I Can Sell My Body If I Wanna: Riot Grrrl Body Writing, Feminist Resistance, and Neoliberalism

An Illustrated Lecture with Leah Perry

This talk will consider the Riot Grrrl punk subculture of the 1990s and frontwoman Kathleen Hanna’s uses of the body to explore the perils and possibilities of an individualist feminist revolution. Riot Grrrl’s goal was to combat patriarchy in the punk scene and in the world. First, focusing on word reclamation via body writing and sex work, I examine how Riot Grrrl attempted to use embodied performances of shamelessness to resist patriarchy and the brutalities of neoliberal capitalism, and how this drew on and reacted to earlier feminist movements. Second, I explore how Riot Grrrl performances also inadvertently embraced neoliberal tropes. In overlooking white privilege and also middle-class privilege in their use of the body, Riot Grrrls supported (or at least failed to undermine) neoliberal hegemony; these performances, alternative youth culture for some, both worked against and from within the structures of neoliberalism. Given these contradictions, I am also interested in the productive potential (if any) of performing shamelessness. Thus, finally, I hope to generate discussion around the possibilities of feminist resistance via shamelessness and the body. Can performing shamelessness with body writing (and more broadly, as with SlutWalk and sex work) be revised or reconstituted to be truly accessiblethat is, a viable option for more than just middle-class white womenand thus truly effective in counteracting racism, patriarchy, and neoliberal capitalism?

Leah Perry is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at SUNY-Empire State College. She received her doctorate from George Mason Universitys Cultural Studies program, a Masters of Arts from New York University in Humanities and Social Thought, a second Masters of Arts and Religion from Yale Divinity School, and a Bachelors in English from Manhattanville College (magna cum laude). Her research and teaching interests encompass gender and sexuality, American Studies, immigration, race and ethnicity, and media and popular culture. She is the author of The Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigration: Gender, Race, and Media (New York University Press, forthcoming 2016). Her work can also be seen in journals such as Cultural Studies and Lateral, and in the book collections Cultural Studies and the Juridical Turn: Culture, Law, and Legitimacy in the Era of Neoliberal Capitalism (Routledge, 2016) and American Shame: Stigma and the Body Politic (University of Indiana Press, 2016). She currently serves the American Studies Association as a member of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Committee.











When: Thu., Jul. 28, 2016 at 7:00 pm
Where: Morbid Anatomy Museum
424 Third Ave. Brooklyn

Price: $8
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An Illustrated Lecture with Leah Perry

This talk will consider the Riot Grrrl punk subculture of the 1990s and frontwoman Kathleen Hanna’s uses of the body to explore the perils and possibilities of an individualist feminist revolution. Riot Grrrl’s goal was to combat patriarchy in the punk scene and in the world. First, focusing on word reclamation via body writing and sex work, I examine how Riot Grrrl attempted to use embodied performances of shamelessness to resist patriarchy and the brutalities of neoliberal capitalism, and how this drew on and reacted to earlier feminist movements. Second, I explore how Riot Grrrl performances also inadvertently embraced neoliberal tropes. In overlooking white privilege and also middle-class privilege in their use of the body, Riot Grrrls supported (or at least failed to undermine) neoliberal hegemony; these performances, alternative youth culture for some, both worked against and from within the structures of neoliberalism. Given these contradictions, I am also interested in the productive potential (if any) of performing shamelessness. Thus, finally, I hope to generate discussion around the possibilities of feminist resistance via shamelessness and the body. Can performing shamelessness with body writing (and more broadly, as with SlutWalk and sex work) be revised or reconstituted to be truly accessiblethat is, a viable option for more than just middle-class white womenand thus truly effective in counteracting racism, patriarchy, and neoliberal capitalism?

Leah Perry is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at SUNY-Empire State College. She received her doctorate from George Mason Universitys Cultural Studies program, a Masters of Arts from New York University in Humanities and Social Thought, a second Masters of Arts and Religion from Yale Divinity School, and a Bachelors in English from Manhattanville College (magna cum laude). Her research and teaching interests encompass gender and sexuality, American Studies, immigration, race and ethnicity, and media and popular culture. She is the author of The Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigration: Gender, Race, and Media (New York University Press, forthcoming 2016). Her work can also be seen in journals such as Cultural Studies and Lateral, and in the book collections Cultural Studies and the Juridical Turn: Culture, Law, and Legitimacy in the Era of Neoliberal Capitalism (Routledge, 2016) and American Shame: Stigma and the Body Politic (University of Indiana Press, 2016). She currently serves the American Studies Association as a member of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Committee.

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