Uncanny Genders

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Taking Duchamp’s porcelain urinal and Louise Bourgeois’ suspended penises as starting points, this paper seeks to illustrate radical and even subversive representations of gender. Duchamp’s urinal, for instance, was intended to test the tolerance of the Society of Independent Artists, to poignantly challenge unitary authorial identity, and to de-essentialise gender. Fountain’s bi-gender characteristics provide the commercially produced porcelain urinal with a series of subversive qualities that trigger a specific kind of uneasiness that comes to coincide with the uncanny. 

A special emphasis will be put on both the social critique articulated by unconventional representations of gender and the reception of this critique by society. In addition to this, echoing back to Judith Butler’s concept of gender as an imitation, this paper pursues the discourse of gender as simulation, a connotatively rich practice with references back to Jean Martin Charcot hysterics and Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulation. In this theoretical context, gender as a simulation is highly resonant with the art of drag that is consciously performative but also with cisgender identities that can be labelled unconsciously performative. In regard to this complexity of art representing drag, transgender identities, and cisgender identities, the 1992 film, Paris is Burning, will be used as a key example. Thus, this paper presents a complex and nuanced conception of gender, as articulated through the medium of art, as well as highlighting the social critique that this forms, and analysing its critical reception.