Introduction: Searching for Methods in this Madness
L’arc de cercle, or the Movement of Modernism (1620–2020)
Hysterias in Pictures
From “Private Theatres Onstage” to Anti-Hysterical Performances: Reclaiming the Feminist Interest in Hysterical Performances Since the 1990s
State of Anxiety: Hysterical Studies for Reproduction Struggles
Hysteria: Turning a Diagnosis into a Call
To Arc, and Other Studies on Hysterical Gesturing
The Other Self of the Imagination: Cindy Sherman’s Hysterical Performance
Hysterical Representation in the Art of Mary Sibande
A Storm in a Teacup, and Other Minor Melodramas: Narratives of Containment and Excess in Cultured Colonies/Colonial Cultures
Making Ghosts Heard
Hysterical Aesthetics in Contemporary Performance: Theater, Dance, Voice
H. Y. S. T. et al., on Archiving Hysteria’s Past in the Present
Male Hysteria and the Archive: An Auto-Ethnographic Reflection
Notes on Hysteria in and as Arts-Based Research: a Case Study
Dora with Medusa: Is Hysterical Writing a Subversive Revolution?
Lecture Performance: On Truth and its Relation to the Cellar Regions of the Body
Via Telefaune, a Phone Call with Hélène Cixous
Johanna Braun is an artist, scholar, curator, and Principle Investigator of the postdoctoral research project “The Hysteric as Conceptual Operator” [J 4164-G24], sponsored by the Austrian Science Funds [FWF], and situated at the University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University and the University of Vienna (2018-2020).
“I recommend this book warmly to all readers interested in the current state of scholarship on hysteria, art, and politics. It is an exciting and timely book with a wonderful range of work, with considerable erudition, innovative theory and artwork.”
—Professor Valerie Walkerdine, Cardiff University, UK
Hysteria is alive and well in our present time and is apparently spreading contagiously: in particular, the second decade of the twenty-first century has shown an increased interest in the term. A quick web search opens the gates to endless swathes of discussions on hysteria, covering almost every aspect of public discourse. The arts seem conspicuously involved in and engaged with this hysterical discourse. Surprisingly, while the strong academic interest in hysteria throughout the twentieth century and, most prominently, at the turn of the century is well-known and much-discussed, the study of how these discourses have continued into twenty-first-century art practices addresses what is effectively an academic blind spot. It is the aim of this volume to illustrate how hysteria was already well-established within the arts alongside and, at times, even separately from much-covered medical studies, and reveal how current artistic practices continue a century spanning cross-fertilization between hysteria and the arts.
Johanna Braun is an artist, scholar, curator, and Principle Investigator of the postdoctoral research project ‘The Hysteric as Conceptual Operator’ [J4164- G24], sponsored by the Austrian Science Fund [FWF], and situated at the University of California Los Angeles, Stanford University, and the University of Vienna (2018–2020).