Wednesday Talk: September 10, 10am-12pm – hybrid

Lorraine York, English and Cultural Studies, McMaster U

Tittle “’Yes, I’m a Witch”: Yoko Ono, Paracelebrity as Parasitism, and the Racializing of Fame Hunger”

Introducer: Linda Hutcheon

Abstract: Yoko Ono’s artistic practice shows us that the legendarily painful accusations of fame hunger directed towards her for many years need not define her as a victim. Drawing upon the concept of paracelebrity— the perceived gaining of celebrity through one’s association with a famous person—and Vivian L. Huang’s reconsideration of the possibilities of performed parasitism in Asian-American women’s performance art, I argue that Ono’s performance of parasitical fame-hungry subjectivity featured a shifting of intimacy and distance, subject and object, hospitality and inhospitality within the very discourses of celebrity dependency that were used to vilify her.

Bio: Lorraine York (Distinguished University Professor in McMaster’s Department of English and Cultural Studies) specializes in Canadian Literature and celebrity culture. Reluctant Celebrity: Affect and Privilege in Contemporary Stardom (2018) theorizes public reluctance about one’s visibility as a product of gender and race privilege. She’s just finished writing a book about reluctance’s opposite—eagerness: Unseemly:  Affect, Gender, New Media, and the Denunciation of Fame Hunger.

The link to register is https://forms.office.com/r/6XKPZ0yx5C

The deadline to register is the Monday before the event at noon.  The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.