| Abstract [eng] |
Although the discourse of power upholds old political, economic, or social orders, ideas of emancipation arise. Nudity, although it is still often considered vulgar, provocative, unacceptable, or indecent, is nonetheless employed in protests and artistic works as a means of empowerment or confrontation with dominant ideas and norms. The aim of this master’s thesis is to theoretically examine and semiotically systematize the possibilities of using the naked body to confront the discourse of power, and to analyze the interactions of these methods in Laura Kutkaitė’s performative lecture “tremolo”. Therefore, the theoretical section examines how discourse affects the body and what enables a conflict. The study draws on Michel Foucault’s studies of power, Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Jacques Lacan’s ideas on the individual’s relationship with the Other, and feminist theories of Judith Butler, Sandra Lee Bartky, and Rebecca Schneider. Remaining within the same theoretical framework, four modes of confrontation are identified: resistance, transgression, disruption, and subversion, whose interactions often remain unreflected upon. To better conceptualize the relationships between these terms, a semiotic square of confrontation with power is formulated and tested by analyzing Kutkaitė’s performative lecture. In it, the modes of confrontation are frequently shifted in search of an alternative which, according to “tremolo,” is possible only by resisting discourses of power. As the modes shift, so does bodily expression – ranging from unsymbolized gagging or acts of undressing to the performance of patriarchal images. The validation of the formulated semiotic square is the greatest contribution of this master’s thesis to the field of semiotics as well as (post)structuralist and feminist theories of power. It also opens up possibilities for further research – namely, (i) what changes when other power relations are analyzed, and (ii) why the confrontation with power, as observed in the “tremolo” analysis, breaks down; in other words, what determines that power discourse becomes dominant. |
