Essay: Differencing: Feminism’s Encounter with the Canon by Griselda Pollock

In Differencing: Feminism’s Encounter with the Canon, Griselda Pollock discusses the ways in which feminism has entered Art Historical discourse. Historically, the place of women in art’s history has been minimal compared to that of men. Pollock highlights that the recognised History of Art is in fact a history of art created by and for Western males, for example through her analysis of the term ‘old master’, which demonstrates that artistic mastery is intrinsically bound to being male. She showcases the need for feminism in Art History, and then goes on to consider the ways in which the discipline should be engaged with by feminists. She uses her text to deconstruct the feminist discourse which is already in place, and to suggest a change in the way we think about art’s history; proposing a focus on how gender difference is created.
Pollock chooses to focus on the artistic canon and its relationship with feminism in her essay. The canon is indisputably gendered: it exemplifies how European men have dominated art’s history throughout time, and symbolises their ‘intellectual domination’ across other disciplines too. The canon excludes those who go against its hegemonic structure, forming the idea that creativity is inherently masculine, therefore naturalising difference and hierarchy. Pollock looks at the way in which the artistic canon has been problematized and rethought as a result of feminism’s interaction with the discipline, noting that the relationship between feminism and the canon is ‘complex’, just as feminism’s relation with Art History is. In her essay, Pollock formulates three contradictory ways in which the canon has been rethought by feminists. She speaks first of the annexation of female artists into the artistic canon. By researching female artists who have been previously been left out, feminists have attempted to reform the masculine structure of the canon into a more representative one. However, Pollock claims it’s an ‘impossible project’ to add women into the canon as it’s intrinsically bound to the Western male.
The second approach is the reconstruction of the canon through the inclusion of art forms that have not originally been thought of as high art. Feminists have valorised techniques which have been practiced by women throughout history, such as ceramics and textiles. This approach asserts the idea that women have produced many works of art over time, but they haven’t always been considered as worthy of artistic status, due to the exclusive nature of the canon. This approach exposes that the artistic canon not only creates a hierarchy of gender, but also of medium. The materiality of art is bound to gender in that the techniques rejected from the canon are considered ‘feminine’, and, because of this, have been left out. This demonstrates the phallocentric ideology that is embedded in art’s history.
Pollock suggests a third way of rethinking the canon, due to her belief that simply amending a pre-existing history would be ‘subscrib[ing] to a slightly modified, but none the less conventional notion of art history’. Pollock said that the discipline required a ‘radical reform, if not a total deconstruction of the present structure’ in order to fully understand the history of women and art. The two previous approaches are also problematic in that female artists are still categorised as ‘female’ and therefore subdued, thought of as ‘other’. The reformed versions of the canon remain secondary to the ‘patrilineal genealogy’ that is already in place and women outlie its rigid structure, thus the patriarchal ideology that constructs art’s history isn’t intercepted.
Pollock doesn’t try to eradicate the canon that is in place, nor does she create a supplementary canon. Instead, she claims that we should think about the canon differently; as a gendering discourse that produces and reproduces ‘sexual difference’. Instead of making an expanded Art History, she suggests a re-reading of what’s already in place. She proposes that in order to deconstruct it, one must consider the psychology behind the creation of difference. She draws on ideas of Freud, Derrida, and Kristeva to try and understand the ‘process of sexuality and the constitution of the subject in sexual difference’. By understanding the creation of the subject, she suggests that one can begin to destabilise structural sexism and notions of difference, and better understand women’s relation with art.
In applying Pollock’s theory to a piece of art, one can try and understand its efficacy. One is able to contemplate notions of difference by looking at Tracey Emin’s Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 (fig. 1). The work consists of a tent with over 100 names appliquéd onto it, each representing a person that Emin has slept with. The work illustrates many key ideas that are drawn upon in Pollock’s essay. First of all, the work is constructed of textiles, and therefore is associated with femininity. The utilisation of a traditionally female technique automatically makes the work a feminist analysis of sexual difference; she is reclaiming of a technique ordinarily used to ‘inculcate self-effacement’. Emin is a high-profile artist and is therefore professionalising techniques that weren’t traditionally considered high art and rejecting the artistic rules proposed by the canon.
Emin re-appropriates the technique further by subverting the feminine norm through her choice of subject matter. Her work plays on ideas of female sexuality, a theme that is traditionally taboo, in that it suggests that she has had sexual intercourse with all those mentioned in the work. The work visually demonstrates Pollock’s strategy of ‘differencing’ the canon, in that it attempts to make the viewer rethink the societal expectations imposed on women, and on women’s art, by societal apparatus such as the canon. The work makes us think about what we perceive as ‘feminine’ and deconstructs this idea: the innate femininity of the technique utilised by Emin contrasts to the overt suggestion of sexuality that she embeds in the work, exposing the disjuncture between societally enforced femininity and a true experience of sexuality. On appearance, the work may seem to comply to the gendered hierarchy of art, but it actually challenges it. By neglecting subject matter and tone recognised as feminine, the work helps to break down both gender stereotypes and the artistic hierarchy, challenging the difference that is perpetuated by the canon.
The work demonstrates that the canon is a gendering discourse and therefore allows us to think about some of the ideas explored by Pollock. Pollock says that ‘we should not read for signs of a known femininity’ but for ‘struggle with phallocentrism’. By looking at this work, one can understand the aim of feminist artists to work against the difference created by the canon and by Art History. Pollock’s ideas are broadly applicable to art that was being created by feminist artists in the late 20th Century. Emin’s work is very much a product of the feminist movements that came before her, and of the feminist discourse that was taking place at the time, whether consciously referencing them or not.
In Differencing: Feminism’s Encounter with the Canon, Pollock reflects on the introduction of feminism into the field of Art History in the early 1970s, focusing in particular on the problems of feminist intervention in the canon. She questions how feminists should think about the artistic canon, and then proposes her own way of thinking about gender’s place in art. Her strategy utilises psychoanalytic techniques to consider how ideology and gender difference are created by the likes of the canon. By revising the structure in which we think about art, and creating a ‘polylogue’ of many voices, she in turn places herself into the tradition of feminist Art History.