Woman's Art Inc.

Francesca Woodman's Self-Images: Transforming Bodies in the Space of Femininity Author(s): Jui-Ch'i Liu Reviewed work(s): Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 2004), pp. 26-31 Published by: Woman's Art Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3566495 . Accessed: 19/06/2012 14:38
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WOODMAN'S SELF-IMA FRANCESCA

TransformingBodies in the Space of Femininity
By Jui-Ch'i Liu

FrancescaWoodman(1958-81) he Americanphotographer

was born in Denver, Colorado, and grew up in Boulder, where her parents were professors in the Department of Art at the University of Colorado, her mother a ceramicist, her father a photographer and painter. A few facts of her life are well known. She started taking photographs at age 13, and studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence from 1975 to 1979. She spent her junior year in Rome, where she frequented the Maldoror bookshop-gallery, which specialized in Surrealism. It was there that Woodman had her first solo exhibition. After completing her degree in Providence, she moved to New York City. Barely a week after her first book, Some Disordered Interior Geometries, was published, in January 1981, Woodman threw herself from the window of her East Village loft. She was 22. Since then, Woodman has become almost a cult figure among feminist curators and critics. During her very brief career, Woodman created more than 500 When Sloan photographic works, most self-representations. Rankin, her close friend, asked her why she so often was the model in her work, she explained: "It's a matter of convenience, I'm always available."' However, feminist scholars have since treated this coherent body of self-portraits as exhibiting the exploration of her feminine desire and identity and placed her among the feminist body artists of the 1970s, alongside Ana Mendieta, Hannah Wilke, and Carolee Schneemann. Woodman's self-images can also be placed around the notion of spatial merging: the merger of her body with the building, the space, or the nature she inhabits.2 In this light, I propose a feminist/psychoanalytic reading of Woodman's formation of feminine space and subjectivity in order to elucidate the sexual politics of her self-representations.3 The theme of an elusive self, absorbed into a nostalgic space, is central to Woodman's self-representations. She often staged herself engaging in an elaborate game of merging with the wall of an abandoned house. Woodman developed this theme as early as her first year at the Rhode Island School of Design. In From Space2 (1975-76; Fig. 1), Woodman stands against the crumbling interior walls of a dilapidated house. Giant shards of peeling, floral wallpaper in her hands envelop her body like a skirt or veil. She exhibits her desire to fuse with the wall through hiding behind the restored flowered wallpaper. Similarly, in House #3 (1975-76; Fig. 2) from her House Series, Woodman displays herself in a transformational state. She is curled in a fetal position under a window frame: through overly long exposure and continuously fluid movement she has blurred her body into a ghostly specter. She hides behind the peeling sheets of wallpaper picked up from the pieces of debris scattered on the floor. These effects make her seem to disappear into the wall. In House #4 (1975-76; Fig. 3), Woodman appears once again as a blurred phantom crouching in a fetal position, this time seen behind the detached mantel of an old fireplace in front of the chipped wall. She appears to be struggling to hide herself by merging into the dark womb of the dismantled fire-

place. Woodmancontinuedthis theme for the next severalyears, photographingherself alwaysaboutto dartbackinto the wall. Feministcriticshave regarded kindof self-representation this as in to the entrapment a womanby the wallpaper Charof analogous lotte PerkinsGilman'sshort story,The YellowWallpaper(1892).4 HelainePosner's statementis representative this line of analysis: of Woodman inhabitsher housein a mannerthat conveysan unseta of boundaries, fear tling disturbance physicaland psychological of the absorption her ego withinan ominous,abandoned of setting. Oneis reminded the heroineof Charlotte PerkinsGilman's turnof shortstory "TheYellow as the result who, of-the-century Wallpaper," isolationand repression her bourgeoisVictorian of of the extreme that the pattern existence,descendsinto madness.Shehallucinates of her wallpaperhas comealivewith women,includingherself,who muststruggleto escapefrom its confines.Onehundred years later Woodman appearsto be at riskof disappearing the supalso into finally engulfed posedsanctuaryof the home,herfragileidentity world.5 by a threatening Posner'sinterpretationprivileges the notion that "the supposed heroof turns,for both Gilman's sanctuary the home"symbolically ine and Woodman's into a space of female confinement, persona, with interiority.6 GriseldaPollockhas mainAs equatingfemininity tained, in late-19th-century society bourgeoiswomen patriarchal were limited to the privatespaces of femininityand thereby prevented from accessingthe public spaces of modernity.7 Gilman,as an awakeningfeminist writer, emblematizes this confinement to actualenthe domesticspherethroughthe metaphorof a woman's in the wallpaper.Posner asserts, in a feminist register, trapment that Woodman'srepresentation of her own body physically dehouse suggestsa simiof vouredby the wall(paper) the dilapidated in larfearof being abandoned the spaceof femininity. I Unlike Gilman's character, contend, however,that Woodman shows an active longing and a positive struggleto merge with the of wall. She is not afraidof "theabsorption her ego withinan omiFemininespaceis not so much a "threatnous, abandoned setting." ening world"as a lure with which she desperatelywants to fuse. aim Woodman's space self-representations to create an alternative This liberativespace is not the the control of patriarchy. beyond confined domesticsphere of the late-19thcentury,but an alternative feminist space with Surrealistconnotations conceived by a womanartistin the second half of the 20th century.These images, in fact, relateto the Surrealist metaphorof the outmodedhouse. influences on scholarshave recognizedthe Surrealist Although the connotationof her interestin the Woodman's work,8 Surrealist dilapidatedhouse has gone unnoticed.SigmundFreud'stheory of the uncanny(unheimlich)is relevantto the imageryof the abanThe doned house in Woodman's self-representations. notion of the feature of Surrealist uncannyis often taken as the distinguishing Freud mentions that "the uncanny is that class of photography.9
WOMAN'S ARTJOURNAL

the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar"and "whichhad become alienated from it if only throughthe process of repression."'? A haunted house, as Barbara Creed points out, is an uncanny metaphor of the womb in the Freudian idiom. She declares that when Freud refers to the places provokingthe feeling of the uncanny, home,"the womb.The ject's "former uncannyis that place whichis "known the of old, and longfamiliar," place from whichthe individualhas become alienatedthrough It repression. is in
fact this feeling of something "knownof he allocates a central place to the sub-

old"thatis centralto the uncanny.

Freud points out that in some languages the German term "an unheimlich house" is only translatable as "a are exploring the act of having been black-and-white ograph,10"x 8". photo haunted house." The house is haunted e New born. Their tearingthroughand gapCourtesyBettyand George Woodman, York. by the ghost or trace of a memory ing at the wallpapersimulatestearing which takes the individual back to the early, perhapsfetal, relation the mother'sskin and leaving her body. At the same time, apart with the mother." there are also suggestions of mother-daughterbonding, such as

: I' : ~femininity, calling to mind her longing for the primal bond with the mother. Feminine space is transformed into a reflection of a daughter'sactivedesire and fantasy. The explorationof the daughter's primal fantasy through turning the inanimate house/room into the animate maternal body recalls some works of Dorothea Tanning. In the painting Children's Games (1942),'4 Tanningexhibitsan implicit mise-enscene of an intra-uterine metaphor, evoking the uncanny.A narrowpassagelikeroomin rapidlyrecedingperspective leads to a very tiny doorway with a landscape outside. In the room, young girls are fiercely pulling apartthe wallpaper,revealinghuman bodies. In this narrow room, a Fig. 1. FrancescaWoodman ,FromSpoce2 (1975-76), metaphorical place of birth, the girls

Creed'sinterpretation suggests that the notion common to all aspects of the uncannyis that of origin.A hauntedhouse, arousinga could feeling associatedwith a place both familiarand unfamiliar, be a metaphorof the womb as the formerhome of humanbeings. Likewise, Hal Foster writes that the outmoded architecture or "seemsto evoke a maternalmemory(or fantaspace in Surrealism sy) of psychicintimacyand bodilyunity."'2 Woodman,however,deploysthe dilapidatedhouse preciselyin the register of the uncanny, as the return of the once familiar made strangeby repression.In Woodman's House Series and other self-representations,it becomes the metaphoric space of the origin-the womb. Woodman even specifies the intra-uterine metaphorthroughexhibitingher body hiding, curling,and blurringin a fetal positionbehind the wall(paper)or the detached mantel. Her blurred body and the uncanny space deconstruct the role of representation a re-preas sentation of reality,and reconstructa Her repeatsurrealist, psychicfantasy. ed performanceof merging with the outmoded house metaphoricallyexhibits her in the fantasy of maternal existence. intimacy,even intra-uterine Just as Hal Foster reminds us that "Surrealism about desire: in order is to allowit backinto architecture fixit es on the outmoded and the ornamental..., associated as they became not only with the historical and the fantastic, but with the infantile and the feminine,"'3 Woodman'sSurreal? ist-oriented self-representationsemploy the dilapidated and decorative wall(paper) or mantel to metaphorically recreate a nostalgic space of
SPRING/ SUMMER 2004

Imar #3 Fig. 2. FrancescaWood n, House (1975-76), black-and-white hotc 10"x 8". pl )graph, CourtesyBettyand GecorgeWoodman, New York.

the link between the girls'hands and the wallpaper,and the connection between the flamelikehairof the girl on the rightand the navel-likelocus on the revealingbody. In Tanning's sculptureHotel du Pavot,Chambre 202 (1970-73),15 wall figuresare violentthe ly strugglingto breakfree from the womblikewall. The wallpaper is ruptured and the figures are exploding from the belly of the wall, just as Julia Kristevawrites, "[e]vocation of the maternal body and childbirthinduces the image of birth as a violent act of expulsionthroughwhich the nascent body tears itself away from the matterof maternalinsides."'6 Here the roomis the place of the uncanny,where the daughter's primalfantasyis alwaysmarkedby the metaphoricpresence of the mother. Althoughboth Tanning and Woodmanuse similarmetaphorsto show the daughter's primal fantasy,17 the dynamics in their ' works differ. Tanning displays the 'IB daughter's fantasy of having been born; Woodmanexhibits her longing I f: or reunionwith the maternalsource. The significance of Woodman's creation of a feminine space can be [ rther understoodin relationto Julia ? _ "' ~~~Kristeva's theoryof the "semioticchora." Kristeva asserts that before a child enters into the symbolicorder,it has experienced jouissance of the fluid and heterogeneoussemiotic motility through contact with the maternal body. After the Oedipal phase, the - iESS ~ child must repress this semiotic rela/ in order to acquire the symbolic -^^ ...~ ition i~,i~'ii of language. The pre-Oedipal, )iorder which she terms the semioticchora,is evoked as a possible way of recalling the suppressed maternal space. It
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could disrupt the normality of a patriarchal symbolic order by reminding us of a different, prelinguistic,

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a (1979), Fig. 4. Francesc Woodman, Untitled,New York black-a ind-white photograph, 10" x 8". CourtesyBet and George Woodman, New York. ty

returnto the pre-Oedipal,to the period of the semiotic bre mnichora. appealof Woodman's disruption of the symbolic ... order also arises from her pleasurablerefusalto be defined by the viewer. Amelia Jones briefly mentions the deflection of the male voyeuristic gaze in Woodman's self-representations: "Abandoningovert objecthood to present herself as a hood to present herself as a
W no-esence, an re moves hersef herself physically mos psica

presymbolicsense of self, in which the maternal space and the jouissance associated with it are central and compelling rather As than peripheraland debased.'8 Alice Jardinefurtherelaborates, Kristeva's semiotic chora could play a crucial role in "gynesis"the process of rethinkingthe master narrativesof the West. She advocates that within "gynesis" the "feminine" signifies, not womanherself but a "space" that could be regardedas embodying the collapse of the master narratives. Jardinefurtherdefines this feminine space:
That of aU the words used to designate this space (now unbound)nature, Other, matter, unconscious, madness, hyle,force-have throughout the tenure of Western philosophy carried feminine connotations.... Those connotations go back, at the very least, to Plato's chora. Julia Kristeva has pointed out that space in general has always connoted the female: "Father's Time, mother's species," as Joyce put it; and, indeed, when evoking the name and destiny of women, one thinks more of the space generating and forming the human species than of time, becoming, or history.'9

Jardineclearlypoints out that the feminine space within "gynesis" is the same as Kristeva's semiotic chora, the area over which the masternarratives the symbolicorder)have lost control. (or Woodman's is self-representation best understoodin relationto Kristeva's semiotic chora and Jardine's feminine space. She metaphorically expressedher yearningto returnto such a maternal space in From Space2and the House Series. In Space2(1975from Rome (1977-78), the 78) and an untitled self-representation of the self melting into space is depicted even more agdisplay With the aid of an extendedexposure,she activelyvisugressively. alizes spinningher body out of focus, transforming into a ghostly it into the decayed walls of an outmoded dwelling. As a uterine of metaphor,the outmoded dwellingis centralto the iconography Woodman's self-images.Corporealfusionwith an outmodedspace is ripe for interpretation with throughthe notion of reintegration the semiotic chora. Her self-representations are fantasmatic screens in which the artist projects her infantile fantasyof preOedipalunion with the maternalbody. Such a quest for the semiotic chora or the feminine space foregroundsthe failure of the symbolic order to ensure the separation of mother and child.
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specter. Her being spills out of its corporeal boundaries and melts

from the viewer, discouraging the kind of voyeurismnormallyinvokedby the female body."20 In the untitled self-representation executed in Rome, Woodman's body blurs into a fuzzyfrenzy,meltinginto the chippedwall, conveying a powerful sense of oceanic vertigo in the polymorphous semioticchora.Just as Woodmanremarked that "I show you what such you do not see-the body'sinnerforce,"21 a lackof figural-spatial boundariesmakesthe viewer awareof the artist's self-perception, unreliantupon the viewer.The more Woodmantraversesand dissolvesher corporealboundaries,the more she refuses to allow her body to be defined by the viewer.Her photographic quest for redeemingthe repressedsemioticchora shattersthe power of the viewer'sunified gaze and henceforthindicatesthe semioticchora's rebellionagainstthe visualsymbolicorder. Kristeva's theoryof abjectionin Powersof Horrorhelps to further interpretthe loss of bodilyboundariesin Woodman's self-representations. Kristevaexplains how the paternal symbolic order constructsthe semiotic chora as abject. Abjection,in its most archaic form,is the processof throwingaway,expelling,or excluding the maternalbody so that the child might expel itself from the dyad and become a subjectin the sympre-Oedipalmother-child bolic order.In otherwords,the abjection(the mother,body fluids, etc.) representswhat has been lost and what has to remainlost to maintainone's subjectivity the symbolicorder.2Kristeva's in theoreticaldiscussionof abjectionis thus concernedprimarily with the constructionof boundary. She mentionsthat the "bodymust bear no trace of its debt to nature:it must be clean and properin order to be fully symbolic."23 the abjectionexistsin oppositionto the But for it represents what "does not respect borpaternal symbolic, ders, positions, rules,"what is the "in-between, the ambiguous, the composite," and what "disturbs identity, system, order."24 Woodman in her self-representations creates a vision of what Kristevadescribesas "the desirableand terrifying,nourishingand murderous,fascinatingand abject inside of the maternalbody."25 The clear boundary between self and other has been transgressed. Her fetuslike merger with the womblike house epitomizes the in-between, which fracturesher self in the very abject place where meaning collapses and borders dissolve. There is, Woodman metaphorically suggests, a pleasure in perversity:a pleasurein returningto that time when the mother-childrelationship was markedby an untrammeledpleasurein playingwith the body and its waste. It is an expression of the abject that chalWOMAN'S ART JOURNAL

eedwith the fantasyof maternalintimalenges the totality,unity,and integrityof B-H _..~ f the subject in the symbolic order I cy, even of intrauterine existence, is " evoked less in images than in texts rethrough displayinga body of becoming, ^ : changing,and alteration. garding architecturalforms and urban ^^^^.^B^,. M Woodman's drives, though it is sometimesprojectInterpreting self-imagery ed upon nature as well."30 Woodman's i through Kristeva's theory highlightsthe active desire to return to the self-representation ought to be seen as daughter's i J maternalbody and subvertsthe paternal embodyingthe latter-the reunionwith _IHJt t' order.Those familiar with Marthe maternal. L symbolic will recogWoodman's active fusion with the garet Sundell'sinterpretation ^' nize a differentemphasisin my argument. environment can be further pursued -k l; : Sundell'sanalysisis problematicallyin- i from the perspective of daughterly /-; k. ^W i debted to the T.acanian mirrorstage.The Hl~;~ ~fetishism. Both Freud and LacanmainLacanianscenario emphasizes that the ' l tain that women cannotbe desiringsub' . .f ^ jects, because they are castrated and photographic self-representation, like the infant'sown image in the mirror(the have nothing to lose; whereas men are _ " mother'seyes) first recognizedby it, dedesiringsubjectswith a need to disavow notes a narcissisticprojection of a uni-their possibility of losing their penis ll fied ego.6 Sundellassertsthat "[t]heten(castration anxiety) by fetishizing the I,Un Woodman itifled, Stanwood, Fig.5. Francesca i -1.~ r7r -1 , worklies Washington sion and strengthof Woodman's 1 1. 97, black-and-wh ptioghIO xWdesired ba object of a woman's body.31 1" hitephotograph, xc 8". . . .1~~. 6s ,~. ~ ~(1979), I ,hotograp, 8. 10" 8. in her abilityto returnagainand againto Feminist theoreticians and artists have e Woodman,New York. orge this precisepoint of instability, simultato disputed this idea and explored female create and explode the fragile fetishism and the possibilityof women neously membranethat protects one's identityfrom being absorbedby its as desiring subjects.2 Among their theoretical and artisticworks Yet eruditeinterpre- related to this subject the majoritydeal with maternalfetishism surroundings.'2 whatis missingfrom Sundell's tation are the specific dynamics of Woodman'sself-images. The (such as Mary Kelly'sPost-PartumDocument). Woodman'sselfto pleasuregeneratedby them is not analogous Tacanianmisrecog- representations provide, I suggest, a precious exploration of nition of bodily unity achieved through the idealized mirror-self. daughterlyfetishism-an importantdimension of female subjecWoodmantypicallydoes not depict the body as a limited form or tivity.Robert Bak has clarifiedthe connection between fetishism masterfullikeness but through the figures of lost boundaryand and the pre-Oedipaltraumaof separation.He observes that the abandoned self. fetishistclingsto the object as a "symbolic substitute" "undoes that Lacan'stheory of the mirrorstage does not highlight Woodthe separation from the mother."33 Woodman'sself-representaman'sactive absorptionof her body into the environment.A comtions, like the fetishisticobjects,metaphorically stage her disavowtakenin New al of the loss of the symbiotic relationship with the mother parisonbetween a series of her untitledphotographs York(1979; Fig. 4) and Man Ray'sRetoura la raison (1923)28 will through exhibiting her longing for fantasmatic fusion with the Woodman womblikeenvironment. help to foregroundmy argument.In these photographs leans upon a chippedwall with her back facingthe camera,exposWoodman's fetishisticyearningfor the illusoryrecoveryof the she ing a skeletonlikepattern.As a kindof desperatemimicry, puts pre-Oedipalspace can also be seen in photographsdisplayingher on an old dress decoratedwith horizontalbands of a skeletalleaf mimetic assimilationswith nature. For example, in an untitled pattern. Moreover,she cuts awaythe back of this vintage dress to photograph executed in Stanwood, Washington (1979; Fig. 5), Woodmanshowsherself and her friendwearingold dresseswhose expose her upper body. Her right hand holds a big fish skeleton against her bare back, analogousto the printsare analogousto the plantsin the of her dress and the chipped .. ^^ patterns surroundinglandscape. When she was wall. Woodman shows her active desire 5an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell l7^^?.ii,':-.' ! to merge with the wall. On the contrary, Colony in Peterborough, New Hampin Man Rays Retoura la raison, as RosI shire, during the summer of 1980, alind Krausspoints out, "the nude torso W'oodmanalso toyed with her name E^^H of a woman is shown as if submittingto *:! V ("wood-man"),wearing birch bark on the possession by space."29In other _ . _ her arms in several self-portraits. By words, Man Ray'sphotograph displays fetishisticallyrestoring the incomplete ?^ " ; the woman'sbody passively yielding to distinction between her body and .': S the devouringforces of the surrounding Mother Nature, Woodman's pho:: |1' space at the expense of individualsubtographssuch as this fulfill her longing for unity, symbiosis, and identification jectivity. Woodman's self-representation is rather an active performanceprojectwith the maternal body. Carol Mavor, ,_ ::: e' ;, ing her body into mimeticcamouflage. basing an argument on Freud's treatHal Foster emphasizestwo extremes ment of all women as clothing ' of Surrealistspatiality.One is the parafetishists,3 holds that Woodman is "a Xa^^El " noid spatiality discussedby Lacanin The .... clothing fetishist who weaves her perFour FundamentalConceptsof Psycho". .version with photography."35 Whether ..'..::".' Woodmanwears a vintage dress, bark, analysis, in which the subject is disposFig.6. FrancescaWoodman, Untitled,New York(1979),
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sessed by a castrative gaze. "The other extreme," as Foster highlights, "associatSPRING / SUMMER 2004

black-and-white tograph,10" x 8". phot F e CourtesyBettyand Ge orgi Woodman, New York.

