply fascist.

> Holzer seeks to undo this "fascim"- her works suggest not only how language subjects us but

how we may disarm it.

>The tactic is subversive complicity: "It is within speech that speech must be fought, led astray

– not by the message of which it is the instrument, but by the play of words of which it is the

theater."

> "theater" becomes a bedlam of voices which mocks the certainty of personal credos and the

neutrality of public discourse.

Key words: bedlam of voices.

Paragraph 11

Topic sentence: This bedlam-effect is strongest in her Truisms (1977), an alphabetical list of

statements which together confound all order and logic.

Supporting sentences: > The Truisms not only "place in contradiction certain ideological

structures that are usually kept apart" but set them into open conflict.

>This contestation-by-contradiction is also contextual.

>Truisms expose the false homogeneity of the signs on the signs on the street among which they

are often placed.

Key words: contestation-by-contradiction – entanglement in discourse.

Paragraph 12

Topic sentence: This entanglement is a continual displacement- to the point where the reader

begins to see, first, that (s)he is not an autonomous individual of free beliefs so much as a subject

inserted into language and, second, that this insertion can be changed.

Supporting sentences: >The experience of truistic entrapment cedes to a feeling of anarchic

release.

>This release comes of the recognition that meaning is a rhetorical construction of will more

than a Platonic apprehension of an idea – that, however directed toward truth, it is finally based

on power.

>This is not a nihilistic insight: it allows for resistance based on truth constructed through

contradiction.

>One genuine truth that the Truisms expresses: that only through contradiction can one construct

a self that is not entirely subjected.

Key words: meaning is a rhetorical construction of will.

Paragraph 13

Topic sentence: Entanglement in discourse is most extreme in the Inflammatory Essays (1979-

82), which also appeared first as street posters and then as signs, books, art works.

Supporting sentences: >Here again the voices are provocative: imperative commands and

subjunctive inducements mix with the impersonal mode of truth.

>Essays are more arguments than statements, and they do not taxonomize ideologies so much as

hyperbolize political rhetoric.

>Some voices insinuate, others demand. A few almost convince, but finally each voice is

convinced, conquered by its own speech.

Key words: force of language.

Paragraph 14

Topic sentence: In 1981 through 1983 Holzer worked (in part with Peter Nadin) on the Living

series.

Supporting sentences: >With these signs and plaques Holzer functioned more in given art spaces;

at the same time she drew more on everyday talk.

>The language of Living series is omnivorous.

>In the Living texts especially, Holzer meets the subtle subjections active in social discourse

with wit and play.

Key words: A sign is a social directive.

Paragraph 15

Topic sentence: Her recent Survival series is again more desperate: these short texts about class

domination, racial oppression, sexual subjection and nuclear annihilation rebut the Panglossian

feel-goodism of the Regan era.

Supporting sentences: >Here it is uncertain whether Holzer represents the rhetoric of "crisis" or

whether she succumbs to it.

Paragraph 16

Topic sentence: Like all her work, the Survival series is involved in a delegitimation of power, in

a rhetorical exposure of its discursive guises and ploys.

Supporting sentences: >In this critique, it is said Holzer is not specific: her work is too anarchic,

too atopic.

Key words: shifting crosswords – effective resistance.

Paragraph 17

Topic sentence: In her panels, posters and books Kruger appropriates photographs (mostly of

women) from media sources, blows them up and crops them severely, then combines them with

short texts.

Supporting sentences: >Alternated image and text – montaged them in a parody of display ads –

combined them in the declarative address of signs in the street.

>This "interception" of the stereotype is her principle device.

>Such foreclosure implied not only that such cultural fictions and subject positions are more

absolute than they are but also that the artist is in a transcendent relation to them.

Paragraph 18

Topic sentence: Aware of these problems, Kruger has suggested that image appropriation, rather

than question "the original use and exchange value" of representations, contradict "the surety of

our initial readings" and strain "the appearence of naturalism," may in fact confirm them.

Supporting sentences: >Her later work evades this closure, for in its oscilliation "from implicit

to explicit, from inference to declaration" neither photograph nor text, neither connotation nor

denotation is priviledged as a stable site or mode of truth.

>This is not to say that they are arbitrary.

