Feminist Methods

So I considered taking a class this quarter called "Feminist Methods." My plate was too full for the additional course, but the title keeps ringing in my head. I know it's basically a class examining how feminist methodologies are used in research practices across the academic disciplines: history, literature, sociology, psychology, etc. But I keep thinking of all the other things this course could offer.

I sometimes feel completely baffled about how to live in a world that remains unrelentingly sexist, racist, classist, homophobic and xenophobic. Despite progress (and lip-service to progress) I feel like I run up against institutionalized inequalities every day. And I live in San Francisco! And I spend most of my time at a university! How do other people even manage?

I know I'm highly sensitive to the suffering caused by sex and gender prejudices; I always have been. And it feels like the more I learn about the world, the more sensitive I become to identity-based injustices.

I have taken many a course on how to see and analyze these injustices, but not a single one that teaches me how to deal with the difficulty of integrating this knowledge into my daily life. It's painful to walk through the world perceiving these half-visible hegemonic structures holding us all trapped in places we don't want to be. I need guidance on how to deal with the information I've gained.

If I were teaching a class called Feminist Methods, my syllabus would include these topics:

- Feminist methods for approaching the study of history without breaking down into tears when you realize that women are systematically left out of most of the juicy parts.

- Feminist methods for appreciating Western art even though 90% of the time women are stuck being the looked-at subject, not the creator.

- Feminist methods for dealing with street harassment from men, especially across cultural lines and in countries that are not your own.

- Feminist methods for thinking about and interacting with pornography in a way that celebrates sexuality, resists censorship and opposes exploitation.

- Feminist methods for getting over jealousy and competitiveness towards other women over who's prettier, sexier, smarter, more capable, more put together, etc...

- Feminist methods for not getting angry when people call you an angry feminist.

- Feminist methods for holding faith that a highly sensitive, responsive, emotional, intuitive, receptive, accepting mode of human interaction is just as valuable as an assertive, rational mode.

- Feminist methods for approaching the monumental task of motherhood with respect even though it's devalued and sentimentalized by Western culture, and usually entails sacrificing hard-won power and privileges in your professional life.

- Feminist methods for forgiving your father, since he's stuck in the system as much as you are.

- Feminist methods for not confusing your boyfriend/husband/lover/friend with the patriarchy just because he's grown up with subtle privileges of having a penis.

- Feminist methods for avoiding the psychic burnout of remaining a feminist.

If you know of any place that offers coursework like this, would you let me know? I could really use it.

And I'm sure there are topics missing from this hypothetical syllabus. What would you add?

Marcus, or the Secret of Onstage Sex Scenes

Marcus, or, The Secret of Sweet is the conclusion of Tarell Alvin McCraney's powerful Brothers/Sisters Trilogy. It plays for two more weekends at ACT and if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to get tickets immediately and DON'T READ the rest of this post!

Marcus is a character you haven't seen before on the regional theatre circuit. Sixteen, gay, and increasingly "out" in the rural Louisiana projects, he is simultaneously a visionary and a horny teenager. He's a powerful character, who, in my opinion, is betrayed in this production by the director's lack of innovation at specific moments of onstage sexuality.

Over the course of the play, three potentially sexual moments between men unfold onstage: a kiss, the prelude to a blow-job, and a thwarted rape. These moments are full of possibility for the character as well as our own culture. What does it mean for the audience to witness Marcus in these moments of queer black male desire?

In contemporary American culture, black male sexuality remains fraught. Overdetermined by threatening "thug" stereotypes, black male bodies are seen as dangerous at the same time as they are objectified and idealized (like the Old Spice superbowl commercial now gone viral). McCraney's scenes of queer desire place black male sexuality not in relationship to a fearing or fetishizing other, but to itself. "Two black men loving each other," said McCraney in an interview, quoting Essex Hemphill, "is always a revolutionary act."

Ultimately, the director misses these opportunities. Unnecessarily loyal to realistic conventions, he rushes through these queer moments as though ashamed to let them breathe. Because of this hesitancy as well as his reliance on the theatrical equivalent of the cinematic "pan to the windblown curtains," ACT's production doesn't find the specificity onstage that McCraney's language invites.

Overt sexuality in theatre is always complicated. The director's challenge is to strive for an externalized vision of the character's internal experience. Is the sexual moment jolting? Languid? Terrifying? Surreal? Does time slow down or speed up? Does space contract or expand? Moments of embodied desire are always moments out of time, out of space, and sometimes out of the limits of the body itself. These edges of expressibility should be where theatre thrives.

Sexuality is not ancillary to Marcus's story, rather it's very close to the young, beating heart of the character and the play. While I'm happy to see him onstage at ACT, I feel like only half Marcus's heart made it into this production.

"Directing Shadows:" Artaud's Dreams

I re-read Artaud last week. I'm always inspired by his vision for what theatre could be. Here are a few snippets, along with images of his own artwork:


"For the theatre as for culture, it remains a question of naming and directing shadows: and the theater, not confined to a fixed language and form, not only destroys false shadows but prepares the way for a new generation of shadows around which assembles the true spectacle of life." (The Theatre and its Double, p 12)






"We must believe in a sense of life renewed by the theater, a sense of life in which man fearlessly makes himself master of what does not yet exist, and brings it into being."(The Theatre and its Double, p 13)








"We can now say that all true freedom is dark, and infallibly associated with sexual freedom which is also dark, although we do not precisely know why...The theatre releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the theater, but of life." (The Theatre and its Double, p 31)






"The true purpose of the theatre is to create Myths, to express life in its immense, universal aspect, and from that life to extract images in which we find pleasure in discovering ourselves... May it free us, in a Myth in which we have sacrificed our little human individuality...with powers rediscovered in the Past" (The Theatre and its Double, p 116)