Thursday, January 31, 2008
why does it usually take trajedy to remind me of my body?
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Performance of Narcissism
Then tonight I read a friends blog about memory especially in regards to love, pain, trauma and memory. This made me think of my own memories of these things. One memory (and yes it is academic in nature but it still changed my life was reading Anne Cvetkovich's book, "An Archive of Feeling: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures." This book offered me a way to view my own life and deal with my own pain regarding my sexuality (and I use this term broadly not only to refer to my sexual orientation.) This book made me uncomfortable and at the same time felt comfort I had never felt anywhere else.
I do not want to go to much into the theory of the book as I am still trying to figure that but what I took from it was that we archive memories into our bodies (or the unconscious) and we act on those memories. While it seems extremely psychoanalytic it isn't just that, it is more complex and sophisticated. What it helped me to learn about myself is that my queerness is inextricably attached to my previous experiences with traumatic events and that that is O.K. While I have heard the argument made that it isn't because women who love women do so because of bad experiences with men, why should this not be a valid reason to be a lesbian? Why do we dismiss this premise as naive or lacking reflexivity regarding one's view of their sexuality. I get wrapped up in this point because as a social-constructionist and one who is committed to the idea that identities are negotiated and performed on a daily basis it makes sense to me that someone who has been sexually abused or assaulted has a valid reason for choosing alternative forms of sexuality, and trauma doesn't even have to occur to choose these alternative approaches to sexuality (such as queerness, s&m, bondage, humiliation, voyeurism, etc...) but that it makes sense that this might be the case. Someone who has experienced immense trauma and felt immense shame in regards to their sexuality may need alternative and safe ways to access their sexuality.
This book also critiques traditional notions of feminist cultures that are in contention with alternative forms of sexual expression. Not lesbian expression, but queer expressions of sexuality like butch/femme which seems to replicate a normative system but does not have to, bondage or s&m or bringing violence (that is completely consensual into a sexual scenario), strap-ons (which may seem to re-center a phallus at the center of sexual desire), role-play and role-play specifically of abuse and incest situations. Feminists (and I use the term broadly as I actually think that most feminists these days are fairly open sexually) critique these practices as being un-feminist. Patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, violence-that is what alternative forms of sexuality elicit. And they don't have to, which is what Cvetkovich is advocating. Instead Cvetkovich offers that queering sexuality and sexual practice is a necessary tool for working through trauma and pain from the past-that enacting an incest scene from someone's past in a consensual s&m situation can actually be healthy. For example she sights Dorthy Allison, one of my all time favorite writers, and her experience dealing with incest. Allison writes that she received a certain amount of taboo pleasure from the sexual abuse she endured from her father or step-father, and that as an adult she did not know how to reconcile these feelings of pain, shame, horror, and pleasure with one another. For traditionally in feminist thought pain and trauma should not be reconciled, one should only find joy in sex as it is removed from pain and shame. It is extremely queer to link these complex emotions together. But I was relieved...I thought my own pain was solitary and isolated and my feelings were strange and taboo. It was't the feeling of community I needed but simply someone saying your being queer because of you mother and your own sexual abuse is ok. I feel like I shouldn't have been looking so hard for this assurance-but I was and I found it...in an academic book...
But as one who is dire need of a way to reconcile her body with pleasure, pain, queerness, horror, sorrow, and joy, I feel that Cvetkovich's trauma theory as well as performance theory can be ways to help myself to maybe find some peace in these places that I usually try to forget. Letting my body remember may be a helpful way to begin...
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Some late ponderings
Some late Ponderings
I had meant to write a reflection on my class period last week right after class. Unfortunately my body has limited my ability to be a human being the past weekend but I do have strong feelings about the last class and the introspection it has provided me and my body.
