REBECCA SHAPASS

FILMMAKER, MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST, COMMUNITY ORGANIZER

Studying the grave-markers of women memorialized as 'mother', 'sister', 'daughter', and most notably 'wife of', wife of (footnotes) collages frame-by-frame in-camera animations with text from Silvia Federici’s "Caliban and the Witch" and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s "Venus in Furs" in an examination of women's bodies as capital, the suppression of pleasure as power, and the dynamics of violence and sexuality.

wife of (footnotes)

“At the core of capitalism there is not only the symbiotic relation between waged-contractual labor and enslavement but, together with it, the dialectics of accumulation and destruction of labor-power, for which women have paid the highest cost, with their bodies, their work, their Lives.”

            — Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation

I, A Dying Woman

Sandwiched between life and death, I nap beneath a blossoming tree and atop the grave of someone’s ancestor. Below me, bone decays – rotting since 1890 or so, over 100 years before my slumber. I snuggle my Super 8 camera to my breast, and the object transforms from tool to trusted friend —always reliable. Grounding.

We’re surrounded by our subjects, and yet, I am beginning to feel that I am too close to being one myself. 'Mother', 'sister', 'daughter', and, most notably, 'wife of,’ mark headstones as far as the eye can see. Sometimes a name is included, a birth and death date, a short remembrance— “beloved sister, mother, and friend,” “dedicated wife,” and so forth. Other times, we are left with no more than an impression of the role she fulfilled to someone else as though this was her only honour. Her counterpart is never referred to as “husband of,” and his name is never omitted. He is “John” or “Jack.” Sometimes his title is preceded by “Sargent” or followed by “beloved husband.” The change of phrasing here is striking. He belongs to no one. She belongs to him. Even in death, she remains not only wed but possessed.

Climbing the trails of Greenwood Cemetery in the blistering summer heat, I examine the graves for hours, snapping single-frames on a roll of Ektachrome as I go. My ear keeps pace, envisioning the rhythm of cuts as I advance the film— slowly, meticulously. My mind and hand race when faced with the possibilities of the latent image. However, the 3600 frames contained on the cartridge of film grow daunting. I rest occasionally, allowing the camera’s trigger a respite as it grows sticky under my persistent clicking. Closing my eyes, I recalibrate them.

The fetishization of my reclined and sleepy passivity is palpable and over-pronounced in this setting. I am reminded of late 19th Century paintings portraying fragile, ghostly, nymph-like maidens lying in repose with eyes shut. In these paintings, the semblance of sleep to death is uncanny, disturbing, and practically negligible, as the effect remains the same. The frail, lifeless women became objects of acceptable desire— appearing to be “safely dead, and therefore also safely beyond actual temptation…”[1] While the viewer is safe from the evils of her seduction, the subject’s vulnerability is twisted into a display of perverse objectification pandering to the male gaze. He is permitted to guiltlessly project his desires upon a body that lacks agency.

My memory flashes to languid mornings not so long ago. When, peeling my crusty eyelids open, I met the gaze of a lover’s watchful eyes. The words depart his lips without hesitation, “You look so sweet when you are sleeping.” Just as quickly, I recoil. The innocuous moment sticks with me as an assault on my vulnerability rather than an exchange of tenderness. I feel a bit guilty. I am unsure how to explain what it feels like to embody a state of precarity based on the perception of my gender. Subverting this gaze is an active task I cannot fulfil in slumber. Bringing the weight of history to the safe space of our bedroom seems wrong, but it follows us everywhere.

Control: Capitalism & Corporeality

In the cemetery, my camera is liberated from the conundrum of capturing the constructed image otherwise known as the “female form.” Cold marble is the stand-in, and it helps to ease my sense of conflict. Yet, even cast in stone, I remain concerned about making images of bodies so steeped in semiotics that even the reproduction of a statue on celluloid poses questions. To include the body or remove it totally? I falter behind the camera and turn instead to the flowers–  creatures of beauty, too, imbued with meaning.  

I decide to keep moving, chilled by the thought of being looked upon in this context: a fleshy body amongst a field of tombs. The women that rest beneath me are safe from objectification at last. Not in death, but in disintegration. Total freedom from form permits them to transcend the gaze. The body complicates unintentionally: our corporeality, a confine in which we are forced to exist.

