Week 6 Module 7 Discussion Forum

AH 270: Art/Identity/Politics

Reading and discussion guide for Representing Race: Black/African American U.S. Women Artists and Feminism

Foster et al. pp. 639-644:

1. What are the similar stages of identity politics—racial, multicultural, feminist, queer?

2. What are some of the common strategies employed by these artists?

3. What are the different approaches employed by Piper, Weems, Simpson and Walker?

4. What is the “stereotypical grotesque”? Do you find this strategy an effective means to combat common stereotypes of race/ethnicity?

bell hooks, “Marginality as a Site of Resistance”:

1. How does she use the terms “margin” and “center”?

2. How is marginality a site of “radical possibility, a space of resistance”?

3. What are her issues with mainstream (white) feminism?

Adrian Piper, “The Triple Negation of Colored Women Artists”

1. Why does she choose the term “Colored women artists”? (read her footnotes…)

2. What are the reasons she cites for not including more CWA’s in shows, or writing about contemporary art?

3. What are some of the ostensibly promising changes since the 1980s? Why does she remain suspicious?

4. What are the various problems of believing in and play the “zero sum game”?

5. Why is she critical of the discourse of “otherness”? How does this relate to bell hooks’s position?

6. What are the 3 negations? How do CWAs present a triple threat?

7. Why is she critical of postmodernism, and what alternative does she insist upon?