<i>Impossible Performances: Duras as Dramatist</i> argues that Marguerite Duras is one of the most important figures on the landscape of twentieth-century theater. Like Artaud and Beckett, she is exemplary of the most radical inquiry into the limits of performance. Duras used theater against itself and dramatized the failure of mimetic realism to represent the post-colonial, post-atomic moment. Unlike Artaud’s and Beckett’s, Duras’s metaphysics of performance were motivated by a desire to make audible the subjectivities of femininity, to unstage the representational structures that have (re)produced the docile female body of western discourse. Duras’s drama consistently features female protagonists who exist in a relationship of struggle with the representational frame and who speak back to the viewing authorities of a masculine symbolic. In this sense, her performance texts and mental dramas can be said to epitomize the move away from the problematics of modernist revolt to one of the most salient rhetorical concerns of post-modern feminism: the impossibility of representation.

Impossible Performances: Duras as Dramatist (Literature and the Visual Arts)

Cody, Gabrielle H.

Humor & Entertainment

Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

<p>Pornography, on or off the stage in an inflammatory issue, and one which is deeply linked to theatrical representation throughout history. But what happens to the notions of the pornographic when a female performer subverts the conventional models of pornographic representation by reclaiming the agency of her own body? This is exactly what sex industry worker and performance artist Annie Sprinkle attempts through her courageous and challenging work. By locating her discourse on her own body, she renders exploitation impossible and refers to herself as a "post-porn modernist". However, Sprinkle's complication of the power raises important theoretical issues. When is identity not created by an outside source? When is the female body not in a prostituted relationship to representational structures? Is the spectator always a voyuer? Why is "post-porn" modernism still not endorsed by many brands of feminism? In order to structure a conversation about these issues, "Hardcore from the Heart" will not only comprise a critical introduction to Sprinkle's later theatre work and essays, but also include several interviews with artists who have worked closely with Sprinkle over the years.</p>

Hardcore from the Heart : The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance

Sprinkle, Annie

Continuum Intl Pub Group

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Books by Cody, Gabrielle H.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cody, Gabrielle H.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Impossible Performances: Duras as Dramatist (Literature and the Visual Arts)

Hardcore from the Heart : The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance