Feminist xianchang of embodiment

 Li Hong’s Out of Phoenix Bridge 回到凤凰桥

Darja Filippova 艺莎/ NYU Fall 2019

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thesis:

In a world where many encounters result in violence to their identity,

Li Hong’s evocation of a uterus-like space for the women to present themselves as subjects capable of choice and fantasy redefines the temporality of xianchang from “being there” to “embodiment.” Through embodying the women with her camera, Li Hong positions their liminality – a state of violence and eventual expiration - as a bracketed space for becoming.

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...a women’s revolution must go hand-in-hand with an economic revolution. If an economic revolution cannot be accomplished, then the common phrase heard today calling for a ‘‘revolu- tion between men and women’’ cannot be said to have touched the essence of the problem.

– He-Yin Zhen (also known as He Zhen) (1907)

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"He-Yin Zhen is hinging her understanding of labor in history on the figure of the subjected and abjected female body – the very body that makes starkly visible the enslaved form of all commodified labor – He-Yin Zhen proceeds to analyze the ways in which, through time, women’s bodies have been subordinated to and appropriated by wealthy men for private gain for almost the entirety of the past.” (Karl  2012:250)

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