Textual Body in City Space - by Lian Duan

This article is dedicated to Peter Fuller who taught me art criticism and psychoanalysis.

This article aims to address the social meaning of representing female body in photography. In contemporary art, particularly in conceptual photography, body is politicized and becomes a discursive text that is encoded with social criticism. Focusing on the relationship between artist and city space, this article examines how a photographer explores the hidden corners in public space and examines how the artist explores the identity of female sex workers through representing their bodies. The artist that is discussed in this article is a Montreal based emerging photographer, Mia Donovan, whose exploration focuses on the women who work in the sex industry and focuses on the issue of female body and identity. Approaching Donovan’s art, in this article, I employ some post-Freudian psychoanalytic concepts of D.W. Winnicott and Jacques Lacan to form a theoretical framework. My intention is to shed light on the issue of city space, body, and identity in the context of contemporary art and critical theory.

The French term “flaneur” describes a certain type of city wanderer-explorer who, in the sense of Charles Baudelaire is “at the center of the world and at the same time hidden from the world.” According to Walter Benjamin the crowd in the city that fills the public spaces forms shelters for the socially rejected, and “the flâneur is someone abandoned in the crowd. In this he shares the situation of the commodity.” American art historian Janet Wolf offers an explanation for Benjamin’s use of this term. She writes “the anonymity of the crowd provides an asylum for the person on the margins of society.” This is to say that a flâneur is socially marginalized. Nevertheless, as Benjamin points out, it is the flâneur that “abandoned himself in the crowd.” Hence, Wolf further explains, “the flâneur is the modern hero; his experience, …… is that of a freedom to move about in the city, observing and being observed, but never interacting with others.” In Mia Donovan’s recent series of photographs entitled Stripped, the artist focuses on sex workers, who are porn stars, strippers, sex chatters on the internet, and call girls. Portraying the images of these women and exploring the hidden corners in public space, such as strip clubs, of the city with her camera, the artist is like, but also different from, the 19th-century Parisian flâneur described by Benjamin. Donovan observes and explores the city and focuses on the commodified demimonde, but does not abandon herself in the crowd. She interacts with the public by exhibiting her art works.
Discussing the flâneur under the pens of Baudelaire and Benjamin, Janet Wolf is not satisfied with the invisibility of the women in their writings, and uses the gendered term flâneuse to refer to the woman wanderer-explorer. Moreover, Wolf is not only unsatisfied with the lack of female explorers, but also unsatisfied with the lack of women who are explored. She writes, “what is missing in this literature is any account of life outside the public realm, of the experience of ‘the modern’ in its private manifestations, and also of the very different nature of the experience of those women who did appear in the public arena.” In the terminology of Wolf, I consider Mia Donovan as an artist flâneuse in Montreal, and the missing women are precisely those she is looking for, and whom her camera focuses on. In this sense, Wolf’s dissatisfaction suggests the importance of Donovan’s photography that demonstrates a flâneuse’s exploration of the socially marginalized, invisible women.

On the similar topic of city exploration, British art historian T.J. Clark, in his book on Manet and the modernization of Paris, discusses how the Impressionists and Post Impressionists explored and represented the city space of Paris. A Marxist, Clark pays more attention to the success and failure in the development of the city, and points out that Van Gogh depicted the aftermath of the Haussmanization of Paris. Clark’s discussion involves the Marxist concepts of class and economic base. Donovan’s photography could be approached from a Marxist point of view as well, since her subjects can be categorized as the exploited, and the hidden corners in the public space of the city that she explores can be regarded as a certain aspect of the economy of the city’s tourist industry. More importantly, although Donovan is not a Marxist, she is interested in the topic of the commodification of the demimonde. As she states in her “Artist Statement,” her recent works focus on the “desire commodified--sex as it is produced, packaged, bought and sold within the sex industry.” While Clark is interested in how the city space is explored in art, Donovan’s photography demonstrates how the hidden corners of the sex industry are explored by the artist.

In his study Clark stresses the relocation of the working class from Paris to its peripheries. From the point of view of city space, I consider such a relocation as a denial of the workers’ sense of certainty, belonging, and affinity, and a deprivation of their living space and geographical identity. Art historian Anthony Vidler, in his discussion of city space, notes that the city space is a social phenomenon, and space and society are interdependent. According to him, space indicates social conditions and human relations, wherein the varied spatial dimensions are encoded with social order, and thus “space might allow for the study of the social boundaries that defined the limits of territorial groupings; spatial unities might be identified, within the borders coincident with the locations of particular social groups.” While the working class in T.J. Clark’s discussion was socially marginalized by the geographical relocation and displacement, and lost the sense of spatial certainty and belonging, the sex workers in Donovan’s photography are socially marginalized and lose their sense of certainty as well in the hidden corners. In the hidden corners their identities as women are ignored and even intentionally denied in the eyes of the club goers, while being dehumanized and turned into sexual objects.

The sex industry in Montreal can be seen in public space. As for the term “public space,” German philosopher Jurgen Habermas uses “public sphere” to broaden its scope. Habermas defines the public sphere as, primarily, “a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens.” Habermas in this definition explains his concept in three terms: first, the public sphere is a social place; second, it is a place for public opinions; and third, it is open to the public. Although Habermas does not use the word “space,” his definition is applicable to the concept of “public space,” since the public sphere and public spaces are physically and metaphysically identical: city squares, parks, bars, clubs, cinemas, news media, and so forth. However, there is a catch: Habermas does not tell us that there are certain hidden corners in public space, such as strip clubs or other places in the adult entertainment business, not to mention the virtual space for the sex trade on the internet.

In downtown Montreal, when one walks along St-Catherine Street, St-Laurent Boulevard, or St-Denis Street, he or she can see certain places with doors open to the public, but the windows sealed. One can walk in but not peep into these places. They are strip clubs. Although they are open to the public, they are not city squares or parks, at least, club patrons’ cameras are forbidden to these places. Hence I have termed these places “hidden corners” in public space.