In class last week we were finally able to move around and perform. I love this class as it is (I know Dr. Calafell says it doesn't have to change your life-but it is changing mine) but when we actually allowed to move in class and perform I felt that a theory/practice connection occurred in my my brain and body that hadn't previously. I know I was nervous-I love movement, I was a dancer for years and a mover in college. I love acting although I have never been that great at it, The Vagina Monologues performance I was in changed my life. It came rushing back to me, the adrenaline, the pulsing, the rush of being in front of others connecting to them in a way that is impossible unless bodies and minds are both physically present. It also allowed us to work with one another differently than is possible when just sitting discussing readings for the day. There were arguments and discussions, there were times I didn't want to put my body into certain physical spaces that I was comfortable with. There were ways we wanted to communicate things all different, but all valid and good. I am always overly-sensitive from power and that day after my first class discussing feminism and "the feminist perspective of voice" (dripping with sarcasm) and I just wanted to make sure our pose conveying voice was an attempt at trying to eliminate power differentials. Although not perfect on the first try the second try (and the class) gave us lots of helpful ways to suggest fixing the performance to make it even more dialogic.
Then we performed an excerpt of Soyini Madison's piece on Trokosi women in Ghana. I felt personally connected with the piece on many levels. To give those who may be reading this a little background on Trokosi (not to sound overly confident as I am truly not) are women who live in the temples and shrines dedicated to different deities in the traditional religious practices of Ghana. I am sure this is universalizing and homogenizing the practice much more than it actually is. The issue is complex like Female Genital Mutilation. Those that practice Trokosi say the girls are taken to the shrines in order to receive an education in order to learn to be proper wives etc...while those on the outside believe the women to be oppressed, denied human/personal rights because they are taken from their homes in order to be servants (sex and otherwise) to priests in the temples. Neither side is completely right or wrong instead it depends mostly on one's positionality and where one stands.
I have not been to Ghana but I have been to South Africa and not to homogenize the cultures and assume in any way shape or form that the entire continent is the same, it just happens that I had an interesting experience while I was in South Africa. We visited a community still much rooted in traditional Xhosa! religious practices ad visited an actual kingdom on the east side of the country. While there we received an interesting talk from a ma who basically manages the tourist aspects of the kingdom. A large coliseum type structure was constructed centrally in the kingdom and we were all seated within it in order to hear the man speak. He told us that the coliseum was constructed on a shrine/grave yard of the past kings. At the end of his talk he invited all the males at the talk to the shrine/grave yard but told all the females they were not allowed to enter the grounds. My professor was outraged. She felt the situation was archaic, sexist, and patriarchal. She wanted to know why it was and the man claimed that it was tradition and that they believed women could contaminate the area with bad luck (my professor attributed this to notions of witchcraft-I am not so certain.) While my professor was outraged I had friends I relayed the story to when back in the U.S. who said that she was crazy for being upset. It is their religion, their customs and traditions, we/I wasn't supposed to judge them with a western lens. Honestly I was torn. A large piece of me was in agreement with my friends back home that we shouldn't continue to colonize people by diminishing their practices or trying to get them to change but at the same time I did not really agree with the practice either. I was in a space of cognitive dissonance. I thought of this as I read the words of the advocate for individual human rights by Madison.
I was angry while I read the piece. Angry at the group, although it wasn't really their faults specifically. I didn't like that we were placing me a white woman in the role of "western feminist." It was too real, this position. I had been in too many women's studies classes where the issue of female genital mutilation and similar practices were heavily critiqued by younger women who couldn't get passed the grotesque nature of the act to understand that for many women it is there only way to access economic resources through marriage. I am not particularly fond of the practice but I see it as a complex issue with many pieces and parts that cannot be judged simply by a western criteria of feminist action. But my role was in many ways to take on this kind of naive simplistic way of seeing Trokosi women as oppressed, uneducated, unenlightened women. On the opposite of this the male in our group played who he considered to be the asshole, the character advocating for keeping the practice of Trokosi. Again maybe too real the man advocating for the possible subservience for women-not that that is what the part entailed or the script explained but what I think the perception could be when the role is played by a male character.
