Artistic Labour of the Body

Artistic Labour of the Body
Rose-Anne Gush
Historical Materialism Book Series, 368
Leiden: Brill, 2025
English, 279 pages, hardcover
ISBN 978-90-04-74649-7
ISBN 978-90-04-746530-7 (E-Book)
EUR 143.00

Chicago: Haymarket Books, November 2026
Paperback

Artistic Labour of the Body examines VALIE EXPORT’s and Elfriede Jelinek’s use of the body and psyche as artistic material to explore Adorno’s concept of artistic labor. Their works challenge women’s reduction to reproductive function or sexual object, articulating a feminism beyond “innocence.” Gush demonstrates how their art critiqued postwar Austria’s culture of disavowal, where unprocessed legacies of Nazism perpetuated Austria’s victimhood myth, while also exploring the complex identifications within this critique. The book reframes postwar artistic practices that revealed the body as a site of both patriarchal-capitalist violence and resistance.