Rethinking Absence: feminist legacies, critical possibilities

Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference addresses the on-going dialogue between feminism, art history and visual culture from contemporary scholarly perspectives. It reviews and revises existing feminist art histories but also reasserts the need for continuous feminist interventions in the academy, the art world and beyond. \n \nMy contribution (chapter 4 – Rethinking Absence, feminist legacies, critical possibilities) explores the way in which thinking through art practice allows for the possibility of rethinking philosophical ideas. Specifically, rethinking the way in which absence is seen to signify through art practice and how it is represented in extant art criticism. It questions, in reference to Jacques Derrida’s proposition of différance, what is positioned philosophically by the metaphysics of presence – what hinges on this - and how its rethinking can have implications socially and politically. \n \n“Coming at the moment when contemporary art practices are themselves involved in re-cycling, re-evaluating and re-enacting the past, this collection asks how feminism’s own ‘troubled’ histories can be reframed productively in the present. The questions that feminism raised in the 1970s and 80s are still pertinent, and are addressed in a number of original essays: What does gender equality mean in the arts? How can women’s subjectivities be articulated or performed differently in art practices? Can attention to gender enable us to engage with complex differences of race, sexuality and class, of age and generation? Do we need new interpretative and conceptual models for writing about art? Alexandra Kokoli’s thoughtful and illuminating introduction reminds us that reframing is a risky but exciting business if it makes us ask these questions anew, with attention to the politics and aesthetics of the present.” (Rosemary Betterton, Emeritus Reader, Lancaster University). \n \n“Artist and writer Karen Roulstone does not merely challenge the boundary between theory and practice, but eloquently demonstrates how painting can engage and collaborate with philosophy towards a rethinking of absence beyond polarised and hierarchical binaries and, crucially, beyond the metaphysics of presence, in the contestation of which feminism has undeniably a stake.” (Kokoli: 2008:14). (Dr Alexandra M. Kokoli, Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University).