Issue Details: First known date: 2006... 2006 The Body of Work : Dorothy Porter's Akhenaten
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article stages an 'imagendering' of Akhenaten, a contemporary collection of poems by Australian poet Dorothy Porter. Surviving sculptures of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten depict a hermaphroditic subject who is, for Porter, a muse of transgression. Her fascination is with his challenge to long-held creative conventions of Egyptian art, depicting himself with a combination of breasts, swollen belly, rounded thighs and a penis. This collection of poems is thus a site of gendered reinscription made possible by the death of Akhenaten's physical body. His bodily absence allows for Porter's textual presence. Operating in this speculative historical space, a space in which the body of work physiologically cross-dresses and engages in sexual play across the boundaries of masculine/feminine, history/poetry, symbolic/semiotic, this poetry demonstrates that language itself can never evade embodiment.'

Source: Abstract.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Gender Forum no. 13 2006 12331266 2006 periodical issue 2006
Last amended 8 Dec 2017 15:00:03
http://genderforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/200613_ImagenderingII.pdf The Body of Work : Dorothy Porter's Akhenatensmall AustLit logo Gender Forum
Subjects:
  • Akhenaten Dorothy Porter , 1992 single work novel
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X