Section 4
However, while Angry Essentialism adheres to the basic tenets of ecofeminism and ritual-making performance, it rejects the valorization of a passive, virtuous, oppressed Female Nature in favor of an aggressive, angry Female Nature that actively fights patriarchal oppression. As such, a genealogy of Angry Essentialism must take into account other developments in the feminist performance history preceding it. Roth identifies yet another branch of feminist performance in the 1970s as that which staged events "which relate directly to feminist activism or provide strong models for feminist action" (28). In this category we find Suzanne Lacy's Ablutions (1972) and the She Who Would Fly portion of Three Weeks in May (1977), both of which used nudity and abjection successfully to (re)present "rape as a political act rather than only as an individual sexual assault" (31). In She Who Would Fly, "People entered the gallery in small groups to encounter a suspended, winged lamb cadaver, a poem scrawled on black asphalt describing a sexual assault and finally four women who, nude and stained blood red, crouched on a ledge above the door" (Roth 114). Similarly, in Ablutions,
The performance took place in an area strewn with egg shells, piles of rope and fresh meat. A tape of women describing their experiences of being raped played, while a naked woman was slowly and methodically being bound with white gauze from her feet upward to her head. At the same time, a clothed woman nailed beef kidneys into the rear wall of the space . . . while two nude women bathed themselves in a center stage series of tubs containing first eggs, then blood, and finally clay. (Roth 86)These and other performances in the feminist activism category have assailed restrictions on abortion and made visible other aspects of violence against women through graphic representations of the defiled female body.Angry Essentialism carries this tradition forward, using abjection to represent the damage done to women's bodies; as Lynda Hart says of Karen Finley, for example, "she mimics the psychosocial structures that describe, theorize, and construct the patriarchal female body" (97). However, even though Angry Essentialism uses abjection to make the oppression of Woman visible, it follows the ecofeminist and ritual-making performance practice of valorizing the association of Woman with Nature. The definition of Woman as Devouring Mother allows the Angry Essentialists to champion anger and aggression as positive forces against exploitation and oppression. This combination of abjection and aggressive anger is what makes Angry Essentialism unique in feminist performance and it is also what makes it problematic.
It is important to keep in mind that, true to feminist goals, Angry Essentialism seeks to empower and liberate women from the traditionally weak, passive, exploited "feminine" role so forcefully imposed upon them by patriarchy via the Woman/Nature equation. In fact, the potential for liberation through anger is palpable in the performances of Hughes and Finley. Juno and Vale assert that "Anger is an emotion which must be reclaimed and legitimized as Woman's rightful, healthy expression--anger can be a source of power, strength, and clarity as well as a creative force" (5). This is a very compelling, appealing idea which, in fact, drew me to Patti Smith nine years ago. Describing her album Easter in my "Rock Poetry" course journal back in 1986, I was awed by her "Screaming, powerful, disgusting references," and I wrote: "Hearing her, how free she is, how angry . . . makes me wonder why the hell I'm so wrapped up in the little shitty things society has bred into me." In Patti Smith's angry, decadent song lyrics, I saw the possibility of freedom from the social/moral constraints imposed upon women (including me). Karen Finley expresses a similar sentiment in The Constant State of Desire. Inspired by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (Champagne 57), The Constant State of Desire responds to the contradictions inherent in the traditional female role which demands that women repress their own desires and seek satisfaction in motherhood while being "desirable" to men. Likewise, Holly Hughes's World Without End (most likely inspired by Joan Nestle's essay, "My Mother Liked to Fuck") attempts to transform the oppressive feminine legacy she has inherited from dominant culture and her mother. In an interview, Holly Hughes discussed the stifling life her mother lived, saying, "She wanted to be sexual, she wanted to be creative, but none of that dovetailed with her notion of what it meant to be a 'good woman'" (Juno & Vale 100). Thus, Hughes represents her mother as a creative, passionate woman who thrives on sexuality, loves herself, and who at one point pulls an axe out of the trunk of the car and starts hacking a porcupine to pieces. A passionate, angry woman does not let the patriarchy push her around.
But it's not that simple. Like Holly Hughes, the ecofeminist/ritual-making feminist performers used the woman-nature equation to reclaim or construct a positive female history, but they did not delve into the violent Devouring Mother myth which Hughes draws upon. And like the activist feminist performers, Karen Finley attempts to enact oppression upon her body, but Finley is often dealing in abstractions (such as the eroticization of her body) whereas the activist feminists were dealing with concrete realities like rape. In these new developments in feminist performance, in Angry Essentialism, some new problems are emerging which exceed the scope of 1970s feminist performance practice and which are extremely difficult to reconcile with materialist or social constructionist feminist theories and practice.
