Indeliable – The feminist performance art of Christine Blasey Ford

I argue that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018, in which she recounted her memories of being assaulted by then Judge, now Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, can be read as a kind of feminist endurance art, of the type famously embodied by artists such Yoko Ono, in works like “Cut Piece,” and Marina Abramovic’s “Rhythm Zero.” I intend to argue that a close reading of the different performance modes, the traditions from which they arose, helps us better understand how the testimony of Blasey Ford and the accused, Kavanaugh, mobilized political opinion. Like these artists, Ford made herself vulnerable on multiple levels to a nominally neutral audience, aimed with a variety of “implements,” while we were invited to watch her endure being “taken apart.”

In the wake of their appearances, pundits described both witnesses as “credible,” ignoring that each of them interpreted what it meant to testify in radically different ways. Indeed, if we think of the generally accepted notion of testimony as assertion of truth backed up by facts, only one of the appearances qualified. Blasey Ford attempted a meticulous account, to the point of noting gaps in her memory, while Kavanaugh’s testimony was almost devoid of facts, but instead relied on an highly emotional display designed to deflect questions with hostility and contempt.

I use Martha Wilson’s three pronged definition of performance, particularly her insistence that it is the opposite of theater, and that the body is its irreducible medium.