Bioautography and Carolee Schneemann's VULVA’S MORPHIA

Abstract

New 7000-word article on the contemporary body artist Carolee Schneemann's book VULVA'S MORPHIA (1997). The article proposes a new theory called bioautography. This critical neologism inverts the normative term “autobiography”: instead of the “self-life-writing” order of the term autobiography, the term bioautography gives primacy to the bio-life in self-writing. Imagining the character of VULVA as and with a language puts us in the position of thinking explicitly about where semiotics works in terms of desire and power.