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Dreaming Feminisms
By Janell Morrow
I have feminist dreams. These ambitious thoughts do not consist of unattainable
imaginings but rather evoke fantastical phenomena. They are nothing short of queer poetic
paragons, which integrate theory and politics while simultaneously destabilizing repressions.
Dreams of this species involve risks because they are irregular, purposefully imprecise, and
never fixed. Yet, anomalous attributes of this sort envisage and envision, meaning they
contemplate and visualize, how to materialize risky theoretical politics. In keeping with those
unpredictable dreams, this essay explores identificatory theories of Judith Butler and futurity
theories of José Esteban Muñoz in conjunction with the intentional politics of the feminist art
movement as an avenue to contend: 1) feminist theories and politics do indeed depend on one
another and do not operate in a vacuum one from the other; 2) feminist politics, like those
illustrated in the feminist art movement, are deeply connected to activist strategies that promote
surprising futures, often marked with wonder, like my aforementioned dreams; and 3) feminist
political movements, and feminist theories, tread on risky ground when asserting a path of
uncertainty in the future, but the risks are necessary. Methodologically, I will begin with an
explication of Butler’s identity theories, briefly intertwining descriptions of Muñoz’s idea of
futurity, move into the politics of the feminist art movement via artistic examples, and then
situate the integration of theories and politics through the framework of Butler’s concepts
“temporal contingency” and/or “strategic provisionality.”
Judith Butler’s “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” presents pioneering theoretical
frameworks for reconsidering the notions of gender, sex/gender, and “normative” discourses.
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Butler argues that gender is established through repetitious performance producing a copy of a
copy, but in fact that copy has no original. She suggests reworking the subordinating paradigm of
sex and gender that has tried to normalize itself, yet fails. This failure ensues because the
polarization of origin/copy only substantiates itself when juxtaposed to the next. For example,
the “normative” mode of thought insists that a copy only exists because an original exists, and
the definition of the original becomes determinate through the production of derivatives.1
Importantly, Butler proposes an inversion, a reversal of consideration as it were, suggesting
gender, and identities alike, eventuate by way of performance and repetition. Thus, the very act
of performativity creates gender, and in this sense gender precedes sex.
Theoretically, Butler also addresses identity through this lens of failure. She aspires to
heighten awareness regarding the instability of disclosing any one signifier or identity. The
rendering of any given exposé actualizes exclusivity. Namely, to say “I am a lesbian” risks the
potentiality of endless possibility for that identity. The claim of any identity has been a political
attempt of coherence, but as Butler argues, that identity has been fabricated out of repeated
productions, none of which are identical, thus resulting in the instability of signifying
“categories.” Thus, any identity develops as an imitation, which copies nothing. So, in some
ontological manner, identities cannot exist but politically necessitate existence. Butler holds
these divergences in tension composing a thematic theory of gender rooted in paradox.
The utility and functionality of Butler’s theorizing maps out potential risks for
acquiescing to regulatory discourse that creates oppressive structures. Butler delineates how
theories of gender and identity transpire as realistic, yet idealistic, providing a trajectory of
possibility for present and future implications of gender discourses. Butler’s emphasis on the
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future invokes José Esteban Muñoz’s articulations of futurity in his soon to be published article
titled “Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism.” In this
essay Muñoz proposes that queerness is not yet fully imagined, placing great emphasis on future
potentialities to summon unforeseen understandings and actualizations for this kind of forwardlooking theory. Admittedly, there are risks within this undisclosed futurity suggested by both
Butler and Muñoz. However, I am suggesting the greater risks become unearthed in silencing
these theories. Precisely, our epistemic platforms regarding positions of gender and identity,
which produce palpable politics, can and will generate pragmatic change if we learn to dispel
unbending assertions related to gender in our western society. So, what is at risk?