A typical hidden corner of this kind is seen in Donovan’s Stripped series, “Tangerine Dreams” (2004) that represents a stripper on stage in a nightclub. When I interviewed the artist, she told me that she asked the dancer if it would be possible to photograph her in her workplace. The dancer agreed and she was even pleased since this was the first time someone had recognized her for her profession. The artist suggested that the setting should be on-stage and the dancer obliged. Without the artist’s suggestions, the dancer undressed and put on professional stockings for the performance.

The public nature of this work is obvious. The club is located on St-Catherine Street, in the heart of downtown Montreal. As I noted, it is open to the public. Anyone, except minors, can go in and watch the shows. However, this is also a hidden corner in a public space. The showgirls bare their bodies only in the club, not on the street or an outdoor stage. In any public space in a usual situation, such as walking along a downtown street, the dancer could be regarded as a common Montreal woman like everyone else. Yet, there is nothing usual in her workplace since she is an erotic dancer. In the eyes of the club goers, she is a sexual object that is used for an entertainment purpose. Before such a male gaze, she is not only objectified, but also marginalized as an “other.”

Similarly, in the photograph “Misty” (2004), a dancer is represented in front of her opened locker in the changing room of a nightclub. This work is somewhat symbolic: in the hidden corner of the club, the changing room is not open to the public, but only to the users. The locker is even more private, being open to only one user. In this photograph, the locker is open and we can see the dancer’s personal and professional belongings. In a way, the dancer’s expression is challenging and also inviting as she confronts and challenges the voyeurs, while also inviting the voyeurs to explore her private space.

The hidden corners represented in Donovan’s photographs are more than strip clubs. In another photograph of the same series, “Sabrina” (2004), the nature of the public space and the nature of the hidden corner are similar to the above two works, though the specific setting is different, which is in a rented luxury limousine. The large limousine is available to the public, and anyone can rent it. In the meantime, compared to a strip club, it is even more private once it is rented out to someone. Looking at the limousine’s fancy and luxurious interior and equipment, one can sense the intimacy and immediacy that reinforce the sense of privacy. In this photograph, a call girl is in the limousine on her way to a client. The car windows are tinted, and the limousine becomes a perfect hidden corner in an open street.

In “2 Much Girls” (2003), the setting is a bedroom, where two girls work for a porn internet business. Equipped with web cameras and other high tech utilities, the girls chat on-line with their customers, and even offer a lesbian-like performance on the internet. The virtual space on the internet is a public space, any one can have access to it, can chat with the girls, watch their performance, and even experience cyber sex with them, as long as one pays. Meanwhile, the virtual space is a hidden haven for the two girls as well, as they are physically in their bedroom, and their privacy cannot be invaded. Thus, in this photograph, the virtual space can also be regarded as a hidden corner in the public space.

Donovan is not the only one or the first to photograph the hidden corners of public space. When I asked her about the influence from other artists, she named two; the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki and the American photographer Larry Sultan. The two artists explore hidden corners of public spaces, yet, they are unlike Donovan. Araki first focuses on street life in Tokyo, then turns to be more intimate and focuses on women’s sexual desire. The difference between Araki and Donovan is the degree of engagement with their models. Although Donovan has a certain affinity to the sex workers in her photographs, she keeps a distance from her models when photographing them, making her works somewhat detached and objective. Araki claimed that he had sex with most of the women he photographed and “his images are often seen as a kind of photographic foreplay, rather a detached and exploitative voyeurism.” This is to say that Araki purposely shortened the distance between his models and himself, thus he is more self-involved, and more subjective.

Larry Sultan is well-known for his series “The Valley” (1988-2004) which depicts the porn industry in the Los Angeles area. An interesting aspect of his work is that he focuses on how the porn industry invades middle-class residential areas. In his works, Sultan explores public space from the point of view of the hidden business, while Donovan explores the hidden corners from the point of view of the public.

Interested in the hidden corners in public space and inspired by the two forerunners, Donovan intends to expand her scope and deepen her exploration. In order to achieve this goal, she plans to travel to Japan in the near future to photograph Canadian sex workers in the Tokyo sex industry.

French social critic Michel de Certeau stresses, in his discussion of city space, the importance of the relationship between the city explorer and city space from a Freudian perspective, and regards such a relationship as the one between mother and child. He remarks, “the child’s differentiation from the mother’s body” is the “experience that the possibility of space and of a localization (a ‘not everything’) of the subject is inaugurated.” Using the relationship between mother and child as an analogy that represents the relationship between the city and city explorer, I consider the psychoanalytic theory of Donald Woods Winnicott to be more adequate for my study of Donovan since the Winnicottian theory is developed from the Freudian theory, and it is fundamentally and almost exclusively based and focused on the relationship between mother and child.

In order to justify the application of the Winnicottian psychoanalysis to my study, I shall refer briefly to the American psychoanalyst and art historian, Laurie Schneider Adams. In her collection of essays, Art and Psychoanalysis, Adams identifies five categories that link psychoanalysis and art: symbolism, sublimation, creativity, and biography and autobiography. In my study of Mia Donovan I weigh the symbolism, since it is relevant to the topic of spatial exploration.

Laurie Schneider Adams regards the importance of symbolization as a mental operation in the Freudian sense and notes that “reading symbols is also an essential aspect of interpretation in the arts.” She particularly brings out the importance of Winnicottian symbolism, which deals with the infant-mother relationship. At this point, I regard the artist as the child, and the contextual public space of the city as the motherly environment, or, to use a figure of speech, I regard the personified public space as the mother.

According to Winnicott, there is a “potential space” in the infant-mother relationship. As the British art critic Peter Fuller explains, a baby in his earliest weeks of life feels at one with his mother, because he lived in his mother’s body before he was born. However, because of the awareness of the surrounding environment, such as noticing the presence of father and other family members, after the earliest weeks the baby gradually senses the otherness of his mother and thus gains his first experience of self-awareness, though it is a very vague awareness. In the meantime, however, the baby denies his separation from his mother, because he needs motherly protection. He wants to be part of his mother and wants his mother to be part of him as well. At this stage in a child’s development, the “potential space” is formed in his relationship with his mother, which is a space “between the inner world of the child and the world outside him.” To my understanding, the “inner world” refers to the child’s awareness and denial of the separation from his mother.

