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Blanchot, Tel Quel and the Formation of a Sadean Aesthetic in the Work of Vito Acconci

This essay considers the work of artist Vito Acconci within the context of the artistic reception of French Theory in the USA in the 1960s and 70s. It considers his work as a specific response to the literary theorist Maurice Blanchot's essay on the Marquis de Sade, which in my interview with the artist he exclusively recounted as having had a profound impact. The originality of this essay is to argue for the first time that there is a fundamental and distinctly Sadean dimension to Acconci’s practice.The argument rejects a dominant Freudian strand in performance and post-minimalist theory and reframes accepted perspectives in the existing literature on Acconci; specifically, Amelia Jones’ interpretation of his practice as a gender politics and Craig Dworkin’s contention that it was a deconstructive mode of ‘writing’. The rigour of the research is present in the sustained and close reading of the theoretical text, its further elaboration through contemporary philosophers’ commentary, and the coherence with which these themes are articulated in relation to the artist’s ideas and works. Moreover, the historical contextualisation, between the French and US context, has a methodological function in actively discrediting prevailing assumptions in previous interpretations. The essay is a revised version of a paper presented at the conference ‘French Theory: reception in the visual arts in the United States between 1965 and 1995’, organised by Université Catholique de Louvain and held in Brussels in May 2011. The conference and publication includes the contributions of internationally renowned scholars, such as Victor Burgin, Laura Mulvey, Stephen Melville, John Rajchman, and Peter Osborne. As an original interpretation the essay has direct significance for future research on Acconci. In the context of the publication it also positions the artist as a principal figure in the reassessment of the intellectual and art history of this period.