2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

The implications of pest control infect many nonhuman and human bodies. Societally rendered a masculine art, women also perform this labor professionally or by default, as they remain largely responsible for their respective households. Pest infestations are unevenly distributed across class, race, and gender lines whereas an inverse relationship exists between household income and amount of unwelcome guests.

When we say “pest control,” we really mean: arbitrary nonhuman death enacted by humans.  Similar to what happens behind the impenetrable walls of the slaughterhouse, pest control transpires almost completely out of human sight—an invisible practice of death-making.  As part of a larger project titled “Pest Control as Performance, Performing Pest Control as Art Practice, and Performance Art about Pest Control,” my paper explores ways of visualizing this invisible problem through art. I will introduce my own artwork: a performance I staged in April 2016 where I play a feminized pest control agent who uses her trappings to enact a Food Network-slash-burlesque-style cooking show; and a device made in the William & Mary Physics Maker Space that controls populations of cockroaches without killing them.

These art forms allow me to investigate the connections between technology and gendered/animalized bodies, by exposing the hierarchies we project on animals.  Can we create a future that eliminates or minimizes animal death, creates healthy relationships and boundaries between pests and humans without reifying the oppressions of those who have been forced to live with pests due to circumstances out of their control?