Tag Archives: Sally’s Rape

From the Archives: Sally’s Rape

By Film

Marceh 24, 2015

By Colleen Daly

The Kitchen Blog

“Naked, posed unapologetically on an auction block, Robbie McCauley stood and called on the audience to hear the brutal tale of her great-great-grandmother Sally’s rape. “Bid ‘em in!” bellowed her performance partner Jeannie Hutchins. The audience shifted uneasily in their seats as the uncanny discomfort of history settled over them. Were they being asked to repeat after Hutchins – to implicate themselves in this reenactment of the slave trade? Hutchins urged the spectators to participate. Arms outstretched and fingers pointing, she reached to drag the words from the guts of a shocked audience. Behind her McCauley was still standing, tall and trembling, detailing exactly what Sally’s white master did to her those years back. “Bid ‘em in,” mumbled a smattering of viewers as McCauley’s hands flew across her body using the discarded dress to cover herself. Exposed, on display, asking spectators to claim her body, McCauley left the audience suspended in the afterlife of slavery and shaken by their own confusion and denial regarding the sexually violent legacy of the slave trade.”

 

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