User:OnBeyondZebrax/sandbox/Vagina

File:Gustave Courbet - The Origin of the World - WGA05503.jpg In 1984, Hortense J. Spillers published her critical article, "Interstices: A Small Drama of Words," wherein she critiques Judy Chicago and the "Dinner Party," asserting that, as a White woman, Chicago recreates the erasure of the Black feminine sexual self. Spillers calls to her defense the place setting of Sojourner Truth, the only Black woman of color. After thorough review, it can be seen that all of the place settings depict uniquely designed vaginas, except for Sojourner Truth. The place setting of Sojourner Truth is depicted by three faces, rather than a vagina. Spillers writes, "The excision of the female genitalia here is a symbolic castration. By effacing the genitals, Chicago not only abrogates the disturbing sexuality of her subject, but also hopes to suggest that her sexual being did not exist to be denied in the first place..." Much like Spillers's critique, Alice Walker published her critical essay in Ms. magazine noting "Chicago's ignorance of women of color in history (specifically black women painters), focusing in particular on The Dinner Party's representation of black female subjectivity in Sojourner Truth's plate. Walker states, "It occurred to me that perhaps white women feminists, no less than white women generally, can not imagine black women have vaginas. Or if they can, where imagination leads them is too far to go."

"Art history is, like every discipline, inherently problematic. In its history, it has focused overwhelmingly on so-called "geniuses," a privileged group who "are nearly entirely white and male."