The body as a political site (book)

po·lit·i·cal/pəˈlitikəl/
Adjective:

1. Of or relating to the government or the public affairs of a country.
2. Of or relating to the ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics.

Politics in this day and age is a major focus of the media and affects our lives daily. In some way or another everything we do need or want relates back to politics, our leaders are the figureheads of our collated views here in the UK. Our system of government gives us democracy; the right to vote for the candidate we think to be the best to lead us, and local councils give us a way to get our voice heard on anything that we want it to, in a more effective way.

Unfortunately democracy is not so simple in action as it is on paper, with every majority there is also created a minority, and much of the time that minority is ignored with their needs or wants, in favor of the general consensus, this often creates a reaction from that minority weather it be protest, riot or otherwise.

We are lucky here to hold freedom of speech in such high regard, many other countries around the world do not have this right, and it is with this freedom we gain a discussion.

Following the writings of J.S.Mill in “On Liberty” he states in his theory that discussion and questioning our views leads to a perfect truth, bringing in people from all points of view to argue out the their beliefs lets us consider all the points of view and find the best answer from that, to be questioned again.

Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie began her "public" artistic career in 1991 with a series of thirteen photographs titled "Being and Having." The title was a seeming allusion to Jacques Lacan's contentious psychoanalytic system that posits women as "being" the phallus, and men as "having" it. Rejecting outright such heterosexist structuralism, Opie's staged "documentary" portraits depicted (and thereby demarcated) a community organized around its members' identifications with butch-dyke, queer, trans, and s/m politics. But the photos never seemed to represent "identity politics" proper, which, at least in its most vulgar manifestations, has always been about essential-ism and the presupposition of a subject (a "doer behind the deed," per Nietzsche, via Judith Butler, who in the early 1990s was building her...

"Bo," the self-portrait within "Being and Having," is emblematic. In a frame-filling close-up, Opie shows herself in the guise of a masculine alter-ego. Her face is soft but her stare is hard, while the netting beneath the false mustache affixed above her upper lip betrays its status as chosen costume.

Cindy Sherman: The Complete Untitled Film Stills

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, a series of 69 black-and-white photographs created between 1977 and 1980, is widely seen as one of the most original and influential achievements in recent art. Witty, provocative and searching, this lively catalogue of female roles inspired by the movies crystallizes widespread concerns in our culture, examining the ways we shape our personal identities and the role of the mass media in our lives. Sherman began making these pictures in 1977 when she was 23 years old. The first six were an experiment: fan-magazine glimpses into the life (or roles) of an imaginary blond actress, played by Sherman herself. The photographs look like movie stills--or perhaps publicity pix--purporting to catch the blond bombshell in unguarded moments at home. The protagonist is shown preening in the kitchen and lounging in the bedroom. Onto something big, Sherman tried other characters in other roles: the chic starlet at her seaside hideaway, the luscious librarian, the domesticated sex kitten, the hot-blooded woman of the people, the ice-cold sophisticate and a can-can line of other stereotypes. She eventually completed the series in 1980. She stopped, she has explained, when she ran out of clichas.

In the Untitled Film Stills there are no Cleopatras, no ladies on trains, no women of a certain age. There are, of course, no men. The 69 solitary heroines map a particular constellation of fictional femininity that took hold in postwar America--the period of Sherman's youth and the starting point for our contemporary mythology. In finding a form for her own sensibility, Sherman touched a sensitive nerve in the culture at large. Although most of the characters are invented, we sense right away that we already know them. That twinge of instant recognition is what makes the series tick and it arises from Cindy Sherman's uncanny poise. There is no wink at the viewer, no open irony, no camp.