FAST FEMINISM + some thoughts

Shannon Bell ~ performance philosopher and associate professor in Political Science at York University, Toronto, Canada sent me her latest book ~ Fast Feminism (just released from Autonomedia, New York in June this year) to read and review.

Last night I read to page 47 and I'm already hearing names that have informed much of my own reading over the past few decades ~ Paul Virilio, Stelarc, Gilles Deleuze, Georges Bataille, Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Sigmund Freud, Judith/Jack Halberstam. The post-porn graphic photos at the back of the book of Shannon's masturbation/female ejaculation/fast feminist/phallus performances were taken by Ionat Zurr, Del LaGrace Volcano, Annie Sprinkle, Monica Frommet, Shawn Bailey, Carolyn Lee Kane ~ artists who work substantially with the body.

Shannon Bell describes the fast feminist:

When she wants, she has the phallus ~ a hard prosthetic cyborg cock. She is part woman, part silicone, part rubber. She straps on the phallus to jack in to fucking: up your ass, in your mouth, in your cunt. (p.34).

This is the language she uses; it's not academic writing, but it's informed by academic theory. As she says, the fast feminist (FF):

is a post-gender provocateur, not so much a gender terrorist as a gender risk-taker going the distance with her body. FF's philosophy is lived. Actions count. One resists with one's body. (p.11)

I just know that I'm going to enjoy this ~ you've just got to love a book that was commissioned by a feminist press and then rejected ~ accepted by a university press and rejected, blocked by a Queer Studies series because they were too conservative and also by a Dutch publisher who was too traditional. It took a radical press to get it into print.

This post links with one I made on May 17, entitled Chic's with Dicks, or, Hypermasculinity: Shannon Bell. You may find the links on that post informative.