ABSTRACT
Skirting the fray of clashing feminisms, many critics still disclose an entrenched resistance to the idea that Sherman’s motifs and thematics are embedded in feminist theory rather than incidental to it - they still recast her gender polemics as a grand concert of ‘human’ desire. Sherman heightens the spectacle of the sexual act by isolating genital parts and coding them with fantasies of desire, possession, and imaginary knowledge. Many women feel that there is literally no place for them within the frame of pom. Sherman’s representation of female sexuality, in contrast, indulges the desire to see, to make sure of the private and the forbidden, but withholds both narcissistic identification with the female body and that body’s objectification as the basis for erotic pleasure. Helene Cixous insists that women should mobilize the force of hysteria to break up continuities and create horror.
