White Hallways and Performance of Mental Health

Walking down the hall to visit the Counseling Center in Cox Hall (CS) at Emory University was startling the first time; it continually is on each subsequent visit. Cox Hall is an inviting building with walls that are generally warm and welcoming. Yellow ochre, sage green, mauve, deep red, electrifying blue, eggshell, soft pink and wood tones cover most of the walls, ceilings and floors. Upon my first visit to the CS, I spent approximately 20 minutes inside the computer lab next to the hallway which I will describe below. In the computer lab, the variety of colors to which I referred above were all apart of this room’s canvas. The little white that was there covered the Apple computers, sheets of paper and other miscellaneous objects. The hallway perpendicular to the one which leads to the CS has comfortable couches and wall colors, again in these comforting tones.

What I found most intriguing is the hall leading to the CS. It appears to be a white tunnel: white floors separated approximately every three feet with a black horizontal line; to the left, windows which look onto the computer lab which, after about 12 feet disappear, a wooden door separating the windows of the lab from an expansive whitewashed wall; to the right, windows which look outside to a white building on the left; a ceiling of white tiles; at the end of this “tunnel” are white walls which stand perpendicular to the hallway. Everywhere I looked, I was enclosed by this whiteness. But what does it signify? What does this white tunnel perform?

I would like to discuss two different aspects of the performance of this particular location or “space”. I utilize E. Patrick Johnson’s understanding of space as he quotes Vivian M. Patrkaka: “space produces sites for multiple performances of interpretation, which situate/produce the spectator as historical subject”[1]. As such, I want to 1) analyze what the space performs on the subjects that walk through it, particularly clients of the CS and; 2) analyze what the subject performs as a result of passing through the space. More generally, I seek to find the relationship between subject and space which encloses the subject.

The white walls, floor and ceiling seem to turn the space into a virtually unending corridor. As the walls close in on the subject, they also open outward towards nothingness; it seems to be unending. In this, I mean that there is no possibility of escaping the whiteness except through color, which eventually ends in this hallway. I postulate that the whiteness of this passageway serves to heighten the awareness of particular bodies to the counseling which they will engage within moments of walking down that hall. The only way out this whiteness is to turn around and return to main hallway or to enter the CS; either reject or receive mental help. Whiteness serves as language and “language can effect action”[2].

It is necessary to note is that there are various subjects that will walk down that particular hall and conceive of nothing strange. A service worker of Emory who mops floors throughout that building may simply not pay attention to the aesthetic qualities of the hall (or lack thereof). Psychologists and staff that work within the CS may view this corridor as nothing more than a daily procession to a biweekly paycheck. For one who believes that CSs are for “crazy people” possibly will stay clear of the hallway altogether, seeking to avoid the foolish persons that need that sort of mental help. In other words, my reading of the hallway is not the only reading. It is literally a space that allows for multiple performances.

For clients of the CS, the white corridor may serve as a gentle reminder of the nature of the visit to Cox Hall – mental health therapy. The hallway’s stark contrast to the other walls, floors and ceilings within the building make this particular passage holy, sanctified and set apart. Just as the hallway is a separation from the rest of the building, those walking to the CS are set apart, are staged as actors within this pallid theater. In this way, I believe that both the hallway and the client participate in a “potential reciprocal gaze” in which a client looks at and is affected by the white hallway but the hallway equally “looks back” and is affected by the client[3].

In as much as there is the potential reciprocal gaze, the client of the CS not only is the “center of attention,” but likewise the hallway acts as the center and centering of attention concurrently[4]. It grabs the attention of the client to recognize one’s own subjectivity within the space but also the sheer divergence of this space from others within the building.

From my personal conversations, it seemed that therapy and counseling were not things that people talked about openly. I remember continually hearing a close friend say weekly that she had been to her counseling appointment and that it was helpful. To me, it seemed to be something that should not be discussed in public. As such, mental health fit within the paradigm of other health issues – the realm of the private. Therefore, my experience is that this hallway, expansive though it may be, performs this sort of bifurcation of public and private realms. Because it so severely deviates from the norm established in the rest of the building – all of the other colorful spaces and walkways are “public” (e.g., computer labs, banquet halls, food courts) – the white hallway serves as the antithesis, the realm of privacy. The white corridor performs a pathological discourse and intimates at the psychological difference of those who choose that hallway as a means to mental health therapy.

My views of the white hallway are affected by what Joseph Roach calls the “kinesthetic imagination” where “Its truth is the truth of simulation, of fantasy, or of daydreams, but its effect on human action may have material consequences of the most tangible sort and of the widest scope”[5]. My kinesthetic imagination envisages the white hallway as a part of the visual imagery of television: whiteness of hospital walls; whiteness of sound-reducing, cushioned walls and floors in mental hospitals; whiteness of straightjackets. Though the whiteness of this particular hallway is imagined through fantasy, it affects how I literally approach the space. I become overtly aware of my subjectivity, of my being constituted as a mental patient, as a client of the counseling service.