Butler argues that any disclosure of an identity suggests a “provisional totalization of this ‘I’.”2
Therefore, at any given moment when someone reveals a particular identity, they temporarily
exclude a plethora of possibility in order to make their claim. This happens since the act of
defining involves the decision of what becomes included and what becomes excluded. Thus, at
the same time, disclosure reveals and also conceals. It conceals those things excluded and thus
upsets any attempt at a consistent lucidity. Butler identifies this concealment as a form of
“opacity.”3 She argues, particularly within the identification of sexuality, that any
comprehensible attempt to denote one’s sexuality can end in an exercise of futility. Plausibly,
sexuality is not sexuality any longer “once it submits to a criterion of transparency.”4 If we fail to
uphold the tensions of revealing and concealing, inclusion and exclusion, we risk a
misconception of identity as totalizing and absolute disclosure. Furthermore, the risks put forth
by Muñoz suggest that in failing to insist upon an open future, we foreclose “the field of utopian
possibility…one in which multiple forms of belongings in difference adhere to a belonging in
collectivity.”5
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Furthering Butler’s theory about identity provides a polyvalent understanding for a
pluralistic possibility in identification. Because Butler cautions the reader about the exclusivity
inherent in the act of defining, we embark upon a new understanding of how to define. Namely,
she states that in order for her to hold the sign “lesbian” over her head there has to be an
understanding that she does not seek to uphold a limiting identity. Rather, the signifier must
remain “permanently unclear” for her espousal of that identity.6 This distinction proves
extremely important because of the risk at hand if not considered. Namely, the risk is permanent
control. Permanence surfaces as the risk since Butler considers what future uses of the signifier
might include. If non-transparency does not become the identity mantra then the future use of the
identity risks totalizing control. Therefore, in order to ensure a plurality of possibility for times to
come, Butler advocates for the bolstering of “temporal contingency.”7 This theoretical
implication places an identity contextually and historically, allowing for future employment of
the identity to take on new and different meanings.
Another theoretical perspective Butler engenders relates to the aforementioned inversion,
or subversion, of the “category” sex/gender. Consideration of gender as performance, without an
original performer, reverses the paradigmatic manner in which we “normally” use to understand
sex and gender. This reversal allows for many more potential articulations of gender and sex. If
we consider that gender precedes sex we can imagine, with much greater ease, femininity
producing female, femininity producing male, masculinity producing male, masculinity
producing female, transgender producing female, transgender producing male, transgender
producing transgender, intersex producing female, intersex producing male, intersex producing
intersex, etc. The potential becomes much greater than with the employment of sex before
gender, which has sociohistorically only resulted in male producing masculinity and female
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producing femininity. Hence, another grounding risk at hand would be to continue with the
regulated paradigm of sex before gender only to finish at a dimorphous dead-end. I believe this
could be compared to Muñoz’s notion of the not-yet-imagined, where he asserts that the
horizon(s) of understandings must remain mutable, and unpredictable, because we have to
squint, even strain our vision, to see these horizons.8 Thus, they are not fully realized because
they are out of our purview. Hence, we do not know what further gender expressions,
performances, politics, etc. future generations will create, but in order to ensure the possibility of
those creations, an indefinite futurity must be promoted.
Perhaps the largest risk we take, at not hearing these theoretical perspectives from Butler
and Muñoz, is the continuance of oppressive systems, or “compulsory” systems, that seek to
make sexuality, gender, and identity derivatives of an ideal origin, and stagnate political attempts
of social change. By way of example, it is clear that when something is considered “derivative”
an indication of subordination surfaces. Therefore, as Butler argues, to suggest heterosexuality as
an idyllic norm/origin, further signifies homosexuality as deriving from that origin. The
problematic structure surfaces hastily and without some innovative theoretical exploration we
risk being left with a negative system that makes homosexuality a “bad” copy of the original.
However, we can flip our risks by simply turning “the homophobic construction of the bad copy
against the framework that privileges heterosexuality as origin,” embarking on a different
theoretical discourse, possibly even a queer theoretical discourse.9
The importance of Butler’s theory for feminist and queer dialogue rests with her fervor to
not simply replace one act of violence with another or one restriction with another.10 She
advocates a political activism that effects policy change but not in simple terms of exchange.
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After all, what purpose would it serve to exchange one set of handcuffs for another? Again, if we
do not consider the future ramifications of policies, paradigms, and practices made today, we risk
limiting political strategies for tomorrow. Butler buttresses her theory with questions of
accountability. She suggests we have to consider what is excluded in claiming an identity or
what is made inferior by the way of differentiation. So, her call, like that of Muñoz, is one to
openness, even though that is a call to great risks! Taking the risk to open possibility for the
future, I am arguing, is a better risk than succumbing to narrowing determinants that limit
possibilities.