I was a bit angry at this, but we were limited in resources and people so the performance was limited also. I didn't mind the "speaking for others" it was more what was being spoken I had issues with because I didn't agree with my character, but at the same time I didn't completely disregard it or agree with the other side either. That was really the beauty of the piece it showed the dissonance that happens with these complicated issues with no easy answers. I thought that aspect was really poignant and meaningful to me. It got at the fact that there are no easy answers to complicated problems and if anything it at least spurned the dialogue into action. In this sense I see that the performance can be a good starting piece when dealing with complicated social justice issues where nothing is as simple as oppressed and oppressor but shows the complicated interworkings of complex relationships.
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Here is a very westernized version of what Trokosi women go through, I hope to not perpetuate this notion but to use this as a demonstration of the western discourses about Trokosi women.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
What I would Like to do with Performance
I-dea #1
I am very concerned with issues of gender and sexuality and the way those identities are performed. But I am also interested in the inextricability of gender and sexuality to race, class, ethnicity, origin and how a multiplicity of identities and positionalities are taken up in a performative way.
One way I am interested in doing this in engaging with the "other" is through music and specifically I am interested in the Riot Grrrl Punk movement, which is a feminist and often lesbian engagement with punk music. It was created as a way to subvert dominant and normative musical styles but was also a way to rebel against the male-dominated punk music scene. Although the movement reached its peak in the 90's much of the music and Do-It-Yourself feminist attitude prevails in certain subcultural groups.
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An example of the Do-It-Yourself mentalityt would be The Gossip's indie punk video for Standing in the Way of Control. The video is not as high tech or expensive as videos played on mainstream networks like MTV, thus, it is reflective of this subcultural ideology.
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An interesting place for this music and ideology to be taken up is at women's music festivals which, also tend to try and subvert dominant male paradigms of oppression. While the internal politics of festivals can be sites of contention it would be interesting to see how the music speaks to and through people. It would be interesting to see how this kind of performance can affect the audience there to see and how it could be a site for healing, a site for social justice, and a site of possible protest also. While complex, this topic could lend itself very nicely to a performance method and paradigm.
If I were writing it I would write about the performance as it speaks to me accounting for my own positionality as a white, queer, lesbian, bi-sexual woman. I would write about the place as a conflicted space but one that for me is a site of healing and personal growth. But I would also write about my cognitive dissonance with being a staunch social constructionist in a place that tries to define female as people who were born and socialized as a person with a vagina. Not only is this space one of contention for its gender definitions but also it's racial politics, while they may desire diversity I must ask where are all the people of color? Mostly together at the women of color tent-is this bad-no-but it is a reality. Even a "women's only" space is not perfect simply because it is built by the sweat and tears of those with vaginas.
But it is also a place where I feel a grand connection unlike anywhere else. Partly it is personal-but even more I feel as though it social and political to be involved and on many different fronts. I connect, I theorize, I am myself in a different way than the rest of my life, and so much of this is from music and the performers who attend. These people offer up their time and many of them rough it in the woods with the rest of us simple folk. Does that happen many other places? Where the power differentials between "stars" and laypeople is almost eliminated (of course they do get better food)-I don't know but I seem to doubt it? Would this be created by a diverse group of peace loving people-possibly, but all I know is that it is created by a group of semi-diverse people who happen to have vaginas.
But then it would be really cool to do performance in some way (writing or physical stage performance) of the impact a place like a women's festival has on other people. How good of an experience it is. for some. How complicated it is for others, who maybe attend but do not wholeheartedly agree with either the policies of the festivals nor completely want to diminish them either. And maybe those people on the outside too-how it makes them feel to not be included in such a rigid definition of what it means to be female and not be given the same chance for healing.
I think this space would be very interesting and complex for a performance ethnography because it isn't always clear who is outsider and who isn't. It isn't as simple as oh you have one marginalized sexuality you are the other, but in differing circumstances at differing times those who are oppressed become oppressor and then those women in turn become oppressed for sticking to their identities as women and as lesbians. It is complicated-but it would be fun and a good way to maybe create some healthy dialogue between the differing communities.
