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Salute : Holding the arms at the back

Lexicon :

a) kneeling

b) kneeling; hands clasped under chin

c) kneeling; hands on floor open fingers

d) palms to forehead

e) hands overlapping the belly

Reflections :

In first engaging with this task there where so many conflicts and confrontations within my own body. Experiencing the feelings of resistance and tension. At first my body felt the need to proclaim my salute and my lexicon to shout out at the other bodies in space. To say " I am making a stand " I was confronted with the feelings of needing to prove I was engaging with the task though I was given no perimeters in which to engage.

This brought up the theory of "body neutrality" the act of taking a neutral stance toward your body – both emotionally and physically. That means not supporting the hatred towards your body's “limitations” or investing time and energy to love it either. You can simply be at peace with your body.

It also reminded me of a section of Eleanor Clark's book, Body Neutrality in which she discusses the feelings associated with the body as being a form of personal enslavement. I relate to feelings of needing to take a stand within my own body as it relates to this take and I remind myself of this :

"Being is Enough"

Clark, E. (2022). Body Neutrality: Finding Acceptance and Liberation in a Body-Focused Culture. In Google Books. Taylor & Francis. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D2aXEAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT7&ots=KtABMH4sBf&dq=theory%20of%20body%20neutrality&lr&pg=PT7#v=onepage&q=theory%20of%20body%20neutrality&f=false

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Reflecting on Body Neutrality

Suffering from binge eating for many years.

I am coming up against what it means to accept my body for its existence and that existence being neither postive or negative.

But just is.

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Video footage of protests during the civil rights movement. I am reminded of these perimeters for necropolitics

1) State terror: The State persecutes, imprisons and eliminates certain populations so that political and social contestations can be neutralized. Those repressive tactics are operated not only by totalitarian regimes but also by contemporary liberal and illiberal countries.

2) The shared use of violence: In many cases, the State does not have and willingly shares the monopoly of violence with other private actors (i.e. militias, paramilitary), increasing the circulation and use of weapons in society. The latter is therefore divided between “those who are protected (because armed) from those who are not”.⁷

3) The “link of enmity”: According to Mbembe, in a society where the possession and nonpossessions of weapons define one’s social value, all social bonds are destroyed. The link of enmity normalizes therefore the “idea that power can be acquired and exercised only at the price of another’s life”.⁸

4) War: “Coercion itself has become a market commodity”.⁹ Nowadays, war and terror have become modes of production on their own, and as such need to generate new military markets.¹⁰

5) The predation of natural resources: In order to exploit valuable natural resources, populations are displaced and eliminated (i.e. indigenous people in the Amazon rain forest) though the active and hidden collaboration of the State, public forces, international corporations and criminal organizations.

6) Different modes of killing: The exposure to death is multiple: tortures, mutilations, mass killings, high-tech elimination through “drone strikes” represent various modalities of necropolitical devices.

7) Different moral justifications: According to Mbembe, atrocities are justified for various reasons such as the eradication of corruption, different types of “therapeutic liturgy”, “the desire for sacrifice”, “messianic eschatologies”, and even “modern discourses of utilitarianism, materialism, and consumerism”.¹¹

Pele, A. (2020, March 2). Achille Mbembe: Necropolitics. Critical Legal Thinking. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2020/03/02/achille-mbembe-necropolitics/

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a photo of a fox I saw walking home that was eating a bird (perhaps pigeon) 

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"The ritual sacrifice of animals is a displacement for

human sacrifice, where one feeds a god an animal to distract the divine attention from the humans who must otherwise be sacrificed. It has even been suggested that the ritual of circumcision is a similar displacement of human

sacrifice: a part of the body sacrificed for the whole. Again, the relations of eating are métonymie for relations of social power. The scene of eating is a displacement of human sacrifice: a cannibalism that symbolizes ultimate and

total control of others."

Eat or Be Eaten - Control or be controlled

Nicholson, M. (1991). Eat–or Be Eaten: An Interdisciplinary Metaphor. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, 24(3/4), 191–210. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24780473

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Who are you here for?

