Performance Studies: An introduction (Third Edition)
Richard Schechner, Sara Brady, media editor.
2013, New York, Routledge.
‘...there is no historically or culturally fixable limit to what is or is not “performance.” ...The underlying notion is that any action that is framed, enacted, presented, highlighted, or displayed is a performance.’ (2)
‘Thus, performance studies does not “read” an action or ask what “text” is being enacted. Rather, one inquires about the “behavior” of, for example, a painting: how, when and by whom was it made, how it interacts with those who view it, and how the painting changes over time. The artifact may be relatively stable, but the performance it creates or takes part in can change radically. The performance studies scholar examines the circumstances in which the painting was created and exhibited; she looks at how the gallery or building displaying the painting shapes its reception. These and similar kinds of performance studies questions can be asked of any behavior, event or material object.’ (2) [Schechner presenting definition of performance studies per Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.]
Multiple literacies and hypertext
‘Operating at many levels and directions simultaneously demands multiple literacies. These multiple literacies are “performatives” - encounters in the realm of doing, of pursuing a through line of action.’ (4)
‘People are both readers and authors. Identities revealed, masked, fabricated, and stolen. This kind of communicating is highly performative. It encourages senders and receivers to use their imaginations, navigating and interpreting the dynamic cloud of possibilities surrounding each message.’ (5)
Indian philosophy - maya and lila
‘...they felt that the whole universe, from ordinary reality to the realm of the gods, was maya and lila -illusion, play, and theatre on a grand scale. The theory of maya-lila asserts that the really real is playful, ever changing, and illusive.’ (15)
Renaissance Europe -theatrum mundi (15)
Shakespeare: As You Like It -Jacques- “All the world’s a stage | And all the men and women merely players; | They have their exits and their entrances; | And one man in his time plays many parts” (2,7: 139-42)
Hamlet “{...} the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, a ‘t were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (3, 2: 21-25)
Modern/Postmodern (15-16)
Lacan ‘The Mirror Stage’ 1977, Écrits, 1, 4, 42
Bateson ‘A Theory of Play and Fantasy’ 1955 metacommunication -complex framework
Goffman ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’ 1959
Austin ‘How to Do Things with Words’ 1962 -performativity
Continental School…
Schechner: seven areas where performance theory and social sciences coincide. (17)
Performance in everyday life, including gatherings of every kind.
The structure of sports, ritual, play, and public political behaviors.
…
Connections between human and animal behavior patterns with an emphasis on play and ritualized behavior.
Aspects of psychotherapy that emphasize person-to-person interaction, acting out, and body awareness.
…
Constitution of unified theories of performance, which are, in fact, theories of behavior.
See Schechner’s diagrams page 18
Victor Turner
‘A performance is a dialectic of “flow,” that is, spontaneous movement in which action and awareness are one, and “reflexivity,” in which the central meanings, values and goals of a culture are seen “in action,” as they shape and explain behavior.’ (20) see Turner box
‘Performance studies resists fixed definition. Performance studies does not value “purity.” It is at its best when operating amidst a dense web of connections. ...New interfaces will appear as time goes on, and older ones will disappear. Accepting “inter” means opposing the establishment of any single system of knowledge, values, or subject matter. Performance studies is open, multivocal, and self-contradictory. Therefore, any call for a “unified field” is, in my view, a misunderstanding of the very fluidity and playfulness fundamental to performance studies.’ (24)
‘...the performative occurs in places and situations not traditionally marked as “performing arts”...’ (24)
Jon McKenzie
‘Hyphenated identities, transgendered bodies, digital avatars, the Human Genome Project -these suggest that the performative subject is constructed as fragmented rather than unified, decentered rather than centered, virtual as well as actual. Similarly, performative objects are unstable rather than fixed, simulated rather than real. They do not occupy a single, “proper” place in knowledge; there is no such thing as the thing-in-itself.’ (27) See McKenzie box
What is Performance? (Chapter 2)
‘To Perform’
Being (existence)
Doing (action)
Showing Doing (action)
Explaining ‘showing doing’ (reflection) (28)
‘That making art involves training and rehearsing is clear. But everyday life also involves years of training and practice,...’ (28)
‘The long infancy and childhood specific to the human species is an extended period of training and rehearsal for the successful performance of adult like. (29)
‘Any and all of the activities of human life can be studies “as” performance. … Every action from the smallest to the most encompassing is made of twice-behaved behaviors. (29)
‘But it is also true that many events and behaviors are one-time events. Their “onceness” is a function of context, reception, and the countless ways bits of behavior can be organized, performed, and displayed. The overall event may appear to be new or original, but its constituent parts - if broken down finely enough and analysed - are revealed as restored behaviors. (29)
‘restored behavior: physical, verbal, or virtual actions that are not-for-the-first time; that are prepared or rehearsed. A person may not be aware she is performing a strip of restored behavior. Also referred to as twice-behaved behavior.’ (29)
Skipping ahead to section on Restoration of behavior (34-36)...
ex. restored behavior is like strips of film being edited...moved around or reordered. (collaged)
‘...they are independent of the causal systems (personal, social, political, technological, etc.) that brought them into existence. They have a life of their own. The original “truth” or “source” of the behavior may not be known, or may be lost, ignored, or contradicted - even while that truth or source is being honored.’ (34)
‘Restored behavior is “out there,” separate from “me.” To put it in personal terms, restored behavior is “me behaving as if I were someone else,” or “as I am told to do,” or “as I have learned.” Even if I feel myself wholly to be myself, acting independently, only a little investigation reveals that the units of behavior that comprise “me” were not invented by “me.” Or, quite opposite, I may experience being “beside myself,” “not myself,” or “taken over” as in trance. The fact that there are multiple “me”s in every person is not a sign of derangement but the way things are. The way one performs one’s selves are connected to the ways people perform others in dramas, dances, and rituals. In fact, if people did not ordinarily come into contact with their multiple selves, the art of acting and the experience of possession trance would not be possible. Most performances, in daily life and otherwise, do not have a single author. … Individuals given credit for inventing rituals or games usually turn out to be synthesizers, recombiners, compilers, or editors of already practiced actions.’ (34-35)
‘...all behavior is restored behavior - all behavior consists of recombining bits of previously behaved behaviors.’ (35)
‘Restored behavior can be “me” at another time or psychological state … Restored behavior can bring into play non-ordinary reality … Restored behavior can be actions marked off by aesthetic convention … It can be actions reified into the “rules of the game,” … Because it is marked, framed, and separate, restored behavior can be worked on, stored and recalled, played with, made into something else, transmitted, and transformed.’ (35)
‘Restored behavior is symbolic and reflexive. Its meanings need to be decoded by those in the know.’ (35)
‘Performance in the restored behavior sense means never for the first time, always for the second to nth time: twice-behaved behavior.’ (36)
Skipping back to page 30…
Performances-
-made from bits of restored behavior
-each performance is unique
-bits of restored behavior can be combined in endless variations
-’no event can exactly copy another event.’ (30)
ex. A film showing:
‘...the context of every reception makes each instance different. Even though every “thing” is exactly the same, each event in which the “thing” participates is different. The uniqueness of an event does not depend on its materiality solely but also on its interactivity - and the interactivity is always in flux.’ (30)
‘ “Where do performances take place?” A painting “takes place” in the physical object; a novel takes place in words. … In this regard, a painting or a novel can be performative or can be analyzed “as” performance. Performance isn’t “in” anything, but “between.” ‘ (30)
‘To treat any object, work, or product “as” performance - a painting, a novel, a shoe, or anything at all - means to investigate what the object does, how it interacts with other objects or beings, and how it relates to other objects or beings. Performances exist only as actions, interactions, and relationships.’ (30)
Eight kinds of performance -sometimes separate, sometimes overlapping
Of the those cited by Schechner I am interested in two of these
2. In the arts
8. In play. (31)
2. In the arts -
‘...even if performance has a strong aesthetic dimension, it is not necessarily “art.” (ex. Figure skating, gymnastics) … Deciding what is art depends on context, historical circumstance, use, and local conventions.’ (32)
Skipping ahead to “Is” and “as” performance (38-40)
Limits to what can be studied under “is” performance; almost anything can studied “as” performance.