or wallpaper, the effect similarly miti-

gates a traumaticsituationof perceived

loss throughdonningformsof envelopmentassimilable the mato ternal environment.Freud asserts that the primitive ego of the from the mother-as-environinfant, even the ego undifferentiated ment, could outlive the infantilestate. The "primary ego-feeling" characterized a sense of "limitlessness and of a bond with the by coexistsin manyindividuals "sideby side with the narrowuniverse" er and more sharplydemarcatedego-feelingof maturity."36 Woodman in her self-representations appearsto redeem such a primitive wishin exhibiting fusionwith MotherNature. her symbiotic Woodman's fetishistic longing to return to the semiotic chora sometimes inspired self-imageshauntedby death, especiallyduring the last two yearsof her life. In an untitledphotographshot in New York(1980), Woodmanappearsas if buried inside a tub, a metaphorof the womblikecoffin. She stages the desiredworld of reunionwith the maternalbody that cannot be recapturedexcept in death. In anotheruntitledphotograph(1979;Fig. 6), Woodman standsagainsta decayedwall wearinga blackvintagedress with a blackveil coveringher head. She looks like both a dead person lying on the bed and an unbornbabynestlingin the darkcomfortof the mother's womb. This scene correspondsto Freud'sinterpretation of the relationship betweenbeing buriedaliveandintra-uterine existence: some people the idea of beingburiedaliveby mistake "To is the most uncannything of all. Andyet psycho-analysis taught has us that this terrifying is only a transformation another of phantasy which had originally aboutit at all, but phantasy nothingterrifying I was qualifiedby a certainlasciviousness-the phantasy, mean, of intra-uterine existence."37 Foster assertsa similarpoint related Hal to Surrealism, "death involvedin this reunionwith the materthat is the returnto the material."38 Woodman's nal, yearningfor the symbioticconnection with the mothereven turnsinto the deathwish. Kristevasheds furtherlight on this kind of self-representation. She highlights the destructive dimension of the abject, which "draws towardthe place where meaningcollapses" boundme and aries dissolve,and to "the edge of nonexistenceand hallucination, of a realitythat, if I acknowledgeit, annihilatesme."39 Abjection, Kristevawrites, is "an avowalof the death drive, a movement of undoingidentity"even as it serves to form the subject;it is "anassertion that the subject may slide back into the impure chaos out of which it was formed."40 Woodmanaddressesabjectionin its destructiveas well as creativepotential.The desire for abjectionin her self-representations never quite free from its deathly,selfis annihilated and aspect,in which the boundarieshave disintegrated dissolved,leavinga trailof chaos,non-existence,and death. One could say that Woodman's act ongoingdisappearing in her foreshadowedher suicide. Perhapsher death self-representations was a furtherexploration towarddissolvingherself into the maternal space. Although she leaves behind the enigma of her death, her powerful body of self-imagesendow us with a very precious heritage of a daughter'svision of her longing for an alternative space of femininityagainst the grain of the patriarchal symbolic order. Woodman wrote her friend Sloan Rankin in November 1980: "Iwould ratherdie young leavingvariousaccomplishments, i.e., some work, my friendshipwith you, some other artifactsinIntact, instead of pell-mell erasingall of these delicate things."41 are deed, her extraordinary self-representations among the most of important photographic performances the 1970s. The metamorbecome a femiphoses of her body mergingwith the environment nist performancesurrealistically conjuringup a subversiveworld of greatemotionalforce.*
NOTES

I thank and on Betty George Woodmanfortheirhelp in myresearch their I latedaughter. also thank Anne-Marie StevenZ. Levine, Regis and Bonnet,

