Patriarchal Company 1.0

This image is of a business card that I received along with a proposition to prostitute myself for a large sum of “cash” equivalent to the value of “an apartment or a car”. I didn’t realize that my body had a price, let alone one to negotiate, approximate, or obliterate with a few words or gestures. This encounter (alongside numerous others) has enabled me to understand that language is inextricably linked to our subjectivity, constantly writing and un-writing ourselves as individuals. Making use of Louis Althusser’s theories of interpellation and Julia Kristeva’s theoretical insight regarding language, I'm currently exploring a question that came up in my cultural theory class, extending it further with bell hooks' feminist critique to ask: How do we inhabit the subject we inherit, and how do we hold each other mutually accountable?

As a culturally constructed individual, I am bound to a subjective language which is complex and socially and culturally 'reflective'. This signified language dominates another form of language that equally demands to be heard: our physiological language-- a heart that races, skin that pricks, a hand that is unconsciously flexed, the half-lidded eyes of a deepened thought, the wrinkle of worry between parental eyebrows--- This is language, but it is a bodily one and it is continuously being ignored.

Radicalized by this notion, the only way that I seemed to be able to articulate the experience was through sound, so I wrote a song (listen here). The strumming, knocking on the shell, smacking the strings, I realized each sound held upon its vibration the physiological conversation of the encounter. After writing the song, I began trying to theorize the contrasts of language, however it came out as spoken word poetry. I'm still giving the poem some time and need to add footnotes as I relate it back cultural theory, but I'll post it along once it's complete.

I'll also post some quotes that have my panties in a bunch, and if they (that goes for any of these posts) spark any thoughts, ideas, reflections-- respond liberally.

To wrap up, I'll end with a quote (and in a way, a question) from Jayne Wark in her book Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America: ...[Feminist] art used personal experience to problematize the prevailing values and hierarchies of both art and life, it can be seen to embody the historical avant-guards' goal "to organize a new life praxis from a basis in art" (88).

Silence, there’s too much

Violence in the common touch

I only see a mirror

When I look at you

A hidden glance

Bad romance

A silent screw

I feel like my body is a drone

As it should

When it’s owned to the bone

Wark, Jayne. Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America. Québec: McGill-Queen's Press, 2006. Print.

#malloryamirault #feministart #performanceart #culturaltheory #bellhooks #juliakristeva #louisalthusser #prostitution #spokenwordpoetry #patriarchy #patriarchalcompany #acousticguitar