As well, part of my kinesthetic imagination is influenced by my identity as a black, queer man. Because homosexuality was pathologized as deviant in religion and medicine, and because queers have historically been maligned as psychologically abnormal, I envisioned that the hallway “looked back” on my personhood and performed an analysis on my sexuality.

My own experiences within this particular hallway are likewise influenced partially by my destination. If this same white hall were in a restaurant or classroom building, changing the destination, my experience within the space would be likewise different. However, this hallway seems to lead one only to the CS and nowhere else. Thus, the kinesthetic imagination causes me to imagine this space as functioning with the health infrastructure, mediating between wellness, sickness and death. This is an example of “the performer’s interpretation [which] is itself informed by a long line of preceding interpretations. The audience draws both on this tradition and on the performance itself in its interpretation”[6].

But how do I reflect the performance of the space on my identity? How does my performance within the space buttress what I have described thus far? Within this space, I am calm, full of anxiety (i.e., “who will see me”), and am acutely aware of my location and proximity to other persons, to color, to my destination, and from my starting point. The blank walls, ceiling and floor serve to give me time to gather my thoughts and build courage to enter the CS, to wonder about the direction which that particular session will take. The darker a color is, the more it absorbs heat energy; black attracts and retains the most sunlight, white reflecting antithetically. Metaphorically, the white walls do not absorb my thoughts or energies but force them to bounce and reflect off the walls and be reabsorbed into my body as I am normally the only one in the space. In the space, I am trying to expunge thoughts but my body serves as receptacle to them.

How does one return from the CS to society? How is one reoriented from this sealed, secluded, secretive room, through a white tunnel, back to color, to life, to reality? One is never the same, to be certain. Similar to what Briggs says of a talk when an elder interjects and adds wisdom and knowledge, “The talk returns to the present, but is no longer the same”[7]. Is the imposition of the moment of counseling and therapy atemporal? Does it take place sometime outside time, outside place? Because the CS is off to the side, out of the way, out of sight, I believe it correct to say that while time does progress, the CS serves to stop time for the client. The client, once leaving, must catch up to reality when walking away from the CS to color. Tissues to wipe the face, headphones to appear “normal,” and the fixing of clothes all serve clients to reintegrate them to real time, to real reality.

The corridor appears to house “archival memory” as it is an entity believed to be “resistant to change”[8]. Yet, the movement away from the CS radically changes the way a client views the corridor. It no longer traps but allows time to ponder and to move back into the familiar. Once serving as a terrifying reminder of one’s difference from “normal” (thus, the need to receive therapy), the hallway on the peregrination towards color is therapeutic. It is still set aside from elsewhere, but moreso to cover the possible embarrassment of the visit.

Diana Taylor says that performances “function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated or…‘twice-behaved behavior’”[9]. Additionally, instead of focusing on performances as either true or false, performance studies asks how “efficacious” a particular performance is: “In their respective historical and cultural contexts, various kinds of performances are efficacious in all sorts of ways”[10]. Simply, when performance is the analytical framework of analysis, one asks if the performance successfully completes its intended goal.

What is social knowledge, memory and identity is transferred though the passage from the beginning of the white corridor to the CS and back? Are the performances, both of the client and the hallway, efficacious; do they reach their intended goal? These answers will vary according to the particular subject and how they interact with the whitewashed environment. However, my experience is that knowledge of health, sickness and death are contained in those walls and I respond to these archived memories. The performance of the space is efficacious in that it forces me to realize that I am not stumbling haphazardly into the space but am purposefully choosing the intended destination. Likewise, my performance within the space readies me for the impending conversation.

Generally, what is the relationship between subject and space which encloses the subject? I believe that they both play a role in the act of transferring knowledge, of inhabiting and creating archived memories, and influence each other in the efficaciousness of performances. Subjects do not just walk into spaces and the spaces remain unchanged. There is social interaction within space, even if the “social” interaction takes place between the subject’s mind and the spaces physical limitations. The kinesthetic imagination influences what the subject brings into the space and how the subject subsequently reads the space; the space envelopes the subject, creating particular responses. They both exist in reciprocal relationship, playing off, in, and through each other.

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[1] Johnson, E. Patrick, Feeling the Spirit in the Dark, Callaloo, (1998), 400.
[2] Briggs, Charles L., Competence in Performance: The Creativity of Tradition in Mexicano Verbal Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 8.
[3] Kapsalis, Terri, Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 26.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 27.
[6] Briggs, 19.
[7] Briggs, 1.
[8] Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 19.
[9] Taylor, 2-3.
[10] Sax, William S., Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandav Lila of Garhwal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3.