Routes to Interiorities: Art Therapy and Knowing in Anthropology

Abstract

In this article we explore the relationship between feminist art therapy and anthropology. We suggest that there is a series of congruities between a feminist approach to art therapy and strands of contemporary anthropological practice concerned with understanding other people's interior thoughts and the potential of art to make critical interventions. To examine these issues we position feminist art therapy approaches at an interface between existing explorations that have created intersections between anthropology and both arts and therapeutic practices. In this context we will suggest that the application of the methodologies developed in feminist art therapy can combine the potential suggested by both of these approaches, to offer anthropologists routes to understanding interiorities and interventions in conventional narrative forms of representation.

Notes

Irving and Rapport posed this question as part of a call for a conference panel at the ASA 2009 conference. While we were unable to attend the conference we were nevertheless inspired to follow through on this question. (Online at http://www.nomadit.co.uk/asa/asa09/panels.php5?PanelID=551, accessed December 19, 2009.)

The French have a word which Henriques et al. [1984: 1] suggest encapsulates an active and complex subjectivity that acknowledges the individual as an active agent in the production of their subjectivity through a process of assujettissement. There is no English equivalent; however, the reflexive verb which means “to make subject” or to “produce subjectivity” as well as to “submit” or “subjugate” is perhaps rather negative with respect to subjugation. It is conceivably a more neutral term that is needed to encapsulate our coming into being—being made and making simultaneously. The lack of a suitable word for this process illustrates an entrenched dichotomy between self and society and a conceptual “hole” in post-structuralist theory.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan Hogan

SUSAN HOGAN is a cultural historian and art therapist with research interests in the history of medicine. She has written extensively on the relationship between the arts and insanity, and the role of the arts in rehabilitation. She is also very interested in the treatment of women within psychiatry. Her books include Healing Arts: The History of Art Therapy [2001].

Sarah Pink

SARAH PINK is a social and visual anthropologist who works across academic and applied disciplines. Her books include Doing Visual Ethnography [2007(2001)], The Future of Visual Anthropology [2006], and Doing Sensory Ethnography [2009].