Disturbing practices: exploring issues of race and gender in American performance art

Abstract

This thesis discusses the work of a range of performance artists based in the United States who deal with issues of race and gender. I argue that their work actively ellicits a reflexive response from their audiences that embodies Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism. I contend that the artists employ the strategy of mimicry and specifically that espoused by Homi Bhabha in order to create a performance encounter that is inherently open-ended and that pivots on dialogic dynamics. I will discuss the feminist interventions of Carolee Schneemann, Hannah Wilke and Yayoi Kusama in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the identity and diasporic based works of Adrian Piper and Ana Mendieta in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and the enactment based performances of William Pope L, James Luna, Robbie McCauley, Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña in the ‘80s, ‘90s and into the 21st century. I argue that these artists’ performances actively solicit a variety of responses, in an attempt to create a dialogic viewing dynamic that encourages their audiences to adopt a self-reflexive position.