Workers Never Leaving: On the Abject after Postmodernism

Looking at a selection of Mika Rottenberg's films addressing forms of gendered labour, the essay argues that the artist has developed a novel approach to the abject that differs substantially, and in many ways inverts, the use of the abject in postmodern art. In Rottenberg's case, the abject (theorised through a Marxist feminist methodology drawing on the work of Marina Vishmidt and Kerstin Stakemeier as well as the Endnotes collective) is relocated into relations of production and the exchange between the worker's body and its surroundings. The reading is based on Rottenberg's use of 'exceptional bodies' that articulate a dialectic between labour power and appearance as 'asset'.