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Countercartographies of copper : Martha Rosler, Chris Kraus and the Great Arizona Copper Strike of 1983-1986
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Tucker-Abramson, Myka (2024) Countercartographies of copper : Martha Rosler, Chris Kraus and the Great Arizona Copper Strike of 1983-1986. Feminist Theory, 25 (2). pp. 149-161. doi:10.1177/14647001231209873 ISSN 1464-7001.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001231209873
Abstract
Chris Kraus is often read as a chronicler of women artists’ experience: their frustrated desires, stifled creativity and stolen labour. But while these are the struggles that her protagonists face, the novel sets such struggles within the pressing context of American Empire's expansion and reorganisation in the post-Vietnam era. The juxtaposition between these levels is what generates the drama of Kraus’ work. Foregrounding these juxtapositions, this article situates Kraus’ novels within a longer tradition of feminist conceptual artists like Martha Rosler who took the labour and domination of predominantly white middle-class housewives as a standpoint from which to attempt to understand the expansion of US-backed global capitalism. Specifically, the article draws on the concept of ‘countertopographies’ developed by feminist geographer Cindi Katz to argue that Rosler and Kraus’ work offers a form of ‘countertopographic aesthetics’. That is, they both turn to the sphere of the reproductive as a site from which to map the uneven effects of global capitalism, while also foregrounding their own uneasy relationship with the imperialist project of mapping itself, by drawing attention to the ideological practices and limits of their very mappings. To illustrate this claim, the article concludes by turning to a partially buried event in Kraus’ Summer of Hate (2012): the 1983 Clifton-Morenci Copper Strike, a crucial but often overlooked flashpoint in the roll-out of neoliberalism. This eighteen-month strike was fought by a largely Mexican-American workforce, and the Women's Auxiliary, who joined a long history of working-class housewives like the Housewives’ Committee of Siglo X in Bolivia in becoming strike leaders. I argue that the strike is both crucial to the conjecture that Kraus’ narrative traces, and also illuminating of the limit point of the protagonists’ politics and the form of mapping that is possible from such a perspective.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | E History America > E151 United States (General) H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Copper industry and trade -- Arizona, Labor disputes -- United States, Working class -- United States, Employee rights -- United States | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Feminist Theory | ||||||
Publisher: | Sage Publications, Inc. | ||||||
ISSN: | 1464-7001 | ||||||
Official Date: | April 2024 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 25 | ||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 149-161 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1177/14647001231209873 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Re-use Statement: | Posted ahead of print. Tucker-Abramson, Myka (2023) Countercartographies of Copper : Martha Rosler, Chris Kraus and the Great Arizona Copper Strike of 1983-1986. Feminist Theory. Copyright © 2023 by SAGE Publications Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. https://journals.sagepub.com/home/fty Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Copyright Holders: | © The Author(s) 2023. | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 26 October 2023 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 27 October 2023 | ||||||
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