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“Art Porn Provocauteurs”: Queer Feminist Performances of Embodiment in the Work of Catherine Breillat and Lena Dunham
- The Velvet Light Trap
- University of Texas Press
- Number 77, Spring 2016
- pp. 28-49
- Article
- Additional Information
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French writer-filmmaker Catherine Breillat and American writer–filmmaker–television series creator Lena Dunham share a devotion to questioning sexual norms and norms of representation, which converge at the point of embodied female performance of sex/uality. Exploring and affirming that which is typically deemed abject or shameful, especially for women, Breillat and Dunham reveal and revise heteropatriarchal uses of female nudity and sexuality, both in and out of pornography, to conceal and deny women’s humanity. In so doing, these “provocauteurs” stretch the definitional and representational boundaries of what we consider “feminist,” “queer,” and “porn.” Through examination of Breillat’s films