2004
Volume 46, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 0167-2444
  • E-ISSN: 2949-8651

Abstract

Abstract

In the 1920s Marcel Duchamp started signing his art works with a new female ID: Rrose Sélavy. Can we argue that the artist is doing something ‘transgender’ here? And, in defiance of a century of historical distance, can we characterize his gesture as ‘woke’? This anachronistic question is the object of the thought experiment developed in this article. Taking Duchamp’s change into Rrose Sélavy for a woke-gesture , one is however invited as well to reflect upon the fundamentals of what ‘identity’ is. It more precisely forces us to consider the ‘surrealist’ condition of modern identity.

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References

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