Some thoughts on

Power
Joannie Godwin Assignment 2: Art History BMA 312, Peter Belton

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In this essay I will study power as an issue in art. I am interested in this topic because of my third year project which reflects my struggle to find my self identity as a female, (recently new) citizen of New Zealand, child of war, domestic abuse victim, mental health patient. I feel stigmatised by being part of each of these low status groups and therefore experience feelings of powerlessness which impede my repossession of my own power. In my study of Feminism in my second year Art History paper, I realised that power, and who holds it, is pivotal in most Feminist theory. Womyns power has been far more fully explored in art than it has been explicitly discussed by theorists (Allen, 2011). The objectives of essay are to look at power, what it is theorised to be and how it functions . Then I want to examine who holds that power and what the implications are for the people who do not have power. Then finally I want to consider what theorists and practitioners believe can be done to redistribute power or to create a new power base within society.

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Judith Butler states that power can only be abused by those who have it (Kirby, 2006). The consequence of the abuse of power is injustice, from whatever stance one chooses to examine the situation. In fact it could be said that issues pertaining to power lie at the base of every issue of fairness in society. I have based this essay on the premise that: 1. power is distributed according to binary hierarchies in our society. There are the haves and the have-nots in every discourse within the social order. Statistically it is improbable that a binary system would polarise so distinctly, all things being equal. Thus the balance of power must have been implemented and maintained by domination strategies that caused imbalances severely disadvantaging huge sections of society,

and

2. for over 2000 years power has been vested in the hands of the male sex. As a result language, culture and social structure have been masculinised. The concomitant uneven positioning of power between men and women has spread throughout society in a complex hierarchy based not only on sex, but on culture, race, gender and economies.

In support of the premise of unbalanced distribution of power and resultant discrimination, I want to start by looking at what power is and how it works. Power is can be defined and discussed from a variety of different angles.

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Linguistic Definition of Power

In linguistic terms power is a noun. In signifies 1 the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way 2 the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events and 3 physical strength and force exerted by something or someone. (The Oxford Online Dictionary, 2011)

In the much quoted Why Have There Been No Great Woman Artists? Linda Nochlin (1971) describes the power that prevents womyn from acting or influencing as "the entire romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying, and monograph-producing substructure upon which the profession of art history is based" (p. 153).

Philosophical Discussion of Power

Michel Foucault saw power, from a Marxist perspective, as a mobile and constantly shifting multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the processes which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them;thus forming a chain or system (Foucault 1979, in Allen, 2011, section 1, para 5). These relationships, compiled and defined by each social interaction, pervade the social body.

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Foucault wrote that power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere (1978, in Allen, 2011 section 3.5, para 1). In The Psychic Life of Power, (1977) Butler elaborates that culture produces ways of being and of knowing. These ways of being and knowing have such potent frames of reference that they appear to create an irrefutable reality. They are so ingrained into the thought of society that the sexing and sexualizing logic has been overlooked. Pollock calls language and culture the phallic symbolic system (1999, p. 31). The way modern Western Languages are constructed empowers the male point of view.

In addition, the brains genetic predisposition for binary memory systems perpetuates these implicit power structures. Knowledge is stored in either/or categories in our brain. Any one word or concept stored in one of the categories will become associated with the other words and concepts in that category and this is reflected in our language. Luce Irigaray analyses these structures of binary regulation and confirms that the masculinist system is deeply embedded within signification (Kirby, 2006).

Power in terms of a Feminist Perspective

There are many conceptualizations of power in feminist writings. Numerous feminists see power in terms of an oppressive or unjust power-over relationship often called 'domination, 'oppression' or 'subjection'. Power is therefore a resource which needs to be (re)distributed (Allen, 2011, section 2, para 1).

Power itself is seen as necessary and beneficial to society However it is the unequal distribution among men and womyn, creating a phallocratic order which privileges the masculine, which causes far reaching distortions in a womyns relations with both others and herself (Irigaray 1985, in Allen 2011, section 4, para 5).
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In addition, many minority groups comprise individuals with feelings of powerlessness, searching for personal autonomy as an escape from cultural power structures. Allen states that ...much work in feminist theory is devoted to the tasks of critiquing women's subordination, analyzing the intersections between sexism and other forms of subordination such as racism, heterosexism, and class oppression, and envisioning the possibilities for both individual and collective resistance to such subordination (2011, section 4 ).

Womyn are Powerless

The fact that there has been no great production of womyns art throughout the history of paternalism is proof that womyn do not hold the power and conversely that men do have it (Nochlin, 1988). According to Kirby, Foucoults most valuable contribution to the reconceptualization of power was to acknowledge its perverse productivity and ubiquity (2006, p. 40). Foucaults insight into the nature of subjection shows that, by becoming a subject, a person is vulnerable to power relations (Allen, 2011, section 3.5, para 1). Power is all knowledge, including self-knowledge.

