“... History reveals the necessity for ...
underlying narratives in the manufacture
of cultures of affirmation and resistance.
The danger in not recognising the
essential fictiveness of such constructs,
however, is that a certain fundamentalism,
a mega-nationalism, emerges – all the
more dangerous for its vagueness – which
exercise, elides, confiscates, imposes and
distorts.” (Oguibe [1993] 2005, p. 228)

New Voices: postmodernism‟s
focus on the marginalised
 How „Authentic‟ is „Primitive‟ art?
 How „Essential‟ is Femininity?
 Have there always been Homosexuals?
 Conclusion: Power and Exclusion

How „Authentic‟ is
„Primitive‟ art?
“Developments in the Disciplines of
History and Anthropology during the
previous fifteen years or so had
eroded the notions of „Authenticity‟
and „the untouched primitive‟,
especially when the two were linked;
and in the aftermath of the 1984‟s
exhibits, the concept of „authentic
primitive art‟ was attacked head-on by
a rack of cultural critics, leaving it
bloody and dead.” (Errington 1998, p.3)

Representing the „Other‟ and
„Authentic‟ Great Exhibition 1851

Otherness – binary oppositions
in the 19th Century world view.
Culture > Nature
Rationality > Irrationality
Western > Non-Western
Man > Woman

Otherness
 “As Europeans increasingly came to
think of themselves during the
nineteenth centuries as essentially and
characteristically secular, rational,
civilized, and technologically advanced,
they almost necessarily generated an
imagined Other that was savage,
ignorant, and uncivilised” (Errington
1998, p.16)

Jean Michel Basquiat

Jean Michel
Basquiat
Basquiat, Jean-Michel
Self-Portrait as a Heel, Part Two
1982

Jean Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1983) Notary

Jean Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel
Basquiat
(1983)
Hollywood
Africans

Jean-Michel
Basquiat
(1982) Native
Carrying
Some Guns,
Bibles,
Amorites on
Surfari.

How “Essential” is Femininity?
“Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, and scientists have
all striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is
willed in heaven and advantageous on earth.” (De Beauvoir
1949)
“All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the
human species; today as always they make up about one half
of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger;
we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become
women. It would appear, then, that every female human being
is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must
share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as
femininity. It this attribute something secreted by the ovaries?”
(Ibid)

How „Essential‟ is femininity?
“the [feminine] stereotype is a
product of a patriarchal culture which
constructs male dominance through
the significance it attained to sexual
difference.” (Parker and Pollock
1981, p.16)

Have there always been homosexuals?

Have there always been
Homosexuals?
 “Foucault did not suggest that sexual
relationships between people of the same sex
did not exist before the 19th Century. In the
Renaissance period, for example, sexual
practices such as sodomy were condemned
by the church and prohibited by law, whether
between men and men or men and women.
But the crucial difference between this early
form of regulatory sexual practices and that of
the late 19th century lies in the latter‟s claim to
identify what Foucault called a „species‟, an
aberrant type of human being defined by
preverse sexuality.” (Spargo p.18)

“Foucault ... Insisted that the category of the
homosexual grew out of a particular context in the
1870s and that, like sexuality generally, it must be
viewed as a constructed category of knowledge
rather than as a discovered identity.” (Ibid, p.17)
“... The most important feature of writing on women
was that it attributed natural explanations to what
were in fact the result of ideological attitudes” (Parker
and Pollock 1981, p.10)

More than being a case of the „simple‟ repression of one
group of people by another, power is implicit in the way „we‟
come to „know‟ the world. For this reason postmodernism,
bound up with an „incredulity‟ towards Grand Narratives
and „truths‟, is incredibly hard to define. To be marginalised
is to be held apart from the „centres‟ of knowledge
production and representation. Multiculturalism, Feminism
and Queer theory are, for these reasons, very important
aspects of the de-centralising process defined as
postmodernism. Moreover, they might be seen to be only
prominent examples in much broader field of
marginalisation.

Bibliography
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http//www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beavoir/2nd-
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 Foucault, M ([1976] 1998) The History of Sexuality: Vol 1. London,
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 Heller, S (ed.) (1999) Design Literacy. New York, Allworth Press.
 Hooks, B (1994) Outlaw Culture. London, Routledge.
 Oguibe, O ([1996] 2005) In the ‘Heart of Darkness’, in Kocur, Z and
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