Chicana Ways - Aletta

AnyBody's Concerns 6(2003)
postmodern notion of the split, multiple subject is taken up,
supplemented with a new concept of the body as map of
erotogenic zones and linked to Christ's crucifixion in a
completely different way:
[...] seven monitors hang in the form of a crucified figure.
On them appear shifting images of the appropriate body part,
spryly juxtaposed with Christian iconography, and scenes from
bondage-themed movies like Mutiny on the Bounty and from
Flanagan's own self-mortifying performances. Masochistic
impulses, clearly, inflect a range of "acceptable" behaviours.
Yet the Frankenstein composite constructed here is a body of
independent parts, with each part enduring separate sensations
(feet being whipped, face dunked, penis dripped with wax,
etc.). (Rugoff 64).
As Rugoff points out, Flanagan uses associations of passively
endured pain not only sexually but also as a critique of the
medical establishment, which requires docility and ignorance
of its patients: "While making us rethink these socially
condoned forms of masochism, as well as our complacent
submission to authority, Flanagan underscores both the body's
frailty and its amazing resilience" (Rugoff 64). His
intertextual and self-referential treatment of pain creates a
metalevel of simulation which makes it impossible to
differentiate between realness of pain and its mere staging.
Pain on the Advance or The Glamour of the Flawed Body
40 With regard to the history of pain in body and
performance art, it is important to note that even up to the
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