The notion of potential space is somewhat abstract. As Winnicott remarks, it is a space “between the subjective object and the object objectively perceived, between me-extensions and the not-me. This potential space is at the interplay between there being nothing but me and there being objects and phenomena outside omnipotent control.” This is to say that in the potential space, because of the child’s awareness and denial of his separation from mother, the subjectivity of himself and the objectivity of the mother are mutually dependant and mutually conditioned. This is also to say that the potential space is an uncertain space. Perhaps this is why Peter Fuller considers that the significance of the potential space is that, because of its uncertainty, it is open to some possibilities. For instance, it could embody the relationships between a child and his family, between the individual and society or the world. Furthermore, it is in the potential space where, as Winnicott observes, the individual finds his cultural location and where he “experiences the creative living.” In other words, the potential space could provide an artist with an opportunity to explore the world in his or her art.

In the above, I used the gendered word “he” from time to time to refer to the child. Due to the lack of a neutral pronoun for child in English, Winnicott sometimes uses “it” or simply “child” to avoid sex specification. However, the child’s gender is important to the Winnicottian theory on the relationship between mother and child. On this topic and in Winnicottian terminology, theorist Rozsika Parker emphasizes the gender specification and observes that because of the similarities between a baby girl and her mother, the girl “develops a sense of identity with her mother, making it much more difficult for her to separate from her than for the boy. Thus she is more likely to develop a personal and psychological style marked by a stress on the importance of relationship, emotionality and nurturing – all the conventional maternal traits.” In this sense I would say that, differing from the Freudian concept of the Oedipus Complex, girls, as well as women, are more motherly attached, and, in the Winnicottian sense as well, more environmentally and spatially inclined.

In the case of Donovan, if we accept the Winnicottian theory and see the artist as the child and public space as the motherly environment, then, I consider the hidden corner in public space as the potential space. Because of the child’s awareness and denial of his or her separation from mother, the child is not certain about his or her status in the potential space. The child is not certain whether he is independent from mother, and how much he is independent from her. This is the uncertainty in the hidden corners, and the uncertainty in the potential space as well.

Such an uncertainty causes the artist’s anxiety to explore her relationship with the social environment, to conquer both the hidden corner and public space. In “Tangerine Dreams,” the artist visualizes the invisible in a hidden corner, and experiences her affinity to the motherly environment where she worked as a bartender when she was a student. Such an affinity also leads the artist to photograph a showgirl in the changing room in “Misty” and the call-girl in a closed limousine in an open street in “Sabrina.”

The uncertainty in “2 Much Girls” is more spatially about the location of the hidden corner, because the location of the two girls is both virtual and physical. By “virtual” I mean that the two girls’ spatial location is not definite on the internet. They can disappear from the chat room with a simple click and they can go back again with another click at any time. They are nowhere in cyberspace, yet everywhere at the same time. In the virtual world, the sense of space and time is not physically realistic, but surrealistic. By “physical” I mean that the spatial location of the two girls is physically there in the real world, being the two girls’ bedroom. The artist was physically present in their bedroom and photographed the two girls.

In the uncertain potential space, a child needs his mother for the sense of certainty. The artist’s affinity to the invisible sex workers is comparable to the child’s desire to be part of the mother, because both the bartender-artist and the sex workers belong to the strip club, at least for financial reasons. In my interview with the artist, she mentioned her friendship with the sex workers and emphasized that they are socially marginalized and categorized as the other. She noted that her anxiety is to visualize and de-marginalize them in her photography. In a certain sense, her de-marginalization of them is a way to search for herself and search for the sense of certainty. An emerging artist, Donovan expects the recognition of herself as an artist, but does not want to cut off her relation from the place that where she worked and from the people that she worked with. To a certain degree, the place and people are the sources of her art, just as the mother who is the source of a child’s life.

The Winnicottian concept of potential space concerns the relationship of a child with his or her mother, between an artist and the social environment. Regarding such relationships, an unavoidable question arises: how does a child, as well as an artist, explore the relationships? Winnicott offers a clear answer: the child plays with transitional objects, which exist in the potential space, and exist in the infant-mother relationship. Likewise, artists create art works that function as transitional objects in the potential space and in his or her relationship with the social environment. Adams observes, “in a general way, all art has a transitional quality; it literally occupies the space between illusion and reality.” She offers some examples, such as a gothic architecture that, as a form of art, mediates between people and God. Pre-history Stonehenge in South England is also a good example that mediates between the living and the dead. To my understanding, the illusion refers to the creative drive and the imaginary world of the artist, and the reality refers to the actual social condition that the artist lives in. An artist creates works that function as Winnicottian transitional objects that mediate between the artist’s illusionary world and social reality.

Winnicott describes transitional objects in a clinical term. In his well-received essay on this topic, he tells a story about the coming of age of two brothers. The older brother was breast-fed for seven months, and although his mother thought it was too long, she could not stop breast-feeding him. When the boy was eventually weaned, he had already developed a very strong attachment to his mother. Winnicott regards such an infant-mother relationship as a distorted one, because the son did not have a substitute for the mother and therefore he was too attached to her even in his adult years. According to Winnicott, due to the lack of a transitional object between the boy and his mother, he had no help in the developmental process of becoming independent when he was a baby. On the contrary, the younger brother developed in a normal way, since he was weaned when he was four months old. At the beginning, the younger brother sucked his thumbs, which replaced mother’s breasts. Then, he started to play with the end of the blanket where the stitching finished. Recounting this case, Winnicott writes, the younger brother “was pleased if a little bit of the wool stuck out at the corner and with this he would tickle his nose.” The end of the blanket substituted the thumbs and the breasts. The little boy, as soon as he was able to vocalize, invented the word “Baa” to represent the end of the blanket. To Winnicott, this is a crucial source of artistic creativity.

