It was great to have the opportunity to see Coco Fusco’s performance-lecture “A Room of One’s Own: Women and Power in the New America” yesterday. It’s not often we get a chance to see an internationally renowned performance artist – let alone for free!
I was really pleased to be able to go along with a number of Gender and Politics students. What did you all think of it? What do you think Fusco was saying? What do you think her point was about what happens when women gain entry to overtly masculine institutions, for instance?
I’m looking forward to discussing this further!
Tania
I saw the performance too. I liked the restraint in the portrayal of ‘feminine interrogation tactics’. The diagrams juxtaposed with Coco Fusco’s serious/ ironic tone looked absurd – as they should. At the same time, we saw no live displays of the women soldiers using such techniques. I appreciated this even though I was anticipating it throughout the performance. The live images would have been what stayed with me – not the absurdity.
The characters were real – the woman guard appearing to be a bored teenager not thinking much about what she was doing and not at all presented as sexy. I couldn’t imagine her ‘interrogating’ the prisoner.
I heard a couple of women mention that it would have been more powerful if Coco Fusco’s role was played by a younger character, given most of the women soldiers are apparantly in their early 20s. What do you think?
Great show!
I really liked that Coco highlighted what was occuring in these ‘rooms’. At the end of the day these interrogation ‘rooms’ although part of the so called public military are very, very private. Very few people usually know what is going on. Women are somehow still trapped within the private sphere of a very public occupation.
Along with this are also the perceptions of women using titillating tactics which reinforces a certain stereotyping of women, yet these actions eminate from women who find themselves acting in masculine roles and possibly in very masculine ways most of the time. The performance asked very real questions of what exactly are women’s roles in the armed forces, what qualities should they be exhibiting and furthermore at what cost to themselves?
Yes! – “women are still trapped within the private sphere of a very public occupation”. I think that is Fusco’s point exactly: women are still trapped in the private sphere even as they participate in the public sphere of paid work. Are public institutions (such as the military) “masculine”; if so, does womens “otherness'” shape their work identity – including how they are valued in their workplace, paying attention to any “special abilities” they may have that are related to their sex (cf the Human Resources industry, but usually more negatively – how their otherness means they can’t do their job as well as men)? This is Fusco’s point I think, that the “war on terror” has allowed many women soldiers the opportunity to show that they can in special circumstances be better than, not equal to, male soldiers, because of their sex. But at what moral cost?
Tania
It was a definant eye opener and although for now I cant contribute such detailed opinion about the effects that the play had I can say that it affected my opinion (as with the entire course) how women play a definant role in what is often seen as a masculine area of work.
Im not sure if this is the same but mum was the first female p.i to work as a counsellor at mt.eden max.prison and worked with men that committed crimes like rape, dom,violence etc and she said that although there were male counsellors and interpreters the offenders found it useful talking to a female because they felt ashamed of what they did but they were also able to open up emotions and talk about feelings that they otherwise could not with a male because that pride and ego thing or something like that..that is a big step seeing as it also crosses not gender issues but cultural and was in the mid eighties or early nineties so not long ago…
i just thought of this as i read Tanias comment ‘women are still trapped in the private sphere of a very public occupation’ .
In relation to the play, i honestly was not sure how to take the ways that women could get info.from the p.o.w. I saw women used their assets to tease the sexual cultural norms/restrictions of a p.o.w in particular to the play.
Morally maybe the point is although the women do what they must to do the job its just seen as a job rather then thinking much about what they do to get that information?Like when they wear the uniform its a job, and when they dont they are their normal self…im not sure if im thinking in the context im supposed to??!!??
What I particularly enjoyed about Coco Fusco’s piece is her referencing back to both historical and popular understandings of women’s empowerment – Virginia Woolf vs Condoleeza Rice, and thus, to me, demonstrating the dangers of a biological-based notion of gender empowerment. While Woolf calls for a room of one’s own, and safe feminist space, Rice typifies for me the ease with which ‘woman’ in positions of structural power equates for many with gender-based empowerment. I think the performance as a whole did well to undermine this and illustrate the cooption of biological- and cultural-based notions of woman and feminity in the contemporary military industrial complex, as well as more broadly.
Anita.