The problem is that while the performances of Hughes and Finley attempt to address/represent large, abstract, extremely important feminist concepts, they often end up replacing the oppressed, nurturing Earth Mother with her mirror double, the Angry Woman or Devouring Mother. As in the ecofeminist/ritual-making tradition, the Woman/Nature equation remains intact, but now Woman/Nature is a deceptively alluring but deadly siren who is lashing out against the patriarchy's exploitation of her body. Juno and Vale's Angry Women depicts the matter in a concrete form: its cover features a beautiful, angry, snake-haired Medusa, and poisonous flowers form the borders of each page; both of these images are deadly in large part because of their ability to attract hapless victims. Similarly, in World Without End, Hughes appears onstage dressed to seduce, "wearing a red silk off-the-shoulder number, possibly her mother's, and gold high heels" (10), and almost immediately she is describing herself "up to [her] elbows in chopped meat" and ripping up meat patties with her bare hands (11). And Finley, in The Constant State of Desire, removes her clothes (with wolf whistles from the audience), layers her body with eggs, glitter, confetti, and garlands so she appears to be wearing a glamorous evening gown, then says, "I go up to all the [Wall Street] traders and cut off their balls. . . . I gather all their balls, scrotum, testicles and stick 'em in my mouth" (62). The image in each case is of a Woman/Nature who is beautiful on the surface--the object of (male) desire and oppression--but who is at heart a murderess: Woman/Nature, red in tooth and claw.
Angry Essentialism attacks the dualism of Woman/Nature by representing the passive female role as a social construct and the aggressive Angry Woman as "real." According to Lynda Hart, for example, Finley attempts to deconstruct the paradoxical construction of Woman as Nurturing Mother by visually representing the damaging, "contradictory inscriptions of the female body in dominant discourse" (99). Hart argues that, by covering her nude body with raw eggs, glitter, confetti, and garlands, Finley
produces a narrative of the construction of the female body as an impossible object. First we see the nude female body; then it is covered with sticky waste products that might have been reproductive; then the glitter and frills only partially cover the waste products beneath them. The final effect is a palimpsestic body that is both seductive and repellent. (98-99)However, if Hart's analysis is correct, Finley's performance challenges only the construction of Woman as Nurturing Mother. As Hart puts it, "From a patriarchal perspective, Finley is Woman and thus always already Mother," so that her performance "enacts the destruction of the raw materials of reproduction" (99). Hence, the glitter, confetti, and garlands become the false veneer of feminine allure which attempt to beautify the decimated eggs, which represent defiled but also false construction of Woman as Nurturing Mother. The result is a very messy (abject), angry, nude woman. The rest of the performance proceeds with the annihilated Nurturing Mother smeared on Finley's nude body while Finley goes about her business of cutting off balls and lashing out against patriarchy with a vengeance.But doesn't Finley's performance suggest that physical abjection--the defilement of her body--goes hand in hand with her anger? Yes: Angry Essentialism opposes the "false" social construct of the oppressed Nurturing Mother with Angry, Abject, Female Nature. Hart claims that "As self-proclaimed 'Queen of the Dung Dynasty,' Finley calls attention to the abject female body" (97). In We Keep Our Victims Ready, the piece which earned her the "nude, chocolate-smeared woman" stigma (Evans and Novak), she ritually covers herself with chocolate from a heart-shaped box. She explains, "I use chocolate because it's a visual symbol that involves eating as well as basically being treated like shit. . . so it works on different levels." Finley says, "I could use real shit, but we know that happens already--just read the news: Tawana Brawley was found covered in shit in a Hefty bag" (Juno and Vale 48-49). She then goes on to apply other substances to her body:
I stick little candy hearts (symbolizing 'love') all over my body--because after we've been treated like shit, then we're loved. And many times that's the only way people get loved. Then I add the alfalfa sprouts (symbolizing sperm) because in a way it's all a big jack-off--we're all being jerked off . . . we're just something to jerk off into, after the 'love.' Finally, I put tinsel on my body, because after going through all that, a woman still gets dressed up for dinner. (Juno and Vale 48-49)In other performances, to extend her theme of the objectification and victimization of women, she takes on a male persona to reveal masculine aggression and violence. In Yams Up Granny's Ass, for example, Finley pulls down her pants and smears yams on her ass, and, speaking in a male voice, describes sticking "yams up granny's butt," saying, "but, I never touch her twat, baby" (Qtd. In Carr, "Unspeakable" 143). In I'm an Ass Man, to illustrate the rapist's disgust that his victim is having her period, "Finley opens a bottle of beets and a can of red kidney beans, and pours them together, rubbing her hands in the red mess." Similarly, in the same piece, "After describing attempted child sexual abuse by an adult male on a young girl, Finley squishes several bars of melted ice cream sandwiches, smearing it all over her black dress" (Jan). Also, according to one account of a 1981 performance in Cologne, Germany, Finley and Brian Routh (aka Harry Kipper) performed as Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler: "Kipper goose-stepped and saluted, naked from the waist down," while Finley, wearing "a corset and garter belt," "periodically took a dump on one side of the stage." Later, she "stuffed toy sharks with hot dogs and sauerkraut and hung them from her body for Kipper to eat," then the two "began rubbing chocolate pudding on each other's asses" (Carr, "Unspeakable" 126).
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