Theorizing his clinical observations, Winnicott summarizes five viewpoints on the concept of the transitional object; among them, two are relevant to my study of Donovan’s photography. First, a transitional object is a substitute for the breast, which helps the child in coping with the infant-mother relationship. Second, the transitional object may become a fetish object in the future which plays an important role in an adult’s sexual life. According to Winnicott, it is not that the object is transitional, but that the object represents the child’s transition from attachment to the mother to a gradual independence from the mother. Therefore, regarding an adult or artist, I would say that the transitional object serves as the exploration of his or her spatial position in the social environment, as well as the exploration of his or her relationship with the environment.

In Donovan’s photographs, the most important transitional objects are female bodies that, either naked or clothed, witness the artist’s attachment to and separation from the Winnicottian mother, her old workplace. In “Tangerine Dreams” the naked female body is placed on the stage that corresponds to and parallels with the bar in the club. On the one hand, since strippers perform on stage and the artist-bartender sells beer in the bar, and since both the stage and the bar are in the same nightclub, the strippers and the bartender could be regarded as Winnicottian sisters. In this sense, they share a similar relationship of attachment and separation with the club, and thus the artist develops an affinity to the strippers. On the other hand, the stage and the strippers are in-between the bartender and the club, and so if there were no strippers the club would not need bartenders. In addition, the club goers form a part of the club, since if there were no customers that come to the club for the strippers’ shows, the club would not need bartenders either. In this sense, strippers are the transitional objects in the potential space between the bartender and the club, and between the bartender and the customers. This is to say that the artist’s relationship with the club and the club goers is conditioned by the strippers. To the bartender-artist, the strippers represent the club and the club goers in the Winnicottian transitional sense. For instance, if the strippers and their performances are not attractive, the club could lose business, and the bartender could lose her job. While the customers look at the naked bodies of the female dancers and thus expose their sexual fantasies, the bartender also looks at them, calculating and exploring their potential consumption, and possibly enjoys watching their fantasy-loaded gaze. Needless to say, this is the artist’s exploration of, through the use of the strippers’ bodies, her relationship with the club and the club goers, and her exploration of the hidden corners in public spaces.

In the terminology of the Winnicottian psychoanalysis, the strippers, whether naked onstage or clothed in the changing room, witness the artist’s exploration of the motherly workplace, a hidden corner in the city. Meanwhile, photographing the sex workers, the artist plays with their bodies and through such a play explores the city spaces. Since the Winnicottian potential space embodies the relationship between an individual and society, and since the transitional objects witness the artist’s exploration of the hidden corners in public spaces, a question about the social meaning of the artist’s exploration arises.

The social meaning in Mia Donovan’s exploration of the hidden corners in the city’s public spaces is related to the objectification of the female body and the loss of women’s identity. As I have cited earlier, Donovan states in her “Artist Statement” that the female bodies represent the “desire commodified--sex as it is produced, packaged, bought and sold within the sex industry.” According to the artist, the commodification is rooted in the desire of the sex consumers and the material and professional needs of the sex workers. Largely due to the commodification, the identity of the sex workers becomes uncertain. For instance, in their workplace and in the eyes of certain customers, their bodies become sexual objects that are used for entertainment purposes. Representing the bodies of female sex workers in their workplaces, Mia Donovan deals with the issue of identity in relevance with the issues of commodification and objectification.

In “Tangerine Dreams” a stripper’s body is represented on the stage of a nightclub. This is a nude female body with large-breast implants, which suggests the “commodified-sex” and the material needs of the women in the profession. The only piece of clothing that is worn is a pair of gaudy stockings that is full of holes, which indicates the profession as well. The seductive gesture of the stripper also stresses her profession. The shiny latex surface of the seats and wall in the background along with beer ads give spectators a sense of a commercial setting that corresponds with the gaudy colour of the stockings, and suggests the sexual exploitation of the female body. Reading this naked female body in the photograph, I do not consider it as a simple image of a stripper. Rather, I consider that it is encoded with a message about women’s identity, which is lost in the workplace.

Donovan’s other works in the Stripped series support this consideration. “Misty” represents a stripper in the changing room of a nightclub. Although she is not on stage nor naked, her clothing is seductive. The background setting of her open locker which displays personal and professional possessions indicates the commodified sex as well. In “2 Much Girls” two girls perform in a lesbian-like show in front of an internet camera, selling cyber sex online. Interestingly, cyber girls play with their bodies on the internet, usually using false identities, as do other online sex workers. In this case, sex workers’ identities are lost due to the fact that, as well as being objectified in the eyes of their male patrons, they want to use a false identity for business purposes as well.

Reading Donovan’s works, I see that the notion of identity, specifically female sex workers’ identities, are embodied in the bodies. In order to explore how the artist conceptualizes the notion of identity in her art, I shall turn to a theoretical preparation first. Tracing the discourse on the body in the western cultural tradition, I notice the separation between body and mind in the philosophy of Plato and Descartes. However, contemporary feminists intend to abandon the concept of mind-body split. As Moira Gatens remarks on this issue, “By abandoning the dualist ontology of mind versus body, nature versus cultural, we can circumvent the either/or impasse of contemporary feminist theory between affirming an essential mental quality, which is the progress of civilization can be entrusted to expose, and affirming an essential bodily difference.” Although Gatens talks about corporeality, I infer the cultural implications from her discussion and consider that the concept of textual body is a form of the bodily difference. By saying this I mean the possible cultural implications or connotations, namely, the “text,” that are inscribed on the body make the body different from the natural body. My inference comes from the fact that even Gatens herself infuses the Foucauldian concept of power, as well as the theories of Jacques Lacan, into her discussion of the corporeality of body.

According to some postmodern theorists, social historians, and feminist and cultural critics of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a body is a text, which is the opposite of the natural body. British literary historian Elisabeth Johnston argues that the Victorian woman poet Elisabeth Barrett Browning is a textual body created by her critics. According to Johnston, the female poet Browning that we know is not the actual Mrs. Browning, but a false one that her critics made up. In the terminology of Johnston, the female poet Browning’s body refers to not only the physical or natural body of Mrs. Browning, but mainly the textual body. The text is, in a metaphorical sense, inscribed on the natural body of Mrs. Browning by her critics. Therefore, what we read today is more or less the textual body of the female poet, not really that of Mrs. Browning, the actual lady. According to Johnston, critics and reviewers represented the body of the female poet as a contaminated body, disfigured and deformed. In Johnston’s writing, the term “textual body” refers to both the body of Mrs. Browning’s poetry, and the body of Mrs. Browning herself.

