Eksootilise keha kriitiline tegusus modernismis ja postmodernismis: Josephine Baker ja Grace Jones semiograafilises perspektiivis
The critical agency of exotic body in modernism and postmodernism: Josephine Baker and Grace Jones in semiographic perspective

Summary/Abstract: I will conduct a semiographic analysis (i.e. concentrating on signs in biographies) of images of the modernist diva Josephine Baker and her postmodernist counterpart Grace Jones, asking what kinds of meanings should be given to body generally and exotic body specifically in the development of the 20th century mentalities; to what extent should the capacity for intellectual participation be granted to artists whose main creative vehicle – indeed, if not the end result – is the exoticized body. I will state that the dance of Josephine Baker can be viewed as not just expanding the established ideal of beauty but also postulating a whole kinetic utopia, presenting critical opposition to the academic contempt for the body. Nevertheless, Baker’s critical agency has been heavily debated whereas Jones’s manipulations with the stereotypes of the black body are more unanimously credited with critical agency. This credit has also enabled positive revaluations of Baker’s status.

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