Administrative Erasure and the Feminist Body

Misogynist Bureaucracies: Administrative Erasure and the Feminist Body

Drawing from artistic, academic, and embodied research, this lecture examines how administrative processes and the public institutions that shape our society are systemically patriarchal. It explores how institutions across healthcare, employment, justice, and education structure narratives, invade and regulate bodies, and enforce silencing through procedural violence and bureaucratic aesthetics.

The lecture investigates the pervasive yet often obscured ways in which bureaucracy functions as a mechanism of misogynist control, structuring the lives and testimonies of those positioned within feminised subjectivities. From tribunal spaces to social welfare systems, administrative infrastructures operate not simply as systems of governance, but as technologies of power that produce and sustain structural inequality.

The outcomes of decisions made in ‘closed’ family courts, policy frameworks surrounding childcare and welfare, and enduring assumptions about the value of unpaid reproductive labour reveal the extent to which these systems enact and perpetuate gendered violence. Through patriarchal language, excessive documentation, and a codified aesthetic of neutrality, institutions discipline bodies, erode credibility, and obscure the material realities of those they process.

This lecture explores the mechanisms of this silencing, considers who is most affected by administrative erasure, and attempts to chart a proposal for creative resistance.

Foregrounding feminist artistic and critical responses to these dynamics, Misogynist Bureaucracies brings together the work of artists who interrogate institutional power and its impact on the body. These include Mary Kelly, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andrea Fraser, Barbara Walker, Carey Young, Daniela Ortiz, Helen Knowles, Jesse Darling, Ana Mendieta, and Yasmin Zaher.

Blending critical theory, art history, and practice-based methodologies, this lecture asks how administrative systems not only shape the stories we are able to tell, but actively determine whose stories are sanctioned, recorded, and remembered.

We are committed to making our sessions as accessible as possible. If you are unable to pay the full amount for this class, please reach out to us via email at [email protected] and we will provide you with a discount code.