Dimensiuni ale limbajului n context carceral

Distruge mereu ultimul stereotip, acel gând care ne-ar oferi confort, de care am putea fi mândri... ea
subminează autoritatea ştiinţei monologice”. 1 Un astfel de discurs, al cărui punct central îl constituie femeia
înstrăinată, este şi cel propus de Mendieta. Alienarea prin care trece Julia Kristeva merge până la
fundamentele limbajului care, paradoxal, este instrumentul afirmării acestui proces: „Utilizarea limbajului,
munca în materialitatea a ceea ce societatea vede ca fiind un mijloc de comunicare şi înţelegere, nu înseamnă
are să te declari brusc străin de limbaj?” 2 o
Asumarea vizuală a limbajului de către Ana Mendieta
dinamitează însă şi acest ultim obstacol.
BIBLIOGRAFIE:
Blocker, Jane, Where Is Ana Mendieta – Identity, Performativity and Exile, Londra, ed.Duke University Press, 1999.
Jones, Amelia, Body Art / Performing the Subject, Minneapolis, ed.University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
Moi, Toril, Sexual, Textual Politics,
Londra & New York, ed.Routledge, 2001.
ANA MENDIETA – IDENTITY THROUGH PERFORMANCE
Abstract
The paper is concerned with the manner in which female identity is constructed and deconstructed in the works of the
Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. Her earth/body works are analyzed by means of their belonging to the postmodern paradigm, framed
within the aesthetic of disappearance. Eloquent examples of a totally postmodern trajectory, Ana Mendieta’s destiny and creation
stand for the search for origin and for the resurrection of primordial beliefs, whereas the analysis of her well-known Siluetas offers
clues for the way language functions, when assumed visually, as a tool for communication or for deconstruction. Born in Cuba,
forced to leave the country during the Castro regime, Mendieta’s works have subtle political implications; therefore, as a result of
her permanent state of exile and orphanhood, her discourse moves towards questioning language and identity, and finds the
appropriate dimension for self-confirmation in the liminal, split, cross-cultural being between multiple identities, no true sense of
belonging and the reactivation of myths and rituals. Performance, as an artistic manner of expressing subjectivity, gives one the
possibility to assume a personal and a collective history simultaneously, to force the inter-subjective dimension of the receptive act,
and
to undermine the official discourse. Female identity is constructed in permanent
connection with emotion, participation,
in terplay of identities, the sense of belonging to nature, when all other possible coordinates have failed to comfort the artist.
Mendieta’s creation undermines the masculine, centered authority, questioning the borders between subject and object of the
discourse, the conventional status of the aesthetic object,
time and space coordinates.
Cuvinte-cheie: Mendieta, Performance, Artă contemporană, Alienare, Limbaj vizual, Subiectivitate, Ritual, Cuba,
Identitate, Postmodernism, Exil, Feminitate, Silueta.
1 Toril Moi, Sexual, Textual Politics, London & New York, ed. Routledge, 2001, pag. 150: Julia Kristeva changes the place of
things (...) She always destroys the latest preconception, the one we thought we could be comforted by, the one of which we could be
proud... she subverts authority, the authority of monologic science.
2 Ibidem: To work on language, to labour in the materiality of that which society regards as a means of contact and understanding,
isn’t that at one stroke to declare oneself a stranger to language?