Calibrating the Female Body: Shame, Disgust, and the Recuperative Gaze in Amos Gitaï's Kadosh

"Calibrating the Female Body" looks at the way affects circulate in Amos Gitaï's 1999 film, Kadosh. It demonstrates that shame and disgust work to maintain hierarchies within the community that Gitaï depicts. As affects, shame and disgust act upon the body, by directing the shamed subject's eyes downward in isolation, or by compelling other bodies to move away from the one deemed disgusting. As Rivka and Malka are consistently perceived as shameful and disgusting, they are rendered subordinate in a system of phallocentric domination. Within this system however, the gaze functions in a peculiar way, at times subduing the shamed subjects, but at other times allowing for a recuperative moment. When Rivka and Malka's downward shamed gazes turn to a reflective surface, such as water or a mirror, they are able to sustain a moment of visual connection with their own selves, helping to ease the rupture between the ego and ego ideal—healing the split which had sustained their shame. These moments allow for a recuperation of subjectivity that creates an opportunity to move beyond the patriarchal system's limitations.