From Johnston’s argument, we can see that the importance of the body in the contemporary theoretical discourse on this issue is that the body serves as a battle ground in the theoretical arena and provides a physical foundation for a cultural, social, and political struggle. In this sense, the body is no longer natural, but is inscribed with cultural codes. However, the inscription is not only the codes that are already imposed on the bodies by artists, but also the ways we decipher the codes. Needless to say, our way of deciphering the codes is influenced by both the living bodies we encounter, and more importantly, the ways the artists and critics impose the codes on the bodies. In other words, a textual body is the one being written and being read.

Therefore, some feminist scholars regard the body as a social and cultural symbol which stands for a social hierarchy system and its rules, as well as its cultural conventions. Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray oppose the idea that the body is only biological and natural, considering that the body is inscribed with social and cultural codes. As Elizabeth Gross remarks, “the body needs not, indeed must not be considered merely a biological entity, but can be seen as a socially inscribed, historically marked, psychologically and interpersonally significant product.” Janet Wolff holds a similar opinion and sees the body as the product of social histories, social relations, and discourses. American feminist critic Judith Butler is a major figure who has taken the side of the textual body. In her essay “Bodies that Matter” and her book that bears the same title, she promotes the notion of constitutive outside. In her terminology, the “outside” refers to the discourses outside of the body, or the body outside of discourses. To my understanding, it is the outside discourses that have inscribed the body with cultural and social texts.

In so far, the complexity of the issue of the body has been demonstrated by the split of the natural body and the textual body. Nevertheless, the complexity of this theoretical issue is also found in the fact that some of today’s scholars, such as Bonnie Mann, consider that the acceptance of the textual body is the denial of the earthly body of blood and flesh. According to her, the textual body refers to the human body that is gendered and embodied with cultural connotations, and thus it is not physically natural, but a simulacrum without the original. Countering the opinion of the textual body and debating Judith Butler, Mann proposes her opinion on the extra-textual body. She writes, “but what is an extra-textual body? In what does its irreducibility to the textual consistency. The textual body, as we have seen, is a body that is culturally inscribed, written on, so to speak – yet not in the sense of some ‘original’ natural thing, some primary matter on which the social is later inscribed. It is interpellated, meaning subjected in the double sense of being made a subject (agent) and a subject (loyal follower) at the same moment. It is a body that performs its subjection in both senses of the word, its subjection to authority and its subjection resistance to authority.” In my opinion, although Bonnie Mann does not agree with Judith Butler and other postmodern feminists’ opinions on the textual body, she actually demonstrates a conciliation, or at least a negotiation, between the natural body and the textual body, as she claims that she is “not opposing the material body and the textual body.” In this case, I am personally in favour of the concept of the “textual body” for its rich cultural and social connotations, while I do not oppose Bonnie Mann’s notion of the earthly body of blood and flesh, which, in my opinion, is the corporeal base of the textual body.

The above discourses on body provide us with a specific perspective to read Donovan’s photography, in which the naked female bodies are natural while also culturally inscribed. For instance, in “Tangerine Dreams,” not only are the background setting and the gaudy-coloured stockings a signifying mechanism, but also the surgically enlarged breasts and the seductive gesture that signify the commodification of the female body. Such a signifying mechanism suggests the textuality of the bodies in the artist’s photography, which leads to the conceptualization of identity.

Gaze and Mirror Stage

In Donovan’s photography, the conceptualization of identity is related to her use of gaze, which is a form of text on the female bodies. In “Tangerine Dreams” the gaze of the stripper is straightforward while also somewhat inward. Possibly, the stripper is communicating with male club goers with a seductive gaze, and also looking into herself with an introspective gaze.

Technically speaking, when the artist photographs her models, the gazes are found between the artist and the models. However, in the case of “Tangerine Dreams,” the scenario is a reenactment of the stripper’s performance on stage. Since the intention of the artist is to photograph the sex workers in their workplaces and to deal with the issue of identity, the on-the-spot reenactment is essential in making the body in the workplace meaningful. This is why, as the artist explains to me in my interview, her works in the Stripped series are not portraits of certain women, but the representation of working women in their workplaces. In the sense of reenactment, therefore, although the gazes are found between the photographer and her models, I have reason to assume that the gazes are between the sex workers and their patrons.

Literally, gaze means looking and watching; it refers to visual communication. However, in the postmodern critical discourse on this notion, gaze is inscribed with power, manipulation, desire, and so forth. This discourse can be traced back to the early Renaissance. At that time, gaze was directly related to the concept of perspective, and, as Patrick Fuery and Nick Mansfield write, “the whole concept of perspective can be seen as the desire to understand and even manipulate the gaze of the reader.” This is to say that, despite the gazes between the sex workers and their patrons, there is a multiple communicative interaction of gaze among a picture, the artist, and the spectators. The artist manipulates the spectator’s way of looking by applying her own perspective to the artwork. In “Misty,” when the artist looks at the stripper through her camera, the stripper also looks back at her with an enigmatic, alluring and mocking smile. Their eye contact not only manipulates the way a viewer looks at the photograph, but also manipulates the communication between the spectator and the stripper in the picture.

In a certain sense, such a manipulation demonstrates the desire for control and the exercise of the power to control. This is the desire of the artist, the spectators, and also the women in the photographs, which involves the issue of objectification and identity. Art historian and critic Whitney Chadwick discusses modern artists’ objectification of their female models. In her monograph Women, Art, and Society, Chadwick refers to these male artists’ “erotically based assault on female form.” She names Manet, Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Renoir, the Surrealists, and some others as the assaulters, and points out that these artists represent women as “powerless and sexually subjugated.” Chadwick does not confine her opinion to the artistic world but goes beyond. She observes, “the representation of the female body has been organized for male viewing pleasure. [……] the persistent presentation of the nude female body as a site of male viewing pleasure, a commodified image of exchange, and a fetishized defense against the fear of castration has left little place for exploration of female subjectivity, knowledge, and experience.” What Chadwick is trying to say is that it is the male gaze that objectifies the female body and deprives women of their subjectivity and identity.