“is” - historical and social context, convention, usage and tradition says it “is” performance; nothing inherent in the action itself makes it or disqualifies it.
ex. rituals, play, and games. (38)
‘Any behavior, event, action, or thing can be studied “as” performance.’ ex. maps (41)
‘What the “as” says is that the object of study will be regarded “from the perspective of,” “in terms of,” “interrogated by” a particular discipline of study.’ (42)
“make-belief” or “make-believe”
‘The many performances in everyday life … are not make-believe actions. … In “make-believe” performances, the distinction between what’s real and what’s pretended is kept clear. … various conventions - …- mark the boundaries between pretending and “being real.” … This distinction was first challenged by the avant-garde and later further eroded by the media and the internet. (becoming make-belief) (43)
‘Public figures are often making belief - enacting the effects they want the receivers of their performance to accept “for real.” ‘ (43)
ex. American President addresses Congress
‘By now, everyone knows these kinds of activities are meticulously staged. Today’s American presidency - at least its public face - is a totally scripted performance that has only been played (as of the 2012 election) by a man. … The goal of this is to “make belief” - first, to build the public’s confidence in the president, and second, to sustain the president’s belief in himself. His performances convince himself even as he strives to convince others.’ (43)
Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” and the “Heisenberg effect” - since 1927 the notion of fixity challenged. ‘The uncertainty principle is closely related to the Heisenberg effect which asserts that the measurement of an event changes the event.’ (44)
‘But “uncertainty” or “indeterminacy” rang a bell. It has proven to be a very appropriate, durable, and powerful metaphor affecting thought in many disciplines including the arts. Music theorist and composer John Cage often used indeterminacy as the basis for his music, influencing a generation of artists and performance theorists.’ (44)
‘But what do performances accomplish?’ (45)
Schechner’s seven functions of performance:
To entertain
To create beauty
To mark or change identity
To make or foster community
To heal
To teach or persuade
To deal with the sacred and the demonic
‘But the hierarchy changes according to who you are and what you want to get done. Few if any performances accomplish all of these functions, but many performances emphasize more than one.’ (46)
See figure 2.12 (46)
Ritual (Chapter 3)
‘...one definition of performance is: Ritualized behavior conditioned and/or permeated by play.’ (52)
‘Play gives people a chance to temporarily experience the taboo, the excessive, and the risky. … Ritual and play lead people into a “second reality,” separate from ordinary life. This reality is one where people can become selves other than their daily selves. When they temporarily become or enact another, people perform actions different from what they do ordinarily. Thus, ritual and play transform people, either permanently or temporarily. … In play, the transformations are temporary, bounded by the rules of the game or the conventions of the genre.’ (52)
Skipping ahead to Rituals as liminal performances (66-70)
the liminal - “betwixt and between”
See Turner box ‘Liminality’ (66)
‘In ritual and aesthetic performances, the thin space of the limen is expanded into a wide space both actually and conceptually. What usually is just a “go-between” becomes the site of the action. And yet this action remains, to use Turner’s phrase, “betwixt and between.” It is enlarged in time and space yet retains its peculiar quality of passageway or temporariness. Architecturally, the empty space of a limen is bridged at the top by a lintel, usually made of lumber or stone. This provides reinforcement. Conceptually, what happens within a liminal time-space is “reinforced,” emphasized.’ (66-67)
See boxes with definitions of limen and liminoid (67) and figure 3.9 (70)
‘Liminal rituals are transformations, permanently changing who people are. Liminoid rituals, effecting a temporary change -...- are transportations. In a transportation, one enters into the experience, is “moved” or “touched” (apt metaphors), and is then dropped off about where she or he entered. (72)
See figure 3.10 (72)
‘A person is transformed only a few times in life, if ever. However, a person may experience transportations on an almost daily basis. … Transportations occur not only in ritual situations but also in aesthetic performances. … In theatre, actors onstage do more than pretend. The actors live a double negative. While performing, actors are not themselves, nor are they characters. Theatrical role-playing takes place between “not me...not not me.” (72)
ex.’... Spalding Gray played a character called “Spalding”, a persona who was a framed and edited version of the “real” Spalding. Gray developed his life-narratives by tape recording early in-process appearances, listening to the recordings, and editing his text. By the time Gray appeared onstage at Lincoln Center, his apparently casual self-presentation was honed in every detail, including slips and “mistakes.” The audience enjoyed “Spalding” as presented by Gray.’ (73)
