Overview
Staging Femininities focuses on the work of performance artists Rose English, Bobby Baker and Annie Sprinkle in order to explicate and examine some of the most influential thinking on the politics of identity. This is one of the first books in this field to examine the productive differences as well as the useful connections between British and North American female performance traditions, between feminist theories of performance practices and, most significantly, between theatrical performance and performativity. Geraldine Harris offers a number of readings on the ways that identity is staged. Undertaking a series of "double movements" she brings together concepts from theorists and critics that include Judith Butler, Susan Bordo, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Joan Riviere, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Lacan, Michel de Certeau, Luce Irigaray, Bertold Brecht, Antonin Artaud and Eleanor Fuchs.