Therefore, as self-knowledge is individually built within power structures that preference one sex over the other, the male sex is enhanced in their functioning and ability to act (power) while the female sex is undermined in their discovery of who they are and what they can do.

Theorists point out that the concepts male, self, familiar, yes, good, technology, power, violence (among others) become linked while womyn becomes associated with mysterious, bad, nature, partnership, gentleness etc. Irigaray elaborates that improper, other, bodiliness, irrationality and animal have also become accepted as belonging to womyn and this establishes a

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disposition towards original inadequacy in every female child (Irigaray in Kirby, 2006).

However, everyone, regardless of sex class race or gender, desires the power to govern their own life. Buss (2008, para 1), discusses this need for personal autonomy, saying how each individual desires to be a law to oneself. Buss goes on to comment, Most of us want to be autonomous because we want to be accountable for what we do, and because it seems that if we are not the ones calling the shots, then we cannot be accountable. More importantly, perhaps, the value of autonomy is tied to the value of self-integration. We don't want to be alien to, or at war with, ourselves; and it seems that when our intentions are not under our own control, we suffer from self-alienation (Buss, 2008, para1).

It is not possible for people who feel alienated, to feel powerful within the current structures of dominator societies (Eisler, 1995). It is now commonly accepted that modern civilization is built on patriarchal power systems 6000 years old, when land began to be violently appropriated accompanied by rape and murder. As warring male raiding parties expanded their boundaries, womyn were taken as slaves while men were slaughtered. The foundation relationship, in our culture, between men and womyn was one of violent domination (Eisler, 1995). In fact, our culture is the child of rape.

Kristeva, in her book Powers of Abjection, (1982) explains that one of the reasons womyn remain powerless in Western culture is that for centuries they have been controlled by stringent religious, and corresponding sexual, prohibitions regarding menstruation and childbirth. Within these structures the blood of the womyn is constructed as abject and thus abhorrent. This system of abjection works to separate male children from womyns influence (Kristeva, 1982).

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In these contexts womyn is associated with the archaic mother and concomitant archetype of generativity (Kristeva, 1982). By implying the abhorrence of womyns blood, the hierarchy of power was established and maintained in the hands of the men (Kristeva, 1982). In Kristevas opinion power must be subdued and shifted into the hands of the individual.

To change society

Irigaray goes further and expounds upon the idea that if the aim (is) simply for a change in the distribution of power, leaving intact the power structure itself, then they (womyn) are resubjecting themselves, deliberately or not, to a phallocratic order (Irigaray 1985, cited in Allen 2011 section 4, para 5). To subvert the phallocratic order, (our Western society) we need to change the entire premise upon which our culture is built.

Butler deems the direct study of power to be more helpful than the feminist focus on subordination. Butler is cited by Allen as considering that feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of women, the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought (2001 section 3.5, para 5).

A better avenue, in Butlers view, would be to understand how power is maintained through language, thought patterns and gender definitions. These things are very important to understanding female embodiment and therefore personal power. Could they be represented within visual art practice?

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Rosemary Betterton (1996) explains that womyn are faced with the fascinating task of trying to transform metaphors such as distance, implicit in looking, and touch, implicit in embodiment into a new visual system that subverts the power of the phallic symbol system. Does this mean the creation of a new language? The emergence of a transformed culture? Allen (2011) suggests that Irigaray's work on sexual difference suggests an alternative conception of power as a transformative force. Could this transformative power result in a new communication system to be understood both visually and auditorily?

Joseph Beuys believed so. He used obscure materials, like fat and felt, to make a profound, visual, philosophical point. He believed that performing the metaphor would change the world. Beuys is an example of an artist who has tried to replace societys passive expectation of art by constructing rituals to restore balance to society. Beuys as guru enacted ritualistic communications in an attempt to shift societys perceptions and create new avenues of discourse (Jones, 2006). Feminist performance has copied Beuys model, transforming metaphor like Beuys transformed fat and felt, to invent other ways of conceptualisation. Of this feminist attempt to redefine the metaphor in language Jean Baker Miller writes, there is enormous validity in women's not wanting to use power as it is presently conceived and used. Rather, women may want to be powerful in ways that simultaneously enhance, rather than diminish, the power of others (Miller 1992, in Allen, 2011, section 4, para 2).

