Faculty of Arts & Science

Criticism and Curatorial Practice

Talia Veneruz

Shamanism and Biopolitics: A Post-War Reading of Joseph Beuys’ I Like America and America Likes Me

German artist Joseph Beuys’ 1974 performance piece I Like America and America Likes Me, is the subject of innumerable research and discussion, packed with criticism of his tendency to self-mythologize and cast himself as a shamanic healer. The criticism has most often been taken up within the histories of performance art and the post-war anxiety of coming to terms with the past. There is another history largely glossed over when interpreting this work, being the presence of indigenous themes. What these three histories all have in common is their focus on body politics, the question of who is considered a human versus a non-human or animal. Through these three lenses, Beuys’ I Like America becomes a biopolitical meditation, urging society away from repeating the mistakes of the Holocaust at the time of an emerging concern for indigenous rights.