Michelfortheircomments an earlier on versionof thisarticlepresented the at 2002 international Bodies:Conceptsand Imagesof conference, "Changing the Bodyin Western at NormalUniversity, Art," the NationalTaiwan Taipei. Thisworkis supported the NationalScienceCouncil Taiwan. of by 1. Quotedby Sloan Rankin, "PeachMumble-Ideas Cooking," in HerveChandes,ed., FrancescaWoodman(Zurich: Scalo, 1998), 35. The here can be foundin Rankin's images discussedbutnot reproduced essay. 2. Woodmanwas "interested the relationships people have with in that ibid., 13. Sollers,"Sorceress," space";quotedin Philippe 3. TheWoodmanfamilyhas not made Francesca's diariesand letters this available,and forthisreasonmostarticleson Woodman,including oriented. one, are theoretically 4. See AbigailSolomon-Godeau, Like Woman," Francesca in "Just a Woodman:Photographic Work(Wellesley, Mass.:WellesleyCollegeMusePoint: Photography The of um, 1986), 31; Margaret Sundell,"Vanishing Francesca in de Woodman," M. Catherine Zegher,ed., Insidethe Visible: An Elliptical of Art Traverse 20th Century in, of, and fromthe Feminine Mass.:MIT "The and Self Press,1996), 435; HelainePosner, (Cambridge, theWorld:NegotiatingBoundaries theArtof YayoiKusama, in Ana Menin Imed., Mirror dieta, and Francesca Woodman," WhitneyChadwick, and Mass.: ages: Women,Surrealism, Self-Representation (Cambridge, MIT The of Press,1998), 169-70; CarolMavor,Becoming: Photographs DukeUniversity, Hawarden Viscountess Clementina, (Durham: 1999), 160. 5. Posner, Self "The and the World," 169-70. 6. See GriseldaPollock, and in "Modernity the Spaces of Femininity," Vision& Difference: and of Feminism, the Histories Art(London: Femininity, Life Routledge,1988), 50-90; NormanBryson,"Still and 'Feminine' at FourEssayson StillLifePainting Space," in Looking the Overlooked: Mass.: Harvard (Cambridge, 1990), 158. University, 7. Pollock,"Modernity the Spaces of Femininity," and 50-90. 8. Ann Gabhart,"Francesca Woodman1958-1981," in Francesca Woodman:Photographic Work,55; Sundell,"Vanishing Point," 435-39; SusanRubin Suleiman, "Dialogueand DoubleAllegiance:Some Contemand in Avant-Garde," Mirror poraryWomenArtists the Historical Images, Self 128-54; Posner,"The and the World,"167-70; Mavor,Becoming, 159-69. 9. Rosalind in Krauss, Delicti," October(Summer 1985), 53"Corpus Mass.: MIT 64; Hal Foster, Press,1993), Compulsive Beauty(Cambridge, 2,8-13, 62,70, 101. 10. SigmundFreud, "TheUncanny(1919)," in TheStandardEdition of the CompletePsychological Worksof Sigmund HoXVII Freud, (London: garth, 1955), 220, 241. 11. Barbara Creed, TheMonstrous-Feminine: Feminism, Film, PsychoRoutledge,1993), 54. analysis(London: 12. Foster, Compulsive Beauty,163. 13. Ibid., 190. 14. Forthe plate, see MargaretBarlow,WomenArtists (New York: Levin,1999), 223, or WAJ(S99/W00), PI.39-1. HughLauter 15. Fortheplate,see JeanChristophe Dorothea (NewYork: Bailly, Tanning 1995), 323. GeorgeBraziller, 16. JuliaKristeva, Powersof Horror: Essayon Abjection,LeonS. An ColumbiaUniversity, Roudiez,trans.(New York: 1982), 101. 17. TheSurrealist Remedios Varo(1908-63) also exploresthe daughter's (1960), in whicha woman primal fantasyin herpaintingToBe Reborn bursts a wall. See JanetA. Kaplan,UnexpectedJourthrough vaginalike Art of Varo(New York: Abbeville,1988), 166. neys: The and Life Remedios in 18. JuliaKristeva, Revolution PoeticLanguage,LeonRoudiez, The ColumbiaUniversity, ed., MargaretWaller,trans.(New York: 1984), 26A Desirein Language: SemioticApproachto Litera27, 68; JuliaKristeva, tureand Art,LeonRoudiez,ed., TomGora, AliceJardine,and Leon ColumbiaUniversity, Roudiez,trans.(New York: 1980), 136. Forinterof maternal see pretations Kristeva's metaphor, DonnaC. Stanton,"DifferA ence on Trial: Critique the Maternal of Metaphorin Cixous, Irigaray,
WOMAN'S ARTJOURNAL