For those of us who are visual...
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Monday, January 14, 2008
Commitment to Critical Research Paradigm
This weekend for my qualitative research methods class (not to be confused with my performance ethnography class) I had to read an article on incest and the supposed way that research interviews can be a transfomative process and thus, create social justice. I don't like to compare, I don' think it is an extremely useful tool in the toolbox to have as it does not allow a thing to be a thing on its own, but only has validity through the way it looks juxtaposed with other things. This only reifies binary ways of thinking and looking at things (i.e. we know what man is by understanding what a woman is not-a complex comparison but a comparison nonetheless). Given my current context, two methods courses; one trying to teach me ways of doing that are somewhat normative while still allowing some freedom for creativity and expression and the other, a complete break-down of traditional methods, ways of seeing, and ways of presenting materials found. I bring up the article on incest because I do not think the way it was presented did it the justice it really and truly needed. This article would have benefited much from an engagement with performance ethnography, a combination of both performative writing and actual performance of the women and men's stories dealing with incest. That would have been social justice or at least an attempt. Instead the researchers provided us with some mail in questionaire data about interviews they conducted previously. In this process I saw little commitment to a co-constructed co-performance. The researchers portrayed little connection to their subjects, there was little bodily connection and no bodily responsibility. All things that dealing with social justice and especially something so traumatic involving the body should have present.
As it was the article was presented as a typical research study, but said that it was an attempt to create social justice because it gave victims a voice, a place to speak and be heard by a researcher who had experienced incest herself. Sounds good right? I thought so too at first. But I kept waiting for the bodily interactions, kept waiting to hear the stories. I didn't. Granted I think this piece specifically focused on methods (focus group and individual interviews) and not so much the content-but given the content something as traumatic as incest how can the researcher simply allude to this pain, this awful experience, but use the data as material to publish a methods article. This makes it seem as though the researcher has no responsibility to the people she interviewed to use their testimonies in the way they wanted it to be used-to help people (to really do social justice.)
On top of this the idea of transformation of the research participant, the abused, the victim, the survivor was made apparently clear. Interviews done to give voice to the participants was a "transformative experience." Was it not also transformative for the researcher who had also survived incest, or those researchers who did not suffer incest abuse-weren't they transformed? Seems that it would be hard for those stories, those testimonies not to make any sort of impact. This methodological process seemed to lack lack reflexivity and definitely did not view the knowledge gained as contingent upon both researcher and researched. And this process really seemed to other the victims. While I would never want to imply that something like speaking wouldn't be transformative, when it is presented as so grotesquely one-sided (that only the researched people are transformed) they become othered-taboo, social pariahs, something to avoid. And it seems to imply that the researched need to be transformed, instead of meeting people somewhere in a contingent middle or grey space, the expectation seemed to be that healing needed to happen on the part of the researched in order for them to somehow be whole. It seems an experience with incest would be transformative in itself-I know my own experiences with abuse have been. I would hate it to be implied that I needed to be further transformed through a research interview process in order to be whole. Although I still at the same time respect that it could be-what about those that did not feel the process was transformative?
So I turn to performance-since this article I feel lacked a bodily sense of responsibility to the "other" the incest survivor, the research participant. What may have better served them? First in performance studies one does not physicially have to get on a stage and perform-using performative writing techniques can also suffice. Being committed to social justice in langage choice, and other forms of presentation where power relations are minimized is helpful.
Using both physical performance and performative writing can create the ultimate amalgamation of re presentation methods to engage in ethnography and the construction of the other. But it takes the responsibility of the researcher and a commitment to the other to use their words as they desire and to research them in the most ethical way possible. This means bodies involved in trauma have to be accountable to one another and even if a researcher s body has not been subjected that they approach the situation as Pollock says, with "empathic empathy." The researcher must approach the subject with empathy, that both the futures of the researcher and researched are contingent upon one another, thus the researcher can no longer approach situations with an objective lens but must approach with a critical mindset to do social justice. Especially with trauma survivors. Do use my words to tell a social justice story, do be reflexive about the work, do recognize limitations in research methods and data, but do not use my words to imply I need to be transformed. My transformation will be personal and social in my own time on my own terms, I don't care how caring the interview situation supposedly is.
