Thinking nude: An ekphrastic autotheoretical poetics of the constructed self (after Julie Lluch)

• Main Author: Dela Cruz, Patricia Amanda Juico
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2023
• Subjects: Ekphrasis; Feminism; Creative Writing
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_lit/13; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdm_lit/article/1015/viewcontent/2023_DeLaCruz_Thinking_Nude__An_ekphrastic_autotheoretical_poetics_Full_text.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

Thinking Nude: An ekphrastic autotheoretical poetics of the constructed self (after Julie Lluch) is a collection of five ekphrastic autotheoretical essays that engage with and are drawn from feminist theories. Speaking from my bodily experiences as a cisgender heterosexual female, the essays confront the issues of childbearing and rearing, birth control and abortion, raunch culture and sexual pleasure, beauty myth, and heteronormativity. Although the issues that the essays are concerned with have been the preoccupation of Western second- and third-wave feminist struggles, my use of autotheory in the narratives decolonize the theories born out of these struggles into the context of and affirm their relentless significance to the bodily experiences of a millennial Filipino woman. Advocating further that these deeply personal experiences of the “I” are indeed political plights of women from the Philippines, and possibly beyond the borders until today, the works of visual art that the essays engage with act as visual metaphors that attest to the claim that the struggles of the “I” are shared by other Filipino women too. With this, I have consciously chosen works by contemporary Filipino woman visual artists. The “I” pose as, with, or beyond these artists’ terracotta, cold-cast marble, and porcelain sculptures; immersive glass art, scent, and taste installation; painting; and embroidery work. The interaction of my “I” in the essays with these artists’ visual works mimic the conversations among feminists the way they do in their consciousness-raising gatherings.