UK Lens-Based Media in the 1980s and 1990s: Disability, Sexuality and the Politics of Representation

本论文论述了20世纪80年代至90年代英国的摄影、录像和电影，以考虑残疾、性和代表性政治的交叉但经常被忽视的历史。我将研究由女性和酷儿艺术家创作的基于实验镜头的作品，她们使用引用、非规范叙事和幻想来表达一种与文化上被标记为酷儿和残疾人的身体相似的感觉。该项目将健康问题带到女同性恋女权主义者基于镜头的媒体讨论的最前沿，将解决摄影理论中纪实形式的挑战，并定位这些辩论在残疾人权利活动和对第28节的回应中如何转变为新的目的。该项目将从20世纪70年代新摄影理论的辩论开始，在20世纪80年代和90年代，这是女同性恋女权主义艺术家的图像制作和写作实践的背景。理论家和摄影师Victor Burgin在《思考摄影》（Thinking Photography, 1982）中认为纪实摄影是意识形态的，因此在表现“真实”方面受到限制，这一观点被女同性恋女权主义者的镜头作品所采用，以假设表现和性的不可分割性。我以最近的学术研究为基础，借鉴了Burgin、Simon Watney和Jo Spence关于代表性政治的基础著作，并阐明了摄影、理论和女同性恋身份的融合（Guy 2017; Dunster 2017），以及反对工人阶级社区和女性主流形象的社区摄影倡议（Stacey 2020; Klorman-Eraqi 2017）。从这些角度出发，这个项目将把残疾的表现作为身份建构的关键。在历史镜头媒体的批评性辩论中，目前缺乏残障与女同性恋身份之间的交叉研究。基于对当代英国代表性辩论的现有理解，我的研究将特别集中在伦敦的酷儿、女权主义艺术家的电影和视频的Cinenova收藏上，那里还没有任何关于残疾作品的严肃研究。我还将利用格拉斯哥妇女图书馆的重要藏品，特别是女同性恋档案；伦敦毕晓普斯盖特研究所（Bishopsgate Institute）保存着Rebel Dykes的档案；乔·斯宾塞纪念图书馆档案；泰莎·伯芬档案馆和圣安德鲁斯大学的弗兰基·莱佛士档案馆。为了进一步将视觉材料语境化，该研究将使用对艺术家、策展人和活动家的采访。“瘸子”和酷儿理论将构成本研究的方法论框架，使人们能够在摄影和电影中讨论多种形式的身份（McRuer 2006, 2017; Garland-Thompson 2001; Butler 1990, 1993; Sedgwick 1990）。当代艺术家和学者也将酷儿理论和中心残疾作为一种批判性的视角来看待对文化同质化的其他形式的抵抗（Smith 2021; Hedva 2016； MacArthur和Zavitsanos 2013； Russel 2001）。这个框架将使我能够提出与残疾有关的代表性的新问题，并将研究的例子作为今天瘸腿理论主张的历史先例。本项目将对巡展《偷瞄：女同性恋拍照》（1991）和以性和残疾为主要主题的电影提供新的分析。Parmar、Jacqui Duckworth、Tran T Kim-Trang和Noski Deville的作品探讨了纪录片和非纪录片的形式，以摆脱残疾人的“积极形象”。这些电影使用虚构、非规范叙事和引用作为颠覆性策略，在视觉上呈现自我的内心世界；酷儿和残疾人都有。考虑到非纪录片模式和非规范性叙事，这些电影同时质问身体健全、女同性恋身份和基于镜头的表现的固定性。

This thesis addresses photography, video, and film of 1980s-1990s Britain, to consider the intersecting but often overlooked histories of disability, sexuality, and the politics of representation. I will examine experimental lens-based works by women and queer artists who use citation, non-normative narrative, and fantasy to articulate a felt parallel with bodies culturally inscribed as queer and disabled. Bringing health to the forefront of discussions on lesbian feminist lens-based media, the project will address the challenge to documentary form in photography theory and locate where these debates were transformed to new ends in disability rights activism and in response to Section 28. The project will begin by setting out debates in the new photography theory of the 1970s, that in the 1980s and 90s served as a backdrop to the image-making and writing practices of lesbian feminist artists. Theorist and photographer Victor Burgin's contention in Thinking Photography (1982) that documentary photography is ideological, and therefore limited in representing 'the real', was taken up in lesbian feminist lens-based work to posit the inseparability of representation and sexuality. I build on recent scholarship that draws on the foundational writings of Burgin, Simon Watney and Jo Spence on the politics of representation, and illuminates the convergence of photography, theory and lesbian identity (Guy 2017; Dunster 2017), and community photography initiatives that countered mainstream images of working-class communities and women (Stacey 2020; Klorman-Eraqi 2017). Departing from these accounts, this project will vitally centre the representation of disability as pivotal to constructions of identity. An intersectional approach between disability and lesbian identity is currently lacking from critical debates on historical lens-based media. Building on existing understandings of contemporaneous debates on representation in Britain, my research will focus in particular on the Cinenova collection of queer, feminist artists' film and video in London, where there is yet to be any serious study on works related to disability. I will also draw on key collections at the Glasgow Women's Library, particularly the Lesbian Archive; the Bishopsgate Institute in London, which holds the archive of Rebel Dykes; the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive; the Tessa Boffin archive and the Franki Raffles Archive at the University of St Andrews. To further contextualise visual materials, the study will use interviews held with artists, curators, and activists. 'Crip' and queer theory will form the study's methodological framework, enabling a discussion of multiple forms of identity as they intersect in photography and film (McRuer 2006, 2017; Garland-Thompson 2001; Butler 1990, 1993; Sedgwick 1990). Contemporary artists and academics have also drawn on queer theory and centred disability as a critical lens to view alternative forms of resistance to cultural homogenisation (Smith 2021; Hedva 2016; MacArthur and Zavitsanos 2013; Russel 2001). This framework will enable me to ask new questions on representation as it pertains to disability, and to posit the study's examples as historical precedents to Crip theory's claims today. This project will offer new analyses on the touring exhibition Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs (1991), and films that take both sexuality and disability as their primary subject. Works by Parmar, Jacqui Duckworth, Tran T Kim-Trang and Noski Deville negotiate documentary and non-documentary forms to move away from 'positive images' of people living with disability. These films use fiction, non-normative narrative, and citation as subversive strategies to visually render interior worlds of the self; both queer and disabled. Reckoning with non-documentary modes and non-normative narrative, these films simultaneously interrogate the fixity of able-bodiedness, lesbian identity and lens-based representation.