Radical interiors: Cindy Sherman's ‘Sex pictures’ and Kathy Acker's 'My mother: demonology'

In 1989, the American visual artist Cindy Sherman produced her ‘Sex Pictures’, a number of photographic images of two medical mannequins whose bodies had been dismembered and reconstructed to form abstract configurations that alluded to pornographic poses. Sherman's series was a response to the National Endowment for the Arts controversy, in which American artists such as Andres Serrano and the late Robert Mapplethorpe, whose work was considered obscene by the Republican Congress, were censored. Many artists in the culture-war period had their grants rescinded. The American avant-garde writer Kathy Acker published My Mother: Demonology in 1993. A prominent concern of Acker's in the work is what she termed her ‘writing freedom’ in a climate of cultural expurgation by the Republican elite. In particular, Acker was worried that she was ‘internalizing certain censorships’. This article addresses Sherman's and Acker's work in a comparative context to explore, through the theoretical work of Julia Kristeva, the ways in which their responses to a climate of political censorship can be read as forms of intimate revolt. Kristeva's notion of ejection—the act of placing something beyond the scope of the possible—transpires as ‘a condition of art's creation’ in Sherman's and Acker's work. Acker and Sherman use the pornographic reference in their work to disrupt and dislocate the narrative and image from convention in order to de-eroticize the body, against heteronormativity's terms, and empower the female sex organs. Eversion—that is, in Sherman's and Acker's works, the act of turning the institutional and maternal body inside out—emerges as a mode of resistance to the danger of the writer and the artist internalizing cultural restrictions. The everted body creates a site of radical interiority which becomes the (impossible) site for the radical (re-)embodiment of the feminine subject.

Magic, divination, and demonology among the Hebrews and their neighbours : including an examination of biblical references and of the biblical terms

Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 1897

Letters on demonology and witchcraft,

Mode of access: Internet.

A course of critical lectures : or a system of theology in three parts, viz : theology, demonology, and christology /

Mode of access: Internet.

Letters on demonology and witchcraft : addressed to J.G. Lockhart, esq. /

Mode of access: Internet.

A course of critical lectures : or, systematical theology, in four parts, viz : theology, demonology, christology, and anthropology /

Mode of access: Internet.

Demonologia : or, Natural knowledge revealed: being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology ... witchcraft, &c. /

By J. S. Forsyth. cf. Halkett and Laing, Dict. anon. and pseud., new ed., 1926, v. 2, p. 37.

Letters on demonology and witchcraft : addressed to J.G. Lockhart, Esq. /

Some copies are extra-illustrated with 12 plates bearing imprint: Designed, etched & published by George Cruikshank, Novr. 1830. These plates are later impressions of the originals, which were first published separately with title-page, explanatory leaves and printed wrapper. Cf. Cohn.

Pardes: The Quest for Spiritual Paradise in Judaism, pt. 3

Mysticism in Judaism

Pardes: The Quest for Spiritual Paradise in Judaism, pt. 2

Mysticism in Judaism

Pardes: The Quest for Spiritual Paradise in Judaism, pt. 1

Mysticism in Judaism

Les marques du diable et les signes de l'Autre : rhétorique du dire démonologique à la fin de la Renaissance

Comment le motif de la marque insensible du diable a-t-il pu se frayer un chemin au sein du discours théologique, juridique et médical de la fin de la Renaissance jusqu'à s'imposer comme une pièce essentielle du crime de sorcellerie? Selon quels mécanismes et à partir de quels systèmes de croyance cette marque corporelle en est-elle venue à connaître une si large diffusion et une aussi grande acceptation tant chez les gens du livres que parmi les couches populaires? En cette époque marquée par la grande chasse aux sorcières et le développement de l'investigation scientifique, l'intérêt que les savants portent à cette étrange sémiologie constitue une porte d'accès privilégiée pour aborder de front la dynamique du déplacement des frontières que la démonologie met en oeuvre au sein des différents champs du savoir. Cette thèse a pour objectif d'étudier le réseau des mutations épistémologiques qui conditionne l'émergence de la marque du diable dans le savoir démonologique français à la charnière des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Nous examinerons par quels cheminements l'altérité diabolique s'est peu à peu intériorisée dans le corps et l'âme des individus sous l'influence grandissante des vertus de l'empirisme, de la méthode expérimentale et de l'observation. En analysant la construction rhétorique de la théorie des marques du diable et en la reliant aux changements qui s'opèrent sur la plateforme intellectuelle de l'Ancien Régime, nous entendons éclairer la nouvelle distribution qui s'effectue entre les faits naturels et surnaturels ainsi que les modalités d'écriture pour en rendre compte.

O demonio renitente: demonologia e colonização no vice reinado do Peru, séculos XVI e XVII

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)