restoration behavior applies even in original improvisations ‘It is the manipulation of these repetitions that give each performer her or his own style.’ (73)
‘The fact is that no performance is pure efficacy or pure entertainment. … Performance originates in the creative tensions of the binary efficacy-entertainment.’ (80)
Play (Chapter 4)
‘Ritual has seriousness to it, … Play is looser, more permissive … flexible where ritual is rigid. … restored behavior is playful; it has a quality of not being entirely “real” or “serious.” Restored behavior is conditional; it can be revised. Playing is double-edged, ambiguous, moving in several directions simultaneously.’ (89)
‘Play is very hard to pin down or define. It is a mood, an activity, a spontaneous eruption. Sometimes it is rule-bound, sometimes very free. It is pervasive. Everyone plays and most people also enjoy watching others play - ... Play can subvert the powers that be…’ (89)
‘Victor Turner called play the “joker in the deck,” meaning it was both indispensable and untrustworthy. Indeed, in Western thought, play has been both valued and suspect.’ (89)
Rundown of ways to control play from Enlightenment to 19th century; in the twentieth century…
‘Play returned as a category of creative thought and action. Notions of the unconscious in psychology and literature, theories of relativity and uncertainty (or indeterminacy) in physics, and game theory in mathematics and economics are examples of play taken seriously. In the visual arts, playing with ordinary reality -inventing new ways to look at things- led to cubism and then abstract expressionism. Various avant-gardes disrupted, parodied, and playfully subverted official culture. Play is intrinsically part of performing because it embodies the “as if,” the make-believe.’ (89)
See Victor Turner The joker in the deck box… ‘Play is the supreme bricoleur of frail transient constructions,...’ (90)
Play and Playing - dichotomies abound
‘There are more questions than can be answered - and this is a significant aspect of the whole “problem” of play and playing. … can we ever really understand something so complex?’ (91)
Two kinds of playing:
‘...all players accept the rules of the game and are equal before the law.’
‘...Nietzschean, where the gods (fate, destiny, luck, indeterminacy) change the rules of the game at any time, and therefore, where nothing is certain.’ (92)
Some qualities of playing (92)
-lifelong activity of humans and many animals
-consists of play acts
-games (more overtly structured than playing): rule-bound, designated location, definite outcome, clearly marked players
-playing (less structured than games): anywhere, anytime, any number of players, rules may or may not be followed by the players and could change unexpectedly at any time -though most players agree to play by the rules determined
-fantasy and “kidding around” no articulated rules
-sometimes “anti-structural” with the fun being in how to subvert the rules
‘Adult playing is different from children’s in terms of the amount of time spent playing and the shift from mostly “free” or “exploratory” play to rule-bound playing. … Artists are not the the only adults given leave to “play around.” … Both child play and adult play involve exploration, learning, and risk with a payoff in the pleasurable experience of “flow” or total involvement in the activity for its own sake. Playing creates its own multiple realities with porous boundaries. … Play is performance (when it is done openly, in public) and performative when it is more private, even secret - a strategy or reverie rather than a display. This interiority separates play from ritual, which is always being enacted.’ (92)
Deep play - when playing can be dangerous (physical or emotional) and the risks outweigh the potential rewards. (92)
Schechner’s seven approaches to play:
Structure: relationships among the events constituting the play act
Process: how are the play acts generated and what are the phases of their development over time
Experience: feelings and moods of the players and observers; affect of these on the playing; different experiences of players and spectators; changes in feelings and moods over time and the affect this has on the playing; how to determine if the play was good or not
Function: purpose of the play acts; affect of play acts on individual and community learning, growth, creativity…, uses, economic consequences
Evolutionary development: human play and animal play relationship; child and adult play; playing and individual creativity; play and culture
Ideology: political, social, and personal values emphasized, criticized, or subverted knowingly or unknowingly by playing
Frame: how do players and spectators know when playing begins, takes place, ends (93)
Roger Caillois four types of playing: see box
Competition
Chance
Simulation
Disorientation (94)
‘In any given play situation there may be both players and observers.’ (95)
[I am both.]
