PERFORMING WITNESSING: ART, SEXUAL TRAUMA, AND FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

Open Access
- Author:
- Kwon, Hyunji
- Graduate Program:
- Art Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- January 31, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Karen Keifer-Boyd, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Karen Keifer-Boyd, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Charles Garoian, Committee Member
Kimberly Powell, Committee Member
Rosemary J. Jolly, Outside Member - Keywords:
- sexual trauma
feminist pedagogy
bearing witness
trauma art - Abstract:
- Feminist art pedagogy can enable sexual trauma subjects to bear witness through art creation. The experience of sexual trauma harms a sense of subjectivity; and, thus, the restoration of subjectivity is critical for bearing witness to trauma. Subjectivity is an individual’s sense of existence whereby the individual can consciously make and act upon decisions. By examining bearing witness through art within the context of feminist art pedagogy, my study reveals how feminist art pedagogy has enabled trauma subjects to actively discover, interpret, and, thereby, comprehend their trauma through art making experiences. Specifically, I examine how feminist art pedagogy enabled art creation as bearing witness by four sexual trauma subjects and three trauma artworks created in feminist art courses. These include former Korean comfort woman Duk-kyung Kang and her painting Stolen Innocence (1995), created in Gyung-shin Lee and Sook-jin Kim’s informal art course for surviving comfort women; co-artists Katie Grone and Joshua Edwards et al.’s group installation art Rape Garage (2001), created in Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman’s undergraduate course the At Home: A Kentucky Project at Western Kentucky University; and my own performance and installation art Honoring Comfort Women, created in Karen Keifer-Boyd’s graduate art course Judy Chicago@PSU: Art, Pedagogy, Exhibition, & Research at the Pennsylvania State University. I intertwine Kang, Grone, Edwards, and myself in a visual mapping and performative autoethnography. Creating visual mapping and performative autoethnography is a way to become a witness to one’s own trauma. The goal of the visual mapping and performative autoethnography, presented in this dissertation, is to dismantle hegemonic, oppressive, and medicalized perceptions of trauma. My autoethnographical and performative research not only analyzes the feminist art pedagogy that prompted trauma art but, also, performs witnessing. Additionally, this research suggests how art educators can utilize feminist art pedagogy to engage trauma subjects to bear witness through art creation by strengthening students’ subjectivity. Performing visual mapping and performative autoethnography is necessary to analyze shared witnessing, to process trauma without being re-traumatized, and to re-affirm the desire to bear witness in building subjectivity through collective and performative acts. This process is evident in how Kang, Grone, Edwards, and my own experiences in distinct feminist art courses considered trauma as a political concern, formed transferential relations between trauma and non-trauma subjects, and helped us affectively engage with trauma through art. Due to the lack of understanding of sexual trauma, a hegemonic visual culture that supports sexual violence, and the minimal recognition given to sexual trauma in an educational context, subjects of sexual trauma typically hide their trauma even from themselves because they feel ashamed. By establishing a counter-hegemonic discourse on sexual trauma through the utilization of art creation as bearing witness, both trauma and non-trauma subjects can become witnesses to the process of witnessing.