Chadwick’s opinion is about the male gaze on women. In order to view fully the notion of objectification, I shall turn to women’s gaze on themselves, and discuss French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s concept of gaze, which provides a theoretical foundation for the notion of objectification.

According to Lacan, when a child between the age of six and eighteen months first looks at the image of himself in a mirror, he acquires the first awareness of his existence, while the image of himself in the mirror is also the image of him in the eyes of others. Realizing his self-existence and the otherness of his own image, the child then develops a desire for self-completion. In a congress in 1949, Lacan presented an influential essay on this topic and it reads, “This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other.” Reading Lacan I discern two viewpoints in this passage: the child’s awareness of his subjectivity and the awareness of his otherness which is related to objectivity.

Speaking of the first viewpoint, I have mentioned the introspectiveness of the stripper’s gaze in Donovan’s “Tangerine Dreams.” Such an introspective gaze is a gendered gaze that suggests her awareness of the split between being a woman and being a stripper on stage. In other words, she understands that her identity is split. Speaking of the second viewpoint, since the stripper’s gendered gaze is also straightforward, looking at the male customers, there is a communication between the gaze of the stripper and the gazes of the club goers. Such gender-specified gazes reinforce the stripper’s awareness of her otherness, and she is clear that when naked on stage she is an objectified sex toy that is used for entertainment purposes. Indeed, Lacan relates the double awareness to each other when he discusses the “gaze sees itself” and the “gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other.” Such a double awareness is centered on the concept of identity.

With regard to gaze and identity, Lacan reveals his interest in a verse that he has favoured, “I saw myself seeing myself.” At a linguistic and grammatical level, the “I” in the verse is the subject of the verb “saw,” while the two “myself” form a compound object of the verb. Within the compound object, the first “myself” is the subject of “seeing” and the second “myself” is the object of “seeing.” In other words, the “I” understands that he or she as the beholder is both the subject and the object of the action of seeing at the same time. The sentence “I see myself seeing myself” can be rewritten in a passive way as “I know that I am being seen by myself.” The two sentences are self-reflexive and self-referential, and demonstrate the double awareness of subjectivity and otherness of the “I”. According to Lacan, gaze itself cannot be seen, but can only be imagined, and be imagined in the relationship between the subjectivity and otherness, or between the subject and the object.

Dealing with the “I” in his essay on mirror stage, Lacan opposes the Cartesian concept “cogito, ergo sum” and re-writes Descartes’ motto as “Where I think ‘I think, therefore I am,’ that is where I am not.” Based on the discussion of Lacan in the above, at this point, I wish to rewrite the Cartesian motto as well in a Lacanian way to state the paradoxical double awareness of identity: “I gaze, therefore I am” and “I gaze, therefore I know I am not.”

In the discourse on identity, scholars consider that it is about difference, namely, the difference between self and others. However, sameness, or commonality, is also a consideration. In other words, the term “identity” contains a double meaning: difference and sameness. On this issue, Susan Stanford Friedman offers a definition: “Identity is constructed relationally through difference from the other; identification with a group based on gender, race, or sexuality, for example, depends mostly on binary system of ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ where difference from the other defines the group to which one belongs. Conversely, identity also suggests sameness, as in the word identical; an identity affirms some form of commonality, some shared ground.” The key in this definition is the difference of an individual from the others and the sameness with the group to which the individual belongs.

In Lacan’s discourse on mirror stage, a child gains the sense of identity from his or her double awareness of subjectivity and objectivity, or otherness, which are interdependent, interdetermined, and interlocked with each other. Lacan opposes the Cartesian concept of Cogito, and considers that looking is before thinking, and that looking is more important in the first step of a child’s intellectual development. Looking at his or her own image in a mirror, a child senses his or her own existence, and then also senses his or her relationship with the surroundings. Therefore, Lacan stresses that the mirror stage should be understood as an identification. According to Lacan, identity is not only an issue of self-awareness, but also an issue of the awareness of otherness, which takes place following self-awareness. As Lacan describes, there are three steps to complete the identification. The self-awareness in the first step is in a primordial form, the awareness of otherness in the second step is in an objectified form, and finally in the third step, language restores the objectified subjectivity.

The social and sociological significance of Lacan’s above theory on gaze and mirror stage is found in his socialization of child psychology, or “social determination.” He regards the primordial self-identification in the first step as a fictional “Ideal I,” and regards the objectification in the second step as the result of social interaction with others. According to Lacan, the objectification is a result of a two-direction projection, referring to both the otherness of the child in the eyes of the others, and the otherness of the others in the eyes of the child. The restoration of the subjectivity by language in the third step is a co-existence of the self and the other, hence, the identity of the child’s self goes towards the completion.

When I use the word “completion” I do not mean that the social meaning of the identity in Lacan’s theory is over. In fact, in order to elaborate his concept of mirror stage and identity, Lacan goes further to discuss the child’s recognition of the others, and the child’s relationship and interaction with the surrounding world.

This relationship and interaction involve two parties: the inner image of the child, which is projected into the child from the mirror, and the outside image of the surrounding world, which is also projected into him from the mirror. In front of the mirror, when the child moves, the two images move as well. Noticing the moves, the child senses that the relationship and interaction between him and the surrounding are both spatial and temporal. At this point, Lacan gives not only social meaning but also historical meaning to the concept of mirror stage. He writes, “This development is experienced as a temporal dialectic that decisively projects the formation of the individual into history. The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation – and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of fantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality.” My interpretation of Lacan is that if the child’s image in the mirror is not in a relationship with the surroundings, or if the child does not sense his interaction with the outside world, the image will be a broken one, or a “fragmented body” in Lacan’s terminology. Whereas once the child gains a sense, then the image gains its totality.

