Scholarly Embarrassment

In this essay I argue that with too few alternative approaches, the strong feminist epistemological habit of attending to the political utility of art risks placing representations of subjective narratives whose emancipatory qualities might be unclear or doubtful out of scholarly reach. Feminist art historian Irit Rogoff discusses how feminist art historians are inclined to acknowledge visual representations of particular types of corporeal vulnerabilities or dependencies as politically significant, while discarding others as vain, narcissistic, embarrassing, or uninteresting. Influenced by Rogoff’s observation, I discuss the performance Mr MEESE UND DIE LIEDER AUS DEM HERZEN #3 (Mr. MEESE AND THE SONGS FROM THE HEART #3) (2011), by Malmö-based Swedish artist ­ Jenny Grönvall. Grönvall’s work portrays messy and complicated entanglements between a feminist artist and prejudiced models of value and meaning in the Northern European art field. Rather than presenting a conventional analysis of Grönvall’s performance, I dwell on moments where I experience embarrassment and discomfort during my process of writing. By lingering with these moments, I consider the analytical limits of the tendency to endow value on art based on a work’s potential to produce socially transformative effects. The essay considers the importance of studying representations of ambivalent gendered and corporeal experience in certain feminist works without quickly ascribing them with some form of political utility or lack thereof.