Out Rage

Sally Richardson’s Ediths Roundtable presentation about her solo dance theatre work JULIA embodies the anger felt by women at the lack of progress since Julia Gillard’s* iconic misogyny speech. Following feminist academics and artists Sara Ahmed, Laurent Berlant, Eve Sedgwick, Sianne Ngai and Anne Gibbs our response thinks with affect, language, emotions and bodies. We explore the rage** that was ignited in the public sphere and as experienced and expressed through bodies. In this writing we pay attention to affect and emotion as it arose from the choreographic moves of the dancer’s body, from Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech, and the public response to it. We use the odds and ends of utterances, movements, and memories attached to rage that are both private and public. We are curious how ‘bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire: affect leaps from one body to another, evoking tenderness, inciting shame, igniting rage, exciting fear – in short, communicable affect can inflame nerves and muscles in a conflagration of every conceivable kind of passion’ (Gibbs 2001).

OUT RAGE

                          Women’s rage is not polite, they say. It is                        irrational.
It       will         put people off. You                                           won’t be listened to,
So     keep it under wraps. they say. Don’t be                        furiouscrazyhysterical
Don’t            speak                           passionately, Don’t be mad. Be         polite, Be
nice. And SMILE! they say. Stay calm. Be offended,                 but don’t be angry.
Don’t                express your outrage. Because we like the way things are, they say.
But she said: “I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not! If he
wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in
the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror!” She said,  ENOUGH!              on behalf of
the women of Australia. Who smile. Who are offended every day,
Who are polite.  And every day                    keep their RAGE under wraps.
And we say,  Here we are,                                                                           mirrors blazing.

*Julia Gillard served as Australian Prime Minister 2010 to 2013 and is the first and only woman to date to hold this role.

** The verb “rage” comes from the mid-13c ragen. Meanings include “be furious; speak passionately; go mad” are attested from early 14c. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=rage

Gibbs, Anna. “Contagious feelings: Pauline Hanson and the epidemiology of affect.” Australian Humanities Review 24, no. Dec (2001). http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2001/12/01/contagious-feelings-pauline-hanson-and-the-epidemiology-of-affect/

This entry was written by The Ediths with Maggie McAlinden and was inspired by the Ediths Roundtable Series 2021 presentation, The Challenge of a Woman in Charge: Dancing the Gillard Years, by Sally Richardson.