Obsessions of a Showwoman

Cultural politics in women's performance art. This book uses the work of British live artist and Showwoman Marisa Carnesky to showcase women working in radical ways. The term "Showwoman" introduces a new identity--a performer who does not control or exploit others but opens up a possibility for collaboration that enables shared experience. As Obsessions of a Showwoman explores this concept, it traces a trajectory of incredible and weird women at work, including showgirls, hairhangers, fire walkers, animal mesmerists, and more. Carnesky has been a central figure in performance and live art in the last thirty years, and her practice as a Showwoman promotes alternative visions of matriarchal entertainment utopias and a new relationship to women's position in power and politics. Carnesky continues an important lineage of performing women with bombastic theatrical flair whose extraordinary skill and artistry are often overlooked. Exploring contemporary and historical performance in popular and marginal entertainment forms, this work treads the margins of cabaret and live art, disrupts normative ideologies through the spectacular, and opens new lines of feminist inquiry through weirdness, absurdity, and provocation in live art and popular culture.