And part of the researcher's responsibility is to write in their own bodily knowledge. Not to make the entire piece about the self of the researcher(Madison)-but to understand the complex relationship between participants and researchers, between self and other (Corey). This is where Tami Spry's words about the "performative-I" really seem to ring true. She says, "I offer the phrase performative-I as a researcher positionality that seeks to embody the copresence of performance and ethnography as these practices have informed, reformed, and coperformed one another..."(340). She then goes on to detail the performative-I position is a positionality affected both by her personal life and her research but that it explicates her inability to either live inside or escape her physical body. Part of her healing was to write from that space between-the only space she could, which was her body. She writes about the knowledge she learned from her body when dealing with her study of healing among the Mapuche people as well as the bodily knowledge needed to survive the death of her child. The body is for the most part void in the article on incest, which is suprising given the content, which is placing the body and bodily harm as the focal point of research. How can the researchers forget their own body, their own sites of pain, grief and frustration with reading about others' pain and trauma. we must write from our bodies as we cannot escape them as much as we might truly wish to. Is it not the responsibility of the researcher to not maintain neutrality since this is absolutely never possible. We can never rid ourselves of our bodies and thus we cannot rid ourselves of our positionalities, so shouldn't we use those things to our advantage. I do not want to tell someone my stories of abuse and assault to someone cold and stone-faced with no reaction. I want someone to want to know my story in a way that they try to feel my pain and that they are upset with the ways I was treated. I want to hear the anger at such injustice. I want to hear that the socially constructed sexism, patriarchy, and domination that men hold over women is something the researcher is not ok with. If I can't hear this I will not want to share. And I do not want as a reader to see this kind of neglect for the body, this neglect to the humans who have shared the intimate portraits of their lives-it is unfair and it is not right.
Gender and Sexuality as Autoethnographic Performance
Part of this is about my love and desire for queering things, and when I use queer I do not use it as an umbrella term for "the gays" as it so often gets minimized to but as a more broad term for those who do things in non-normative ways who believe that their identities, sexual and otherwise have a level of contingency upon given social contexts, circumstances, surroundings, negotiations etc...(look at me trying to be all Foucauldian stringing my synonyms together.) I like to use queer as a verb not a noun. And in saying this I still must except my positionality as a white, middle class, femme bi-sexual lesbian, who enjoys school, blogging and cheesy television shows. But I like Linda Alcoff's suggestion, that identity not be an over-determination of the spaces we occupy in the world and the behaviors associated but that simply put our position affects how we see. It is not the be-all end-all (there's a platitude for ya) of understanding but it simply gives us different ways of looking and being in the world. But within this we all have agency to a certain extent to enact social justice through whatever means we can. I mean it isn't as though our positionality is essential or innate or something ridiculous like that. It changes, fluctuates, depending on my social context and sometimes my mood.
But this doesn't help with the writing of my blog, or the understanding of how to do my performance. I mean my fingers can move the keys and I can write about things I seem to know about and truly want to understand, but I still do not know who I am. I can pick at my face to the point of bleeding hoping to reach an answer-I don't and all I have is blood and puss. This is gross-but this is the truth. This is my body.
I know my positionality, I know that my positionality changes. I see it change. When I am with the women I date who happen to be more masculine in appearance and stature I immediately notice the looks and stares we both get. My body juxtaposed against theirs says it pretty clearly. Because bodies are political and as spoken word artist Alix Olson says, "At least lesbian bodies are political." Because when my body and her body are together occupying a shared space (like a dinner table in a restaurant full of heterosexual couples the stares "their" bodies give mine and hers say, "What are you?" "Why is she with that?". "She could get a man, she's pretty enough." "She looks normal, how is it that she can like women...and that kind of woman?" "I mean it's cool if she wanted to make out with a hot chick I wouldn't have a problem with it, I'd watch, maybe they'd let me join in on the fun." When I am with a more masculine woman of color the stares become even more intense. "Why would she do that doesn't she have it hard enough as it is [in reference to being a person of color and dressing like a boy]?"
