Back to the Slash

This essay is a delayed addendum to my book on punctuation, considering the forward slash mark as it traverses theory, art, and visual culture. I focus in particular on its uses in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when writers and artists were under the spell of structuralism and poststructuralism. More specifically, I examine the proliferation of forward slash marks across video art (Dara Birnbaum’s work Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman), Kirk/Spock slash zines, and academic film criticism (Raymond Bellour’s analyses, which chart out shot-by-shot descriptions of Hollywood films to reveal dynamics of alternation structured around gender and heterosexual union).