What truths do you hold in your body?

How do you embody liberation?

What does it look like to be free?

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Thoughts on Shadows or the Shadow Self

a. by hiding

b. by divesting yourself of all distinguishing marks

c. by going away

d. by sinking through the floor

e. by becoming someone else

f. by concentrating so hard on some object or idea that you cease to be aware of your physical presence

g. by distracting everyone else from your physical image

h. by ceasing to exist

We can never be invisible because there are always shadows. Standing in a dark theatre in a dark room or standing in one place and walking away. There are always vapers or reminders of what was. Therefore there is no such thing as being truly invisible.

This reminded me of the philosophy behind Carl Jung, and the shadow self.

“shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors… “

This to me related to a previous task reflection on the protesting body. And this idea that you cannot have one without the other.

Perry, C. (2015, August 12). The Shadow. Society of Analytical Psychology. https://www.thesap.org.uk/articles-on-jungian-psychology-2/about-analysis-and-therapy/the-shadow/

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Senga Nengudi, Performance Piece, 1978 (performed by Maren Hassinger). Gelatin silver print, 31 1/2 x 40 in. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Erben Gallery, New Y

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Among the first artists to exhibit at Just Above Midtown, New York’s first gallery to regularly feature African American artists, Senga Nengudi expresses her ideas about the human body through performance-based sculptures and installations. Her best-known work R.S.V.P. (1975)—so called because the artist really wanted people to respond—was an installation of sand-filled, dark-hued pantyhose knotted and stretched into all directions. “It relates to the elasticity of the human body," Nengudi said. "From tender, tight beginnings to sagging… The body can only stand so much push and pull until it gives way." Her more recent work has included performative installations, variously incorporating ritual dance, sand painting, original music and videos, and cross-cultural references to the crafts of indigenous cultures around the world.

Senga Nengudi | Performance Piece (1978) | Artsy. (n.d.). Www.artsy.net. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/senga-nengudi-performance-piece

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Task : Add Insult to Injury

It's a lonely life I lead.

Staring at blank pages of blank walls and blank faces I see.

Eyes vacant.

Constantly reading the words.

Never written.

Passing through.

Like cars on the road of mortality. Down the one way street of my insanity.

Screaming in a silent movie. Captions reading "love me".

Yet the only sound you hear is the earth, shattering beneath my feet. Or maybe is my heart beneath my defeat.

Trapped.

Under the weight of responsibility. And why?

Because in some small sense of reality my mind can't let go of humanity.

Lonely is this life I lead.

Crushed by the hope of empty promises.

Like butterflies against the windshield of abandonment.

Being touched but never feeling. Closed mouths always speaking. Open eyes but never seeing.

The tears.

Rolling like the waves to this ocean.

I am lost forever at sea.

And it's lonely.

So lonely.

This life that I lead.

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Embodying Subconscious Protest :

Task : Choreograph a distress signal, a distress call.

Reflections :

My signal of distress is capturing moments of when I was in distress without my body being a part of these moments. I am recognizing a pattern in myself when asked to engage in a task involving my body. I want to disengage, I want to remain absent. As an act of protest, I choose to be invisible. But I am wondering if maybe this is because it is so hard to disconnect my body from acts of protest.

As a woman of color I am inevitably always engaging in what I define as "subconscious protest " meaning to me that different from those of white European decent, the simple act of me existing in a space can be perceived as a protest or act of protest. Choosing to be seen, is not a choice. Is this in itself an act of selective forgetting as a body?

This reminds me of the philosophy of "double-consciousness" defined as follows:

"Double-consciousness is a concept in social philosophy referring, originally, to a source of inward “twoness” putatively experienced by African-Americans because of their racialized oppression and disvaluation in a white-dominated society."

Therefore is it an act of protest as a body of color to disappear? Or is this an act of selective forgetting?

Pittman, J. P. (2016). Double Consciousness (E. N. Zalta, Ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/#:~:text=Double%2Dconsciousness%20is%20a%20concept

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