Marcus, New Embodiment and Sustaining Social Performances

I struggle with Marcus’ understanding of agency, but still cannot help but sympathize with her ultimate proposal. I feel as though I understand the power and possibility of inhabiting bodies differently--transforming bodies, normally experienced as docile, into something active. Embodiment can be powerful. Marcus’ theorization of rape is, in essence (pun intended), a mimicry of Judith Butler’s canonical gender performance theory. Yet, it differs drastically in its idea of agency: Butler is clear that gender is not easily changed, while Marcus suggests women can intervene into the “rape script.”

I think what Marcus fails to account for is the process of learning how to live this embodiment.  In relation to Butler, one does not wake up and decide one’s gender, gender is “created through sustained social performances.” Interrupting the rape script through a revised embodiment, then, like gender identity, is not possible unless it is learnt and also consistently reiterated.

This, I think is the point at which our CSL project comes into play. I know that learning these behaviours requires a context and space through which one is able to re-embody. And, to some extent, I think this is what our CSL project tries to allow for. My CSL project is a collaborative project with GBVPP wherein we project consent based messaging around campus as a way of consciousness raising and re-defining the spaces themselves. [For a more extensive explanation of our project  see Emily’s (aka PU$$Y riot~*’s) last blog entry.]

I think that our project, in part, aims to make space for the possibility of rape script interruption. In that it attempts to confront the dark, scary spaces that reinforce female docility. It tries to create an empowering context that has the potential to influence people’s embodiment. While it may be overly optimistic, I hope that our project can serve as the inbetween space of total empowerment (and the ability to easily interrupt the rape script) and the often insidious, lived docility of women’s usual embodiment.