When I am in this situation my perceived heterosexuality is challenged and that is when I become gay. Before this I was a heterosexual woman as conceived by our heterosexist society. It isn't just with lovers/partners it happened with my best friend too. When I walked with her in our small college town in Iowa completely platonically I became a lesbian because that is how she was perceived. "Dykes!" they would yell as they drove by us, those high school boys in their white suv. That's what I mean by contingent-when I walk with my more feminine looking friends I don't get the same yells or stares. "They're all straight," because that's the problem with linking up gender performance and sexual identity in a "heterosexual matrix" if they don't look like women trying to be men than they must be straight women desiring men. If they only knew...
And I say I am queer, but I question that too. I mean I shop at J-Crew, I wear make-up (eyeliner is my favorite), I carry a purse, and when I walk down a street nobody would ever have to know. I could pass for straight. But I don't want to. I am pretty open with anyone you ask, "Yes, I am indeed open to loving anyone, it just so happens that most of the people I love happen to have vaginas (it is not however, a requirement.)" That too goes for friends and lovers.
I like women who look different than me. Am I homophobic? I can't imagine I am-but is my desire for difference somehow interlaced with notions about heterosexism and heterosexuality. My friend who is more masculine once suggested this about herself in reference to dating another more masculine and possibly ftm trans person. These thoughts all infiltrate my space. Maybe that's why I am queer-because the women I date and befriend are not male or female, man or woman, they occupy a space somewhere in between and yet completely different and outside at the same time.
I recognize what this means for me, I will be seen as the straight one. I am not really a lesbian-I am a bisexual, a confused silly school girl going through a phase. But I am queer-I too see my masculine and feminine traits and those that defy both of those to create something entirely new and fantastic. I am as much queer as those women in suits, or track jackets with popped collars and sideways trucker hats, even if my appearance might not suggest it. Another friend of mine once wrote about gender in her blog as being so much more than appearance but about gender play. About the way we negotiate and perform gender in social spaces WITH OTHER PEOPLE!! It is not just the way we look, I know that, than why does it matter so much to me? I am not really a lesbian, I don't look the way lesbians look. I must be a bi-sexual, an unspeakable, "she'll end up with a man one day..." I don't like femme lesbian or bi-sexual as labels, but as an identity expression I create as a daily negotiation-yeah I can live with that. I can occupy the shit out of that space-just watch me!
And how can I write this? How does one articulate that I am a daily negotiation always contingent upon my circumstance, my surrounding, my situation. I am a fractured whole-I do not actually believe I was ever whole to begin with, but instead I am actively creating different pieces of myself everyday that will probably never complete me-I don't want to be completed, I want to be challenged and complemented. And how do I write this. How do I write fluidity into such a static medium. The way I just did? Is that good enough-explain where I am coming from and the rest will tell itself in a way? How do I write my change in a way that is compelling, truthful and honest. How do I write myself into my text, when I do not know who or what I am? I may have a sense of self but this sense of self is completely unstable and at times completely lashes out at me! How do I write this? How do I perform this... Maybe I just did...
For the People By the People
In light of all the really interesting things I have been reading about performance studies and performance ethnography (Conquergood et.al) I have decided to blog about it in a performance autoethnography style...who knows maybe this will turn into my paper for this week...
I look a the stack of papers I have to get through. There are a lot. Two classes this quarter-both about research methods. I never imagined I would be taking one methods course (none were required in my previous M.A. program-I should have known then right ;)!) let alone multiple methods courses at the same time. I mean I signed up for them-maybe I didn't know the class was a class theorizing about performance and maybe I thought it was more of a how-to. I mean I am not extremely creative-I'm not artsy-the most artistic thing I do is make cd compilations-good ones- but still. Lots of reading in both clases, some writing too. It shouldn't be too bad. If I can just get through Barthes, "The Pleasure of the Text," which reminds me of something painful and yet beautiful at the same time, like touching hot wax, it burns but I just keep wanting more.
