OMG, Does Every Woman Adore a Fascist?

Research output: Contribution to conferenceOtherpeer-review

Abstract

Sylvia Plath’s (in)famous poetic words, ‘every woman adores a fascist’, from the first half of the 1960s and included in ‘Daddy’, continue to give us nightmares. Is this true? Who is ‘us’? And, as suspected by at least one scholar, is this really a poem about Mommy? These are some of the burning questions that may or may not be addressed in this 'didactic play' (a theory-based play to be performed live for audiences), which will seek to prioritise fascism and sex. In the play, while ‘sex’ may or may not refer to the experience of having sex or the experience of embodying differentiating sexual features, ‘fascism’ will always and unambiguously refer to a politics. The key issues are (a) what ‘politics’ and (b) whether such politics may have anything to do with art, also known as ‘sublimation’. The dialogue/play is inspired by various incidents and processes including: 1. The history of patriarchy as the history of sexualisation of power over. 2. Fears about certain things that Carla Lonzi and Valerie Solanas thought about art. 3. A woman the author met in Helsinki in 2016 and described in a lengthy essay on contemporary fascism in Berlin Quarterly 5 (Autumn 2016). 3. Golden Dawn Girls (Havard Bustnes, 2017), a documentary film.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 17 May 2018
EventPropositions for Non-Fascist Living #4: Unpacking Aesthetics and the Far Right - BAK , Utrecht, Netherlands
Duration: 17 Mar 201817 Mar 2018
https://www.bakonline.org/program-item/unpacking-aesthetics-and-the-far-right/

Conference

ConferencePropositions for Non-Fascist Living #4: Unpacking Aesthetics and the Far Right
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityUtrecht
Period17/03/1817/03/18
Internet address

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • fascism
  • women
  • Contemporary art

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