Annie Sprinkle's The Post-Porn Modernist Show

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Annie M. Sprinkle, born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954, is an American sex educator, feminist stripper, pornographic actress, magazine editor, writer and sex film producer. She received a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1986 and earned a doctorate in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco in 1992 (Annie Sprinkle, 2016).
The Post Porn Modernist Show is the story of Annie Sprinkle's sexual evolution told, and explored, through a series of burlesque-like autobiographical multi-media vignettes. During the course of its performance run, between 1989 and 1996, Annie Sprinkle allowed the Post Porn Modernist Show to evolve to represent her personal, aesthetic and political evolution. The Post Porn Modernist Show with its structure consisting of independent, interrelated, scenarios allowed Sprinkle to create an interesting fusion of Postmodernism and Feminism theoretical discourse. In this linkage both the weaknesses and unique potencies of each discourse are bought to focus in their criticism
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They believe “postmodernists offer sophisticated and persuasive criticisms of foundationalism and essentialism but their conceptions of social criticism tend to be anemic. Feminists offer robust conceptions of social criticism, but they tend, at times, to lapse into foundationalism and essentialism” (Fraser and Nicholson, 1989). These two perspectives are evident and important in understanding Annie Sprinkle and her Post-Porn Modernist Show. Annie Sprinkle’s Post-Porn Modernist Shows explores the ideas of sex, gender, and sexuality while challenging the binary of art/pornography and women/men. Both postmodernism and feminism, mainly materialistic feminism, intertwine in Annie Sprinkle’s work, which helps voice out female issues and highlights the challenged role of women in contemporary

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