For bodies that reproduce, the physical form can be “the source of identity and at the same time a prison,” Silvia Federici writes in the introduction to her seminal work Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation.[2] So often, the notion of women reclaiming their bodies has been linked to a celebration of its reproductive powers – an exaltation of woman as life-bearing goddess. As beautiful as this can be, our identities and sense of value cannot be derived from this notion alone. The equation of woman to reproductive power is – in and of itself– a crude misunderstanding of womanhood. Ascribing to this idea, though liberating for many as an act of repossession, is extremely dangerous for woman-identified individuals who cannot reproduce. We cannot continue to perpetuate a myth rooted in an equivocation of sex to gender. Moreover, this focus diminishes the values, needs, and desires of all woman-identified individuals' bodies beyond the assumed reproductive function. 

It is unsurprising, then, that during the "transition to capitalism” in Western Europe (1350-1500), one of the greatest tools used to restructure society was the repression of women through the politicization of their sexuality as demonic, evil, and dangerous. An integral component to the co-opting of women’s bodies and work was the shaming, banning, and punishment of any display of sexuality that was not procreative in nature. In turn, women’s bodies were reduced to machines for reproducing and rearing the most important and vital part of a capitalist system: the worker.[3]

Federici makes clear that in the early 14th Century, the assault on women’s social standing, and the silencing of the proletariat to the benefit of the bourgeois was strategically aided by one of the most under-investigated genocides of all time: the Great Witch Hunt. Women, especially poor women, who did not conform to the new imposed system of operation were persecuted at the outcry of “prostitute” or “witch.”[4] In fear-mongering public displays of violence that stripped women of their dignity in the most grotesque and disturbing manners, the State led a successful crusade which “left indelible marks in the collective female psyche and in women's sense of possibilities.”[5] Terrorized, women of the era understood that any deviation from the new norm could result in the loss of their lives. From this macabre reconstruction of roles, the image of woman as docile and obedient housewife emerges– not as a choice, as a mandate.

The Erotic and the Exploitation of Power

In the transformation of bodies to machines, an integral part of human existence is lost. The machine need not feel; the machine must only function. Today, characterizations of women as “overly emotional,” “hysterical,” and outright “crazy,” execute the same task that “witch” once did. These identifiers are used to silence women. In avoiding such labels, the notion of emotional  numbness as strength is impressed upon the psyche. This is a strategic form of socially embodied torment. To feel becomes taboo.

In her essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” Audre Lorde defines the erotic as “power in knowing and feeling.”[6] She argues that the repression of the erotic which “lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling” is a critical power of the white, patriarchal structure. Lorde suggests that we must unlearn our fear of the erotic and embrace our ability to feel deeply in all aspects of our lives. Undoubtedly, this is to risk being deemed “hysterical.” Yet, it is a risk that offers the possibility of true reclamation and agency through the reconnection of body and mind.

The erotic has been exploited by patriarchal systems of oppression. Perverted into the purely sexual, the erotic has become linked to the pornographic which is its very antithesis in that the pornographic “represents the supression of true feeling” or “plasticized sensation.”[7] These ideas manifest fully in the fetishized image of the sleeping or dead woman. She is without feeling and, therefore, deemed safe for the male gaze. He takes from her and she requires nothing in return – neither sexually or emotionally. She is the ultimate fantasy of the oppressor.

Experiences of transgression that shatter the notion of numb, feminine sexuality have been painted as objectionable or monstrous. In 1870, when Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch published Venus in Furs, he fantasized a dominant woman whose reclamation of power through the transgression of constructed sexual norms made her desirable. Wielding her whip and donned in furs, Wanda is, in many ways, an emblem of empowerment. She is anything but a passive receiver. Yet, the dynamics between Wanda and Severin, the man who worships her, are fraught by his own desire to be dominated by her. Initially, Wanda resists the idea of enacting violence against the person who loves her so dearly. Over time, however, she comes to take pleasure in their sadomasochistic dynamic. There is a sense of great pride in her despotism which comes to engulf every aspect of their relationship.

The Crack of Her Whip

My heart jumps at the possibility contained in the crack of Wanda’s whip. I laud her, invigorated by her shattering of constructed feminine sexuality. Yet, I am harrowed by the temporary and conditional veneer of reestablished power dynamics. Her “liberation” is prompted by the request of a man, and though she subverts that relationship, she remains – in the eyes of society – lesser than her counterpart despite her awakened sense of agency. The mythology of Wanda’s sexual vindication is fully acknowledged by Sacher-Masoch’s recognition of woman’s true inequality. He writes, “That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work.”[8]

One can’t help but ruminate in this profoundly solemn and crushing acknowledgment at the end of an otherwise salacious novella. As a woman committed to my own sexual liberation, Wanda acts as a mirror to me in ways I find enticing and disturbing. She revels in dominating her lover, charged by a sense of agency I have seldom embodied. However, does the active woman in a sexual power dynamic not– in some way– remain tethered to the notion of the sexual deviance as a sort of forbidden fruit? Is reclamation of an idea between two individuals enough without the total social upheaval of gender constructs surrounding sexuality? Even if it is a place to explore my own physical and emotional coalescence, do flashes of my own liberation reverberate beyond the confines of the bedroom?

I hang a whip on the wall next to my bed. It spends more time there collecting dust than in my hand. It is a symbol of aspiration– not to my sexual dominance but to the ability to act as true equals, venturing into the vulnerable and exciting world of emotional and physical coalescence. To share an experience that is truly erotic in its meeting of body and mind suggests the potential to move this intimacy beyond our constructed, interpersonal agreement of equality. Can this space not be a learning ground for the acceptance of one another as emotional beings? Can this aid in the erosion of stigma around feeling – not just for women-identified individuals but for those who identify as men as well?

Stripped: For Whom and the Camera

As I near the end of a roll of film, I strip naked and permit my body to be captured at 18 frames per second by a man who is all too familiar with the crevices of my body. In this moment, I embody the very power dynamics I had interrogated in the graveyard. He is under my direction, but his position behind the lens changes everything. I feel too close to the sleeping woman even though I am very awake. My agency is blurred momentarily. I think of Wanda. The camera is my whip. It matters who holds it.

The whips’ potential is latent, as are the frames of film. Captured and stored, both objects reverberate in their ability to be wholly transformed and transforming. The question is one of use and reception. When the images enter the film and pervade the graveyard, I am filled with anxiety and grief, wondering if the gaze is apparent to anyone but me. However the footage holds a quality, one which affirms my alive and active presence amongst the tombs. A breathing body whose voice battles on behalf of her own agency.

The history and perpetuation of women’s alienation from the erotic and from their physical bodies continues beyond the bedroom, beyond the image, beyond the grave. To reclaim it, however, is to embody the erotic in all senses— it is to embrace feeling and open oneself up to both empowerment and intense vulnerability. This action, of course, implies a sense of risk but also great privilege. Therefore, it is the sacred responsibility of those with such privilege to enact it fiercely in defense of all who do not have it and to demand the liberation of all othered bodies from the confines of what has been deemed “appropriate” and “acceptable” for them. 

The body’s potential for feeling is sublime and formidable. I want to feel deeply. Of that, I am certain and, at times, scared. Yet, I am sure that the erotic lives deep within me, urging me on with my camera in hand, demanding me to venture into the graveyard, to celebrate the spirits of the women before me, and to revel with them in our state of divine feeling – knowing we are bonded deeply through our struggle and inextricably through our strength.

References

Bram Dijkstra, “Dead Ladies and the Fetish of Sleep,” in Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of feminine evil in fin-de-sieicle culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

 Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch New York: Autonomedia, 2004.

 Lorde, Audre. “Use of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007.

 Sacher-Masoch, Leopold. Venus in Furs. Translated by Fernanda Savage. Project Gutenberg, 2004.

[1] Bram Dijkstra, “Dead Ladies and the Fetish of Sleep,” in Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of feminine evil in fin-de-sieicle culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 62.

[2] Federici, Silvia. “Introduction.” Caliban and the Witch (New York: Autonomedia, 2004), 16.

[3] Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch (New York: Autonomedia, 2004).

[4] Idib., 173- 177.

[5] Ibid., 102.

[6] Lorde, Audre. “Use of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007), 53.

[7]  Ibid.

[8] Sacher-Masoch, Leopold. Venus in Furs, trans. Fernanda Savage (Project Gutenberg, 2004), 298.