(Btw) I just ate a cookie that tastes like marshmallows-that scares me because I do not eat marshmallows, I am not a vegan but the idea of gelatin really makes me feel ill. I have gotten most of my friends to stop eating gelatin even if they still eat meat because the idea that animals are produced for their connective muscle fibers to make nasty gelatinous substances is more grotesque than eating meat to them. I have to admit both sicken me slightly, but that is beside the point-right?
Back to my stack of papers. I pick up the first Conquergood-I read the opening lines. Immeadiately, I think, O.k. so you want to challenge normative modes of knowledge by offering this different methods of presenting your data-like performance-spoken word, art, daily activities like quilting, cooking, recipes..." Hasn't this been done before? Isn't this exactly what Alice Walker is advocating in the book, "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens" and isn't Audre Lourde advocating for reintroducing the body into the academy in "The Pleasure of the Erotic." They are not new concepts but of course white, straight (I am assuming) guy comes in and says it so veryone has to listen right? I don't want to be this negative-I swear it is the feminist in me-she likes to be a pessimist-she isn't exactly sure how to be any other way.
But I read on knowing that my initial reactions are far too simplistic he must have something more to say-something more to offer. And he does...Conquergood suggests that performance can challenge dominant ways of knowing and can challenge the way we do things in the academy. He is wanting to revolutionize the praxis/theory divide and give us new ways of knowing and opening up the everyday (ritualized) activities we engage in to be valued knowledge, that those kinds of knowledge are just as worth studying and knowing as something extremely positivistic. And how does he suggest this happen? By introducing the body back into our study. That our bodies can somehow hold us more accountable to the cultures we study than writings on a paper. That our bodily knowledge is undervalued and we need to integrate it back into what we do.
That's kind of big-HUGE if you think about it. Here is a man coming from privilege-he could be happy just leaving things as they are-goddess knows he's the kind of person that would really benefit from keeping such a system in place. But he wants to change it and not only that but he wants to do it ethically. He doesn't want to be the paternalistic hand of the father changing ways of thinking in the people that he studies-he doesn't want to go native, or save the natives, he just wants the body to be reintegrated into the way we know and then used to rearticulate the knowledge we have learned.
This is fascinating to my feminist side. The body which is so often on the female side of the male/female, man/woman, masculinity/femininity divide that for a "man" to suggest using the body to know seems completely foreign and outrageous (in the good way-I am feeling another candle wax moment coming on...). And I hate dichotomies-they do very little for anybody but limit them and express a system of language that dominates and benefits from a dichotomy. But as a "classically trained women's studies minor" we have to recognize the dichotomies before we dismantle and disrupt them. So maybe that is also what Conquergood is doing- queering the notions of scholarship and at the same time challenging traditional notions of the masculine and the feminine...maybe not but I thinkt he argument could be made.
But at the same time and my main critique is while he is advocating this totally radical thing-where did I read about it? A freaking peer reviewed journal article. Because we still have to value some of that traditional stuff and still do somethings in a traditional and normative way. It sucks. It's like here's a great idea-now if we could just get over that hump of will it ever be accepted? Which it won't not int he radical revolutionary way it needs to-but change is slow and a process and I am willing to wait it out-I mean I have to.
What else is there for me to do? But sit here and think about these things and try to offer what little I have-which happens to be myself. My brain, my thoughts, my insights. Because I know that for me without autoethnographical performances like those of Alix Olson and Staceyanne Chin I would not be the person I am today if it weren't for hearing those words of pain, and joy and taking those into my body letting the words consume me until they couldn't anymore and I just had to break down and cry because I did not think there was anything else I could do. Is that bodily enough for you?