‘It is possible to be playing from the perspective of the observers but not be playing, or at least not be in a play mood, from another point of view. … Indeed, professional sports present a particularly complex situation. A lot of hype goes into convincing fans that the players are in it “for the love of the game.” Probably many players enjoy playing at a professional level. But clearly money and stardom also count for a lot. Furthermore, the players on the field are only the most visible parts of an extremely elaborate network of managers, owners, and media joined to real estate, government, and corporate interests. At what level does the play stop and something else begin?’ (95)
[art world analogy?]
‘Play acts often serve multiple, contradictory purposes simultaneously.’ (96)
‘If play acts themselves are not always fun, neither are the processes that generate play acts always playful.’ (96)
ex. training, tedious, boring processes…[watching paint dry]
‘On the other hand, sometimes the processes involved in preparing can be more enjoyable than the outcome.’ (96)
ex. making the work as opposed to showing or trying to show it!
‘Thus there is no necessary relationship between process and product. Either, both, or neither may be playful.’ (96)
ex. making a video and showing/watching it!
‘Moods are especially labile, shifting suddenly and totally. … moods are part of playing… play can suddenly turn venomous and deadly. Only in well-organized games -which constitute a minority of play acts- is the situation always under control.’ (96)
James P. Carse see box (97)
Finite games move towards resolution (means to the end), infinite games have the goal to keep playing (never a means to the end, only a means to a means to a means…)
‘Cultures are infinite games. The ultimate infinite game is the open-ended play that sustains existence.’ (97)
Csikszentmihalyi -Flow (97)
The experience of playing is ‘flow’.
‘Flow occurs when the player becomes one with the playing. … At the same time, flow can be an extreme self-awareness where the player has total control over the play act. These two aspects of flow, apparently contrasting, are essentially the same. In each case, the boundary between the interior psychological self and the performed activity dissolves.’ (97)
M. Csikszentmihalyi: 1975, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, 35-36
‘In the flow state, action follows upon action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention by the actor.’ (97)
D.W. Winnicott -transitional objects and transitional phenomena
‘...playing was a very special experience of trust that had its origins in the “potential space” between baby and mother. This space is both an actual playground and the conceptual arena where human culture originates. Experiencing this potential space starts when an infant first senses the difference between “me” and “not me.” ‘(98-99)
mother’s breasts = transitional objects
mutual fondling/gazing during nursing = transitional phenomena
Progresses to other objects and spaces...neutral space of unchallenged illusion, per Winnicott; a liminal play world where anything can become anything else.
‘Winnicott locates the origins of creativity and illusion in playing. He writes that the satisfaction of playing is a feeling that comforts and sustains a person throughout life. Winnicott asserts that the satisfying experience of playing is inherent in art and religion.’ (99)
See Winnicott box (100)
In animals…
‘The creativity of play comes in the new ways already-known behaviors are reorganized, made into new sequences. Some individual movements within a play sequence may never be completed, and this incomplete element may be repeated over and over. Seen this way, play is a very cogent example of “restored behavior.”’ (102)
Signals ‘I’m playing.’ -metacommunication: a signal framing other signals contained within or after it. (103)
ex. a wink, a smirk, over or under playing...Stanislavskian “as if” or Schechner’s double negative, “not...not”.
