Angry Women Re/Search 1991

Re/Search -sarjan teemana nyt vihaiset naiset. Hintalappu ja nimmari mutta kirja kuin uusi. Lydia Lunch, Annie Sprinkle, Diamanda Galas, Kathy Acker, bell hooks…

Kun feminismin kiukku kohtaa punk-asenteen ja yhteiskunnallisen performanssin. Kirja on melko harvinainen jo.

RE/Search’s issue on Angry Women brought together a range of critics, theorists, performance artists and lesbian activists including Kathy Acker, Valie Export, bell hooks, Lydia Lunch, Carolee Schneemann and Annie Sprinkle. Published in 1991, the issue proposed a ‘revolutionary feminism’, finding its forms and manifestations in ‘wild sex, humor, beauty, spirituality plus radical politics’. Despite the radical content of this issue and the significance of its contributors for feminism, the publication has received little academic attention. Analyses that address this publication treat it in isolation from the wider context of RE/Search and its theoretical perspectives. This article focuses on Angry Women by setting it into these contexts. It argues that RE/Search’s theoretical positions can be understood through Bataillean notions of base materialism. The article explores a range of influences and relations, including that of Bataille on RE/Search and the significance of the relation of Angry Women to the wider RE/Search project once read through the lens of Bataillean theories. It will also demonstrate that the deliberate selection of contributors by Juno and Vale reveals a distinct Bataillean strain within feminist projects in the 1990s.

This cult issue of San Francisco based publication RE/Search reads more like a college textbook than a journal; Angry Women (1991) features exclusive, longform interviews with feminist theorist bell hooks, avant-garde writer Kathy Acker, pioneering performance artist Carolee Schneemann and 13 other iconic feminst figureheads. “Anger is an emotion which must be reclaimed and legitimised as Woman’s rightful, healthy expression – anger can be a source of power, strength and clarity as well as a creative force,” write editors Andrea Juno and V. Vale in the introduction. Full of punk black-and-white photographs and illustrations, Angry Women pushed the boundaries of what feminism could look like in the early 1990s – topics including menstruation, masturbation, vibrators, failed utopias and the death of the Sixties are all discussed. ‘How can you have a revolutionary feminism that encompasses wild sex, humor, beauty and spirituality plus radical politics?’ reads the blurb.