Allanand IrisMarionYoung,eds., TheThinking in and Kristeva," Jeffner Indiana and Muse: Feminism ModernFrenchPhilosophy (Bloomington: The 1989), 163-64, and Madelon Sprengnether, Spectral University, CornellUniversity, and Mother:Freud,Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Ithaca: 1990), 213-14. of 19. AliceJardine,Gynesis:Configurations Womanand Modernity CornellUniversity, 1985), 25, 88-89. (Ithaca: Artist's 20. AmeliaJonesand Tracy Phaidon, Warr,The Body(London: 2000), 170. 10. 21. Quoted in Sollers,"Sorceress," Powersof Horror, 64-67, 71-72. 22. Kristeva, 13, 23. Ibid., 102. 24. Ibid.,4. 25. Ibid.,54. of of Mirror 26. JacquesLacan,"The Stage as Formative the Function in A the I as Revealedin Psychoanalytic Experience," Ecrits: Selection, W. Alan Sheridan,trans.(New York: W. Norton, 1977), 1-7. 437-38. 27. Sundell,"Vanishing Point," Krauss Jane Livingston, and 28. Forthe plate, see Rosalind eds., & L'Amour Photography Surrealism fou: Abbeville,1985), 75. (New York: 50. 29. Krauss, Delicti," "Corpus 30. Foster,Compulsive Beauty,203. and Perof The 31. Teresade Lauretis, Practice Love:Lesbian Sexuality 216-17. IndianaUniversity, verse Desire(Bloomington: 1994), Document 32. Mary Kelly, "Noteson Readingthe Post-Partum (1977)" Desire(1984)," in ImagingDesire and "Desiring Images/Imaging Mass.: MIT Press,1996), 20-25, 122-29; Naomi Schor, (Cambridge, "Female The Fetishism: Case of George Sand,"in SusanR. Suleiman,ed., TheFemaleBody in WesternCulture: Contemporary Perspectives Mass.: Harvard 1986), 363-72; Emily Apter, (Cambridge, University,

and Obsessionin Turn-ofthe Psychoanalysis Narrative Feminizing Fetish: CornellUniversity, France(Ithaca: Grosz, 1991); Elizabeth the-Century as in Fetishism?" Emily "Lesbian Apterand WilliamPietz,eds., Fetishism Lorraine CornellUniversity, Discourse Cultural 1993), 101-15; (Ithaca: A Gammanand MerjaMakinen,FemaleFetishism: New Look(London: The of & Lawrence WishartLimited, 1994); Teresade Lauretis, Practice Mike a BecauseYou're Man:MaternalFetishism, Love; Apter,"Just Emily and SallyMann,"in Make:TheMagazine of Women's Kelley, MaryKelly, Art(April/May1997), 3-8. in in 33. Robert Bak,"Distortions the Conceptof Fetishism," ThePsychoanalyticStudyof the Child,29 (1974), 292. Minand 34. SigmundFreud,"Freud Fetishism: Previously Unpublished utesof the ViennaPsychoanalytic Rose,ed. and trans.,in Society,"Louis 57 Quarterly, (1988), 156. Psychoanalytic 35. Mavor,Becoming,169. ed. and 36. SigmundFreud,Civilization ItsDiscontents, JamesStrachey, and trans.(New York: W. Norton& Company,1989), 68. W. 244. 37. Freud,"The Uncanny," 38. Foster, Beauty,203. Compulsive 2. 39. Kristeva, Powersof Horror, in and 40. Elizabeth Gross, "TheBodyof Signification," JohnFletcher Melancholiaand Love:TheWorkof JuAndrewBenjamin, eds., Abjection, lia Kristeva (London: Routledge,1990), 90. 41. Rankin, "PeachMumble-Ideas Cooking,"37. Jui-Ch'i Liu, Associate Professor at the Institute of Art Studies of National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, is currently working on a book about masquerading self-representations by women photographers. She has published articles (in Chinese) on Florine Stettheimer, Claude Cahun, and Cindy Sherman.

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