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I can just imagine her performing this at Michigan orange pants, tank top, wild hair maybe in two pigtails every word inciting some sort of movement with the occasional pause- for oh what's the word-i guess to work up her momentous orgasmically inclined potential...
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Staceyann Chin's FALL AWAKENING (for sloane)
after too many movies
about honor
and faith
and the fury of time/the hours
unwrap moments for me to fill
the monotone hiss of the heater
has begun
new skin is shedding the nights I spent
aching for things not promised
wishes and horses and all that manure
the crisp edges of real time
injects itself drunken into me
vein and artery
arrow and artistry
my fingers click precise
not trained or systematic
they type inclined to carpal tunnel
syndromes
honing in on old age and raw certainty
and me only worried that my eggs
will never bring themselves to fruition
but life can mark itself on a body
many ways
sperm and life
and being a lesbian is more complicated
than I would ever have envisioned
inside my head
I was coming to America
to laugh
and live a little
leave some of me to giggle
small parts dissolving into cackles
I though I would last longer than this restless devil caressing
inch long bruises across my identity
what the fuck is identity
in the face of all we endure
existence is inane
necessary
and without reason
no logic sticks to the ribcage
of death
and my voice is finding itself
blue
and yellow light breaking new skin all over my solitary bed
my limbs
can rest naked
missing the familiar
but aching less with the hours
thank God/or fate/or luck foe these horrible movies
for this book I am tapping into shape
no matter what you say
assault
survival
almost/almost survival
almost rape
such windows were made to be seen through
tall glass structures
erected upright for efficiency
and me sleeping un the nude
so the cold autumn sun can lick my stomach
my face unfolding to find morning
blinking at me
nothing feels as good
as my own belly
uncontained, my hips, my ass curved and kissed gently by the blanket
we slept under
in Washington Heights
and here
I can smile now
thinking of you
inhale the memory of your beautiful hands
seeking a clarity
elsewhere
and me
searching the bed for the phone
or a pen
or the remote
for one more movie
and me smiling open at the possibilities
opened up again
not so long ago
my hands were happily tied to yours
perfect
your fingers knew me
languid
Sunday mornings
sex and sleeping and the simple rote
of kisses
awakening
smiles
hidden/self-conscious
you were always too conscious of how much this meant
in another life
we will look back
and weep at our innocence
our rash politics
our wild hope against hope
we could have lasted
and did
almost two years
and I can smile at us now
new rings
promised under skies
and rain jackets at 2 a.m.
my feminist self
has never felt so reflected
almost a foot above me
you towered
and I laughed at how small you seemed
wrapped-up in my arms
you made me into a giant
small hands
and feet
I was always amazed
at the height of me
lying next to you the world seemed smaller
than my fears
my hesitation
I wish I would have jumped for you
higher than I did
not out of regret
but because you would have known
that I wanted to
you were beautiful
are beautiful
without clothes
and I challenge the looking glass
here in my bedroom
noon has never been so far
away
rocks the rhythm of a night without tears
willow trees bend stunning
in my imagination
they weep and whisper sweet nothings
nothing can make me
take back how much we loved each other
love each other
even now
a crass warp in our time
synchronized
we could have tested the parameters
of forever
but the edges would not have been
visible
the skies would have been endless
such excess
may have compromised
the way I love you now
rejoice
not in what could have been
but what was
flesh
morning
cafes
love and hope blooming radical in out chests
we nested
each lifetime pocketed
finite
in our hands
forever
was a thing to be trusted
and I giggle now
pleased with the memories fluttering comfortable
against my ribs
Adam can go fuck himself
I wanted Eve- I always want Eve
the apple tempting rose-like against her cheek
the meek shall inherit the earth
but I wanted your flesh
revelled in it human
frail
I found you
against these odds
twice
and now the future
winds itself spring-like against the Fall
winter is almost here
the winds
the leaves breaking colorful piles and piles of potential
next year
is still a possibility
and am committed to living in the now