Boal’s ‘...Theatre of the Oppressed is most effective when the boundary between spectators and actors is blurred or entirely effaced. Boal’s message to spectators is, “This is play, and you must play with us!”’ (105)
Philosophies of play (106-112) See boxes for the many different thoughts on play
Early view: play = power because those with power (the gods, the kings) were free to play, make and break the rules, indulge their desires
Ancient Greek ‘free play’ (paidia) versus ‘rule of law’ (ludus)
paidia … Greek word origin relates to ‘child’
ludus … Latin origin, related words...ludic, illusion, delusion, ludicrous… (107)
From Nietzsche to Derrida…
‘“Free play” in many guises -from Dada to performance art, from the unconscious to indeterminacy- has regained much of its power, if not its divine status. But the question (free play versus rules) is far from settled. It probably never can be settled because the struggle is not over data or interpretation, but over basic worldviews.’ (107)
According to Nietzsche “will-to-power”, or making up the rules as you go playing is the way artists and children play. (109)
No center to play, according to Derrida, because the center is not a fixed place but a function. ‘All authority is subverted, “displaced,” opening spaces for all kinds of radical free play.’ (111)
See Derrida’s own writing on decentering, with its wordplay, punning and double meanings. (box on 112)
Artists understand Heisenberg metaphorically -open to chance processes. (111)
A deep-seated Western bias against play. (112) [think Protestant Work Ethic…]
‘Adults are supposed to play only during “time off” (from work) in specially designated places and according to well-defined rules. If the playing is regarded as risky, sexual, and subversive to work values or the authority of the state, whole neighborhoods are fenced off and designated a “red-light” district. … Or special days are designated for playing -holidays, time off, and vacation. But every Mardi Gras is followed by Ash Wednesday, each binge by a confession. … In many cities, the railroad station, the theatre district, and the red-light district are cheek by jowl. People want to come and go efficiently from where they can play or watch others play.’ (112)
Disneyfication of Times Square in 1990s....controlling play.
Maya-lila (113-118)
Playing is fundamental to Indian philosophy, worldview, aesthetics. (113)
See box definition (114)
ma -to make...transformation, something from nothing, or something to something else (114)
lila - play, sport, or drama
‘...when the gods play, the world comes into existence; but this world, however substantial it appears, is not fixed or reliable. It is ultimately governed by desire and chance.’ (114)
‘...the relationship of maya to lila is paradoxical.’ (114)
Deep play, dark play (118-121)
See box from Geertz (118)
Deep play is dangerous, all absorbing.
Dark play is when some of the players don’t know they are playing.
‘Dark play subverts order, dissolves frames, and breaks its own rules -so much so that the playing itself is in danger of being destroyed, as in spying, double-agentry, con games, and stings. … dark play is truly subversive, its agendas always hidden. Dark play rewards its players by means of deceit, disruption, and excess.’ (119)
‘Why do people create and enact dark play? ...Sutton-Smith …”the masks of play” -play that conceals its purposes, even its existence. Children no less than adults engage in this kind of play. … wherever the eyes of authority gaze down on them -kids find ways around the rules.’ (121)
‘All these activities - the pleasant, the provocative, and the terrifying - can be understood as playing, as ways of establishing autonomous social orders and hierarchies, of exploring or exploding the limits of power, of resisting the adult world that apparently so dominates them. … But why do others engage in it? Assuming a new or alternative identity, even briefly, is very important. Masking, cloaking one’s ordinary self just to get away from the humdrum, is also important. Much role-playing over the internet is this kind of dark play. … There is something excitingly liberating about this kind of playing.’ (121)
‘However one looks at it, play and playing are fundamentally performative.’ (121)
Performativity (Chapter 5)
It’s everywhere! And like play, difficult to pin down. A noun and an adjective. Similar to what Schechner calls “as” performance. (123)
Austin’s performative -words and actions: “To say something is to do something.” (123)
‘Austin did not understand, or refused to appreciate, the unique power of the theatrical imagination made flesh. … The characters are real within their own domain and time. … Insofar as the characters partake of their special reality, their performative utterances are efficacious.’ (124)
‘What the “as if” provides is a time-space where reactions can be actual while the actions that elicit these reactions are fictional. … The situation is paradoxical, and uniquely human. It demands the ability to keep two contradictory realities simultaneously in play.’ (124-125)
Poststructuralists had issues with Austin.
‘Derrida insisted that all utterances are infelicitous: speech in the theatre is a “determined modification” of a “general iterability”. That is, meaning cannot be permanently fixed: every utterance is a repetition -just as stage speech is the repetition of a script. But Derrida’s “iterability” is not the parroting of a known script, but a quality inherent in language and therefore embedded in thought, in the personal-cultural construction of reality. Meaning is not singular, original, or locatable. Meaning is not owned by the speaker, the spectator, or even the circumstance. Meaning -and all and every meaning is contingent, temporary- is created in process through the complex interaction of all speakers -players- and their specific personal-cultural circumstances.’ (125)
Reality TV and beyond (126-129)
In light of recent world events...I wonder how much this section needs revising (or not)?
