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Article
This Body of Art: The Singular Plural of the Feminine
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (2005)
  • Helen A Fielding, The University of Western Ontario
Abstract
I explore the possibility that the feminine, like art, can be thought in terms of Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the singular plural. In Les Muses, Nancy claims that art provides for the rethinking of a technë not ruled by instrumentality. Specifically, in rethinking aesthetics in terms of the debates laid out by Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, he resituates the ontological in terms of the specificity of the techniques of each particular artwork; each artwork establishes relations particular to its world or worlds. What is at stake in the singular plural is the multiplicity of relations that are lost in the unifying gestures that arise out of radical oppositions. I rethink the singular plural through a phenomenological encounter with Barb Hunt’s artwork, Antipersonnel, a collection of hand-knitted replicas of antipersonnel landmines.
Keywords
  • Jean-Luc Nancy,
  • Merleau-Ponty,
  • Heidegger,
  • Barb Hunt,
  • anti-personnel landmines,
  • art,
  • craft
Publication Date
October, 2005
Citation Information
Helen A Fielding. "This Body of Art: The Singular Plural of the Feminine" Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology Vol. 36 Iss. 3 (2005)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/helen_fielding/21/