Insubmissas

Abstract

It asks how the shift from a body constituted as an object of contemplation to a body that intervenes in the very conditions of visibility transforms relations among desire, authorship, and power. The approach combines comparative analysis of artworks, self-representation, performance, and photography, using the opposition between smoothness and roughness as an analytical device for examining different regimes of visuality. The analysis shows that the feminist iconographic turn does not amount to a linear passage from submission to autonomy, but to the destabilization of codes that naturalized particular modes of representation. It concludes that the radicality of these practices lies in making the gaze less comfortable, shifting the female body from an available object to a field of enunciation, conflict, and knowledge production.