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Tori Amos’ (re)sounding and (dis)appearing girls: conceptual and sonic approaches to assembled femininity

2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0740770x.2015.1057013

1748-5819

Devon R. Kehler,

Contemporary Literature and Criticism

This project considers the ways in which Tori Amos’ 2007 album American Doll Posse (ADP) conceptually and sonically engages neoliberal scripts of gendered and sexualized femininity. The article examines ADP as a musical-political project sounding a collective configuration of femininity, with emphasis given to how “posse femininity” sounds crowded aggravation as it gathers around the site of Amos as singer-songwriter. In order to discern how posse femininity plays upon neoliberal expectations of individualized and responsibilized self-hood, the analysis is trained upon the political exigencies, conceptual apparatuses, composing strategies, and naming practices that came together in the making of ADP. This piece attends to the potentialities of persona-work as an invention strategy capable of modifying how femininity is made intelligible within neoliberal tenets of possessive and responsible individuality. This project aims to show that ADP revises the idea of personal responsibility as persona respond-ability by presenting femininity as an assembly, a crowd, a coalition – a posse that poses possibilities for re-sounding feminine intelligibility.