‘People asked then, and the question remains salient, does the presence of cameras change behavior or convert someone’s home from a “real-life” venue into a “theatre”? It is a sociological application of Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle where the observation affects the outcome.’ (128)
‘Does the ubiquity of the looking eye make the world into one vast prison (as Hamlet believed Denmark to be)? … Where will the line separating private from public be drawn? Can it be drawn anywhere? The line is disappearing, if it has not already vanished. These are situations addressed, but by no means resolved, by theories of performativity.’ (129)
Postmodernism
‘One of the decisive qualities of postmodernism is the application of the “performance principle” to all aspects of social and artistic life. Performance is no longer confined to the stage, to the arts, and to ritual. … this ability to embrace contradiction and eclecticism is a hallmark of the postmodern.’ (129)
See box Lyotard: Performativity and power (129-130)
Postmodern -deconstruction of the master narratives of modernism leading to fragmentation, pastiche, relativism, local truths, delight in contradictions … media generated “temporary master narratives” (131)
‘The arts themselves take a back seat because ordinary life is framed so “artistically.”’ (131)
‘Representational art of all kinds is based on the assumption that “art” and “life” are not only separate but of different orders of reality: life is primary, art is secondary. But developments in photography, film, and digital media overturned traditional theories. Questions arose concerning exactly what was an “original” -even if there could be such a thing as an original.’ (131)
See box W. Benjamin -Authenticity, presence, aura (132)
The authority of the object is threatened.
before=after
Simulation - representation ends and reproduction takes over.
‘In the realm of the arts and information technology, digital “copies” are not copies at all, but clones.’ (133)
see Baudrillard box (134)
Popular culture simulation similar to ‘reality’ TV and ‘real life’ internet sites.
‘A simulation is neither a pretense nor an imitation. It is a replication of… itself as another. That makes simulations perfect performatives. A cloned sheep or a U2 song distributed digitally over the internet is not a copy but an “original” in a theoretically infinite series. There is no difference between “copy” and “original.” The decision about whether to call a specific sequence of digitized data an original or a copy is a matter of ideology, not of any difference between the so-called original and the so-called copy. One can determine the “first” in chronological and even legal terms, as the courts have done; but this determination depends on knowledge outside the simulation. There is nothing inherent in the code that tells whether it was first, fifth, or nth.’ (133)
Feigning
‘One pretends, then acts, then simulates, then arrives back at real life. A kind of experiential mobius strip is performed. Is this second real life “real life” and not real life? How can one tell?’ (135)
Simulations and Disney parks
Simulations and historical reenactment -ex. Plimouth Plantation
Simulations of military exercises
Simulations of scientific experiments
Simulations of torture
‘Simulation is important to the arts -especially with regard to works that occupy a liminal area between what is socially-legally acceptable and what is beyond the pale.’ (140)
Poststructuralism/deconstruction
Bases for academic theories of performativity; postmodernism is a practice in the visual arts, architecture, and performance art; poststructuralism (deconstruction) is an academic response to postmodernism. (141)
Postmodernism - practice
+ Poststructuralism - theory
Performativity (practices and theories)
‘...subverting the established order of things. But the matter doesn’t end there. What’s happened is that the ideas of poststructuralism and the techniques of performativity -...- have been eagerly taken up by business, science, and the military, eager to enhance their control over knowledge; anxious to acquire more power.’’ (141)
[So, we’re back to the early ideas of ‘play’ and the power of the gods?]
