Differentiating the Canon. Feminism, Marxism and Psychoanalysis in the Theory of Art by Griselda Pollock
Lecture by Ewa Majewska

  • Differentiating the Canon.  Feminism, Marxism and Psychoanalysis in the Theory of Art by Griselda Pollock

Analysing the sexist entanglement of the theory and practice of art and searching for appropriate tools to exclude women from the expanse of culture, Griselda Pollock indicates that what Heidi Hartmann called an “unhappy marriage of feminism and Marxism” should be overcome in order to free the culture from inequalities and oppressions and make its analysis a critical analysis.

In her book, Vision and Difference. Feminity, Feminism and the Histories of Art Pollock makes an attempt to include in the research on the history of art the category of production and to merge the critical tools of feminism and Marxism in such a way as to make it possible in the history of art to carry out reasonable research on the canon, the presence and the absence of women, as well as to explain such phenomena as reproduction, ideology or opposition. Inspired by L. Nochlin, K. Millet, V. Woolf, L. Althusser, T. J. Clark, B. Brecht, and by other male and female authors, Pollock is not trying to convince us anymore that outstanding female artists “did exist” – instead, she builds a theory of the cultural reproduction of inequality, where one of the elements, also reflected in art, is the exclusion of women.

In this perspective, the criticism of “product fetishism” in the world of art is enriched by the criticism of objectification, alienation and exploitation of women, and feministic art and theory are treated as tools to do away with these phenomena.

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