In Martha Rosler’s 1980 text, “Well, is the Personal Political?”, she argued that art is not political simply if it is made by a woman, rather it must be conscious that personal life and collective struggle are “both dialectically opposed and unitary.” Here she describes the continuing importance of protest, while noting that many who were active in the social movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s have transitioned to academic positions as “tenured radicals,” mentoring a younger generation whose own relationship to radicalism is often mediated through texts and passed-down histories.

Martha Rosler spoke on the panel “The Personal is Political, Revisited” at Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions: 2007 CalArts Feminist Art Symposium, a student-organized project that took place at CalArts on March 10, 2007.

http://exquisiteacts.org/symposium/the-personal-is-political-revisited.html