Lucy Lippard (1983) commenting on the fact that performers and audiences have enacted rituals for as long as there have been cultures, emphasises the importance of these rituals by explaining how much mathematical, engineering and astronomical knowledge was necessary for the detailed creation of the ceremonial places associated with the rituals. Subjects throughout history have needed to prove their existence through ritual in order to confirm their own identity. In this way the subject attempts to authenticate its discourse with society by re-living mythical or instinctual moments (Marsh, 1993).
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Lippard highlights this importance of societal intervention in the construction of knowing who and what one is. For her it is through performance, knowing through doing (1983, p. 30), that one constructs identity nowadays. Marsh remarks that the repeated use of similar actions by body artists of the 60s and 70s suggests that the subjects were trying to prove their own existence to themselves and to society (1993).

Performing

Performative feminist politics had no emphasis on any one, single, definition of womyn or any other political identity. Instead, as any identity is constructed performatively, any identity can also be created and shaped as it is lived. Therefore identity becomes something entirely within the control of the individual (Butler, 2009). In Gender Trouble, Butler theorises that resistance to power is the re-articulation of power. She believes that the shift in power will come about as a result of new gender identities incorporating a sense of personal power, which are created by performing gender norms (Allen, 2011).

By anticipating and creating alternative identities, a different and better political future is created. Differing conceptualizations will begin to be performed and created, and therefore the general understanding of what power is will be drastically shifted within the common understanding of society (Allen, 2011).

Marsh talks about how body and performance art was aimed specifically in these reconceptualizations in that they were all about breaking taboos in the 70s (1993). Describing Serlacs performances, involving multiple incisions, insertion of hooks into the skin and being suspended, she explains that the pain and stamina needed to overcome it, proves the limits of the body, both
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physically and psychically thereby defining it. Nevertheless Marsh points out the deep intricate male bias of culture prevailed and man was seen as master of discourse, master of ceremonies and further, master of pain (1993, p. 99) However, new language was formed and metaphor was created. The numerous wounds caused in these performances communicate at the non verbal level to reveal the aggressive tension of the subject. Gina Pane, however, did not just want to explore her own identity. She used self-inflicted injuries as a tool to bring real experience (through empathy with her discomfort) into the viewer's appreciation of her art. In her early performances she contributed heavily to the creation of the new metaphor language in bringing complex visualizations of psychological states and conflicts to the audiences attention (Oxford Grove Art, 2002).

In New Zealand, Allie Eagle raised awareness of rape and other sexual violence done to womyn. Her most famous work Empathy for a Rape Trial Victim (1978) was one of the most poignant installations of the New Zealand art world. Abortion was also a really important issue for Eagle as she believed that womyn should have the power to define what was happening to their bodies. In her painting This Woman Died I Care, attempts to get others to think about the risks womyn take when they are not empowered to control their own body. She used her influence as a curator to try and change womyns situation and to identify the inequities faced by female artists.

Carolee Schneemann was one of the first artists to explore the goddess cult (Lippard, 1983). In her performance Eye-Body she appeared naked with live snakes referencing the goddess dominion over the snake, symbolizing fertility and rebirth. Schneemann brought these highly feminised signifiers to the attention of the public. In addition, her tactic of performing naked was an attempt to transform herself from object, in the eyes of male society, to image maker, creating her own self image. Schneemann is quoted by Lippard as

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saying In some sense I made a gift of my body to other women: giving our bodies back to ourselves (1983, p. 77).

Betterton says that in paternalist culture the body represents all that is degrading in the erotic tradition of Western art and yet - a means of articulating a specifically female experience (1996, p. 9). Schneemans work reveals this attempt to express the female experience. Her stated purpose was to release all womyn from the constraints of a sex negative society into one of connection with each other (Lippard, 1983, p. 77). Therefore her intent can be articulated as an attempt to shift the balance of power. Instead of fuelling the war between the male and female factions, her work was supposed to reinforce connection and concomitant power, between womyn themselves. Jones (1998) summarises Schneemanns intent an attempt to take the focus of power away from the individual and empower womyn as a whole by giving womyn her own eroticism. This is the transformative power that Irigaray speaks of.

Concluding thoughts

The task seems unattainable. To change the entire power structure of the whole of patriarchal civilization. And yet it is being attempted. Research is happening into existing intersectional analyses of power. All new information is being brought into the open and is being rethought in light of recent discussions of globalization, cosmopolitanism, and transnational justice. The relationships between action-theoretical, systemic, and constitutive dimensions of power are being analysed. (Allen, 2011, Section 3.4 para 1). In the past most enquiry was directed at defining what power is and who holds it. Presently though, artists and performance artists in particular, have outstripped the theorists in investigating the practical implementation of a new power base in society. It seems idealistic, but many serious theorists believe it

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to be possible. Eislers hope is that as we shift the powerbase in society (t)he most dramatic change ..... will be that we, and our children and grandchildren, will again know what it means to live free of the fear of war. (1995, p. 198)

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Buss, S. (2008). "Personal Autonomy". The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/personalautonomy/>.

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