“Reading in the Corner”: Nancy M. Henley’s Body Politics
By An
Mi-seon
Published:
March 25, 2015
Translated
by Marilyn Hook
Editor’s note: This is one of a series of columns by An
Mi-seon, who listens to, reads, and writes women’s stories and is the author of
Women, Voices.
The
most moving scene in the movie Cart
(directed by Bu Ji-yeong, 2014) is the one in which an older female cleaning
worker, after finding out that she has been unfairly dismissed, straightens her
hunched form to look her manager full in the face. She, who has worked with her
back bent and has had to keep her eyes downcast even when something unfair
happens while she is following orders, rises slowly. As she looks her opponent
squarely in the eye, the shock and then determination to fight back in her eyes
is heartbreaking.
This
movie vividly portrays the gestures, tones of voice, and expressions of the
dominant and subordinated as they fight for power, as well as how those
gestures, tones, and expressions change as much as anything does when the
female laborers band together and fight for their right to make a living.
Voices that had once been low mumbles become loud and determined. Bodies that
cowered and braced themselves become upright, point fingers, and step forward.
The women stop avoiding others’ gaze and look them straight in the eye.
The
reason that the scenes that show these changes are so moving is that they show
the true feelings that the women had kept hidden. What they had wanted to say
when they were forced to be silent, what they had wanted to go on to say then
they were interrupted, the demands they wanted to shout when they were ignored,
the truth—that their survival was not a trivial matter—that they had screamed
only internally. As these women reveal this truth that has been repressed, they
become one with their bodies for the first time. They stop having to deceive
themselves. For the first time, they can hug and laugh with their coworkers,
and tell their stories in their own voices and without inhibition.
 |
| A scene from the movie Cart, which is based on the labor struggle of female irregular employees of Homever and New Core in 2007-8. |
While
watching the movie, I was reminded of Body
Politics (Nancy M. Henley, Prentice Hall, 1977). This is because it is the
rare book that considers how authority oppresses us through the body, and how
we should fight back against authority that threatens our survival. It is clear
that this book was written in order to awaken women and urge them to change
their behavior.
“In
front of, and defending, the political-economic structure that determines our
lives and defines the context of human relationships, there is the
micropolitical structure that helps maintain it. This micropolitical structure
is the substance of our everyday experience. The humiliation of being a
subordinate is often felt most sharply and painfully when one is ignored or
interrupted while speaking, towered over or forced to move by another’s bodily
presence, or cowed unknowingly into dropping the eyes, the head, the shoulders.
Conversely, the power to manipulate others’ lives, to take graft, price gouge,
or plan the bombing of far-off peasants is conferred in part by others’
snapping to attention in one’s presence, their smiling, fearing to touch or
approach, their following one around for information and favors. These are the
trivia that make up the batter for that great stratified waffle that we call
our society.” (pg. 3)
With
her research into this previously little-researched topic of the politics of
body-language, Nancy Henley reveals how dominance and oppression—on the basis of
class, race, gender and age—are accomplished through concrete actions. She
analyzes how power is shown, maintained, and negotiated through greetings,
attitude, posture, personal space, timing, physical contact, eye contact,
facial expressions, and self-revelation. In this way, she shows how unjust a
culture that criticizes the victimized is.
She
collects this information because she wants the oppressed to become conscious
of the humiliation and intimidation that they feel every day, and change that
behavior. And more than anything, she wants people to be able to stand up to
existing political-economic power and unjust authority and change the system.
 |
| Another scene from Cart |
When
irregular workers engage in labor struggles, the most common reason they give
for their struggle is that their human dignity is routinely disregarded. This
fact shows the inhuman atmosphere in which authority operates. Communication
between the dominating and the dominated follows a similar script whether it is
between the rich and the poor, white people and black people, men and women, or
adults and children.
Women are
cast as childlike beings in this script, and socialized not to show aggression,
not to assert themselves, and to be compliant. These kinds of characteristics
are not individual and personal but formed, systematically, for the benefit of
those in power.
Even
after they form a labor union, the women in the movie are left sitting in an
empty office waiting for their employer to arrive. Because they are not
considered to be worth speaking to, they are ultimately unable to meet with the
company president. This is how authority works.
There
is the person who asks personal questions without hesitation, and the person
who cannot ask them in return but has to answer politely and be thankful. The
person who relaxes and takes up space and the person whose space is taken as
they brace themselves. The person who repeatedly remarks that they are busy and
is stingy about giving someone a sliver of their time, and the person who is
always waiting because they “have so much time.” The person who presumptuously
touches the other and invades their space, and the person who can’t express
their discomfort directly. The one who stares piercingly and monitors and the
one who lowers their gaze and feels uncomfortable knowing they are being
watched. The person who unsmilingly gives orders and the person who smiles continuously
while obeying. The person who doesn’t reveal their emotions and the person who
comes to them and cries and pleads while telling their story.
Authority
causes these kinds of differences between human bodies, and establishes,
maintains, and reproduces itself.
“In a society in which women’s clothing
is designed explicitly to reveal the body and its contours; in which women are
ogled, whistled at, and pinched while simply going about their business; in
which they see advertisements in magazines, on billboards, on TV in their own
homes, showing revealingly clad women; in which tactual information about them
is freely available, their bodies accessible to touch like community property;
in which even their marital status is the first information by which a stranger
identifies them—in such a society it is little wonder that women feel
‘observed.’ They are.” (pg. 167)
 |
| Cart (2014, directed by Bu Ji-yeong) |
Women haven’t learned the gestures of unity, trapped as they are behind the walls of the authority of the body. This is the result of oppression. In Cart, however, one of the last scenes is of women workers pushing shopping carts with all their might to charge into their blockaded supermarket, the workplace they are not allowed to enter. In the face of the water cannon and threats that are prohibiting their approach, they snatch up the carts and cry out as they push forward. The inanimate carts that had been arranged in identical lines now seem like part of the advancing women’s bodies.
Just
like when I look into the eyes that have been hidden by bowed heads, just like
when I face the emotions those eyes contain, this scene makes me feel the cries
they have been holding in.
“Neither the history, nor the
pervasiveness, nor the intricate workings, nor seeming inexorableness of power
make it immutable. The history of power in fact shows us that victims of
unfathomable oppression have arisen to claim their rights, that power is
persistently being broken down and overturned. Every new insight into its
workings may provide a new road to its overthrow. I am one who believes in the
human ability through striving to transform political organization and social relations
continually for the better. Let’s not settle for less.” (pg. 205)
*Original
article:
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