In Search of the Outlaw Cowgirl

A critical essay published in the catalogue accompanying a show of Susan Hiller’s work at the BAWAG Foundation Vienna. The essay considers the relationship of humour, psychoanalysis and feminism in Hiller’s work. It asks whether the humour in Hiller’s work may be characterized as cynical in the philosophical sense. However, it also associates Hiller herself with the figure of the “outlaw cowgirl”, and suggests that the full challenge and disturbance of certain key Hiller works relies on their “outlaw” character: they refuse to provide a legible moral framework. Out of this the essay poses a more general question about the tendency of some criticism to wish to characterize “radical practice” as ultimately emollient.