This is the oral presentation I gave at my Master’s thesis-project defense:
My project is called SKIN and is an experiment in auto ethnography, in which I explored my fascination with the esoteric world of fortune-telling, palm-reading and tarot cards, to find out what my interest in this subject matter might reveal about myself. My starting point was an interest in the notion of intuition, of knowledge that is unarticulated in language or logic, but that is rather felt. And this led to an exploration of what kind of information our body, rather than our mind, absorbs and contains. I undertook it a point in my life where the logic, or rationale or frameworks I had been brought up with no longer seemed to help me, as my body and my emotions took over and overwhelmed me, in the form of a extreme case of full-body eczema. For two years my body and mind fought a war against each other and I guess my project was a way to try and make peace.
Last night, I was still struggling to figure out what the hell to say to you today. What maybe I hadn’t said, or hadn’t said long or loud enough. So I watched my video again, and freaked out, because all of a sudden, there was no more sound on the sequences of me learning how to fight. On both copies of the video. This was at 8:30 last night, so you can understand why I was in a bit of a panic. Luckily, my ever calm and level-headed roommate suggested I try the tape on her VCR, and to my relief, the sound magically re-materialized. I hope it plays well today.
I’m telling you about it today because that moment of panic pointed me to what is perhaps the most important thing I have gained in undertaking this experiment in auto-ethnographic video. It is rediscovering and externalizing the anger in me. It was just the section of my video where I’m fighting, that had lost its voice. And as I watched the silent sequence in horror, I felt that anger rising in me, but no longer a destructive kind of anger that stays inside and eats away at me, causing me to reject myself, hate myself, give up on myself, hurt myself but the anger of a fighter, a survivor, who externalizes her anger. The anger of someone who wants to win.
For a long time whenever I watched my footage I got angry at the fact that I presented such a picture of fragility and weakness. I wondered where the old Caroline had gone, the one I was when I was younger and more arrogant. The one who used to drink a lot, and then when drunk, would look for the biggest asshole in the room and pick a fight with him. I’m sure if I had been born a man I would’ve gotten beaten up a lot. There are certain advantages to being a woman. And actually I think I’ve decided to take up drinking again.
So in the very final stages of editing, as I battled against time and my computer who seemed to be giving up on me, I changed the ending, as you saw it in the version I handed in two weeks ago and I am still insecure about my decision. Because it is like, at the last minute, as I was obliged to rework my editing, due to the technical problems I experienced, a new Caroline (or rather an old Caroline I hadn’t seen in a long time) emerged and I am still getting used to her. This ending is a bit more in your face – literally – than the old one. I tried to rework the images I had, to end by showing myself fighting rather than just moving forward. Because everytime an obstacle has presented itself – and there have been many – on the road to finishing this project – I have found a little bit of that fighter in me again. And as I get to know her again, I am letting her out, instead of burning all of my energy, fighting to keep her down.
I did not talk explicitly talk about anger in my paper. Even in my video images, I think the fighting sequences are more comical than angry. And my voice – which is rarely heard is always shy, subdued, quiet, Maybe that’s why in the final stages of editing, I couldn’t help myself and indulged in a little editing loop of the only place where I vocalize it: I kick, I kick, I Kick. I finally feel like kicking some ass again.
It seems that during the time that I was sick, during the time that my video was shot, the only anger I could express was directed at myself, at my body, at the skin that I scratched and picked at it and tore off until it bled. That anger is the anger of being born in the skin of a woman, the anger that stems from having been conscious from a very early age that I was not number one but number two. The anger that comes everytime I see a woman accept that secondary place, and everytime I have found myself – to my own surprise – taking it too.
You should have seen the bloody scarred mess my arms became while I was in Tunisia, the birthplace of my mother, which I went to see for the first time, to try and understand, where this skin I have comes from. What my mother’s skin might have felt, and then passed down to me, if not in words, then in feelings that were lodged under my skin.
I felt the gaze of the men there so strongly that I could not forget for a second that I was the object of their sexual desire. And I felt the paradox of my condition as a young woman. Yes, I enjoy being seen, and desired. But I also hate it everytime I realize my breasts attract more attention than anything I have to say. But oh the power of that gaze, when it comes from someone you desire as well. It seems that the approving look of a man I respect and admire, has always had the ability to put a spell on me. It appears to makes me smile instead of bitch, turn the other cheek instead of kick and kick and kick.
So imagine the power of touch, from said man. All that anger turns to mush. And then that angry young woman that I am stops fighting. I am convinced our anger comes from the same place as our sexual desire. It is the force of creation and destruction, of giving life and death, of the cycle of nature, that all those who bleeds every month know deep down. I’ve always thought that deep down men must be so very afraid of this power. I’ve always thought that maybe the reason why in the part of the world my mom comes from, women are still required to cover themselves from head to toe, is because just the sight of them is so powerful. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, how beautiful the eyes are of say, just about any Middle Eastern woman you meet here. Probably because for years, they were her one means of communicating all she was thinking and feeling. How much the body can speak, without words. My attraction to witches or fortune-tellers is that these are women who have kept that knowledge of the language of the body alive, who have not cut themselves off from their sexual energy, and who know how to keep away anyone who tries to tame it.