The totality of the child’s image in the mirror refers to, as previously mentioned, both spatiality and temporality. The two are fundamental to the concept of identity, since they provide this concept with a social and historical setting. Returning to the topic of Donovan’s photography, in the sense of Lacan’s “symbolic reduction,” if I reduce the spatiality and temporality to a specific setting, say, the strip club, then, in the particular spatial setting of the performing stage and the particular temporal setting of the show time, the image of the stripper, or the image of her body, is fragmented, and her identity as a woman is broken as well. In this case, the word “fragmented” means that the image of the stripper on stage is a partial one in which her body represents only part of her life. Similarly, the word “broken” means that the identity of the stripper is also partial or incomplete. On the contrary, in a broader setting, the spatiality and temporality could give the concept of identity a much deeper meaning, namely, a social and historical meaning. In such a broad setting, say, out of the spatial and temporal confinement of the strip club, the stripper could demonstrate her identity of being a common woman and not a sexual object performing on stage.

Between the reduced setting and the broad setting, there is a development from an individual self to a social self. Lacan borrowed two terms from Anna Freud (1895-1982), the specular I and the social I, which could be used to refer to this development. In the process of the development from the specular I to the social I, the sense of identity is established. The specular I is related to one’s characteristic, or inertia, while the social I is relevant to society, or the outside world. The interaction and the integration of the specular I and the social I make the realization and establishment of identity possible. At the end of his essay, Lacan uses a poetic phrase to tell his readers that the establishment of identity is not the end of the story, but the starting point, “where the real journey begins.”

The reason I have devoted a lengthy passage to discuss Lacan is that his concepts of gaze and mirror stage tell us how the sense of identity is formed in a social and historical setting. Then, what is the relevance of the Lacanian theory to my interpretation of the issue of body and identity in Mia Donovan’s photography? I consider the relevance as being twofold. Firstly, in Donovan’s photography, gaze is a socially inscribed text on the bodies, therefore it is the artist’s imprint on the bodies. Such textual bodies subvert the objectification of the female bodies of the sex workers. Secondly, not only does the gaze serve as the feminist concept of the textual body, but also the notion of mirror stage serves as the feminist concept of identity by revealing the social meaning in Donovan’s works. Bearing in mind the Lacanian concepts of gaze and mirror stage and looking at the sex workers’ bodies in Donovan’s works, I see that the bodies on stage and other workplaces are objectified by the male voyeurism. Interviewing the artist, I also understand that the artist intends to redeem their identity by not only representing their bodies but also criticizing the objectification of their bodies.

Towards a Conclusion:

The loss of identity occurs in the female sex workers’ workplaces, the hidden corners of public spaces. In Donovan’s photography, the artist explores their identity in relation to their workplaces. Such a social setting embodies the sexist power that imposes a commodifying code on the sex workers, that is their clothing, make-up, behaviour, and so forth. As the artist states in her “Artist Statement,” “these women use their bodies to earn their livelihood and put much time and effort into maintaining and perfecting their image. When your body is the tool of your trade, keeping the personal separate from the professional is a tricky business.” This is to say that there is a gap between what the sex workers look like on stage and who they actually are. As discussed, they are perceived as sexual toys in their workplaces. In my interview with the artist, she emphasized the fact that sex workers are often judged by their clothing and make-up at a superficial level. In this circumstance, their identities as women are ignored and even purposely denied, hence becoming sex objects that are represented by their bodies.

The objectified female bodies are presumably intended for the heterosexual male gaze. However, reading and interpreting the images in Mia Donovan’s photography, I argue that, while the male customers may enjoy their power over the female by gazing at and thus objectifying their naked bodies, the female bodies are also a sign of subjective identity that is encoded with an anti-sexist message, especially when the strippers look back and challenge the male gaze. Aside from the stripper’s gaze, three types of gazes in Donovan’s works can be discerned: the male gaze of the club goers, the artist’s gaze through her camera, and the gaze of the gallery goers. Among the three, the artist’s gaze also subjectifies the strippers by capturing their gazes that look back and challenge the objectification. With this consideration, I observe that the artist visualizes the invisible: the socially marginalized women of the sex industry in the hidden corners of city spaces.

Related to this observation, I propose a question: why does the artist photograph the female sex workers in their workplaces, or what is the importance of the workplace to the female bodies?

On the one hand, as discussed, the female sex workers’ loss of identity results from the commodification and objectification of their bodies. The commodification comes from their professional needs, and the sex consumers’ needs, while the objectification is largely due to the consumers’ voyeuristic gaze, or the heterosexual male gaze. Both commodification and objectification occur in the female sex workers’ workplaces. On the other hand, in order to redeem the lost identity of the female sex workers, the artist places their bodies in their workplaces to consider two facts. First, in the workplace the artist can capture and emphasize the sex workers’ gazes that look back and challenge the sex consumers’ objectifying gazes. Second, the workplace indicates that the sex workers are workingwomen. Regardless of the reason, the female sex workers made a decision to earn a living on their own, and thus they gain both the financial and personal independence which assures their subjectivity and identity.

The issue of working women is a heavy one and has a long history in the feminist discourse. Some scholars have paid attention to the topic of the workplace and its relation to women’s identities. Discussing women’s independence in her study of female Scottish artists of the late 19th century, Canadian art historian Janice Helland points out the importance of working for wages outside of the home. Although Helland deals with middle-class women and I deal with working-class women, her way of thinking is applicable to my study: we should place the working women “within an economy of production and consumption,” otherwise, “women will continue to inhabit an insecure space within society.” In other words, because workingwomen earn wages in their workplaces, the workplaces give them a sense of security. Whether it be in the 19th century, 20th century or today, this provides not only a sense of financial security, but also a sense of independence, which is important to women’s identities.

Certainly, the work of workingwomen in the sex industry is different from the workingwomen in other industries, for the products that the sex workers make are their own bodies. The artist has captured the focal point of this issue: the “desire commodified--sex as it is produced, packaged, bought and sold within the sex industry.” What Donovan focuses on in her photography is the products and the producing process during which the female sex workers have lost their identity. This is also the process during which the loss of identity is incorporated with the objectifying gaze of the male club goers.