So, as Butler advances a notion of failure within her theoretical scope of gender,
particularly the ways in which heterosexuality has failed as ideal, many lessons are gained that
move us forward with less risk for subordination and oppression. As I have argued, further sides
of this failure prism, shine on our responses to theories like those articulated by Butler and
Muñoz. Where we could fail, or stand on the brink of potential failure, rests on whether or not
theory, like this, falls on deaf ears. If so, we remain captured by the web of
regulatory/compulsory structures that presume socio-cultural subordination and derivation, and if
not, we reckon against negative systems opening up gender, identity, and political possibilities
that persevere in “disruptive promise.”11
Importantly, this positive disruption generates constructive chaos. This may be what
Amelia Jones called “feminism with friction” while speaking at the Los Angeles MOCA panel
titled “Visual Culture, Race and Globalization: Is Feminism Still Relevant?” This particular
mode of theory aims to politically unravel oppressive hegemonic manifestations. Therefore,
political locales unearth the ways in which theory and practice converge. I would like to employ
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the feminist art movement, specifically as expressed in the 1960’s and 1970’s, to model how
Butler and Muñoz’s call to open futurity, and non-repressive political systems, can be concretely
evidenced in activist movements. In this particular movement, I would suggest many pieces
show that neither the theory nor the activism necessarily materialized one prior to the other.
Rather, the production of feminist political images depicts, in a corporeal manner, how both
theory and activism can occur simultaneously. Butler states,
If the political task is to show that theory is never merely theoria, in the sense of
disengaged contemplation, and to insist that it is fully political (phronesis or praxis), then
why not simply call this operation politics, or some permutation of it?12
Moreover, bell hooks describes the feminist movement by placing emphasis back on the
motion in the movement. Specifically, she contends the active organizing in the political
movement needs a revival of sorts, thus highlighting the verb “to move” within the political
framework aids in understanding the feminist agenda.13
Cornelia Butler, the curator for the current art exhibit titled, WACK! Art and the Feminist
Revolution at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, suggests that feminism profoundly
and fundamentally changed contemporary art practices.14 She argues, “Feminism’s legacy of
inclusivity and its interrogation of cultural hierarchies of all kinds suggest a more complicated
history of simultaneous feminisms,” which defies any univalent coherence one might attempt to
attribute to the movement.15 Thus, the feminist art movement was multifaceted and organized by
collaborative efforts of groups like the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), Women’s Action
Coalition (WAC), Women, Students, and Artists for Black Art Liberation (WSABAL), “Where
We At” Black Women Artists, and Women Artists in Revolution (WAR). These groups
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protested for representation of women artists and embedded the movement with political content
related to their manifold feminisms. From the onset female artists, and feminists, knew they had
to fight for artistic spaces to display their art, and amidst pervasively androcentric cultures they
produced political art as a way to organize against experienced oppressions. Therefore, these
women offer a precisely detailed model of practicing theory and theorizing practice. A brief
window into some of these artistic expressions will depict artists’ particular political agendas,
including, but not limited to, the intersections of racism, classism, and sexism, and the ways in
which these representations secure future identities.
Artist and activist, Judith Baca locates all her artistic endeavors and expressions in the
seat of social change. One of her first artistic projects involved working with gang members to
collaboratively create murals on the walls of Los Angeles in the 1970’s. This spurred Baca to
found her non-profit organization called Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC)
in1976, which still serves to support public and community art projects that promote the
inclusion of ethnically and economically diverse communities, along with immigrant and female
populations. Baca utilizes SPARC to collectively create art. For example, her project titled The
Great Wall of Los Angeles, which began in 1973 and remains ongoing, models this cooperative
aspect. The project, thus far, makes up a 2,754-foot mural located in the Tujunga Flood Control
Channel of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. The mural represents the collaboration of
approximately four hundred community members, most of which have been youth participants.
Baca contends the purpose of The Great Wall of Los Angeles is to narrate the personal histories
of California’s ethnic groups, which are mostly underrepresented in the classroom setting or
school textbooks.16
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For example, one section of the great wall titled Farewell to Rosie the Riveter, depicts the
labor force environment post World War II. Precisely, women made up a large part of the
workplace while men were away during war. When men returned, women were isolated back
into the domestic realm. The television set during this period was flooded with images of women
who were housewives, keeping meals on the table and resigning themselves to the work of
spotless living spaces. Thus, Baca in this portion of The Great Wall shows Rosie the Riveter
sucked out of the workplace, by the television, back to the home.
http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/newsletters/18_2/images/p20_sm.jpg
Theoretically, Baca depicts an unclear future and identity for Rosie. Before this coercive act of
relegating Rosie back into the domestic place, she identified through her work skills. The
floating wrench, at the left side of the panel, evokes an understanding that Rosie’s life is no
longer fixed. Additionally, the look of despondency on Rosie’s face suggests uncertainty as well.
The artist elicits a particular reading of unpredictability from the viewer in the rendering of this
image. As mentioned above, the Butlerian articulation of identity calls for an open future. This
intentional delineation of identity hopes to create more possibilities for the present and future. In
this way, I would suggest Baca portrays Rosie’s limited present as a political strategy to call for a
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self-determined future. This might be what Muñoz refers to as “daring to see or imagine the NotYet-Conscious.”17 He defines this expression saying, “The not-quite-conscious is the realm of
potentiality that must be called upon, insisted upon, if we are ever to look beyond the pragmatic
sphere of the here and now, the hollow nature of the present.”18 Butler and Muñoz alike, call for
an unpredictable future in order to secure mobility and fluidity in those yet to be imagined
spaces. Rosie’s agency in this piece has been threatened by the patriarchal social norms and thus
needs an open future. Again, open futurity entails risks.
One of these risks for Rosie involves living amidst an unstable present in order to not foreclose
the possibilities of tomorrow. These risks also include a teleological uncertainty that requires one
to hold pliability and political tactics in constant tension. This kind of strategizing is far from
facile living. In fact, the difficulty lies in remaining temporally contingent, as Butler suggests,
upon one’s present circumstances in order for future identities, strategies, and existences to
flourish with imaginative belonging and becoming. I am arguing that if we do not take these
risks we are left with a fully disclosed present that restricts future possibility, and perhaps
indeterminately confines Rosie to the temporal spatiality of domesticity.
Another artistic example of feminist art laden with theoretical and political implications
includes Baca’s Uprising of the Mujeras. This piece, started in 1977 and finished in 1979, shows
a strong indigenous woman flying to the front of the patriarchal working class community
holding out her minimal wages. This woman, resilient and uninhibited, points to the left side of
the mural where money is grinded out through machines by men to pay the working class. Baca
portrays women’s unequal pay, while situating this fearless Native American woman at the front
of the piece, leading the men in her class. The men in the piece take on domestic responsibilities,
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like holding the babies, while this woman pursues justice. The bodily representation has multiple
theoretical implications. Baca makes visible the invisible indigenous female body, calling out
racist norms in California history and artistic displays. She also fights against classism, wage
inequality, and male-centered job placement in this piece.
http://www.umich.edu/~ac213/student_projects/ceo/GalleryEntrance_image001.jpg
It is my contention that Baca renders this image because of the political injustices
inscribed on these people. What future can be imagined for the repressed working class if these
dominating structures are not overturned? In many ways these bodies must revolt, in order to
turn away from the oppressive present, and envisage a “not-quite-imagined” future, as Muñoz
articulates. In this way, as the Native American woman in the piece fights, she fights not only for
herself but also for all those who will follow her. In this piece, the endless display of repressed
people riot in hope of attaining alternative political existences, for their own futures, and for
future generations. Baca pointedly titles this painting the Uprising of the Mujeras because it
depicts a time of rebellion, a time of motion. The artist shows that controlling political
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restrictions, such as racism, sexism, and classism illustrated in this visual representation, attempt
to claim complete coherence. However, I am suggesting that as people protest political positions
of oppression, as Baca does in her artistic images, those once claimed coherences become
incoherent. This shift from perceived stability to realized instability opens up the future by
drawing on circumstances from the past and present. As Butler tactically advocates,
In avowing the sign’s strategic provisionality, rather than its strategic essentialism, that
identity can become a site of contest and revision, indeed, take on a future set of
significations that those of us who use it now may not be able to foresee. It is in the
safeguarding of the future of the political signifiers— preserving the signifier as a site of
rearticulation—that Laclau and Mouffe discern its democratic promise.19
Therefore, there is something practical, yet quite utopian, as Muñoz expresses, in this
kind of imagining. As this indigenous woman rises for revolutionary change, she embraces a
kind of pragmatic protesting, while simultaneously, striving for a future of unmet desires, hopes,
and dreams. She signals new epistemic modes that suggest what Muñoz calls “doing in
futurity.”20 This means Baca’s art reads like a manifesto reads. Manifestos call for action in the
future, asserting something must be done.21 Theoretically and politically then, I suggest the
Uprising of the Mujeras reads as a visual manifesto embracing new and unknown ontological
futures expressed by Butler and Muñoz, which forcefully call for a differentiated reality.
Other examples of images from the feminist art movement calling for future change can
be seen in the works of Anita Steckel. In February of 1972 Steckel opened an exhibit of her work
at Rockland Community College titled, “The Feminist Art of Sexual Politics.” The show
displayed pieces from her series called Giant Women on New York where a female nude moved
through the streets of New York City. Her 1970 piece titled Just Waiting for the Bus portrays a
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colossal nude woman waiting at a bus stop as pedestrians pass by. Steckel aims to raise
consciousness regarding the ways in which society ignore and silence women, even when in
plain sight.
http://www.westbeth.org/steckel/steckel-3.html
Steckel draws on the past in order to express the necessary change for the future.
Practically, she utilizes an old photo she found for the background and foundation of this
painting. She then imposes her own body on the photograph with ink and oil paint as a
monumental representation calling for a different way of living. This call recognizes the power
of history and the power of the present as an avenue of advocacy for imagining future
possibilities incongruent with present norms. Steckel’s political imagination transgresses the
current impasse of patriarchy, reaching for a world that embraces a realm of infinite potentiality.
Therefore, Steckel makes use of the past and present in order to transcend the limitations within
those temporal spaces. The past and present are then crucial elements to the future, and
theoretically cannot be disregarded. However, the activism within these artistic deployments, like
that of Steckel’s Just Waiting for the Bus, challenges the corporal repressions of the female body
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by soliciting alternative frameworks of living in the future. These alternatives, again, are not
known in full. Rather, they resist complete classification due to the recognition that a broader
futurity includes what has yet to be dreamed. So, as Steckel waits at the bus stop, ignored in
plain sight, she theorizes a future without such subjugations. However, just because it seems
obvious of what she does not want, does not mean she knows, or we can know, what is wanted.
Here we see, literally through visual representation, the political necessity of an open future, a
future not fully disclosed and not possible to be fully disclosed.
Steckel also photographed Anita Steckel and the Skyline Painting in 1974 depicting
herself in front of the phallocentric skyline reflecting the subjugating norms of those penistopped buildings. When the show opened, Steckel distributed a photocopied piece to patrons
where she simply traced the silhouette of a penis onto a dollar bill and titled it Legal Gender.
This piece displayed the ways in which the phallus held status as a currency unit, and how
women were not compensated for their work equal to men. Steckel’s theory and activism became
even more apparent when Rockland County legislator, John Komar, tried to have the exhibit
removed because it seemed “pornographic,” and then a local district attorney pursued whether or
not Steckel could be sued for breaking New York State obscenity laws.22 Needless to say,
Steckel’s theoretical framework and activism did not go unnoticed.
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http://finearts.usc.edu/events/images/anita%20(1974)%20copy.jpg
In Anita Steckel and the Skyline Painting, I suggest the artist depicts herself in front of
the New York skyline to politically challenge those phallocentric spaces. It seems as if the artist
might be asking herself, “What would this skyline look like, in a time and space, where the
buildings were not dominated by androcentrism?” This question elicits futurity. Steckel can
imagine ways in which that skyline would change if it were not penis-topped, but she cannot
know in certainty the future results of such shifts. Importantly, certainty and predictability are
not the goals of such futurity theories. In fact, as I have argued and delineated, Butler and Muñoz
articulate a positive ambiguity. As Muñoz argues, asserting the not-here-yet of futurity actually
offers some present “theoretical leverage.”23 I believe this leverage materializes as mobility,
defying the current hegemonic attempts of fixed identities and existences.
Risk acts as a common denominator shared by both Baca and Steckel in the feminist art
movement, and for other artists as well. Baca’s Uprising of the Mujeras was very controversial.
She was studying art in Mexico at the time the idea for the piece surfaced. During this period of
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her career she happened to be creating an idea for the “woman’s issue” in a group setting. She
was the only woman in her group, and furthermore the only female artist amongst twenty-six
male artists in this art program. The men in her group designed a piece where a nude woman sat
spread eagle with a funnel in her mouth depicting how capitalism and consumerism were
funneled into women’s bodies. Baca strongly opposed the image, seeing it as a giant rape
depiction, and proposed the Uprising of the Mujeras in place of the former image. Her male art
team voted against her idea, and even saw her as less of an artist for her idea.24 She notes,
Activism in the 1970’s had to do with me turning upside down the notion that the
creation of monumental art was a male act. I started painting these ferocious Indian
women who looked like they could devour you—in the Uprising of the Mujeres, for
example—I can’t tell you what backlash there was about those images.25
Also, as mentioned above, Anita Steckel faced censorship and even legal ramifications
for painting politically loaded images. However, these political efforts realized through artistic
expression delineate the mobility of futurity and feminisms.
This brings us back to Judith Butler’s concepts “temporal contingency” and “strategic
provisionality.” Butler articulates these ideas as a way to map out this kind of mobility.
Specifically, she holds identity signifiers, like feminist, in this temporal provisional space
because she desires for identities to remain replete with possibility. This constitutes a political
strategy. Like the feminist expressions within the feminist art movement, no one definition or
timeless boundary can explicate the meaning of this movement. Rather, the movement, is best
understood as just that, movement. Identities are also best understood as always in motion.
Importantly, however, the tension to keep at hand remains in politically organizing while
upholding this kind of mutability. One does this by demonstrating the politic at hand, in a
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conscious time and space, while simultaneously remaining mindful of the future. This leaves an
open future, a “yes” future, while making change at the present. This offers a raison d’être for
both present and future feminisms, incorporating both theory and politics.
So, yes, I do have feminist dreams. These possibilities are the fabric of those imaginings.
Feminist political art expressed in images like Judith Baca’s The Great Wall of Los Angeles
move the imaginary to the real. They operate in a space where theory and politics become the
ingredients of praxis. These dreams actively pursue change by way of transgressing hegemonic
constructions of oppression, and defining feminisms in temporal spaces. These defining
moments are always subject to change, which elicits high risks, but defies stagnation and
immobility. Dreams of this kind are never inert or lifeless; rather, they remain dynamic and
animated at all times. They educe complexity and challenge the ways we continually understand
feminisms.
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1 Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” in The Gay and Lesbian Studies
Reader, ed. Henry Abelove (London: Routledge, 1993), 310.
2 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 309.
3 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 309.
4 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 309.
5 José Esteban Muñoz, “Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay
Pragmatism,” not yet published, 2.
6 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 308.
7 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 312.
8 Muñoz, “Queerness as Horizon,” 6.
9 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 309.
10 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 311.
11 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 318.
12 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 308.
13 bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End
Press, 2000).
14 Cornelia Butler, “Art and Feminism: An Ideology of Shifting Criteria,” in WACK! Art and
the Feminist Revolution, ed. Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 15.
15 Cornelia Butler, “Art and Feminism,” 16.
16 Elizabeth Hamilton, “Judith F. Baca,” in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, ed. Lisa
Gabrielle Mark (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 215.
17 Muñoz, “Queerness as Horizon,” 4.
18 Muñoz, “Queerness as Horizon,” 4.
19 Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 312.
20 Muñoz, “Queerness as Horizon,” 13.
21 Muñoz, “Queerness as Horizon,” 13.
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22 Richard Meyer, “Hard Targets: Male Bodies, Feminist Art, and the Force of Censorship in
the 1970’s,” in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, ed. Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2007), 364.
23 Muñoz, “Queerness as Horizon,” 6.
24 Judith E. Stein, “Collaboration,” in The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of
the 1970’s, History and Impact, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York, NY: Henry
N. Abrams, 1994), 241.
25 Judy Baca, interview by Moira Roth, Berkeley, California, April 1, 1993, in The Power of
Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970’s, History and Impact, ed. Norma Broude
and Mary D. Garrard (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 151.
copyright © 2008 culture critique
Cultural Studies Department: School of Arts & Humanities
Claremont Graduate University 121 East Tenth Street, Claremont CA 91711