The poststructuralist rejected the ‘binary oppositions’ of the structuralists as being over-simplified and buttressing the status quo socially, politically, and philosophically. ‘Poststructuralists opposed all notions of universals, originals, or firsts. To poststructuralists, every act, every utterance, every idea, is a performative.’ (142)
No ‘first voice’ of ultimate authority, instead an endless stream of repetitions (see Foucault box, 143) -everything is in flux (Heraclitus and Nietzsche)
‘“There is nothing outside the text,” Derrida wrote. But the “text” in Derrida’s theory is all of human culture. ...By “writing” Derrida means more than graphic inscription and literature. He means entire systems of “inscribed” power: laws, rituals, traditions, hierarchies, politics, economic relations, science, the military, and the arts. Derrida views sultures as constructed sets of relations, historically founded and always contested. … It is no accident that in English the word “authority” includes the word “author.” … All writing enacts agendas of power. Writing doesn’t serve power, but the other way around: who writes performs authority. Yet all authority, whatever its proclamation of eternity and universality, is temporary:...’ (143)
See Derrida box (144)
Cultures are palimpsests according to Derrida. Behind every writing are other writings; every writing is a power struggle…
‘Yet every narrative, no matter how elegant or seemingly total, is full of holes, what Derrida calls “aporia” -open spaces, absences, and contradictions. Nothing can be totally erased. These aporias leak various pasts and alternatives into the present order of things. The authorities -...- attempt to make the present take on the appearance of being the outcome of an inevitable process (...). But this ineluctable continuity -...- is a fiction. The past is full of holes; the present is provisional, the future is not known. All historical narratives are haunted by what/who is erased, threatened by what/who demands representation.’ (145)
See Blau box (145)
Différance (difference + deferral) - otherness plus a lack of a fixed or decided meaning. Coined by Derrida. Meaning is always being ‘played out’ in writing as it cannot ‘be’ once and for all.
‘Furthermore, writing in the poststructuralist sense consists of “iterations” -quotations, repetitions, and citations. Derrida emphasizes that language in general and speech acts in particular depend on an active estrangement, an encounter with “otherness.” This is very close to Brechts Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect).’ (146)
‘Brecht argued that art is not a mirror held up to nature but a hammer with which to shape it.’ (146)
The diffusion of poststructuralism
Problem: poststructuralists were holed up in the ivory tower… a closed system. See Butt box (149)
‘.In fact, the more liberal the academic system, the more easily it keeps radical impulses within known bounds. … the revolution of thinking envisioned by the poststructuralists has largely been reduced to and transformed into performative play.’ (149)
See Lakoff box (150)
Constructions of gender
‘The performative inquiry asks, “What constitutes individual identity and social reality? Are these constructed or given? And if constructed, out of what? … the answer is that these consist not of naturally determined operations but of something built and enforced by means of “performance” (see Chapter 2) … Even “nature” is not natural, or prior, but a humanly constructed concept designed (consciously or unconsciously) to accomplish human ends.’ (151)
See Butler box (151) from “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” 521, 524-28 (1988)
‘Each individual from an early age learns to perform gender-specific…’ (151)
Constructions of race
A cultural construct, therefore changes in reaction to culture-specific historical forces. (154)
ex. Adrian Piper Cornered (1988) dissects what constitutes racial identity.
See Piper box (157-158)
During, before, and after performance art
‘One of the recurring themes/actions in performance art is the construction of identity. The question performance art often asks, sometimes answered, sometimes left hanging, is, “Who is this person doing these actions?” This is very different from the question theatre asks, “Who is this character doing these actions?” Insisting that spectators regard not a character but an actual person (even if the artist embellishes that persona, as Spalding Gray did), actualized the slogan, “the personal is the political.” ‘ (158)
See boxes from Brentano and Schneider (159)
‘Only by recognizing that identity is constructed, not given, contested, not settled, historically and politically evolving, not fixed in “nature”, can personal art be regarded as political.’ (160)
ex. Carolee Schneemann Interior Scroll (1975) -a rejection of the rejection.
‘Performance art evolved to some degree from painting.’ (162)
See Kaprow box (163)
[and Carolee Schneemann is a painter]
‘Performance art is part of a line of the avant-garde reaching back to the turn of the twentieth century -...’ (164)
Kaprow (like Warhol, Duchamp…)
‘...to demystify art, debunk the establishment that controlled museums, and make arts that could be performed by anyone.’ (165)
‘An increasing number of iconic works are being “re-performed.” (165)
What the Gravedigger knew about the performative
“An act hath three branches - it is to do, to act, to perform” (Hamlet, 5, 1:11)
‘Any action consciously performed refers to itself, is part of itself. Its “origins” is its repetition. Every consciously performed action is an instance of restored behavior. Restored behavior enacted not on a stage but in “real life” is what poststructuralists call a “performative.” … The ultimate example of “to act” is “to perform” - to be reflexive about one’s acting. … But the Gravedigger’s brief disquisition shows that the notion of performativity has been around a long time.’ (166)