"... it is always in the 'dead letter' in which the living spirit must survive ...
Submitted by Camilla M. Peters to the University of Exeter as a dissertation towards the degree of Master of Arts by advanced study in Women's Studies, December 1994.
Abstract
it is always in the "dead letter" in which the living spirit must survive, a deadness which can be rescued only when the dead letter comes again into contact with a life willing to resurrect it, although this resurrection shares with all living things that it, too, will die again." (Hannah Arendt 1958: 148-9)
In this dissertation I argue for a re-evaluation of common language-use in order to enrich the formal discourses through which the plastic arts are traditionally discussed so that the arts may be perceived as vehicles for knowledge on a par with literary analyses and documentary evidence. I specifically place the vase-painters of C5th Athens within the contemporary focus on sexuality, identity and semiotics using post-structuralist discourses which suggest that artists and images can now be perceived as authors and texts.
My main focus is on an Attic vase-painter posthumously known as The Pan Painter who worked in C5th BC Athens. By placing his work in a broad socio-cultural framework I show how his imagery "speaks" of and about his time.
In keeping with the late Archaic focus on realistic representation, The Pan Painter used the red-figure vase-painting technique to record his ideas. Through his specific and thematic use of the phallic herm as an evocation of Hermes the god of signs, I argue that his images - while not overtly speaking for women - do acknowledge that women were denied equal access to the linguistic/power mechanisms of the period. His images thus allow a space through which women can "speak". This hypothesis is of course a matter of conjecture. But through an analysis of two of The Pan Painter's images (ARV 551.10 & ARV 550.1) I argue that this might be so. I argue further, that ARV 551.10 (which depicts a woman running along with a phallus under both arms) has resonances for contemporary women who, 2,500 years later, are still concerned to speak of different viewpoints and to find routes which allow this to happen.
Through these connections I aim to show how images, and the re-appropriation of established images, can transgress the strictures of linear time and can have meanings for many eras, cultures, individuals, or groups.