X-Studio: Performing Abjection

PSAM 3702, CRN 3303

This performance art studio course takes as its starting point Julia Kristeva’s conception of the abject as neither subject nor object, yet constitutive of subjecthood. Moving from psychoanalytic approaches to abjection (repression, perversion, phobia, desire, disgust) to considerations of disability, racialization, and national identity, students will construct live works that lure and repel their viewers. Readings by Kristeva, Karen Shimakawa, and Jennifer Doyle will animate performance assignments. Students will explore bodily abjection, from vomit to the corpse; inhabit cast-off sites; and study a number of historic performance works that elicit discomfort and revulsion.