Free Lunch with the Stench Wench: towards a synaesthetics of poverty and shame in Catherine Hoffmann’s performance

Article


Kokoli, A. 2018. Free Lunch with the Stench Wench: towards a synaesthetics of poverty and shame in Catherine Hoffmann’s performance. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. 33 (3), pp. 485-499. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12399
TypeArticle
TitleFree Lunch with the Stench Wench: towards a synaesthetics of poverty and shame in Catherine Hoffmann’s performance
AuthorsKokoli, A.
Abstract

Catherine Hoffmann’s Free Lunch with the Stench Wench is a performance of abjection and self-abjection through poverty with an apotropaic aspiration: to shed the shame through sharing, and to create opportunities for a common social subjectivity that refuses to be silent about the struggle of its own creation and maintenance. Despite its title, Free Lunch does not come with a free lunch for the audience but creates an olfactory situation, through the on-stage cooking of hot chocolate and the presence of a dead rat, which compliments Hoffman’s narration and stage presence into a synaesthetic portrait of poverty and its psychosocial fallout. Drawing on the psychological foundations of shame studies, sociological approaches and social-theoretical responses to austerity and social division, I propose to examine the gendered embodiment of shame and its exorcism in Hoffmann’s performance, focusing on its physical codification in and beyond the visual. I explore the potential of shame to be re-weaponised against those who originally inflict it, and consider the shame that haunts every creative act, especially those with high political stakes: the failure to make a connection, the fear of being misunderstood.

Research GroupCREATE/Feminisms cluster
PublisherWileyBlackwell
JournalHypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy
ISSN0887-5367
Electronic1527-2001
Publication dates
Online23 Jan 2018
Print11 Aug 2018
Publication process dates
Deposited27 Nov 2017
Accepted09 Aug 2017
Output statusPublished
Accepted author manuscript
Copyright Statement

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Kokoli, A. (2018), Free Lunch with the Stench Wench: Toward a Synaesthetics of Poverty and Shame in Catherine Hoffmann's Performance. Hypatia, 33: 485-499. doi:10.1111/hypa.12399, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12399. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.

Additional information

Volume 33, Issue 3 (Special Issue: Gender and the Politics of Shame)
As of 2020, Hypatia is no longer published by Wiley. Current content can be found on the new publisher's website: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12399
LanguageEnglish
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