Paragraph 19

Topic sentence: The women in the images used by Kruger are most often posed or pursued but in

either case passive, there to be gazed upon, saved, found out, used.

Supporting sentences: >These positions of capture presuppose a male subject who seeks to fix

his image of desire and/or who identifies with the assumed protagonist of the situation.

>This accords with the ways in which Hollywood cinema plays upon the scopophillic drives and

ego identifications of the masculine viewer.

Paragraph 20

Topic sentence: Such disruption might also be grasped by general reference to the Lacanian

orders of the Imaginary and the Symbolic.

Supporting sentences: Lacan spoke of the Imaginary in terms of a dialectic of self and image,

and of the Symbolic in terms of the mediation of language.

Key words: the Imaginary and the Symbolic.

Paragraph 21

Topic sentence: For Lacan, as soon as the subject is represented in language, (s)he is excluded or

absented from it, and so is literally divided by it.

Supporting sentences: Kruger resists this disavowal of the body, for with it goes a disavowal of

the productive, of the transformative.

Key words: rejects the manipulation

Paragraph 22

Topic sentence: Her critique, then is not a single or simple sabotage: it seeks to catch our various

desires and disciplines that position the body and invest representation.

Supporting sentences: >Her work has had to be reflexive.

>Her recent pieces are concerned as much with the economic manipulation of (her own) art as

with sexist subjection

>Finally is the interest of her work: reflexivity with which it considers the discourses, with

which it is engaged.

Using Psychoanalytic Theory: Parveen Adams, Rosalind Delmar and Sue Lipshitz

Reshma.S

1124120

Semester I

MEL 132

Anil Pinto

 13 July 2011

 

 

Using Psychoanalytic Theory

Parveen Adams, Rosalind Delmar and Sue Lipshitz

 

Thesis statement: "Laura Mulvey writing about Allen Jones in Spare Rib has shown how fruitful a psychoanalytic approach can be-there again with no question of psychoanalyzing Allen Jones"

 

1.Topic sentence : "Michelene Wandor and Margot Waddell's comment on Laura Mulvey's article and Mary Kelly's exhibition would be more of 'a contribution to a debate' had any of their of points been argued."

Instead-they present-series of assertions-need to be questioned and clarified-first-their speculation about Mary Kelly's intentions-second-their claims about-exhibition's 'difficulty' and 'obscurity' for visitor-single response on-any exhibition-Post Partum Document included-unnecessary-unilluminating enterprise

Key word:' Post Partum Document'

 

2. Topic sentence: "One of the strength of Laura Mulvey's article is that it treats the exhibition as a product of artistic practice."

Relationship between-work of an artist-theoretical position informing the work- missing in Margot and Michelene's comments-Mary Kelley's exhibition-exposes-difficulties involved

Key word: 'product of artistic practice'

 

3. Topic sentence: "Their account of her work consequently reduces it to a question of the 'issues' involved, simply and somewhat blandly described as 'the mutual mother-child socialization process in infancy' : a sociological categorization which misses an important point."

Mary Kelly's work-original-deconstructs-assumed unity of mother and child relation-inorder to give place-mother's phantasies of possession and loss-links-exploration of psychic forces involved to social relation-indicates motherhood as a constructed meaning-deconstruction-achieved through-work of-uncovering-interplay of unconscious desire with conscious activity and physical and mental labour-demanded by childcare-this aspect-not mentioned by Margot and Micheline

Key word: 'motherhood'

 

4. Topic sentence: "This brings to the question of the 'relatively new area of psychoanalysis' – 'new' for the women's movement or 'new' within psychoanalysis?

Margot and Micheline-connects-philistinism and anti-theoriticism-failed-explain-why Mary Kelly  should have adopted-conciliatory stance

Key word: 'psychoanalysis'

 

5. Topic sentence: "Perhaps Margot and Micheline could be more explicit about what they mean by ' a confusion about the nature of psychoanalysis '."

Psychoanalytic theory-used to-structure-exhibition-contains-no overtone of 'clinical process'-not a psychoanalysis of Mary Kelly or her child—theory-emphasizes-ideological positioning of women-explores phantasy of the loss of phallus

Key word: 'nature of psychoanalysis'