Speaking of the work of female sex workers, I shall refer to Karl Marx who has discussed the issue of commodity-related objectification, though he uses the word “men” in a general sense for people or workers. In his Capital, Marx writes, “The mystery of the commodity form, therefore, consists in the fact that in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective characteristic, a social natural quality of the labour product itself, and that consequently the relations of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour.” The concept of objectification in Marx might be indirect and somewhat abstract, but it is not difficult to apply it to the discussion of the objectification in Mia Donovan’s photography. Reading Marx in relation to Donovan’s works, I see a contradiction in these works. On one hand, as I discussed, the sex workers made the decision on their own to work in the sex industry. Such a decision demonstrates their self-awareness of subjectivity and identity. On the other hand however, it is precisely that decision that placed them in the particular workplaces where they are objectified and lost their identity. Logically, I could say that due to the specificity of their workplaces, the sex workers’ subjectivity and objectivity are the two sides of one coin: in order to demonstrate their subjectivity, they choose to be objectified.

However, in my understanding of Mia Donovan’s photography, this contradiction is the poignant and insightful irony in her art. Taking advantage of this contradiction by representing female bodies in workplaces, the artist demonstrates not only an aesthetic complexity, but also the social meaning of her photography. Certain feminist critics consider that deconstructing the commodification of the female body in art could be a link between feminism and Marxism. According to the Canadian critic, Linda Hutcheon, feminist critics and Marxist critics have a common frontline in deconstructing the desire-commodified consumer society. The purpose of Mia Donovan’s art, as I discussed in this essay and as she indicates in her Artist Statement, is to deal with the “desire-commodified sex” with a critical and subversive approach. The poignant and insightful irony of her art is embedded in her endeavour to redeem the female sex workers’ lost identities and to restore their subjectivity through representing their bodies in workplaces, the hidden corners of public spaces. Thus, I conclude that this is the social meaning of Mia Donovan’s photography.

Janet Wolf. “The Invisible Flaneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity” in The Problem of Modernity: Adorno and Benjamin. Andrew Benjamin, ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1991, p. 145.

Walter Benjamin. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era ofHighCapitalism. London: Verso, 1976, p. 55.

Janet Wolf (1991), p. 146.

Walter Benjamin (1976), p. 55.

Janet Wolf (1991), p. 146.

Ibid., 154.

T.J. Clark. The Painter of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1985, p. 30.

Anthony Vidler. Warped Space: Art, Architecture and Anxiety in Modern Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000, p. 65.

Ibid., p. 67.

Jurgen Habermas. “The Public Sphere: an Encyclopedia Article (1964)” in New German Critique, vol.1, no.3, 1974, p. 49.

Charlotte Cotton. The Photograph as Contemporary Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004, pp. 142-3.

Michel de Certeau. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p. 109.

Laurie Schneider Adams. Art and Psychoanalysis. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994, p. 4.

Ibid..

Peter Fuller. Art and Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth Press, 1989, p. 202.

Howard A. Bacal and Kenneth M. Newman. Theories of Object Relations: Bridges to Self Psychology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, p. 203.

D.W. Winnicott. Playing and Reality. New York: Routledge, 1991, p. 100.

Peter Fuller (1989), p. 204.

D.W. Winnicott (1989), p. 103.

Parker, Rozsika. Mother Love / Mother Hate. New York: Basic Books, 1995, p. 159.

Winnicott describes sufficient examples as the answer, see D. W. Winnicott. Playing and Reality. London and New York: Routledge, 1991, pp. 6-9.

Laurie Schneider Adams (1994), p. 180.

Ibid., p. 181.

D. W. Winnicott (1991), p. 7.

Ibid., 9.

Ibid., 15.

Moira Gatens. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London and New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 57.

Ibid., p. 69.

Bonnie Mann. “Talking Back to Feminist Postmodernism: toward a New Radical Feminist Interpretation of the Body” in Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, Robin N. Fiore and Hilde Lindemann Nelson, eds. New York and Oxford: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, p. 143. However, Bonnie Mann opposes the concept of textual body. See my succeeding discussion.

Elisabeth Johnston. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Textual Bodies and the Rhetoric of Gender in Nineteenth-Century Critical Discourse.” Third Space, vol. 4, issue 1, November 2004. <http://thirdspace.ca/vol4/4_1_Johnston.htm> April 19, 2005.

Elizabeth Grosz. “Philosophy, Subjectivity and the Body: Kristeva and Irigaray” in Carole Pateman and Elizabeth Gross, eds. Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986, p. 140.

Janet Wolf. Feminine Sentences: Essays on Women and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, p. 133.

Judith Butler. Bodies that Matter: on the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 8.

Bonnie Mann (2003), p. 143, p. 156.

Ibid., p. 146, p. 157. As for the issue of simulacrum without original, see also Rey Chow. “Gender and Representation” in Feminist Consequences: Theory for the New Century. Elisabeth Bronfen and Misha Kavka, eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. p. 54.

Bonnie Mann (2003), p. 156-7.

Ibid., p. 157. In the terminology of Bonnie Mann, the material body and the natural body are the same, both emphasizing the physicality of the body.

Patrick Fuery and Nick Mansfield. Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 77.

Whitney Chadwick. Women, Art, and Society (revised version). London: Thames and Hudson, 1996, p. 279.

Ibid., pp. 280-282.

Jacques Lacan. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Zurich: the 16th International Congress of Psychoanalysis, July 17, 1949. See Jacques Lacan. Ecrits: A Selection. trans. Alan Sheridan trans. New York: W.W. Norton, 1977, p. 2.

Jacques Lacan. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton and Company, 1981, p. 84.

Ibid., 80.

Ibid., 84.

Jacques Lacan (1977), p. 1.

Ibid.

Susan Stanford Friedman. Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 19.

Jacques Lacan (1977), p. 2.

Ibid., pp. 2-3.

Ibid., p. 4

Ibid.

Ibid., 5.

Ibid., 7.

Janice Helland. Professional Women Painters in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Commitment, Friendship, Pleasure. Burlington, VT : Ashgate, 2000, p. 4.

Karl Marx. Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. T.B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel, eds. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1974, p. 183.

Linda Hutcheon. The Politics of Postmodernism. New York and London: Routledge, 1989, p. 144.

Assistant Professor in Chinese and Coordinator of Chinese Program, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada