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LA ~ 'lCfOb

PERF OR MANCE Critical Concepts in Literary

and Cultural Studies

Edited by Philip A uslander

Volume III

I~ ~~_~~t!;,~R:ul'

I (IN l ldN liNO NI W VORK

cLLl

CO N TENTS

YOLUME 111

A ckl10wledgemenls

tX

I'ART I

First publishcd 200.1

by Routledgc

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon , Oxon, OX 14 4RN

Simultanenusly puhlished in thc USA and Cunada by ROlltlcdgc 270 Madison Ave, Ncw York NY 10016

1.1 Pel/orming sciellce

45 From science to theatre: dramas of spcculative thought

T ransfcrrcd to Digital I'rinting 2009

3

GAUTAM ))"SGUI'TA

ROL/r/elige;s 1m imprin/ ol/he Tay/or & Frall e;s (iI'OlljJ Editorial matter and sc1cction «) 20m I'hilip AlI slan der: individual owners retain cnpyright in thcir own material

1

Science and social science

46 Performance and production: the relatioD between science as inquiry and science as cultural practice

11

ROIlFRT P. CRI , ASI:

T ypcsct in Tim es by (;raphicraft Limitcd , Il ong Kong AII rights rcserved . No part 01' thi s book may be reprinted or reproduced or utiliscd in any rorm or by any dcctronic,

mcchanica l. 0 1' nther means , 1l0W known or herea rter

invcntcd , indudin g ph otocopying and reeordin g. nI' in a ny

inl"onnatioll sto ra ge or retricval sys tcm, without perrnission in

writin g from the publishcrs.

¡\

Brirish l.ihrary Caru/ogu;Il,¡;;/1 Puhlicarion f)ata catalogue record fnr this book is available from the British l,ibrary

1.2 Socia! he!1al';or as perj{¡r/1/al1ce

IUCII A RD IlAUMAN

-IX A performance-centered approach to gossip

61

){()(j J: R D. AB R A IIAMS

Uhrar,v o{ COl/gress Ca/a/of;illf; in PlIh/ica/;oll f)a/a ¡\ ealalog record ror this book has bcen rcqucstcu

-Il) ISBN 0-415-25511-2 (Set)

ISBN 0-4 15-255 14-7 ( Volumc 111)

32

-17 Yerbal art as performance

nccoming other-wise: conversalional performance and Ihe politics of cxperience

75

I.J-:( )NARI) 1'. I IAWI S J>lIblr.ln:r·~ Rd~ ' n'II<"" s

NO'l'

",i tl "ll ";1<'11 .-I1;1I'!t"r an: .IS Lhey ¡¡PI""'" in 1111" 1\1 ¡"¡ lIal ¡'Oll1plt-l\ \V III

L.

541 Sodal tIr;lIl1a.. ancJ .. turil... uboul tbclIJ v)( 1 "I~ 1 1' I( N JoIt \!

108

(' 1 I

N'I'Il N I' S

I · ,,' ~ I I N IS

1 .1 "" I'/IIIIIIII/g ,'(!tI/I/,lr!" 'I,!t l'

, i 1'1,,'0,.,

51 P...rl'orming liS a moral ad: cl hkal dlmCIISiOIl'i 01' 1lit' ... tllllography 01' performance

134

/llg

l'O/lIiI ·,tI 11c'/'/; I/'III'/lI'

"

... , Thl'ft' musl hl' II 1411 uf lish in tlmt lakc: toward an l'l~ulllg ical 1hcal cr

DWI(iIlT C O "l QUE R G OOD

293

ti NA ( 'II /\ IIUI Il IRI

52 Performance science

149

(,1

MICIIAL M, \1<:CA I.I. AND 1I 0W ARD S, BEC KER

169

tll Tlw ontolog)' 01' perform ance: representation witJlOut

RI C IlA R U A, IIII.BERT

320

n'prodllction

54 SNAPl Culture: a different kind of "reading"

305

I;! .IN I>IAMOND

53 The efficacy of performance science: comment 00 McCaJl and Becker

Brc'clll ilm thcory/feminist theory: toward a gestic feminist l·..ilidsm

!'!:(iCiY PIIEI.A N

173

E. PAT RI C K JOII NSON

(1 1

336

I'rax is and pcrl'ormativity ANDRI ' W I'ARKI ' R

PART 2

Hjstory, politics, política) econoPlY

199

'"

Work . l'roducliol1. Po/iliCCl/ ecol1omy

344

h-I The future that worked

2. J Peljórming hislOry

I( 'SE!'I I ROACI I

55 Disa ppearance as historJ: the stages of terror

201

(1C\

ANTI-lO N Y K U BIAK

I{hythm and the performance of organization

353

IUCIIAR!) A. RO()ERS

56 Historical events and the historiograpby of tourism

213

(,(, The I)erformance of production and consumption

M ICHAI. KOBIAI.KA

372

MII(ANDA JOSEI'II

57 Spectacles of suffering: performing presence, absence, and historical memory al U.S. Holocaust museums

fa 234

405

I ,l'~ally Ih'e 1'1111.11' AUSI.A N DER

VIVIA N M. J>ATR ,\ KA

2.2 Po/itica/ actil'ism ane/ per(órmal1ce

58 Spectacles and scenarios: a dramaturgy of radical activity

253

I.EE BAXA N D AI.I.

59 Fighting in tbe streets: dramaturgies of popular protest,

1968- 1989

266

HAZ K ERSIl A W

VI

\ ' 11

AC K NOWLEDGE ME NTS

Tltc I'ublishcrs would like to thank the following for permission to reprint Ihcir material: Ihe Massachusctts Institute of Technology Press for permission to reprint ( ia utam Dasgllpta. "From scicnce to theatre: dramas of speculative thoughf' , /',.,./imnillg ArlS JuurnaI9(2/3) (1985): 237- 246. () 1985 by Performing Arts ,. luma!. 'lIdiana U niversity Press for permission to reprint Robert P. Crease, "Per lorrllance ami production: the relation between science as inquiry and sciencc ;IS l'ultural practice". in Tlze P/av olNature: Exper¡melllaliol1 as Peljórm(/Ilce. IIIloomington: Indiana University Press , 1993), pp. 158- 177. © 1993 by 1{ oIJert P. Crease. Ihe American Anthropological Association for permission to reprint Richard Ha liman, "Verbal art as performance", American Anlhrup%gisl 77(2) (1975): "JO 311. Not rol' sale or further reproduction . Blal'kwdl Pllblishers for permission to reprint Roger D . Abrahams, "/\ pl'rrorl11ance-centered approach to gossip", Man, N ew Series 5(2) (1970): 290 101. (( 1970 Royal Anthropological Institute ofGreat Britain and Ire1and. Ihe National Communication Assoeiation (formerly the Speech Communica /\ssociation) for permission to reprint Leonard C. Hawes, "Becoming Illllc r-wisc: convcrsational performance and the politics ofexperience", Texl o/I/t! /'a!imllul1cc Quarterly 18(4) (1998): 273 - 299. @ 1998 by the National ( 'ollll11unieation Association. 11.111

I'hl' IllIiversily of Chieago Prcss for permission to reprint Victor Turner, So ~ial dramas and stories about them " . Critiwl JI/c¡uiry 7( 1) (1980): 141 I " !oí . •) IIJt\O by The University of Chjcago. 1 lit' N,lli llJ1t1 1C Ol11l11ullicati on /\ssociéltion (fo nneriy the Speech Commun ica 11 1111

/\ssllc ia lion ) lúr pcrm i!'i silln l O re print Dwighl C"onq ucrgood, "Perfo rm

lll¡' ;¡~i iI mura l ae!: cthici li dill1l.:flSioll~ ~) r Ihl: dhlwgr' lphy llf pnformance" .

i\

,\ 1 .,: NIIW I, Hp(HI M HN 1',,\ / ./1,,/,,11/1/,,'

1/1 /" '1'10 1111'''''''' l(.!) ( II)X~ ) , 1 I J,

",!

1\)1<1) by IlIl' IlIll:rprctatioll

Di vi s ion, Srccch ( 'OnllllUllicaliul1 AssodaLl oll, T ite lI niVé rsi ty 01' Calirornia I'ress ror permlsslon to reprint M ichal M , MeCall and Iloward S, Bccker, "Performance seience", Social Prohlems 37{ 1) (1990): 117- 132, © 1990 by The Society for the Study ofSocial Problems, The Univcrsity 01' C alifornia Press for permission lO reprint Ric hard A. Hilbert, "The efficacy of performance scienee: comment on McCall and Becker", Soóal Prohlell1s 37( 1) (1990): 133 135, © 1990 by The Society for the Study of Social Problcms.

I

I

I

The National Communication !\ssociation (formerly kn own a s the Speec h Communication !\ssoeiation) for pennission to reprint E. Patriek Johnson , "SN AP! Culture: a different kind of ' reading''' , Texl (//1(1 Pel/ormal1ce Quarlerly 15(2) (1995): 122-- 142, © 1995 by the Specch Comlllunication Associa tion. The Johns Hopkins University Press for permlSSlon to reprint Anthony Kubiak , " Disappearance as history: the stages of terror" , Thealre Joul'nal 39(1) (1987): 78- 88, © 1987 by Thc Johns Hopkins University Press, The Joul'nal (J/ Thealre al1d Drama and the author for permission to reprint Michal Kobialka, "Historical events and the historiography o f tOllrism", Jo urnal (JI 711ea!re alld Drama 2 (1996): 153 - 174, Taylor & Francis Ud for permission to Teprint Vivian M . Patraka, " Spec tacles 01' suffering: performing presence, absence, and historical memory at U,S. Holocaust museums", in Elin Diamond (ed.), Peljórmallce ({Ilel Cullural Po/ilics. (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 89- 107. © 1996, [!in Diamond and contributors, Tite Drama Rel!ielV for permission to rcprint Lee Baxandall, "Dramaturgy 01' radical aetivity ", The Drama RevielV 13(4) (1969): 52- 71. © 1969 The Drama Review .

The author for permission to reprint Baz Kershaw, "Fighting in the strcets: dra mat urgies of popular protest, 1968-· 1989", New Thealre Quarlerly 13(3) (J997): 255 -276, © 1997 Cambridge University Press.

l\c '''NtiW i 1 11Ií! MI.N IS

I;¡ ylnr &. I-'Jancis /.Id rOl pl.'l lIli ssl\ lJl lo rcp ri nl Pcggy I)hcla n, "The onlo Il lgy nI' perro rmance : rc r rcsl~ n tal i()1l wilhoul n:prodllcl ion ", in Unmarked: / he /'(/111 ¡C.I' o( Pn/{¡mwl/{'(' . ( L ondon: Ro utledgc, 1993), pp. 146- 166. The aulh or ror pcnnission to rcprint Andrew Parker. " Praxis and perform ;¡tivit y". WOII/CI1 Olle! Per/órmancc 8(2) (1 996): 265- 273 . © 1996, W omen and Perrormance Project. Ine , I>uke Un ivcrsity Press for permission to reprint Joscph Roach , "The future Ihal workcd ", Thealer 8(2) (1998): 19- 26. © 1998 b y D uk e University Press , Thc National Communication !\ssociation (formerly known as the Speech ( 'ol11l11unicatio\1 Assoeiation) 1'01' permission to reprint R ichard A . Rogers, " Rhythm and the performance of organ ization " . Texl al1d Per/ormance ()¡llIrlerly 14(3) (1994): 222 ·237. © 1994 by the Speeeh Commllnication Associatiol1. 1)ukc University Press for permission to reprint Miranda Joseph , 'The per

rormance 01' prod uction and consumption", Social T ex! 16( 1) (1998): 25- 62. ,,') 1998 by Duke University Press, Thc Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press for pcrmission to rcprint Philip Auslander, " Lcgally live", TDR: The Joul'na! o/Per/órnlClllcc Sludies 41(2) (1997): 9- 29. © 1997 New York University and the Massachusetts 1nstitute of Technology Press,

Oisclaimer The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders IIrworks reprintcd in Per/ol'mal1ce: Critical COl1cepts in Lilerary ami Cultural ,'l/lldies. This has not been possible in evcry case, howevcr, and we would wdcome corresponden ce from those individuals/companies who \Ve have heen unable to trace.

Note I'holographs included in the original books I artic1es have not been reprinled here.

Duke University Press for pcrmission to reprint Una Chaudhuri , " There must be a 101 offish in that lake': toward an ecological theater", Thealel' 25(1) (1995): 23 - 31. © 1994 Thealer. The Massachusctts Institllle 01' Technology Press for permission to reprint Flin IJ iamond, " Brechtian lheory/remini:.;t theory : toward a gestic ferninist crit icism ", r DR: nI/' ./0111'/1(/1 of' Per/ (¡ I'I/wnt'c S (ud¡e.\, 32( 1) (1988): 82--94. IC" 19HI-i Ncw York I Jllivcrsil y und lhe M 'I~ sachllsetls InstitU!e ofTechnology. .~

xi

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45 FR()M SCIENCE TO THEAT R E

Dramas of speculative thought

Gautam Dasgupta :;""."": f'( 'rfiJrll/ing Arl.l' JOU/'/llIf 9(2 3) (1985 ): 2:\7 246 ,

:\llistic practice and scientific inquiry are commonly pen:eived as distinctly op 1" l:;cd modes 01' thoughí. 1'he underlying assumption is that art- specifically IlIé:! tre in this case- eoncerns itself with human amI social relations, while :.rlc nce purvcys the domain of physical reality. Sinee at Ieast the early nine h.'l'nth century, however, such divergences have on occasion been breached . 1'111: incursions 01' newer forms 01' investigative disciplines- Darwinism, h c udianism, behaviorism, social scicnecs- have all made their mark on the ,11 a lila and theatre 01' recent times. lt can be argued. though. that as the abovc disciplines are not rigidly seientific in approach. their usurpatí on by thc .Irlislic mind has been made that much easier. 1'heir referent is the human IlIind. not formulations about the nature 01' reality. (>1' course. aligning such humanistic disciplines with artistie practice be 11 .l ys a myopic view 01' how ideas in various spheres 01' activity interpenetrate IIl1 e anolher. 1'0 take just one instance from an earlier century , did not I krbcrt Spencer, precursor of Darwin amI theorist of social evolution , sup 1'1111 his c1aims by acknowledging the physical principIes 01' the conservation '1Il:llergy? Could we noL then , resurrect this missing scientific link in discuss IIl t' Ihe dramatic works 01' 701a, Hauptmann and Strindberg, for example, as I n~ lanccs 01' a dcterministic dramaturgy where aesthetic and structurallaws ,h-rivc I'rom an accepted scicntific paradigm? 1'he prel'erred methodology has ¡'l'~'n lo sludy thcir plays as expressive ol' evolu[,Íonary processes that have h ~'C n "llInnanizcd." í,c. , fol' theír residual implications in the realm of human ;IL"Iivil y. What I <1m proposing instead is a re- working 01' dramatic ami arlistic 1IIII1I11hl as Ihe locus 01' prevalent scien tilk ideas 01' the time. HopefuJly, in plll'SI UlIg lh is une 01' inq uiry . il ma y hc1p us undcrstand I'rom the dominant pl'l spcctivc scil'nlilinh.:vclopmcn l l hro ugh lhe agcs what brough t about the ·II I C q~ (.: I) C C \ ) r l:~ rl;ríll styk , .,1 dr;lIn a al givclI hishlrica l pc ri ods. Wc rna y (hen .

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;11 11111: ~ 1 1I)"~. !)t .Ihll' lo (lWl\m lll~' 111(; II:ldili ul1; rI hill s ¡lglI lIl:;1 1lit, IIl1ificali OI1 ol!i\:icllcl.: :1 lit! 1111,::1 1"'. :1 dCl!r ly illl:\lui Tlcd p rejudice lha l clJ llli lJ ues lInabaled nol oll ly in Ilit' millds o/'tlle gc nera l Pll blie bUI on Ih eparl ol'arlisls ami scholars alike. T he isslIe here is nol so mueh one 01' intluence bul oí' correspondences that may emerge when lhe thcalre is subjecled to a mode 01' inquiry sustained by discoveries in the scienees. Irboth science and theatre seek to comprehend the nature 01' reality in all its varied manifestations, surely they must convcrge at some point in their individual searches. Sueh correlations. whcn and if they can be determined, do not neeessarily have lo presen t themselves in the strueture and lan g uage of the corresponding discipline. T ranspositions along metaphorical tines allow all art to subsume ideas prevalenl in other fields. Could we not speeulate, for instance, thal Aristotle's emphasis on dramati c aetion as the first principIe of dramaturgy may have reftected his own seientific stud ies on motion? F urthermo re, did his placement of tragedy as superior to eomedy in the hierarehy of drama tic genres stem from his belief in the idea 01' Final Causes, as opposed to that of Efficient Causes? From the alternate viewpoint of scientifie inquiry, \ve find subatomic physies borrow ing the metaphor ofthe " quark " 1'rom Joyee's Finnegans Wake , and the ongo ing debate about determinate and indeterminate workings of physieal reatity not only replay aneient philosophieal coneerns but also reAeet opposed drama tic strategies that lie imbedded in the plays of, for example, Sophodes and Euripedes, or Corneille and Raeine. What eoneerns me here is not which eame first, the chicken or the egg. The goal is far more modest: to outline on a provisional basis modalities ofthought that seem to recur in the exe reises 01' the theatrical imagination and of the seientific temper. For the purposes of my remarks here, and as an initial foray into this field ofresearch, 1 have narrowed the subject ofmy inquiry to two contemporary artists \Vho best exemplify the advaneed theatrieality of our time . The choice 01' Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson is arbitrary insofar as urawing Iink s between theatrical practice and seientific discourse is concerneu, although it may be safe to suggest that sueh correspondences are more easily identified in \Vorks that radically break \Vith traditional patterns of dramaturgy and aecepted modes 01' theatrical representation . The sehism itself announces an altered strategy to reftect upon the \\'orld. a move that has much in eommon with the scientific spirit. And though many of my observations below eould be applied in slightly modified form to the \vorks of other eontemporary artists, 1 have, ror reasons of speeificity, relied on the theatrieal careers 01' Foreman and Wilson.

* * * * * The ve ry nal1ling 01' Poreman "s O nto logical -H ysterie Theatre c1ues us in to Ihe ph ilosophical pn:m ise o n which his thcu lre is groun ded. Al tb ough t he phil'lSOr hic co mpo lIl:1l 1 is by now llld hae FL)rCman's cOlll inJ.! I ~) lerms with

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II lIlIIlugy ill 0111' n :nlury k ud lo l'\ lI l1 l'lcXI IICS Ihal arl' bounJcJ by scicnlific IIwlIri\!s. I li jo¡ olllologil'al q U\!SI 10 úea l with lhe Ilalure 01' be ing or rcality as lila lI ill!l'ilcd ill his cOllsciousncss. or féal cx istcnces dedueed 1'rom his thoughts, il li)11I Ih~~ elllerprise with a Cartesian approach to metaphysics. From lhe k ~l' llIlary predicale " cogito ergo sum" he ehooses rather to 1'ocus on what "o llslilules thc being orthought in other words ofhow to make his thinking vl ~ ibk (and
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hl:tOl tll'\ ,1 p n:l~qll h ll c 1I hll ~ 11 1i 1l1 is tu all,lI yll: il wlIII ddlll y dlld pll'cision. II 11 111." h,' l:;p!all'U ¡¡lid hdJ ill plan:, lhl~ sl agc acti o n IIOZC II ill laIJkall x, ~o Iha' ,llollg lll lIlay bé I;ol\' cm rlalcd ill ils slasis.

Bul lo wlIlcmrlak Ihis alorn izcd. spatial con tiguration of lhought as an isolatcd phenorncn o n, il proves impossible to ground in certainty what the conliguration implies in Foreman's scheme ofthinking. Although he \Vants us to perceive distinctly a stage image within its spatial coordina tes, the image al so exists in time (and duration), a coordinate that Foreman views as problematic in nature. Like Gertrude Stein, he \vants us ,t o engage in the act of perception \Vithin a continuous present, 01' vision sustained by Ihe idea 01' a landscapc. But matter and the act of perceiving it, as modero physics has demonstrated, exists in él space-time continullm. F oreman, on th e other hand. would rather hold time in abeyance so as to properly situate his experiments with ontology. Just as Wittgenstein 1'ound time a problematic factor in his investigations along the path oflogical atomism, so too Foreman who would rather present experiences as autonomous entities ofthought minus its referential attributes. In atomized behavior, \Vhich Heisenberg theorized as a consequence of the space-time, four-dimensional natllre of rcality, certainty is not attainable (his Uncertainty PrincipIe would also hold for om normal world were ,it not for the masses of objects being so huge). lt is this same uncertainty thal gets transposed to Foreman 's atomized reality, which is perhaps why he feels compelled to deny the temporal axis 01' his experiments and thoughts. 1t is the only way that he could arrive at the Cartesian certainty postulated as one of the crucial determinants of his theatrical premise. In following the Cartesian dictate ofmatter as extension , Foreman neces sarily succumbs to a rigidly geometric conception of stage movement. Even the moments of stasis in his theatre are establrished within strict Cartesian coordinates. In 1'act, even the stage spaccs employed by him betray this notion of matter in extension. The elongated frontal imagery with which he ¡¡rst began then gave way to an extension in depth, and the physical attributes 01' matter were discarded in favor ofplacement and movement that adhered to a sciencc ofkinematics. At times, objects were framed within the parameters of a door or opening and the playing area itself compartmentalized \Vith strings, the latter a familiar trademark o1'his staging. Geometry as the art (or science) of spatial extension (and also the art of pure ideation) is dose to Foreman 's heart. It is a construct of pure thought, as is mathematical formulation. It is hardly a coincidence that many 01' the titles 01' his plays take on the 1'orm of algebraic equations, while his manifestos on theatre are cluttercd \vith lautologies , syllogisms. and other computationallinguistic systems. When matter is viewed as extension , it follows that the actor too beco mes mcrcly a property o f Ihe geometric model. In addition, speech too takes on a mo nolo nal quality . Acti ng and diction J o not refer to anything that would suhlracl rmlll Iheir a ll rih llles as mallcr in motion. Furtherl1lore, if a ll matter is \:xll.:n:s i\l11 , Ihcll , as in f)csl.:u rlc:s, lile nol iollllrcmpty space h a~ no validity. /,

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1'v1;a1l ~' 1 ,11 11.1 lIJ'1i1I.:C hcco" ,\: a t,; lIld.!' "ill'i illtillilc \Vhulc, alld spaw is nlllhing IIllIe. Ihall IlI a Ucr in u ::; (ale ul cnllllllllUllS eXll'nsillll. C Ollscquently, the slage "p:l n : ill a I '\ m: 111 a n prodllcl ion is a spacc nI' ceaseless visual and aural stimllli. IlIl' rclcll tltss bomhardrncnt 01' Ihc audicnce \Vith sounds, lights, and rapid I'lIysictllllovclllellt suggest lhat not only nature. but being and thought them w l v c~ ablwr él vacuum. ( )ddly cllollgh, howcver, although Cartesian p hysics was superseded by New 11IIlian rnechallics , sillce Faraday on to the present time , science has sh owed leil lity In be more and more consonant with many aspects of Descartes's IlIcorics. The Newtonian distinction bet\veen matter and space gave way, IlIl'lItlgh Ihe discoverics of fields 01' force and the concept of energy, to a II ll'chanical philosophy and new physics itself has been geol1letricized to a brge extent. In keeping with the emergence of concepts such as cnergy and Ill'lds 01' force. Foreman's theatre increasingly took 011 lhe l1lechanisms 01' an 11I1l:ractive systCI1l , with the director himself f1rmly located within his theatr Il'al system. The equivalence 01' matter and energy (as in Einstein 's formula lioll) beca me the crux 01' all 0-[; Theatre exercises. All perception 01' stage Il'alily Ieads, In equationary fashion, to the energies ofthought expended by l·llI"cman. Thought, as fundamental neural energy, beco mes theatre, luros illlo matter, and the increasing complexity 01' his stagings betray the increas IlIg cl)lllplexity 01' energy displayed in his thOllghts. In fanciful terms , one ,'ollld suggcst that F oreman's theatre is a black holc (curiously , the O-H Ihcalre in its heyday employed black as the sole color of its props and scenic I'Il'IlICnts) into which is pOllred the densüy 01' his thought-energies. And in II'Vl~ rsc (or, as I suspect, in the right direction), since what we perceive on :;I.agc are all emanations from his mind, it is as if in the final analysis Fore lIIíl n's own mind is the black hole where all reality is trapped beyond redemp l ¡¡'.I. Theatre, or artistic praxis, for Foreman cannot lead to communicability tlI l~xpressivity : it stays trapped within a solipsistic exercise. (>1" COllrsc, Forcman's theatre is not all an extension of the mind. The mind "ody dualism 01' Descartes is implied in the lIysteric hall' 01' his theatre . Ilyslcria (dcrivcd from the Greek hyslera, meaning uterus) suggests a neu[ ,,1 ic condition stemming from somatic traits and assuming strange mental l"llllligurations. Again , in an equationary mode, i1' ontology rartakes of the pn~Sl~T1ce of" being, hysteria subsumes both body and mental sta tes. In addi I iOIl, frolll the semantic point of view, the utcrllS, souce 01' the becoming of hcing, joins torces with the ontological quest. The nakcd body (more often 1l:lIlalc Ihan male), a quintessential part 01' the 0-11 Theatre, points to this 11I1\!lTclalionship bctwecn the mind-body, ontology-hysteria dualism . Is body 41 " maller a further exlension to be attributed to pure reason? Or does the "ud y gellerate thought ami actions of thc mind? These are questions for 11l"lIn' biohlgisls (an d lha t d iscirlinc may well be one 01' lhe last fro ntiers 01' ~l' ie l1l"e lod uy ), bul thcy lIl'\: also ljuestions wit h wh ich R o bert Wilson has 1"I'lI cc nll~d hilllsd r wilh Ihese r asl k~w years .

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Rohlll W lhtlll 11:11> ¡'Cl' f\ hll llW II 1., lla ve \V\ II k..:d wlllI Illclllally illlpaired d ll Id n':lI illlll ~ pa~H Irallli h llli,: sllrspaeealld lim¡; a mgc lIl'rall:d rmm rcason ill the Ihca lrc 01' I;nro/llan, io W ilsll n':; work they are gcne raled rmm how the braill Illlt only pl'lu:ivcs lhese parametcrs bllt how it gocs about creating 1hem. Ifmatter is extenuateu in Foreman's theatrc, time unuergoes a similar shift in Wilson ' s vast spectacles. Time is now atomizcd into uiscrete units. Percep tion is what interests both these practitioncrs of stagecraft, although in the former spatiaJ perception becomes paramount. while in Wilson to perceive in time does so. For him , to pcrccive in timeis to see how the very act of perceiv ing and what is being perceiveu undergo a change. In this respect, of course, Wilson's enterprise belongs to the natme of quantum mechanics where the very act of observation changes the reality of that which is bcing observeu. lt may seem ouu that in Wilson time is atomized , since what we experience in his stagings is the elongation 01' time stretcheu out over an infinitely long continuum. In essence, what seems paradoxical is not the case, beca use by extenuating time we become conscious ofeach passing moment oftime. Per ception in time, with a nod to the nature oflight, is what resulted in Einstein 's theories of relativity , with his famous example of clocks that slow down , and other bewildering parauoxes. In Wilson's use of time dilation one suspects a certain coming to terms with a similar relative nature of time. Once the relative natme of time is positeu in the Wilsonian theatre , simul taneity of experience also enters the theatrical matrix. While there are always crucial densities of experience concentrateu in space in Foreman 's theatre , with action contemplated at a uistance anu movement transposeu from one area of the space to another, in Wilson's theatre spaee is not so uistinctly demarcateu. The relative nature of time allows Wilson to portray uifferent actions at different places that may not be visible from either location anu yet taking place at the same time and within the same structure of theatrical experience (as he uiu in Jran with a week-Iong production spreau out over vast distances or as he continues to do in the vast confines 01' his stagings). AI1 ofthis begins to look very much like the uiscontinuous nature ofreality that q uantum mechanics revealed to physicists in the first half ofthis century. Observations on the path of atomic particles uisplayeu strange wave func tions that, in their motion , uemolisheu trauitional theories of continuity in the llniverse. So extreme were the mathematical formulations to uescribe the aberrant aod chaotic behavior offunuamental particles that causal principies had to be abandoneu in uealing with the precise location or momentum of these microscopic constituents of matter. The present could not be preuicteu on the basis of the past, and knowleuge orthe present was of no help in ueter l1lining lhe fllture direction a particle might lake. Loss of continuity in terms 01' 1cmporality a ml Jircctio na lily openeu up visions of a fluid, changing anu inlcJ'c hangea blc(;()nstrllc t or n:u lily. 1t is Ihe rea lily o r a Wil son spectaele, where hisllll·ic ll su hjcc ls, ¡')criods :1 11 ilila k alld ina nimah.: li li.: mcld inlll onc ¡(Ilolher.

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Ptlh:, ing al"lilllls lake place (1 11 a WiI:-,ol\ stagc, l~ach lolally separa le fmm ,lIl' olller a lld llllilCd onl y by lh e passage ortilllc, which in tllrn is different for I".ldl (lhsl'rvér . This Icads to the slIbjectivity (as opposeu to the Foremanesque , ,, Iipsislll) Ihal is al lhe hearl 01' Wilson 's project. He uoes not aim for a 1'\"ln: plion lllal is elear and distinct; in fae!, to daydream al his theatre is .,'\.'11 as an assd by Wi1so11 himsc1f. This again has bearing 00 the nature , ,1 sl1l1uJtancily. Ilow can it be possiblc, he seems to be asking, that while per 1,·lvil1g a given material stimuli our minus eontinue to urirt onto visualizing IIlw ~mlly other images of reality? Js there a surreal rea1ity of which we are \uhlil11inally awarc even when confronteu with objective reality'? Taken to its n ln'l11c, what is questioneu here is the smallest unit of time in which a IhllUI',lIt ¡¡rises in our mind in pure isolation , without further eontamination ,,1 otllcr lcvc1s 01' thought-experience anu simultaneity. Th ese qllcstions are II11W being increasingly posed by brain researchers through stuuies in Neuro IlIl't ries, evokeu response patterns, and the fascinating stuuy of P300 (or P3) \\la ves, lhc last a time-baseu stuuy of neural firing that attempts to ueterminc lite prccise moment at which a thought is formeu anu cmanateu. In adJition , the very tenuous nature oftime and the consequent simultane 1I y (Ir spatial configurations leau to the amorphous q uality of Wilson 's stage I'iclllre in contrauistinction to the angularity of Foreman's stagings. One '\l uId cven say that circularity is what further uefines Wilson 's stagc experi IIIL'nls. (In fact , it is no coineiuence that he collaborateu with Philip Glass, \IIJy de Groat, anu the repetitive, albeit angular, dancc structure of Lucinua ( 'ltilds, each of whom uisplays a concern for fluidity through repeatedly "' I1l11css gestures in time of unitizeu spatial movement.) Each repeateu move IIlcnl is seen anew at a uifferent time scheme, perceiveu accoruing to patterns, Iltl' rccognition 01' which is increasingly being auvanceu as the means whereby WI.: gain know1euge of the \Vorlu arounu US o Pattern recognition , with its ', pa lial and temporal attributes, has longattracteu stuuies in brain formation. J;rom an alternative viewpoint, Wilson 's blurring 01' space anu time is 1';[J'allc1eu in the sciences where space itself is cndowed with time attributes .llld vice-versa . J ust as the geometric mouel of the atom has given way to an ,1I11orphous cJouu picture vieweu more in terms of energy anu its spatial 11'11I)10ral ueflnitions, so too have Wilson 's spectac1es, whieh appear in our P"'lcl!plual mechanisllls with as much consistency as that 01' a uream or vlsion. ;\nd final1y , if space and time can so easily be interchangeu (not unlike IlIl' rael that 1ight also can be both a wave anu a partic1c). then is it not ppssihlt for alternative rca1ities to co-exist? TI1\': plura1ity and simultancity of rca1ities is what, I believe. continues to t,lsCin¡llt.: Wilson wilh the workings of physieally anu mental1y-impaireu drildrcn. IJi-- wi,) rk wi lh deaf a mI
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l'o tlld II lI ll lY/l' W II ~(l Il \ II H;all k al alld d,. lltld l u .,1111(1 111\' IÚ)1l1lhe Pl'IS[ll'C IIVe ofn H:d latl\)11 1.k1l:J'llIill\.!.u by hraill il1lpaill1 wII IS. II 0w, I01 il1slance, lIu hl'aill h Clll is r h c ri~ dysl'unc!i\)l1il1g or illlbalancc gellerale Ihe p()ssibility nI' cI11hracil1g 1Il.'W visionary (or other sensorial) ficlds'! Does sensory depriva lion in one arca lead lo a sensitizing of other pereeptual tools that in turn enect Ihe manner by which the brain assembles rcality? Already, deaf and blind people are being taught to "hear" and "see" through taetile bodily sensations, prosthesis that works through pattern recognition. And what ofbrain dysfunc tioning, where neural manipulation has allowed researchers to bypass the damaged portion of the cortex or lim bic system and th LIS resume a "normal" How of thought processes. O r indeed how the brain processes information in a manner that those possessed with " normal" brain growth coLlld perhaps never hope to attain. But evcn outside of tactile neLlral stimulation, is it possib1e to generate thought processes by appealing to other forms 01' stimulation (visual , audit ory, etc.)? Can Wilson 's success with Christopher Knowles, an autistic child, be laid to his being able to generate forms 01' pattern recognition that dre\' a mentall y introverted self, fixated on his own ego, to relate to the external world? What precisely goes on in our brains, and what constitutes the rela tionship between our sensory and cognitive facLllties, is a subject that both Wilson and brain researchers have chosen to e1aborate on , each in his own way. Conversely, did Knowles's spedfic neural arrangement lead to the arehitectural and sculptural models that are now the basic compositional units 01' Wilson's o\Vn theatre? Whatever the case, there can be no doubt that in his work on stage, Wil son has aligned theatre with the most advanced studies being conducted in science today .

* * * * * My assertions and spec ulations are offered to suggest that theatre (indeed all art) and science are not as divergent as is usually assumed. 11' Foreman belongs to the classical age of atomic physics, then Wilson seems closer in spirit to the ethos of quantum physics. I f the one age gave us Einstein, the other Bohr, it is not too far-fetched to speculate that the earlier age re-introduced Aristotle in our century, the latter Zen o. And pcrhaps Foreman 's insistence on space as the dominant attribute ofhis staging is a complex re-visioning 01' Aristotle's philosophic premises of a continuolls universe, whereas Wilson's emphasis on time and a discontinuous world reftect the paradoxes of Zeno's analysis 01' motion . Ideas exist in the world to be shared. And in any particular era, the most aLlventurous al·tists incorporate the advanced thought of their times (and all times) into their work . Thc mechanism 01' consciousness is fast becoming the final frontier al' sc ientiflc rescarch as epistemology reaches IInc>..plored hcights, and il is sma ll wondc r, then, 1hat two of the most serio us ;Jl'lisls wnrkinu loua v n.: llcl.'l Ihi ¡.; mI/de o finqlliry. 111

46

P ER FOR M ANCE ANO

P ROOUCTIO N

The relation between science as inquiry and science as cultural practice Roherl P. Crease ',,,,", ',': RIII,.,rt P. Crease, 711<' Play III Na/un': ¡o'x p erim el1(a(io/l as I'eljol'llw!lce. 111 01 1111111 IllIívcrsíl)' Pn:ss. ,('>9\ pp. 158 177.

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\ I lite c1ll1 of ehapter 3, I said that the absence of experimentation from our pll' lmc 01' science could be filled in \Vith the help of the theatrical analogy, , 11 Ihl' point-by-point comparison between scientific experimentation and 1Itl\ll rical performance. Perfo rmance has three principal dimensions: pres 1lI llI linll, rcpresentation , and recognition , and analogues of each 01" these \l/l' ll' discnvered in experimentatio n a nd elaborated in chapters 4 through r.' \\ Ilh too!s provided by the three thinkers discussed in chapter 2. ('hl' thcatrical analogy has allowed us to redefine experimentation philo ¡ll'hically . Expcrimt:ntation is a process of inquiry that seeks to make "I1I'1l0IllCna kn o wn through the performance 01' actions. Performances are ·,el. IIlcd by and for mem bers of a suitably prepared communilY, in response 111 /'/'/Ih!"lIllIlic .I'ilualion.\'. R econslruclion 01" those probl ematic situations I'I Vl·... risl.~ to a more assured , deepened , and enriched engagement with the \II.)lId . Illquiry is inlel"pretil'c, involving the development of the understand I lIp via Illnving in the her/11ell eUlical eire/e, two ve rsions of which may be .I 1', lcnguishcd: {('X { herm eneutics, involvin g textual interpretation , and uU ¡', ·/I/II'/II'I/tic.\" , involving the performance of actions. Problema tic situations (Il' H'Cil lls1 rUl:ted via recognition of phenomena that appear in performance: l. tt- ill)'. Ilhjeds ;lnd cvents as instances of phen0111ena is the cul{ural alfilUde ni ,,('iC ll\.:c. 1 \: frO flllall ~eS have th ree principal and related dimension s: (1) they are ¡ illlul ly cxe~\Il ed act ións, or p rc'.\'C'l1 l al io/ls; (2) Ihey are actions in which 1 'I 'III;lblv 11I cpa rcLl l.'()ltlllltlllil y s\!\,;k s Ihe 1'I '('ogllitioll \)(" phenomcna; and 11

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proven remarkably inconsjstcnt over the years even in the hands 0 1' rell ow lled commcn tators, ami o bject that in science l11l1ch more object Ihe cval ua lion 01' expcrimcnls is available. BII ! whcn the ive crilcrill

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11.I~kgl " IIIHI COIII l.!x l is slall í!,l1 dl /l'd "'ÍIII ICS pCCt tn C4 UIPl11l'IIt, tcchniqllcs, • \ I h:~ 1; 1Iji lll il , Wüys llf rCL:o ru i IIg ;¡ li d ~() ron 11, t IIcrc a re indecd sharcJ proced 11ft', \Vi 1h ill tIl c sciCllli lic COIllIIIII n ity rOl' cvalual ing what is a good cx periment. 1111 1 IlIes\.! arl~ no! always prcscnL and in that cvent a play 01' perspectives \\ 1I1 prudllcc wntrovcrsy as each individual relies on a difforcnt experience , In lll tl illtancc wil lJ proccdures, advice 01' friends, hunches about proper 11 1\ IIlllds and direction orthe field , and so on. Anyone who doubts this should ,1 111'11 11 ;1 lIIeeting of a laboratory program committee faued with the task of I' k r l i11 /,\ rrolll alllong several proposals the minority to be supported by the ].¡] I Finco cOll1pctition oftcn emerges among noted scientists and vast dis 11'1 q; lIll~nl over the vallle of each proposal. Shouting matches ha ve transpired 11('1 \Vco n em inent researchers over the value 01' new and unstandardized tcch llH llICS slIch as magnetoencephalography.' Similarly, while opening night Il'V It' WS 01' a new work are one thing, and subject to tbe idiosyncracies of the ind ividllal rcviewers, there are cases where a standardized background con Ir, 1 l'xis!s say, at a graduate school evaluation or recital. In that case, it lis 111 ,;,:,ihlc lo put aside one' s temperament or personal indinations and achieve I e l )IISl'I1SlIS. " \ JlCrilllental performances thus lead to the disclosure of new entities in I,¡] ,oralllry and other situations. These new entities may be related to already I.lIlIiliar entities: the laboratory phenoll1cnon of electrons may be related to )ll' hllling, for instance , or the laboratory phenomenon of optical refractiol1 "lid rcllcction may be related to rain bows . Bul these familiar entities are 11 1. 1 Ibllldions from the theory in an explanatory sense. When one under 1,IPlls Ihe scientific account 01' a rainbow, one experienees somcthing new

\11 ;Iccollnt of the behavior of light under certain conditions - that is now

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11 phellolllenon , namely, 01' the rcflection and refraction of ¡ight rays in .11 o Jlkls 01' water. ( ¡ivell a sufricicnt level of abstraction , then, both thea!rical and scientific t\ 1ivil Y ex hibit a similar structure involving an interaction betwecn world, )lcd t Hmancc, and audiencc. Just as the dramatic world changes in part by I 1II Il':I I cvalllation of pcrforlllances and in part by changes in the external 111'11 / 011 . d iciting a demand for new scripts and new theatrical performances, ,11 I hl' sci L:ll t itic world changes in part by evall1ation of experimental perform 'r.',"" :l lId alsl) in part by ch a nges in thc external horizon, eliciting a demand 11 o! II l'W l h c \l rÍl~s ami new ex perimcntal performances. Vitality is defined not IIV ¡III Y tinal ach icvclllcn ls ill this proccss 01' intcraction , but by continued t1111 11 11l i.

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I'nldud imt Whik: <1 general cllaracLeriza li o n 01' pe rforlllance C Ih r~e principal dilllclIsinns. another importanl structure is addressed by product;o/'l. 2 A phenomenon does not lend itself to all cin:umstances, and Iends ¡tselr difrerenlly to ditTerenl circumstances; it belongs to different eircum slances di ffcre ntly. Rontgen 's X rays present lhemselves through glowing screens in some eireumstances and exposed photographic plates in others; the rays are, we might say, differently produced. Ir one somehow were able to "replay the tape" 01' this episode, thoroughly erase everything lo a point in time a number 01' years prior to November of 1895, and let lhe tape run again with all the decisions and actions fre e lo occur differently, X rays might well have presented tbemselves to someone other than Róntgen in a different formo Production thus plays a crucial role in experimenta l inquiry. In theatre, the need for a production arises Crom the fact that, by itself, a script or score is but an abstract testimonial to the possibility 01' a perform ance. To realize a performance, a number of decisions have to be made and aets aecomplished in advance to specify and creale the circumstances. Advance deeisions involve aspects Iike casting, props. staging, blocking, and costumes; advanee actions include securing funding, obtaining a theatre, and drawing up a production schedule. Similarly, theories are but abstract testimonials lo the possibility of thc presence of phenomena. Theories do not specify, ror example. when or where a phenomenon is to take place in a lab. The process 01' experimental produc tion force s a researcher to make a number of decisions and to accomplish a number of actions in advance of an actual experiment in order to create the environment or special context in which the phenomenon may appear. Ad vance decisions involve choice 01' collaborators, site, equipment, timetable, and design; advance actions indude securing funding, necessary permissions, Iining up contractors if necessary, and drawing up organizational plans and schedules. This environment or special contexl then provides a stable content to the runs or performances 01' that experiment, making it possible to speak 01' repeating runs and even 01' repeating experiments; the lalter wOLlld occur if, e1sewhere, the same set 01' decisions regarding the phenomenon were to be made and the same environment recreated. (In theatre, too, speeifie pro ductions 01' a show as opposed to the show itself can be revived in a similar manner.) And just as there may be different "runs" of one preparation, there may be different ways 01' "producing" the same phenomenon. I mentioned the vari ous ways Rontgen produced his X rays: in modern physics the productions can be much larger in scale. The Glashow-Weinberg-Salcm electroweak theory, rol' in!;tance , le nL ilSclf to several different kinds of productions: of neutral currcn ls. 01" lhe sca llering 01' polarized e1ectrons, and 01' atomic pru'ity viola lion dlcels Tht:s~ omuun h:d 10 Ihrcc d irti!renl ways u f producing the same

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I'mcc. 1111 th~' busis \11' a sillgle Ihcory. I'lOdllCli o l1 rcqllircs LlII~; lo nperale in a concrele social conlext, and any i.· \l' lIl " prod llccd " lhcrerore is shaped by political, environmenlal, economic, ,lIld p.~yL'h()lllgical faclors. Even dcciding lo build a laboratory or observat !t, y 111 a specific place is the outcome of such factors. The site selection for a IIhll lcrn scicntific laboratory is inevitably él protracted and highly political plOéCSS. A long list 01' scientific, environlllental , and pol itical factors were la"ell illlo account in the planning 01' Brookhaven National Laboratory, for IlIslallCC, incuding the consideration that the new laboratory, lhe rirst in the Nllllheast region orthe United States with a nuclear reactor, be an overnight I1 :till ride rrolll the univcrsities involved in its planning. J Once constructed alld L'ollllllissioned, laboratories then beco me part of the "world" of seience, pu rl (Ir Ihe available sites where certain kinds 01' experimenlal performances ":llIlake place. At this point, other sets orsocial factors come into play in the 1" m:licc 01' science, each 01' which could become the theme 01' an inquiry in its "WI1 right. At any given time , thousands ofexperiments might be performed; 1I~llinnal laboratories and observatories are swamped with proposals for ,' \pcril1lents, and can accommodate only a fraction of the requests for lab IIIII~' put to them. The choice is dictated by a variety 01' motives, including the It: plllalions 01' the scientists who make the proposals (including how quali 11\'11, rdiable, and easy to work with they are), the faeiJities ofthe laboratories, Ihe aims 01' the laboralories, the ability 01' a team to draw outside funding, .!lld other factors such as the desirability 01' international collaboration. Nnt all sites may be available or have the appropriate facilities. Anyone wishing to arrange a series of astronomical observations. for instance, has a I'Iloice of observatories to approach with different capabilities; moreover, Ih\'sc observatories are generally oversubscribed and one may be forced to wllrk with a less convenient site to gain time on a telescope. SimiJarly, some ,'IlC wishing to produce an experiment in high-energy physics has only a small 1IIIIIlbcr oflaboratories with large partide accelerators from which to choose, ,11111 evcn if one's proposal is approved one must compete for beam time with IIlh\~ r llngoing experiments. Here again, a Iess convenient site may be more :lvililahle. One factor. however, is inevitably a judgment about the pressing : ;l'i~'lllilic qucslions 01' the day and which 01' the proposed experiments best :uldn:sscs them. AII cxperimental production also embodics an entire set of judgments ,1I'l1l11 how that phenomenon is to appear in an experimental performance. I he ("ashow-Weinberg-Salem e\ectroweak theory was a " script" with a variety 111 possihlc performances; experimental productions could involve vastly dlll'crclIl conlexls in whieh these performanccs might take place (nalional I.dH )l'iI lori~;s , or at the ho llol11 l)r Jeep mines), each of wruch called 1'01' vast ly ddle l ~1l1 insl rllmcnlal ion . f'lllld ing, ami pcrsonnel. T he simplest Grand Uni 11l'c1 1'Ilcory, M I Ih \! nLlJcl 1I :llId wa s a scripl wilh fcw possiblc pcrform ances \\Il'.Ik

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)lnlúJ11J;llln: h~ lI lg pW11l1l dl'cay . Sev e ra l groups of sd~n t is l s workillg in di ffcl'crIl rroJucll ll ll s jlHlvcd unable to excclllc pcr fnrJll anccs in these cnvirOll ments, slIggcsling that the script had to be reviseu. Moreover, in produeing an experiment one must choose and work with a set of available or promising tcchnologies , a set of personalities, available money, contracts and reglllations, and so forth. Questions arise: Can it be done cheaply enough? Can these peoplc work well together? Is the schedule realistic? Are supplies available'! Are the techniques reliable enough? Can one work within the prevailing regulations and restrictions-·-involving, for instance, handling and disposal of radioactive materials , union regulations, research on human or a nimal subjects? Production may require considerable ingenuity. It is desirablc when using lead shiclding for cosmic ray experiments, for instance, to have the \cad refined to eliminate naturally occurring radioactive isotopes. Refining i::; expensive, however, and e1ever experimenters seeking to bring in their projects under budget have from time to time turned to other sources, ineluding old lead coffins, and lead ingots from lhe cargo of ancient Roman sailing vessels . This illustrates ingenuity in production for budgetary reasons; ingenuity is also frequently needed to create the very conditions in which a phenomenon v.'ill appear. Such ingenuity characterizes a good experimenter, making it possible for that experimenter to " reach " a result before someone else. Con sider, for instance, the cosmic ray studies based on analysis of rat mine. The middens or nests of desert rats consist of a jumble of sticks, garbage, and other material that then becomes drenched in the animals' urine. Such middens have been preserved for thousands and even tens of thousands of years , and are treasure troves for biologists sludying plant Jife thousands of years ago . They have also been used for cosmic ray studies. Cosmic rays passing through the atmosphere change argon atoms to chlorine-36, which is then taken up by plants , eonsumed by animals , and discharged in urine; the amount of chlorine-36 in urine is thus an indicator ofthe cosmic ray flux. By examining the chlorine-36 conlent at various Icvels 01' a rat midden , scientists have been able to obtain a reading on the cosmic ray flux at various points in the Earth 's recent history . In this case, it is not a matter 01' a e1ever production decision (in creating the righl environment in which to seek profiles ofa phenomenon) makin g the appearance of a phenomenon to scientists economical- it is a matter of a e1ever production decision devising the conditions in whil:h the phenornenon can appcar at all. Personal style is often involved in production; it \Vas a factor , for instance, in the choice ofwhich large experiments to construct at the Sllpercondllcting Supercollider.'l Prodllction is also the dornain examined by the sociology 01' sciem;e, s uch as whet.he r scientific aClivi ty is norrned by particular kinds of \'allles, r resurrosi tin ns, anJ l11()n:s. ()IIC may get the imp ression nowadays lllal Ihinus likc t:lIl1lpc li li\ln. rcr;¡)naltlil.!!>, palc nls, and pllhlicity ~xist only in ¿i"c lI (l ,,·...clI l · day ills l fl lIlH' ll til ll011

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sciC IH.'I.!. hlll tll t:y lla ve iI 1\llI lIalivl' ruh; in go()d sdc ncc as wd!. [t is II lIpOI tant, hllwcvcr. In sce tltci r rolc in tltc experimental inquiry; namely . in I'IlJllllcti\ln . \Ir in tlll' se! uf' dccisions and actions that have to be executed klll r\! cx pl~rilllenlal perf'onnallces take place. 1)\1 :Inccdlllcs about the role 01' such things as ingenuity , personality. and l'( lllIpctition truly reveal something essential about sciencc? Only someone IH 'lwlcssly lúive about scientific activity can answer in the negative . Re 1.·;lIcltcrs are not interchangeable parts so that it Illatters little whether A or B ,nlldlll:ts
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T" e í.,'¡)fH,'cpts \, 1' performaní.'1.: lInd produdi on thus allow a hettm' undcrstand ing \JI' the inll: rrdati on 0 1' seien cc as inquiry and science as cultural practice. Th liS , to our Iist 01' dcfinitions a t the begi lllling of the chapter, we m ust add that perform ances are p/'oduced by a set 01' decisions and actions executed in advance 01' the performance. The anli/'lomic character 01' performances of any sort is that they are simultaneoLlsly o/'ltolog;cal, 01' concerned with the real prcsence ami disclosure of invariants in the world , and p rax ical, or shaped by human cultural and historical forces. The antinomic character of science gives rise to the temptation to overemphasize one of two diffcrent aspects; its objcctivity (invariant structure) on the one hand, and its social construction on the other. 80th tcmptations should be resisted , for performance involves the coworking 01' each . Any appropriately structured inquiry into science at some point must iden tify the various social, historical. cultural , and economic factors involved in the practice ofscience, amllocate their proper place. This inquiry uses the theatrical analogy as a preliminary way of recognizing these factors , and to model their interaction. It would be as Oluch of an error to ignore the presence of such factors as it would be to reduce the activity of science to them. The traditional philosoph y of science has taken the former path, supposing that social, cultural , and historical inftuences either do not exist or that they are unimportant. Social constructivists and cpistemological relativists, on the other hand , have chosen the latter path, considering socio-historical-cultural factors to be detenllinative. They underplay the constraints placed on the deve10pment of scientific experimentation and inquiry by the necessity to achieve the real presence ofscientific phenomena in the laboratory as achieved through readable technoJogics. The theatrical analogy exposes the na'iveté of both approaches. The unsophistication 01' someone who asserts that the theatrical world is exclusively about explorations of the Meaning of Human Existence is as evident as the cynicism of someone who claims that it is al1 politics or personalities. The point, 01' course, is that both views are right to an extent. The theatrical analogy, in conjunction with the schema of prag matic henneneutical phenomenology, al10ws us to perceil'e the situation aright. to reco/lsliwle our perception 01' scientific experimentation, and to notice that scientific phenomcna, Iike those 01' theatre, takes place amid a complex interaction of internal and external horizon s. Scientific experimentation is at once ontological and praxical , indebted alike to Being on the onc hand ami history and culture on the other. The ideas pertaining to production and performance outlined above al10w us lo describe conveniently the existence of different ways in which a scientific Teseareh program may be conducted. First of al1, it may be directed to loo k ing 1'01' the th(!0ry he hind tl series oI'repeatab1e performances- performances Ihal cx pc ri rnCIlLl!rs I-. n(IW how lo pr \!rll rl~ c\>n sistently. Rontgcn 's efforts (and I: ¡

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!lh)"~' 1I 1 hi s Clll\h: mpIlrilrics) IOIlIl J \.' I/;tll lld whal \Vas ma king h is scilltill"lion r.¡: I l'l.' lI p,low is all CX il lllp1c (, !'thilo l-.inJ 01 resc.arch programo In such research, ""'PI isls :II C looking to writc thc thcory l' r ~cript, as it werc, for a series 01' PI" IO IIlI:IIICl'S that have becn consistcntly executed. A successful writing 01' 11\1' S l ' l ipt pn,:sllll1ably would show the possibility 01' perfo rmances in other I 1ll' llIlIslam;cs, and possibly 1ead to their standardization. S\'l'IlIld, scientilic rescarch may be directed to preparing a performance for 1I Il' lirsl timc. In more traditional language, this would be "discovering" a 1'1 1l.' II!IIllCnOn predicted by theory . Seeking a subatomic particle predicted by 1hl'o ry is an example of this kind of research. liere, ex perimenters are lookin g lo I'>CC whcther a certain performance can be achieved , so to speak, on the 11oI~¡s 01'
Science as inquiry and as cultural practice !'he model of scientifie activity as involving the distinctio n between perform ,lIll'l' and production abo helps to signal the dangers of overstressing aspects Ll ll'xperilllentation. One mistake in an inquiry into theatre, for instance, is to 1IH.: 11 S too much on the script, viewing the performance as a species 01' demon :; II;¡ Iion or ornamentation , Equally Illisguided is the approach that focuses !tI\) Illllch on the cultural and historical context in cxplaining the meaning .,ra performance. Imagine a drama critic ab1e to account for each ami every •lI.'lail nI' performance or, say, .JUlillS C(tesa/', as a function of political and social L\l'lors. Altbough the army uniforms and boots \\IOrll by the Roman actors in ( '1 son Wclles's 1935 production can be explained as part of lhe thcatre wo rlJ 's hnrrified reactio ll to the spectre 01' fascism then rising over Europe, it \>VtI\t1J he a mistakc to rcd u l.'~ the production to an antifascist diatribe . Some , 111 ics d iú so, 01' COl\ I"'C. nul Wc lks's J I/liu.\' ('ac',I'a/' was a play, anJ not only a '.Ii l t 01' 111l.:a tri.:a l np-cd pie\.'\: n.: ,~ p\llldill g. to lhe spccifi c po1ilical context: 1'.1

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indcéd, il \Va s IlIc .\'(////(' play IlIal hall appeared in many other political con lexls ami beclI spokt:n in a difieren! way in each. Silllilarly, sciencc is not just Iheory, for theories are fragile ; they are theor ies ojperformances and the aim is lo represent the phenomenon that puts in an appearance in performance. Nor is science only data , for data are fluid ; data are descriptions of the way something appears in a particular context, and science is interested in the phenomenon that appears rather than merely how it appeared. Science is not just the production of literar1' texts, as " laborator1' studies" peoplc often would have it, for these texts are aecounts of pcrformances or the preparation for such performances, Science is not j ust about the domination and control of nature, for performances ínvolve not mastery or control but play, Nature is no! infinitely plia ble, not a11 perform ances are possible. and one must engage Nature to " play along" in order to discover the rules of that play. Science is not just about economic or polit ical praxes, as social studies of science scholars occasionally imply, nor is il about the c1ash of ambítiou$ personalities, as some journalism would have it, because these relate only to the social dimension involved in the prepara tion of performances; experimentation is a fJoiesis , or a bringing-forth of some phenomenon through praxes, One could just as legitimately c1aim that theatre is about box office, or the clash of ambitious personalities, or the desire for fame or power, and so forth, Social forces have theír place in the appearing of phenomena in performance, but if human beings were not interested, fascinated , and preoccupied by the perforlllances, they would not happen. If we víew scientific activity without the productive aspect , as pos itivism attempted to do , then we have no understanding of the role of social and historical forces al work in it. If, on the other hand, we view science without the performance aspect ami concentrate wholly on the productive aspect, as the social studies ol' science scholars often do, then we are ín danger of seeing in science onl1' the arbitrary clash of forces, I t would be Iike flying over a soccer game in an airplane sufficiently high up so that one can see the compctitors but not the ball; the players will seem to ebb and flow in a series of interesting beh aviors exhibiting many difterent patterns--patterns that could be described empirically in great detail--but the key element thal would allow us to grasp the real meaning of the game would be invisible, Consider, as ao example, the light that Ihe performance-production model sheds on the controversy over the nature, desirability, and dangers of " Big Science," which involves scientific production, Alvin Weinberg, then director ofOak Ridge National Laborator1', coined the phrase in a 1961 article entitled " lmpact of Large-Scale Science on the United States."s Ever since, "Big Science" has been a stanJ a rd term in the lexicon of those who write a bout scicnce, Iho ugh no t ulways with Ihe sume connotations. W hile Wcinberg, for instant e, was call1ionary ahoul Ihe prospecl anJ strcssed the da ngcrs ofl arge ~c i en l ilic prujecls. othcrs wele clIl h usiaslk; and elllph a~ i7.cd 1I1l' o pporllln il i\:s . T\lday, " lJ ig Sck'llc\'!" is f.l'll cra lly lJscd as a tcrm (Ir o ppl\lhd1lJ II ,

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I,alge scicntilic projecls pose cerlain dangcrs , Weinbcrg wrote, including '1lIOm:1'ilis" (cxpending mone1' not thought), "jo urnalitis" (public rather litan scicntilic debate on plojects), and "administratitis" (an overabllndance IIf ad1l1inistrators), He criticized the 1l1anned space program for "hazard, ex pense, and rclevance," and was unenthusiasüc about large accelerators, which werc more scientifically valid but equally remote from human con l'lTns. Ile wondered whether such projects would sap reso urces of seienee and ~;()cicty, and proposed redirecting money to "scie ntific issues which bear more directly on human well-being. " Weinberg's aim, however, was not to cast IlIdglllent but to inaugurate "philosophic debate on the problems of scientific \"Iloice."r, Big Science, he felt, introduces new issues into science policy that Illllst be exposed and addressed lcst they be settled by default at the expense ..1' scientiflc "productivity" (note that this word has a different Illeaning from \Vllat I have called " production ," but the use 01' both terllls in this chapter is IIl1avoidable), But additional issues have appeared in the intervening years ;lIId Ihe debate over the value of Big Science and its impact on productivity has continued unabated ,7 Productivity is notoriously difficult to measure and even define, regardless •lf the field. Consider agriculture, for instance, where the definition and dl'tcrmination ofproductivity might seem, erroneously, to be re1atively straight l. llward.' To take a simplistic exalllple, a farmer faced with a choice 01' wha.t 1.. plant on a particular plot of land could decide to maximize Illonetary JlI olit, number of calories per acre, amount of protein per acre, sccurity of the harvest, number of calories per Illan-hour 01' labor, prestige of tlle farm , and ',11 I"orth , There is, in short, no single index 01' productivit1', Each option Illl'nlioned is guided by a difTerent set of possible values which puts into play ;1 dilTerent index ofproductivity and suggests a different crop, In practice, of .'I)1lrSe, no sole value would likel1' be given entire priority and the actual 1 IIllcome would be some compromise. 111 science, the matter is further complicated beca use, Weinberg says, the product," the understanding of and ability to manipulate nature, can be ~'v: lll1aled by two differeut kinds of measures which he called "i nternal" ami \'.\ll.'l'I1al" criteria . lnternal criteria "arise from within the science itself, or 11I11Il its social structure and organization," while external criteria "stem from I hl' social or other setting in which the science is embedded. "9 Neither kind, in 111111, involves a single index of productivity; within each set different possible l':rllIl:S can be identified implying different indices. 111 practicc, as the working scicntist knows only too \Vell, the decision of wllidl scientiric projccts to support is the outcome of a highly political pl OIXSS gcnc rally invol ving compromises between a number of different Inle rnal anJ exlern al values, Moreover, the social neg()tation involved takes 1,1 :r ~' e 011 :J l1 ulllhcr 01" di lTcrcll1 leveh, Science, for insta nce, competes \Vith a Illllllhl.: r 01' olller acl ivi lies Ilt at ;rlso are pcnJeived lo be 01' SOJ1)e economic, IlIili!;II>,. l"IllllIraL 111 pl1l llk: rI V;rlIIC Withill :\cicncc. in turn, a competition '1

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...,i!-:Is 101 ~"IPlll'll :JIIH'lIg its dil le lcllt hr;l lI dll:~ , slId l ;1:; p;lIlldl' physics, ()I,;Can llg l:J (lll y, aslfOllonl y, l'lIenll sl ry . lll olccuJa r biology, anJ gcu log)' , alllong olhcrs. caeh wilh ils own pc rccivcJ value . "nlC com pt!titiun continues within cal,;h braneh. \Vhere dilTcrent projects are rivals for available resources. The Big vs. Littlc Scienee debate, \Vhich is alI about that aspect of scientific activity that I have ealIed production. \Vas spawned by the fear that the emergence of large scientific projects threatens to skew an otherwise healtby competition on alI levels and to distort the \Vay values are applied to evaluate projects. A large project in one branch, it \Vas feIt, could soak up money that might be shared by several smaller but equalIy valuable projects. M oreover, a large project in one branch might get out of hand and wind up unfairly expropl'iating resollrees otherwise destined for other branches- or even for \Vorthy nonscientific activities. In recent years, the percentage of the total re search and development budget consullled by largest projects has increased. 'o It is lIndeniable, as Weinberg foresaw, that this development has changed the way scientific experiments are condllcted, and the conventional wisdom is that it has brought about the impact of what Weinberg calIed external values on their planning and execution. '1 But the matter can be elaborated in a clearer way , I think, by reforlllulating Weinberg's distinction as that between science as perfórmance and as pro dUCfion. An experiment, 1 have argued , is a kind of performance, lInderstood in the broadest sense of an action executed to see what happens in order to satisfy an interest. In science, the actions are those of instrllments interacting with nature. and the interest is connected with a specific inquiry into natural strllctures. The performance values of scienee are those that promote the skilled execution 01' experiments, and include how welI an experiment is thought out, the quality of the investigators, and the relcvance of the experi ment to the principal direetion s 01' the f1eld . Prodllction, on the other hand, refers to the interaction between planners and the particular social, political , technological, and economic context required that a performance may take place. Production values 01' science can inelude social and economic returns for society, improved instrumentation, international cooperation, and national prestige. The distinction between performance and production values in science is crucial and must be born in mind at a time when so much of science threatens to dissolve into politics. But it is misleading to imply, as Weinberg does, that productioll is "extelllal " to science, givcn the essential place 01' production in scientific activity. More over, more performance values exist than the t\\fO (" ripeness for exploitation" amI "caliber 01' the practitioners") Weinberg mentions as internaL and a wider range 01' possible production values than the three external species he idcn tifies (technological merit, social merit, and scientific merit). O ne issue high lightcJ by the pe rfo rm a nce-prodllction distinction is the cxiSl l1nce (jf dil"IC rc nt models fór Big Scicncc in va rio w; arcas inv olvi ng dra l1 lL11il,;illl y dil"li.:re l1 l n.:IUli"ll s hctwcclI prOl.h lcti o"n and pc ri"olfll ancc. The 11

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SlI pl'll'o ndlll'tillg S \l pcre~)II¡d c l . 111 1 IlIslallce. is a large instnll1l\:nl serving a II 'blivdy sll1all nUl11h0l- of cxperilllenls with low divcrsity; synchrotron radia 11 11 11 f:.lci lilies providc centraliz eJ staging areas for n lImerous small maximally d lVl.' rsc l'xpc riments; the genome project is a noncentralized coordination of .lIl:1 l1n elTorts. Optical teIescopes are another special case, due to the avail 1IlIIity ofprivalc money. The community spectrum served, the kinds ofrisks, ,lIul Ihc potential returns are so varied as to involve in each case a different ~ ¡nd uf productivity- and a dilTerent meaning 1'01' " Big Science." A second issue highlighted by this distinction involves risks that accrue t 111111 the ract that the time it takes to complete present-day productions can he so extended ·-over a decade- that interim changes in the seientiflc world l':1I1 alter the productivity 01' the eventual ex periments. Tbe speed, quality, ,llId rdcvanee 01' a certain k ind 01' experimental production may change in the 11I11e it takes to complete one, possibly rendering it obsolete. The factors IIIvulved may be 01' three sorts: technologieal breakthroughs, eompletion 01' "Ihel' projects, and new information. In the years since construction bcgan on Ihe Ilubble Space Telescope, for instance, developments in auaptive optics IIIC-reased the resolution 01' ground-based observatories, other " windows" have been opened in the electromagnetie spectrllm, and the general body of aslronomical knowledge have aIl changed, forcing changes in the original "slimations of the produetivity of the deviee. "l"hird , the increased size 01" productions means increased government illvolvement not merely beca use the more resources a society has to sheIl out l"nr them means a grea ter expectation 01' return, but beca use of a greater social ¡Illerest in the way the interac.tions are handled. Larger productions attract IIIMe attention to the potential impact on the environment, considerations Ilf national security and industrial competitiveness, accountability and the IIllportance 01' guarding again st sueh things as fraud, collusi on , inefficieney. alld so forth. M oreover, the larger the scale of a production the greater the klllptation to use it as a vehicle for advaneing social ends; governmental illslitutions may insist, for instancc, that scientific projects follow "Buy Amer kan" and minority business provisions. 12 Fourth , the realization ofa production might have social spinoffs that must he distinguished from the spinoffs 01' scientific knowledge itself. Technologies lIlay have to be developed 01' crea ted in the construction 01' a production that CIIl be successfully transferred out of the laboratory. Constructing a state-of Iht~-art particlc detector, for instanee, is an immense production that forces ddcctor physieists, in order to create an instrument that \\fould be at the cutting edgc for the maximum period of time, to develop new technologies. In the l'll\lrse 01' the eonstruction of one particle detector a number of years ago , st:icntists taught a company that made, among other things, teddy bear whiskers IImv to make high-precision plastics needed for the detector in exchange for an l"l'ollomical mte ; the prod uclivc skills acq uired b y lha t cOlllpany in the process Ihen ¡¡11!lwed il lo COlllpct C sUliccssflllly for militar)' contracts. So rne attempts q

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IlIlVC h l'l' lI 1 1I; ,d ~' IIJ 11 Y 111 \)1I:llIliry spillolTs a tislll ~ 111 111 1 ,ll l' n ," ~ lllIl'IiOI1 01' hig lH': IlCIgy ph Y:l k ... \.:1>111 HICls, 1\ This k illd 01' prod ucllo ll n:I "I ~d spilloll is lo be clJlltrastcd wil h pcrlú rlllancc-rdatcd spino lls lha l are a n ollll:ollle 01' the knowlcdge gaincd -- forcxamplc , thc discovcry orthc X ray, lascr, and 11ssion_ I:inally, thc aims ora production may not be fulfillcd by the performances_ It has oftcn been the case that the technological implications 01' the most important and far-reaching discoveries, most no toriously those ofthe X ray, nuclear fission , and lascr, have had nothing to do with the aims ofthe research programs in which they were first encountered. A similar comment cOllld be made regarding scientiflc merit ; while in some cases discoveries and devel opments in one field do Ilnd immediate use in neighboring branches, in other instances the applications come lInexpeütedly from far afield. The same is even true 01' the social va Iue of a project; many of the breakthrollghs in the ',",.velr on cancer" came not from projccts targeted specifically ror that purpose by President Richard Nixon 's legislation, but from various and apparently unrelated work , including research on yeast , Xenopus, Drosophila , and Caenorhahdilis elegans. In retrospect. it is fortunate that funds for such projects had not been diverted to the \Var on cancer effort. U ndertaking a production --e.g., a \Var on cancer, on AIDS, on high-tech space defenses does not g uarantee that the ambition will be fulfilled. Oeveloping the concept of production may thus help to c1arify many issues involved in Weinberg's " philosophic debate on the problems 01' scientific choice" by allowing us to recognize more features of the process of preparing and executing an experiment than emerge in most discussions of the iss ue . Like the general analogy between the sciences and the theatrical arts of which it is a part, the analogy with production helps guide development 01' a language with which to speak about experimental activity that enables one to assign a place both to the cultural and historical contexts that influence experimental activity (and which, for instance, are stlldied by social con structivists) and at the same time to the invariants that show through such contexts in that activity (on which postivists and scientists themselves rightly place so much emphasis). The analogy helps to sho\V how scientifk activity can both exhibit the presence of social factors without being reducible to it. The result is to c1arify the much-misunderstood relation between science as inquiry and science as cultural practice. Thus, the benefit of replacing Weinberg's distinction between "internal" and "external" criteria with that between performance and production is not merely that a fe\\' nuances are added, but that the new distinction brings lhe problem in q uestion ""ithin the purview 01' a more comprehcnsive picture of science itself.

Tmplications for narratives about science Phil os()phcrs have tended lo hold slory tclling, or Ihe organizalion 01' ma telÍal aholll ;¡ s ll h j~ct illlo a sill )!ltc! dcscriptiv\! crisode l"oll( )willg I"OlIghly '1'1

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ll'u hlY thl!}' un: rcllccting. Moreovcr, in il1litatin g one must heed appearance III t"~'1 than substancc a nd cater to one's audience, so that the product is not ,·Vl' lI all adcquatc imitation but a distortion rather than truth. Plato 's argu 1III'IIt stiIJ excrts force today, cspecially among so-called " new hi storians" who .lIdlllk Marxists. practitioncrs 01' the American c1iometric methodology, and IlIl'lIlhns 01' lhe french Annales school. Th ese groups disown storytelling, ·\llII lIlIillg descriptions of the particular and concrete in favor 01' "scientific" 14 111\'1 hods allegeuly able to yield more universal and eternal truths. The activity .11 Ihe storytellcr scems in contrast to be but a pale echo of truth rather than .1 discllvery or crcation of it. The storyteller appears to be in the position of p\¡ly ill).!, I\aron to Moses, passing on an already disclosed truth albeit in a /t' "1I more readily comprchensible to the public. Like M oses , the subject of the lalc told by the storyteller (who could be a primary lawgiver, explorer, Il'Iigious figure , artist , or scientist) has one fo ot in the sphere 01' the divine , Il.II licipating in primordial disclosure , bringing to ordinary mortals in the w"rld some previously undi sclosed know1cdge from the beyond. The story ,,·Ilcr. like I\aron, seems rel egated to the role of amanuen sis or mouthpiece, Ihe pcrson \Vho Iives Ilrst of all in the mundane world and who interprets 1'1 illlllrdial activity so as to make it accessible to the public, but is able to do ... unly by using distortion s, mediations, corruptions, descriptive meta phors , 1" IIHllar language. This attitude among historian s has its counterpart in a particular brced 01' IInv science histo ry practiced by social eonstructivists . .1 ust as advocates of Ihe "scientific" methods mentioned aboye, which are ultimately of posit ivist IIlspiration , tend towa rd a determinist view of history with an emphasis on ""l'ial and institutional factors, on the impersonal forces 01" demography, on Ih(' kading role of economics and politics, and so forth , while underplay lit!' the role of the culture of the group and of the wills of the group and IlIlhviduals, so these ne\V approaches to scicnce history also tend toward ,k h'nninism. emphasizing the role of technology , c1ass, social, political , and \ I"ollomic fadors \Vhile underplayi ng the role of individuals, the contribu 111 IIlS uf nature, and the impact of character and chance o Recently a renewed appreciation for the value 01' narrati ve among his 1,,, ialls has appeared. 15The new appreciation \Vas prompted by the awareness ,11 ;. t lIarrative is a tool able to disclose the "event-character" of human lite i" " way available to no other mode of presentation. As the organization of 11I1"nllation into a roughly sequcntial order exhibiting the decision s affecting .1 pll lh-dcpcnuent phenomcnon, a narrative is able to relate the contingent set loll h:l:isioIlS aclll all y made in él production with the appearance ofa phenom l'III .1I that appc ar~ ill a nd thwlI gh that prodllclion. A narrative is ideal for l \ "ihili n ~, in lllhcl'word s. ¡¡ rul h..d cpclldc lll Il ondassica l phcnomenon because ! 1 pll:Sllfl Is tIn: evollll io n \11 i1" " 1'1 .\:a I ;11 1t:\! aIOllg wi 1h t he CLlnt ine.cnt dccisions )~

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Ih al !l'IVl' IIse lo tll a l l'vllllll lO lI. 1111: prcvioll s rcl k l't ll ' IH, 1111 Ih l' lIalme 01' !X pl.:ri lll CIl la I10 11 ~lJ ggcs l l hc rrllillúltH':SS llrll1l' nanal ivc tCchlliqllc rOl" ullder standillg 11. A fully told slory oran experimenl, ror instance, might illVOlvc lhe weaving together of several different story Iines. 16 These incl ude: (1) a story of science itself, and why certain areas of science (weak interaction physics or nuclear cross sections, for instance) were seen as more crucial to pursue, more author itative, than others; (2) a story 01' the instruments used in this pursuil , each 01' whieh having its own story 0 1' development and produetion; and (3) a story 01' individuals who conceived , produeed, and executed the experiment, and how each 01' them carne to Jea rn what the important problems were and how they carne to anticipate the solutions they did. These are only the principal story lines; others inc1ude the stories 01' the various experimental tec1miques involved (bubb1e chambers, neutron scattering, etc,) and the stories of the laboratories where the experiment is conducted. One can pursue separately one or more 01' these story lines, of course. But a true narrative attempts to incorporate each , for as each evolved so did thc experiment. A narrative about a discovery made with a c10ud chamber- ofthe meson, say-might focus on technieal details ofthe apparatus used by the three teams that discovered it almost simultaneously. Or it might focus on production related factors such as the cultural and historical forces which led to the development of c10ud chambers, the institutions whose researchers were given the freedom to pursue such studies, or the journals whose different publication demands detennined the order of publication 01' the discovery papers. Or it might focus on the persona"lities and actions of the individual researchers. Each 01' these provides a legitimate perspeetive for writing a dis covery account, for any discovery made with a c10ud chamber is intelligible only as disc10sive 01' nature, within eomplex historical spaee, and as the aet of human beings. But it would be a mistake to limit the possibility of an account to one 01' these perspeetives: the "event-character" of the discovery process emerges only when each of these perspeetives are preserved. I t would be as if (me tried to tell the story of the assassination of Francis Ferdinand of11y in terms ofthe detonation 01' a charge in Gavrilo Princip's gun, the trajectory of the bullet, and its interference with vital life processes inside the archduke; or (mly in terms of Serbian nationalism ; or ol11y in terms of Princip's personal motives. narratives about scienee is A first implication of the previous ehapters thus that while narratives can be told about science that are located in one or more particular perspectives, such as individuals, science, institutions, equip men t, and production, science itse1f transpires tbrough the intertwining 01' al1 ofthell1. But t here is a deepe r implical ion, I think , having to d o nol with the conten! lowarJ s wh ich lhe a lten Lion 01" lhe scicllce historian is drawn b ut with the 1l1~l l1ner 0 1' cxcc uli~l l1 01' lile lIaná livc ilse l!". T hc conslrudioll oC a narrative is

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11.,1'1 1 all lIl"Il'arried 0111 ror Ihe p urposc o r disc10sing something about sciencc, ,dl"will g il In he witnessed ror il:; own sake. This suggests one further argu 1I1I'lllali wan a logy lhat narralives are yet another kind of performance. Ir 11. l1cey call be co nsidered to sharc many of the features about which I have .c1 I.... ady spllken . They are undertaken for the purpose of rendering present .lllI h:l1cillg bygone, and aim to tell notj ust any old story, but to disc10se some ¡ III II ).! abolll a phenomenon: science. They put on display that phenomenon 111 slIí:h a way that certain 01' its aspects, though possibly already familia.r \11 liS, sland out and can be contemplated, lingered over, pondered. Nar 1.llivcs are holistic in that a history is not a catalogue or compendium of one ,Ielu il arter another (which would overwhelm the narrative) , but a judicious ';I'k cl illn and interweaving 01' details rOl" the sake of disc1osure. Narratives ,IIL' prnhative (exploratory) in that one knows no! beforehand exactly what ,vi II he disclosed when one sets out to construct a narrative, and one allows IIl1l'sclr to be surprised: one is not constructing a narrative when one sets out tU lind confirming illustrations of a predetermined thesis. Narratives are IlIllvisory in that they are pcrpetually open to being revised; there is no final lIillTalivc about any episode any more than there is a final performance 01' a play llf final experiment in a certain area. Narratives are autboritative in that IIH'y demand acknowledgment by those engaged in inquiry into the event 111 question. They are situational in that they are re1ative to a certain state ,,( know\cdge and perspective: as the perspective or available information I'Ilanges, a ne\\' narrative m ay be called fo ro There is a primaey 01' perfOlm ,lIlce in narrative; one is not in full control of it, and must put oneself in the (', vice of the narrative. rhe holism of narrative is especially significant. Every detail is potentially II'vealing. I was once involved , for instance, in a heated discussion about the disdosive value of eandied Mexican hats. In a previous book, my coauthor ,lIId 1 had rclated a story of a bet made by a physicist tha t a eertain partic\e \\!o uld be discovered or he \\'ould eat his hat. The discovery was duly made, ;11111 al a subscquent conferenee candied Mexican hats were passed out for 1!l.'lIeral consumption. A historian 01' science reproached me at a confcrence l. Ir dcvoting space to this episode. What did it contribute to knowledge a bOLlt ::I'ielll:e? Shouldn ' t 1 have devoted the space to scientific information'? Hadn't I cOllll1litted the sin of popularizaliol1; to fOCLlS on extraneous matters because III\'Y would be interesting to and comprehensib\e by the layperson? !'he Mexican hats turned out to be but one instance 01' a dass of details in IlIy hOllk to which the historian objected. Others inc1uded a description ofthe halldkerchief that students recall Emmy Nocther kcpt in her blouse and ho w ',Ice waved il when illLlstrating a point: the flash 01' an emincnt physicist's 11 01 id silk tic as he vanished from studcnts' sight arter teaehing a c1ass; the fish Ihal rClI1ailled llncaten whcn a brilliant I"uture Nobelist met his mentor in a Il'stiluran l a nu ueJ'eren l ia l1 y a ll owcd lhe men tor to Qn.ler ror both of them a "i~1c Ihal Ih\! prod igy loatl ll.:d: th,: way an Italian physicisl crushed out his l,/

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cigaretle ill a lilm dish; alld Ihe Clllllfurta hle sl lprc rs which a Pakistani physicisl wor king in the Wesl kept IIlldernealh his desk . A proressional , so the historian infonned me, would have stuck to the esscntials. I argued in reply that such details propcrly handled did disdose essential aspccts 01' science. The bet revealed the game-Iike q uality theoretical physics has for many practitioners. It showed an irreverence 1'01' final answers and rational solutions and a wiIJin gness to put oneself on the line; lhis quality. in turn, had everything to do with the eharacter of the person who made the bet and the kind 01' \l,iork that he did. The episode thus served as an antidote lO the view of theorists as solemn fabricators ofthe gro und plan 01' the Universe. (The role 01' comedy and humor in the activity 01' science cleserves more attention than it has so far received.) Likewise for th e other episodes. The fact that students found Noether's ha ndkerchier behavior unfeminine indieated the presence of gender stereotypes. T he flash 01' the tie was emblema tic 01' the obsessive secrecy 01' the person who wore it, which in tum was emblema tic of the hermetic nature of his work, which in turn had much to do with the eventual reception of that work in the scientific community and how httle of it was eventuaIJy incorporated into the standard formulations despite the immense achievement it represented . The uneaten fish revea led a mixture of respect and iconodasm ; that the prodigy was reverential enough to agree to order it on the advice of the mentor but stubborn enough to trust his own taste and refuse to consume it. The film canister/ashtray bespoke the tradi tional informality and economy of a certain g roup of Italian scientists. And the slippers were mule testimony of the lonely efforts 01' a person from the third world to make a home in an unfamiliar environment. Far from serving as mere entertainment, such details were in the service of the disdosure effected by the narrative, and one cannot draw a lin e between what kinds 01' details are disdosive and what are not. It is true that each such detail was inessential in that another, similar one could have been substituted. But that ofwhich the details were disdosive was significant and could not have been omitted; the details were thus symbols. What each dctail disdoscd could have been made the subject 01' ao explicit study··- jokes and gambling in science, sexism , idiosyncracy, mentoring, informality, the anxieties 01' third-world participants in the international sci entific community. Such stuoies are 01' course important , but a narrative serves a different function, oisclosing él different kíno ofphenomenon. To object to the indusion of such oetails in a narratíve has as little justice as to object to the lighting, props, cost umes, etc., of a playas having merely entertaínment value instead of belongin g intrinsically to the performance itself. Indeed , to pass over th is kind 01' detail in narratives about science contributes to the im pressioll tha t sciem:c is a privileged act ivi ty unlike other kinds 01' hum an aClivily . T hin kíng., cvcn scientilk thinking, is never conducled in apure, ra relied ~l1viml1Jl1en t. Th ink ill g a lways bdongs lo lile wo rlJ 01' :lpp~ara I1ces , u f n H\Cn: h.: hisl nril:ul cnV lr()t1Illt: lIl s. O J1 \! m ll~l hcw:lI'l' , I IIl'rtl Ill'I:. u f Ihe

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IIII(1uISI: lo decide beforehalld what is irrcJevant and what not for a narrat I\il.'. !\ny altcmpt lo make such a decision beforehand wil! be guioed by an .llIlicipalion ofwhat to expect , by an ioea ofwhat the privilegeo slory lille is, 1;llhl:r than by the performance itself. To construct a narrati ve is a process 01' iI hack and forth relation between one's ioeas abollt the subject. ano what one dí ~t.: overs about it. New anticipations allow LIS to discover new profiles 01' the "lIhiect, whieh in tllrn force us tD revise our anticipations. If Ilarratives about science are akin to perform ances, then the philosophy .,1' science is akin to lhe "theory " of the perforrnances, Philosophy 01' science Idi~s explicitly or implicity on narratives or accounts of scientific activity, whdher extended treatments or anecootal, ano can be thought 01' as attempt IIIg lo provioe the " theory" of such narrative perforlllances. Too frequently, Iladitional philosophers of science have relied on mythic or "fictionalized " .1l'Cllunts of science history to support their views. 17 Yet, philosophy 01' science .roes not aim to describe an essellce aboye human time alld history that works " hchind the scenes" of scientific phcnomcna. but rather to construct a repres l'nlalion of how its characteristic worldly profiles emerge fro m the processes hy which it is produced . The dialcctic between the philosophy of science and narratives about it can hl: c:onsioered analogously to the dialectic between theoretical scripting ano ¡'x perimental performances. Philosophy of science, like theory , allows one to Il'l lIrn to the phenomenon- science ilself- lo look for new profiles and aspects :lml how they fulfill anticipations. The theatrical analogy, for instance, helps liS appreciate aspects that we had not looked at careful!y enough before , such as proouction , recognition, ano skil!. In highlighting the creative aspeet 01' "icicllce, for instance, it might Icao onc lo look for and appreciate expressions 01 Ihe joy 01' creation among seientists. The expressions of beallty in M illikan 's lIolebooks, lhe orunken symposillm at the Cosmotron deoicatíon party , the ¡lIy ofthe chase in the Douhle Helíx, the satisfaction at knowing about atomic parily violation-·all these would then not be particular psyehological expres ~.iolls of inoividuals but aspects of the pradice 01' science itself insofar as it is .1 creative ano productive worldly activity. True philosophy of science asks Ijllestions about science rather than oictates to it , ano if things are disdosed aholll the activity of science it is to allow for new questioning, not to provide Ihings lo put up on the shelf as trophies . Other a rea s that the theatrical allalogy opens up for questioning indude proouction , the effect of scale on pl'oduction , skill, the role 01' management contracts, the nature of rehearsal! l'a lihralion , the nature and character orthe laboratory , and the way one can ¡',d "swept up" by the thcatricality of it all in cases of self-oeception. Morcovcr. like other kinos 01' performances, narratives are " produced. " I hal rncans that someone uecides to carry them o ut. makes necessary decisions 111 advance. and a ims Ihe na rrative at a certain comm unity- al! of which ·.lIape ils I,;Q 11 L'rcle rorm , Narrali vc~, lOO, have ma ny di lTcrcllI kinds of research pIPl.! laIlIS. Onc ca ll I, )¡lk ill IhclIl rol' a COlll lTlon Iheme he hinJ a series of ti)

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whl'thr.:r thr.:re illl' iIK¡)misll'lll! il!s hl'lWél.'11 11 hislmical I:!vCIH illIJ PIl' vil ilíllg dlaractr.:riza ti~)lls 01' il. Vicwing narrativr.: as perlórm a nce thus contributes to él restitution and justilka lion 01' lhe storyteller's arl. I f a narrative is performance and perform ance disclosure, then lhe difference between the activity 01' the subject of the story and the storytelling activity itsclf does not correspond to that between primordial discJosure and popularization. The storyteller eannot be seen as playing Aaron to Moses. 01', if one insists on putting it that way, it must be with the recugnilion that their activities are not so fundamentally dirterent because any aet of disclos Llre , evcn th a t of Moses. is already a listening. For, as a patient story-Iistener once reminded me, Moses played Aa ron to God. 1.' \ I.'Il IS.

Notes See, for instance. Robert P. Crease, " rm ages of C onflict: ME G vs. [EG ," S cience 253 (1991): 374-·75 . 2 My attention was drawn to the importa nce of this concept by Ze v T rachtenberg, "A Thr.:ory of Drama," (M.Phi!. thesis, University College, London . 1980). 3 See Crease, "History of Brookhavcn Natiollal Laboratory. Par! One," 4 As is evident. for instance. from thc ncws ,wd research news stories abol!lt this process in Science: Robert R. Crease. "Choosing Detectors for the SSC," Science 250 (1990): 1648- 50: David P. Hamilton , " Showdown at thc Waxahachie C orral ," Science 252 (1991): 908 iJOl0; David 1'. Hamilton , " Ad Hoc Team Revives SSC Competition ." Scien ce 252 (1991): 1610; David P. Hamiltoll , " A New Round of Backbiting over the Cancellation of L *," Sciellce 252 (1991): 1775. 5 "lmpact 01' Largc-Sea le Science on the LJ nited Sta tes ," Sciellce 134 (196,J): 16 J- 64. Yale historian Derek de Solla Price adopted the phrase in a 1962 lecture series at Brookhaven N a tional Laboratory. " Little Scie)lce, Big Science," subsequently published as a book, Unle Science, Big Science (Ne\\' York: Columbia LJniversity Prcss, 1963). 6 Alvin Weinberg, Reflectiol1s 011 Big Sciel1 ce (Cambridge: M lT Press. 1967), p. 67. 7 Weinberg had before him only t\Vo models of Big Science , large particle acceler ators and the manned spaee programo neithcr ofwhieh had really matured. Fore front particle aecelerators could still be built at universities and Project rv1'ercury \Vas in its infancy ; Weinberg's artiele \Vas based on an address given before a meeting ofthe American Rocket Soeiety in Gatlinburg, Tenn., on May 4. 1961, the day before Alan Shephcrd became the flrst American astronaut to be launched into space. 8 The examplc is from Michael Joehim, SlrCilegiesjór Surviw¡/ (New York: Aca demic Press, 1981), p. 11. 1 am indebted to Marshall Spector for drawing my attention to this n::ference. 9 Alvin Weinberg. 'The Axiology of Science," Aml'rican SciertliSI 58 (November Deeember 1990): 612- 17. 10 Large NOlld( f'ense R ami D Projecl.\· i// Ihe Bl/dgel: J 980 1996 by Da vid Moore and Philip Webre (Washi ngton , D .C. : U.S . Congress. U.S. Ho use of Representatives, Congressional BlIdgel O ffl ce, Ju ly 19(1). 11 T h is, rol' inslance. is l he po int Illade by .1 01111 A. Relllin gton in " Beyond Big S~: i \!lIcl! ¡Il Amer i \;~t: T he BimJing ll l' In qu iry." Social SIl/dic.\' o( SI'i¡'//('(' 1RR (1988) :

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1' ,. Ih ,)ug )¡ he 1Ises Wl' IIIIll' I¡.\'s dislilld illll hc (w ~ ~n internal and external " ,,: ria. I • ""1;1 disellssiol\ ol'a l1 ex <1 111 pIe. eOllcerning the decline ofadlllinistrative cOlltraets illn;llil1l1allaboratorics. scc Robert P. Crease and Nieholas P. Samios, "Managing lIle 1 illl11allageable," At/al1lic 267 (January 1991) : 80-· 88. 1 \ Sec o túr instancc. Ji. Schmied , " A Study 01' Economic lJtility Resulting from 'h RN Contraets" (Geneva: C ERN 75-5 , 1975; Second Study , CERN 84- 14, 1'184): Edwin Mansficld . " Estimates of the Social Returns fro m Research ami 1kvdoplllCllt" (paper presen ted at th e Science and Technology Poliey C olloquium ,,1' Ihe American Association 1'01' the Advanccment 01' Science, W ashingt on . D.e.. April 12, 19(1). 1 I Sc\: 1,awrCllce Stone, "The Revi val of Narrati ve." in Pasl (//1(/ p,.esenl 85 (Novcm her 1979): 3- 24. 1'1 See ibid. 1(, ( ' n~asc, " I-listory of Brookhaven National Laboratory , Pa rt One," pp. 167 · 88. II 'J'he use 01' ficti o nali zed history in the philosoph y 01' science is admiUed with a n :rtain chagrin by Ilerbcrt feigl in " Beyo nd Peaceful C oexi stence," in A1inneso la Sll/diC's in Ihe Philo'\"ophy o( Science, vol. S, ed. Roger Stuewer (I'vlinneapolis : Ilniversity ofMinnesota Press, 1970), p. 3. But John J. e. Slllart defends the use of liclionalized history in " Science, H islory, and Methodology." Brilish .lou/'/llIljór l/te Philo.\'ophy o/Science 23 (1972): 266; "Methodolo gists need examples 1'ro111 lhe history ofscience onl y bccause it is too hard to think up fictitious ones. It does not llIatter, therefore, whether the history is quite true." I

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VERBAL ART AS PE RF ORMANCE I Richard Baun1ar/ Sourcc: Americall Anlhrofl% gisl 77(2) ( 19 75): 290 311.

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Departing from text-centered perspectives o n verbal art, an approach is developed to verbal art as performance, derived from recent work in folklore , the ethnograp by uf speaking, sociolinguistics , and literary stylistics, The patteming of per formance in genres, aets, roles, and events is discussed , as we" as the emergent quality of performance, manifested in text, event , and social structu rc.

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We will be concerned in this paper to develop a conception of verbal art as performance, based upon an understanding 01' performance as a mode of speaking. In constructing this framework for a performanee-centered approach lo verbal art, we have started from the position of the folklorist. bul have drawn concepts and ideas from a wide range of disciplines, chiefty anthropo logy, linguistics, and literar)' criticismo Each of these disciplines has its own distinctive perspective on verbal arl, and a long t radition 01' independent scholarship in its study. From at least the time of Herder, however, there has been an integrative tradition as well in the stud y of verbal art, manifested in the work 01' such figures as Edward Sapir, Roman Jakobson , and Dell H)'mes, scholars who have operated at an intellectuallevel beyond the bound aries which separate academic disciplines, sharing an interest in thc esthetic dimension of social and cultural life in human communities as manifested Ihrough the use of language. The present paper is offered in the spirit of that integrativc tradilion. In a recent colleclion 01' conceptua l and theoretical cssays in folkl ore, assem bkd to indlc,ll e <1 range o fnew pers pccli ves in the (¡eIJ , it wa s emphas izt:d in lhe Inlroduclio n lh al Ihe con lrihll l ~)rs s hureJ a l:OnHllllJl cn nce rn willt perl'n n 11:1 m:1.: ;\\¡ all IlI ga n i/ in )'. p rinc ipie ( Ba lllll:lll I')na ) J'h¡: Il'rlll

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Vl'rbal ar l, whellrel" in al1[!lropology, lin guistics, 01" literalll re, lend o Vl'rwhell1lingly to be constrlleled in terms of specialusages or patterning 01' formal features within texts. General formula tioos identify a primary "focus on the message for its own sake" (Jakobson 1960: 356; Stankiewicz 1960: 14- 15) 01' a "coneern with the form of expres sion, over and aboye tb e needs ofeommunication " (Baseol1l 1955: 247) as the essence 01' verbal arto O tbers are more speeific about the nature o r consequences 01' such a focus or eoncern, suggesting, for examplc, that the touchstone 01' verbal art lies in a l1laximized "use 01' the deviees of the language in sueh a way that this use itself attracts attention and is pereeived as uneommon " (I-Iavránek 1964: 10). Among certain linguists, the idea has some currency that verbal art " in some way deviates from norms which we , as members of society, have learnt to expect in the medium used" (Leech 1969: 56; ef. Stankiewiez 1960: 12; Durbin 1971), while others of their colleagues make a point ol' the " mllltiplicity 01' additionu/ ./órl1la/ Imvs restricting the poet's free choice of expressions" (Fónagy 1965: 72; ita'lics in original). Whatever their differences, of foeus or emphasis, all of these approaches make for a conception 01' verbal art that is text-eentered. For al/, the artful, esthetic quality of an utterance resides in the way in which language is used in the construction of the textual item . To be sure, it may be considered neces sary, at least implicitly, lo assess the text against the baekground 01' general lingllistic norms, but it is the text itself that remains the unit 01' analysis and point of departure for proponents of these approaehes. This in turn places severe constraints on the development of a meaningful framework for the llnderstanding 01' verbal art as performance, as a species of situated human communication, a way of speaking. It is, of course, possible to move from artistic texts, identified in formal or other terms, to performance, by simply looking at how such texts are rendered , in action terms. But this is to proceed backwards, by approaehing phenomena whose primary social reality lies in their nature as oral commun ication in terms of the abstracted textual products of the communieative process. As we shall see, oralliterary texts, though they may fulfill the formal mea sures of verbal art, be accurately recorded , and bear strong associatiol1s with performance in their conventional contexts, may nevertheless not be the products ol' performance, but 01' rendition in another communicative mode. How many ofthe texts in our colJections represent reeordings ofinformants ' abstracts, resumés, or reports 01' performances and performance forms rather than true performances (cr. Tedlock 1972)'1 By identifying the nature of per formance and distinguis hi ng il rrom other ways of speaking, \Ve will have. a mong o ther thillgs, a meas ure o flhe a uthe ll Lic ity of collecteu oralliterary texts. A per rorrnance-cellt cred COI1u:pl iOIl ( 11' verbal art <.:al b for a n approach tlrroll gh j1c lforrn:l m;¡: ¡tsdr. Tn slIch all a pp ro:l(;h, lhc 'úlI11a l nW lli prrla til1l1 01' {) r

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1I 111' trislic I ca tllrl~S is s(!(.;{lIld;rr y [o [I ll:. naturc 01' performance, per se, con ¡ ",ved nI' ami delineu as a moJe 01' (;üllllllunication. Tltc rl' is a very old (;onception 01' verbal art as communicalion which goes hol\.·k. al least to Plato's insistence that \iterature is lies. The notion, also IIlalli rt!st in Sir J>hilip Sidney's oft-quoted dictum, "the poet nothing affirmth" le Iltll1:1l1n 1971 : 5) holds that whatever the propositional content of an item ",' verbal art, its meaning js somehow eancelled out or rendered inoperative bv [lte nature of the utterance as verbal art. A more recent expression of this ,·tlllception is to be found in the writings 01' the British Ordina ry Language pl lllllsopher, J. L. Austin. A ustin maintains, " of any and every utte rance," [ltal it will be "in a peculiar way hol/ow or void ir said by an actor on the stagc . . nI' spokcn in soliloquy." He continues, " Ianguage in such circumstances 1\ ill special ways - intelligibly- used not seriously, but in waysparasilic upon li s Ilormal use- ways whieh fall under the doctrine 01' eliolations oflanguage" (Arrslin 1962: 21 - 22; italícs in original) .4 Lcaving aside ¡(he unfo rtunate suggestion that the uses Austin mention s nc rt a weakening ínfluenee on languagc, a product of h is partícular bias, we IIlay abstract from the cited passage the suggestion that performance repres "IIts a transformation ofthe basic referential ("serious," "normal " in Austin's 1l'IIlIS) uses of language. In other words, in artistic performance of this kind , 1Itere is something going on in the eommunicative interchange which says to lile auditor, "interpret what 1say in some special scnse; do not take it to mean \Vllat the words alone. taken literal/y. would convey." This may lead to the [mther suggestion that performance sets up, or represents, an interpretativc ',allle within which the messages being eommunicated are to be understood , ,lIlll that this frame eontrasts with at least one other frame, the literal. In employing the term "frame" here, 1 am drawing not upon Austin , but on 111l: powerful insights of Gregory Bateson, and the more recent and equaIly )11' lvocative work of Erving GofTman (1974). Bateson first developed system .Itil'ally on the notion of frame as a defined interpretive context providing '1liudines for discriminating between orders 01' message (1972[1956]: 222), in Irr s seminal article, "A Thcory ofPlay and Fantasy" (1972[1955] : 177-·193). Wl' shal/ return to aspects of this theory, and of Goffman's, in more detail hdnw s Although the notion of performance as a frame was introduced above, in , o llnl,ction with Austin's thinking, as contrasting with literal communica li"", il should be made clear from the beginning that many other such frames hl'sides these t\Vo may be identified. For example: il1silll/aliol1, in which the words spoken are to be interpreted as having covert a mI indirect relation to the mean ing ofthe utterance (cf. Allstin 1<)()2: 12 1); jll/,;llIg, in wh it:h t hc w md~ ~ro k cn a re lO be interpreted as not serio usly IlH.!an ing \Vllat tllcy II li !! hlnIIH;rwisc mean (el'. Auslin 1962: 121);

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This is a partial and unelaborated list, which does not even adeqllately sample, mllch less exhausto the range of possible interpretive fra mes within which communication may be couched . It should be noted , moreover, that framcs listed may be used in combination, as well as singly. It shollld also be stresscd that althollgh theorists like AlIstin suggest that the literal frame somc-how has priority over all the others- is more " no rmal "- this is not neces sary to the theory, and in fact biases it in unproductive ways (Fish 1973). The notorious difficlllty of defining literalness aside, there is gro\Ving evidence that literal utterances are no more frequent or "normal " in situated human communication than any of the other frames, and indeed that in spoken commllnication no slIch thing as naked literalness may actually exist (Burns 1972; Goffman 1974). For ollr purposes, all that is necessary is the recogni tion of performance as a distinctive frame , available as a communicative resource along with the others to speakers in particular commllnities. 6 The first major task , then , is to suggest what kind 01" interpretive frame performance establishes or represents. How is communication that constitutes performance to be interpreted? The following represcnts a very preliminary attempt to specify the interpretive guidelines set up by the performance frame . Fllndamentally, performance as a mode of spoken verbal communica tion consists in the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display 01' communicative competence. This competence rests on the knowledge and ability to speak in socially appropriate ways. Performance involves on the part of the performer an assumption 01' accountability to an audience for the way in which communication is carried out, aboye and beyond its referential content. From the point of víew of lhe audience, the act of expression on the part of the performer is lhus marked as subject lo evaluatíon for the way it is done, for the relative skill and effectiveness of the performcr's display of 7 competence. Addítionally, it is marked as available for the enhancement of experience, through the present enjoyment 01' lhe intrinsic qllalities of the act of expression itself. Performance thus calls forth special attention to and heightened awareness 01' the act of expression, and gives license to the audi ence to regard the act of expression and the performer with special intensity.~ Th us conceived, performance is a mode 01' langllage use, a way of speaking. The implicat io n 01' such a concept for a theory 01' verbal art is this: it is no longer nccessary tn bcgin with ¡¡rtful lexls, identified on indepcn dent formal g ro un ús anÓ thcn rci njecLcd inl o silLla tio ns 01" u:-;c, in o nJer lO CUllccpt ualize V\!,hal ;Irl in cotJ1 lllltn ica livc lcrt lls. Ralhcr. in tcnllS ol' llIe ap pl ll;ll.:h bcing

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d,·\t'l ll pc(/ i1e n:, perf'onll<111Cl' hCl'\lI ll\!l> (·oll .I'!i!uli,/(' orthe domain ol"vcrbal mt l · " 1111 ~ \!11 ,'0 mili UIJ ica ti o Il. Sil 11 1,' \!xil m plcs Illay be userul at this point, lO demonstratc in empirical 1I" IIlIS Ihe application 01" the notion 01" performance \Ve have proposed . In ,1'\~' I;d 01" her writings on the people of the plateau area of the Malagasy I( qlllhlic (Kcenan 1973, 1974), Elinor Keenan delineates the two major ways ,,1 ~pcaking identified by this group. The first, ca lled in native terminology I \(/ha, may be loosely defined as informal conversation , descTibed by native ddcrs as "everyday tal k," or " simple talk." The other way ofspcaking, /whary, l . Ihe onc of principal interest to us here. Kahary is glossed by Keenan as II,' H:lllonial speech, what we might cal! oratory. " The following are excerpts 1111111 Keenan 's description: I\lIh({/y as a focal point of tradition and as a rocal point of artistic expression is ... regarded with great interest. It is not uncommon to see groups 01' elders evaluating the skilJs and approaches 01" speech lllakers following a kahary performance. A speechma ker \Vho pleases his audiencc is rewarded wi th praise such as: ' He is a very snarp specchlllaker. ' ' H e is prepared : 'He is a true speechmaker, a child of his father.' His words are said to be 'well-arranged' and 'balanced .' His pcrformance is d esc r,ibed as 'sa tisfying' .... Evalllations are based on hoth skill in handling winding speech and on one's ability to follow ccrtain rules governing the sequence and content 01' particular oratory. [1973: 226- 227]

'\lId rurther, "kabary performances ... are platforms for exhibiting know I¡'d ge of traditional oratory" (1973: 229). Wedding kahary, in particular, "is 111" lllost developed art form in the culture and a so urce 01' great delight an d IIIt.'rest to al! participants" (1973: 242). 11 is clear from this description that kahary represents for the plateau Malagasy a domain of performance. To engage in kahary is to assume Il'sponsibility to one's audience for a display of competence in the traditional /. f/¡'lIr.l' forms, to render one's speeeh subjcct to evaluation for the quality 01' 11111,'\ speaking. One isjudged as a speechmaker, for the way one's words are .11 ranged . Kabary performances are keenly attended to and actively evalu .Ih'd, wilh good performances indeed serving as a source of enjoyment and ,;Itisraction to the auditors, for the way they are done. The ethnography of w l' bal art among the plateau Malagasy thus becomes centrally the ethno 'Iu phy 01' kahary. AlllOllg the lIongot ofthe Philippines, by contrast with the aboye, there are IlI n.:-: majo r speech styles, described by Michelle Rosaldo: the stylistical1y IlIlIllarkcd " straighl speeeh " (quhe:na{a qupu), invocatory speech (n(/\vnmv), .llId a Ihi rd styll'. l/amhaqan, deseri bed as "crooked" or witty tal k (R osaldo 1'1'1 1).11 is nol wlH>lI y clca r I"rOlll Ro~ ald ()' s aCCllunt whet.hcr 11011111(/\11 involves

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pt.' rll lIll l,/1/,"/ Vl.'r y deal'l y J ll\.':-:. Q IIIIII>C/{ftlll is "anrlll , witty. c ltarlllillg ," " a Ia llg uagc 01' displa y, rl~rl Ú l'lllaltL"\! , pose" (Rosaldo 1973: 197 19X). Wha t is espedally no leworlhy about speaking amon g the Ilongot, within our presenl conlext, is lha! the tclling 01' tales, always included in (f priori tcxH.:entercd dcfinitions of verbal art, is c1assified as a kind of "straight spcech. " That is, storytelling for the /lo ngot is not a form of performance, thus in culture-specific communicative terms, not a form of verbal art. The domain ofspeaking among the Ilongot is to this extent, among many others, organized differently from that of the many cultures in which storytelli.ng does involve performance. Japanese profession" 1storytellers. for example, as described by Ilrdlicková, "re certainly performers in our sense 01' the termo For their audiences, " it is not seldom more importanl hOlv a story is told than wha{ rhe story relates. ... Storytellers regard the mastery of [storytelling] elements as a neccssary preliminary stage prior to
The keying of prrfoTmancc

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co ltcepl iolt tll" pl'r l"orman cc as a I'r;\IIll: which musl be delineatcd . i.c., the way 111 whidl I"raming is an;omplisltcd , 01" , lo use Goffman 's tcrm for the process hy which I"ralllcs "re invoked and shifted, how performance is keyed(Goffman 1')74). Ilcrc "gain, we may draw on Bateson's powerful insight, that it is dlaracterislic 01' communieative interaetion that it ind ude a range of explícit tlr il11plicit Il1essages which carry instruetions on how 10 interpret Lhe other IIIl'ssage(s) being communicated. This comm unication about communication Batcson termed metaeommunication (Ruesch and Bateson 1968: 209). In Batcson 's terms. "a frame is metaco mmunicative. Any message which either l'xplícitly or implicitly defines a frame , ipso .raclo gives the reeeiver instruc 1ions or aids in his attempt to understan d the messages inclllded within the frame" (Bateson 1972[ 1955]: 188). AH framing, then, incJuding perfo rma nce , is accomplished through the employment of culturally conve ntional i7.ed IlIctacommunication . In empírical terms, this means that each speech com 'lIunity will make use of a structured set of distinctive communicative means from among its resources in culturally eonventionalized and culture-specific ways to kcy the perform ance frame . such tha1 all communication that takes place within that frame is to be understood as performance within that n 1Il1 m un i ty. An etie Iist 01' communicative means that have been widely d ocumented in various cultures as serving to key performance is no t difficult to compile. Such a list would indude at least the following: ( 1) special codes, e.g.. archaic 01' esoteric languagc, reserved for and dia gnostic of performance (e.g., Toelken 1969; Sherzer 1974); (.~) special formulae that signal performance. such as conventional opcnings and c1osings , or explicit statements announcing or asserting performance (e.g., Crowley 1966: Reaver 1972; Uspensky 1972: 19; Babcock-Abrahams 1974); (~) figura ti ve language. sllch as metaphor, metonymy, etc. (e.g., Keenan 1973, 1974; Fox 1974; Rosaldo 1973; Sherzer 1974); ( tI) rormal stylistic devices. s uch as rhyme , vowel harmony, other forms of parallelism (Jakobson 1966, 1968 ; Stankiewicz 1960: 15; AlIsterlitz 1960; Gossen 1972, 1974; Fox 1974; Sherzer and Sherzer 1972); (~) speciaJI prosodic patterns oftempo , stress. pitch (e.g., Lord 1960; Tedlock 1972) ; ((,) special paralinguistic patterns of voiee quality and vocaJization (e.g. , Tcdlock 1972; McDowell 1974); (/) appca'llo tradition (e.g .. Innes 1874: 145); (X) dísclaimer of performance (e .g. , Darnell 1974; Keenan 1974).

Bclürc cm bark ing upon a Ji sell ~si l)n n I' I he rur lhcr ím plíca 1inns or lhe nUlion ()rpnl() IIIl: \IH';~' plll rtll Wil ll1 alll wc Ihcrc is l lll t' majo r ek lllL' ll1 1lI l\" j'rallo lhc

rhe I"orma l and convc ntional natu n: of the devices listed aboye bears an illlJllll lant rcla lion lo lhe very nature 01' perform ance ilsclf. Ru rke has a lcrted \1:; lo Ihl' powc r 01' fm l11l\1 patl l:rns lo d il.:it lhe parlil.:ípa lio l1 of an aud ien(;e

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""OlIg" IJ¡I.: ;lro ll ~1I1 ,,1 " 1111 a llilud e ,,1' l:( III;¡ h\lti ll lV\.' \" pl'C!;lm'y .. .. Once yu u g ru sp Ihc IICIIJ urllle 10 1111 , il in viles partieipali llll," I his " yidJing to the I'omud J cvc lo pmclll, SlIITC I lI.kri IIg lo its sylllrm:try as ~Udl," (Burkc 1969[1950]: 58) hxcs the allclllion 01' lhc alldiencc more strongly on the performer, binJs the audience to thc performer in a relationship 01' dependence that keeps them caught IIp in his display. A not insignifH;a nt part of th e capacity of performance to transform social structure, to be discussed at the end 01' this paper, resides in the power thall the performer derives fmm the control over his audience afforded him by the formal appeal of his performance. A Iist of the kind given above, however, is ultimately of only Iimited utility, for the essential task in the ethnography 01' performance is to determine the culture-speeifie constel!ations 01' commuuicative means that serve to key performance in particular communities. Features such as those listed abo ve may figure in a variety 01' ways in the speech economy 01' a community. Rhyme, for examplc, may be used to key performance, or it may simply be a formal feature of the language, as when it figures in certain forms of redup lication , or it may appear in speech play (which may or may not involve performance). It may even be inadvertent. I nterestingly , when this happens in English, there is a traditional formula whieh may be invoked to disclaim performance retroactively: ''!' m a poet and I don't know it; my feet show ir, they're longfellows." This is an indication that rhyme often does in fact key performance in English . The basic point here is that one must determine empirically what are the specific conventionalized means that key performance in a particular com munity , and that these will vary from one community to another (though one may discover areal and typological patterns, and universal tendeneies may exist). Let us consider some examples. The telling of traditional folktales , or "old stories," in the Bahamas, as described by Daniel J. Crowley, characteristical!y involves performance. Narrators assume responsibility for the way they render their stories, and their performances are attended to 1'01' the enjoyment to be derived from the telling, and evaluated as displays 01' competence (for evidence of this se;;: Crowley 1966: 37, 137- 139). Old story performances are keyed by a complex system of communicative means. One of the most distinctive 01' these is the word "Bunday," which serves as a "trademark" for old stories, " since its mere mention is the sign for an old story to begin ... . To the Bahamians, 'Bunday ain't nothing, it just mean is old story.'" Cmwley identifies five conventional functions scrved by "Bunday" as a marker of old story performance: (1) as a means of announcing one's intention to tel! a story and testing lhe audience's willingness to hear it: (2) as a means 01' recapturing audience attention (the better the storyteller. the less Orlen he must have reClJUTSO [o this Jevice, but slorytellers must use it occasi,m a lly): (3) for ell1pllasis anú puncl ua li on, (4) ru; a filler II'H.:over pauses a ud nI her l!.a ps in tho na rra l ion; ( 'i ) as a signal I hal II ll' s lq. v j:. l'lldcd.

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111 alldil illll lo "BllIld a y," si 01 yll'llill g pcrf'onnancc is f'urther signaled by "poning ami dnsing fonnulac. SOllle 01' these, such as "Once UpOll a time, a Vl'l 'I gLlOd lime, monkey chew tobacco. and he spit white lime," are stylistic ,¡lIv devcJoped in their own right, while others, like "Once upon a time, " are II UlrL! simple. Closing formulae are more individualized, \Vith the c10sing 1IIII1day" coming before, between, or after the formula. To take one charac In i"lic cxample, which brings the narra ti ve back to th e o ccasion of its telling: 1 \Vas passing by, and I say 'Mister Jaek, how come you so smart?' And he IIlakc at me, and j run , causing me to come here tonight to tell you this \VIlIHlerful story" (Cmwley 1966: 35 - 36). The keying devices for old story performance further inclode special words ,llId phrases (e.g., "one more day than all . .. " to begin a new motif), special I'lollunciations, e1aborate onomatopoeia , and a range 01' meta narrational IIl'vices. such as the following 01' an impossible statement by " Ifl was going to Idl you a story," and then another even more impossible statement (Crowley 1%6: 26-27). Finally, old story performance is keyed by distinctive para Iilll'-uistic and prosodic shifts for the purpose of characterization (e.g.. Crowley 1%6: 67). In sum, this one segment 01' the Bahamian performance domain is L.l:ycd by a complex system of ffiu tually reinforcing means, serving together lo signal that an old story is being performed . As we have noted, the foregoing inventory of keys to old story perform .II1CC pertains to but a single game. A fulil and ideal ethnography 01' perform !IIICe would encompass the ent,i re domain, viewing speaking and performance .IS a cultural system and indicating how the whole range of performance is kcyed. Gary Gossen's elegant analyses of Chamula genres 01' verbal behavior .'Illlle closest lo any work in the Iitcrature known to the author to achic"ing ~ lIch a description (Gossen 1972, 1974). Within the oyerall domain 01' "peoplc's 'pcel'h" (sk'op kir.l'a/1o), Chamula identity three macro-catcgories of speech: p rdinary speech" (lo'!il k'op), "speech for peop\e whose hearts are heated " r!. o 'Ii .I'vel7/a sk'isl/ah yo'!ntol1 yu'!un li k irsal7oe), and " pure speech" (pum 1, 'oli). Ordinary speech is conceived ofby the peop\e as unmarked , not special 111 any way. It is not associated with performance. Speech for people whose Iica rts are heated and pure speech , on the other hand , are strongly relevant to 11111' discussion. As an overall category, what distinguishes speech for people whose hcarts .Il e heated from ordinary speech is that it is stylistically marked by a degree i II vl~rbatim repetition of woros, phrases and metaphors , and in certain sub \ .tl cgories, 01' gen res, by parallelism in syntax and metaphorical couplets. 1'111\' spcech is distinguished in turn fmm speech for people whose hearts are hV:Ih:d by its relative fixity of form and the grcater dcnsity of parallelism , ,'jI hl:r lhrough p roliferation 01' syntactically parallellines or the " stack ing" 01' IIlctaphorical cúu plels. l'rom ( iósscn's dcscriptio n. it is cv ident lhal repe titioll and parallelism • '1lIslilllr c kI.:ys lo pcrf(l llll¡IIICC 10 1' the C ham ula. Bot h speech for pcople

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whus.: lIei ll l:. tl l l' III.:u ln J ;llId pll ll: spn:I.:II iIlVUI Vl: IIll dl ~ JlI!lY n f cOlllpclcncc, co n lti n ulc lu lhe c nllaneclI lClI l ul" cxpcriem;c. a llu a re slIhlcCI lo \.~valllation ror lil e way lhey are Jone. Thcrc is a crucial po in l W be maJe Iterc. however. Speech I"or people whose hearts are healcu is idiosyncratic, unfixed. and mark edly less saturated \Vith those reatures that signal performance. The user of speech for people whose hearts are heated is less fully accountable for a display of compelence. his expression is less intensely regarded by the audi ence, his performance has less to contribute to the enhancement of the audience's experience than the one who uses the forms of pure speeeh . The performance frame may thus be seen to opera te with variable intensity in Chamula speaking. I t is worth underscoring this last point. Arl is eommonly conceived as an all-or-nothing phenomenon--something either is or is not art ·- but con ceived as performance, in terms 01" an interpretive frame , verbal art may be culturally defined as varying in intensity as \Vell as range. We are not speaking here of the relative quality of a performance - good performance versus tad performance- but the degree of intensity with which the performance frame operatcs in a particular range of culturally deflned ways of speaking. When \Ve move beyond the first leveJ discrimination of culturally-defined ways of speaking that do not conventionally involve performance (e.g., Chamula ordinary speech, Malagasy resaka) versus ways of speaking that do characteristically involve performance (e.g. , Chamula speech for people whose hearts are heated and pure speech, Malagasy kabary), we need to attend to the relative saturation ofthe performance frame attendant tlpon the more specific categories of \Vays 01' speaking within the community. The variable range ol' performance in Chamula is confirmed by the meta language cmployed by the Chamula in their evaluation of performance. Because of the importance 01' the evaluative dimension of performance as commun ication, such metalanguages and the esthetic standards they express constitute an essential consideration in the ethnography of performance; the range of app1.ication 01' such esthetic systems may be the best indicator of thc extent of the performance domain \Vithin a community (Dundes 1966; Babcock Abrahams 1974). Increased fixity ofform, repetition, and parallelism , which serve as measures of increasing intensity of performance, also signal for the Chamula increasing "heat. " Heat is a basic metaphor for the Chamula, symbolizing lhe orderly, the good, and the beautiful , by derivation from the power 01' the sun deity . The transition from ordinary speech to speech for people whose hearts are heated to pllrc speech thus involves a progressive increase in heat and therefore 01' csthetic and ethical vallle in speaking. IO

Tbc patterning of performance O ur Ji sclIssion 01' C halllllla pe rform a nce has ccnlercuu pilll lhe way ill wh ich pClfMlilancc is " \.:ycd, lile COllllll llllica li vc rncl'l ns lhal sit' na l Ikll ;1 P;lItil:lIlar 1.

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Id I,r l.:\ preSSilln is bcill l' Jli! II ~ '"l1l~d. Wc may advance our considcrations 1111 furth er by recngllizin g thal il is ol1ly as thcse means are embodicd in 1',11 liclllar gcnrcs thal they figure in the performance system of the Chamula 111I:lIIsclvcs. That is, the Chamula organize the domain of speaking in terms of 'l' lIl cs. i.c .. convcntionalized message forms. formal structures that incorpor dk lile lCaturcs that key performance. The assoeiation of performance with p,lIlicular genres is a signifieant aspect of the patterning of performance Wllllin cOTTlmunities. This association is more problema tic than text-ccntered , '1,,: .Ipproaches to verbal art would indicate (Ben-A mos 1969). 111 llre ethnography 01' performance as a cultural system, the investigator's ,llll'lIlion \ViII frequently be attracted first by those genres that are con ven IIllllally performed. These are the genres, like lhe Chamula genres of pure pecch or Bahamian old stories. for which there is liUle or no expectation on tlll' part of members of the eommunity that they wjll be renuered in any other way. Ile should be atlentive as well , however, for those genres for which tbe n peclation or proba bility of perform ance is 10\Ver, for \Vbich performance '" fdl to be more optional. but which occasion no surprise if they are per ¡"rllled. A familiar example from contemporary American sodety migbt be Ihl' personal narrative, which is frequenlly rendered in a simply repertorial IIlmle, but which may \Vell bc highlighted as performance. There \ViII , of 111I1rsc. in any society. be a range of verbal genres that are not rendered as Ill' rformances. These will be viewed as not involving the kind 01' competence tllal is susceptible to display, not lending themsc1ves for the enhancement ,,1" l',\perience. Not to be forgotten are those genres that are considcrcd by lI u:llIbers of the community to be performance forms, but that are neverthe k 'iti lIot performed. as when there is no one Ieft who is competent to perform Illl'l1I , or conditions for appropriate performance no longer exist. A related phenomenon is \Vhat Hymes calls performance in a perfunctory key (personal I "JIll11unication), in which the responsibility for a display of cOl11municat IW competence is undertakcn out of a sense of cultural duty. traditional l\hligation , but offering, because of changed circumstances, relatively little plcasure or enhancement of experience. One thinks, for example, of some IIlasses in Latin. Such perforrnances may, however, be a means of preserving p\!lfllrmance forms for later reinvigoration and restoration to the level of fu 11 pel formance. It should be noted , wilh refercnce to the native organization of the domain IIl" spcaking and cultural expectations for performance. that the members ofa \"C'lIItllunity may conceptualize speech activity in lerms of acts rather than ~ IIrCS. The St. Vincentians are a case in point (Abrahams and Bauman I t) 11 ). Spcech acts and genres are, of course , analytically distinct. the former 11;lving lo do \Vith speech behavior, the latter with the verbal products ofthat lIe havillr. For an oral culture. howevcr, the distinction between the act o f ~ pc;¡killg amllhc ¡ü nn \,1' Ihe ultcra nce tends characteristicall y not to be sig lIílicall!, ir il i~ l"l:colJ,llil",cd al all . T h us a particular perfo rmance systcm may 11

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wd l hl! 1l 1l'~ll1l /l! d hy IIIClllhl' lS 1111111' COIrtI Ill lll 11 y 111 Il' l lll' n ' .pl'l'dl ads thal cOll vcl1t iollally ill V(llw »l! rl orlllaIlCC. \ll he rs Ilral 111 01 Y P I Il loIy 1101 , ami still olhc rs ror which pcrrn rfll un¡;l' is nnl a relevalJl CO Il 'iidl!rü lio/l . Wc view tIJe ac1 01' pl!rto rlllam;e as situatcd bchavillr, situalcd withil1 and rcndered meaningful with referente to relevant contcxts. Such contexts mal' be identified al a variety of leve!:; in terms of settings, for example, lhe cultura\'ly-defined places where performance occurs. Ill stitutions too religion , eoucation , politics-may be vieweo from the perspective ofthe way in which they do or do not represent contexts for performance within com munities. Most important as an organizing principie in the clhnography of performance is the event, or scene, within which performance occurs (see, e.g .. Kirshen bla tt-G imblett 1974). Thcre are , first 01' all , events for which performance is requireo, for wh ich it is a criterial attribute, such that performance is a necessary component for a particular event lo counl as a valio instance of the c1ass. T hese will be what Singer calls "cultural performances" (Singer 1972: 71). They mal' be organ ized ano conoucteo prilllarily for entertainment, such as Bahamian old story sessions or Vincentian tea meetings, or they mal' have some other stated primary purpose, like Malagasy brioe-price meetings, but performance will be as integral a component for the latter as for the former. As with genres ami acts, there are other events for which performance is an optional fealure , not necessary or invariably expected , but not unexpeeted or surprising, as when someonc tells jokes at a party. Again , there will be a further range of events in which performance is extraneous, not a relevant variable insofar as people categorize and participate in the events of their culture. The structure of perform a nce events is a product of the interplay 01' many factors , including setting, act sequence, and ground rules of performance. These last will eonsist of the set 01' cultural themes and social-interactional organizing principies that govern the conduct of performance (Bauman and Sherzer 1974, Sed. 111). As a kind of speaking, performance will be subject to a range 01' community groLlno rules that regulate speaking in general, but there will also be a set 01' ground rules specific to performance itself Basic, too, to the structure of performance evenls are the partici pants, performer(s) , and audience. PerfOllTlanCe roles constitute a major dimension ofthe patterning 01' performance within communities. As with events, certain roles \Viii incorpora te performance as a definitive attribute. Performance is necessary to establish oneself in the role, such that one cannot be considered an incumbent ofthe role without being a performer 01' verbal art , like the sgea/oi. the traditional Irish storyteller (Delargy 1945). Other roles mal' be more loosely associated with performa nce, such that m e111 ber~ orthc co m m un ity ha ve a ccrlai n expectatio n 01' pe rfo rmance from a person in a rarticular role, out it is nCllhc r req uired (jI' cV\! rylll1C in the role, 1101' surpri sing when il d llC'i IHl I \1ccur, Salcslllcn ma l' sel W ilS all cxalllple

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hl' I,· ill that liten! is a l(l!\ ~\.' ~·\Pc ~· ( t1lilln in ¡;olltemporary American culture Ih. 1I sak'sllll:1I are ortcn good per(llnnCrS 01' jokes, hut no one relluires or • ~ p l'c ts this skill un the part o r all sales1l1en . And , as aboye, other roles \ViII 1r.1VL' nothing to do with performance, either as definiti ve criterion or optionaJ .1111 ihllle. I' Jigi hility ror and recruitment to performance roles vary cross-culturaJly 111 llIlercsting ways. One di1l1ensioLl al ong wh ich this va riat íon occurs has to d'l wilh conceptions ofthe nature ofthe com petence required ofa performer .llId I he \Vay sueh competencc is acquircd . Does it, for example, req uire spe ,1.11 aptitude, talen!. or training? Among the Limba , storytelling is a form of I1l'1 lúrmance, but it is not eonsidercd to req uire the special talent called for 111 drum1l1ing and dancing. Anyone is a potential storyteller, a nd it calls ro r 1111 s)1ecial trainin g to beeome one (Finncgan 1967: 69- 70). By contrast, the lapancse storytellers who perform rakugo or kodan must undergo a long and .Irdllous period of trainin g and apprenticeship before they are considered Il'a dy to practiue their art ( Hrdlick ová 1969). Abo to be taken into account in the analysis 01' performance roles it; the Idalionship , both social and behavioral , between such roles and other roles played by the same individual. We have in mind here the way and extent to which the role of performer and the behavior associated with it may dom Inate or be subordinate to the other roles he mal' play. To illustrate one (",trcme possibility, we mal' cite Keil 's assertion that in Afro-American soci dy the role 01' blues1l1an assimilates or oversh a dows all other roles an adult IlIale mal' normally be expected to fulfill (Keil 1966: 143, 153 155). Sam1l1y I >avis, Jr. , tellingly reveals the encompassin g power of his role as entertainer 111 his statement that , " as soon as 1 go out the front door of my house in the IlImning, I'm on, Daddy, I'm on " (quoted in Messinger et a l. 1962:98 -· 99). The foregoing list 01' patterning factors for performance has bcen presented :;~hcmatically , for analytieal and presentational convenience, but it sho uld IIDt be taken as a mere checklist. It should be self-evident that performance ge mes, aets, evcnts. and roles cannot occur in i~olati o n , but are mutually IlIleractive and interdepenoent. Any of the aboye faclors mal' be used as a Jloint of departurc or point of entry into the descriptio n and analysis 01' the Jll:rfonnance systcm 01' a community, but the ultimate ethnographie statc IIlcnt one makes about performance as part of social Jife must incorporate I hCIIl all in some oegree. It will be useful to consider one extended example hcre, drawn from Joel Sherzcr's description 01' three major ceremonial tradi liolls of the San Bias Cuna, lo give some indication how the organizing t(:alures ora performance system tlt together in empirical terms (Sherzer 1974). Ahstracting from Sherzer's rich description 01' the three traditions , we IlIay flote that each is associated with a type 01' event, within which speciflc t IIl1ctioflaries perform particular genres in a charaeteristic perfo rmance mode. Thus, in tlle IYre 01' cong ress kn own as ol11e/(o/1 fi e/a (the women a nd every hod y ), thl' chicfs ( sIIMII) ch ant (1/(/II1(./kk(') long chants called ¡}{/I' ika/'. T he

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d lillll :-, ill 1111 11 :I 1l: rrl l ~ II "l: I ~'d !t) I lIl' assl.:llI l>II.:II p:II 111 q ',lrrh 111 Ilre l:ollgress hOIl Sl' by spl!C la I spokcl'ilJle ll (tlr" arj . wllOsc s pca k ing (S/II/III1/1.Á 1') a Iso involvcs perrmllla ncc, though d irkrclIl rro rn that or lhc chid·s. In curillg rituals, a special ikar-knowcr (ikar lI'isil) speaks (.\lII1/1wkkf') lhe particular curing chant (each a type 01' ¡/((Ir) for which he is a specialist and w hich is ealled for by the ailrnent frorn which the patient is sufrering. In the third type 01' event, the girls' puberty ceremony, the specialist (kamllle) in girls ' puberty chants (kantur ¡kar) shouts (konnakke) the eha))ts for the participants. The three perform ance traditions mal' be summarized in tabular form thus:

1( 1 ,\S I'I ' IU 'O R MAN I ' I':

For each ceremony or ritual to count as a valid instance of its class, the appropriate foml must be rendered in the appropriate way by the appropri ate functionary. That namakke, the Slll1l11akke 01' the arkar's interpretation and the sl/l1n/(/kke of the medicine chants, and kor!11akke all represent ways of performing for the Cuna is dear from Sherzer's description . Al! four roles, salela, arkar, ¡¡wr lVisit , and /wl1/ule , are defined in essential part in terms of com petence in tbese specific ways 01' performing their respective genres. There is thus, in these ceremonial traditions, a close and integral relationship between performance and specific events, acts, roles, and genres, and the configuration creatcd by the interrelationships among these factors must be close to the center 01' an ethnography of performa nce among the Cuna . Constellations such as Sherzer describes, involving events, acts. gcnres, and roles in highly structured and predictable combinations, constitute the nucleus of an ethnography of performance among the Cuna, and are aptly made the focus ofSherzer's paper. However. it is crucial to cstablish that not all performance related to thc system Sherzer dcscribes is captured within the framewo rk 01' conventional interrelationships outlined above. We have noted , for examplc, that lhe performance of curing i/((tr by the ilear-lVisil has its convcnlion a l loc us in the curing ritual ; such pcrfü rmance is obligatory lor lh e i/({Ir It'i.l'if lO fulfi ll the d cma nds 01' his role a nd for lhe ~. uring ritual to be conduc led al all. Agains ll his bac.kg ro und, Ihen , il is nnll'wllnhy Ilrallhe i!,II /'- It'i.l'il Illay abo he as kcu h, pl.'r f'\,rm his ¡kilI' lIlI l ír!)'. I1 d lll"l l;1 I\-slival

1·.S.l('lI lled wilh Ihe gi rl s' r "h~ ll y 1itl.!s, Plln;ly rOl' l~nlertainn1cnl. That is. the p"l llIlllIancc th¡¡t has its primal y place in a particular context, in which it is .,¡'Iigalory. llIay be an o pliollal f'calure 01' anolhcr kind of event. extended to Iltl.' Iatll~r because 01' the csthetic enjoyment to be derivcd from it. The associ " lI ln bclween performcr and genre is maintaincd , but the contexto and of l "III"SC Ihe I'unction, are different. I'lrollgh optional. the performancc of curing ¡/((Ir at puberty rite festivities ", liD k~ss institutionalized than the obligatory performance of these chants in ( 111 illg rituals. There is no surprise or novelty in the performance of curing ti. tlr al lhe chicha festivals. Beyond the institu tio nalized system , ho wever, lies 11111.' ol'lhe most important outlets for creative vitality within the perfo rmance d lllllain. Consider the follo wing circumsta nce, involving a group of small '" Is whom Shcrzer wa s using as linguisti c informants. On one occasion , I. lIll\ving that he was interested in the performance forms of the community, 1"," liulc girls launched spontaneously into a rendition of an arkar' s perform ,IIIl.'l; as they were being recorded (Sherzer, personal communication). The 1I' I1Iarkableness of this is apparent when one considers that the role of arkar '" rl1strieled to adult men , and performances of the k.i nd the girls imilaled Itl'longed. in conventional terll1s, to the congress and the congress house. lli n llgh lhe httle girls' rendition was framed as imitation, a reframing of lit,' ((r/(((r's performance, it eonstituted performance in its own right as \Vell , 111 which the girls assllmed resronsibility to an audience for a display of , ,lIllpetence. ( 'onsider one further observation made by Sherzer in his study of the ( ·""a. The congresses (omekan pela) discussed above. in which the chiefs , Irallt their pap ¡kar and the arkar.l· interpret them to the audience, are held in IIIl' congress house during the eveniog. During the daytimc, however, when I "ng resses are not in session , individuals \vho find themselves in the congress Ir""sc may occasionally sit in a chief's hammock and launch into an attempt .1 1 ;r chief's chant, just for lhe fun of it (Sherzer, personal communieation). l!ere we have what is a eonventional performance doubly reframed as ""ilalion and more importantly as play. in whieh there is no assumplion of I I~S P()IISibility for a display of communicative competenee, nor any assump lr"ll 01' responsibility ror or susceptibility to evaluation for the \Vay in which Iltt.' ael of expression is done. What are the implications of these two circumstances? The Jittle girls' 1'\'lforl11ance 01' an arkar's interpretalion represents a striking instance of the II';~' or
1(,

1'1

El'en!

ACI

Role

venre

congress (om ekan pela)

ehant (l1wnakke)

ehief (salda)

ehief's ehant (pap ikar)

speak (slIllmakke)

spokesman (arkar)

interpretation

speak (slIIllI1akke)

special ikar knower (íkar lVi.l'il)

medicine chant (kapur ikar. kurkin ¡kar. etc.)

shoLlt (ko ,.,,/(/kkr')

speciali st in girls' puberty chant (kanlllle)

girls' pubcrty chant (kal//ur ikar)

curing ritual

girls' pubcrty ceremony

SI '1I 1Nf' l : "N I! SI )!

1"'. .sI' I IlNC I

manipulation , as a base un whidl a I;¡ n¡J.c 01' 1,;0 11 111 1I11lica Ilve I J anst'ormations can be wrought (cr. Sacks 1974). 1 ht! struclurcu systclIl s~lJlds available to them as a set of convention<:tl expec Lations ano associalion~, but these expecta tions and associations are further mani p lllated in inn ovative ways, by fashion ing novel performances outside the conventional system , 01' \Vorking various tranformational adaptations which turn performance into something clse. This is a very poorly documented aspect of performance systems. but one [ichly deserving of study, as a key to the creative vitality and fl exibiJity of performance in a community.

Tbe emergent quality of peñormance By stressing the creative aspect of optative performance, and the normative , structured aspect of conventional performance, we do not mean to imply that the latter is fixed and frozen while creativity is confined to the fonner. Rather, the argument developed IIp to this point to highlight creativity in the use of the performance frame itseJf as a resource for communication pro vides the entree for the final theme to be developed in this papel', the emer gent q uality ofall performance. 12 The concept of emergen ce is necessary to the study of performance as a means toward comprehending the uniqueness of particular performances within the context of performance as a generalized cultural system in a community (cf. Georges 1969: 319) . The ethnographic construction 01' the structured, conventionalized performance syslem stand ardizes and homogenizes description , but all performances are nol the same, and one wants to be <:tble to appreciate the individuality of each , as \Vell as the community-wide p<:ttterning of lhe overall doma in. The emergent quality of performance resides in the interplay between communicative resources, individual competence, and the goals 01' the par ticipants, within the context of particular situations. We consider as resources all those aspects 01' the communication system available to the members of a community for the conduct 01' performance. Rclevant here are the keys to performance, genres, acts, events, and ground rules rol' the conduct of per formance that make up the structured system 01' conventionalized perform ance for the community. The goals 01' the participants indude those that are intrinsic lo performance- - the display of competence, the focusing of atten tion on oneself as performer, the enhanccment of experience - as well as the other desired ends toward which performance is brought to bear; these latter will be highly culture- and situation-specific. Rel
IX

VE 'UI '"

Al( I AS l'I,IU-' ()I{ M AN('l t

Whel hcr the performance la kes place al home, in the cofTee house, in the co urtyard , or in the halls 01' a noble , the essential element 01' the occasion 01' singing that inAlIences the form of the poelry is the variability and instability of the audience. The instability of the audience requires a marked degree 01' con centration on the part of the singer in order that he may sing at all: it also tests to the utmost his dramatic ability and hi s narrative skill in keeping the audience as attentive as possible. But it is the Iength of a song which is Illost affected by the audience's restlessness. The singer begins to teJl his tale. Ifhe is fortunate, he may find it possible lo sing until he is tired without interruption from the audience. After a rest he will continue, if his audience slill wishes. This may last until he ftnishes the song. and if his Iisteners are propitious and his mood heightened by their interest, he may lengthen his tale. savoring each descriptive passage . It is more likely that, instead ofhaving this ideal occasion the singer will realize shortly after beginning that his audience is not receptive, and hence he will shorten his song so that it may be finished within the limit of time for which he feels the audience may be counted on. Or, if he misjudges, he may simply never finish the songo Leaving out of consideration for the moment the q uestion of the talent of the sin ger, one can say that the length 01' the song depends upon the audience . [Lord 1960: 16- 17] The cha racteristic context for the performance of the oral epics that Lord describes is one in \Vhich the singer competes for the attention ofhis audience with other factors that may engage them , and in which the time available for performance is of variable duration. The epic form is remarkably wcll-suited lo the singer's combined need for Aueney and ftexibility. The songs are made "]1 of ten-syllable , end-stopped lines with a medial caesura a fter the fourth syllable. In attaining competence, the singer must master a personal stock 01' line and half-line formulas for expressing character, action , and place , de vclop the capacity to genera te formul<:tic expressions on the model of his fixed rormulas , and learn to string together his lines in the development of the narrativc themes out ofwhich his epic songs are built. The ready-madeness 01' Ihe formulas makes possible the fluency required under performance condi Ii(lns , while the ftexibility of the form allO\vs the singer to adapt his perform ance to the situation and the audience, making il longer and more e1aborate, ,)1' shortcr and less adorned , as audience response, his own mood , and time vnnstraints l1lay diet
1')

V I I( 111\1 110 111 IlIt' .,;111 11.: '.JII )'.I.'I ,lIul 111l11I dill ~'n:nl SllIt!l'IS 111:11, V! llkd 111 kll)',11I hyas IIIlJ1,:1I as :;evClaIIII\ IIlS¡IIHI lille:. LJ lli ma ldy, Olll' nf Lord's chier clJlllrib uli o ns is lO Uelll ollslrale the llnique anJ emergent qllalily ofthe oral lex\. col11posed in performance. His analysis ofthe dynal11ics orthe tradition sets forth what amounts to a generative model 01' epic performance. i\lthough it has been argued that perhaps all verbal art is generated anew in the act of perfolmance (Maranda 1972), there is also ample evidence to sho\\' that rote memorization and insistence on word-for-\vord fldelity to a fixed text do playa part in the performance system 01' certain communities (see, e.g. , Friedman 1961). The PQint is that completely novel and completely fixed texts represent the poles of a n ideal continuum, and that between the poles lies the range of emergent text slructures to be found in empirical performance. The study ofthe factors eontributing to the emergent q uality of the oral literary text promises to bring about a major reeoncep tualization 01' the nature of the text, freeing it from the apparent fixity it assumes when abstracted from performance and placed on the written page, amI placing it within an analytical context which focuses on the very so urce of the empirical relationship between art and society (ef. Georges 1969: 324). Other aspects of emergent structu re are highlighted in Elinor Keenan 's ethnography 01' the Malagasy marriage kabary, J1 an artflll oratorical negotia tion surrounding a marriage req uest (Keenan 1973). The kabary is condlleted by two speechmakers, one representing the boy 's famUy and one the girl 's. The boy 's speaker initiates each step of the kahary , which is then evaluated by the speaker for the girl. The latter may indicate that he agrees with and approves 01' that step, urging his opposite number on to the next, or he may state that the other's words are not according 10 tradition, that he has made an error in the kahary. The boy's speaker must lhen be able to justify what he has said, to show that no error has been made, or, if he admits error, he must cornxt it by repeating the step the right way and paying a smal1 fine to the girl's family.

Keenan discovered, however, that there is no one unified concept 01' what constitutes a correct kahary shared by all members 01' the community. Rather, there are regional , familial , generational , individual , and other differenees of conception and style. This being so, how is it decided what constitutes an error? There is, first 01' all , a preliminary meeting between the families, often with their respective speechmakers present, to establish the ground rules for the kahary. These are never fully condusive, however, and it is a prominent feature 01' the /whary that arguments eoncerning the ground rules oceur throughout the event, with appeals to the preliminary negotiations becoming simply one set 01' the range 01' possible appeals to establish authoritative l1l'rforma nce. M ucll of Illt' im pcl u!'> !{w"aru argll lllcnl derives from conll ic li ng pressures PII 1ho boy 's spcedlllHll..c r, wllo is oh ligcd lo uu mit 10 a cc rt ai n range o f nrnrs, PIII u l coufh.:sy lo II I ~ ¡! iJl \ !;¡llI lly, h lll \Vilo is al Ihe sa ll l~' lill'" ild ll;llI'd hy ,11

,\ 11 I

,\ ."¡ \' 1 In ti R M ¡\ N (' L

¡llr 1IlIlli vc:; nI' gooJ pcrfollllaIlCl.:, i.c .. lo cslablish his virtuosity as a per ",' 11 1\'1'. Thc girl's spccchlllakl:r, desirous of rcpresenÜng the family to best ulvalll agl.:. is likewise concerned to display his own skil1 as speechmakcr. rile a rgllmenb, as noted , concern the ground rules for the k.abary with , . .1\ h parly illsisling on the obligatoriness of particular rules and features by ,IJlIWallo various standards, drawn from pre-kahary negotiation, gcnerational , Il~J' i \ lIlal , and other stylistic differences. 01' particular interest is the fact that Ihe 'i lrength 01' the partieipants' insistenee on the rightness of their o\Vn way , IIll'il strudural rigidity , is a function ofthe mood ofthe encounter , inereasing 1" I he lension mounts, deereasing as a settlement is approached. Ultimately , IIIIwcver, the practical goal of establishing an allianee between the t\Vo fam t11 ~'o; involved takes precedence over al1 lhe speechmakers' insistence upon IlIl' wllventions 01' /((fhary performance and their desirc to display lbeir per l"nll
ro..

SI 11 Nc ' P "N I I !_H C' I /\I . ,"l l ' r"c ' j

Whal is ll1isslng flllnl I: inh \ f'll ll nt tlali ~) II I~ r h~' ~ l' II I I;l l j l y ,,1 sllll:\led social inlcracl io n as lhe C{lI1t~X I ill which s,)cial orgtllli í'a llt>lI . a... ¡lI ll'IIICl'gcnl, lakes formo The currenl rócus on the;; emergence 01" liOl;ill l slrm;turcs in socia'l in teraction is principally the conlribution 01' cthno-lllelhoJology, lhe work 01' Garfinkel, Cicou rel, Sacks, ano olhers. For these sociologists, " the lIcIo of sociological analysis is anywhere the sociologist can obtain access and can examine tbe way the 'social structurc' is a meaningful ongoing aecomplish ment of members" (Phillipson 1972: 162). To these scholars too is oweo , in large part, lhe recognition that language is a basic means through which social realities are inte;;rsubjectively conslituted and communicated (PhilIipson 1972: 140). From th is perspective, insofa r as performance is conceived of as communicative interaction , one woulo expect aspects of the social structure of the interaction to be emergent from the interaction itself, as in a ny otber such situation. Rosaldo's explication of the strategic ro1e-taking and role making she observeo in the course of a meeting to settIe a oispute over brioeprice among the Hongot ill umjnates quite clearly the emergent aspect of social structure in that event (R osaldo 1973). The conventions of such meelings ano the oratorical performances of the interaetants endow the interaction with a special oegree of formalization and intensity , but the faet that artistic verbal performance is involveo is not functionally relateo to the negotiation of social structure on the leve] Rosaldo is concerneo with . Rather she focllses on such matters as the rhetorical strategies ano consequenccs of taking the role 01' father in a particular event, thus placing your interlocutor in the role of son , with its attendant obligations. There is, however, a distinctive potential in performance which has impli cations for the creation 01' social structure in performance. It is part 01' the essence of performance that it offcrs to the participants a special enhance ment of experience, bringing with it a heighteneo intensity 01' communicative interaction which binos the audience to the performer in a way that is speeifie to performance as a mode of communic.ation. Through his performance, the performer elicits the participative attention and energy 01' hls audience, ano to the extent that they value his performance, they will allow themselves to be caught up in it. When this happens, the performer gains a mcasure ofprestige ano control over the audience- prestige beca use ofthe demonstrateo compet ence he had displayeo, control becallse the oetermination 01' the flow of the interaction is in his hands. When the perfoTmer gains control in this way, the potential for transformation of the social structure may become availabk to him as \Vell (Burke 1969[1950]: 58-59). The process is manifest in the follow ing passage from [)ick Gregory's autobiography: I gol pickeo on a 101 uro und tJ1C ncighbo rhood . .. I guess lhat's whe n I li rst bCg~1 1l lo Icarn abo ul hUl1wr, lhe power 01' a j\lkc Alllrst ... r d j usI gel rilad :lnd nlll home a ntl ay whl.!lI IIH' k iJs sl a ll ~d . !\ Ild Ih':lI . I don ', k ll \l\V jusI wlll~n , 1 slar' ed lo IiJ 'III~' il 11111.

V I : It JI 1\ 1 ¡\ II I

I\,"i

Pllt F Of{ M i\ N ('1"

Tll l!y \Vcrc going lo lallgll allyway, bul il' I made the j Okes lhey'o la 11gb lI'i¡h l11e inslead 01' al llle. ro gel Ihe kios off my back, on my side. So ('d COllle off lhal porch talking aboul myself. .. . Be!"ore they cOLlld get going, ro knock il out f1rsl, fast , knock out those jokes so they wouldn't have time to sel and climb all o ver me. . .. And they started to come over and listen to me, they' d see rne coming and crowd around me on the corner. .. . Everything began to change then .. .. The kids began to expect to hear funny things from me, and after a while 1 could say anything I wanted. I got a reputation as a fllnny man oAno then I starteo to turn lhe jokes on them . [Gregory 1964: 54- 55; italics in original] rhrough performance, Gregory is able to take control of the situation , lTcaling a social strllcture with himself at the center. A t first he gains control hy lhe artful use of the oeprecatory humor that the other boys had formerly direcled at him. The joking is still al his own expense, b ut he has transformed lite situalion, lhrough performance, inlo one in which he gains admiralion 101' his performance skills. Then, building on the control he gains tluollgh performance, he is able, by strategic use of his performance skills, to trans1III"In the situation still further , turning the humor aggressively against those \Vho had earlier victimized him. In a very real sense, Gregory emerges from 1he performance encounters in él oifferent social position vis-el-vis the other hllyS from the one he occllpied before he began to perform, ano Ihe change is ;1 consequence of his performance in those encounters. The consioeration ofthe power inherent in performance to transform social ~;I ruclures opens the way lo a range 01' aooitional eonsiderations concerning I he role of the performer in sociely. Perhaps lhere is a key here to the persist "lIlly oocumented tendency for performers lo be both admired ano feared .tdlllireo for their artistic skil\ and power ano for lhe e.nhanccment 01' expcr,ience IIley provide, fea red beca use ofthe potential they represent fo1' subverting and 11 ansforming the status q uO. Bere too may lie a reason for the equally persistent a'lliociation between performers ano marginality 01' oevi ~tnce, for in the special "llll'l"gent quality ofperformance the capacity for change may be;; high-lighteo i1nd maoe manifest to the community (sec, e.g., Abrahams and Bauman 1971 , Il.d.; !\zaoovskii 1926: 23 - 25: Glassie 1971: 42- 52; Szweo 1971: 157- 165). If ¡'hange is concciveo of in opposition to the conventionality of the community ;11 large, then it is only appropriate that the agents 01' that change be placed :Iway froJ1l the center 01' that conventionality, on the margins of society.

Conclusion 111\': Ji scip linc o rro ll..Jnre (:l IIl! 1\) " n ex lenl. anlhro po logy a~ weJl), has lenoed 1IIII1IIgho lll it~ his'\llY In d l"li ll\! il s\.! 11' in Icnn:) (')1' a principal fouls on Ih\.! .,1

1l 10'¡ C II ¡\I'J JI S O( ' I"I . S ( ' ll fI'¡ f ,

l nu.1 íl lullal r~'Il1I1 ,IIj( '4 11 1 l':III".: r p\' lllIlI -; , slíll lu I¡l 1III IIId 11, 1III l~~' .~L'L'tllrs 01' snt: ic ty that h u\'\.' h~c Jl llllldis l ilJ1t:cd hy the UUl lllll illl 1 nlll lllc 111 lhis cxtent. lo lklorc has bcc l1 largd y lhe :-;tlldy n I' wha t R a yJ1lo nu Wlll iullts has recently tcrmcd "residual l'UltIHl' ." thOSl: " cxpcricnccs. mcaniJlgs ami values which cannot be verified or cannot be cxprcssed in terms of thc dominant culture, [but] are nevcrthcless lived and practised on the basis of the residue-cultural as wcl1 as social of some previous social formation " (Wil1iams 1973: 10 - 11). If the subject matter of the discipline is restricted to the residue of a specific cultural or historical period, then folklore anticipates its own demise. for when the traditions are fully gone, the discipline loses its raisol1 d'elre (cf. H ymes 1962: 678; Ben-Amos 1972: 14). This need not be the case, however, for as W il1iams defines the concept. c ultural clements may become part of residual culture as part of a contin ual social proce ss, a nd parts of resid ual culture may be incorporatcd into the dominant culture in a complemen tary process. At best, though , folklore as the discipline of residual culture looks backward to the past for its frame of reference. disqualifying i!self from the study of the creations of contemporary culture until they too may become residual. Contrasted with residual culture in Williams' provoca ti ve formulation is "emergent culture, " in which " new meanings and values, new practices, new sig nificances and cxperiences are continual1y being created" (Wil1iams 1973: 11). This is a further extension of the concept of emergence, as employed in the preceding pages of this artide, but interestingly compatible with it , for the emergent quality of experiencc is a vital factor in the generation of emergent culture. Emergent culture. though a basic eIement in human social life, has always lain outside the charter of folklore , perhaps in part for lack of a unified point of depárture or frume of reference able to comprehend residual forms and items, contemporary practice, and emergent structures. Performance, we would offer, constitutes just such a point of departure, the nexus of traditi on, practice, and emergencc in verbal art. Performance may thus be the corner stone of a new folkloristics, libcrated from its backward-facing perspective, and able to comprehend much more of the totality of human experience .

Notes In thc development ofthe ideas presented in this essay J have profited greatly from discussions with mally colleagues amI students over the past several years, élmong whom Barbara Babeock-Abrahams. Dan Ben-Amos, Marcia Herndon , Barbara K.irshcnblall-Gimblctt, 10hn McDo\\'ell , Norma McLeod, Américo Paredes, Dina Sherzer. amI Bc"crly Stocltje deserve special mention and thanks. My greatest debe howe"cr, is lo the three individuals who have slimulated amI int1uenccd my Ihink ing lIloSl pro ro lllldly: Dell I-I ymes. ror imparting to me the ethnographic ~ rsrct,;1 iw on vUfh,,) arl ami for his ide,ls 011 Ihe na ture 01" performance; Roger D. I\ hm hallls, rpr fnc lIsi ng my allenli o ll lI n performance a~ an or~al1 i7.i l1f principie 1,,1 Ihe sllldy of'fp lklore; il u d Jocl Sherzer rol' sharing in Ihe illl c llc~ III ;¡ 1 ]1I'1lWSS all :¡]oll u.lhl' W:I V

,1,

VIIUIAI

1\1t' 1

1\ ," I'FHI ' OI{M i\N C II

, 1'; (1 ()68) , amI Abl'ahallls (1 %8 , 1972). Two eollections which reflect lhc perl'lm nance orientation are Paredes and Bauman (1972) amI Ben-Amos and (,oldslein (llJ75). Balllllan and Sherzer (1974) refteets a \Vider performance ori \.:ntatioll , of whieh performance in verbal art is one aspect. Singer (1 958a , 1958b, 1(72) represents the perspective ofan anthropologist on "cultural performances. " <.'olby éUld Peacock (1973) eontams a section on Performance Analysis which, howevcr, ignores lhe IVork offolklorists in this field, a n omission whieh is perhaps lo be expected in an article on narrative IVhieh announces its deliberate neg'lcet of rolk lore jOllrnals. The ter m "spoken art" was suggested by Thomas Sebeok in disellssioll ofBascom's ideas on verbal art (Baseom 1955: 246, n. 9; see abo Dorson 1972: 9). 4 Richard Ohman n, in t\Vo recent articles. employs Ihe sa me passage frorn Allstin as a point of departure for the fQnnlllation of a theory of literature based on AustiJl'S theory of speeeh aets (Ohman n 1971 , 1972). Ohmann's argument is iTlteresting in places. but its productiveness is severely limited by his failure - 'iike Allstin 's- to reeogni ze that the notion of strietly referential. " literal" meallling has liule, if any, rclevance to the use of spoken language in social lire. For a strong critique of the concept of "ord,i nary langLlage." and the impoverishing etTect it has on definitions of literature, see Fish (1973). .~ The notion 01' frame, thou.gh not necessarily Ihe term , is used in a similar manner by other writers (see, e.g., lIuiziuga 1955; Mjlner 1955: 86; Smith 1968; Uspensky 1972; Fish 1973: 52-53). (, Concerning the ccological model of communication underlying Ihis fonnulation , are Sherzer ami Bauman (1972) and Bauman and Sher~er (1974). 7 Note that it is slIsceplibifily to evaluation that is indieated hefe; in this formuJation lhe status of an utterance as perform311ee is independent 01' hm\! it is evalllated , whether it is judged good or bad, beautiful 01' ugly, etc. A bad performance is nonetheless a performance. On this poinl , see H ymes (1973: 189-190). X I have been inftuenced in this formulation by I-Iyrnes (1974, 1975), d'Azevedo (1958: 7(6), Mukafovsky (1964: 19, 1970: 21), and Goffman (1974). A similar conception of perfolmance is developed in an unfinished papel' by my former colleague Joseph Doherly (Doherty n.d.), whose reeent tragie and untimely dea th oecurred before he wru; a ble to complete his work, ami prevented me from benefit ing from discussions \Ve planned but never hado EHi K6ngiis Maranda seems to be operating in terms of a conception 01' verba l art which is similar in eertain central respects to the one developed here (Mara nda 1974: 6). Compare also Fish 's eonception 01' literature (Fish 1973). A special \\'ord should be said ofthe use of "compctence" and "performance" in Ihe aboye formulation. Use of these tenns, especially in such close ,juxtaposition, dcmands at least sorne acknowledgement of Noam Chomsky's contribution of both to the technical vocabulary oflinguistics (Chomsky 1965: 3- 4). lt shollld be apparent, however, that bOlh lerms are employed in a very diffcrent way in the present IVork- eompetence in the seme advanced by Hylfles (1971) , and perform ance as formulated on page 293 above. () The aspeet of eonventionality will be diseussed belo\\'. I() Ethics and esthetics a re nol always as eotcrminous as Gossen suggests, in sum nling up his analysis of the Chamula. In St. Vineent, for example, the domain "1,lIking nonsensc" is negatively valued in terms of ethics, but eneompasses a rallge 01: speech aclivilics \Vi lh a slrong performance elcment about them that is Itighly valued allll Ill llch \'Iljllyed in esthetic lerlllS (Abrahams and Jhuman 1971). Rc;lI , as againsl idea l 111111':11 syslellls unen aceoHll1lodale more disrepulability

......

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IIIal1 al1lltl"r\ )k)~'I ~ I:, 1]1 v,' 1111'111 ( Ied ll IllI , '1IId lit.' . 1 ~~( " f .llli'l1 h, IWI!I! I1 pcrl'orm ance ;lI1d disrq~ Ll t:t hllil y IIas Ill"'-:II been 1l: III:trkcd 1'L',' A llJ illtal lls alld Bauman 11.(1.). !\nolhcr casI.' Ihal 1II1 dcrsClll\ :S lite ctl nlr lcx ily ()I' lite relaliollship between cthies ami csthctics is lhal 01' Ihe scvc nteenlh cClltUl'y Q uakcrs. rol' wholll fUllda mental mora l p rinciplcs against putting oncselffolward , speaking things that werc in a strict sense " not the truth." and gratifying thc carthly mano sevcrely limited the potential and actual domain nf artistic verbal perfommnce. leaving but a few very spccial kinds of outlets for performance at all (Bauman 1970, 1974, 1975). The whole maller of the relatiollship betwcen cthics and esthetics is one that badly needs investigation from an anthropological point of view. 11 Hymes (1975) applies the tcml " metaphrasi¡;" to this phenomenon. 12 The concept of emelgence is developed in McH ugh (1968). f he emergent quality of performance is emphasized in Hymes (1975). 13 Kahary designates both a way of speak ing a nd the forms in which it is manifested.

Referenccs Abrahams. Roger D. 1968. lntroductory Rernarks to a Rhetorical Theory 01' Folk lore. Journal 01' American Folklore 81: 143 - 148. - - 1970. A Performance-Centered Approach to Gossip. Man 5: 290-30J. - - 1972. Folklore and Literature as Performance. Journal 01' the Folklore 1nstitute 8: 75 - 94. Abrahams, Roger D. , and Richard Bauman 1971. Sense and Nonsense in SI. Vincent. American Anthropologist 73: 762- 772. - - n.d. Ranges of Festival Behavior. /n The Reversible World: Essays on Symbolie lnversion. Barbara Babcoek-Abrahams, Ed. Austerhtz, Robert 1960. ParaJlelismus. 1/1 Pocties.. Poetyka , 1WHVKU. The Hague: Mouton. Austin, J. L. 1962. How To Do Things With Words. Ncw York: Oxford University Press. Azadovskii, Mark 1926. Eine Sibirische Miirchenerúihlerin. Helsinki: Folklore Fel lows Comrnunication No. 68. English translation by James R. Dow. Austin, TX: Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Oral History (in press). Rabcock-Abrahams, Barbara 1974. The Story in the Story: Meranarraliol1 in Folk Narrative. Papel' delivered at lhe VI Folk Narrative C ongress, Helsinki , June 17. Bascom. William 1955. Verbal Art. Journal of American F olk lore 68: 245- 252. Bateson, Gregory 1972. Stcps to Hn Ecology of 1\·lind. New York: Ballantine. Bauman , Richard 1970. Aspects 01' Sc ventcenth Ccntury Quaker Rhetoric. Quarterly Journal 01' Speech 56: 67- 74. - - 1972a. (ntroduction./11 T oward Ncw Perspeclivcs in Folklore. Américo Paredes and Richard Bauman. Eds. Austin: University ofTexas Press. - - 1972b. Thc La Have (sland General Store: Sociability and Verbal Art in a Nova Scotia Commu.llity. Journal 01' American Folklore 85: 330- 343 . - 1974. Speaking in the Light: lhc Role ,)fthc Quaker Minister. In Explorations in lhc Ethnography 01' Speak ing. R ichard Ba ulllan and Joel She rze r, Fds. Ncw York : Cambridge Uni vc rsil y r rcss. 1975. QUilkel' h ,lk Llll j.!, uisli,·s " ud F olklore. In Ful klllll!' ( 'PllllIllllli,';llion and f'e l-t'\ln lliln¡;c n all Ikll '¡\ lTIos un d KC ll ndh C ()kb l ~· ill . hl.. 111,· 11:1)'.1Ie: M ~lllltlll.

'lit

v,.

1(

11 ¡\ I

i\ It l' ,\.'; "~l ' R I () 1~ M A N ( . "

1I:llIlllall . Ri chard, a llo .l oe! Shcr/c l (hls.) 1')74. [x ploralions inlhe Et hnography of Speakillg. Ncw York: C ambridge I Jnivcrsity Prcss. \!\!Il -¡\ 11 \llS, !Jan 1969. ¡\nalytical Calcgories ,lI1d Ethnic Genres. Genre 2: 275 - 301 . 1')72. Toward a Detlnition 01' Folklore in Context. 1/1 Toward New Perspectives ill Folklore. Américo Paredes and Richard Rauman , Eds. Austin: Univcrsity of Tcxas Prcss. Ikn-¡\mos, Dan and Kenneth G oldstein (Eds .) 1975 . Folklore: Comll1unicatioll and Performance. The 1 [auge: M o uton. IIl1rkc, Kennelh 1969. A Rhetoric 01' Motives. Berkeley & Los A ngeles: U n iversi ty of ('alifornia Press. IIl1rlls , Elizabeth 1972. Theatricality. Ncw York: Harper. ( ·holllsky. Noam 1965 . Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT !'ress. (·olby. Benjamin, and James Peacoek 1973. Na rratiw. In Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology. John J. Honigmann , Ed. Chieago: Ra nd McNall y. (·rowley. Daniel J. 1966. 1 Could Talk Old Story Good. Berkeley & Los Angeles: l.Iniversity ofCalifornia Press. 1>arnell , Regna 1974. Correlates of Cree Narrative Performance. [1/ Explorations in the Ethnography 01' Speaking. Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, Eds. New York: Cambridge Univcrsily Press. d'Azevedo. Warrcn 1958. A Structural Approach to Esthetics: Toward a Detlnition of Art in Anthropology. American Anthropologist 60: 702- 714. 1klargy. James H. 1945. The Gaelic Story-Teller. London: Proeeedings 01' the British Academy 31: 177- 221 . Doherty , Josep h n.d. Towards a Poetics of Pe rform a nce. Manuscript. Dorson. Richard M. 1972. African Folklore. New York: Doubleday Anchor. l >undes, Alan 1966. Metafolklore and Oral Literary Criticismo The Monist 50: 505 516. J)urbin , M ridula 1971. Transformational M odels Applied 10 Musical Analysis: The oretical Possibilities. Elhnomusicology 15: 353 - 362. Finnegan. Ruth 1967. Limba Stories and Storytelling. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1:irth. Raymond 1961. Elements ofSocial Organization. Third editiol1. Boston: Beacon Press (paperback 1963). i'ish , Stanley E. 1973. Ho\\' Ordinary ls Ordinary Language'! New Literary History

5: 40 - 54. I:úmtgy , Ivan 1965. Form alld Function ofPoetie Language. Diogenes 51: 72 110. I:ox . .lames 1974. Our Ancestors Spoke in Pairs. In Explorations in the Ethnograph y 01' Speaking. Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, Eds. Ncw York: Cambridge University Press. I'ricdman , Albert 1961. The Formulaic lmprovisalion Theory ofRallad Tradition A Counterstatement. Journal of American F olklore 74: 113 ·115. ('corgcs. Robert 1969. Toward an Understanding ofStorytelling Events. Journal of Amcrican Folklore 82: 313 - 328: ( i lassie. Hcnry 1971. T ake th a t N ighl T ra in to Selma : an Exc ursion to the O utskirts oí' :-Il'ho larship. In Folkson )!s and their Makers. b y Henry Glassie. Edward D. (ves, all e! Jo hn r . S/wed. O.l\vlin p, G r\;;en, OH : Bow ling G rcen Po pular Press.

(;.,11111:111 . hrv inll 1'/7<1 . !'r.nl ll: A n;¡J ysi,. New Yo rk: 1(; 1\ flcr ('olopholl.

')-'/

v 1, It

S "'ENc " <'; ,ISS\:II , ( ia ry 1'172 . ('lIalllllla (i l; III C~ ,,1 Vl',hal lkh. lvl4l1 1" 1.,\\. ",1 NL:w I'nspcct iws inl·ol J.. l~rt~ . ¡\lIIérieu I'a n:dcs alltl Richard J!alllllall h l. \",,1111 ' 1lIivcrsity uf

Texas Press . - - 1974. '1'0 Speak with a 1,l eateu Ilcart: Chall1l1la Canuns 01' Slyle and Gaod Perfonnance. In Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. R ichard BéllIll1an and Joel Sherler, Eds. New York: Cam hridge Uni versi ty Press. Gregory, Dick 1964. Nigger: An Autobiography. New York: Dutl o n. Havránek, Bohus1a v 1964. The Fundional Differentiation orthe Standard Language. In ¡\ Prague School Reader on Estheties. Literary Structure, and Style. Paul L. Ga rvin, Ed. Was hington , OC: Geo rgetown University. H rdlickovú , V. 1969. Japanese Profession al Storytellers. Genre 2: 179- 210.

HlIi zi nga . lohan 1955. Ho mo Ludens. Bastan: Beacon.

Hymes, Dell 1962. Re l'iew of I ndian Tales 01' North America, by T. P. Coffin. Amer

ican . Anthropologist 64: 676- 679. - - 1971. Competence and Performance in Linguistic Theory . In Language Acquisi tion: Models and Methods. Renira Huxley and Elisabeth Ingram, Eds. London and New York: Academic Press . - - 1973. An Ethnographic Perspective . New Literary History 5: 187- 201. - - 1974. Ways 01' Speaking. In Exp lorations in the E thnography 01' Speaking. Richard Bauman and loel Sherzer, Eds. New York: Cambridge University Press. - - 1975. Breakthrollgh into Perfo rmance. In Folklore: Commllnication and Per formance. Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth Goldstein, Eds. The Haglle: Mouton. Innes, Gordon 1974. Sunjata: Three Mandinka Versions. London: School 01' Oriental and Africiln Studies, University of London. lakobson . Roman 1960. Linguistics and Poetics. In Style in Language. Thomas A. Sebeok, Ed. Cambridge, MA: Mil Press. - - 1966. Grammatical Parallclism and Its Russian Facet. Language 42: 399- 429. - - 1968. Poetry 01' Grammar a nd Grammar of Poetry. Lingu
k

11 ¡\ '- ,\ It I

.•\ ' . l' I I{ l ' 1) I( M t\ N ( T

1(174 . Individual all d I ': lIlllh'll. I'al'l'r dl'livenxl at Ihe VI T'oll.. Narrative ('on Ilclsinki , .Iune 211. Md>ü well , Jol1ll 1974. SOl11e Aspects 01' Verbal !\rt in Bolivian Quechua. f-olklorc I\nnual 01' Ihe l.Iniversity Folklore Assoeiation (University of T exas, Austin). No. (,. I\kllugh. Peter 1968. Defining the Situation. Indianapolis, 1N: Bobbs-Merrill. I\kssinger. Shcldon L. 1962. Life as Theater: Some Notes on the Dramaturgic Approach to Social Rea lity, Soeiometry 25: 98- 110. M ilner, Marion 1955. Role of II lusion in Symbol Formation. Jn New Directions in I'sychoa na lysi s. Mclanie Klein . Ed. New York: Basie Books. Mllkarovsk y, Jan 1964. Standard Language and Poetic Language.ln A Prague Sehool Reader on Esthetics. Lite rary Str uctll re and Style. Paul L. Garvin , Ed. Washington , De: Georgetown Uni versi ty. 1970. Aesthetic Function, Norm and Va/ue as Socia l Facts. Ann Arbor: Depart nlent of Slavie Languages and Literature. University of Michigan. ()llIl1ann , Richard 1971. Speech Acts and the Definition of Litcrature. Philoso phy and f{ hetoric 4: 1- 19. 1972. Speech , Literature, anu the Space Bctween. New Literary Hi story 4: 47 111. I'¡¡n:des, Américo . and Richard Bauman (Eds.) 1972. Toward New Pers pedives in I'olklore. Austin: Universit y ofTexas Press. I'hillipson , Michael 1972. Phenomenological Phil oso phy and Sociology. In New Dir cctions in Sociological Theory. by Paul Filmer, Michacl Phillipson , David Silvcnnan, and David \Valsh. Cambridge , MA : MIT Press. f{l'aver, 1. Russell 1972. From Reality to Fantasy: Opening-Closing Formulas in the Slructures of American Tall Tales. Southern Folklore QlIartcrl y 36: 369- 382. f{llsaldo. Michellc Z. 1973. I Have Nothing lo Ilide: the Language of I1ongot Oratory. I ,anguage in Society 2: 193 - 223. f{lIesch , lurgen , and Gregory Bateso n 1968. Communication. New Yo rk: Norton. ,""acks, Harvey 1974. A n Analysis of the Course 01' a Jokc 's Tell ing in Conversatioll. In Lxplorations in the F thnography of Speaking. Richard Bauman and lo el Sherzer, hls. New York: Ca mbridge University Press. Sherzcr, Dina, and loel Sherzer 1972. Literature in San BIas: Discovering the C una Ika/a. Semiotiea 6: 182- 199. SlIcrzcr,loel 1974. Namakke. SU/'lll1akke, Korll1akke: Three Types of Cuna Speech I ~ vents. 1/1 Explon1tions in the Ethnography of Speaking. Richard Bauman and .Ioel Sherze r. Eds. New Yo rk : Camhridge U niversi ty Press. Shl'1'zcr. Joel, and Richard Baumall 1972. Arcal Studies and Culture History: Lan guage as a Key to the Hist o rieal Study ofCulture Contact. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 28: 131 - 152. Sillger. Milton 1958a. From the GlIest Editor. .Iollrnal of American Folklore 7 1: 19 1· 204. 1958b. The Great Traditian in a I\ktropolitan Center: Mauras. Journal of American Folklore 71: 347- 388. 1972. When a Great Tradition Modem izes. New York: Praeger. SlIlilh . Barbara 11. 196X. Poct ic Clos ure. C hicago: Uni versity of C hicago. SI :lIlkiewicl.. Pdwun.l lilúO, l'nClic l.anguagc and No n-Poctic Lang uagc in their Intcr 1"lalioll . /11 PnClirs , I't11'1 y\.. :t . 1tm:'tVllTl.. Thc I-Iu gue: MO llton. I' rC ~,.

',i)

Sl'll l Nc' 1 AN I I SIH J I\! . :-; t ¡ 'I ~ N (' 1 l'OI ul l· I';¡II .:I Nl'W jl)lI l1dlrll ld "iillll ' ~1 ¡l~" r ,llld ('wlIlI1unity 1'"lksollj\s ;llId th l!lr M;¡kel's. hy I li.' ilJy ( II ' IS~ I (,' I d wo rd D. Ivcs, ami J"hn 1:. S/wcd. llowlingGn.:cll , 01 1: Ho wli ng GrcclJ l! lIi vc rsil y I'vJ>ular Press. Tedlock. Dcnnis 1972. On lhe T ranslation 01' Stylc in Oral Narrative. 111 Toward New Pc rspectivcs in Folklore. Américo Paredes é1nd Richard Bauman . Eds. Austin: University of Texas Press. Toelken, J. Barre 1969. The "Pretty Language" of Yellowman: Genre, Mode, and Texture in Navaho Coyote Na rra tives. G enre 2: 211 - 235 . Uspensky. B. A. 1972. Struetural Isomorphism of Verbal and Visual Art. Poeties 5: 5- 39. S/W.:'1. J.. IIII ,; 1'111 Or Sllll¡,t. /11

Wcinreich , Uriel 1966. On the Semantic Structure 01' a Language. In Uni versals of Language. Joseph Greenberg, Ed.. Cambridge, MA : M IT Press. Williams. Ra ymo nd 1973. Base and Superstructure in Marxist C ultural T heory. New Left Rcview 82: 3- 16.

48

A PERFORMAN CE- CE N TER ED

APPROACH TO GOSS IP

RORe,. D. Abrahams

Sourcc: Mall, Ncw Series. 5(2) (1970) : 290 301.

Gossip, like joking, takes place between individuals who stand in a special relationship to each other. We can therefore discern a good deal oftbe formal and informal social structure of a community by noting those categories of people who joke or gossip with each other. rurthermore, like joking, both the content and forms of gossip are traditional, and it is these conventional aspects which define ami restrict the communicative situation. lt would thus be instructive in both joking and gossip to investigate the communications exchanged in regard to what Limits there are to the license given by the community and by the individuals involved , and how judgement is made on violations of decorum. This means that the observer must take note of the q ualities of the specific performance which give rise to these traditionaJ gossiping and joking relationships. To do this, however, it is important not only to see what other forms of conventional conversational interchange exist within the speech community under investigation , but also such other deliber ate, licensed performances as occur. In olher \Vords, to understand gossip in the context of the range of speech acts of a community, it is necessary to investigate the fcatures unique to gossip and those which are shared witb other speech acts and events. The functionalist perspective has made us sensitive to the elemcnts of social control whieh underlie so much of what peoplc say and perform to eaeh other. Most public perfonnances call for sorne dramatisation of the ideals of the group, either through a formal 01' a comic presentation , the slrategy of the former arguing cm ulation. that 01' the latter, a voidance. But sorne ethnogra phcrs have become uneaS)' about the fU llctionalist approach, beca use of its unitary focus. Th ey nole correctly thal there are other dimensions and uses to slIch rcrJ'orma nces whidl UI'C dirricult lo account for lh rough the use 01' the cqui lihriu lll nwucl al ol H' ¡lO

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( 'OIIIlI IOllly Ihe ,11 ¡'IIII 1\"11 1', " ~·III/,..,l lhl· flllll' I111 11,111:.1'. 1'"',111 011 h;lw sln:ssed IIldI V"III;l 1 PI 1 1I~'I I !/ ll iI' 1: ll111 pclll iw lI ~il gCS l /C pCI rl11ItlUIH:C dl'vil'l's. Taking Ihe Inll gel vil'w, il ;;Cl:rt IS a lrll os l o lw io lls IIJat Illany o r lhesc lraditillnal devil'es Wllldl al gllC in \(;nns o ra p uhlil' moralily. (such as provcrbs and myths), may also he applicd in Ihe prosel'ution of personal or radiona! encls. Tndeed. it has hl'cll c lcgal1lly dcmllnstratcd by Leach and Firth thatjust such a process is to be nhsl'rvcd ill Ihe use 01' myths, at lea si among the Kachin and Tikopians (1 cal'h 1954; Firlh 196 1). The disl'ussion of the nature and function of gossi p ha s bC\:ollle c
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Arnollg Ihc previuus eOln llll:nla lors on gossip. I find only Edmonson (1966) amI Gosscn (1969) hinlingalslIch a perspcclive. Both deal with Middl0

American Indian langllages, and both approach gossip as one native form of sclf-conscious expression amon g others. Edmonson points out that those calcgorics are somewhat at variance with ours (a possibility that Gluckman scems to ignore in his reliance on a too restrictive dictionary definition o f the practico). Edmonson says: At first glance the linking of games with gossip and humor may appear both arbitrary and misleading.. .. Taken together. ho wcver, the three topics ha ve a ce rtain coherence peculiarly relevan t perhaps to the Middle American Indians: in many languages of M iddle Arnerica they are called by lhe same word. To ' Iaugh \Vith ' (or 'at ' 01' ' over') somebody is to play with hirn , to mock him , or to amuse him (Nahllatl ucl zca. Yucatec cheeh). (1966: 191) Gossen, going somewhat l'arther in lhis direction , indicates that gossip is not only regarded as a form of play or performance arnong lhe Cham ula , but is also eategorised as a kind of narrative form , embodying stories about the doings ol' people in the fourth (contemporary) crea tion world (Gossen 1969: 29 - 33).

* * * * * Among Vincenlian peasants, újmmess isjudged Iike all verbal performances in terms ofthe appropriate use orthe form by the performer. It is thu s related in th e rninds of the group to a number ol' other types of verbally slylised encounters, both in terms of contcnt (where it is associated \Vith other gemes which focus on scandal), and form (where it fits into other types of licensed narratives, sueh as Anansi stories). Gossip is therefore judged in the same lerms as a story or a song, that is. according to whcther it is judiciously per formed in the right setting and under the properly Iicensed conditions. Since it is regarded as onc form 01' ' rudcness' or ' nonscnse' , a good deal of license from the (restrictcd) audience is called for if it is to be carried off successfully. In line \Vith the previous arguments concerning gossip, Vincenlian cOl11mcss does elucidate public1y approved behaviour by condemning departllres from norms . It is also used by a number of judicious performers to build up their bases of estecm within the commLlnity. This we must infer from the rail L1re ol' sorne gossipers lo use the oevice appropriately, and from the ensuing discus sions 01' lhe consq uences 01' such actions in terrns of community division. But Ihe app roach wh ich will be used in this artic1e will focus Iess on sueh public, llr personal, a;,;pects 01' gossip use, and m ore o n the way in which Vincentians view áil1l/IH'.I'.I' il! rclal ion lo (Ilher performance rorms. (ti

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As III \'"u tiP 11Cd, ¡\II SI VillI.'C lIt tlll'l ~ is a gupu dca llll Inl" ,I "o"t talk_ IlllieCU, lIH: hasil: illstituti'"IS uf 111 ... pcasant rarnily- alld rncnJ~lIip-lldworks are uclincd as 1II11ch in tcrlllS spccch behavioll\' as by actiolls. (A l'olk-taxonomy or spccch acts in this collllllunity is descri bed in A brahams & Bauman 1969.) Onc rcason for this focus on talk is the retenti on 01' the attitude that control of woros and speaking events provides the key to community status and personal power. Words , as control oevices, are greatly aomireo when effectivcly used in a controlIcd and familiar atmosphere while observing tb e conventional rules ano boundaries of the occasio n. but greatly fea red when these controls are absent or when the expectation patterns established by convention are abrogated (A brahams 1967: 1968). In short, Vincent ian peas ants retain an essentialIy oral culture in spite of the high oegree 01' literacy in the community. Adivities such as 'making cümmess' and 'vextation ' (arguing) occur constan ti y but are nevertheless fea red because they lead to a feeling 01' loss of control over the most powerful words 01' alI- one 's personal name . One therefore attempts to manage one's o\Vn identity by ading sensibly, especialIy within the family , and by being judicious in the choice of friends , picking those to whom one may talk without one's words being 'stolen' and publicly oramatiseo. However, there is an ambivalence in Vincentian life , arising from the feel ing that one can fuI1y manage one's own identity only by keepin g silent at most times ; not even friends and family are realIy trllstworthy in keepin g counsel. Yet silence on many occasions is a sign oflack of trust and is strongly resented . The strong, silent type is regarded as strange and unnatural in this community. Furthermore, the same motives ernbodied in gossiping ano arguing, when they are channel1ed into appropriate ceremonial ('play ') per formances, are encouraged by the community. Though there is afear 01' having one's name used in scandal-pieces, therc is a contrary notion that prestige may result from having one's name used (and therefore knovo'Il) by so many people _In some cases, beca use one beeomes known (albeit notoriously), com munity scorn is acceptcd and taken aovantage 01' by inoividuals. Here the implication is that people \Vould rather be feared as deviants than ignored . T his contradiction scems due to the presence of contrary motives _ Onc motive dictates that one should live decorously , earning rcspect for oneself and one's parents. The implication is that one's role in the community is lInder OIlC's OVo'll control or unde_r the control 01' one's family . The contrary motive is that commllnity role perception and typing procedures are going to accord one a place ano that on e must learn to accept and capitalise on this. These contrary aspects a re not the subject of much discussion or worry beca use they are not oi rect ly pc n:\!ivcd . Rather, the Vincentian sees certai n elements o rhi s idenli ty whidl Ill' 1ll~l y l:ontrol throu gh devcJoping lhe expres sive capac'itics consisten t wil h ccr(ai" rnh:s. T hcre are, howcvcr. o thel h:a t lIr\!s 01' the rQlc-castin g ~WC I wltid l he hato lilllc control , whiclt h...· tI W ld 'II~' il;arns

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* * * * * Because 01' its relation to these iueals, however. gossip is regardeu as -1I11nsense' and is therefore one of a number of performances everydayand \'l'rClIlonial--so designated. Being placed in such a category is , in a sense, a valllcjudgement. ' Nonsense' activitics are those which are potentially divisive 1mm the community point of view. They exhibit traits which are regarued as ll'lll-factuaL ' ignorant ': and those \Vho l'all into ' nonscnse ' are often described ,¡-; ' ignorant l'el1ows' . C onsequent1y. behaviOlJr is being condemned when I(lIalified as nonsen se. But in the actual operations of th e gro up, 'nonsense' plllvidcs the major motive ror él number 01' important ceremonial entertain IIlI:nts sllch as wukcs . 111 wakcs, Jicense fo r ' nonsense' is gi ven so that the 1o" l:i al con fusi un M d cu tll h~ articula tcJ , bwught play full y into the open,

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playl,;u ou l, alll! halld lc,1 111 II II~ Wa yo Lil:clIl iOll'l pi.. ." bd ... \ 111111 111 illes Ihe grollp l ()g~ lh l,; l ;lJId a llmv-; II lo l'CIIC;¡rSe cOllrU ~i () 1I alld ~lIlhOl I I a~~ lI lelll in a canlcxl whic h is lllH.k r COf1trol. O n slIch occasi on~ , 'n l)n~c.;flSl!· cafl be seen to serve as a cornlTlunity rocus in c!lannclling creative energics in socially useful dircctions. To undcrstand t!lis it is ncccssary to rccognise that ' nonsense' is a contrast term for 'sensible', and 'sensiblo' performances are those which are regarded as embodying the highest ideals of the community. A 'sensible ' performance is one in which 'decorum ' (often the key word in such a ceremony) is boldly stated and aeted upon ; it is one in whieh the familistic ideals of the commun ity are openly disellssed . It is looked upon as a model of behaviour not only beca use of its order bLlt because of its 'sen se', its factual and reliable eontent. Being 'sensible' rneans being well-spoken and knowledgeable --the two traits are regarded as synonymous- and anything weighed against 'sensible' enact ments is seen to be of liule or no value. The 'sensible' perfOTmance is one which emphasises the order and decorum afforded by knowledge, the 'nonsense' focuses Llpon the energetic and the lieentious ambienee which aeeompanies lies. The 'sensible'-' nonscnse' con trast not only refers to the embodiment 01' truth or lies, but also to t\Vo other categories 01' pcrfOTmance aUributes: language- and interaction-types. Reflcct ing this are t\Vo further contrast-sets of terms. Language usage, which is associated \Vith 'sensible' performance, is referred to as 'talking sweet' or 'talking good' . Speeeh which is congruent with 'non sense ' occasions is designated as ' talking broad ' or 'talking bad '. 'Talking sweet ' generally means approximating to formal standard English in diction, grammar and syntax . There is a natural congruence felt in both principie and practice between the lIse 01' this Ievel of language (espeeially in dietion) with the highly decorous stylised ceremonies whieh are designated as 'sensible'. lndeed, they are more often reterred to as 'sweet' than 'sensible'. Further more, when 'nonsense ' occasions are denigrated, it is often beca use they are not only full of ' Iies' but they are expressed in creole language, or ' taJking broad ' . The seeond eontrast-set related to the 'sensible-non sen se' dichotomy is the distinction between being 'rude' and being 'behaved ' or 'besaid '. 'Being behaved' is regarded as an aUribute of being 'sensible'; 'rudeness ' is associ ated with ' nonsense' . There is also an intimate relationship between language level and this behaviour contras!, for the 'behaved' are regarded as those who have words unJer control, while the 'rude' are those who do not and who therefore cause embarrassment, fear and anger in others. As one informan t put it, 'rude peoplc, they does make noisc to aflnoy ' (i.e . to embarra~s). The ' besaid ' are arlic ulate wilh words and with silence. Thus, the Vincentian has lIuee sets 01' lerms by which he commcnts upon and jlldges a pe rformance acc(l rd ing lO i l~ cO ll rormily lu his cOllse,;io us spcaki ng idca ls: ' I a l kin~' swcct', 'actil1g s~lI sihk ' , ' hcillj.! hc havl:d ' ; ano 'Ialking hroad'. '1.11].. 11 11' 1") I\ ~c n sc "

wlllll g (lit rlld c · . l\ lIlh es~ lC IIJI !\ ;111 ;Ipplicd bolh lo ~vcryd ay :tnd lo cen:l1lll 111 .11 pnronllal\Ccs. Thl~se c(in ll'asl ICrlns mus! be underslood ir Ihe operalion ,,1 !,ossip in Villcentian culture 15 to bc rully appreciated. Vinccnlians regard talk abollt the doings 01' others as a dcvice by which fI H':SC ollters' mImes are 'ealled' . By this is meant the ability of a speaker to Ide r lo SO/llcone by their familiar designation , and through such reference to II se IlIc Ilélllling as a means of, on the one hand, increasing one 's base of esteem, .Il1d PIl the other, controlling the person named. The 'call ing out' of names IICl"llrS in all pcrformances. Out it is taken note of only in those cases where it h 1l~garded as illegitimate or badly done. The ' rudeness' of such 'calling out' d mws altention to itself most commonly in those reculTe nt failures of recip I i Iral communieation , situations of embarrassment. 1'"111' inslance, when I was in St Vineent, certain of my acquaintanees \V\luld ycll out my name as I would pass on the road , and I notieed that my Villccntian companions would suck their teeth in displeasure, or \Vould r.llddcnly beeome very quiet. Naturally I asked why this was wrong, and \las lold that it was very improper for anyone, even my c10sest friends, to '\"all out' my name. The true sign 01' friendship in such circumstances would haw been to wait until our eyes met and then to raise the eyebrows, or to say II\lw , ho\V'7' or ' Wha' ' appening, manTo The inappropriateness of 'ealling llllt' my name , especially in the diminutive form, was that when someone lIalllCS you they imply that you are a friendo Friendship means more than an olvailable communication relationship; it involves a whole series of rights and ,)hligations, and therefore , a friend needs to have more ofa sign offriendship liten simply the knowlcdge of someone's name. This sense 01' embarrassment indica tes that there are strongly feh dis IlIlctions in what is regarJed as proper in public, and what should rema in priva le. A person 's name epitomises his private world, and when this intimacy 1:, violated by the inappropriate 'ealling' of his name, the victim may say, . y \lll t 'in k mo and yOll is sex and size?' or aecuses the ollender of ' playin' IIlan before 'c time' . The implication here, of course, is that the namer has IIlislakcnly assumed a peer-group relationship with the onc to whom he has l'alkd. '( 'alling name' mean s more than yelling it at yOll when yOll pass. lt also Idás to naming a person \Vhen discussing his activitics in conversation. Villt'cntian ideas 01' áJmmess are inc\udcd in this coneept, and someone who IS always talking about others is described as having a ' fas ' m o lit' '. This term 1:; ~iJ',flificant for bcing 'fas" means being thievish, and having a ' fas ' mout" 1:. Ihlls regarded as ' t' iefin " someone's good namc, betraying trust.

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dd llh.:d 1/1 1111: S~'IJ:-'l' 111 whidl Ihl: I ~ I'II is II )¡Uillly "lIlph.\\ " . il ,', viltllally l>y lltll1yll lO lIS wilh 'ca lli ng Sllnwnnl.l'S lIaml.: in a l:el'C llOI.l l'e ú lfll c\ 1. Bul on unll llH': 1 leve!. ir a pcrsnn wtl nls lo point out wl1ll has UlII ll' lhe tll lki ll g about Wh OIll, ti dislilll:lion is m ude betwecn crJnmU!s.I' ami ' nigger husinl.lss ' , In this l'ontcx l. cúm/lwss Illcans talk aboLlt sOllleone e1se whilc they arc not present, whilc 'niggcr busincss' rcl'crs to talk about someone's business which has been institutcd by themselves, but which is on the samc subjects and in the same terms as crJmmess. 'Nigger business' is discussed abstractly, as is crJmmess, as a weakness 01' the commun ity. One informant, for instanee, explains, 'Yo u know we Negroes are "broadminded " [talkative] people, "bla'guard" [bad because of talking too much): \Ve just feel that if we have any worry on our mind . we couldn ' t keep without explaining somet' ing' [talking about it]." This rationalisation is exactly the same as the one given ror 'ca lling out a name ' and for c6mmes.I'. They are grouped together as ex amples of 'non sense', 'ignoram:e', inability to organise one's thoughts ami present them in effective language. One often hears remarks that Negroes are 'a ignorant people- we have no sense atall, atall, atall'. One of the reasons why there is sllch a strong feeling that both ciJmmess and 'nigger business' are wrong is that privacy, especially in family affairs , is highly valued, The quiet person , who keeps most of his communications within the family is someone who, in principIe, is admired. But in actual interpersonal relations, he may be reacted to as an unfriendly person and his reticence may be held against him. This attitude may be shown by members of his own family; he will then be termed a 'ga rden man ' (one who keeps to himself in the fields) . Not only will this lack of communieativeness be held against him , but imputations of greed and lack of co-operativeness may also be voiced, for these traits are those which are associated with this widely recognised Vincentian social type. A similar attitude is maintained in regard to another social type, the bashful person (the Vineentian term is ' selfish' , meaning not covetous but inward-Iooking). The shy individual is regarded as a somewhat undesirable type, especially beca use he is said to have no sense, of humour and to becol1le easily irritated by those who make fun 01' him,

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values. The disparity can best be summarised by the confliet between the value conferred on a close-knit extended-family unit, on the one hand , and on the other the importa nce placed on having a large network of friends. CiJmmess and ' ni gger busi ness' are nalura lly ussocia ted with friendships, for such talk is one way in which rricndship may be dC l1lo nstrated a nd maintained. On the other hand . lhi:; kind of lulk ofte n invo lves dí!a r violations nI' I h~ kinds o r priva cy whi dl a re lIssoc ia lcd \\'. Ll I Ihe fa lll ily.

1'111111\'1' n-ason l'nr thl' alllhivakllt attitudes towards talk abtmt people is ill ma ny ways the slllall community's social systcm demands ciJl11l1les,\' .11111 ewn more extreme publications or others' business for the maintenance tlr social mdcr. Thc subjects discussed or gossiped about commonly deal wit h Ihe proper maintenance of the household and the appropriate practice of IIlll'rpcrsonal relationships within the fa mily and among friends. Talk about -,lIdl Illatters constantly serves to remind those involved orthe importance of tht' norms of the community, but also rehearses the necessity of working wilhin the decorum system by which household and fricndship networks are lIlaintained . In a very rea'l sense, commess and 'nigger business' establish has~s of communication which play an importa nt part in holding the com IIl1lllity together. But, as the members of the community recognise, there are strong dissoci ative potentials in any speech act which involves the ' calling o ut ' 01' a name. 1'I1lIS a distinction is sometimes made between c(Jl11l11eSS, which means gossi p 111' any sort, and ' melée', which is malicious gossip. When contrasted in such ;1 way, c6mmess is regarded as permissible because it is harmless, whilc ' melée' is frowned upon , especially in principIe. C{ill1mess in all 01' its uses provides an active way of g uaranteeing a certain ,,"vel of homoge neit y of ideals and even 01' social practices. This is clearly secn In the common topics which are gossiped about. Men talk about each other primarily in terms of how well they demonstrate their masculinity (in athlctics, with women , by ge ttin g work and learning a trade, by the number 01' babies Ihat they have ' made '), or how well they share out and co-operate with IIthers, or ho\\' many friends they have . Men talk about girls in terms of who i ,~ 'wild'-that is, who viola tes the ideal s of trust which are supposed to hold ,~wa.y in man-woman relationships. This ideal 01' trust means, primarily. that ;e girl is never supposed to ' talk wit" or '[riend wit" more than one boy at a lillle. (These terms may refer simply to courting, 'gossin' wit", or they may IlIean engaging in sexual intercourse.) Women gossip about other women in legard to their abilities to keep their households in ordcr, eithcr in terms of tidiness , or in rega rd to the personal behaviour of members of the famil y. Bringing up children badly is one common topic of ' melée ' , as is the way a woman treats he r Illan in terms ofkeeping him ' in line'. But to view ciil11l11e.l'.I' only in terms of norm a tive content is to ignore certain Il.'alures 01' its practice. eÜmmes.\' is subject to a variety of uses. Not the least 01' t hese is the maintenance of one's esteem by using stories-about-others both to demonstrate the extent of one's network of people whose business one knllWS, and lO solidify a reciprocal trust-and-gossip relationship with the pnson with whom one is gossiping. This can only be done if certain rules 01' "¡;I//lI/('S.I' are observetl. One must not talk badly of others ifthey are very close I1 il'nds 01' ra mily, ror then t he gossiper is su bject to a rebulT which leads to a laih ll c llf rcciprocity ill Ihe c\changc. O ne m ust nevcr gi ve the feeli ng of l'IlIl lillg In al1l11hcr pcrso ll jll sl tll )',lIssip, unless lh ~ slIhjl:ct orthe inl'ormatioll

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01' association within the social strueture, and by extension , by conflicting

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IS MlIlleII UII)' vl'ry slurtli ng whi t: h hal> .Il1~ 1 h: lp pclled. But ir in a l:o nvcl':';u livnal contexl, it l11usl rreSlTve lhe appearance 01 Ihe :,plHllalleous ullerance. hlrl.hermore, ('(Jlllnle.I·.\' \Viii be rcjected ir lhe illilialOl' collvey~ lhc inl'o rm alion in too bcated a \Vay, thus belrayinga coerci ve 01 siue- tal ki ng purposc in an on-going argumenl. The communication is then a pol.elllial ' mole::;" (libe!) and thercfore is ofa different intensity amI involves a dillcn:nl slrategy from crJl1une.\'.\'. '/'0 view (,¡¡/IImcs.\' in this way is to see it as contributing to both a sensc of l'OIlIIllUllily (by articulaling ideals and by providing a patterned and expected s:lnclioning procedure) and to an individua!'s sense ofesteem. Bu! to argue that il should be judged in tcrms of one or the other is to ignore lhe way gossip aClually opcrates. Like so many such expressive devices, comme.l's is a pro l'C:;slIal !Calure of interpcr:;o nal beha vi our which media tes betwcen conflicting principies. This suggesls, then, that one of the keys to understanding gossip, alleast on St Vincent, is to understand the nature ofthe internal conflicts, and lo see how expressive devices of all sorts, induding gossip, are used to mediate Ihe contradictions which arise in the form 01' public probJem situations. ' lI l'W"

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As noted aboye, perhaps the greatest source of intra-cultural ' rub' is the way in which the family system ofideals conflicts \Vith the friendship networks ccnl ral to the maintenance of esteem , especially among males. Recurrent pro hlclll situations arise in those activities where the t\Vo systems ofvalues conftict. The yard and the house of the family are regarded as inviolable, and are Ihe domain of the maler familias . Conseq uently, she is the guardian of the .vard and is judgcd in terms of how effectively she runs her household. Male I'ricndships are carried on in the streets and rumshops, for the most part, l~xcept during specia'l family-centred occasions like \Vcdding fétes and wakes. What fcw friendships the women engage in within the community are carried !Jn in Ihe yard , but these are discouraged by the meno The Vin ccntian family is a unit composcd of those living in one yard . This cOllllllonly means a nuclear family of father, mother a nd their children, and Icss c!Jlllmonly grandparents and grandchildren. Matrifocal households are 1101 unusLlal, but far from the rule (as in some other West Indian commun ilies). C10sc relations tend to live near each other and to regard each others' yards as their own. The extended family ideal persists and is aeted upon, C~ pecially during ceremonial occaskms, by the sharing and helping principie. 'Fricnding' is regarded as thrcatening to family loyalties. rol' a numbcr 01' reasum. O ne's loyalt ies a rc slI pposed to be primarily tu onc's ramily. cspccially in sllaring, 011 1 I'ric llush ip olso calls rOl' Ihe Sil111l: kinu o f sharing prtll:Css . Fu rllH.: rlllorc, n1 alc 1'1 il.:ndsh irs earry o lle üway f'n) lll lIl e Ilh.'II S o r lhe la ll ll ly, allo whilc 0 111.' i, away. Ullc is 110 longc l so scvcrclv II II" l' (' Ihe cOll tro l o!' lI le fa llli l" cell lre n i 1I11 11111/ II V I 'in. lll v. r,il'nd shlrs nllly ¡'(!ll le 111 10 L'on lllcl 11)

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wilh ramilial "alues beca use Ihe IaUcr emphasise co-opt!ral ion and an orderly houschold. The greatcsl enemy 01' order is seen to be words out of control in argumcnts cspecially. It is regardcd as very important to keep one 's family affa irs to oncsclf. Because of the high value plaeed on staying out of public notice, ciJmmes.\' is feared cspeeial!y when it is ' melée' . But this isjust the kind 01' malicious talk which is commonly canied on between friends . Contrari wise, it is regarded as unnatural , ano es pecially as urnnanly. to stay in the yard and the garoen and not to ha ve friends. Aman earns respect by the number of friends he can count on . On a day-to-day basis, conflict s between family and friendship roles do not arise beca uSe the ideal s of fri end ship grow out offamily ideals: trust, privacy , sharing. However, a frien dship must be a rcciproca Larrangement, and reciprocity (not primarily economic) exists on the social leve!. Consequently, to demonstrate friendship (with one orthe same 01' opposite sex) one must talk with the other. and the friendship is potentially threatening 10 the family since one must tel! the other some thing, and that something may come from withi n the family. One must answer trust wi th trust- - but one also does not expect that trust to be kept as wel! by friends as by family. The family is also a circumscribed social group ing, while the friendship network is no\. ThllS, there is a feeling 01' constraint and restriction within the family group, and contrarily there is a sensc of freedom felt in developing friendships. This has a physical concomitant, since family affairs must be pursued primarily in the house and yaro, while friend ships are canied on in the streets. Becallse of this psychological opposition between freedom and constraint, those \Vho break away from the household especial!y strongly are the young meno This is regarded as natural. on the one hand, and yet also as leading inev.itably to a loss 01' 'sense' and to 'rudeness', for the family is regarded as the locus 01' 'sense', it being the centre 01' the social ordering system of the community_This is reOected in the drinking of rum o' the nonsense-maker', on friendship occasions. Naturally enough , it is the young men who are regarded as the centre 01' ' rude' activities in the community _ From this ambience ariscs a felt (and often expressed) relationship between friendship , gregariousness, ' rudeness' and 'nonsense', and by extension, also between family and order, 'acting sensible' and ' behaved '. This has its ramifi cations in performances 01' al! sorts , especially in ceremonial occasions. Those festivities which go on in the yard emphasise bringing Criends and family togeth er by an aesthetic stylisation of oecorum , and those carried on in the streets styli se ' nonsense ', or licensing bchaviour. Natural!y , these latter occur only at very special times.

* * * * * This survt:y 01' Ihe u.sc 01' t
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ul" individll a l ¡¡i lm., il lI1a y be 11l('Il: plolil abll: 11' I()o~ ,11 Iltl 1" ,lIl h l ' 110111 a more perl"o nnal1c~-cclll n;d p\:rs pecli vc. Tltis would enabk: 11:-' lu h ll'I IS 011 lh\: fo lk recognition and ~valu a tion 01' IcJling slo ries aboul o ther!)' bllsilless, and Ihus to perceive the place 01' gossip in the native system 01' comlllunication. Furlher, at least in rega rd lo Vincentian peusants, there is a felt continuity betwcen speech acts , such as tiJmmess, and speech events, such as riddling or slory-Iclling sessions. CiJmmess, li ke Ana ncy stories and C amival perfOlIll ances, is dassified as permissible rudeness, as licensed non sense- licensed beca use n I" the need to cmbody anti-social motives and to castiga te them. Bu l OIlCC Ihe continuity between the more casual m ode of the C(Jmmess perfo rmance (Ind the cerem o ni a l 'r ude' performances is recognised , it is neces sary lo nolice the differences between them . CiJmmes.l' is (1 conversational gen re: il lIIusl therefore follow the dicta tes ofconversation . w hich means that il m usl. alllung other thin gs, appear to be sponta neo us. Just as there is a structuru lo overall conversations, there are sta ndard casual story-telling pa llcrns ¡1I10 which this conversational device lits. And there are certain times when Ihe ilclll 01' gossip will be rega rded as most appropriate. Furthermore, tho ugh Ihe n.: is :In art to ('j)l1l1ness, we recognise the a rtfulness 01' the praetice nol so nllll;h Ilrmugh the apparent abilities orthe pe rformer (as we do in more styl ised pcrful l1Ia nces) , but through the in a bilities of those who do not under stand Ihe rll les, il lld who therefore cause embarrassment and the attribution 01' 'making IlIl'It!C'. In this, too , the practice is an aspect 01' ge neral eonversa tion , bc~allsc 111 all slIch small , casual a nd spontan eo us persona l interaetions, we \curn :thlllll Ihe rules of performance primarily throug h failures , com m only rcgisll:lcd UIl the interact in g group as embarrassment (cf. Goffman 1968). lllC J); III ~'II1S uf oral composition and improvisation are no t as evident with ('(jl/l/l lt',I .1 ,h IIll'y are with the more self-conscious performa nces, but it is th is ver)' apPcu l:llll'l' ofspontaneity which , in large part, provides the license for goss ir . Gossir 11111'1 1 1.,II.,w certain lines of argument. It makes a statement of app rova l 111 ~tl \l dl ' lllllalion which reiterates the approved behavioural limits 01' Ihe grll ll Jl BIII 1I is also a tool by which the gossiper exereises personal eon trol llVcl t illo I;d kcd-about persono if only because he is Iicensed to call the pe rson '~ 1I:t llll 1111.' Il\usl important rules 01' ccJmmess are that the stories must be to lú in ' III,¡\I ~'In llps. (lnes which indude neither the talked-abo ut person no r all yll"~' w li .. \\!llllld report the conversation to him . It is judged in terms of ils SlIlu",'. ,1', IHlI1SenSe', as a device by which fri endship values and oftcn I'l lt lld.,I IIP IIl'1wurks may be maintained without seri o usly challenging Ihe nlo l, d 1I11 11Plily llI' lhe family. One is given license to talk about others by ¡lId,'" lft hlh,l vlour in Icrms 01' Ihe ideals of famil y ti fe. But by judging all bc huVlll ll1 111 1l' IIIIS ul" im.'v it.a bi li ly a mI human faltibility , indudin g ('()l1Il11ess ¡Ise ll , Ih\l lu lrl v IS main lai ncd CVC Il wh ik condemnation goes () n. ('/'11/111' \\ l' .IIIl' 01' mU ll y dl.:V ICCS by wh ich One m ay use lht bch a vill llr 01' 11 11 11'1.1 1 .111 1I...·~· a siO Il lo ~h: I IIII I1~;1 1;( l e OIlC'S ()wn verbul ah il ilV BI II IIl1like /"

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slOry. lclling and stlllg- l11 a~illt' 11 is a lcdll1ique available lo everyone, a nd all hlll soci almisflls (poor pcrrormers) may ' make ('cJlI1l11e.l'.I" to sllslain their pusil ion in t.his speaking community. This arlic\c argues, Ihen , that the functi o n 01' gossip in specific groups cannot be fully undcrstood until it is related no t only to the system of ideal s and Ihe techniques 01' achieving power, but also to the syslem 01' perform allcc. This involves an unders tanding 01' the rules governing interpersonal dCl'orul11 and Ihe procedures by which Iicense is aecorded to an individual lo p~rrorm . It also neeessitates a consideration of m odification , or refusal of auJience participa tion , beca use of ineptitudes a nd failurcs in performance, l'spceiall y those invo lvin g failure to recognise the no rm s and conventions appropriate to the occasion. In thi s way. goss ip m ay no l only give us eues as lo lhe dieta tes ofpublic Illorality , but m ay also indieate the native criteria of a good perfo rmance (in this case, through performa nce fa iJures ra ther than successes) .

Notes Material gathcrco \Vhdc on a sma ll grant from Ihe U nil ed Statcs N a ti o nallnstil ute of Mcntal Health , M H - 15706- 0 1, for thc slImmer 01' 1968. M y thanks lo Ihis gra nlin g agency. Both the qu otati on here a no the explanatio ns o f lhe key te rm s carne fram the informan \, Regin al d 'Caloo' MacD ona ld , 24. The definitions \Vere e1iciled , of course, beca use the words oid not seem lo confo rm lo common English usage. 8 0l h ' braadminded' a nd ' bla ' gua rd' \Verc subseq ue nll y o bse rved being used in essen tially these senses·- ' bla' guard' being a commo n tcrm for those \Vho cOlllo not refrain fram the kind o t'ta lk that lead s to fi ghts.

References Ahrahams. R . D . 1967. The shaping of folkl o re traoilions in Ihe Bril ish West Ind ies . ./. inl.-Am. SlUd. 9. 456 80. 1968. Public d ra ma a nd commo n values in t\Vo Caribbea n is la nos. TrwIs-(Jclio/l 5,62-7 1. - & R. Ba uman 1969 . Scnsc a nd nonsense in St Vincenl (un p ub1is hco manuscript) . hlrnonson , M. S. 1966. Pla y: games, gossip a nd hum or. In H andbook o{ M iddle America/l Indian.\' (eo.) Mannin g Nash. Austin , Texas: Uni\'. ofTexas Press. I:aris. J. 1966. The oynami cs of vc rbal exchange: a N ewfounolan o example. AnI/¡r o !1O{ogic(} (N.S.) 8. 2:'5- 48. l'irth . R. 1961 . Hi.\'lOry ol1d I{'({di/ion.\' ofTikof!i({ (Mem. Po lyncs. Soco 33) . Wellin gto n: Po lynesi an Society. (ihll'kman , M. 1963. Goss ip ano scanda l. Curro Anlhrof!, 4, 307.... 16. 19(,8. Psychological. soeio logica l nnd a nlhropologieal explanat ions of \Vitchcraft ano gossip. M II II (N ,S.) \ 20 34. ( illlflllan , E. 1968 /({/('l w' li"/I lillud Ne\V York: Doublcday. (iI ISSI,; II, (j . 11. I ()(¡() . 1\ 11 111111' 1 Illllk al \V"r!d vic\V (lI npuhlished l11anllscril':) .

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S/wcd . .I. I ()I!II, (;ossip. drinking and social control: consensus and cornmunication in a NcwlúlIndlanu parish. D/¡I/%gy 5. 4~4 41. Vidi ch. 1\ . J. & .l. l3ensman 1968. Smafll(JII'I/ ill /1/(/ SS so ciely (rev. edn). Princeton, N ..I.: LJ niv. Press.

49 BECOMIN G OTHER-W ISE Conversational performance and the politics of experience Leonard e IIawes SIIun;c: Tex!IJ/!{/ f'cljórll1on ce Quarl erly 18(4) (1998): 27 ~ 299.

This thcoretkal discussion about con versation , perfo rm ance and cultural politics makes eight mo ves. First, conversa tion is theorized as the micropractical flows and rnicrophysical traces 01' lhe means of production and reproduction 01' domina nt ideas. prevailing be!iefs, and articulated subjeetivities, Second. rules , rituals and pcrforrnances of everyday life a re theorized as both mt and practice. Third, practicalit y. temporality and spaliali·ty are. then reformulated as common senses and con ven tional wisdoms. Fourth , conversational turn-taking formats are theorized in terrns 01' the political-econornics 01' lurn-laking. Fifth, human bodies are theorized as ll'le material in ami lhrough which memory and practical consci.ousness are in~cribed as both context and artifact, Sixth. convcrsing selves a re concep lllali.zed as ullfinished, open ideas with Illllltiple voices that exprcss lhe trllths 01' tactical ami strategic experience, Seventh. conversation is theorized as lhe rnicropractical produetion ami rcprodllclion 01' the idcology of evcryday life. as lhe rnethods 01' forrnatting consciousllCSS , structllring feelings , and express ing cxperiencc in ways that allow meaning and significat ion to reproduce themselves indcfinitel y, Finally, conversation is lhe orized in terms of autoethnography , as the writing practices of sclf-implication and self-reftexivity.

( 'lIltural sludics is pn:dicaled 011 the assumpti ol1 that, in additiol1 to being

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II Hlll,lgl'd /l/ir IIIM:p pÍl.;all y I1l'I rUlllIed tacl ically. ;.II1d I l·:¡Ir/.cd )lolitically. A ~' I \Ida I pm;cct (()r c ult urll ! st lidies. wnversa tio nal cr iti qu e amJ critica! theory is tn t!ll'mi /c. track an d critique conversations as co urses 01' action , lines 01' Ili gh l. paths (lf resistancc, as well as openings 1"or transformation. Conversa tiDIIS fu rccJose as \Ve1l as disdose ways of escaping from and relocating to difl"cren t su bject-positions at the same time they redraw ideological bou ml aríes; theorizing conversations in such a fashion renders dominant practices amI thcir transparent codes as audible fictions that put into practice novel as wdl as mundane modes 01' resistance and surrender. Payin g genealogica l att cn tion to J iscursive formations and their di sconÜnuiti es and ruptures is Dile way this critical-experiential-political \York proceeds . T his essay develo ps a theorctical rati onale for thinki ng through the m icroph ysies of power in h.: rllls o f" the micropractices of conversation.

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I >iail!ctically organized conversations, then , are contradictory and oppositional; dialol'.ical1y organized conversations can be, and often are, both contradic lory and oppositional as wel1 as heteroglossic and unfinalizable. They are digital. synchronic translations of analogic, diachronic desirc . Julia Kristeva Jllight ronnulate this feature of conversation as the practices of producing sYlllbolic language from semiotic desirc.' for Kristeva. subjects-becom ing 1IIt'Iic .\"uhjects --lea ve a chaotic, fluid , turbulent, oceanic dOlllain of the .\"<'IIliOlii" e/lOra that which comes before language-··-and enter the domain of Ihe ~y mh(1lic, oflanguage, logic, order, patriarchy and hierarchy. The tensions bc twcen the semiotic ami lhe symbolic never ultimately resolve themselves. ! milca u, a thctic sub.lect. as Kristcva illsists. is a subject in proccss/on trial. IlIdi vid uals are not (h ell. uni!ary sllbjects: tl1ey are, rather , Ill ulli plc, tluid. iJl prm;css,
thcori.ü!s it;·' t1Jese llIicropradiccs a re prac tical insof"ar as they say and do that which lJ1ust be said ami done. It would be a Illistake to theorize conversation as a lotality, as sorne c0herent, bounded, unitary phenomenon. 0ne 01' my critical tasks is to dcconstruct conversation into its mllltiple voices and diverse Illicropractices, sOllle 01' which install and position individuals into discursive formation s as conversed and conversing subjeds, and sorne of which cut off individuals from discursive possibilities. The installation of an individual, as a conscious subject. into the regime of lclllguage is , in large measure, the marking o f idcntity and differenee, of presence and a bsence, 01' sound and silence , of self and other. In the realm o r language, an individual is alternatingly, and often simultaneously, subject and object. Subjectlobjeet divi sions and oscillations are coded in conversational formats and performed by means 01' exehanges - taking and giving turns. ' The boundaries 01' division and the movements of oscillation are learned in a (m)other's arms, in touching, voicing, 1istening and nurturing- or their absences- and are produced and reprodllced in contextually sensitive formats that articulate subjects adept at perfo rming in accord with the logics of sociocultural exchange systems.(, Such discursive micropracticcs interpellate individua1s- as interlocutors- lo the speaking voices of performing bodies. Installed into these discursive (uni)verses , an individual is positioned, as interlocutor, to address selI ami one or more o/he,..\". So positioned. inter10cutive subjects are in positions to givc and take turns, to engage in the practices of division and oscillation that constitute the circuitries of comlllon sen se and conventional wisdom of everyday lite. 1 am referring hcre to a matter of scale; practices are notable and observable to common sense whereas micropractices are observable only to more finely attuned ears and eyes. It is by means 01' their apparent invisibi1ity that powcr is exercised: who would think of conversational practices and micropracticcs as suffused with power? lsn ' t the real \Vor1d the wor1d of actions and pro nouncements" Actions speak louder than words, don ' t they? Conversations, and the fantastic arrays of realities they perforrn, are material manifestations of consciousncss. As such , conversations are overlooked/overheard ami not attended to , not only beca use they are so densely pervasive but also beca use they are assullled to be inconsequcntial , lhe sma1l change of everyday life. This is precisely whcre their crfectivity lies; they formulate and spcak us: they are conventional formats and mundane performélnces. They produce us , and in so doing, leave us with secmingly unmistakable impressions that we are originating authors of our ideas and thoughts. C onvcrsational micropractices situate. identify. produce and trace these interloc utive subjectivi ties. W hcn speaking ceases, cOllversed subjectivity dis solvcs into silence; no visible traces are left behi nd. unless recorded . As a m i\.:rotcchn o logy 01' suhjed(ive) cxperience loca ted within voices' bodies, conversatíans are indexÍl.:.II rclcrend ll g devjcc~. To lose ()Ilc\ place is (() lose tl ll C's il.iL'nlily: kceping track lit" lIlIl': ' ,; iJenli ly has l11al crial alld spiritual

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lile disc urs iw l'ormu lauoll prw.:lkal consciousness, in what Mikhail Bakhtin calls a dialog ue 01' IIIt('ral1(,(,,\'.~ Michol de C erteau locates distinctions between speech and language in Ihe problematics 01' enunciation, which he characterizes in tenns of its four propenies. First, language takes place by means 01' speaking; speech realizes languagc by actualizing portions 01" it as potential ami possibility. Second, speaking uppropriates language in the very act 01' speaki ng it. Third, speech presupposes a particular re!atiOl1a! conlract with an "other" -real or fictive. i\nd fourth. spcech instantiates a presen/ as the time for an ''1'' to speak. (33) In these ways, conversational micropractices produce and reproduce socio cultural structures and formations by means of binding time an d space. They are more or less transparent mediational practices of and l'or structuration. The question I set for rnyself in this essay is: How do these conversationa l micropractices~so seemingly innocllous and innocent of power- produce and consume ideoJogies of everyday living? Conversa/ion is a term designating a large but finite assemblage 01' dis course micropractices that produce and rep roduce wltures a.ml their social rormations. How is this performed conversationally? 80th ethnomethodology generally, ami conversation analysis particularly, have invested heavily in the finely grained descri ptions 01' the indexicality ami reflexivity of everyday life. 9 There are growing research literatures that describe arrays 01' interactional sociolinguistic ami ethnomethodolgical devices and procedures instrumental in the co-production 01' conversation. Sociolinguistic variation, ethnomethod ological conversational analysis , extended standard theory, and ethnography ofcommunication share several theoretical and methodological assumptions. Ilowever, situating any of this work in the intimately political worlds 01' the conversants thernselvcs is still relatively rareo Conversational moves , devices and properties (e.g. , greetings, repetitions, questions and answers, accounts, correction invitations, address terms, stories, paraphrasing, quoting, pronouns, gossiping, visiting, politeness, hosting, telephone talking. among others) me seldom explored as modes of consciousness, structures 01' feeling, shapes of experience; nor are they often fitted into the domÍllant, residual, and emer gent features 01' their sociocultural traditions, institution s and formations . lu 1 want to take a difl'erent course ami follow several lines of cultural studies, performance theory . ami conversational studies to forcground some pivota.1 differences distinguishing these traditions. Everyday conversations are identified, reified , described, and analyzed , but rarely arc they abstracted back into the material and spiritual relations of the political-economics ofthe daily lives ofits interloclltors. One is left with little scnse ofhow thesc conversational micropractices produce and reproduce the si r\lctural amI post-st ructural eonditi o m; 0[" the expe rience ol' postmodem life. V. N . Volosin ov's IIJ('orctical ano cri tical \Vork in the philosophy o flan gUi.lgL·, M ikhuil Bakhl in 's WPl'k in spcech gcnrcs, poctics a no dia logics, Michol h .luca ull 's W ¡)!' ]" 011 Ih¡; I'l'J\C ;i!()!'il:s of pmvcr/k nuwlcd gc, and Ihe dh ics.

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That 's il. a rhizome . Embryos, trces. develop according lo their gene tic perfonnation or their structural reorgani za tions. But the weed overftows by virtl1e of being restrained. It grows between. It is the path itsclf. The English ami Ameriean s, \Vho are the least " autho[-like" 01' writers, have t\Vo particularly sharp directions whieh connect: that 01' the road and of the path, that oí' the grass and 01" the rhi zome.... /-Ienry Miller: " Grass only exists between the great non-cultivated spaces. It fills in the voids. 1/ grows he/wecn C/mong o/her /hings. The f10wer is beautiful , the cabbage is Llseful , the poppy makes yOl1 erazy. But the grass is overflowing, it is a lesson in 1Il0rality. The walk as act, as politics , as experimentation, as life: " 1 spread myself out like a fog BETWE EN t he people th at I know the best" says V irginia Woolf in her walk a mon g the ta xis.

(30) Like rhizomcs, conversations grow from the middle, gi ve n that there are beginnings and endings, other than those imposed from the outside. (;ralltcd. wnversational micropractices are ideologically formatted and hcgel1l onically circumscribed; nevertheless, conversations wander down bli nd ;Ilkys, slam into dead-ends, topple off sheer cliffs, get turned arollnd, beeome asphyxiated. repeat aimlessly, and suddenly break off. They circle a round al\(l fold back onto themselves; they retricve and recreate , recall ami adum IlIalc in ways that elude the ass umptive foundations 01' formal logics and dialcctics . IVllIch of the theoretical ami cultural significance of conversational ll1i crupradices are their performative locations along the seams 01' speech/ lall g uagc. On the one hand, conversations partake of both speech ami lan ~ t1 :t gc; ü n the other, thcy havc little to do with cither. lnsofar as language is IlIal which il.s (collllsional) mCfllbers aSSllfllC they know in common--that which !'PI'S wilhout say ing- Ia ngu age is a practical conseiousness, an implicjtly held CO IIII\lOIl sen sc. Spl:cch . on Ih\.! olhcr hand. is a discursive eo nsciollsness ,11 1 il1 divjdlr:.tlcd, .:xpliLil purlorllla livc sCll se- inso far a s ji i.~ lllal which mol.[ hl: sa id hl:l';JlISl' II ¡'(l IIII O!I he W;su rl ll.:d lo p as!; in );iIL' lIl.:l· Spwd l 1 :111 bc 110

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Rules, rituals and perforrnances as art and practice 111 I'hi/osophú:a/ lnvesti!;ations, W ittgenstein encapsulates many of the cur 11.'111 dilemmas confronting th corics 01' discourse that invoke rules to explain • 1I111111unicative practices: What do 1 call " the rule" by which he proceeds?- the hypothcsis thal satisfactorily describes his use of words, which \Ve observe: or the rule which he looks up when hc uses signs; or the one which he gives us in reply when \Ve ask what his rule is?- But what if observation does not enable us to see any c1ear ru le, and the q uestion brings none to light?- for he did indeed give me a definition when I asked him what he understood by "N", but he was prepared to withdraw and alter it. So ho\V am 1 to determine the rule according to which he is playing? He does not know it himsel f.- Or, to ask a better question: What meaning is the expression " the rule by which he proceeds" supposed to ha ve left to it here? (38 - 9)

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cxcculC language llIerdy hy f'nllowill g rules . [701' Chomsky, as ror Saussure, Ihe Iheory 01' speech practin:s reduces almost lega listically to the function 01' oIJedient execution. Practices 01' performance are simplified drastically and slripped ofthe possibilities ofstyle, tactic and strategy. Jt is this \llore or \ess directly exeeutivc rc\ation between rule and practice that is the stubbornly unresolvable paraoox rol' most theories oCcommunication generally, and con vcrsation in particular. Knowing- in a discursive o r theoretical sense- the strategic rules and cooes is a grossly imperfect predictor of an interlocutor's tactical ingenllity. The fallacy oflocating competence either in an autonomolls language, external to ano indepcndent of inoividual speakers, 01' alternatively within corporeal homo sapiens as a psychologized attribute, is that either alternati ve simply postpones the realization that eompetence is a wholly magical construct and as such is an inadequate theory 01' and for practice. T o have a cooe of rules as a mouel for performative practice is to fall far short of being able to say much at all about the everyday practical circumstances of the production and consumption of conversation. To account for everyday conversational practices in terms of conversa tional rules- whatever the rclation between rule amI practice is taken to be-- is to hold to the position that practice is a product of rules, which has the conseq uence of privileging synchronic competence over diachronic perform ance. Discourse, as systems of rules and codes of relations, is thereby in the master position and it is for speech to be obedient to those oiscursive rules , conseq uently reproducing and more deepl y inclllcating the epistemic bias ano its unresolvabJe paradoxes. the chief one alllong them being that to explain conversational performance in terms of cooes and rules is to undermine the very possibility 01' ever theoretically accounting for everyday conversation. This conoition is a direct conscquence 01' a discourse \vhose voice takes a position of observer and one which conceptualizes everyday conversational practices as representational objects of observation. Conversation comes to be theorized from a position of outside observer rath er than from an inter locutive positi on.

For Pierre Bourdieu, the theoretical status of a rule is as the presupposed solution to these very difficulties, the difficulties posed by an inadequate Iheory 01' practice. Insofar as there is no adeq uate theory of practice, there is a compensating emphasis on rules and codes as devices for explaining prac lices as accomplished social facts: as products of, rather than as processes of, production. Rules are the structural keys to the engines of social praxis: the difficulty is that rules themselves are products of discursive knowledge. Rules are di scursive inventions whose value lies in their retrospective accounts of social practices. Insofar as our understanding of practice is incomplete, rules are rationalistic devices that supposeoly account for practical outcomes. Consioer language as an example: being able to specify its grammar is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for putting the speaking rules into per formative practice. Chomsky's theory of practice is woefully underoeveloped in relation to his theory of competence, the latter being his version of Saussure's /allgu e, the former his version ofparo/e. To make rules lhcoretically operative requires the attribution rather tha n demon stration DI' agency lo indi vid ualcd ~u bjecls . This :;u pposcLlly solves the problcms nI' hnw spcakcrs arc abh: lo pllt di scursive co rn pclcncc in \¡) perf'onn ativc pnlclice. T he n.:la lion lIt' COl1lpc lem:c lo perl'o t111 :t ncl' iN asslI\llcd to be mono! nI' kss L1in:cl a nd Ll ll prnhkllla tic; I lit: pracl ict:s n l' l'OI IwrsuII UII '\ upposed ly

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hll Bourdiell, the operations 01' the practices 01' everyday life- a nd that illcludcs convcrsationalmicropractiees- presuppose that subjects do not re l' ~)g IÜZl~ , or lhat they ll1isrecognize, the mechanisms of the cxchange systell1s thal analysls ' models expose by tell1porally collapsing them, rendering dia chronic praclices as synchronic strllctures. As a temporally deflated structure \Ir tcxlured rclations, practices now appear to be reversibly granularized ral hcr than irreversibly temporalizcJ. Inflating a structuralist model with the IL:mporality 01' tlle subjects' practices produces a dialectic of two opposing lruths. The reversible sign -value system 01' relations 01' power is as true as, cven ir overshadowed by, Ihe irreversible symbolic-exchange system. 13 Tcmporalizing structural rclations of power Joesn ' t invaliJate political ccntlomic models; rather it produces a symbolic-exchange model , anJ each syslelll unLlerwrites the possibilities of others. Time is the meJium through which s pa tio-structural eontradictions are worked throllgh/out, anJ analytic conccrn s shifl to practices 01' and 1'01' making time take place. For Bourdieu, t hcsc practiecs are strategies; for de Certeau, they are taeties. 14 Both refer to cm pnral practices that materialize in space bul are not inscribeJ in space "unce amI all time." lntcrvals between durations 01' actions constitute rhe Icmporal embodiments and amplifications of contradictions that are resolved ilion.: or lcss preciscly by these unfolding discursive tempos. Variable inter vals (JI' lime bctweell actions accommodate the acceptable arrays of contra d iclillllS lo be taken aeeount of practically, to be appropri ated and wor ked Ih n lllgh lime, and that materialize as praetices. Bourdieu writes:

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To reslore lo practice its practical truth, we must .. . reintroduce lillle inlo lhe theoretical representation ofpractiee which , being tell1 poral1y slrllclurcd, is intrinsically defined by its lempo. The generative, orga nizing sehel1le which gives ... improvised speech its arg ument , ami attaills c()nscio ll~ exprcssion in order to work itself out, is an ofien illlp n:cise b ut sys temalic principIe 01' selection and realizal ion, tend ing Ihrough st \!ad il y J inxlcJ co rrcl:tions, to eli mina te a~~ i d c n t s when Ih¡;y ~..a ll he pu l 111 lI 'iC, ;llI d lo ¡:()Ilscrvc cven rorlllil oll" " U~·\;C~~I.!S (·1)

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As Illesc h rllad ly dc pltlycd III1L'J I1 pracl i..:cs 01' sdcct illn a no I'caJi Lation 01' a lld r CllÚl ll lafl cc, 01' tl'l lI poral praclices ror producing and repro dlll'illg the ll.!llI pOS 01' cVl'l'yday lire convcrsational micropracticcs resolvc approprialc contnldiclions and discrepant understandings, and sup press Ihl: malerialization 01' others. As l11ultiply mediated, eonversations ca n be likencJ lo lhe play 01' a spolltaneous semiology that orchestrates regulated improvisation of practices whose regions of performance lie somewhere h¡;l ween the seemingly open set ofmundane practices af everyday lite and the 1Il0re conslrained practices of custom , ceremony and ri t ual ; between indi vidual slyle and social custom ." It's important to note that, for Bourdieu, such improvisa lio nal perform ;lIlces only appear to be free and easy. 16 ln fact, an apparently improv isalional process has its play regulatcd by a more or less definite set of precepts, aphorisms, formulae and codes oImprovisation is not random, unprecedented free activity , but rather innovative play both o( anJ 011 conventional(ised) rorms . Conversations consist of those micropractiees for being carried along by, and on occasion being carried away with ·- or for being ca rried beyond practical knowledges, which are the practical resources of and for the per l'ormance 01' con versation al discourse. Consider Bourdieu's notion ofthe material installation ofhabilus (which is always italicized). Hahitus-or opus operalul11 (i.e., a product of practice) consists 01' the structures constitutive of a particular environment whereas di,lpO.l'itio/1 modus operandi (i.e., modes of practice)- is both the distinctive mark 01' hahitus and a way or style ofbeing. The domestic organization ofthe hOllse, the social organization of the agrarian calendar and the sexual organ ization 01' labor, for examplc, are homologues constituting the habitus: hrí c~)l agc

Di.l'positiol1 expressed first Ihe r('sull o( 0/1 orgunizing aclion , with a meaning c10se to that 01' structllre; it also designa tes a \Vay ofheing, a hahiluaf s(ale (espeeial1y ofthe body) and a predi.\posiliof1 , lendel1cy , propensity, or inclinalioll_ (214)

( 'onsidcr the practices 01' children 's performances 01' games, which occur in all socicties to structurally exercise chilJren 's practical mastery 01' the Jis positions necessary for them to participate in an assortment 01' exchange syslcms. Here- in the riddle, the chal1enge, the duel , the put-on , the tease, the darc, the con--children learn the logics ofchallenge/riposte, the modus operandi (JI' a protean ho!Jilus. Before newborn homo sapiens en ter onto the Iwhiw,l' 01' eventual sociocul 1mal ro nnations, they a re readied, more or less, in the hahilus of family. An illralll enlers a fam ily system as a soci ocult uraJ signi1i er with its status and ()pposilionali ty al rca Jy b rgcly ["¡",ed , Already , it hus been overdeteTmined, lill gl'l y withllllt cx plid l dd ilH'I,llioll , hnw a newborn is to be raised and ~.:

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ICII(lt:d , by WIW Ill, rOl' how long, in what places, a t wIJ a! limet>, alld in rc!alioll In wholll. An infant illlmcuiatcly, anu not lIsua lly as a rcsult 01' conscio lls inlclltiol1, bccol1les an emerging anu uevcloping embouiment of /whiIU.I' , lhe materialloclls ordispositions anu their principIes ofregulateu improvisation: ... it is in the dialectieal relationship between the body and a spaee structured according to the mythico-ritual oppositions that one finds the form of the structural apprenticeship which leads to the embody ing of the structure of the world- -the appropriating by lhe world of a body th us enabled to appropriate the world .

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Thc principi es cm · houic~ ill Ihis way are placed beyond the grasp 01' consciousness and hence cannot be touehed by voluntary, delibera te trans formation , cannot even be made explicit; nothing seems more inerfable, more incommunieable, more inimitable, and, thcrefore, more precious, than the values given body, /l/ade body by the trans ubstantiation achieved by the hidden persuasion 01' an implicit pedagogy, capabk orinstilJing a wholc cosmology, an ethic, a meta physic , a polítical philosophy, through injuneti ons as insignificant as "stand up straight" or " don't hold your knife in your left hand ." (Bourdieu 94)

(89)

The domestic organization of the housc, or whatever the structure 01' domestie space in which an infant finds itself, is both cngendercd and sexualized, both spatialized and temporalized , and politicized through and through. The house, an opus operatum, lends itself to a deciphering which uocs not forget that the "book" from which the c hildren learn their vcrsion of the world is read with the body , in and through the 1lI0vcments and displacements which make the space within which they are enacted as much as they are made by it.

(90)

'1'0 summarize his argument, and thereby to compress it drastically, Bour diell contends that social space in general, and its primordially minimalist hHlcouldian gesture- the house- in particular, is organized according to an el1semble 01' homologous relations- fire:water :: cooked:raw :: high:low :: light:shade :: night:day :: male:female :: inside:outside. The primal habitus of hOllse Illarks the infant with these hOlllologous signs and the child becomes the embodied dispositions reproducing the struetured relations into whieh it was born. A socioculturally embodied subject reproduces practices which are products of a modus operandi over whieh the subject has little discursive consciousness. The modus operandi often has an objective intention or logic which is both larger than and outruns a subject's partial consciousness. For Baudrilla rd , this would be a matter of the subject-as-code being collapsed and dosed offshort ofdecoding its history as that habilu.l' oflin which it finds itselrlllaterially ensconced. Contradictions are inevitable among homologo liS relations organizing the social cosmology and the bodily cosmogony. One of the suggestive implications of this line 01' theorizing is that co rporeality, as socioc ultura l cmbodi ment as thc ohject 01' Ihe seem ingl y trivial a nu inconscqucnlial praclkcs u f dn:ss, dc mcH nn r, ncaring. ma nnc rs ano stylc, is Ihe IlI a leriali ty ol'I1ICl llory. fhe hlldy, as Ihe In l l}r .~ lp Il S writtell hy (Jxpcricllcl.! :tnl! rccunlcd as 1ll,II k.. u / dlilnl-":!Cr, i ~ a IlllwnltHllt: 1I 11~d illl n in whid. an: lnsí.'l'Ílx'd I he pll '" il)k~ 111' I/W l'OlllC lll CUhlll l'

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The political-economics of cOllversational turn-taking A turn is self-reflexive; it lllaterializes as itself only in relation to another turno And such a sclf-reflexivc relationship is the basis of ideologieal transparency. An altcrnative formulation of conversation is a mimetic form oThe Greek term mimesis captures the existential validity of transpare ney. Mimesis translates as self-imitation or self-present-in-motion. Here is McIntyre's thinking of it: In conversations we do not only elaborate thoughts, arguments, theories, poems, dramas; we gesture, \Ve draw, \Ve paint, we sing. In so doing we give structurc to our thought; we interpret a reality that was already partially constituted by the interprctation 01' the agents engagcd in the transaction and our interpretation is more or less adequate, approaches or fails to approach truth more nearly. What was the free play of con versa tion al transaction becomes structured mimesis and mimesis al\Vays cJaims tnlth. (43) Given tum as a co nstitutive feature of conversation, and given the self reflexiveness of a turn , that which is constituted in and through the taking of turns is itself self-reflexive. Conversation imitates itselfby inscribing itself in the movement of a turn 's laking place. To take a LUrn is lo oricnl (fnd Clllend LO (/ sociocuLltlra//if'eworld by inscrihing .1]Jace/lime il/ Clnd Ihrough lhe a{'()ustie! kineslhetic moremenls (~f' con\!ersing. A turn and its space, time, a nd move rncnt are co-extensive. A conversational move is to take a turn, and the micropractices of taking turns inscribe \Vorlds 01' subjects, objects, and their interpenetrated relations of power. Turns are values, and as such are sought, avoidcd, givcn, and taken, and the ways in which turn-taking distributes its partici pating members can be thought through in political-economic terms. As wi th any política l-economy, the orga nization 01' turn-taking reproduces the very di stributional structures of that which it organizes. 17 ('Ol1 vcl'sa ti o na l mil:ropract ices are the structures of sharing a nd commun ily , as well as 01' hoan.l il1!,! :llld alicn a ti o n- turns are u istrihutive. Much of ~{",

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allll fllIlÚ Ilt'ÍlI g IUIII S I :ItW~'''' 11(1111 ¡he Illctonym il: 111 IlI l' 111\;1.11'111 ti 11 , h e l yday life is [l ulI<: lua ll.:d fll fll/llg lt ·, aud c rlh.:tally, Illllch 01' Ihl: lil m: 111, ):.,1.: p ll lll:luational ~ys l cms ;t n: tlallspan:1I1 arrangc mcnts for asscssing \Vho has wll a t rights and llhli galillns in the liccmingly ordinary schemes of things. To illustrate: ('0111 /1/011 gO /ltl.\' is a fundamentally diflerent mode of distribution than is individua! /illrfiollillg. Thc analogy is to buffe! dining as opposed to a la carto dining. ror abulTe!. the choices are all present and available whereas for ala ca rte. someone presupposes the right to determine for you how m llcb you get a nd haw often you gct it. The more fasci st the dining, the more the regime pre sumes lbe right to serve the portions. T he more anarehic the dining, the more the indiv idual diners presume the right to serve themselvcs. The analoguc is apposite for conversation. In a family system , turn s a re distributed somewhere along a common goods/a la carte continuum. The diversity of a subject's styles 01' taking turns is either maximized or minim ized, empowered 01' suppressed . Passivity is th e ultima te income of fascism ; chaos is the ultimate outcome of anarchism . Somewhere along these line~, family systems articulate their conventional practices in the material forms of rights and obligations, pursuant to turns, in competition for dominan ce and control (of the system). Structures and codes of tum distribution become conventionalised as common sense. A subject's identity, in largc measure, is a conventionalized assemblage 01' discursive micropractices, tactics for giving and getting, taking ami sUTTendering tums. A tum, given this line ofthinking, is an opening, a possibility. But what is done with turns is integrally related to how and when turns materialize and how turns are embodied and f1eshed out. ]ndividuals are installed in discourse as conversed and conversing subjects of distributed conversations. Coming to discourse as a conversed and convers ing subject, then , is at one ami the same time a coming to pragmatic, ethical, aesthetic, political, erotic, ami spiritual consciousness. And so there is in the very production ami consumption of conversational micropractices a morality whose ideology appropriates space/time and infonJls the power relations of production and consumption. The hegemonic effectivity of conversational micropractices is actualized in the production and con sumption of quotidian common sense and common places. The temporality 01' this everyday life is produced as if experience were seq uential and linear rather than archeological ami nonlinear, ifnot chaotic. Time is commodified and is capablc of being schedulcd, regulated, organizcd, routinized , mea su red and contro\lcd . l ~ It isn 't surprising, in the face 01' such a massively over determined yet chaotic world , that so many subjects experience everyday life as managed, ir not manageable, ami disciplincd, if not coherenl.l ~ Neverthe lcss, even in mOlllcnts 01' schcJIlk:d ordina ri llcss , there is pa lpa ble, undcnia ble terro r, al ti mes. o n Ihe IiICCS 01' (!lIlbou ied practica l conscio usness; ()vcryday prac.:ticcti , ul l\r osc 1¡IIIC... . Sl'ClI l lo be losi ng t hcir com mon ~cn ~1,; in Ilu: Illisfircs a mI Ira giL"-colllic rllp l ull'~ Il l l'V \:1 y((;¡ y liil-.'"

( 'lHlvc rsa Iion a llllicm pr¡¡c l h:CS all iClIlale con vcutional wisdom wilh circum slantiall y pUIIl:luated exr crience. Thc rroperty 01' conversational microprac I ices lllo st rcsponsi ble for the rrou uetion ami rcprod uction of this ordinariness and JIlundancity are its transparent methods 01' clllling ouf and /llrning o ve/' 01' both informing and performing- sociocultural fOTms of life. ]n his critique 01' FO llcault's Illicrophysics of power and 01' Bourdieu's notion of /¡ahitus, de C crteau argues that each theoretical discourse cut.\' out a particular p he uomeno n from its context and inverts it or /l/m.\' il ove!". ]n Foucault ' s case, lhe "it " is the microphysical practices 01' surveillam:e and discipline, ami in Bourdieu's case, " it" is the domestic practices 01' hahitus. The discourse takes !lne of its features out of its (con)text and turns it into a principie that ~xplains (almost) everytbing. Tum-taking is a (uni)versalizing practice for locally and micropractically producing, allol:ating and regulating power and dcsire . Such formats regulate pattcrns 01' dominance and submission by mean s 01' enforcing codes 01' rights and obligations . So, a tum takes what it linds- and what it finds are living relations to the real co nditions 01" exist cncc, interpellated subjccts as interlocutors. subjects cuf out as speakers and mnl'ersed as authorities - and it fashions an utterance, which necessarily rearranges those cveryda y material conditions. Once the analogic relations of practical consciousness are digitalized by way of their transfiguration into the discursive practices of conversation , different gaps and absenees becollle apparent~s peech digitalizes the an a logue 01" semiosis. But speech cannot cxhaust language, conversation cannot cxhaust discourse, any more th a n a digital recording can exha ust an analogue signa!. The continuity 01' practical consciousness becomes the discontinuity nI' discursive practice. The turning and reversing of conversation breaks up analogic experience into digital, circumstantial experience the codes and I'ormats ofwhich are the perl"ormative structures of conversation. What must be said and done to fill in the gaps and rupturcs between formats of changing ~ircumstanccs , and what stitches together the seams of temporary coherence illto transparent common sense, changes with cach utterance, neccssitating another tum to address and redress the newly produced gaps . U/lerance, hcre, is the name for the ways and means- ·the stylcs - ol" tuming; it ' s the llame for the practices of ma king time take place in the conjunctures ami fissures of everyday circumstances. Taking a turn by producing an utterance is at one and the same moment radil:al assertion ami repressive confonnity. [t asscrts change and difference in the same movement as it punctuates reality in formats of tradition and I.."llnvention. The conversational micropractices 01' making time take place a re ~ ill1ult an eously fasci stic and anarchic. They are fascistic insofar as indi vidllals are o bligated to be subjects 01' conventional turns as emblcms 01' IHclllbcrship and good railh. !\nd they are anurchic insofar as turns can be lak é ll lo Vi(ll "tc convc ll lin l1 a lld IÚlI lldali o ll all y lransl'onn both practical and di "cun;ivl: conscin llsnc:-Is. HlIl lhl:S pllls il Ih is way:

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To takc part in the turn-taking political-economy of conversation is to trust in somc kind of covenant of sociality. And that trust presupposes memory and imaginatioll: they both remember and represent. lIIuminating the out Iines 01" Illemory and imagination, conversation's taking place in turns re arflrll1s the covenant(tense) of the present. As an infant enters the symbolic rt)a IIll , the analogic world of the semiotic begins to break up, to digitalize , inlo Jiscontinuous experience. The gaps marking offthese discontinuities are Ihe spaccs in praetical consciousness that summon(interpellate) the voices of discursive consciousness. Such spaces are the locations for turns to take place, I"l)l' discursive consciollsness to be performed in and through the formats of co nversational micropracticcs, and for those fomlats to interpellate their intc rlocutors onto the lamlscarcs of practical affairs. in:ul11stances play () n Ihe boJi es 01' suhjeets who Olay, in turn, rcspond to Ihcse ma LCrial anLl spili lllal I.:PIII.! itioIlS hy giving \oiee to Ilwlll. Illl minent circlIlIlslallccs give v(lil:c 11' IIw wisdo lll ¡lOtI lo ll y () I' nlcllwry whic h is no t silllply SPI1 H': rcc(lrJ in!', s l p l ol~'c ¡lI ld ICll i,'v al ar paral " .. 1(.1111.'1. fl l\' lI lory is

pla yed by Ihe prescnccs a lid :¡llsl'lIcCS ot"circlllllslallccs M aterial and spirit ual play th e hOlhcs 01' ils subjccts as the embodiments 01' practical cOllsci,HIsncss Y Circulllstallces disclosc the ruptures that Sllmmon conversa tion to makc time take place, and to transform circumstance into experience. In the same moment as they bridge circumstantial gaps in practical consci ousness. cOllversational micropractices produce rllptures, as circumstances, again to be transformed into the formatted experiences of conversing sub jects. Memory's voices are repeated as conversational mkropractiees that intcrpellate interlocutors as the embodiments of experience. The Greek term melis captures many of the connotations intended by ",.ac!ical consciousness. De Certeau discusses it as a form 01' consciousness immersed or elllboJieJ in practice Y Conversationallllicropraetices are dis cursive formats ror practica] consciollsness insofar as a praclice is \\Ihal il does and , as such. has three defi ning characteristics. F irst , micropractices are primarily temporal techniques; their appropriateness is demonstrated in their appearing at just the right moment. Second, in appearing at just the right moment , they undo proper places by changing forms via metapho rical trans formations. And third, they disappear inlo thcir own aetions , they dissolve in their very production; they have no renection or echo. Put more bluntly, conversational micropractices are predominantly tactical (i.e., temporal) rather than strategic (i.e. , spatial). 24 Conversation is, in this sense, tbe speaking 01' and Ii stening to discourse at its proper times. De Certcau Jevelops melis into his notion of memory , a taetical phenomenon with no proper place , a phenomenon that moves through events without possessing them. 1 want to suggest that (,ol1l'ersalivnal micropracLices are perfármcd mcmor)', and are responsible for reproducing the infrastructures 01' sociocultural formations. Memory is neither a general nor an abstract idca. A master, for examplc, is a subject surrenJered to experience, someone whose expericncc produces micropractices dcmonstrating principies 01' economy. Expcrienced micro practices obtain maximum etlect from minimum effort. A master makcs it look easy . An experieneed pianist, for example. is one whose discursive practices evidence practical consciousness: she knows her way around the keyboard. 25 Memory is embodied in the temporality of its Illicropraetices, in the discursive formats of practical consciousness . It is lhe micropractica'l body that kn ows, and the experience 01' sueh embodied knowledge takcs place in time . The same can be said to be true of conversational interlocutors. As an interlocutor, an 1 speaks what an 1 thinks, and it thinks what it knows; and an I knows its own experience as memory that is formatted in the very conversational micropractices it speaks. An 1 is unable to converse out of or heyond what it knows acknowledging for the moment lhe multiple \Vays of knowing. An 1 speak.s prior experience as thoughts, and a n 1 experiences those structllres 01' reeling as the eontinuity of an I's o wn identity. Memory, lllu teria li/"cd a ~ co nvcrs:t lion almicropractices, reproduces itself in the spaces ur time as co nlinllily :tlld idl~lItity. Im provisation consists 01' pe rforming

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Ways nI' ill sc rihing time in rlacc are, (hen , both prcsences and absences, both :l ss¡:rli()l\s alld rcpressions. As sllch, turns are moves in rclations of powe r. R nmantici¡,ing codcd rituals ami cercmonies takes on thc appearances 01' rl'lation<:h ips ami cOlllmunitics. From this vantage, rules of roliteness can be rcad as the spcciricatioll 01' rules for what must be articulated so that faee thrca lcni ng Cil\.:umstallces either are avoided altogether, or are blunted a no ca ll1ou llaged silllultancously. Unstated in Brown an d Lcvinson ' s catalogue nI" cOllvcrsatiollal rclatiolls, for examplc, is the hegemonic po\Ver Iying dormanl, but always at the ready , to ensure that only the appropriate is arliculalcd with practice . ~ ' To violate the rules ofpoliteness is to risk embar rasSl11ent ami shamc, certainly, but also madness and death at the extreme hcgclllonic cdgcs. P{) wer relalions, then, materialize in the most microscopic of sociocultural practices, reali7.cd as colleclivc living articulates differences that become, IIpon lheir materialization , signs of values, commodities marking status dif krcnces anJ thcreby po\Vcr rclations. To live in the everyday \Vorld of late , postmodern capitalism is to livc in a \Vorld of constantly shifting allianees éLlllong signs. Conversational micropractices are ways 01' modifying one's p(Jsilionality among signs of power, means of shifting alliances, methods 01' aCClll11modating individuated benefits and of taking care 01' practical affairs.

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m:sthdica ll y pkasin g Vll llil llt llh 1111 tltl~ stnH;turl's t hl: l1\~I'I\v ... :lIll'ady knowll 10 m¡:mmy What is llutsi!.lc nll.'lI ll)ry is nn-Ihing anLl 11 0 I Hil.:11 se K rislcva 's semiloil ' h ol'l/ il is unlhi nk a hlc and unspeakable ,"(' Insola r :I~ 1IIl'IIlory is cm bodicd in lh e tClllporality orpractice, and a turn is lhe lllillclI.t1 l' lIlhllJilllent 01' mcmory in circumstance, micropractices carry memol y 11 \1 11 I Itl' spaces in which an I fi nds subjecl-positions for living its everytl
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alld p lays on Ihese indcxica l Spilt:CS that bcckon conversalional practices to hridge the gaps, T hese gaps amI fissurcs , which tUI'llS produce, are lhe places 01' lhe othe!'. Spca king breaks out expcrient:e that produces o ther ga ps and spaces, The process is infinitely self-recursive, Mcmory ca11s for practiccs that edit circumstance inlo experience which. in turn , promise the satisfaction of desire and the possibility o f power. Here is de Certcau: , . . an a rt 01' memory develops a n aptitllde for always being in the other's place without possessing it. and from profiting from this alteration without destroying itself through it. This ability is not a power. It has been given the name of C1ulI1Orily: what has been "drawn " from the co11ective 01' individu al memory and authorizes (makes possib1c) a reversal , a change in order or place, a transition into something different, a metaphor for practice of disco urse . (87) It is these pradiees of memory lhal are respon sible for organizing the occa sions of everyday modes of action , fo r tnmsformin g ways of thinkin g into styles of doing, for evidencing expcrienee in practice and for diseursivising practical consciousness.

Multiple voices of the truth of lactical and strategic expeTience QuadraJlI I 11 pll'sc lIls the initial circumstanlial place; quadrant 11 is the domain 01' IIIl IIll1l 11' limes that in quadrant "' erupts and intervenes at just lhe right Il IUllIllI lllIll' Greek term ror this "appropriate moment" is kairos) , Quadranl 1V IIIrll Il'prcsents the modificati on of circumstances as a result of lhe intervl.:nl j¡ 11 , ' 111 1I~'1Il0ry, Quadrants , and IV represent two spatial equilibria whereas qu"d l ,1111 11 ;¡nd III represent a temporal intervention that produces Ihe spal ia 1 1, ""1 111111, lhe experience, the change 01' spatial circumstances. Tim e, mOllll'"1 11 11.,. il mllemporarily, lakes place, transforming place by mean s ofmemo lY 1" l llIll'~' S, and producing circumstantial experience, The 4111'- 11011 1I'l lIains unan swered , however, as to !JOII' memory and the domain ,,1 11 11 11 hll'; 1k through at just the right moment into the domain 01' material, 11 11I111 ... 1 ,1 11I:t.~ S to effect spatial transformation s and produce experi ential 0 \ \ I I¡HU 1)~ Ccrteau contends that kairo,\' relies on a sense of tactics; it is th~ 11 11 1111111 1 11 1 arl ? ' He reminds us that memory has no prefabricated, rea dY-lI li1dl 111 11'lalil.ing organil.alioJlal slructure, but rather is mobilized rcl ali h ' 1" \\1 •.11 ltappcl1s. Memo ry plays on and is played by circumstances lha l 1'1...1111 I l' p~ 1 icncc in plUl:es lhal bclo ng to lhe other. The places memory iIT II JlI \ 111111 11 111 o"l'upi cs kmporaril y, are gaps in the bound aries \) 1' I he codes nr pIIllIIIJ¡ rI , "" :,I'jou Sll L'SS , Tite,'" dil' il:r1 i/c lang uagc , and memo l y ¡ll lIpIS illto '10

In the course of theroizing the space/time binary. de Certeall is concerned with the question of how everyday life can be lived increasingly tactica11y in more fu11 y spatialised and strategic worlds , In tbeorizing The Practices O/ Everyday L(f'e, he distin guishes betwecn tactic and strategy as fo11ows : I ca11 a "strategy" the call:ulus of force-relationships which becomc possible when a subject of wi11 and power (a proprietor, an enter prise, a city. a scientific institution) can be isolated from an "envir onmenL " A strategy assumes a place that can be circumscribed as proper (propre) and thus serve as the basis for gencrating relations with an exterior distinct fmm it (competitors, adversaries. "clienteles-', " targets", or "objects" ofresearch). , .. I call a " tactic ," on the other hand , él ca1culus which cannot count on a " proper" (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totalily. The pl ace ofa tactic belongs to lhe othe\'. (xix) Tacties conslÍtu lc lile praclical inlelligence ()f limc-binding relations whereas stralegics c()n:-.titll lC I ht: praclieal intell igcm:e 01' space-binding relations, T he tn<:di ulll "r ladíc:; is 111111:: l it\: IlIcdi llnl \)I'slra lcgies is spacc, 111

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,lI ld .k ( '~'I Il'II I1 'S \'(m / l'g rltlll'I/I 1:01 BUlI l"d iCtl, Ilit' l/l ll" .II ,lIl d hll ll'\:III SCil'IH:CS "lIlI lI p sl' " ICVl:tS lhlc lcm polal ll'hlliOlls into rcvcr~ l hlc 'i1 1 1l ~' II II ' al rl'lations; 1Itl'y I'lIv ik gc spatia I IIHl\,h.: ls o ver temporal ones. hvcryda y practiccs of li ving al e IlItlical illsorar as thcy are w
tural ló rlllati ons. Thl.!se minor pra-.:ti-.:cs organi7.e both space and time in sub ordinatc ami indirect ways. Practiccs that become dominant, such as Fou-.:ault's panopti-.:al te-.:hnology, becol1le the organ izi ng principJcs 01' entire technolo gics 01' po\Vcr, De Certeau is con cerned with the minor practices that never attain sllch dominance. H is con-.:ern is with the tactical practices that inflltrate, erode and subtly transfigure dominant strategic practices. The minor practices of ripping off (de Certeau's la perruque) may be the inevitable and perpet ual encroachment of symbolic-exchange and meaning onto the dominant, hegemonic territo ry 01' sign-exchange and signification. Time and space are crucially co-ordinated in the bureaucratized world of cellular grids, and bodies become social cmbodiments 01', and the temporary anchors for , the cellular grids by locating themselves appropriateJy in space ami time-- by staying in their spaces over time. A rip-off appropriates the space 01' an other 1'01' a time; it is the operation 01' the symbo1ic-cxchange system in codifled, shifting -.:ircuits ofsign-value. For Baudrillard, a gift is a symbol whose meaning is the rcJationship its exchange defines and affirms in its own material insignifi-.:ance as a sign-object. The everday world of work is the ex.perience 01' being in the place 01' the other; it's the employcr's materiaJ s and technologies being L1sed by an employee, but it's the employee's time, not the employer's. An employer, 01' course, \\fould not agree; that's the crux of thecontestation- whose time is it, and whose space?-questions of will(ingness) and power.

\Vc may say that a structu re is what previolJsly struetured praetices lla ve produccd as a result. Thcse then constitute lhe "given eondi li l)IJS, " the nccessary slarting point. 1'01" new generations of practice, In IIeilher case should " practice" be treated as transparently inten lional: we makc history , but on the basis of anterior conditions whid1 arc not of our making. Practice is ho\\' a strueture is actively rcpl'lld uced. (95, 6) I "l' nlistake 01' Fouca ult and the other more conventiona I post-structuralists, ;lel'O rding to de Certeall, is that they privilege the determinate-ness 01' ;III ICl'ior conditions. Foucault, like de Certeau , is eoncerned about the micro phy ... ics 01' power in the forms 01' disciplinary and surveillance practices and Icl'l lllolügies. But whercas FoucauJt produces a dying, if not dead subject, IIH ll l' or lcss lo-.:ked into overdetermined structuraJising practices ofinstitution ali/l:d llvcryday Ji fe, de Certeau's subject is an artful dodger, a poacher 01' :;palializing forms . For de Certeau , there is a tactical response to , and a tem I'ol il lizing capitalization 01', ifnot an outright es-.:ape ('rom, the Foucauldian WchLTian iron -.:age 01' historical overdetermination. Tactics-becoming are 1hl! Il:l11poral pra-.:tices that take place in the gaps and slippages of free-play , 111 IlIl~
M.icropracticaJ production and reproduction of ideology of everyday Jife The configurations 01' cultural contradictions and paradoxes are suppressed and camouOaged at this micropractical level of conversation. The seemingly obvious, mundane , routine, normalizin g practi-.:es and knowledges 01' cvery day life constitutc the ontological and epistemological infrastructures 01' -.:om mon sense. And common sense is hegemony's material manifestation at the micropractical leve!. The critical study 01' conversation and the critical study 01' hegemony at this point beco me one and the same enterprise. The silences of what cannot be spoken mark the boundaries 01' conversation. Conversa tional micropra-.:tices, in other words, perform and reproduce ideological codes that norma1ize the contradidions contained within hegemonic bound aries, lIsually without calling them into q uestion. Any given em bodied subject, as interlocutor, however, is in process. Conversation works to epistemologically punctuate ontology, producing momentary appearances ofautonomous sub jeds of intcrsubjcctivity. Vo losinov argucs that the notion ol' a qua1itative difference between the "inm:r"
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)' IIlIIl1t IIlIl:I) II ~ly 1< )w¡ lrd 11ll' ¡¡dd l CSKC I :tnd Inw:1I d I hl: , Itl d ""':-;I:~:. Tht: I W Il skk, 1;"I I, litIl IC Ih~' I \VO P\ ) k:~ n I" a co ntill uulIl W,)lIg whid l ~" I1l''¡ c nl:c can be aPP\'I.:Il\.:rH.bl ami stlllctur¡;U I\ kulogica lly. Thc " 1-cxpcricllI.:c," a l its extremc, l usc~ ils ideological strlll.:t urcJness and with it, its apprehcnJability. It appro ¡¡ches Ihc physiolngical reaction of animality in losing its verbal delineation. !\t the other extrcme is what Volosinov calls the "we-experience," character izcd by él high degree of differentiation , the mark of a change/expansion of consciOLlsness. The more differentiated the collcctive in which an individual orients hcrselC the more vivid and complex her conscioLlsness. For Bakhtin 's essay, "The Problem of Speech Gcnres," the editors write:

Idcology should not be confuscd with the politically oriented English word. Ideology as it is used here is essentially an y system of ideas . But ideology is semiotic in the sense that it involves the concrete cxchange of signs in society and history. Every word/discourse betrays the ideology of ils speaker; every speaker is thus an ideologue and every utterance an ideologeme. (101)

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handed t! ()w n it CIldll ll.:S, hlll ilcl\dllrC~ as a continllOlls rroccss ~)r bccolllillg. IlIdividllals do no t rl'ccive a ready-made langllage at all, rathcr they enter llpon the stream of verbal comlllunication; indced , only in this stream does their consciousness first bcgin to operatc.

(8 1) Bakhtin works from the theory and history of literature to develop the concept of dia/ofiica/ C0l1sciousness. 11 In hi s study of Dostoev sky's poetics, hero (subject) is neither character nor personality ; it is rather discourse about itself and its world. Dostoevsky's hcro is not an objectified image but an autonomous discourse, pure voice; \Ve do not see him, we hear him ; everythlng that we see and know apart from his disco urse is nonessential and is swallowed up by disco~lrse as its own material, or else remains outside it as something that st imulates and provokcs. (53)

In actual fact, howcver, 1:.l1Ig lla g..: moves together with that stream and is inseparable rmm il. 1 :J lI ll.u age üun not properly be sa id to hc

Dostoevsky 's heroe.1 speak themselves into consciousness in the process of experiencing living. Rather th an creating a finali zed and complete monologist, Dostoevsky writes hemes who speak themsclves into at least partial conscious ness in a world inhabited by others in the process of becoming conscious -heco/11ing-olher-wi.l'e- in the ongoing stream of speech-communicatio n. Subjects speak utterances structured by their material circumstances, which then structure and flesh out their experience. Speaking dialogically, for Bakhtin , is speaking lI'ilh a multiplicity of other voiees rather than speakingjo,. othcrs and ahoul lhei,. experience. Dialogical discoursc is speech that is open and on the threshold of elisis and possibil ity at evcry moment. Its speaker is not a finali zed and determinable subject but an interlocutor in process, a subject coming to partiaJ consciousness in a world of other unfinished subjects, working to spcak the truth ol' their experience. From such a theorctical vantage point, speaking dialogically is consciousness-beeoming. Speaking dialogically c1arifies events and experi ence for a subject such that the trulh at which a conversing subject is arriving is the truth of its own partial consciousness. 1t is self-reflexivc specch coming lo consciousness.12 Conversation , in short, is inherently ideological. It is into and against this ideological world that speaking subjects come to partial consciousncss. Realized utterances, as gesturc and spcech, influence experience by tying inner lite together and sharpening difl'erentiations. Volosinov uses the term " behavioral ideology" to delineate our unsystematized speeeh , which en uo ws every acC a nd thcrct"orc o ur every con scious sta te, with meaning.'1 F or Volosinov:

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Native language learning is an infan!'s gradual immersion into verbal com munication , and very quickly, if not immediately, conversation , which per forms intersubjectivity, in etTect. Volosinov argues that experience and its outward objectifications are articulated in embodied signs. !\gain, expcrience does not exist indcpendent, somehow, of its embodiment as signs. It 's not a matter of experience organizing utterances; rather, the reverse. Utterances organize experience. And it is the immediate social situation and its broader sociocultural milieux that determine, from within themselves. the structure of each utterance. U tterances then form up and orient to experiences of its speaker's partial consciousness. Coward and Ellis define ideology as representational practices that c10se off meanings and produce subjects as th e supports and supporters 01' mcan illgs. It is mealling as dosure that delimits and {hes the subject as an individual in discourse- an interlocutor. The work of ideology is the production of lhe (,llntinuity of the unitary ego as subject. By closing off the inherent open Ill'SS 01' discourse and its contradictions, ideology produces the appearance of Ihe unity of the subject and of world. But the sllbject, as sign , is in process. Ilkology works, then , to punctuate the being of becoming, producing the r,mll of an auton omous subject speaking with a unitary voice. Similarly, for Vu losinov , discou rse is not reified language conceptualized synchronically, but rather it is th c stream of verbal communication:

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Rccal1 Ihal I"or BOllrd l\'II , dl ~ p\lsiliul1s are leamed withoul bcil1~ expli eilly Illoddkd, tau!dlt , or inslmcled in and throllgh daily participation in Iln: pl"actices 01" evcryday Iifc. Thcy are the matcrial embod.imcnts of every day pracliccs. A complimcntary notion is Hall's formulation of the " doub1c articulation" of str ucturc and practice:

('on -:C4 11cntly. "Marxist philosophy of langllage shollld and must stand sq lIa n!ly on thL: lIttcrance as the rcal phenomenon of language-speech and as I hc s()c,ioidcological structure." (97) I ,el mc now turn to the sociologieal side of diseourse a nd the matter of id co logy. Complemellting the conception of con sciousness as d ialogical is hnmpson's conception of ideology as the th ought o f lhe other, the though l nI" sorneonc other than onesclf, thought that serves to sustaio relations and slructurcs 01" domination :

By "double articulation " 1 mean Lha t the structure- the given condi tions 01' existence , the structure of determinations in any situation can also be understood, from another point ofview, as simply the result 01' previous praetices. We may say that a structure is what p reviously strllctllred practices have produced as a result. These then constitute the " given conditions," the necessary starting point for new genera tions of practice. (93)

To characterizc a view as " ideological" is alrea(zv to criticize it, ror ideology is not a neutral tenn. Hence, the study of ideology is a controversial, confiict-laden activity . It is an aetivity which plunges the analyst into a realm of daim and eounter-c1ai lll . of a llegation , accusation and riposte. ( 14)

As discursive practices, conversation articulates the experiencc 01' sllbjects' consciousness with the meanings of sociohistorical conditions. And it is the articulation of meaning with experience, and thereby the c10sing off 01' lllean ing, that constitutes the ideological nature of dialogical conversation. Insofar as ideology consists in the ways ami means by which meaning and significa tion serve to sustain relations and structures of domination, conversing arti culates meaning with experience. which produces consciousness as cmbodied subjects at the same time it produces history and reproduces sociocultural formations. Dialogical conversation is a double articulation; it media tes consciollsness and ideology . Conversational micropractices art'i culate meaning and signification not in any determinate sense but rather in the sense of momentarily arresting the slippage of the field of signifiers. According to Hall's reading of Althusser's formulation ofideology, it is ideology's fllnction to fix llleanjng a lld signi.fica tion by establishing a chain of eqllivalcnces in the field of pe rpetuaIly slipping and shifting signifiers.34 Insofar as ideologies are maps of worlds , their formats are discursive, read as the strategies of common sense regarding a material and spiritual world. Discourse, as the semiotic domain 01' llleaning aad repres entation , then, is the material lllodality of the functioning 01' ideology- as formatted common sense-·and conversational micropracticcs are the material devices for plltting the practical consciousness of ideology into the material practices of everyday living. Hall writes:

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To characterize conversation as ideological is to grant it its own agency and autonollly. Conversation is no more neutral than is ideology. Utter ¡mces of lhe ongoing stream of conversation are, by their very existence , idcological , and whcn conversation is dialogical and more truly heterg lossic, as it is for Dostoevsky's heroes, then it Slll1lmOnS a response. An utterance stands as a summons or challenge to preceden!; it sumlllons a response from an other interlocutor giving voice to partial consciousness. Behavioral ideology entails the speaking of experience into autonomous self-consciousness, and sllch se1f-conscioLlsness rests on a foundation of opposition . difference, contradiction , c1ailll and counter-c1aim . rn these ways, Thompson and Volosinov concur on the rclations between conversation and idcology: To explore the interrelations between language éLnd ideology is to turn away frolll the analysis of well-formed sentences or systems of signs, focusing instead on the ways in which expressions serve as a means 01' action and interaetion, a mediulll through which history is produced and society reproduced. The theory of ideology invites us to see that lan guage i~ IIllt sim pl y a li tructure which can be employed fU I" corlll11l1l1icalhm 01 lJll lc' rl.u il1l11cnt but a sociohi storicul pl h.: no m ellOI1 wh ich is \'l11h , oi ln l in h ll li1~ 1I1 c0 l10 ict.

Language and behavior are the media , so to speak , 01' the material registration 01' ideology , the moda1ity of its functioning. That is \Vhy we have to anal yze o r deconstruct language and behavior in order to dcciphcr the patterns of ideological thinking which are inscribed in t!telll . (99, I nO)

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Il ,tll Pdl,lp l ll ¡¡~('" I\Ir ""!o"'lI " Ill llllll hll lun .. 1 u Il'I .' liI¡' , ,1',sys lt'IllS or rqlll'"cll lll llulI l'\ II I1 P"Sl'd., 1 l- 1I11(T pls. id\!as, IlIy lh., 111 II IHI~'CS 111 wllil:h 1IIl' I! ,11Il1 WOl lIl'1I ... 1iVl' IhelJ illl a!lillary rcla lil)/ls 11> the lea lconJ ilions 01" C\ I.,It'Ill't', .. " SySll:lIIS \)r represental ion a re codcs ~ ,r inl cll igihilily , the form ats 11\1 n l't' IICIIl'in g lhe lI1alerial l:llllllilions 01' cveryday lire. Thesc systems Il'Pll''ó\'1I1 alld rncu i;lle lhe imll1ediate or real l:onditions ol' existenee. 1t is III IJ1\Issi bk III cx perience lhe reall:ollllitions immediately; thus all practiees 01' rv pl csl' lIla lillll are ideologieal, whieh does not neeessarily imply that all Il' llI c:-.cn lalional practices sUl:h as l:ol1versational praetices - a re nOlhing hut idl'" lol'lV- ('lIIwersalional micropractil:es are formats or l:odes shaping our V\ IWI ICIIl'e Ill' lhe reall:onditions 01' existenl:e , b llt as mediated experience, it '.I,llI ds in an imaginary re1ation to the real. SUl:h pradices put into play the ~y~ ll l11 oruJlles and presentations, and are in that sense inherently ideological. ( '1I l1 wrsational nlil:ropractices mediale lhe immediate vertical circumstances by IlI yillg lhel1l down and building them up into horizontal differenees, 1I ,II1 o.; hHllli ng Illeaning into signifieation, and producing their interlocutors ,I ~ hIiC\ '!c llrs taking what they find and mediating, styling, and fashioning 11 Ihl' way a lurn takes what it finds- and what it finds are the imaginary ICll l110llS lo lhe real conditions of existence and interpellated subjects as IIILCIl ,)cu lors, subjeds cul out as conversants and i/1l'erled as authoritie 11I1Idlil~CS an utteranl:e that ofnecessity rearranges those conoitions, which are li s Ia w llIaterials. Once the analogic relations 01' practicall:onsl:iousness are d l!, II ,dil.l'd as the disl:ursive practices of conversation, gaps and absences ¡lI l' pl'lldlll:ed: the l:ontinuity of practical consl:iousness becomes the disl:on 1IIIII il y 01' disl:ursive pradices. The turning and reversing of conversing break IIp illla lngical experienee into digital , circumstantial experience, the formats ,,1 which are the performative structures of l:onversation. ( 'onwrsations, as both memory ano pradice, de Certcau ealls the narrafil'e ,,1'111('/ . ll e charaderizes an "art" as a practice for which there is not enuncia 11,11 1; il is practil:al know1edge that has yet to be diseursivised ; it is use-value wilholll lhe eommodifying algorithm that produl:es exchange-value. For de ('cr leall , conversing is such an art, an art 01' doing and of thinking constitut i fl~' Ihcory and practice simllltaneously. In shor!, it is the genius of praxis a rliclIlakd with the art ofstoryte11ing. 1ú As an art ofconversing, storytelling pIl)dllCCS effects, not objects- narratioll, not description. As the narraJive o/ 1(/, '1, ClJnvcrsations are the ways tactical turn-taking enal:ts memory and prodllces sllbjective experience; to develop the multiple relations bctween \'Illl vcrsing and narrating is beyond the seope of this essay.

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an: autOl:th llog rar lllc sc lI 1l·llcX lvc, sdl -illlpl ical ive illwsligaliolls 01' Ihe cOl1wrsatiollal polil ics nI' cxpc riellec." It's work prediea ted (lll the aSSlll11p li(lJl that olhcr is inlerior (1m! exlerior; here (fl1d there: now (fnd then . Trinh T. M in h-Ila addresscs this self-rellexive turn: critique from the interior always helps to sow ooubts in a way that cannot be I1lcrely oiscaroeo as "other" .... To l1lake things even more complex and prone to critical investigation, " westcrn " and "nonwestern" must be unoerstood not mcrely in tcrms 01' opposi tions ano separations bul rat her in terms ofoifferences. This irn plies a constant to-a nd-fro movement between the sa me and the o ther. ( 138)

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Thc search for thc exotil: other is futile . Histories are projections of the unwanted and the unforgiven onto other, then a1ienating- or worse- other only to be dceply disturbeo by the disquiet, thc longings, the absences , the violences.'x Separating, evaluating, rejecting and projecting masculi nity onto other, for examp1e, perpetuates a more or 1css open state 01' conflict. Alienation and fragmentation are all but inevitable. My critical ano tneoretical intercsts are to show how conversations map the lano sca pes of practical consciOllsness as oiscursive eonsciousness: how conversations separate possibility from impossibi1ity; how they articulate subject ano objecL Ano other is doin g some version 01' the same, cvcn though both may assume that self is, in fact, adoressing other. Ano at the same time, there are the abject fears 01' nihilismo of oissolving. w Each wnversational study based o n these interests involves a subject alldiotaping a convcrsation with an other. O nce audiotaped, authors listen, transcribe, edit , re-transcribe, analyze , critique and implicatc their discursive selves. This critical sc1f-reflexivity is a double-reflcction: it is the oialectical partner of narcissisl1l; il is a hecoming-olher-lVise. The anal ytic prol:edures involveo in eaeh stLloy are analogolls to watching a film or vioeo 01' one's self, repeateoly , in slow-motion. with stop-adion , ano pause. Subjects begin to hear conversational octails, often for the tirst time . As 1 become inl:reasingly involveo in the micropractices oftranscribing, I come to questions oC the dialogics and dialectics of the more or less con ventional configurations of conversalion , consl:Íousness, experience and mcaning. Mikhail Bakhtin's various treatments 01' U/lerance, creafiFe under standing, hero, carniva/', helerog/ossia, po!yvocalily, centripetal and cel1trijúga! forces, ol(lsidedness and superaddressee are the conceptual thematics through which 1 come to understand these conversations.41l This progrcssi o n aeross analytic ano perlormative bounoaries is a strip ping a way of fam ili arity, a setting aside of lhe ord inary, a sel f-refl exive movC lll at accomplishes Ihe cxpcricncc 01' \Vhat Bakhlin calls oUlsidedness. 4' FOllcalllt spccifics CXP('/'ÍCI/U in 11!1 'H s nI" thrce moóes 01" o bjeclilka tio n in a nd t hrough

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\vllll: h Il1d ivuIIl UI ' , hu U1 11~ .IIIWlllah:d with k nllW lcd l''''I'Ii\Vl'I 11'. SlIhjl'd.s: IlI'lds (J I' k n mvlcd ,·ll' \IIllh l: OII1:~ p I S ; rules or di viding p l lld ll T1-I . , 11111 Ihe rcla III1Ilship tu OJl cscW I ! !'l lIs lX1Jlh.:xtualising is an cxplicil ulfirnllllg (JI' lIIultiple VOl I.:CS tha! cons litulc c~)nversational sclves. Outsidedncss o issol vcs into inter 'tuhjectivily as ulllhors hear the vo ices of sclves in the llttera nces of others. In Ihe process oftranseribing, authors atteno to conversational taeties for invert Ilg l'xpectations, questioning oppositions, refusing troubles, resisting labds, \p icing mcanings, laughing, crying, shouting, and perhaps even listening in , ,!cuce. Transeribing conversations ano identifying diseursive taeties ereate I'.ó' ps between subjeet and object, self and othe!'. These gaps are the tadical Ip: lces ol' and for critical self-reflexi vity, J\uthors recogni ze selves' voices on I.Jpe, and yet the experience of listening repeatedly to short bits and bursts of Ihl'ir audiotaped conversations, and seeing what transcribed conversation Itloks like, is a sometimes surprisingly destabilizing process. Richard Schechncr writes of the liminoid space 01' the no/(me) . , . l7ol(no/ 1/1/') produeed during a performance following workshop and rehearsal pre l'i1ration.43 Authors get senses of this liminoid spacc as they experience being ,llodds with their recorded voices. 44 One begins to hcar and to recognize the mices that articulate self with other, voiees that speak presumptions of a Jlllitary, univoeal , singular identity. Bakhtin 's treatments of [Jo/yl'ocalily and 1he inherenl unfinalizahili/y 4/he subjec/ can be understood this way. J\ uthors hcgin to realize these multiplicities and this destabilizing, decentering experi ('!Ice is both unnerving and empowering. Schechner claims that restored hehavior is not a discovery proeess, but rather a proeess of research and field work, and of rehearsals in the most profound sense. Theater, for him, is the :trt of specializing in the concrete techniques of restoring behavior. Critica! lllltology and conversation dialogics also aim at produeing conversational dialogues that restore behavior, and create differenccs and possibilities. 45

11 ¡¡ ( ' . 1 M 1 NI. / I

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varidy uf rossihle sr"ces. POPIJ!;1I clJlture increasingly requires each nI' us lO live taelieally in the forms uf cOl1temporancity and lO cullivale alternative aeslhelics Cllld spiri l uali lies filted lo such conditions. Conversations are lhe malerial media through \vhich much 01' this gets worked out, even if never finally accomplished.

Notes

One of the objectives of this work is to politicize details and featmes of cveryday discursive practices, and thereby politicize the eonsciollsnesses tha! are partially reproduced and imperfectly evidenced conversationally.46 Stra legic ingenuity evidences ilselfin the polítical economies ofspace, in the ways space is acquired, defended, traded, and used to enhance the control of scarce resources. Tactieal ingenuity evidenccs itself in the political economies of time, in ways to live temporarily, in the timing of interventions into space, in the styles of making lime stand still, accelerate, and decelcrale . The
Kri steva , 1984,2 1- 106. 2 For a discussion 01' thesc dialogic features in terms of contemporary experimental litcratu re, see Stephen-Paul Martin. Open Form ond Ihe Femil/ine Imag;nalioll ( Tite Polilics of Reading in TlI'entielh-CenlUr)' Jllnovative Wrilin g) (Wash.ington: Maisonneuve Press), 117- 214. 3 Stephen Tyler, The Ul1.Ipeakab le: Discourse, Dia!goue. ond Rhe lor;(: in IIIt! Po,\'l !/wi!ern World (Madison: U 01' Wisconsin p , 1987). 103 145. 4 Anthony Giddens. Central Proh!('/11s in Social Tlteory: AClion, SlruclIIre and COI1 /radielion ;n Social Analysis (Bcrkcley: U of California P, 1979), 9- 48. 5 For the classic convcrsation analytic formulation of turn-taking systcms, sec Liarvey Sacks, E. ¡\. Schegloff and G a il Jefferson , " ¡\ Simplest Systematies ror the Organizatioll 01' Turn-Taking ror Co¡;¡versation, " Lal1gllagl! 50 (1974), 696 ·-ns. 6 Rosaland Miles, LOl'e Sex Dcalh alJ(llhe lV/aking oj'lhe Male (New York: Summit, 1991 ). 7 The comparison of rhizome to lattiee is used througho~lt the first essay in Gilles Oelellzc and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, transo Hugh Tomlinson and Barba ra Ilaberjam. (New York: Columbia, 1987) 30 -· 35. See al so Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Tl1Ousal1d Plaleaus: Capiwfisl11 & Schi:::ophrenia. tmns. BrÍ
1110

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IIl i ' 111\11 N r: - 11' 1 111 /( - W / S /

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.!I I'clH,: ll1pc BrnWII "Ild St\: phl"1I I.cv il1 ~ llll . "lJll ivcl':;ab in Lan gua gc Usage: Polite O/I/'fI's."(',/ ( Mi llllcapp lis : 1I Mi llllcsota 1', I'J'J3); ",11.:11 I l"h ll \~ 11 lid I kkll WU':;üw ness l'hcrwlllclla ," eJ. I ': sl he!' N. GO(ld y. (Jl/esl iO/1S (lnd Poli/elless: S lfa legies in (cO s.), A /Jiall/)!,//c ()( VI/in ',\': h'llli//i.I·/ Li/allly 'Un'(//Y (/"rI lJoh!'/i" (Millllcapolis: ,<';/Il'ÍolllIl('/'(/uioll (Calllbridg\!: Cambridge UP 1978) pp. 56- 289. U Minll\!SOla P, 1994); Tullio Maranhao (ed.), nI(' III/aprc/o/illll /I( J)ialo)!,ue For a cultural anthropological discussion of bodies a.nd embodied ex perience in (C hicago: U C hicago P. 1990); ano a Iibcral humanist inlerprcta lion by Robe rt lenns 01' emoti onal ano spirituaJ experience, see T homas J. Csordas (Ed .) Embodi Grudin. On Dialogue: An E~say in fi- ee Tlwugh/ (Boston : H o ughton Mifftin , menl al/(I Experience: Th e Existenlial GrOUlld of Cull1/1'e afld Self (Cambridge: 1996). C ambridge UP). Fo r a complementary trea tme nt of identi ty a nd ident ity politics, 12 Pierrc Bourdieu. Ou lline o/a Theory of Practice, transo Rich ard N ice (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977) ,30- 71. see Anthony P. Cohen SelfConsciousness: A/1 Allernatil'e AlIlhropology of ldenlily 13 For a theoreti cal elaboration of this argument, see Jean Baudrillard, For A Cri (London: Ro utledge, 1994). 23 FQr a c1assically grounded discussion ofmemory, see F ra nces A. Yates, The Arl of lique OfThe Polítical Economy Of The Sigl!, transo Charles Levin (S!. Lo uis: Telos, 198 1). Mem ory (Chicago : U Chicago P, 1966). 24 See Fiske for a simila r trea tment of de Certeau thco rized in terms of popular 14 Reading both Bou rd ie u and de Certea u on this ma tter of time and space is cultu re. extremely valuable. even if they use stralegy in seemingly opposi te ways. La ter in 25 See David Sudnow, Ways of lhe Hand. thi s essay, 1 develop de Certeau's thinking on strategies and tactics for li ving ordinary and extraordinary everyday lives. 26 See Stephen Tyler, 103 - 145. 27 De Certeau elaborates on this figure , (83) by discussing time, operation a nd 15 For a more performative'ly developed di scuss ion of these concerns and their a ppea rance agai nst place, me mory, Iwiros and effects. His enti re discussion of mem implications, see Victor Turner's work , pa rticularly, The Ritual Process (Chicago: ory is well worth stud ying; in the interests of space , .¡ have chosen not to synposize Aldine, 1969); Dramas, Fields, and M elaphors: Symbolie Ae/ion in Human Socie/y (Ithica : Cornell UP, 1974); and " Dramatic Ri tual/Ritual Drama," Kel1yon Review tha t d iscussion ; (82-9) . 2 (1979); From Ritual 10 Th ealer (New York : Performing A rts Journal Press, 1982); 28 See Csord as here. "Performing Ethnography," Drama R eview (1982): 33 - 50; and "Body, Brain and 29 De Certea u, 82-9. Cu lture," Z ygon 18 (1983): 21 - 46. 30 For a discussion of subculture and style as bricolage and found-art, see Dick Hebdige, Subcullure: Th e Meaning ofStyle (Lo noon : Methuen , 1979),74- 133. For 16 The object of Gregory Bateson 's theorizing of play, for example, is this very provocative differcnccs in the conceptualization and the study of strategies and doma in of the meta-communicatio n of th e practical knowledge of micropractices tactics in po pular culture, see (an Chambers, Popular Culture: Tite M e/ropolitan that enable subjects to ac t on lhe d.ifferences between fo r p laylfor rea!. See, Gregory Experience (London: Methuen , 1(86), and John Fiske, Unders /anding Popular Bateson. Naven (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1936), and Steps lo an Ecology of Mifzd(New York: Ballantine, 1972, 159- 239). Cullure (Boston: Unwin H yma n, 1989). 31 See particularly his " Discourse in the Novel," in M . M . Bak htin , Tlze Dialugic 17 l'm referring here to a kind of "circul a r organization" that theo retica l biologists lmaginatio/'/: FOllr Essays ed . M ichael H olq uist, trans oCaryl Emerson and M ichael and cognitive scientists call autopoiesis, a term coined to refer to the dynamics of Holquist (Austin: U of Texas P, 198 J) , 259-422. the autonomy proper to living systems, systems that reproduce themselves. J:raisisco 32 See Anthony P. Cohen, Self Consciollsness: An Allernalive Anlhropology vf lden Va rela, in PrincipIes of Biolog ical AUlonomy (New York : Elsevier North Holland , 1979), defin es aUlopoiesis as: lily (London : Routled ge, 1994), 55- 79. 33 " Behavioral ideology " corresponds c10sely with the Ma rxist concept of socia l psychology, according to Volosinov . ... a network of processes of production (transformation and dest ruc tion ) of components that produce the componcnts that (1) through their 34 H all,93 , 35 Stuart Hall, " Sign ification, Representat ion , Ideology: Althu sser and the Post intemctions and tra nsformatio ns continuou sly regenerate and realize structuralist Debates," Crilical Studies in Mass COIllIJIWlÍcalio/1, 2,1 03 . the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (2) con 36 De Certeau , 33. stitute it (the mac hine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they 37 T he distinctiOllS separatin g implicale from if'/eriminate. or insinuale, 01' b/ame, or cx.ist by specifying the topological d omain of its realization as sLLch á network. confes.\', and so on, are crucial ones. 1'0 implicate one's subjectivity a nd selves in the actions and events one calls one's " Iife" is to begin to co nsider what Nietzsche ( 13) referred to as lhe doctrine of eternal recurrencc. In effect. the question that surfaees in the problematic of eterna l recurrence is: " If I had my life to live over 18 For a discussion ofthe genealogical dynamics ofthis episleme, see Michel Foucault's again, what, if anything, would ( change?" '1'0 cOlllprehend eternal recurrence is to discussio n of the mcans of correct training in , Discipline &Punis{¡: Th e Birth of /he wish to change noth ing, to will to Jive life exactly as it has been and is now . Self Prison (New York : Vintage Books, 1979), pp. 170- 194. implication is a critical-analytic as well as a dialogic process of taking on the 19 See Kath y E. Ferguson, The Feminisl Case Againsl Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: implications of the princi pie of eternal rec urrcnce. A subject begins to undcrsta nd Temple UP, 1984) 30- 82. that its selves collabo rate and col1ude in co-producin g the conditions of one's 20 For a n elaboration 01' th is d iscussion in Nietzschean a nd FOLLcouldian te rms, circumstances. As a subject changes its practices and lines of actio ns, conversa see Kath leen Higgins, "Nietzsche and Postmodern Subjectivity," ed. Clayto n tion al d ynamics ch ange . F oucault implies that change at the socia l lcvel of acti vity Koclb . Nielzsche as Postll/odemi\'I: EI·say.\' P ro and Con /m (Alba ny: S UNY P, can ol1l y be brought a bo ut by changes on the microphysical level of power. 1990) pp. 189- 215. Higgins's com mcntary on Nietzsche's 01/ nI(' A d lloll/{¡RC (lml COllversation is s uch a n instrumental microd iscursive meoium for resistance as Di.\'i./{l l/lI/1tagl' 0( 1Ii.\·IIIIY ji,,' L UI' is aho pcrti nent here.

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ell, 1again l'c1y heavily on Michcl de Ccrkau's distínctiotl bet\~ecn t{/('fil' and sll'alegy. O n :1 pl une l wh osc ccosy¡;ICIllS ;Ire hCCL)m ing increasingl y y¡!Il1ahlc and decreas illl',ly a Yil ilahle, IHl w 1" l i v~"' ,'I lIl'olal' íl y i.llld lllarginall Y- l hal is. how lo Iivc wílh Inurt.! allll !lIore 1;ICl k ll l llil' \' "U IIV i~ a q llcslill!l "flile and deallt 1" "Jl"l'liolls. and \Villt IIIL' .,alll' :Ind il '$ IIIC I(' l'l" , , l' l~I "II :,

A lk n, Guy ami Rebecca F. G uy (Eds.). COIIl'ersation An(/Iysis: Th c Sol'iology f)f"I(¡lk. The llague: Mouton, 1974. Bakhtin, 1\11. M. SpeCl:h Genrc.l' & Othrr I.ale ES.I'ays. Trans. Vern W. McGee, Ed. Caryl Emcrson and Michael Holquisl. Austin: U Texas P, 1986. Bakhtill , M . M. The Dialogi{' Inwgino lion: FOl/r Essavs. T rans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Ed. Michael Holquist. A ustin: U Texas P, 1986. Bakhtin , M . M. Prohlems o/ DoslOev.I'ky's Poclics. Ed. a nd transo Ca ryl Emerson. Millneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1984 . Bateson, G regory. Naren. Onnbridge: Cambridge U p, 1936. Bateson , Gregory. Steps lo (In Ecology o/ Mind. New York : BaJla ntine, 1972. Baudrilla rd , Jeall. For A Critique O/ Th e Polilicol Economy O/ The Signo Trans. Charles Levin. SI. Louis: Telos, 1981. Boal , Augusto. Thelllre oj'lhe Oppressed. Ne w York: Thealre Communications Group, 1985. Boal , Augusto. Tllc Rainbmv o/ Desire: Tlle Boal Melhod oj' 7/¡ea /re and Therapy. Trans. Adrian Jaekson. Londo n: Routledge, 1995. Bernauer , James and David Rasmussen. (Eds.). Thc Final FOl/caull. Cambridge: MJT P,1988. Bourdieu, Pierre. OUlline o( a Theory o/ Pr(/clice. Trans. Richard Nice. Ca mbridge: Cambridge UP, 1977. Chambers, lan. POjJular Cullure: 711e Melropolilan Expericl1ce. London: Methuen , 1986. Cohen, Anthony P. Se/l CO/1.\ciousl/es.I': An A/¡en¡alil'e Anthropology o/ldenti/y. London: Routledge, 1994. Cornell, Drucilla. Tra/7.\:fimf1alion.l': Reco//ective Imagination und Sexual Dij/erencc. New York: Routledge, 1993. Coulthard, M.t1colm . (Ed.). Advonces in SJlo/cen Di.\·cow·se AI1(/{ysis. London: Routledge, 1992. Csordas, Thomas J. (Ed.). Dnhodimenl (/nd Experience: The Existenlial Ground o/ C/tllur" a/l(1 Sel( Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1994. de Certeau , Michel. TlJc Pr{/cli{'c oj'Every day Lije. Trans. Steven F. Rendal!. Berkeley: U Califomia P" 1984. Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet. Dialogue.\'. Tra ns. Hugh TOl1llinson and Barbara Haberjam. Ncw York: Columbia , 1987. Deleuze, Gillcs alld Felix Guattari. A Thollsílnd Plalear.I.\': Capilalis/)'/ & SehizofJh/'l:nia. Trans. Brian Massumi. l'vlinneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1988. Ferguson, Kathy E. The Feminisl CasI Ag(/inSl Bu/'eaucrrley. Philadelphia: T emple UP, 1984. Fiske, John. Understallding Popul(/r eu"ure. London: Routledge , 1989. F ouca ult, Miehel. Disciplinc & PUl1i.l'h: T/¡e Birth o/ th" Prisol1. New York: Vintage, 1979. Fouüault , Michel. " Wh y Study Power: The Question ofthe Subject," Miche/ Fouwull: Beyond SI /'l/ouralislI/ 111/(1 I-le/'l11etlCII I ic.\'. Eds. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. C hicago: lJ Chicago P, 19X2. FOUCillllt, Mi c]¡c!. Polití, ·.\· fllt illl.I'Of!II)' C//I/I/re: lnlaviews (/Ild O/her Wri/ings 1977 11)84. I'.d . I.awrcncc K rilll llan . N..:w Yo rk: Roullc~l gc , l'»)\~.

101

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w ol 1dil I I,' Il' .

li'! ( 'Iilll 11 , I ';I \' tlod'~ fillll , 7111' lill/(,rgil'('II, is a conlemporary u" illllple 01' rOlllanlieiz 111 1' 1111.' r'0l',:ClIL)1l uf' Ihe uuacceplahk oulo other ami Ihen driviug that vilifkd ph: lr l1l f1l.'o!ll.·iu !'rolll 1he villagdearth. 1') "OU! p rohlcllls keep liS sol ved." ,lO 1:"":1 slIcciUCl Irca lment (JI' the~e pivotal dialogie concepts, see the Glossary in M. 1\11. na khlill, '/he Dilllogit Imagina !ion: Four Essay.l', ed. Miehael Ho lquist , lrans. (' aryll ~ llIerson a nd M ichaell-l olquist (Austin: U Texas P, 1981),423 -· 34. •11 111 Ih,' "Inlroduction " to Speech GCllre.l' & Other Lalc E.I'says, the editors wr,ite: For instance, the cmphasis on openncss, on unfillishedness (l1ezal'er shellos!) that is so much a fe a turc 01' his earliest work is still evident here in his opposition to Spengler's habit of trcating cultural units as dosed tIlollads, finished systellls. But lInflnishedness is only one of the key concepts from 8ak htin's ,'arly period that is in vo ked in these remarks made fifty years after their lirsl appcarance in his notebooks: others are outsidedness (vnenak I/lNlill/o.l·t) and lhe distinctive use he l1lakes ofthe word "body," as when he talks about " material bearers of meaning" in terms 01' hodic.l' of Illcalllng. p. xii

.2 1\!lichd I-'oucault, "Why Study Power: The Qucstion of lhe Subject ," in Hubert 1lrcyl'us ami Paul Rabinow (eds.), Michel FOl/caufl: Beyond StrucllIralisl1I a/1(/ 1/l'/'1I/('!/('llIil'.l·

(Chicago: U Chicago P, 1982), 208.

1\ R ichard Schechner, Betwcel1 Thealer a/1(1 Al1lhropology (Philadelphia: U Pennsyl

vallia P, 1985), 35 · 116. ·1·1 I alJl rClllinded here of"Once In A Lifetimc," on the Talking I-Ieads album, SIOp MII"i!/g Sel1.\'e: "You may find yourself living in anolher part of the uni versc" . . . " Youlllay say to yourself, thls is not my beautiful life," Sire D 124560, 1'>X4. .j', Ril'llard Schechner writes, in 1985: By inlcgrating lhe thought 01' Winnicott, Turner, and Batesoll with my D\VII work as a thcater director, 1 pro pose a theory that includes lhe Dntogenesis 01' individuals, the social action of ritual , ami the symbolic, l~VC!l rictivc, action 01' arto Clcarly these overlap: their unuerlying process is idcntieal. A performance "takes place" in the "not me ... not not me" hetwcen perfonners; between perforl1lers and tex\s; between performers, lc.xls and envirolltnent ; between performers, texts, environments and audience. The larger the Ileld of " between ," the stronger the perform ance. The anlistructure that is performance swclls until it threatens to hurst. The trick is to cxtend it to the bursting point bu! no further. p.113

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Fo ucault, MicheL T/¡e C(/I·.· .·/ 1"/ ",'/1 11,.. lIi.l'III/' · n/ S,. II "illfl Pa ntheo n, 1986.

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Mill'lill . Slcph\!Il -Paul. 0 111'11 F",.,II tlll.1 !h.. 1'('/IIill íll" 1/IIlIgillll!i/J 1I ( nl/ ' 1'lIlilh 's 111' Rc(/(/illg ill 1'l\'('llliel/¡-( '('11//(/ )' 11II1/)1'lIli,'" Wri/ing ). WBshin gtoll : MaisOIlIl\!UV\!, 1999. Gardner. MichaeL The Dia/og /. · ,,1 ( ·I'ili/II/". ¡'v/. M. B(lklilill.~ llit' IIlI'm )' ,!(Idm/ogy Mehan , I lugh and Il o uSIOIl Wood . TlI/' Re(fli/y oI E//lI1oll1('/h ot!oloKV. N\!w Yo rk: Lo nd o n: Routledge, 1992. Jo hn Wilcy & Sons, 1975. Garfinkel , Harold. Sludies In EtII//{)/I/('lllOd%g)'. Englewood Clifl's: Prcntice Hall , 196 7. Miles, Rosa land. Love SI'X Del///¡ af1(llhe Makil1g oj'lhe Male. New York : Summit, Giddens, Anthony. ('elllm/ Pro/JII'/Ils in Social Theory: Aelion. Sll'uclure and COl1lra 1991. dh:lio/l in Sodal Ana/y,li.\'. Bcrkcley: U California P, 1979. Min h-Ha , Trinh T. "Of Other Peoples: Beyond the 'Salvage' Paradigm ,'" D/A Al' Goody, Esther N. Queslion.\' a/ld Polilenes,\': Stralegies in Sof'ial Inlew('lion. Cam Foundlllioll /)iscussio/'t in COl1lemJ!owry Culture. Ed. Ilal Foster. Seattle: Bay P. bridge: Cambridge UP, 1978. 1987. Goodwin , C ha rles. ConllersOllullal Orgonizalion: Il1lel'(/Cliol7 BellVeen Speaker.I' Ill/e/ Mo i, Toril. The Krislev(/ Reacler. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. Heorers. New York: Academie Press, 198 1. Mo r1ey, Dllv id and Ku an-I-Is ing Chen (Eds .). S luart 11al/: Critica/ Dialogues in Cu l Grudin, Robert. On Dialogue: AI1 E\'~'oy in Free Tlwugh l. Boston: Ho ughton MifAin, /ural S Il/dies. Lo ndon : Ro utledge, 1996. 1996. Pa rker, Andrcw a nd Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Eds.). Perform(lIivity and Performance. Hall , Stuar!. "Signification , Represe ntatio n, Ideology : Althusser and the Post New York: Ro utledge, 1995. Structuralist Debates. " Crilico/ S Il/dies in M ass CommUl1iCalioll 2, 1985: 91 - 114. Phclan , Peggy . Unma rked: The Poli/ies o/ Pe¡f'rJ/"lnance. I.ondon: Routledge, 1993. Ha lliday, M. A. K Languogl' os Sof'ia/ Sell7iolic: The Social Inl erprelaliOIl o/ LIII1 Read , Alan. T/¡I'alre & E l'eryday Li/e: An Ethics o/Pe/j'ormal1cc . London: Ro utledge, guagl' I/nd Meal1illg. University Park P, 1978 . 199). Hebdige, Dick . SUbclIllure: The Meaning o}'Slyll'. London : Methuen . 1979. Sa¡;ks, I-Iarvey, E. A. Schegloff and G ail Jefferso n. " A Simplest Systcmatics ror the I-I ebdige, Dick . CU! "n "Mix: CU/lllrl', flbllily alld Cari!Jhean Musie. London: Organiza tion ofTurn -Taking for C onversation." Ll/l1guage 50: 1974. Roulledgc, 1987. Sawyer. R. Keith . Prelend Play l/S Improvisalion: CO/1.l'ersa¡iol1 in lhe PresdlOol Clas.\' Hennessy, Rosemary . J{alerla/isl Feminism I/m/ !he Polilies o}' Discour,\'e. New York: room. Ma hwah : Law rence Erlbaum Assoeiates , 1997. Ro utledge, 1993. Schechner, Rich ard . Belll'ee/1 Thealer a/U/ An/hropology. Philadclphia: U Pen nsy Heritage, John. Glllj inkel al1d Elhnomelhodology. Ca mbridge: Po lity, 1984. lvania P, 1985. Ilitcheock. Pete!'. Dialogic o/ the Oppr('ssed. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1993. Srnith, Paul. Di.\'eeming the Subjecl. Minnea po lis: U Minllesota P, 1988. l'lllhne, Karen a nd Helcn Wussow (Eds.). Dialogul' oI Voiee.\': Ferninisl Lilerar)' Sudnow, Da vi d. Ways O/lile Hand: The Organiza/ion o/IlI1provised Conduel . Cam '/'/¡eo/'y a/1(/ Bakh/ i!1 . l\.-linneapo lis: U Minnesota P, 1994. bridge: Ha rvard U P, 1978 . Iloprer , Robert. Telephone Conversatio/! . Bloomington : Indiana U P, 1992. Sudnow, David . Ta/k '.\' Body: A ¡'vlcdialion Bel\Vl'ell TlVo Keyhoards. New York : .1; 11 '('e, Joseph a nd Stanley Feldstein. R/¡ylhl1ls o/ Dia/ogue. New York : Academic P, Alfred A. Knopf, 19 79. 1970. Taussig, Michael. Mimesis I/l1d A/lerity: A Par/icular Hislory o/ /lIe Senses. New .Iohn~o n, Mark. Tite Roe/y in Ihe Mind: ¡he Bodily Bosis oj' Mean/ng. InU/gina I iO!1, and York: Routledge, 1993. Rl'a,\'oll . U Chicago P. 1987. Thompson, John B. S ludies i/1 ¡he T/¡eory oj' ldeolo,!!,y. Berk eley: lJ California P , 1984. "nshaw, Baz. The Polities o/ Perj'orman ce: Radical Tllea tre liS Culluralln/ ervel1lio!1.

T urner, Ro y. (Ed .). E/llI1o/JIl'I!1od%gy. Baltimore: Penguin , 1974. I,(lndon: Ro utled ge, 1992.

Tu rner, Viclor. Tlle Ri/ual Pro cess. Chicago: Aldine, 1969. "irshcnblatt-Gim blett. Barbara. (E d.). Speech Play: R f,\'('arc/¡ am/ Resource.\'jor Ihe

Turner, Victor. Dramas, FieM\', am/ M.e/apl/{)rs: Sym/)()/ic ACliol1 i/1 Human Socil!ly. ,''itlllly o/UlIguis/ie Creo li vity. U Pen nsylva nia P, 1976.

Ithica: Cornell ur, 1974. K~,clb, Clayton. Nietzs('he as PO.\'lmodel'l1isl: Es.m)'s Pro 1I/1(/ COl7lra Albany: SUNY

Turn er, Victor. From Ri/uallo Th ealer. New York : PAJ , 1982. P, 1990.

Turner, Victor. The AII/hrop%gy (!/ Pe/jórmol1ce. New York: PAJ , 1987. "risteva , J. "Thc Subject in Signyfying Practice" Sernio/exl(e) Vol 1 1975 . T yler, Stephen . T/¡e Un.I'J! l'aka!J/e: Di.I·('our.\·e, Dia/ogul', (lml Rhe/oric il/ lite Poslll1odl'l'/1 "ris/(;\'a, Juli a. Revoluliol1 in Poelie L(fl1guagl'. Intro. Leon S. Rou diez. New Yo rk : World. Madi son: U WiscOlIsin P, 1987. ( 'oltlll1bia UP, 1984. Varela, Fransisoo. Prilll.'iple,l' o( Biologiml AUIOI/Ol1ly. New Yo rk : Enselvier North 1 cf'ebvre, Hcnri . C/'iliqueo/Everyc!ay U/e. Tran s. John Moore. Lo ndo n: Verso, 1958. Holland , 1979 . 1 l.!lll ricchia, Frank and Th omas Mc Laughlin . Cri/ica/ Tern¡s jór Li/erory Sltidy. Volosi nov. V. N. Ma rx iSIlI and /h" Phi/o.\'ophy (~(LlIl1gLl(fge. Trans. Ladislav Matejk a C hicago: U C hicago P. 1990. and 1. R . Titunik . New York: Simin ar Press. 19n. t UI /, Ca 1heri ne A. U!1l1alllral Emol iolls: E,'e/yda)' Sen Iimel1 1.\' on a AlicrOl1l'sian A lol! Wi ttge nstein , Ludwig. Phi/o.\'opl!ical In ves /iga tiol1S. Oxford : Blackwcll , 1963. ,1: n/{'ir ('/II//h'l/ge lo Wcs/ern 7/11'01')'. Chicago: LJ C hicago r, 1988. Yates, Elizabcth . The An o/ l\lel1lory. Ch icago: U Chica go P, 1966. Mal'alll !Uo, T ulli/! (b !.). TI//' III/CI'/'I'('llIlioll o/Dialogfl('. C hicago: IJ (,h i L:< I ~W P, 1990. M:II-lill Llll hur 11., I luck (i ll llll;1I1 ;lIld l'alrÍ\'k 11. 1Itllt On. (Eds.). /i ,. /¡lIol".J:w.\· o¡I/¡,' ,\'.'/1 I S"/IIil/lIl' l1 'ilh Mí,,!,, ·I Ii,,,, ·.I"/1 '\ IIIJ¡ ~'rsl; I I M a ssa dl l1 s~. th 1'. Jl IXX. 1111,

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50

SOCIAL DRAMA S AN O

STOR IES ABOUT TI--IE M

Victor Turner SOllrn ·· (ál ica/lnCluiry 7(1) (1980): 141 1(¡8.

Anth l'npologists count and measure what they can in order to establish gen eral kalllres of the sociocultural fields they study. A lthough these activities have Ihcir irritating side, on the whole 1 found it eminently soothing, during my t WII and a half years of fieldwork among the Ndembu of northwestern Zam bia, a west-central Bantu-speaking people, to sit in villages before él cala bash ~1" lll i.llet or honey beer and colleet numerieal data- on village membcr ship, lllv m ce frequeney , bride wea.Jth , labor migration rates, individual eash budgcl'I. birth and homicide rates- and, more strenuously, to measure the aerea gc uf gardens and the dimensions 01' ritual enclosures. These figures told 1111,: ir not a story at least where to go to find stories. 1 W: IS able 10 infer from statistics based on censuscs and genealogies of SOl111' seventy villages tha t these residential units consisted of cores of c10sely Idated male matrilineal kin ; wives and sisters, as a result 01' frequent divorcc. had returned to their natal villages bringing their children \. . ith them. This W il O¡, uf eourse, only the thin end of a massive wedge. 1 soon discovered tha t Nd~'lllb ll ma rry v¡ri/owlly, that is, arter m a rria ge a woman resides in her h us ba IId '~ village. Conseq uently, in the long run , village co ntinuity depends UpOIl 1I \.lr ital discontinuity, since onc 's right to reside in a given village is primal il)' determined by matrilineal affiliation, though one may reside in one's /;II I1(.: r's village during the father's lifetime. Clcarly a sort 01' structural turhukll \.'l· is buill into these normat ive a rrangements. For a village can only persisl hy recruiting widows , divorcécs. and their child ren. There is also a propcwH I y 1'0 1' men , who reside in their OWIl matrili nea l village, to persuade Iheir SI'h:I'S lo Icave their husbands, hringing with them Ihe ch ildren who " pr()p~ 1h he kmg," l O tha( village. Poli tica l au thority, chicfta inship, hcad lll éln:-. llI )l .lIld ollle!' oflices are in mu le Ilands, evcn inl hi <; lIIulri lillc;¡1 society; a mall . IlI lwcvcr, CUIIIl o l be SlIcc.:cclkJ by hi~ OW ll SO Il bU I ("l/y hy Ili!> Ill crinc I()S

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hroth\! r M his sister's son . "'h ~ d will 01' authority , therd~) re . lkma nu s that , sooncr o r later, a heactlllan's si stcr's SOIlS will Icave their paternal villagcs amI dwe l! with their maternal uncle. It is casier to do this if a young man is rcsiding with his stepfather, not the fath er who begat him. Thus d iv on.:e worb in various ways to reassert the ultimate paramountcy of the materna l li ne, despitc thc maseuline attempt to pre-empt the present through virilocal ma rriage. It is m y p urpose to sh ow here bow certain entrenehed features of a given society's social structure influence both the course of conduct in observable social events and the scenarios of its genres of cultural performancc- ranging from ritual to marchen. To complete the simplified picture of Ndem b u social structure 1 should mention, however. that in several books ' I have triee! to work out how stresses between matri1ineal suecession and other principIes and the processes to which they give rise have affected vari o us munda nc and ritual phenomena, proeesses, and institutions of Ndembu society- s uch as village size, composüion, mobility, fission , marita l stability, re1a tions between and within genealogical generations, the role ofthe many cult assoeiations in counterbalancing village cleavages, lineages amI families , the strong maSCll line stress on complex hunting and circumcision rites in a system ultimately dependent on women's agricultural amI food-processing activ iti es, amI the patterning of witeherat't accusations, whieh are often directed against matri lineal rivals for offiee 01' prestige. I suppose that if I had confined mysell' to the analysis of n umerical data, guided by knowledge ofsalient kinship principIes amI politieal, legal , amI eco nomic contexts, 1 would have construed an anthropological narrative inforrned by what Hayden White in Me/a/¡i.l'LO/'y surely would have called " mech anistic " presuppositions? Indeed , this was standard practice in the British school of structuralist-functionalist anthropology in which 1 was nurtured in the late forties amI early fifties . One of its main aims was lO exhibit the laws of structure amI process which, in a given preliterate soeiety, determin e the speeific configurations ol' relationships amI institutions detectable by trained observation. The ultimate intent of this school, as formulated by Radclil'l'e Brown , was to seek out by the comparative method generallaws by success ive approximation , Each specific ethnography sought for general principies that appeared in the sludy of a singl e society. In other words, idiographic proeedures. detailed descriptions ofwhat 1 actually observed or learned from informants, were pressed into the service of the devclopment of laws. Hypo theses dcveloping out of idiographie research were tested nomothetically, that is, for the purpose 01' formulating general sociologicallaws. There are, 01' course, many virtues in this approach. My figures did give me somc measure of the relative ;mportance 01' the principies on which Ndembu villages are socially construeted . They pointed to trends of ind iv idl1al amI corporate spatial mo bilit y. They ind icated how in so me areas particularly exposed to Ihe modern cash cCOllomy a smaller type of residential unit hased I t)()

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thdcss, this approach has its limitations. As George Spindler has ' llll~ idiography of ethnography may be distorted by the nomethetic 1' lllll l,IITIIII 01' the ethnographer."3 In other words, the general theory you IIl l il; 111 111 the l1eld leads you to select certain data for attention but blinds you 111 . " III' T. pcrhaps more important, data for the understanding 01' the people 1.. 11 1('\1 As I carne to know Ndembu \Vell both in stressful and uneventful 111110 • : I:-l " mcn and women alive" (to paraphrase D. H. Lawrence), 1 became IIh 1o·o l<,illl'.ly aware ofthis limitation. Long before I had read a \Vord of Wilhelm I til llwv's I had shared his notion that " structures of experience" are funda IIll ll lll l IIlIits in the study of human action . Such structures are irrefrangibly 1I'I o '~' l old, being at once cognitive, conative, and affective. Each ofthese terms ¡.. il'ol' ll: nI' course, a shorthand for a range 01' processes and capacities. I'l'l haps this view was influenccd by Edward Sapir's celebrated essay " The , '1IL' II'.l:nce of the Concept of Personality in a Study of Cultures," in which he \' loll l:~ "In spite ofthe oft assertcd impersonality ofculture, a humble truth 1,"III,lins that vast reaches ofculture, far from being 'carried ' by a community 111 ,'toUp ... are discoverable only as the peculiar property of certain indi vlIlllals, who cannot but give these cultural goods the impress of their own 1'1' 1 :..,mality."4 Not only that but persons will , desire, and feel , as well as think, ,lIld Iheir desires and feelings impregnate their thoughts and influence their 1I11l'1I1ions. Sapir assailed cultural overdeterminism as a reified cognitive .' Pllstruct of the anthropologist, whose "impersonalized " culture is hardly 1I1111L' than "an assembly or mass ofloosely overlapping idea[s) and aetion sys Il'llIS which, through verbal habit, can be made to assume the appearance oIr a dosed system of behavior" (p. 412), a position corresponding to sorne l~J{ tl:llt with White's organicist paradigm--as prestigious among American allthropologists as functionalism was among their Britisb eontemporaries. It hl'came clear to me that an "anthropology of experience" would have to take illlo account the psychological properties of individuals as well as the culture which, as Sapir insists, is "neva given" to each individual but, rather, "grop ingly discovered," and, I would add, some parts of it quite late in life. We lIever cease to learn our 011 '11 culture, which is always changing, let alone other cultures. It also be¡;ame d eci r lhu! um ong Ihe m any tasks 01' the ant h ropologist lay lhe d uty no l n nl y In ma kc sl rllcl llralist and runc tion alist ul1 ulyscs 01" slalisl ical and tex tu ul J a la ( CC IlS USCS lI nd lIIyllts) hui abo lo pl'ld ll' lId c'< pniclIlial

strudu rcs in Ihe aclual proecsscs 01' sol:Íallirc. Hcrc l11y own approach, and lh' ll of" Illany olher anthropologists, conforms lo sOllle extcnt with White's conlcxlualisl model. White, using Stephen Pepper's term, sees contextualism as the isolation 01' some element of the hist oncal fleld (or, in the anthropo logical instance, the sociocultural field) as the subject 01' study, "whether the element be as large as ' the French Revolution' or as smaJl as (me day in the life of a specific person. " The investigator " then proceeds to pick out the 'threads' that link the event to be explained to differenl areas 01' the context. The threads are identified and traced outward, into lhe circumambient natura l and social space within whicb the event occurred , and both backward in time, in order to determine the 'origin s' of the event, and forward in tim e, in order to determine its 'impact' and 'influence' on subsequent events. This tracing operation ends at the point at which the 'threads' either disappear into the 'context' 01' sOllle other 'event' or 'converge' to cause the occurrence of some new 'even1.' The impulse is not to integrate all the events and trends that might be identified iD the whole historical field, but rather to link them together in a chain of provisional and restricted charaeterizations of finite provinces of manifestly 'significant' occurrence" ( White, pp. 18- 19). It is jnteresting to pause here for a moment and compare how Sapir and White use the metaphor of"thread." For Sapir points out that the " purely form alized and 'l ogically developed schemes" we calll ethnographies do not explain beha\iior until " the threads 01' symbolism or implication [ that] conneet pat terns or parts of patterns with others 01' an entirely different formal aspect" are discovered (p. 412; my emphasis). For Sapir these threads are interna! to the sociocultural spaee studied and relate to the personality and temperament of individuals, whiJe for W hite and Pepper threads describe the nature of connections between an "elemcnt" or "event" and its significant enl'ironing sociocultural field viewed, aceording to White, "synchronically" or "structur ally" (p. 19). 1 find fascinating Sapir's 110tion tha t his threads are sym bolic and implicative; for symbols, the spawn of such tropes as arise in the inter action 01' men and women alive, metaphors, synechdoches, metonymies new minted in crises, so to speak , really do come lo serve as semiotie connectives among the Jevels and parts 01' a system 01' action and bet\Veen that system and its significant environmcnt. We have becn neglecting the role of symbols in establishing connexity bctween the different Ievels of a narrative strlleture. But I am anticipating. I shall shortly call attention to a kind or species of "element 01' the historical field " or "event," in White' s tcnninology, which is cross-culturally ¡solable and which exhibits, if it is allowed to come to full term, a characteristic processual structure, a strueturc that holds firm whether one is considering a macro- or microhistorical event of this type. Before I discuss this unit, which I consider to be the social ground of many types of "narralive" and which I call " social drama," L must first mention for lhe hcn ~(it of my Ilo na n lhr(lpolngica l readers another lI~efu l dislinetion made by alllhrop(llo g i ~l¡; Iha l hCIWCcll '\!m ic" ami " clic" pcrspectives; thcse terms

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alc d\.:lI vcU 1'1'11111 Ihli dislim;li o n lIIadl.: hy linguisls bl;lwccn "phoncm ic" an u " phOIlClil', " Ihe l'orlller heing Ihe sllIdy 01' sounds rccogni í'.cd as dislill\;t lVilhin a spccilic la llgllage, Ihe la ller bcing the cross-lingual sluuy of distinguishablc human soumJ unils . Ken neth Pike, who propounded this dichotomy, should be allowed to formulate, it: " Descriptions of analyses from the etic stand poinl are 'alien .' with criteri a external to the system. Emic descriptions pro vide an intcrnal view [or an " inside view" in H ockett's tcm ls], with criteria chosen from within the systelll . They represent to us the view 01' one familiar with th is system and who knows how to function within it hi mself. "5 F rolll this standpoint all t'our of the stra tegies of explanation proposed by White dr a wing on Pepper- formism , organicism, Illechanjsm . a nd context ualism would produce etic narratives if they were uscd to provide accounts of societies outside that Western cultun Il t radi tion gcnerativel y lriang ulated by the Ihinking of Jerusalcm , Athens , and Rome and eontinued in the phiJo sophical , literary, and soeialscientific traditions of E urope , North America, and their cultural offshoots. Indeed, members of such societies (the so-called Third World) have protcsted, as recently as 1973/' that Western attempts to "explain " their cultures amount to no more than "cognitive cthnocentrism," dimini shing thcir contribution to the global human reHexivity which mod em communicational and informational systems are now making possiblc, if hardly casy. In other words. what we in the West consider etic, that is, " nolllothetic," " non-culture-bound ," "scientific," " objective," they are com in g to regard as emic. There are then hOlh etie and emic ways 01' regarding narralive. An anthro pologist, embedded in the life 01' an at-first-wholly-othcr culture and separ ated, save in memory , from his own, has lo come to terms with that which invests and invades him. The situation is odd enough. He is tossed into the ongoinglife 01' a parce! of people who not on 1)' speak él di fferent language but also classify what we wOllld caJl "social reality " in ways that are at first quite un expected. He is compelJed to learn , however haltingly , the criteria which provide the " inside view." l am aware of W hite's "t heory 01' the historical work " and that it bears importantly upon how to write ethnographies as well as histories; but I am also aware that any discussion of lhe role of narrative in other cultures requires that an emic description of narrative be made. For the anthropo logist's work is deeply involved in what l ile might calJ " tales." "stories," "folktales," "histories." "gossip:' and " inrormants' accounts"--types of nar rative for which there may be many native names , not all of which coincide with our terms. Indeed , M ax Gluckman has commentcd that Ihe very lerm " anthropologist" means in G reek "onc who talks abo ul men ," in other words, a "gossip. " In our cult ure \Ve havc many way:; or lal ki ng abolll mcn , descri ptivc ém d a nalYl ica l, f(lrImll an u illrorl11 ... l, tradi tiona l an u \l pcn-e nucu. Sincc o urs is el Iilera lc cu lture, chanu.:lcl il.cu by ti rdincd div lSill1l n I' cu lt ura l labor, we have ucv iscd f1 UI11Cl'lll IS spt d a li/.cd gcnrcs by II K'a !! '! ,,1' whic h we 11')

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scal1 , uc:;cribc, alld ill lc rprcllllll hch ... vior to\Vard onC anolher. But lhe impulse lo lalk aboLlI one anothcr in dilTercnt ways, in terms 01' different qualities and Icvcls or mutual consciousness, precedes literacy in all human communities. 1\11 human acts and in stitulions a re enveloped, as C lifrord Geertz might say, in \Vebs 01" interpretive words. Also, of course, we mime and dance with one another- we ha ve webs or interpretive nonverbal symbols. A nd we play one anothe r- beginning as children- a nd continue through life to learn new ro les and the subcultures of highe r statuses to which we aspire, partly seriously, partly ironically. Ndcmbu make a distinction, akin to White' s divisi o n be lween " chron icle" and " story" as levels of conceptuu liza tioo in Western culture, between nsang'u and kaheka Nsang'u, chronicle, may refer, for exam ple, to a purportedly factual record of Úle migration 01' the L unda chiefs amI their followers from the K atanga region of Zaire on Ihe Nkalanyi River, to Ih eir encounter with the autochthonous Mbwela or Lukolwe peoples in Mwinilunga District, to battles and marriages between Lunda and Mbwela .. to the establishment of Ndembu-Lunda chiefdom s, to the order o f chietIy incumbents down to lhe present, to the raids of Luvale and Tchokwc in the nincteenth century to secure indentured labor for the Portuguese in San Tome lon g after the fomlal abolition orthe slave trade, to the coming ofthe missionaries, foJlowed by Ihe British South Africa Company, and finally to British colonial rule . Nsang'u may also denote an autobiographical account , a personal reminisccnce, or an eyewitness report of yesterday's interesting happening, N.\·an/(u, like chron ieJe, in White's words, arranges " the events to be dealt with in the temporal order of their oecurrence" (p. 5). Just as a chronieJe becomes a "story," in White's usage, " by the rurther arrangement of the events into the cornpon ents 01' a 'spectacle' or process 01' happenin g, which is thought to possess a discernible beginnin g, middle, and end .. . in terms 01' inaugural motifs . .. terminating motifs ... and transitional motifs," so 11,1'{¡ng'u becomes /whe/w. The term kaheka covers a range 01' tales which ollr folklorists \Vollld no doubt sort out into a number or etic typcs : myth , folktal e, marchen , legend , bailad , folk epic, and the Iike. Their distinctive fealure is thal they arc partl y told. partly sung. At key points in thc narration th e audience joins in a sung refrain, brea king the spoken scq lIcnce. It depend s on the context of the situation and Ihe mod e of framing whether a given set of events is regardcd as Ilsan/(u 01' kahe/w . Take, for example, the series of tales about the ancicnt Lunda chiefY a la Mwaku , his dallghter Lweji Ankonde , her lover the LlIban hunter-prince C hibinda Ilung'a , and her broth ers Ching'uli and Chinyama : their loves, hates, l:Onflicts, and reconciliations Jed, on the one hand, to the establishment of the Lunda nation and , on th e other, to the secession and d iaspo ra of d issident Lunda groups, thereby spreading knowledge of central izeo polil ic-..t l organi zal ion over a wide territory. This sequence may be told by a chicr 01' puta ti ve Lunua 0rigin to pol iticaJl y in flue ntia l visitors as a I/Sl/IIg '/1, a ch rollide, pc rhaps tu justi ry his ti tic lO hi-; a rrice, Bul epi sodes rrolll 1I \

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lit is dllll llit.:l\: 111;1 )' h.: Ilall ~ I ~ II"II'd i"!l' Sllll ll'. 111.11 ,', 11,11,/" , Ipllllal 01' /\(/11,,1\11), allu luid hy old WOlIll~1l lo grou ps o l' ~ h" d l l:1 1 II " "!IItd 1I~'. \1 I hr "ildwll (ire during Ihe ~old seasoll. A particular favorite story , analyzed recently by tlw dislinguishcd Bclgian structuralist Luc de Hcusch .7 relates how the drunken king Yala M waku was derided and beaten by his sons but cared for tenderly by his daughter Lweji A nkonde, whom he rewarded by passing on to her, on his death . the royal bracelet, the /u/wnll (made 01' human genitalia for the magical maintenanee of the fertility of humans, animals, and crops in the whole kingdom) , thus rendering her the legitimate Illonarch of the Lunda. Another story tells how the young queen is informed by her maidens that a handsome young hunter, Chibinda, having slain a waterbuck, had camped with his companions on the far sioe of the Nkalanye River. She Sllmmons him to her presence, and tbe two fall in love at once amI talk for many hOllrs in a grove of trees (where tooaya sacreo fire, lhe center of an extensive pilgrimage, burns constantly). She Iearns that he is the youngest son of a great Luba chief but that he prefers the free life of a forest huntcr to the court. Nevertheless, he marries Lweji out of love and, in time, receives from her the lukul1l1- she has to go into sedusion ouring menstruation and hands Chibinda the bracelet lest it become polluteo--·making him the ruJcr ofthe Lunda nation. Lweji's turbulent brothers refuse lo recognize him ano lead their people away to carve out new king ooms for themselves and consequentIy spread the format 01' political central ization among stateless societies. Jan Vansina, the noted Belgian ethnohistorian, has discusseo the relation ship between this foundation narrative ano the political structures ofthe many central African societies who c1aim that they "came from Mwantiyanvwa ," as the new oynasty carne to call itself. ~ He finos in this corpus of stories more than myth, although Heusch has iJluminatingly treated it as such; Vansina finds c1ues to historical affinities between the scattered societies who assert Lunoa origin-- indications corroborated by other types of evidence, lin guistic, archaeological, ano cultural. As in other cultures, the same events may be framed as I1SCll1g'U or kaheka. chronicJe or story, oftcn accoroing to their nooal location in the tife prolJess of the group or community that recounts thcm. It all oepenos where and when ano by whom they are told. Thus, for some purposes the fOLlndation tales ofYala Mwaku ano Lweji are treatcd as chroniclc to aovance él political cJaim. for example. a c1aim to " Lundahooo, " as lan Cunnison calls their assertion of descent from prestigio LIS migrants. f"or the purpose of entertainment, the same tales are defi ned as stories, with many rhetorical touches and tlourishes as wel! as songs inserted as evoca ti ve embellishment. Incidents may even be ci teu during pro~esses 01' Iitigation to legitima te or rein fo rce Ihe cJaims or a rlai nl ilTin él dispute over boundarics or sLJccession lo Orfil:C. For I he a nlhro pologisl. h OWCVé t . wll o is cOllccrm:u wi Ih t he sluoy 01' social i1di oll ami :-:ocia l procCl,S, il is 1101 thcsc 1'olll1ul gC'rm!s ul" lakldl i [1~ and

laldll';\l'in¡; tllal lllOst glil' IIi~; al 11'111"'11 hll!, rall1\.'I', as wc have secll, \Vhal we wOllld l'all gossip, tal" alld 1'lllllOl'S ahollt Ihe privale arrairs 01' othcrs, what lite Ndcl1lbll alld their neighbors. the Luvalc, call kudiyong'o/a, relatcd to the vcrb kllyll/lg'(/, "lo cf()wd together," for much gossip takes place in the central, unwalled shelter of traditional villages. where the circumcised, hence socially " mature," males gather to discuss community affairs and hear the "news" from wayfarers 01" other commun ities. Frank Kerm ode once defined the novel as consisting 01" two components: scandal and myth. Certainly gossip, which incJuoes scandal , is one of the peren nial sources of cul t ural genres. Gossip ooes not occur in a vacuum among the Ndembu; it is almost always "plugged in" to social orama. Although it might be argued that the social drama is a story in White's sense, In that it has oiscernible inaugural, transitiona l. amI terminal moti fs, that ¡s. a beginning, a miodle, ano an end, my observations convinee me that it is, illdeed, a spontaneous unit of social process and a fad 01' everyone' s experiellce in every human society. My hypothesis, based on repeated observa tions of such processual units in a range 01' sociocultural systems ano on my read ing in ethnography ano history , is th a t social dramas, "dramas ofli ving," as Kenneth Burke calls them , can be aptly stuJied as having four phases. These Ilabel breach , crisis, redress, and eithel' reintegration 01' recognition of schism. Social oramas occur within groups of persons who share values ano interests ano who have a real or alleged common history. The main actors are persons for whom the group has a h igh value priority , Most of LIS ha ve what 1 call our " star" group or groups to which we owe our deepest loyalty ano whose fate is for us of the greatest personal coocern. It is the one with which a person identifies most deeply ano in which he finds fulfillment ofhis major social and personal desires. We are all members of many groups, formal or informal , from the family to the nation or sorne international religious or political institution, Each person makes his/hcr own subjective evaluation of the group 's respective worth: some are "dear" to one, others it is one's "duty to oefend," and so on. Some tragic situations arise frolll conflicts ofloyalty to different star groups. There is no ohjeclil'e rank order in any culture for sllch groups. I have known academic colleagues whose supreme star group, believe it or not, was a particular faculty administrative committee and whose families and rccrc ational groups rankeo IllLlch lower, others whose love and loyalty were towaro the local philatelic society, In every culture one is ohliged to be10ng to certain grollps, usually institutionalizeo ones- family. age-set, school, firm. professional association , ano the like, But such groups are not necessaril y one's bcloved star groups. It is in one's star group that one looks most for love, recognition, prestige, office. and ol her tangible ano intangible benefits and rewarJs. In it one achieves self-respect and a sense ofbelonging with others rol' whom o nc has r~s pccl. Now every objective grOllp has some melll bers wlto sce il as lhc ir Slll l )'I(IIIP, while olhers may regaro it with inoifference,

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d l"hk ¡; Rclillhlll., 1111 11 1111' I hc ~I !Ir grllltpC Il'! :I H' p ll l ll IU I, ld v :lIuhivaknl, t!t OS\: :11111 11 11: 11I\:llIhclS 01 lI n delllclI! ul y IU lllll y 1"1 whidl, per II llp" IIB' SI;¡ I I:!IU Up IS <1 11 auull subsli l ulc, l lH:y n:cognl/C Dile another's t.1I1ll ll111l all adllm:/ll lu lhe g rollp but are jealQus 01' une alllllher over the 1, 1.1 11\'1: IlllCIlSily nI' lhal allachmenl or the esteem in which another member 1 , "\"Id hy lhe group as a wholc . They may contend with each other for the 11 11 1I II Ihcncy of high ofllce in lhe grollp, not merely to seelk power but out of 11 ... l'llllviction tha t they, and they alone, really understand the nature and \ ,allle "r lhe group and can altruistically advance its interests. In other words , \i o' IlIId symbolic equivalents of sibling rivalry and parent-child competition IIII " ")! slar grollpers. 111 <;cveral books I have discussed social dramas at some length ,9 both in 11I.III -scale societies, such as Ndembu , at the village level and in complex lI.tIlCl IlS. as in the power struggle between Henry 11 of England and Arch 10hlll 'I' Thomas Becket. Whether it is a large affair, Iike the Dreyfus affair or \\ ,Il l'rgate, or a struggle for village headmanship, a social drama first mani Ir ,h ibelf as lhe breach of a norm the infraction ol" a rule of morality, law, ¡'¡I'.IIIm, or etiquette, in some public arena. This breach is seen as the expres 11 ,ti lit' a deeper division of interests and loyalties than appears on the surface. lit" trIcident ofbreach may be deliberately , even cakulatedly, contrived by a 1,,1 1\1) 11 or party disposed to demonstrate or challenge entrenched authority 1111' example, the Boston T ea Party·-- or emerge from a scene of heated Io'r ltllgs. Once visible. it can hardly be revoked. Whatever may be the case, a IIII ulIling crisis follows , a momentous juncture or turning point in the rela IIPlIS between components ofa social field---at which seeming peace becomes II\l:l'l conflict and covert a ntagonisms become visible. Sides are taken, fae 1IlI IlS are formed , and unless the conflict can be sealed off quickly within a tllllited area of social interaction, there is a tendency for the breach to widen .lIld spread until it coincides with some dominant cleavage in the widest set of I "¡c vant social relations to which the parties in conflict belong. We have seen litis process at wo.-k in the l ranian crisis fol1owing the breach precipitated by Iltc seizure of the U.S . embassy in Teheran. During the phase of crisis , the I'il ttern of current facti onal slruggle within the rc\eva nt social group- -be it \ il1age or world community -is exposed; and beneath it there becomes slowly visible the less plastie, more durable, but nevertheless gradual1y changing ha sic social structure, maJe up of relations which are relatively constant ami nlllsistent. 1 found that among the Ndembu, fo.- example, prolonged social dramas always revealed the related sets ofoppositions that give Ndembu social struc lure its tensile eharacter: mat rili ny verslIs viriloealily; the ambitious indi vidual versus the wider inlcrlink ing 01' ma trilineal kin ; lhe elementary family versus the uterine sibli ng g ro up (dlildnm 01' one mother); t he forwurdness ol' yo uth wrsus Ihe do mincerint! cltkl s; sllI tll s-scc king versus rt'sponsibility; sOlu:rislll ( II'I//n jil llr al is . hos li le Il-d illgs , grud ge~, a mi illlrig llcs versus

rn clldly rl:specl a mI gcncflls il y II\w:ard olltcrs. 111 lite lraniall crisis lhe divi 'ions a nd coalttilll\s 01' inlcrcsls Itavc bL'Come p ublidy visible, SOllle ol' which are surprising and rcvclatory . Crisis Clll1stilutes many levels in all cultures. In social dramas, ra\se friendship is winnowed frol11 true communality of inter csts; the limits of eonscnsus are reaehed and realized; real power emerges from behind the facade of authority . In order to limit the contagious spread of breach. certain adjustive and redressive mechanisms, informal and formal , are broug ht into operation by leading members ofthe dislurbed group. These mechanisms vary in eharacter with such factors as the depth and signiflcance of the breach, the social inc\u siveness of the crisis, the nature of the social group withi n which the breach took place, and the group's degree of autonomy in regard to wider systems of social relations . The mechanisllls may range from personal advice a nd informal arbitration to forl11aljuridical and lega l machinery and, to resolve certain kinds of crises, to the performance ofpublie ritual. Sueb ritual involves a literal or moral "sacrifice," th at is , a victim as scapegoat is offered for the group's "sin" ol' redressive violcnce. The fi nal phase con sists either in the reintegration of the disturbed social group- -though the scope and range of its rclationa I field wi11 have altered, the number ofits parts wi11 be different, and their size and inflllence wi11 have changed-·--or the social recognilion of irreparable breach between the coo testing parties, sometimes leading to their spatial separation. Thi s may be on the scale of the many exoduses of history or mere\y a move of disgruntlcd viHagers to a spot a few miles a way. This phase, too, may be registered by a public ceremony or ritual , indicating reconciliation or permanent cleavage between the involved parties. [ am \veH aware that the social drama is an agonistic model drawn after a recurrent agonistic situation , and 1 make no claim that there are no other types of processual units. Philip Gu11iver, for example, studying a nother central African society, lhe Ndendeuli 01' Tanzania, direets attenlion to the cumulative effeet of a n endless series of minor incidents, cases, and evcnts that might be quite as significant in affecting and changing soci al relation ships as the more overtly dramatic encounters. Raymond Firth discusses " harmonic" processual units which 1 ca11 "social enterprises" that also have recognizablc pha se structure ..- which stress " th e process of ordering of action and of rclations in reference to given social ends" and are ol'ten economic in type. Quite often , though, such enterprises- as in the case of urban renewal in America- become social dramas if there is resistance to the aims of their instigators. The resisters perceive the inauguration ofthe enterprise as breach, not progress. Nor does lhe COllrse of a social drama, Iike " true love ," always " run smoolh ." Redrcssive procedures may brea k down , with reversion to cris is. T raditiona l l11élchinery 01' conci liation or coe rcion may prove inad cquatc lO cope wi llt ncw l ype~ 111' iSSllCS anu problems and ncw roles and slaluses. Anu , llr Cn Ill'S~·. ICI,;\IIH:i li;llioll lTIa y 11I11 y sccm lo have bccll achieved

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111 pll a'c 111111 \Villl 1 ~;l l l' J\ llllil'l " ¡;h ' ~'l'U ov\!r "11 1 11111 11' ,,,lv"1I MOI \!(IVn, al n' ll a." h INI "1 H:: tI IUIII·IUI \!:'. ill lal gl!-'i~..tk co mpl \!x ~m·lcl ll "'. I~'drcss may bl.! 111I 1'lljJ lJ rchd líoll, orCVélllcvolllli'm , il'thc socictal valllc-colISCIlSUS has broken do \\ 11 ¡¡ lid ncw 1I1lprccelklltl.!d rolcs. rdalionships. ami dasscs have emerged . Ncvc Jlhl'lcss. I would pc rsist ill arglling that the social drama is a wel1-nigh IIl1ivVlsal r rol;csslIal 1'0n11 amI reprcscnts a perpetual ch a llenge to al1 aspira III IIlS l o pc rll:d iO Il in social and polítical organization. In some cultures its IlI l. lile is dca r'-clIt aud its styJc abrasivc; in others. agonistic (contestative) ;lV" " 1l lIlay he muted 01' dellected by elaborate codes of etiquett.e , In yet tllhel's Cllllllict ma y be lO cite R ichard Antoun on Arab vil1age politics in ordan "k)w-key," eschewing direct confrontation and encounter in its style. Socia l d r;lmas arc in largc measure political processes. that is, they involve l'IllllpcliLion l'or scarce ends · power, dignity. prestige, honor, purity-by pn rtic ular means and by the utiliza tion of resources lhat are also scarcc ;o(ld~, lerritory, money, men and women . Ends, means. and resources are :allght up in an interdependent feedback process. Some kinds of resources, rol' cxample, land and money , may be co nverted into other kinds, for instance. Illlnor and prestige (which are simu1taneously the needs sought). 01' they may hc cmployed to stigmatize rivals and deny them these ends. The political aspect of social dramas is dominated by star groupers; they are the main protagonists, the Ieaders of factions , the defenders of the faith , the revolu liomlry vanguard , the areh-reformers. They are tne ones who develop to an mt the rhetorie of persuasion and inftuence , who know how and when to apply pressure and force , and who are most sensitive to the t~lctors of legiti macy. In phase three, redress, it is the star groupers who manipulate the machinery of redress, the law courts , the procedures of divination and ritual , and impose sanctions on Ihose adjudged to have precipitated crisis, just as it may well be disgruntled 01' dissident star groupers \Vho lead rebellions and provoke the initial breach. The fact that a social drama , as J have analyzed its form , c10sely corres ponds to ¡\ristotle's description of tragedy in the Poetir:s - in that it is " the imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and ol' a certain magnitude ... having a bcginning , a middle, and an end "- is not, J repeat, beca use I have tried inappropriatel y to impose an etic Western model of stage action upon the conduct of an African village society but because there is an interde pendent, perhaps dialectic, relationship between social dramas and genres of cultural performance in perhaps all socielies. Lite , after all , is as much an imitation of art as the reverse. Those \Vho, as children in Ndembu society, have listened to innumerable stories about Yala Mwaku and Lwcji Ankonde know al! ab(lUt inaugura l motirs " when the king was dr unk a nd helpless , his sons beal and rc vilcJ hilll " Iransili~lIlal motirs " his d a llghter fóund him nl:ar J l:a lh a nu COmrM ICd alld l\!n J cd him " ami ll:rll1 ina l nHlli/'s "l he king gaw his Jall gh ll'l Ihe 1111, (1/1 1/ a mi l!xc ludetl hi ~ SO Il S ¡'10 m Ihe Hlya l sll~cc:)si \l I1 ." W hCl1 Ihese SillI l\.' Nd¡'l1Ih ll , IH )W /'1I11 -grtl\vn wi.. h In P' I)\'llk c él

o n;¡Kh Of lo c1ai lll Ihal SOIlI \! pa ll y has crllcially dislurbed Ihe pla~id so~ial order, Ihey have a /'rallle ;lvai lahle lo " inaugurate" a social drama, with a repertoire 01' "transi tional " and "ending" moti/'s to conlinue the framing pro cess and channc1 the sllbsequent agonistic devclopments. The story itselfstill Illakes importanl points about family relationships. and about the stresses between scx and age roles, and appears to be an emic generalization, dolhed in metaphor and involving p rojection , 01' innumerable specinc social dramas generated by these structural tension s: so does the story feed back into the social process, providing it with a rhetorie, a mode of emplotm ent, and a Illeaning. Some ge nres, particularly the epic, serve as paradigms which inform the action 01' important political leaders - star groupers of encompassing groups such as church 0 1' sta te- giving them style, direction . and sometimes compelling them subliminally lo follo\v in major publie erises a ccrtain course of action , thus emplotting their lives. 1 tried to show in chapler 2 of Dramas, Field.l', Clnd Metapho/'s how Thomas Becket, after hi s antagonistic co nfrontation with both Henry 11 and the bench of bishops at the council of Northampton , seemed to have been a lmost "takcn over," " possessed " by the action-paradigm provided by the via crucis in Christian beliefand ritual, sealing his love-h ate relation ship \Vith Henry in the conjoined image of martyr and martyrizer- and giving rise to a subseq uenl host of narratives and aesthetic dramas . By paradigm J do not mean a system of univocal concepts, logically arraycd . l do not mean either a stereotyped set 01' guidelines for ethical , aesthetic, or eonventional action. ¡\ paradigm 01' this sort goes bcyond the cognitive and even the moral to the existential domain ; a nd in so doing becomes c10thed with allusive ness. implications, and mctaphor- for in the stress of action firm definitioua l outlines becollle blurred by the encounter of emotionally charged \Vills. Paradigllls orthis type, cultural root paradigms , so to speak , reach down to irred lIciblc life stances of indi viduals, passing beneath conscious prehension to anduciary hold on what they sense to be axiomatie values, matters Iiterally of Jife and death. Richard Schechner has recently sought to express the relationship between social drama and aesthetic 01' staged drama in the forlll of a figure ei ghl placed in a hori70ntal position and then bisected through ooth Joops:'o

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scapcgllals. l ' JllsI 111 he in Ilre casi nI' a lIarratcd drama whiclt l'(lIllCS lo he takt'n as cxclll plary or paradigmatic is some assurance 01" social illlmort:.tl ily. It is lhe third rhase ofa social drama , redress, that has mosl to do with the genesis and sustentation of cultural genres, both " high" and " rolk ," oral and lilerate. In 5;c/¡ism (lnd CuntinllÍlY, 1 argued that in Ndembu society when conllict emerges from the opposed interests and c1aims 01' protagonists acting under a single social principie, sa y, descent from a common ancestress, judicial institutions can be invoked to m eet the crisis, 1'or a rational attempt can be madc to adjust daims that are similarly based. But when daims are advanced under ditTerent social principies, which are inconsistent w¡th one another even to the point of mutual contradiction , th ere can be no ralional settlement. I lere Ndembu have recourse to divination 01' sorcery 01' ancestral wrath to account for misfortune, illness, or death occurring before or during the social drama. Ultimately, rituals of reconciliation may be performed, which, in their verbal and nonverbal symbolism , reassert a nd reanimate the over-arching values shared by all Ndembu, despite confticts of norms and intcrests 011 the ground level. Whether juridical or ritual processes of redress are invoked against mount ing crises, the result is an increasc in what one might call social or plural re/lexil'ilY, lhe ways in \vhich a group tries to serutinize, portray, understand , and then act 011 itself. Barbara Myerhoff has recently written 01' cultural perrormances in Lire !lislory amon/{ fhe Elderly: Per/()/,/I1(//1Ce, VisihilifY, and Rememherin/{ that they are "rc/lcclil'c in the sense of showing ourselves to ourselves. They are a1so capable ofbeing reflcxive, arousing consciousness 01' oursclves as we see ourselves. As heroes in our own dramas. we are made self aware, conscious of our consciousness. At onee actor and audience, we may then come into the fullness 01' our human capability- and perhaps human desire to watch ourselves and enjoy knowing that we know. "n 1 tend to regard the social drama in its full formal development , its full phase structure, as a process 01' converting particular vallles and ends, distributed over a range of actors , into a system (which is always temporary and provisional) 01' shared or consensual meanin g. Jt has not yet reached the stage of Myerhoff 's enjoyillg that we know that we know ourselves. but it is a step in that direction. 1 am inc\ined to agree with Dilthey that meaning (Bedelllung) arises in memory, in cognilion 01' the past, and is concerned with negotiation about the " fit ' between past and present; and wtlue (Wen) inheres in the affective enjoyment of the pre.l'enf, while the category of end (Zweck) or good (Gul) arises from I'olifion. the po\\'er or faculty 01' using the will , which refers to the ./iilttre. 11 The redressive phase, in which feedback on crisis is provided by the scanning devices 01' law (secular ritual) and religious ritual, is a liminal time, set
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It is on ly I ht' l:;llcl' Oly ,,1 11li.::I llillg. so Dilth cy ldhi II ~ d l.l l O1lth ll's li S to clll1t.:civc 01 all illlrin sic al'lillil y hctwccll thc :wcccs:¡ivc ': \1':11 1'0 lil lil \! "'1'. UIlC Illight aLlLl . (,1' a social drama. In Ihe redressive phase, lhe l1l.:anin g 01' the social lile inl'orllls Ihc apprchension 01' itself, whilc the objecl lo be appre hended enters into and reshapes the apprehending subject. Pure anthropolo gical functionalislll , whose aim is to state the conditions 01' social equilibriul1l among the components of a social system at a given time, cannot dea l with meaning, for meaning aJways involves retrospection and reflexivity, a past, a history. Meaning is lhe only eategory which grasps the full relation of the parl lo Ihe whole in life, for value, being dominantly affective, belongs essentially to an experience in a conscious prcsent. Such eonscious presents, regarded purely as present moments, lotally involve Ihe experiencer, even to the extent that these moments have no intrinsic connection with one another, at least 01' a systematic, eognitive kind. They stand behjnd one another in temporal sequence, and, while they may be compared aS"values," that is. as having the same epistemological status, they do not form anything li ke a coherent whole, for they are essentially momentary, transient, insofar as lhey are values alone; ir they are interconnected, [he Iigatures that bind them belong to another category- that of rneaniltg, reflexjvity arrived al. In stage drama, values would be the province of actors, meaning that of the producer. Reflexivity articula tes experience. Dilthey eloquently hits off the unarticulated quality 01' value: "From the standpoint of value, life appears as an innoile assortmenl 01' positive and negative existence-valucs. It is like a chaos of harmonies and discords. Eac h ofthese is a tooe-structure which fills a presen[; but they have ItO musical relaliolt to one a nother" (my emphasis), To establish such a musical retation , the liminal reflexivity of the redressive phase is necessa ry if a crisis is to be rendered meaningful. Since crises are " like a chaos 01' harmonies and discords," some modern modalities 01' music try to repli cate Ihis chaos and let it stand as it is: for the meaning- ligatures inherited from the past- no longer bind. Here we must return to narrative. For bo th legal and ritual procedures genera te nClrro.li ves from the brute facts, the mere empirical coexistence of experiences, and endeavor to lay hold 01' the factors making for integration in a given situation. Meaning is apprc hended by looking hack over a temporal process: it is generated in the nar rative constructed by lawmen and judges in the process of cross-examination from witnesses' evidenee or by diviners from their intuitions into the responses 01' their c1ients as framed by their specific hermeneutic techniqlles. The mean ing of every part of the process is assessed by its contribution to the totaJ result. It wi11 be noted that my basic social drama model is agonistic, rife with prob lem and conflict, and thi s is 110t merely because it assumes Ihat sociocultural syslcms a re never logical systems or harmoni o us gestallen bul a re fraught wi th slrucLU ra l con trauictions
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alld alll\)uucs ~, f J Ckllllilla I il 111 Il ld.:lc llllilJacy is, so to spca k, in t hc su bj u 1'1.: li ve mond, since il is that whid, is lJol yc t sctlk:d, coneludcd, and knowll. It is alll ha t Illay bc, lIlighl bc, could be, perhaps cven should be. It is that which territlcs in Ihe brcach and crisis phases of a social drama. Sally Falk Moore goes so 1~lr as lo suggest that "the underlying quality ofsociallife shou1ld be considered lo be one of theoretical absolute indeterminacy." 15 Social realily is " fluid and indeterminate ," though, fo r her, " regularizing processes" and " processes of situational adjustment " constantly represenl human aspira lions to transform social reality into organized 01' systematic forms. But even where ordcring rules and customs are strongly sanctioned, " indelerminacy may be produced and ambiguities within the universe of relatively determinate elements." Such maniplllati on is characteristic of breach and crisis. It may also help to resolve crisis. Thc third phase, redress, reveals Ihat " delermining" and " fixing" are indeed processes, not permanent slates or givens. These processes proceed by assigning meanings to evenls and relationships in reflex ive narratives . Indeterminacy should not be regarded as Ihe absenüe of socia l being; it is not negation, empliness, privalion . Rather, it is pOlentiality, the possibility 01' becoming. From this point 01' view social bcing is finitudc , limita tion, constraint. Actu ally it only exists as a set of cognilivc m odels in acto rs' heads or as more or less coherent objectivized doctrines and protocols. Ritual and legal pro cedures mediate betwcen the formed and the indeterminate. As Moore and Myerhoff argue, " ritual is a deelaration of form agai17s1 indeterminacy, tht:re fore indeterminacy is always present in the background of any analysis of ritual."¡6 The social drama, then, I regard as thc cxperientialmatrix from which the many genres of cultural performance, beginning with redressive ritual and juridical procedures and eventually inc1uding oral and literary narrative, have been generated. Breach, crisis, and reintegrat ivc 0 1' divi sive outcomes provide the content of such later genres, redressive procedures their formo As society complexifies, as lhe division of labor produces more specialized and professionalized modalities of sociocultural action , so do Ihe modes of assigning meaning to social dramas mulliply out Ihe drama remains to Ihe last simple and ineradicable, a facI 01' everyonc's socia l experience and a significant node in the developlllcntal cyele of all groups thal aspire to con tinuance. The social drama remains humankind 's thorny problem , its undy ing worm , its Achil1es' heel- one can only use clichés for such a n obvious and familiar pattern of sequentiality. At the same time it is our native way of manifesting ourselves to ourselves and of dec1aring wherc power and mean ing Jie and ho\\' Ihey are distributed. R iles of passagc.like social dramas, involvc temporal processes and ago nistic rcla tio ll s noviccs 01' initi a nds arc separated (solTlctirnes real 01' symbolic lú n:e is lIseLl) fro rn a ¡m:v i() lIs sl')cia l slate 01' status. compelled to remain in sccl u:;iün ulIring lhe líl1 l1f1:t1 ph;¡ ~c . ~ lIhl1liltc d tn o rdeal by initiated sen iors 01' l' \

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,l lld I l· :I~'VII,.·)!,. fI ~'d 111 1111I 'Udlall SPI.:lc ly 111 :.VlllhnIJl w:lys Ihal oflen ',l llllV 11 111 1 ni (;11111;11 1k', ha w hel,'" 111 l.!llIcd iably ¡' lI lk~'1 1 ;llId II CW rel uliollships I ~' mkled I.:Om ptlh(1IY. BlI I. lil-.c ollwl kinds Il rrilll; II~ , liJl:.l,; lIsis rilllals alrcady e, hi bíl a 111:11 ked J egrl.'c M gcncraJi/.alion- lhey are Ihe ra idy lale product of o;I1dll i rdluxivi ly. Thcy co nl'er un Ihc actors, by nonwrhal as we11 as verball IIIClI IIS , Ihe cx pc riLHllialllnderslanding that sociallife is a series ol'movements 111 i'lpal.:C and lime, a series 01' changcs 01' activity, and a series of transitions in sl;¡llIS li)J' individllals. They also inscribe in the individ uals the kno wledge 1hal slIch movemcnts. changcs. ami transitions are not merely mark ed but also e!'kdcd by rilual. Rilual ami juridical procedures represent germinative \.iOI1l I)() lléI1 IS or social drama , from which, I suggest, many perfonnative :lnd lI a rralivc mod es 01' complex culture derive. Cultural performances may h~ vi cwe.d as " dia lectica l dancing partners" (to use Ronald Grime's phrase) ,\1 Ihe pcrcnnial social drama to which they give meanjng appropriale lo 1111' spl'cificilics 01' time, place. and culture. 1I0wever, they have their own :Ililonomy and m omentum: one genre may generate another; with sufficient ,'villelle\,' in ccrtain cultural traditions one might be able to reconstruct a Il'asonably accurate genealogy ofgenres. (l use advisedly the terms genre, gen "I;I1c . gcnealogy, which are derived from the Indo-European root gan ["to Ill'gc l or produce"] as metaphors for their ready cultural reproductiveness.) ( )1 O nl~ genre might supplant or replace another as the historically or situation II lIy dominant form 01' "social metacommentary" (to use Geertz's i11umin al illg lel'm). New communicative techniques and media may make possible Wlllllly lInprecedonted genres 01' cultural performance ami thus new modes 01' sd !'-lIndcrstanding. Once a genre has beco me prominent, however, it is Iikely 1\1 s lI rv ive or be revived at some level of the socio-cultural system , perhaps 11Ioving I'rom the elite to the popular culture or vice versa , gaining and losing alldil~nces and support in the process. Neverthe1ess, all the genres have to cirde, as il werc, around the earth of the social drama, and sorne, like satellites, may exerl lidal effects on its inner structure. Since rilual in the so-called simp1er societics is so comp1ex ami many-Iayercd, it may not unfittingly be considcred an importanl " source" oflater (in cultural evolutionary terms), more special i¡.ed, perrormative genres. Often when ritual perishes as a dominant genre , it di \!s, a lllultipara, giving birth to rituali zed progeny , including the many pcrl'ormative arls. In carlier publications 1 denned " ritual" as " prescribed formal behavior fol' üccasions nol given ovcr to technological routine, having reference to helicfs in invisible beings or powers regarded as the first and final causes ofa11 clTccts" él dcfinition which OWeS ll1uch to those of Auguste Comte, Godfrey ami Mo nica Wilson , an d R ulh Bcnedicl. I still find this formulation opera lioll a lly llscfu l despilc Si r I::dlllund Lcach, ami olhcr anlhropologisls ol' his ilk. wll o wou lJ elimin a1\! lh\! rc ligil' lI s com ponenl anu regard ritual as " stere \\lYflcd hchavilll whid l is rolenl ill il sel!' in teJIllO; nI' Ihe c ultura l conw nli o /lS \1 1' 1111.: adl1rs, tholl!:h 11111 11II1c 1l 1 ill ;1 r:-lI io na l-tech nkal S('I IS\!" alld wlIich

Sl:rvcs lo COIIIIIlUllical \! ill!'Ol"lllalioll allolll a l'ultu rc's lIHlsl cherishcd values. 1 tind il 11 serll I beca use 1 like lo IlIink nI' rilual csscnlially as jJnjim/1al1ce, as (' IIUCllllenl. and not primarily as rules or rubrics. The rules rrame the ritual process, but Ihe ritual proccss transcends its frame. A river needs banks or il will be a dangerous fiood, but banks without a river epitomi ze aridity. Thc term " performance" is, of course, derived fro m Old English pwjóurnir, lilerally, " to furnish completely or th oroughly." To perform is thus to bring something about, lo consummate something, or to "carry out" a play, order, or project. But in the carrying ouL I hold , something new may be generated. The performance transform s itself. True, as I said , the rules may frame the performance, but the fiow of a ction and interaction within that rrame may conduce to hitherto unprecedented insights a nd even generate new symbols and meani.ngs, which may be incorporated into subsequent performances. Traditional framings may have to be reframed- new bottles made for new wine. It is here that I find the notion of orientation to preternatural and invisible beings and powers singularly apposite. For there is undoubtable transformative capacity in a well-pcrformed ritual , implying an ing ress 01' power into the initial situation; and "performing well " implies the coinvolve ment of the majority of its perrormers in a self-transcending fiow of ritual events. The power may be drawn from the persons of the drama but drawn from their human depths, not entirely from their cognitive, "indicative" hold on cultural skills. Even if a r ubrical book exists prescribing Ihe order and character 01' the performance 01' the rites, this should be seen as a souree 01' channelings rather than of dictates . The experience of subjective an d inter subjeetive fiow in ritual performance, whatever its sociobiological 01' person alogical concomitants may be , often convinces performers that the ritual situation is indeed informed with powers both transcendental and immanent. Most anthropological definitions 01' ritual , moreover, including my own earlier attempts, have failed to take into account Arnold van Gennep's dis covery that rituals nearly always " accompany transitions l'rom one situation to another and from one cosmic or social world fo another. " 17 As is well known , van Gennep divides Ihese rituals into rites of separation , threshold rites, and rites ol' reaggregation, for which he also employs the terms "pre\iminal," "Iiminal ," and "postliminal." The order in which the ritual events follow one another and must be performed. van Gennep points out, is a religious element 01' essential importance. To exist at all , writes Nicole Belmont about van Gennep's notion, " a rilual must first and forem ost be inscribed in time and space or, rather, be reinscribed " ir it fo11ows " a prior model given in myth ." I ~ In other words, performativc sequel1cil1g is intrinsic and should be taken into account in any definition 01' ritual. Here I \vould query the formal structuralist implication that sequence is an illusion and all is but a perll1utalion and combination o f rules and vocabularies already laid J own in Ihe J eep slructurcs o rmind <1 na b rain. There is a qualitative d istinc lilln bc lwce n s\I\.:cl'ssiv(,; :>Iil gcs in social drá mas ami rites 01' passage which

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rCOI.h.: l's thl' m i n \:Vl'I'lh l¡ th~il :>\:qllencc is no illusi'lIl I h~ lIll1dill:cli onal mOVCIIICnl is tl'a lls lú lI ll.rllw. I ha y\: wriltt:n at sorne Icngth abtH lt 1h~ thresh hJ or liminal plw s~ 0 1 ,i lual amI found it rruitful to cxtenu th ~ Ilution 01' li nti n¡rlity as meta phnr bcyond ritual to other domains 01' expressi vc c ultural adio ll . But limin al ity Illust be ta ken into account in any serioLls formulation of ntual as performa nce, for it is in connection \Vith this phase that emic folk ch ar\l cterizations ol' ri tual lay strongest stress on the transformative action ( I r " invisible or supernatural beings 01' powers regarued as the first anu final causes 01' all effects." Without taking liminality into account , r itua l becomes illdistinguishable from "cerem ony," " tormality," or what Myerh o ff and M oore, in their introductinn to S ecular Ritual, indeed call " secular ritual. " The liminal phase is the essenti al., ([nl/secular component in true ritual, whcther it be labcled "religiolls" or " magical. " Ceremony indica/es, ritual transform.\', and transformation occurs most radically in the ritual "pupation" oC limi nal seclusion-at least in Iife-crisis rituals. T he public liminality of great seasonal feasts exhibits its fantasies and "transforms"19 to the eyes of all-- and so does postmodern theater, but that is a matter for a different essay. 1have also argued that ritual in its performative plenitude in tribal and many post-tribal cultures is a matrix from which several other genres of cultural pertormance, induding most ofthose we tend to think 01' as "aesthetic," have been derived. It is a late modern Western m yth, encouraged perhaps by depth psychologists and , lately , by ethologists, that ritual has the rigid precision characteristics of the " ritualized " behavior of an obsessive neurotic or a territory-marking animal or bird, and it is also eneouraged by an early modern Puritan myth that ritual is " mere empty form without true religious content. " 11 is true that rituals may become mere shells or husks at certain historical junctures, but this state of affairs belongs to the senescence or pathology of the ritual process, not to its "normal working." Living ritual may be better likened to artwork than to neurosis . Ritual is, in its most typical cross cultural expressions, a synchronization of many performative genres and is orten ordercd by a drarna/ic strudure. a plOL frequently involving an ad of sacriflcc or self-sacrifice, which encrgizes and gives emotional coloring to the interdepcndent communicative codes which express in manifold ways the ll1eanings inherent in the dramatic leitmotiv. Insofar as it is "dramatic," ritual contains a distanced and generalized reduplication of the agonistic process of lhe social drama. Ritual, therefore, is not "threadbare" but "richly textured " hy virtue of its varied interweavings of the productions of mind and senses. Participants in the major rituals of vital religions, whether tribal or post trihal, may be passive and active in turn with regard to the ritual movement, wbich , as van Ciennep and, more recently, Roland Delattre have shown, draws o n hio logical , di ma tic, and ccological rhythms, as well as on social rhythms, as nHII.lcl s rol' the proccss lIal rOf1l1S it seq uentially em rlo ys in its e pisodie Mructlln.:, AlIlhl! SC Il 'iCS 01' pall iópan ts
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h;l, 'k lo 1IIl' " Hll hl. " "\ 11 1111111 ,II,,")'.h Ihis .:vc n 1I1111S11l1l1ll'd , 11\ illll lll' rsi ll ll in sllh ,III1 ~' 1 Iv it y; I his 1)r<)Cco,¡s IP lI g ltly l.:¡)rn~sp' Im.J:.: WII h vH" ( ,CIII ICp'S prcl illlina1. 11I1I11I,tl . ¡¡tld post litllitlal phascs. ItI [1l l:1 lll1illal ri les ul" Sl.'paration liJe initianu is moved rrolll the indicative qlllltidiatl sm:ial slrllctllre inlo lhe sllbjunctive antistrllctllre of the liminal Il rCl\.:C!iS a nd is lhen rCl l.l rned. transformed by liminal experienees, by the rites ,,1' rl!lIggregat iún to social structural partieipation in the indicative mood. suhjllm:live. according to ~Veh,I'ler's Diclionary, is always coneerncd wilLt " wish. tksire. possibility. or hypothcsis"; il is a world 01' "as ir." ranging Irlllll scienlilic hypothesis to Icstive fantasy. It is "i1'it were so, " not "it is so ." inditative prevails in the world o fwhat in the Wcst we cal1 "act ual fael:' I hOll gh lhis definition can rangc from a close scientific inquiry into how a situ ;tllotl. event , or agcnt produces an effect or result to a layperson's descripti on ,,( t he l.:haracteristics 01' ordinary good sense or sound practical judgment. M()OI'e é1nd Mycrhoff. in Secular Rilual, did not use this pair 01' terms, ' :;lIhjllnc1ivc" and "indicativc," but, ratber, saw social process as moving " hl!twecll the formed and the indeterminatc" (p. 17). They are, however, IlIostly discussing "ceremony" or " sccular ritual ," not pure ritual. J agree Vlllh them . as I said earlier, that "al1 col1ective ceremony can be intcrpreted as a cllltural statement a bout cultural order as against a cultural voíd " (p. 16) alld thal "cercmony is a declaration against indeterminacy. Through fo nn alld rl)rrnality it ceJebrates man-madc meaning, the cultural1y determinate, 1111' rcg lllated, the named , and the explained. It banishes from consideration Ihl! Im sic q uestions raised by the made-upness 01' culture, its malleability and altcrahility .... [Every ceremony] seeks to state that the cosmos and social wOlld, or sorne particular smal1 part of them are orderly and explicable and 1'0, the Illomcnt fixed. A ccremony can al1ude to such propositions and dem ollstratc lhem at the same time.... Ritual [real1y " ceremony"] is a declaration uf f'orl11 ({guin.\'1 indeterminaey, therefore indetcrminacy is always present in lhe hackground 01' any analysis 01' ritual" (pp. 16--- 17). Roy Rappaport in hi s In:~~nl hook, Ecology, Mcal1il1g, (fl1d Religiol1 , adopts a similar standpoint when he writes: "Liturgical orders [whose "sequential dimension ," he says, is rit ual] hind together disparate entities and processes, and it is this binding tllgclhcr, rather than what is bound together, that is peculiar to them. Litur gical mders are meta-orders, or orders of orders.... they m end ever again worlds rorcvcr breaking apart under the blows of usage and the slashing dist im:tions 01' langllage. "21 Whi1c I considcr thesc to he admirably lucid statements about ceremon y, which 1'01" me cQnslilulcs an im pressive institutionaliz ed performance o r illdicativc. l10 rmatively s tructurcd social reality and is also boih a model (J! ;tltd a model /i)r socitll slatcs antl stuluscs . 1 do n o t th ink sudl f'orl1111 1a I ltlllS ClI lt he arr 1icd with cqll ul cllpL'n¡;y t( l rit ual. rol' ri tll ul. ;I S I havc said , .tOL'S lIot r n rlra y a d Ulllisl lL" , :IIt11()~;t I'Vh llidlaca n, s tr uj!.l-!i,· IWIWl'l! ll m dc r and

void, cllsmos ami chaos, 1'111111 all" itlddcrtninacy . wilh lhe ronner always trilllllphing in thc cnd . It is. rathcr. a transformativc sclf'-immolation 01' order as prcscntly constiluted, evcn sometimes a vo:l untary sparagmo,\' or self dislllcmbcrmcnt 01' order, in the subjunctivc dcpths 01' liminality. One thinks nI' Eliadc's sludics 01' the "shaman 's journey" where the initiand is broken into pieces and then put togethcr again as a being bridging visible aud invisible \Vorlds. Only in this \Vay. through destwctiou and reconstruc tion , thal is, transformation , may an allthcntic reordering come about. Actuality takes the sacrificial plunge into possibility and emerges as a ditTerent kind o f actuality . We are not here in the presence 01' two like but opposed forces as in Manichaean myth; rathcr there is a qualitative incongruenee between the contraries engaged , though Jung's daring metaphor 01' the incestuous marriage 01' the conseious ego with the unconscious seen as an arehetypal mother poses that relationship in terrns 01' paradoxical kinship and affinity. Subjunctivity is fittingly the mother 01' indicativi ty, since any aetualizalion is only one among a myriad of possibilities of being, sorne of which may be aetuali zed in space-time some\Vhere or somewhen ebe. The hard saying "except ye become as a liule ehild" assumes ne\\' meaning. Unless the fixing and ordering processes 01' the adult, the .Iocioslmouml dOl1lain, are liminal1y abandoned and the initiand submits to being broken down to a generalized prima 111Olcria, a lump ofhuman clay, he cannot be transformed or reshaped to encounter new experiences. Ritual's ¡¡minal phase, then, approximates to the "subjunctive m ood " 01' sociocultural adion. Jt is, quintessential1y, a timc and p lace lodged between al1 times and spaces defined and governed in any specific biocultural ecosys tem (Andrew Vayda. John Bennett, and the like) by the rules 01' law, politics, and religion and by economic neeessity. Here the cognitive schemata that give sense and order to evcryday lite no longer apply but are, as it were, suspended in ritual symbolisl1l perhaps even shown as destroyed or dissolved. Gods and goddesses 01' destruction are adored primarily beca use they personify an essential phase in an irreversible transforl1lative process. Al1 further growth requires the immolation ofthat \\,hich was fundamental to an earlier stage "lest one good custom should corrupt lhe world. " CJearly , the liminal space time " pod " created by ritual action, or today by certain kinds of reftexively ritualized theater, is potential1y perilolls. For it may be opened IIp to energics 01' the biopsychical human constitution normal1y channeled by socialization into status-roJe activities. to cmploy the unwieldy jargon of the social sciences. Ncvertheless, the danger of the liminal phasc conceded and respected by hedging it around by ritual interdictions and tabus, it is also held in most cullures lo be regenerative. as I mentioned earlier. For in liminality what is IIHlIldancly bound in sociostructural form m ay be unbollnd and rebound. 01' co ursc, ir a ::iociety is in hair1ine-precarious subsistence balance with its envir 11 ll l11ent. \Ve arl' unl ikl'1y (o lind in its liminal zones very much in the way of cx pe rilllcnta tiotl 1I":lc \ \l I~' d( j\:s tlot ¡()ol aHlllll d wi th the lried ami tested .

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wc ll-clldowcd l.'ll vi wlIll\l'llt, t he lilllillalily or ilo.¡ llIajl 'l lit lIal ~ IlIay \Vell g CII l'''II \! cllltll ra l sUlplu scs too . One Ihinks orth e Kwa kitlll alld Ilthl!r northwest i\1I1l'rindian peoplcs \Vitl! Iheir complex iconographies anJ lormerly rich hllnt ing and gathering resources. New meanings a nd symbols may be intro dm:nl or ncw ways 01' portraying or embellishing old models for living, and so or rcnnving intl!rl!st in them. Ritualliminali1ty, therefore , contains the poten tialily ror cultural innovation as \Vell as the means for effecting structural translimnations witbin él relatively stable sociocultural system. For many transformations are, 01' course, within the Iimits 01' social structure and ha ve tI) J o with its internal aJjustments al1l1external adaptions to environmental dlanges. Cognitive structuralism can cope best with such relatively l!yclical and repetitivc societies. In tribal and agrarian cultures, even reJatively comp1cx ones, the innov ative potcntial 01' ritual limjnality seems to have been circumseribed, even dormant, or pressed into the service of maintai.ning the existing social order. Even so, room for "play," H uizinga's ludic, abounds in many kinds 01' tribal rituals, even in funerary rituals. There is a play of.\j'lI1hol-vehicles, leading to the construction 01' bizarre masks and costumes from c1ements of mundane Iifc no\V conjoined in fantastic ways . There is a play of meal1ings, involving the reversal 01' hierarchical orderings of values and social statuses. There is a play with Ivords, resulting in the generation of secret initiatory languages as well as joyful or serious punning. Even the Jramatic scenarios which give many rituals their processual armature may be presenteJ as comedic rather than serious or tragic. RiJdling anJjoking may take place, even in the liminal seclusion 01' initiatory 10Jges. Recent studies of Pueblo ritual clowns recall to us how widespread the down role is in tribal and archaic religious culture. Liminality is peculiarly conducive to play, where it is not restricted to games and jokes, and extends to the introduction of new forms 01' symbolic action, such as word games or original masks. But whatever happened to Iiminality as societies incrcased in scale and comp1cxity, particularly Western industrial societies? With delimimt1ization seems to have gone the powerful play component. Other religions ofthe Book, too, have tended regularly to stress the solemn at the expense 01' the festive. Religiously connected fairs, fiestas, and carnivals do continue to exist, 01' course, but not as intrinsic parts of liturgical systems. The great Oriental rcligions, Hinduism, Taoism, Tantric Buddhism , Shintoism , however, stiJ1 rc:cognize in many public performances that human ritual can be both earnest (/lId playful. Eros may sport with Thanatos not as a grisly Janse macabre but lo sY lllbülize a complete human reality and a nature full 01' odditics. It woulJ secm tha t wil h inu lI slri a linl io n , urba niza tion, sprcading Iiteracy, la bo r lIli gra t i~)JJ, spcciali7a lillll. pro ll:ssillllal iLati on, bu reaUl,;racy, the divi si(, n the ld Slln: lIJ1hl·n.: I 1I1II 1 I h ~ wo rk sphe rc, Ihe fllnlll.'l illl cgri ty 01' the

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11l dll.;s tlatcu rd igiuus gCSI:t!1 IlIa t "11~'l: cOlIstilllll.:d ritualllas burst 0!1l.:1l anJ lI1an y spec iali zcd pl.:rf"rlTl ati Vl: gcm es have bl!l.:lI ho m rrmn the death 01' that lI1igh ty (/PUS t!('Or/llll /¡olllil/l/ll/c/I/c. Thesl.: genres 01' ind ustrial leisure would incl ude theater, ballet, opera, 111m, Ihe novel, printed poetry , the art exhibi tion , c1assical l11usic, rock music, carnivals, processions, folk drama , major sports events, and dozens more. Disintegration has been accompanied by seeulari.zation . T raditional religions, their rituals denuded 01' much 01' their former symbolic wealth and meaning, hence their transfonnalive capacity, persist in the leisure sphere but have not adapted well to modernity. Modern ity means the exaltation 01' the indieativc mood ; but in what Iha b Hassan has called the "postIJlodern turn " we may be seeing a re-turn to subjunetivity and a rediscovery of cultural transformative modes, particularly in sorne forms 01' theater. Dismembering may be a prelude to remembering, whieh is not meTely restoring sorne past intaet but setting it in living relationship to the present. There are signs , however, that those nations and cultures which carne late to the industrial table, sueh as Japan , India, the Middle Eastern nations, aud much 01' South and Central America , have suceeeded, at least in part, in avoiJing the Jismemberment of important ritual types; they have incor porated into their ritual performances many of the issues and p.roblems of moJern urban living and succeeded in giving them religious meaning. When industrial development camc to much 01' the Third World it had to confront po\Verfully consolidated structures of ritual performative genres. In the West similar institutions had been gradually eroded from within, from the rcvival oflearning to the Industrial Revolution . Here the indicative mood triumphed , and subjunetivity was relegated to a redueed doma in where admittedly it shone more brightly in the arts than in religion. Religion, Iike art, liI'es insofar as jt is performed , that is, insofar as its rituals are "going concerns." Ifyou wish to spay or geld religion , first remove its rituals. its generative and regenerative processes. For religion is not a cognitive system, a set of dogma s, alone; it is meaningful experience and ex perienced meaning. In ritual one ¡¡)les Ihrough events or through lhe alchemy ofits rramings and symbolings; one relives semiogenetic events, the deeds and \Vords of prophets and saints or, if these are absent. myths anJ sacred epics. Ir, then , \Ve regarJ narrative as an emie Western genre or metagcnre of expressive culture, it has to be seen as one 01' the cultural grandchildren or grcat-granJchildren of "tribal " ritual or juridical process. But if \Ve regard narrative ctically, as the supreme instrument for binding the "values" and " goals," in Dilthey's sense 01' these terms, which motivate human conduct into situational structures of "meaning," then we must concede it to be a universal cultural activity, embedded in the very eenter 01' the social drama, itself an other cross-cu ltural and transtemporaJ unit of social process. "N a rrate" is rl'O ITI lhe Latin lIarrurc ("to tell") w hich is a kin to the La lin ~1I(jru,\' ("k nowing," "ucq ua in ll.:d wit h," "expc rt in") botlI d crivative fro m the 1:\1

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14 ~cc 11. 1\ . H('l d gc ~' nI/' /'I,ilo,l'ol'llI' o(Willl/'llII l>i1111/'1' ( Lo!\ dOIl , 1'>'l2) , pp . 272- 73. 1) S;tlly ""tlk M oore, I ,III\' 11.1' /'1'11('(',1'.1' (London , 197X), j). 4~. 16 Inlrodul.:li on lo Sccular Rilual. ed. Moore and MyerhoO' (J\msterdam, 1977), p. 17: all further references lo this work will be ciled in the text. 17 J\rnold van (¡ennep, The Riles oj' p(J,I'.\'age (190X: Londoll, 1%0), p. 13. 18 Nil.:ole Belmon t, Arnold v(/n Gennep: 711e Crealor 01' Frencll Etl1l1ography , transo Derck Coltman (Chil.:ago. 1979), p. 64. 19 J\k in here lo the linguistic sellse of"transform:' thal is, (a) , any 01' a set of rules for producing grammatical transformatiolls of a kern el sClllence; (h), a sentellce pro dUl.:ed by using such a role. 20 Judith Ly nne I-Ianna, To Dance Is Human: A Tlleory uf Nonverhal Comm/lIliC!ilio¡¡ (Austi n, Tex., 1979). 21 Roy Rappa port , Ecolog)', ¡\lJc(}l1ing, (Jml Religion (Richmond , CaL, 1979), p. 206.

Notes See my Schism a/ld Conlinu;ly in (In. Aji'ic(ll/ So ciety: A SU/dy oI Ndembu Village Lile (M anchester, 1957); The f'oresl ofSym!Juls: A.\pec/s ojNrlemhll Sociely (Ilhaca, N.Y. , 1967): Thc Dl'1/1l1s olAfllic¡iol1: A SlUdy o( Religious Pl'ocesses amung Ihe Ndemhu oI Za/11!Ji(l (Oxford, 1968); and The Riwal Proce.l's: Slrucwre ul1d Anli SII'IIC!UN' (Chicago, 1969) . 2 See I-Ia yde n White's Mel ahislory: The Hi.l'loriml Im(/gina/ion in Nineleet'llh Cenlllry Europe (Baltimore. 1973), p. J 6; all furthcr refcrcnces to this work will be cited in thc text. 3 George D. Spilldler, introduetion to The Making of Psychologic(}/ Anlhropolugy, ed. Spindler (Berkelcy, 1978), p. JI. 4 Edward Sapil', "The Emergcnce of the Conccpt of Personality in a Study of Cultures:' }oul'I1al olSocial P.I'ydlOlogy 5 (1934): 412; all further refercnces to this work \ViII be cited in the tex!. 5 Kenneth L. Pike, Language in Relolioll /O (/ Unilied Theory ol llte Slruclure (!r Human Be/ulI'l'or (Glendalc, Cal., 1954), p. 8. 6 See Asmarom Legesse's Cada: Tllree Appro(fche.\· lo Ihe SII/t!y of Afi'ican Society (New York , 1l)73), p. 283 . 7 See Luc de I-Icusch 's Le Roi i"re; ou, L 'Origin e de/'éwl (Paris, 1972). 8 Sec Jan Vansina's Kingdol1l.l' (¿( Ihe Sal'ol1l1uh (Madison , Wis ... 1966). 9 See my Schism ({/1(1 COIlI;nuily in (fn Aji-ic({1/ Sociely: 1'171' Foresl ol S).' fI1IJols; The Drul11s o( Ajj/iclion;
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PERFORM I NG AS A MORAL ACT 1 Ethical dimensions of the ethnography of performance Dwighl Conquergood

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Illalmily. I bcg ill \Vil ll le\ l:.. ll JeIl wcave cUlIlexts aroulIll them lo lIlaJ...e thelll IIIl:allillgl'lIl tl' l11 ak.e life c0l11prehensible. 4 Joining olher hUll1anists who celebra te the nccessary and indissoluble lin k hclween art and lile, cthnographers present performancc as vulnerable and open to dialogue \Vit.h the world . Thc rcpercllssions for "thin ki ng," which ClitTord Geertz attributes to Dewey. Can be tnLllsposed to a socially committed ano humanistic understanding of " performing": Since Dcwey, it has been much more oifficult to regard thinking as an abstention from action, theorizingas an alternative to commitment, and the intellectual life as a kino of secular monasticism , excuscd fram aecountability by its sensitivity to the Gooo. '

J bcgin study wil h st urdy, fc¡;und 101al itie:; c reatcd by lhe people lhcmsclves , who le sta LCl11cnls. whoh: songs or houses 01' events, away fro m whÍl.;h li fe (!,<pa nd s. Inwa ld which Jife orienls in scl'kill¡!

This view euts off the safe retreat into aesthetiei sm , art for art's sake, and brings performance "o ut into the publie world where cthical judgment can get at it."6 Moral and cthical questions get stirred to the surface because ethnographers of performance explode the notion 01' aesthetic distancc. 7 [n their fieldwork efforts to grasp the native's point 01' view , to understand lhe human com plexities displayed in even the most humble folk performance, ethnograp hers try to surrenoer themsclves to the centripetal pulls 01' culture, to get close to the face of humanity where lite is not always pretty. Sir Edward E vans Pritchard wrote that fieldwork " requires a certain kind of character and temperament. ... To suceeed in it aman must be able to abandon himself to native life without reservc. "x Instead ofworrying about maintaining aesthetic distance, ethnographers try to bring "thc enormously distant enormously close without becoming any less far away."9 Moreover, cthnographers work with expressivity, which is inextricable from its human creators. They must work with real people, humankino alivc .. instead of printed texts . Opening and interpreting lives is ver)' different from opening and dosing books. Perhaps that is why ethnographers worry more about acquiring experiential insight than maintaining aesthetic distancc . Indeed , they are calling for empathic performance as a way of intensifying the participative nature 01' fieldwork , and as a corrective to foreshorten the textual distance that results from writ.ing monographs about the people \Vith whom one lives and studies. 1O When one keeps intellectual, aesthetic, or an)' other kind of distance from the other, ethnographers worr)' that other peop1c will be held at an ethieal and moral remove as \Vel\. Wh atever else one may say about ethnographic fieldwork , Geertz reminds us, " one can hardly dail11 lha Lit is focused on trivial issues (Jr abslracted hom huma n concc rns. " 11T his kind l1 frcsca rch " involves direct ointimatc and more or Icss distm hinl.l \.' lIcou nl crs \V ilh Ihe illlll1cdi a tc deta ib 01' contcmporary

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hlr the story 01' my life is always embedded in the story 01' those communit ies from which l derive my identity... . The self has to liml ils moral iden tity in and through its membership in commun ilies such as those 01' the family, the neighborhood , the city , and the lribe.... Witho llt those moral particularities to begin from there would never be al1ywhere to begin: but it is in moving forward fram sm:h particlllarity that the search fo r the good, for the universal, ClllIsists. - Alasdair Maclntyre 2 I )lIring the crucial days 01' 1954. when the Senate was pushing for Il'llIlination 01' a ll (ndian rights, not one single seholar, anthrapo Illgist , sociologist. hi storian, or economist came forward to support lile lribes again st lhe detrimental policy. - Vine Deloria, Jr. 1 Eth nllgraphers study thc diversity and unity of cultural performance as a uni ve rsal human resource for deepening ami clarifying thc meaningfulness of liti:!. T hey hclp us see performance with aJl its moral entailments, not as a fl igh t fl Olll lived responsibilities. Henry Glassie represents the contemporary e lhnoglapher's interest in the interanimation between expressive art and d aily liti:!, lcxts. and contexts:

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h it· I W f¡ ~ 1I 1' lh lll lP-1Ijllll'r, 11 1 pt: ri llllllafl \;C 1,;\ ll lIpll III\'II( l!l l' lI p;nlil'ipant O h~I' 1 \'U llll ll ht.:ld wo l k hy m't 11 01 lI y Pllrl'lllmi l1g rO l d il ll"I\.'1 1I ,,"I!i¡;IJ I.:I.:S t hl~ vcrbal ;1/ 1 lht'Y !lave s tudJi.:d ill Si /II, lhl~y CXP\l SC U1COISdvcs III d'Hlhk jCllpardy. 111I.!y bt.:CVII Il.: k\!l! /Ily aware lhal performance docs nol p rocccd in ideological iJl II\ lCC III'C a mi axiological pllrily. Mus l n;sC~lrchers who have extended ethnographic fieldwork into public J1C rrorfllLlncc will cxperience resistancc and hostility fr om audienecs fro m Illl1l' lo time." This disq lIieting antagonism, however, more than the aud ience appruval, sign als most clcarly that ethnographic performance is a form of l.'o ndllcl decply cnmeshed in moral nlatters. 1 believe that all performance has l·t hical di lllcnsions, but ha ve fOllnd that moral issues 01' performance are more lra /lsparcnl when lhe performer attempts to engage ethnie and intercultural l\!xIS, particlIlarly those texts outside the canon and derived fro m fieldwork lescarch . 1"or three and a half years 1ha ve cond ueted ethnographic fieldwork among Jao ami Hmong refllgees in Chicago. The performance of their oral narrat iws is an intcgral part of my research project and a natural extension of the I Ille 01' lhl~ cthnographer as participant to that of advocate. When working with Illinorily pcoplcs and disenfranchised subcultures, such as refugees, one IN Il cqul'ntly propelled into the role 01' advocate. The ethnographer, an unin Vlll'd slranger who depends upon the patient courtesies and openhearted IlI lS pitality oflhe community, iscompelled by the laws ofreciprocity and human d ¡;~c fl l'y to intervene, if he can, in a crisis. Further, the stories my Laotian 11Í ~' fIlJs tell makc claims on me. For example, what do you do when the l'lll \lIlL~ r orders an autopsy on a Hmong friend and the family comes to you 111111111 wilh horror because according to Hmong bcliefifyou cut the skin ofa d cad Iwrson the soul is lost forever, there can be no hope 01' reincarnation? l'vI on:o ver, that disembodied soul eonsigned to perpetuallimbo will no doubt 'P IIU: back lo haunt and terrorize the family. I llave performed Ihe stories of the refugees for dozens of audiences. In additioll lo academic audiences, where the performance usualIy complements ;¡ theorclical argument I want to make about the epistemological potential of paformance as a way 01' deeply sensing the other, I have performed them hclóre Illany émd varied non-academic audiences. 1 have tried to bring the slorics ofthc Lao and Hmong before social service agencies, high schools where I hc re ha vc becn outbreaks of violence against refugee students, businessmen, lawycrs. wclf~lre case workers , public school teachers and administrators, rcl igious groups, wealthy women's clubs, and so forth. Often 1 have been ~r
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three-hollr sessioll thal IK:gó.11l wilh allack ami ahusc bul movcd gradually, an d painfully, lo Ill'ightened sclf- rdlcxivity (ror mc , as well as thcm). The last hour we spent talking about oursclves instcad 01' tbe re fugees. Here is a partial list of the ofTenses for which 1 am most frequently con demned. Members of certain religiolls groups indict me ror collaborating in th e "work orthe devil." M y refugee f riends are not Christian, and their stories enunciate a eosmology radically different from Judeo-Christian traditions. fundamentalist Christians perceptivcly point out that by the very aet of collecting, preserving, and performing these stories, J am legitimizing them , offering thelll as worthy 01' contemplation for Chri stians, and encouraging the Lao ami Ilmong to hold fast to their " heathenism. " Welfare workers despise me for retarding the refugees' assimilation into mainstream America and thereby making the caseworker's job more difficult. From their point of view, these people must be Amerieanized as quickly as possiblc. They simply must drop their old ways ofthinking, "superstitions, " and become American. Developing resettlement programs that involve careful adjustments and blends between the old and new would requjre too much time or encrgy or money. Some social workers and admini strators cIearIy emphasize that videotaping ancjent rituaIs, recording and performing oral history are not mora lI y neutral activities. Some public school educators interrogate m e fo r performing in a respectful tone a Lao legend that explains the lunar eclipse as a frog in the sky who swalIows the moon. Afler one performance I \Vas asked, "How do the Lao react when you tell them they are wrong'?" When T replied that 1 do not "corree!" my Lao friends about their understanding of the lunar eclipse, lhe audience was aghast. Some stormed out, but some stayed to chastise me. I've been faulted for not correcting the grammar and pronunciation of the na1" rative texts '\'ve collected and thus Illaking the peop1c "sound slupid and backward. " W eeks afler a performance )'ve received Ietters from people telling me ho w angry they \vere, that they "eouldn ' t sleep" \Vhen thinking about the performance, ami that it had given them "bad dreallls. " In another vein, from audiences \Vho are moved by the performance , I am sometimes ehallenged in an accusing tone, "How can yOll go back to bei n g a professor at a rich university? Why don't you spend full time trying to help these peoplc Iearn English , get jobs, find lost relatives'!" In comparison to nonacademic audiences. the criticism from aeademic audiences pales. Nevertheless, remarks get back to me about how I'm " moving the Ileld off.. center." The ostensibly neutral question , " What does this have to do with oral interpretation of litcrature'?" thinly veils deep misgivings. One specialist in eighteenth-century literature \Vas more direct. and I respect him for tha!. At a Danforth conference, this senior gentleman rose to his feet afler my presenta tion and in authoritativc and measured tones declared: " Y()U have confused ar t an u nature, and Ihal is an abominati o n!" The o ne q uest io ll I a!lll11sl ncver gel, however, is lile " wh ite guilt" accusa ti on , "W hal righ l do yllu" (1 Ir1 id dlc-dass whi le man , have tn pcrform these

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1I, lIlUl IVI'S',' '' II '1I:lIh WI! " L'\l' l 11I ' IUdu l,;\:s II I\: glVl's ,l1 llll' hlll I..J!lO IIIIII illrorma 111 111 ah p ul In)' pa l ll cljl;l lll Il hSCfvlIlion rc~a.:a l'l.: 1 1. I ) II¡: tlllll' 1'!\)JIIl: alld icllce IlIl' ttl h \; l '\ ¡;UIIII.! in I .\ t~ , a rt er tlH: illtmd ut.:tio!1, ano MIrl' \"'I1<1ug h. (lile 01' them WB S 11 11': fi r~1 l(l raise his hand artcr the performancc a mI accllsc me 01' white Il1al1'S pn:!'itllllpltlousness, I-Iowever, other audience members eame to my ddl: IlS\; hc fore I had él chancc to respondo They explained to him that 1 had li ved wi th the people for more than three years, that 1 was not a weekend wmmutcr rmm a comfortable suburban house. This informatioll seemed to slIbdllC hil11 . Fvel1 lhough my ego is probably as vulnerable as the next person's, I take cOll rage in knowing that negativc response, more than approving app)ause. testifies to the moral im plications ofthis kind ofwork. l can be gratefu) to m y detractors ror forcing into my awa reness the complex ethical tensions, tacit political commitments, and moral ambiguities inextrieably caught up in the ad 01' performing ethnographic materials. lndeed , I began doing this kind of work focused on performance as a way of knowing and deeply sensing the other. Ilostile audienees have helped me see performance as the enaelment of a llIoral stancc. Now l have beco me deeply interested in the ethical dimen sions of performing the expressive art that springs from other lives, other sensibilities, other cultures. I agree with Wallace Bacon that the validity 01' an intercultural perform ance is " an ethieal concern no less than a performance problem. " 14 Good will and an open hcart are not enough when one "seeks to express cultural cxperienees which are c1early separa te from his or her lived world . "15 I would like to sketch four ethical pitfalls, performative stances towards the other that are morally problema tic. 1 name these performative stanees "The Custodian 's Rip-O!T," "The Enthusiast's lnfatuation," "The Curator's Exhibitionism ," and "The Skeptie's Cop-Out." These four problem areas can be graphieally represcnted as the extreme corners of a moral map artieulated by intersecting axes 01' ethnographic tensions. The vertical axis is the tensive counterpull bctween ldentity and Difference, the horizontal axis between Detachment and Commitment (see Figure 1). The extreme points ofboth sets ofcontinuua represent "dangerous shores" to be navigated , binary oppositions to be trans cended. The center of the map represents the moral center that transcends and reconeiles the spin-off extremes. 1 call this dynamic center, whieh holds il1 lensive equipoise the four contrarities, "Dialogieal Performance."l c, After l11apping the five performative stances in order to see their alignments, 1 will disclIss cach one in more detail.

The Custod ian's

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The Curator's Exhibitionism

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tourists ' stare

C O M M I T M E N T

DIFFERENCE Figure I M oral Mapping 01' Performative Stances Towards the Other*

*This graph ic rcprcscnlalioo is dcrivcd rrom Ma ry Dougtas' mClh od 01' grid/group aOHlysi s. Scc

Cul/ural Bias (1978) and Jn ¡he Ae/ive Voiee (1982).

striking examp1e of this performa tive stance when he ci ted the case of the Presüott Smoki cultural preservation group \Vho contioued to perform the Hopi Snake Dance over the vigorous objections of J--Iopi elders. T his group appropriated cherished traditions, reframed them in a way that was saereligious to the Hopi , and added insult to injury by selling trinkets for $7.50, all in th e name of preserving " dying cultures. " 17 The immorality 01' such performanees is unambiguous and can be compared to theft and rape. Potential performers 01' ethnographic materials should not en ter the fi eld with the overriding motive of " findíng some good performancc material. " A n analogy from my fieldwork situation would be m y pcrformance of some of the stunningly theatrical shaman chants of Ilmon g hea.Jcrs replete with black veil over fa ce and sacred costume. Not even a Hm ong man or woman may perform these sacred traditions at will. YOll must be called to shamanic performance, which typieally is signalled by a life-threatenin g illness, during \vhich you have tremors , "shake" (oy nang, the Hmong word for "shaman," is Ih e sam e word ror "shake "). When the shamall shakes and ehants, he or she is talk ing an o plcadin g wilh the iipirits th a t control the world. These ecstatic perform ancc!> arc cx trannJi naril y uclieate anu uangerous a ffa irs. A Il m on g Sh:l man ri!'l k:-; h is Qr hCllik c: tc h tillle thl! s()lIll cavc~ the hod y ami ascends the 1 \\)

Ir I i\ l. '\1."1 rN, - ' lJi:C .. 1 !ir., 11111111' ll" ,llIl ll IIIIII II(:Y ItI Ih(' SJlII II 1-..1111,110111. 1 ";Id wlif'keu wilh I III BIIII' 1111 " lIoul III .~<.' Yl'iJl S bd'lln.: 1 Wlls pr l\ llu!L'l1 ItI wilm:ss one 01'

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II¡n, " ,1 ,1 111 II;¡II ~C pl..' l lnllll il llces, Nn w I [1 m nOI o ll ly Pl' lIll1l1 cd. huI encour I1 1" \ Ilku lil lll' Ilwl11. I have ewn parlicipnlcu in one 01' Ihese riluals ul Idll .. Ilt l ll ,1 ' , Ihe victilll. 1\11 dderly shaman "shook "- wenl into ecstatic jI{lhlllll,IHI' lü r rny hlind cye. Howcver, I would never try lo simulate one ji rltnD P~)\"~' 1I111 (lCrl'orlllallces beca use not only would that be a desecration. 11 \\!H .l d ,,\~ I lr l ~'l'iwd hy the Ilmong as having catastrophic consequences.

The Enthusiast's Infatuatioll ¡ "ii i ,, 11, hk llld ica tioll with the other coupled witb enthusiastic commit 1I¡lIve alld glib performances marked by superficiality. This ,. ¡Iji' ,PI,lIb,l lI' lll' Ihe quick-fix. piek-up artist, where performance runs I¡UIiIlIl~ 1 111 111" ',hallows. Eager performers get sucked into the quicksand !h,'lId" "f\! ' 11 1 ,111 (leople really just alike?" Although not as transparently h'lti'lílhl j "" Irl 111' ('lIslodian's Rip-Off," this performative stance is u nethical hCI.l ilr.C 1I 11 ¡H lll / l'S I he other. The distinctiveness of the other is gJossed over I "IIi/U ,iI ¡((' !Ir I alities. 1... , .:-11111 1,,, 10 11 IV IIl1masks the moral conseq ue nces 01' too easy and eager 111 i,kiliHil Ilu lI l willl the other: 11I~' ill 1'" ,,1 111 n

(11 \\ i~' 1¡ dlv Ime someone if we know little or nothing 01' his identity, l' Wll ~I.! ':ll 111 I'I:I CI..' DI' that identity, a projection 01' oursclves 01' ideals? \\\, i¡ lItI\\ .hal SlIch a thing is quite possible, even frequent, in per \1111 ¡ tí 111 111111:;: huI what happens in cultural confrontations? Doesn't lit'.' j'Il llllll I isk 1rying to transform lhe other in its own name , lii,l ,!t':IL' I'lll' lisk subjugating il as well? How much is such love

J ¡" , I II n !u ~ iIH; I:; Infatuation," whieh is also the quadrant where "1'0015 rush i!1 Wllt'lillllll'd ·, k a r lO tread," is neither innocent nor benign o Hn i ¡/t' I. III II' ~l lI l, to whom we are indebted for naming the Identity lJ'"l' i¡'II' !C 11 11 '" jlll'live diJemma ,'~ complements Todorov by showing how iÍl i, 111 1111' uf identity not only banalizes the other, but seals off the I! i¡ íihlllln 11IIlra l cllgagement:

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its tdevisilln sct ~ a mi S il pc rl Jig-hwa ys , . . a mi 1hu 1 \Ve ha ve Ilevcr really left horne at all, tha t (lur Il'di llg 01' Ver.l'{c/w/1 is lillle bcttcr than mere psychological projection, that we have somehow failed to touch lhe strangeness and the rcsistance of a reality genuinely differ ent from our own. 20 Secure in our protective solipsism, those of us in this performative stance will never permit the other " to come before us as a radically different life form that rises up to call our own form 01' Jire into question and to pass judgment on us, and through us, on the social formation in which we live," " Superfici ality suffocates self as well as other.

The Curator's Ex hibitionism Whereas the enthusiast assumed too easy an Identity with the other, the cllrator is committed to the Difference of the othe!'. This is the "Wild King dom " approach to performance that grows out offascination with the exotic, primitive, culturally remote. The performer wants to astonish rather than underst a nd , This q uadrant is suffused with sentimentality and roma ntic notions about the " Noble Savage." Performances from this comer 01' the map resemble curio postcards, sOllvenirs, trophies brought back from the tour for display cases. Instead 01' bringing LIS into genlline contact (and risk) with the lives 01' strangers, pcrformances in this mode bring back mllseum exhibits, mute and staring. Jameson explains that when one affirms "from the outset, the radical Dif ference 01' the alien object from ourselves, then al once the doors ol' com prehension begin to swing dosed .. . .'m The mani fest sin 01' this quadrant is Sensationalism, and it is an immoral stance becaLlse it dchumanizes the othe!'. Todorov makes strikingly dear the moral conseqLlences 01' exoticizing the other in his brilliant case study 01' lhe most dramatic encounter with the other in ollr history , the discovery and conquest 01' America. 2 ' He clarifies how the snap-shot perspcclives of"Noble Savage" and "dirty dog" can come from the same view-finder: How can Columbus be associated with these two apparently con tradictor)' myths, one whereby the other is a "noble savage" (when perceived at a distance) and one whereby he is a "dirty dog," a potential slave? It is because both rest on a common basis, which is the failure to rccognize the Indians, and the refusal to admit them as a sllbject having the same rights as onesclf, but different. Colllmbus has discovered I\merica but not the Americans. 24

hilOS,' lo .. ninn the identity orthe alien object with ourselves words, we decide that Chaucer, say , .. or the narratives '! 111111 11, 111 h l'l:nlury R ussian gentry, are more 01' 1ess directly 01' 1111 1111.\\" ,Il'l'cssihlc lo us ... then we have presupposed in advance IWI \\ . ~ 111 " ¡IVé hce l1 demonstrated , ancJ our apparenl comprehen ,(, i,l 1hC~I' ali"tI lI.:x ts m us t he hauntcd by the nag!!ing suspicion llil l! \\1 llil "l' ¡¡lI thl.: whi l(; n:maill l:d Inckcd in om \)WlI presl.: n! wilh

T oo great H distance aes thetic, romantic, political- denies t o the other \l1cmbcrship in lhe samc IlIural comlnunity a~ ourselvcs.

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in wh il:h . ¡ll:l:ul'dillg lo J:tlllCSOI1 , '",ve lino ou rsclvcs sep.lt aleo hy Ihe whole l.kns it y llr n ur l)Wn culture rn 1111 pbjccts or clllllln.:s tl1lls inilially dcfined as uthcr fro lll pursclvcs and thus as irrcmediably inacl'cssible."¡<¡ Instead of a pCrl~lnmltivc stancc, it is an casy bail-out into the no man's land ol' paralyz ing skept.icism. This corner ol' the map is Ihe refuge of cowards and cynics. Instcad of facing up to and struggling with the ethical tensions and moral ambiguities of performing cultura lly sensilive materials, Ihe skeptic, with chilling a loofness, ft a tl y declares, " 1 am neither black nor femal e: I will not pcrlorm from 111e ( '% r Purp/e." When this stra nge coupling of naive empiricism amI sociobiology--o nly blacks can understand and perform black literature, only white males 10hn Cheever's short stories-is deconstructed to expose the absurdily of the major premise, then the " No Trespassing" d.isclaimer is unmasked as cow ardice or imperialism ofthe most arrogant kind. It is only the members ofthe dominant culture who can hold to this high purity argument regarding cultural intercoursc. It is a faet 01' life of being a membcr of a minority or disenfranchised subculture that one must and can learn how to perform cultural scripts and play roles that do not arise out 01' one's own culture. As a matter 01' sheer survival refugees musl learn how to play American ways 01' thinking and social conduct. " Code-switching" is a commonplace ethno graphic term used to describe lhe complex shifts minority peoples deftly and continuously negotiale between the communication styles 01' dominant cul ture and subculture. Todorov, who refers to his own " simultaneous participa tion in two cultures,"2ó offers a strong rebuttal to the skeptic's position: l'I1 1:C

Ultimately, underslanding between representatives 01' differcnt cul tures (or between parts of my own being which derive from one culture or the other) is possib1e, if the will-to-understand is present: there is something beyond 'points 01' view,' and it is charaeteristic of human beings that the1' can transcend their partia1ity amI their local determina tions. 27 There is no null hypothesis in the moral universe. Refusal to take él moral stand is itself a powerful statement 01' one's moral position . That is wh)' I havc placed squarely on the moral map the skeptic's refusal to risk encounter to show that nihilism is as much a moral position as its diagonal counterpart, naivc cnthusias11l. In my view, "The Skeptic's Cop-Out" is the most morally rep rehensible comer of the map beca use it forecloses dialogue. The enth usi ast , one can always hopc, may move beyond infatualion to love . R e\ation s hip~ tha t bcgin superlicia lly cu n sOl nelill1es deepen an d grow. Ma ny 01' ll1y sludcnts bcgin in lhe c nlh lls inst 's COI" IIl:r nI" lhe map. IL is the wu rk (lf Icaching

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tn lry lo p ull thcll1 tmvaru tlll' cCl llc l. ·1 he skc ptic. hllW\!VCr , shuts uown lhe very iJcil 01' cn tcrin g inl n coll vcrsa tiíln wilh lhe othcr bcforc the attempt , howevcr prob1cmatic, begi ns. Ba con , who is keenly aware of Ihe "deep and dillicult and enduring problems, ' ·l~ rejects the skeptic's cop-out when facing up to the a1tcrnalives I'or ac!ion in the wo rld: What , then, do ~.'e do? Do we give up performing ethnic materials'? Do we say , with Anaya, that to the Hispanics belong Hispanic treasures? S urely not, because o ur wor1d has never before cried out so need full y for understanding among us al1 . N ever has a sen se of the other seemed more crucial for our own humanity . The em bodiment of texts of all kind s is . . . one real path to the understanding of othcrs. 29 The skeptic, delachcd and estranged, with no sense 01' Ihe olher, sits alone in an echo-chamber of his own making, with only the sound 01' his own scoffin g laughter ringing in his ears.

Dialogical performance One path to genuine understanding of other5 , amI out of Ihis moral morass and ethicalminefield 01' performative plumier, superficial silliness, curiosity secking. amI nihilism. is dialogical performance.'!) This performative stance struggles to bring togelher different voices, world views, value systems , amI beliefs so that they can have a conversation with one another. The aim of dialogical performance is to bring self and other together so that they can question. debate, and challenge one another. It ís a k.ind ofperformance that resisls conclusions, it is íntenscly committed to keeping Ihe dialogue between performer and text open and ongoing. Dialogical understanding does nol end with empathy. There is always enough appreciation for difference so Ihat the text can interroga te , rather than dissolve into, the performer. That is wh y I have charted this pertormative stancc at the centcr of the moral map . More than a definite position , the dialogical stance is siluated in the space helrveen competing ideologies. It brings se1f amI other together even while it holds them apart. It is more like a hyphen than a pe riod o The strength of the center is that it pulls together mutually opposed energíes that become destructive only when they are vented without the counterbal aneing pull 01' theír opposite. For example , good performalivc cthnographers must eontinuously play the oppositions between Idenlity and Difference. Their stance toward this heuristically rieh paradox of fieldwork (and per formance) is bolh/and . yes/but, instead ofeither/or. They affirm crosscultural aeeessibiJity withoul glossing ver)' real di fferences. Moreover, Ihey respeet the D iffere nce of Ih e ot her cnough to quest ion and rn a ke vulnerable her own a priori assumptions . Whcn we have lrue respect ror lhe DilTcrcnee 01' o the r

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in sisls Ihal lhl! dh nognt plh.:r's hnlllc culture sh o ll ld hc as opL'n lo interpreta t 11 m. q lIl:sl ioning, weighillg of alh:rnalives, as th e hosl culture. Old socielies alienaled from us by chronology beco me but academ ic no ch a lle nge at all to lhe status quo. The out\vard search for allernali ves l:an likewise die il110 thrills ami souvenirs, but when the lravole r is serious, the quest th ro ugh spaee leads through conl"ronta tion into culture, into fear , and il ca n pro ve trying, eonvincing, pro I"oundly I"rllitful. The reason to study people, to order experienee into ethnography, is not to prod uce more en tries for the central file or more trinkets for milord 's cabinet 01" curiosities . It is to stimulate thought, to assure us there are things we do not know , things \Ve must know, things capable 01" unsettling the world we inhabit. " curi o~,

In order to keep fieldwork dialogically alive, Glassie construes it as "intimate conversation," a dcscription that resonatcs both literally ami metaphorically with the praxis 01" ethnography: Ethnography is interaction, eollaboration. What it demands is not hypotheses, which may unnaturally dose study down, obscllring the integrity 01" the other, but the ability to converse intimately 32

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M Il t( A l . 1\ I . 1

Lalltian cosl11ological lcgc lld st ,lIIds hc fOlI: an audiencl: in all his Scots G c rman I"actici ly. Dia logical pe rl"ormance cclebrates the paradox 01" "how the Jceply difTerent can be deL~ply known withollt becoming any 'Iess differ cnt.,, 15 Bacon quoteo Auden, who evocatively etched the morallineaments of dialogical performance: "When truly brothers/men don ' t sing in unison/but in harmony ." '(' Dialogical performance is a way of finding the moral center as much as it is an indieator that one is ethically grounded . One does not have to delay entering the conversation until self and other have become old friends . In oeed, as the metaphor makes clear, one cannot build a friendship without beginning a conversa tion . DialogicaJ performance is the means as mueh as the end of honest intercultural understanding. But what are the qua lÜies one absolutely needs before joining the eonversation? T hree indispensa bles, aecording to G la ssie: energy , imagination, a nd eourage. Scholars need energy to gather enough information to ereate full portraits. They need imagination to enter between facts , to feel what it is like to be, to think and aet as another person oT hey need courage to faee alternatives. compa ring different experiences to help their fellows locate themselves.J1

He arg ues that the honesty 01" dialogic eriticism líes in two voices that can speak simultaneously and interactively. Like good conversation , the event is a eooperative enterprise between t\Vo voiees , neither of which sueeumbs to monologue: " ... as in personal relations , the illusion offusion is s\Veet, but it is an illusion, and its end is bitter, to recognize others as others permits loving them better. " '.j Dialogieal performance is él way of having intimate conversation with other pcoplc and cultures. InsteaJ ol'speaking about them , one speaks to and wi th them. Thc sensLlous immediaey and empathie leap demanded by per fonnuncc is an ol:casion 1'0,. l~ rch\!s l ..aling two voiees, for bringin g together lwo scnsihililics. A l lhe Sa n1l~ lill1l'. Illl' cunspicuous arti fict! o fpcrrnrlllance is a vivid lI!minJcr lhut cadl Vll h t' ha s ils o W Il in lel!rity . fhc p~'1 rOIIIIl'" 01" a

Ifwe bring to our \York energy, imagination , and eourage- qualities that can be excrcised ano strengthened through dialogieal performance- then we can hope not to tra mple on " the sweet, terrible wholeness 01' life. " 3~ Finally, you don ' t have to do years offieldwork with a people before you can perform their verbal art. Fieldwork is enormously time-consuming and labor-intensive; it appeals to a certain kind of pcrson and temperament , but certainly it is not for everyone. Ethnographers would be seltish and arrogant to set thcmselves up as cultural game \Yarden s, insisting that you have to have "been there " before yOLl understand . Geertz is quite insistent that good ethnography is not dependent on the fieldworker's being possessed of sorne mystieal powers that enable her to "commune with natives": good ethno graphy can be d one " without reeourse to pretensions to more-than-normal capacities for ego-effaeement and fellow-feeling. " ) '1 He arglles that ethno graphic understanding "is more Iike grasping a proverb, eatching an allusion , seeing a joke-- or, as I have suggested, reading a poem--than it is Iike achieving COI1lI1l union . "40 It is the responsibility of the ethnographer of performance to make per formance texts derived from fieldwork tha! are aeeessible- and that means performable-for responsible interpreters of texts who have callings other than fi eldwork. 41The ethnographic movement in performance studies will die ir it does not reach out to sha re the h uman dignity 01' the other, lhe other wise, with a udi~ nc(; s la rgcr th
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Todorov makes the same point about the dialogical stance towards textual criticism: Dialogic c¡úicism speaks not o/ \Vorks but lo works, rather lVith works. 1t refuses to eliminatc either 01" the two voices present. ... The author is a "thou ," not a "he," an interlocutor with whom one discusses and even debates human values. D

/1/(¡ '/'IItI//OI/,¡/ ( '" IIOlt/ti/1/1/ 01/ ( '''"I//lIII/'' '(I/iOI/ , ed .I;IIIl:1 Md 11Ighl:~ (Telupc: t\rizm}¡l Slale llllív ... I')X'H. \ )( 1 ~ h'''l'l' lit Illu illll llu d IlIl l'I I'Il' I I: I S II I1U l \.' ad l ~' I " 111 I tlll.l ltll l·, wil o ¡; PlIlillllC 17 Bacon , p. ()4 '15. lo d l'l' PO:lllll Ill;W gC IlL'ril li ollS uI' stuuCII1S scnsilivi ty 1I1 1111' o lho:r "fa Rcnais 1X 1f¡c COI/l/Uc.11 o/AII/aim: '{he Quc.I'/io/l o//I/t' O/her , transo R ichard Howard (New lia nuc 1..::< (, or a I:O J1 h!lIl pll r ary pOL'm, so Ihal whc lI perfnlll ulIlcc lexls rrom York: Ha rper and Row, 1984), p. 16!l. 1t: is noteworthy that two other books ha ve 1I \,lllilcra ll: ': lIltllrL~s arc produccJ and made availa ble, il \Viii be possible ror appeared reccntly that deal centrally with ~he concept of "the other": Johannes Fa bian, Time !lnd /he Olher: Ho\,' AIl/hropology j'Jakc.l' i/s Oh¡ec/ (New York: Illorc v()ice.~ lo join lhe human dialogue. :::olllmbia Uni v. Press, 1983); Michael Theunissen , The O/ha: Swdies in/he Socia! On/ology of Husserl. Heidegger, Sarlre, and Buher, transo Christopher Macann (Cambridge, Mass: MTT Press , 1984). Notes 19 " Ma rxislll and Historicism .'· N ew Literary I-lis/ory, II (Autumn 1979), 41-73. This essay is the result 01' "n ongoing di a logue with (hree vo i-:es other than my 20 Jameson , p. 45. " Wll . My tra nsposition ofClifford Gecrtz' title, " Thinking as el M o ral Act: Ethical 2 I Jameson , p. 70. Dill1cllsiolls 01' A nthropological Fieldwork in lhe New States, " A n tio ch Rel'iew, 28 22 Jameso ll, p. 43. 23 Todorov writes, " M y main intercst is less a historian's than a moralist's, the (Sullllller, 19(8), 139- 158, explicitly sig nals the deep impact that essay has had on present is m o re important to me than the past," p. 4. Illy "wn fieldwork project. Wallace 13aconfirst introduced me to "the sense ofthe other," u n idea that cha nged IllY life and is a Illminous demonstration of"thinking 24 Jameson, p. 49. as a moral act. " For more than a decade. M a ry Strine has given me lists of difficlllt 25 Jameson. p. 43- 44. 26 " A Dialogic Criticism'?" Raritan , 4 (Summer 1984), 69.

11I'oks that élsk hard questions, and insistcd that 1 read them. Particularly the dialogical Illarxislll of Mikhail Bakhtin , which she introduced to the field, has 27 <'A Dialogic Critieism?" p. 70.

challcnged me. élnd cven though not explicitly cited, 1 hope its presence is felt by 28 Bacon, p. 96.

Ihe very nature 01' the qllestions that shaped this paper. 29 Bacon, p. 97.

30 The recent explosion of interest in the works (JI' 1\1ikhail Bakhtin now being .! i /licr Viril/e: A S/tldy i/1 ¡\;Jorol Theory, 2nd ed . (Notre Dame: Unjv. of Notre translated from the origin a l Ru ssian and made accessible to western rea ders has Dalllc Prcss, 1984), p. 221. given widesprcad currency to the idea of " dialogue" as a way 01' being in the world. \ ('lis/el' J)ied jór Your Sins: An Illdion }vlanij'e s /o (New York: Avon , 1969), p. 98. Two 01' Bakhtin 's works now available in translation are useful starting points for 1 l'i1s.l'ing /IIe Tirne in Ba!!yrnel1one: Cul/ure and His/ory oI an Ulster C0fJ1I1111nily engaging the complcxities of his thinking: The Diologic Imagina/ion. transo Caryl (I'hiladclphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), p. xvi. Emerson and Michael Holquist , ed. I\tiehéLel HDlquist (A ustin : U ni v. of T exas ') "Thinking as a Moral Act," p. 140. Press, 1981), and Problems (Jf DO,l'/oellsky 's Poe/ics , ed. and tram;. C a ryl Emerson (, "Thinking as él Moral Act," p. 139. (Minneapolis: UlJ iv. 01' Mi nnesota Press, 1984). I recommend also two invaluabJe ./ hJr an incisive historieal explanation of this concept, see Beverly W hitaker Long, scholarly tools 1'01' anyone working with Bakhtin : the intdlectual biography b)1 " A ' Oistanced' Art: Interpretation al Mid-Century," Performance oI Li/ era /ure Katerina C1ark and Michael Holquist, Mikh({il Baklllin (Cambridge: Harvard il/ lIis/ori('al Per.I,/lcC! ives, ed. Da vid Thompson (Lanhalll, M D: U ni versity Prcss Univ. Press, 1984), élnd the critical assessment nf his ideas in their progra mmatic 01' A merica, 1983), pp. 567--588. See also lhe provocative di scussioll of "moral context by T zvetan Todorov, ¡'Jikhai! Bllkh/in: Thc Dia/ogica/ Principie . transo distance" in Mary Frances Hopkins, "F rorn Page to Stage: The BurJen 01' Proof," Wlad GodzÍch ( Minneapolis: Univ. 01' Minnesota Press, 1984). C lark and Holquist n/e Sou/hel'l1 Speech COl11munica/ion Journa!, 47 (r-all 1981), 1- 9. poin t out in their biograph y that Bakhtin had él Iifelong invol vement with per X QuoteJ in CJifford Geertz. ·'SI.ide Show: EVélns-Pritchard's Africéln Transparen formance and theatre rangin g from the German governess who organized the cies," Rariwn , 3 (Fall 1983), 72- 73. young Bakhtin brothe rs in dramatic renderings 01' the /liad to his drama tic per () ClitTord Geertz, Local Kl1l1w!edge: Furlher Essays in lnlerprelille Anthropology formances in the Ne vel theatre groups long arter his university days (p . 2 1). (New York: Rasie Books, 1983), p. 48. Todorov concludes his assessll1ent 01' Bakhtin 's lifclong career by arguing that lhe 10 el'. Vietor Turner. Frorn Ri/uo//o Tll ea/re: The Human Seriousness oj' Play (New tcrlll that mosl richly encompasses the scope and depth ofhis intelleetual project is York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982). "phil\()sophical anthropology": " 1 have rescrvcd for this last chaplcr those ideas 01' 11 'Thinking as a Moral Act ," p. 139. Bakhtin that I value most and that, 1 bcJieve, hold the key to his whole work: the y 12 "Thinking as a Moral Act." p. 14 J. cOllstitute. in his own terms, his 'philosophical anthropology,'" (p. 94). 1J Sec lean Spcer and Elizabeth Fine, "What Ooes a Dog \-lave to do with Human il y'l: The Politics of H umanities Public Programming," paper presented at the 31 Glassie, pp. 1213.

Eastern COllllllunieation Association C onve nti o n, Ocean City. Md., 1983 . 32 Glassie, p. 14.

:13 " A Dialogic Criticism')" p. 14 "T hc I nterpretation 01' O ral and Ethnic Materials: Thc Ethical Dimcnsion ," Li/ cra//lri' in Perjim1!IIIlCe, 4 (April 1984), 94--97. 34 "A D ialogic Criticislll'l" p. 73.

1:) Bacon, p. 95. 35 Local Knvwledge, p. 48.

11, 1 lI;lve discussed " dialog ic;¡] jlcrl'llrrnancc" in the philoso ph ical context of the 36 Bacon , p. 94.

111l'"ri <.;~ PI' M artin Bubl:r. Mi kh;l il 13; ,\"h lin , "nd Wallacc Baco n in " Pe rformance 37 G lassie, p. 12.

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52 P E R FO RM AN C E S C IE N CE M;cha! M. !vlcCall am! Ho ward S. Becker Sourcc: Social "roh/en!s 37( 1) (1 <)')0): 117 132.

Performance seience is a new wa y of prescnting the results of fieldwork research. 'lhe pe rformance mode creatcs problems o f syntax and inte rpretation, but has correspo nding advant ages. including narrat iv ity and mullivoea lity. We illustrate these prob lems and advantages wilh examples from ou,r sludy orthe social organization 01' professional lheatre in the United Statcs, and \Ve urge ficldworkcrs studying other subjecl mallers to expcri ment with the performance mode .

Prologue MICHAL: We should probably explain that th is script was written for and first performed at a confercnce, called "Editin g Rea lity: A Symposium on the Construction of Social Truth ," that Bruce Jackson and D ia ne Christian organized and hosted at the State University of New York at Buffalo on the weekend of Septembcr 24 and 25 , 1988 . HOWIE: We also nccd to say this script is a methodological piece. It refers to other scripts and papers that contain some ofthe findings of our theatre research, but it's about performance sciencc, not theatre . 1

MICHAL: Saying that underscorcs one ofthe points we want to make: vve don't think performance science scripts have to be about theatre. We hope other field workers, who study other eollective activities, will explore this new formo HOW1 E: An d p uUing It In the context of Bruce and Di ane's conference under scores anot her r oin t: a pcrrOllllancc sci ence script is ed ited every bit as

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M I('II A L: A nd telling sto ries is very mllch an ad of editing. What wa s it Hayden White ~ai ú'! Narrati ve " is prodllctive 01' meaning by its imposition o f a ccrlain formal coherence on él virtual chaos of cven ls, which in themselves ((lr as given to perception) eannot be said to possess any particular form at all, mUL:h less the kind that we associate with 'stories'. "2 IIOWIE: But our script isn ' tjust a story, any more than a real play is like a novel , It depends more on dialogue than on the narrator's voice. Several other pcoplc at the conference told stories. Our piece \Vas different beca use it was written and performed as a dialogue. That's what performance science does best: il shows US, talking aboul what we're doing, constrllcling inter pretations as well as data. MICHAL: \t's bcen more than ayear since we wrote this script. Since then , you've taught a course ealled " Performance and Social Seience," with Dwight Conquergood, and ('ve read more feminist theory and criticism o What wOllld you say about performance sciencc, now, that you didn't or couldn ' t say when we wrote it? HOWIE: One thing ('ve certainly learned is how appropriate performance science is to a wide variety 01' subject matters. Students in that cJass performed materials as vario LIS as the situation ofhomeless people and the activities 01' the Charles Manson gang, as well as portions 01' Kai Erikson's El'ery/hil1g In lIs Palh' and Diane Va ughn 's U/1(:ouplil1g 4 They devised very inventive solutions to the problems 01' performing those differing texts. MI C II AL: I might say something more, or different , about textual politics. On the one hand. Dorothy Smith's argument is very convincing, that the isslle isn ' t how mueh voiee informants have in our texts, it 's ho\V much \Ve add to their understanding of the extraloeal determinants of their experience lhrou gh (lur sociological investigations. ' On the other hand , 1 Ii ke it that pCrrOml
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1I0WIL No scnse tal king abo ut what \Vl: might have done dilTerently, if \Ve knew thc n what we know now. This script. li ke all intellectual work, has some rough edges. Let's just let them sh ow ,

( Al a Iypical academic ("ol1/erence. in Ihefrol11 o/a lypical meeling room, is a dais, raised ahoul Ilvoleel ahove Ihe/loor. /1I Ihe hack (~/ lhe dais sils (f lah/e, wilh lwo dwjrs behilld il. a skirl on lhe F0l11 oI il. and (l chair al eilher end. There are podia al hOlh./i"IJ/l1 comer.\' o/lhe dais. HO WIE ami M I CHAL sil in Ihe chairs hehind ¡he lahle. preparing lO presen l lheir papel'. HO ~VlE sils .I'tage righl, MJCl-I AL slage leji. Each holds a copy of lhe scripl. HO W IE remolles a papel' clip F om his paper, takes a \VCl/eh Fom his pockel and pulS ii on lhe lah/e in/i'onl oJhim, 0/1(1 begil7s. M/C HAL appears lo take noles as HO rV/E .\peak.s. In lhis./irsl section, they address lhe audience direc/ly. When /101 .I'peaking, Ihey look clown al [h e paper.\' they hold. )

HOWIE: For the last t\Vo years, we have, witb Lori Monis, been studying the careers oftheatre peopJe and the social organization oftheatrical commun ities in the United States. We've interviewed, observed anu participated. one way and another, in those communities in the San f"rancisco Bay Area. MICHAL: The Twin Cities. HOWIE: And C hicago. MICH A L: For the last year, we've been experimenting wi th a new way of presenting the results of that research. HOWIE: New to us , although the ideas certainly aren't new to theatrc peoplc. MICHAL: We call what \Ve' ve been doin g " performance science ." That 's partly a joke. HOW I E: ( Parc/ll!7 elically) People who know abollt per fo rmance art get the joke, but not many sociologists do. MICHAL: And partly serio LIS, becallse \Ve do think that our rescarch is some kind of science. HOWI E: ( ro M/CHAL) A1thollgh it 's not clear th a t many other sociolo gi sts will think so. ( TI! (/11 dirm ce ) Tho first text we pe rformed wasn't m uch di l'fi::rent from a convcntio na \ sdwhu·ly paper, th0ugh the way we presen ted it "vas ullusual. 1<'; 1

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M I('II A L: Oi¡ (/udience) 'fhink orthe theatre as an industry whose product is plays. 'fhe intl ustry is located , like all industries, in particular places- in c.oIl1IllUnilies, both local and nationaI. 'fhe major shift in American theatre in Ihe last fort y yea rs or so, has been rrom a highly centralized national system ccntered in Ncw York to a system in which theatre is ereated in a network 01' regional theatre eommuni ties. We have been stlldying those communities. HOWI E: (To audience) We' ve llscd some simple ideas 10 organize our inter vicws, observa tions , and arohivalmaterials. Communilies, roughly defined as lhe arca in which you can work and still get home every night , contajn pools o(resources needed to make thealre: actors, directors, technieal workers, and administralive personncl ; spaces in whieh plays can be performed; and audi ences. Produclions bring those resources together in various combinations, creating cooperalive arrangements in which plays get put on and prescnted to lhe public. Ollr problem is: how do prodllcing organizations draw those rcsources from lhe community's pool to produce the performances ,....e see? ( I-IOWIE walks lo c/U/ir, slage righl , and sils down. ) MICHAL: ( Al l/¡e podium, slage le.fl , oddressing lhe (ludien ce) YOl! can create the whole organization anew for eaeh produetion, as was done in Broadway's heyday. ( She lurns /O look al HOWJE) Aeeording to a theatre historian: HOWIE: (Slulis lo lhealre hislorian voiee, slroking an imaginar)' heard once or IlI'ice) "Producing a Broadway play was an ad hoe operation. A producer got a likely script from an author or agent and eontracted to put it on. He thcn raised the necessary money; hired a director, aetors, and staff(designers, prcss agent , etc.); rented a theatrc; and oversaw the preparations. 'fhe dir ector and actors rehearsed in rentcd halls while the set was being built by a carpentry firm and the eostumes were created or supplied by a costume company. When the show was ready it went on an out-of-town tour, on a circuit that lIsually inc1uded Philadelphia, Boston , ami New Haven , to be testcd in front uf audienees and revised ir neeessary. 'fhen it opened in New York. \Vas revic\Ved, a lld either c10sed in disgraee or ran for a while. 'fhe weekly operat in g surrlus -lhe a mo unt by whil.:h tickt:l sales exceeded ru nning COSls (rent, salaries. etc.) was rellllTléd 10 lite investors lllllil they were r aid and lhen

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( Both adc/res.\" I he audiente in this seel ion; IVhen nol speaking, lhey /01101\1 in their scripls. ) HOWIE: Like most scholarIy reports of ethnographie research. this piece contained both our voiees and words as researchers, and the voiees and words 01' lhe people we'd interviewed . And iJl that piece it was casy to tell which was which: ( he poinls lo the podia) sociologists stood, informants and others we quoted sal. MICHA L: But in most scholarly rep orts, the researcher's voiee domin a tes. HOWIE: We only hear the informants' words through the flIter of the aea demie interpretation. MICHAL: We wanted to give the people who talked to us more "voice," let them be heard more fulIy , \Vith less intervention by uS. HOWIE: We aIso wanted to use more theatrical techniques, so our seeond script started without any sociology talk , each of us giving voiee to someone we had interviewcd: Lori in Chicago, Micha'l in the 'fwin Cities, and Howie in San Francisco.

( They stand. H O WIE moves lO a .SpOi right o/center and do wnstage. M ICHAL mOlles lo (f SpOl upslage ami cenler. She stand.'i wil/¡ her back /0 lhe audience. He looks direclly al Ihe audience as he speaks. ) HOWIE: Everyonc says Chicago is so hot now. Well, it's beeause 01' the non ·Equity theatres. Steppenwolf and Rcmains were non-Equity. When they gol big they were foreed to go Eqllity. Organic was non-Equity. Chicago is a succcss because 01' the non-Eqllity theatres where they Ila ....e a chance to do intercsting stuff. ... Lots of times peopIe say there are so many theatres that audiences are goin g to start dropping off but 1 don't thin k it's true. 1 think it helps. not hurls . O nce a pcrson comes lo a theatre the tludien ce wilI be cxpanded and thcy ' lI come aga in .

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M I( ' IIAI ,: Minnca polis-St. Palll \Vas a very fal thcalrc lown in 1975. Therc wa,~ a gllod crowJ fü r everylhing. People went to see cverylhing, gooJ or bad. Th i~ Illyally l ( ) cxperimentalion was Jestroyed by the cost of tiekets anJ by lhe audiencc perception lhat they ha ve less disposable ineo me than they IIscd lo have, Really. a twenty-dollar lieket today is no more ex pensive, as a pcrcentage 01' income, than a five dollar ticket was then, But to most people, it"s still twenty bucks and they think twice about spending it.

( When .I'he jinishes speaking, M ICHAL lUrns her back LO audience again. ,.. ·. imu/laneous/y, IlOW/E lurn.\', shaking his head, und addresses Ihe audience di/'eclly. ) IIOWIE: Casting really is a problom. San Francisco has a problem that \vc share with a lot of other smaller centers, sma1\er cities , \Vhich is that \Ve have a lot of talented, really fine younger actors. Twenty to twenty-five , no prob lem, a lot of really good people. Twenty-five to early thirties, thirties and forties. beyond that- the farther you go the harder it gets to flnd competent people. There arc just fewer and fewer peop1e of real skill the older they are. Tho reasons for that are obvious. lt 's a hard lifc, being an actor. People don't stick with it. They quit. As lhey get older and begin to develop aduIt attitudes and responsibilities, they find something else to do. They'l1 only stay with it for company work, where they're part of a company that gives them steady work. That's one ofthe things that's ACT's real strength, that group of l'e(1)y highly skilled older men they have. That's price1ess.

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I IOW IE: Ilaving youl' o\Yn spa<.:e is really crucial , isn 't it, in establishing who you are? MIC HA L: It is, yes, Three other groups use the same two lheatres we use, ['ve had peoplc say to me thal they're not sure, but they think they've seen oul' wol'k hecause they always go lo plays in those two theatres. A udiences don't pay any attention to who is producing. They just know the space. So it really is hard . HOWIE: Is it ha rd to schedule the spaces you use? Because so many thea tres use them? MICHAL: It is. They hook way in advance. One books in March for the next calendar year, and the other books in December for the follo w ing thcatre season. And , of course, they' re ve ry different spaces. What works in the big one won't \York in the small one. Our last show would never have \Yorked in the small theatre. So you have to know what you ' rc doing and when you can get the space and which things will work in each space, and \York all that out, too , Ideally, YOll'd have your o\Yn space 01' spa<.:e yo u rented year round. But that's hard, too . It's hard to afford lhat \Vhen you only produce three or four times ayear. And you 'd still have the problclll of drawing an audience to a ne\\' space. And if it 's a warehouse 01' store-front you sti11 have the size problem. And then , ir you rent it out to other gl'oups in betwcen , you still have problems with schcduling. And bcsides, then yOll have to "ma nage" lhe space and that's not really why you- why we- got into this in thc first place.

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M ICHAL: That opening go t people's attention. It makes it clear there's a slory here.

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HOWIE: YOl! can see that a 101 of data gets communicated. MICHAL: The sele<.:tion and arrangcment of the stories cmbodies a rudi mentary analysis.

H O W IE: These pieces. HOWIE: Maybe as much as anyone reaUy needs. M IC IIA L: You can scc ho\Y theatrical conventions \Yere getting to wa y we call them pieces. mther than papers or articles.

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IIOW I E: Ik sidc!i, we rCIll t.: llloc rcu that Ervi ng U olfl1lán. il! his dassic paper 0 11 "T hc Lcctllre," ~pec itkally forbade professo rs and similar typcs to per rOnl1. ( JI" sils up slraighl and .\peaks in an academic slyle) " [A speaker who attelllpls lo perrQnn] and succecd s. should have come to the occasion dressed in tights, carrying a lute. lIe who attempts such evasion and fails- as is likely- is jusI a plain schmuck, and it would be better if he had not come to lhe occasion at al\." MIC HAL: ( Looking allhe ((udie/1ce . she ges/Ures lO 110WIE.) Never mind Goffman. We knew, from the flrst time \Ve did it, that performing our work was a real improvement over reading sc holarly papen; aloud. IIOW IE: Of course, performing does create some new problems. M ICHAL: We needed a performance syntax our audiences could under stand as easily as they understand the syntax of sehoJarly papers, whether written or read aloud. HOWIE: For instance, written papers havc headings, which say "This text has parts and now we' re in the next one. " Headings tell you where yOll are in the argument that's being constructed. MICHAL: In written form., this paper would have a heading saying "Part 11 starts right here."

M IC HAL: We solved the problem al10therway in oursecond pieee, by letting eaeh of us be the sociologist for a third of the piece, and seating that person in the weakest position 011 stage. ( Sils in staf{e /eji chair ) Sitting here, stage left , puts me in a relativcly weak position, because audiences more ar less automatically look to their left- stage right- maybe beca use we read from left to right. HOWI.E: ( To audien ce, silling in ¡he chair upslage, cenler ) Siuing upstage of others makes you the foeus of audience attention , because other:; on stage have to turn their backs to the audience when they talk to you. (M/CHAL lurns lo /ook al HO WJE. He poinls lo her.) When they do that, they " upstage" themselves, meaning they lose the focus of audience attention . MICHAL: ( L ookillg oullo Ihe audiellce ) If we do a bit of an interview seated this way. it automatically makes the informant more important than Ihe social scienee interviewer. ( Tul'/1s back I(J HOWIE) HOWIE: ( To audience) Other variations in placement, where we look, how we use our scripts, our tone of voice, amI so forth , also Jet you know when we ' re playing the part of an interviewer and when we' re commenting on the interview's content.

I IOWIE: ( To MICH AL) But how do you indicatea headingin a performance? MICHAL: ( To HOWIE) One of us could get up and say ( stand\' and says ) : "Act 11: Problems of Performing Social Science Texts." (Sil.\') ( ¡'Vhen .I'he suy.\' "Acl 1/: Prohlems of Perjórming Social Science Texl.\', " she ho/cI.\· UjJ ha .\'cripl so Ihullhe audiente can sec, Ivrillel1 olllhe hack ofil ill/arge J¡'llers, lhe lI'ords "Acl I1. ")

IIOWI E: ( To oudience) We' ve found a lot of similar problems. We already mentioned one: how do we indieate that the people we interviewed, as opposed lo the aulhors, are talking? Typographically, you indent the quoted material.

MICHAL: ( Turns loIace audience) You can ' t do theatre wit hout a place to perfonn. A nd a space is more than a home, ies a large part of a theatre's identity. Each community's Iimited supply of spaces reflects the cconoll1ic ami political situation of its city. Competing with other thcatres for a home takes a lot of time and effort. And not all spaces suit a theatre's way of working. The space you flnd Iimits the work you can do in it. ( Tul'I1.1' 10 HOWIE, as i/inlerl'ie willg lIil11 ) What are you looking for'? HOWIE: ( To MICHAL ) We 'd like to find someplace, you know. about two hundred and fifty seats. The main thing is that it has to be a flexible space, we have to be able to rearrange it for different shows, \Ve don't want a place where we' re locked into a proscenium stage.

M I('IIAL: Or ~impl y an nou nc(; il: " As one director told us. " We solved that Jlwh lcm lhe firsl li mi! in tlli! way wc showeu yo u, by crealing a visual ana I~)guc lo inJcnluliot l in t lll' sl lIl'illlt slll: iologi:;ts stoou . inl'ofln: ll lIs <;111.

M IC II AL: (To 1I0IVIE) I l10ticed that sOl1l eone has taken over that old movic thcntre tha t ck)scd.

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110\\ 11: : ( 111 MIC/l AL) Ves, lhaCs the kind ofplace we' re looking fOL We ha v!.: .1 cornl1l iUec 01' the Board looking, and we're all nosing around. In facl. \\'\,' h,IVC a cIltlple 01' places that we're really interested in, one in pa rticular Ihal 1 thi n k is going lo work out. We need to have our own place an yway, hccallsc 110 one knows where we are and audiences get attaehed to places as 111111'11 as thcy do lo thcatres.

M IClIA L: Meaning that he had thought it rnight be Cun , or at least no worsc than a minor irritation , but now realizes it's a real pain. IIOWI E: And having done that, L lost my innocence forever. Frorn then on, 1 knew··- could never forget- that whether I cmphasized "casting," " real1y is," or " problem ," wheth er I thought about it or not , the choice was not " natural " and obvious. It was a real choice that 1 could have made some other wa y. And I real ized what theatre people meant when they spoke to us of " making choices."

MI< 'I I/\L: ( To J/OWIE) What's the place you think is going to happen? 111 )\-\ 11:: ( To MJCH AL ) There's a real estate developer ' ....ho's got a building tll. l t . IlIst right for us. See, the problem is that you can find these buildings but VII II h.1VC lo put a lot ofmoney into them to rnake them suitable for a theatre. IIl'( 111 ,c cssentia lIy these buildings are just empty shells, a lot ofthem you'd have In I'"í hcut and c1ectricity and plumbing in, there's nothing there, so it gets to 1", .1 , y cxpensive business. This developer is willing to spend some money 111 1 11 111 1llsc1L put all that stuff in and we 'd just be responsible for the seating :11111 11" thcatricallights and stufflike that. So it would be a good deal for us o

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¡lItCI' " lIIg problem that performing our text makes inescapable. That's what hllP IIl'II" when you read something aloud. (h e nex f exchallge, H O WJE say.\' his /ines Ivifholl( paying allen (ioll (u lvflCHAL. She, in turn. commenfs 0/1 what he says as fhough he can'¡ 1/('1/1' lIt '/", She speaks (o Lhe audience, but sfands sideways II'(/ (ching HOWIE II'/¡(,// IIr' speaks. ) ( '/ /¡/'IIlIg IUItIf

IIOWI E: As I was preparing for one of our performances, 1 decided to read one 01' 111 Yspeeches aloud to m yself. l hadn ' t done that before. I was probably worryillg about how my voice so unded . I suddenly remembered something cvcryll llc learns as a kid·- that you can a lter the meaning of a scntence by chal1)'llI g which word you emphasize. So I said, talking out loud to mysclf, "('/\ S I ING rcally is a problem. " 1\ 111 '11 \ L: Mea ning that casting is a problelll rathcr than sorne other things Ih ., 1IIIEht bc problems, li ke fi nding a g()od script to do.

1I0WIF: Then I said ,

' THs ti m~

R¡:',\I LV ISa r roblcm." I t", ~~

M IC HAL: ( Wa/k,\'. during this speech, 10 the stage {eji chair. HOWIE ge fs il1fO roho t pose.) When you write something- for a silent reader in sorne other place and timc- you don ' t have to decide which o rthose several things you or your informant meant by saying that casting really was a problem. The reader decides that from dues in the context, or however they decide it. Reading the sentence aloud forces you to choose an interpretation. You have to decide what this speech mean s, NOW. HOWIE: (Looking al the audience. HO WIE speaks in a robot- /ike voice, Ivilh no emphasis al al/. ) Because not emphasizing any \Vord would, of coursc, be a very scrious intcrpretation too . (To the audience, again ~peaki/1[( na(ural/y) Maybe thal's why people read their papers in that dry , uninflected \Vay. So they won't have to decide what they really mean . (Again, they ade/ress th e audience direcl/y. Wlzen not .\peaking, they {ook (/1 thei,. scripfs.)

M ICH AL: Thinking througlt the choices of emphasis, intonation , and pace leads you to a deeper understanding of the text. Decidin g what caeh sentence means inevitably shapcs the larger meaning of thc content. HOWIE: Decidin g to say "Casti ng rea1ly is a PROBL EM" means deciding that what's important is that this guy thought he didn 't have to \Vony about casting and now finds that he does. That implies that some theatres can't get the actors they want to work with them. That leads to the analysis of the stratiflcation ofthe theatrc commllnity, how some theatres have rnore money , longer seasons and better reputations, and so are more attractive to desirable actors. M IC HAL: PcrCo rmi ng the tcxt becamc a way 01' unde rstandíng the sub slance 01' what wc wer\! sa ying,

I 'i \)

JlI Il I41I{~ j AN I~ ' 1

HOW IE: (Pare/II//('Iim lfl') I ".: II'I\: Il~lItics, \Ve're (\lId, 1I1110 lll a ll y Iderrcd lo the practice 01' reading Bi blical passag~ aloud to gel a t1ec pcr umkrstanding 01' their meaning. M I( 'IIAL: Since we had heen studying theatre , thcre was a special payoff: hl.'l.:allsc WE were performing, putting some kind ofshow on stage, we hegan lo lInderstand what lhe people we had been íntervicwíng realIy were doíng wllen TI-! T::Y put a show on stage. IIO W IL: We can see no\\' that the pcrformanccs needn 't be about theatre. It ad ll;¡lIy Icds Iike \Ve have two resea rch projects going- one about theatre ('Ollllll ullíties and one about thís way ofpresenting results: perfo rmance science. MI Cl IAL: We started doing performance scíence for runo T had written a papel', lIsing Howíe's data on San Francisco and Lorí 's 011 Chícago as \Vell as Ill y OWIl on the Twín Citíes. llisted them as co-authors and called it " Lookíng !'t u Work : Routine and Heroic Efforts to Find Work in the Amerícan Theatre." II()WI E: ( ro auelience. conJidenl ia/(y) 1 think we're getting into the next par!. ( Sland.\· ({nd ho/els his scripl so lhat Ihe audience can see, wriUen on (h e !J¡¡/"k olil in large /ellers, lh e )lJords "Acl Il!. ") " Act 111 : Some Ad vantages of I'crforming Socíal Science Texts. " (SilS) "vlleIIAL: ( To audience) One day, I was talking about it to Howíe on the ldcphonc. ( FI/I'.\' Il/m ami (,/'OS.I· their /egs alv({Y.rro!n each olher, in unison, ami ho/d ill/(/ginar\! lelep/lOlle receivers lo their ears. MICHA L ho/ds her imaginary Ilhol/l' in her lefi hand: HO WIE hohll' his in his righl //{/nd. As (h ey la/k Ihey loo/.. inlo Ihe middle distance. as illislening lo each Ol/ter. )

M 1<'IIAL: You know what wOllld be fun ') IIOW I E: What') MI<' IIAI.: Ir all three of us read this paper. You cOllld rcad all the men's vllic\:s, Lorí could read all the women's voices and I cOllld read the sociology. I IOWI E:

(A slC/lement. !lol

C/

Ilueslio/1 ) You mean like a staged reading.

M WIIA L: Wdl, thal 's nol whal I mcant. But, yes, I guess it wOllld be líke a ~ Iilgcd

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IIOWI E: ( ro (/lIdi('I/('I ) 111 lhe Clld, she read thal papel' alonc. Il ll1 later I pllt it togcther with a pa pe l' 1,00i had writtell and madc él scripl, which all three o f us read- l should say " perfórmcd "- at a conferellce on art a nó social theOl a month later. ( TurnínlJ lo M I CHA L ) It is fun. (Duril1g Ihe /lex! sectio/1, lh ey lum and la/k

lO

each other, as ifin con versa 1íon. )

MICHAL: Fun and .. . energizing. I feel energízed after a performance. lt's a high! HOW IE: Tt ís. Maybe because it takcs so much concentratíon. You have to focus. Not think about anything elsc while you 're doing the performance. J ust tryíng to do it righ í- not miss atine or trip over your tongue. Trying to read it so the mcaníng ís clear. MIC HA L: And you don't thin k about the audíence. Don't look at them to see ifthey' re convínced. Don' t look around to see who 's there. HOWI E: There are no distractions. You don 't have to sit there on the platform with nOlhín g to do whíle others read their papers. MICHAL: Sinee \Ve ' ve started performíng, ¡'ve been watchin g regular con vention sessions more dosely . The other speakers , and th e session orga nizer, and the discussants .. . (hey aU act like they're backstage while other people are speaking, like the a udience can' t see them . HOWI E: In a performance, you know you ' re on stage, that cvery word and gesture will he taken to mean somethíng. MICHAL: Performing really FEELS dífferent from readíng a paper. Yo u feel like you are the informant, like you're havi ng the experiences they' ve descríbed. HOWI E: Yeah, like you really are the actress who found hersclf out of work. (MI C H A L lurns lo address lhe audience. H O WI E !ooks down al hi.l' scripl. ) M ICIIA L: Our theatre has gotten top heavy , there ís too much adminístra

lion. As a result. artistíc decísions are predicated on financial consíderations, on lhe necessity of keeping rhe in stitlltion going. /t 's someLhing that I am reall y UpSel a boLlt becall~e now il has affected me personal ly. Thcy had a reaIly wonJ erful play lhat was g~)i n g lo be done ... a bri ll iant, wonderful play. It w a ~ :il:hcd lllcJ rOl" la ln lhío; sc,,~o n ami I \Vas casI ín il. No\\! thcy' vc cancellcd 1(;1

SI 11 "1("1 ¡\N ll o.;IW I I\ •• ,St' IINI' 1

\Vdl . 11a.·>, didn , ( ,ll ll'l·l lt . illl'y pO'i lpllJH:d II 1111 111 u n l y~'ill IlIsll'ad Ihey 1 ;11\' d l 11l1:' n Iwo d w nu:lc' show :l lId il looks Ir!- \.! Ihc olhc, aclress in the l'lllll rany is go ing lo ge l ti!\! W(lIllall 'S par!
( 1/1 Ihe / /{! X( se('lio/1, {hey address Ih e (fudience direclly. When nOI speaking, Ihey loo/( dOl\'n (fl fheir s('ripls.)

I' IlHFlllt~I .\NC:' 1

IIOWI L Ami mosl 01" Ihe li me 11 '(' played inlervicwcrs, 110t an
IIOWIE: Afler our performance at the national sociology meetings, a friend said that our performance was "dense with information. " MICHAL: He said, " 1 felt like I learned a lot. Usually when you come out of a session, you haven 't lea rned anything." IIOWIE: Maybe that's beca use we start with fieldwork data. After alJ, the goal of fieldwork is to learn everything about what you 're studying. So the information is always denser. It's not just associations between variables, significant or not. MICHAL: ( To H OWIE) I suppose. How would you perform that other kind of paper'! How do you playa statistical table?

S('IEN t'I '

[n

postmodern terms: we've "deprivileged" the analyst.

MICHAL: In other terms, too. By turning the analysts into characters in a script. we made them less authoritative, easier to argue with , especially since we gavc them several voiees and let them disagree with eaeh other. HOWIE: A script is more story-like, less like an argument. You can't pi n down the meaning as mucho When you build an argument, you try to eover all the bases, answer all the questi ons that might eome up. Ifyou do it right, there aren't any questions. M ICHAL: We gel lots of questions after a performance. And not the obligal ory question s tha t mean: "1 know we'fe supposed to have a discussion, now, and somebody has to say something."

IIOWIE: ( To MICHA L) Maybe in music. Like Tom Lehrel". You could sing multiple regressions. ( SIarls lo sing so/Uy, 10 Ihe /Une ollhe Mozar/ "Eine K!eine Na('hll11us;k") The beta weight is three point four six eight. ( Gefling !ouda am! evel1lual!y ('(frried (fIJ!(lY) The beta weight is three point four six eight!

HOWIE: Or: " I'm going to show offhow much I know about this subject or how welll know the spel:Lkers." ( To M ICHAL ) People in the audience want to talk about the Il1caning of what they've just experienced.

MICHAL: (To IlO WJE) Howie! ( To audiel1ce) A performance also feels dense beca use there are so many voices.

MICHAL: The question and answer period is my favorite parto 1 think ] do Ihe performances just to get to the questions.

( IIgain Ihey addres.\" fhe audien('C' a/1(! !ook d()}j'n al Ihe;r seriplo\" when /he.Ji (/ren '1 spe'aking. )

HOWIE: You know what surprises me? AlI the questions we get aboLlt fieldwork and interviewing.

IIOWI E: It's whal Ba khlin called " rnultivocal. "

M IC HAL: I know. 1\11 those people who wanted 10 use copies orthe script to 1l:
MICIIAL: T hc !Ulalys t\ vn i ~'~'

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(In (he l1exl see/ion, /he)' .l'peak /() each olher, as il in col1l'CI"salion.)

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M 1(.'1 lA 1.: "( 'o lkg\! 1'1Il!c....., ¡1I • II ()W l c : " A re you plannin g lo Vl)tc in thc coming clection'?" MICII!\ L: " I)on 't know! "

( Agaill. l!ter ac/c/ress Ihe al/dil'IIC(' wul/i¡/I01r Iheir scripls Iv{¡en nol ,Ip eaking.)

M IClIA L: Pcrlo rming social scicncc also makes the resea rch process more visihh:, more alive to the audiencc. Bruno Latour might say that we "opened lhc black box of interviewin g. " We Jet th e in tcrviewing show.

(IlOWIE. rehulled, /oob down , fll /'/1S lo/a ce upslage. lh en Sil S il! c/wir t/pslage cenler. A-JICH AL is SIW sealed in ellair do wnswgc ¡eji. ) MI C J-IAL: ( To audience) Anyol1e \Vh o has done interview in g in th e fie1d know:s that a good in te rview is mueh more of a conve rsation than that.

II O W IC: We admit ... J-1 0WIE: (To lit/dience) Instcad of following the printed questions on a schedule, we ask for just ificatio ns.

M ICHAL: Even insist ... IIOWI E: That social science grows out of people talking to people, being with other peopIc, hearing, listening. interpreting. making somethin g out of it all.

M ICH AL: Use o ur person al knowledge of what 's being di scussed.

MICHAL: That the meanin g of\Vhat we hear isn' t obvious,

( Tltey lurn loward caeh olher (/m/ reenacl (/n inler vielV. HOWlE is lhe inJimnanl. )

01'

given,

J-10WI E: That the data are constructed . When yo u read someone 's \Vords, other people hear that person 's voice , in the words. The voices start to be reall pcople , to exist independent of what yOll say a bout them . MICHAL: The audience knows they a ren ' t listening to the real person who actually said what's being read. They know thcy're li stenin g to us read what someonc else said, as we wrote it down. They see our bodies a nd know they're not the bodi es of the r ea l speakers. So the constructed character of the data is obvio LIS . IIOWI E: They also see that the interviewing fieldworkers do isn ' t like survey interviewin g. Ethnographic interviewers don 't do this: ( He .l'tand.I' {1m/ hu/d.I: his scripl up /ike a c/ipboard ond prelend.l' lo read Ih e I/Ueslionsji'Oll1 il and wrile l/le ansJllers dOJlln. During Ihis I'xc/lIlllge. he keeps advancing 100\'(/rd Al lCH A L. a slep lVilh each queslion, hecoming more (t/1(/II/Ore domineering: )vl¡CHAL resisls his dominalion , 17101'1' (lml more, as she al1.l'Jl'ers, )

IIOWII ':: " Name?" MIClIAL: "Michal MeCal!. " IIOWI E: "O(,;cu rut ion'!"

1/;.'

J-1 0 WI E: Offer our o wn thoughts, opinions and mcm ories.

MI CH A L: Where did you have the theatre then? HOWI E: lt \Vas in a basement on 16th SU·cet. the building where T heatre Rhinoceros is now, you kno\V that building? MICHAL: Yeah. Ho w ma ny people that did that seat? HOWIE: Forty-nine peopl e. At least that's a ll that the fire marshal would let us have in there. MICJ-IAL: Oid you stay in that space after the first season? HO WIE: No , \Ve moved . The city had a building th a t they wallted to tear down. But it had be come a sort of artists' han go ut: artists lived and wo rked there, and th e Mayor did no t want to provoke anything there because the re \Vas an election comin g up . You know , tihe is pretty sharp about public rclations. So there was a nice vacant space in there, that wa s just right for a theatre, so \Ve got that and built ourselves another theatre inside there... , We were only sllpposed to have fift y seats according to the fire marshal. but we could :-.q ueeze in another couple ofTows and get it up to seventy 0 1' so. But the tim e fina lly came I glless the election was over- when they were going to leal' uow n the b uiklinp. Wc hall I'ril.!l1 tb a t C'ity Ha ll. we knew when they were 1(,'1

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MI( ' I IA I. . Wllcn: d itl you go ('rom thcre? IIOW I F: We rnund a rcally great space, in the basement of a church. MI( 'IIAL: Ilow big was it'? I IOWI E: Tlla t was fi fty seats too. Actually, we c ou ld get a lo! mo re than Ihal in. T he tire marshal said we could only have fift y. B ul we co uld put in a I:I)¡¡pk nI' c'\t ra rows, it was pretty easy. MI< 'IIAL: Ilow did you get away with that'? You know what happened tlIe Eureka. ( Speaking, orer her shoulder, 10 audience ) The E ureka TIIl'aln:'s space had been dosed down by the Fire Marshal for fire code viola 1j, IIIS. ( ....,'/¡e s(oI1d.\' u/UI, pacing (he stage rig/¡l and le/t, reuds as i/ quoling./i·um (/¡" code. ) "To hold more than fifty persons in San Francisco, including pCrrOnlli:rS and erew as well as audience for a play, a room must have two l'x its ora certain width , equipped with approved panic hardware and opening olllwanL more than a certain percentage 01' the cin.:umference from eaeh lit lIer." l' 1

fin lt 1\1¡\ N I ' I~T' I I ' N I

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II OW I F: 1 kilO\\' what he 1Il\!;1Il 1. ( fll ' Imlkl' /11 (I/(' 1){)¡{iulII, stagl' righ(, (/s he (alk.\'.) 0 11 my way lo a pl' rl onnance. I walked past a room wherc lhey were having a regular session. T here were maybe six people in a room set up for a hundred. Sorne poor guy was standing at the podium , sayi ng: " None ofthese associations were significant at the .05 leve! , but they wcre all in the same direction , so we are entitlcd to condude that .. . " r didn 't wait fo r the con dusion. He didn't sound like he cared and 1 eertainly didn't. MICHAL: (She walks (O (he podium, s tage le.fi, as she talks. ) Not all our reviews our raves. Al lhe national meelings, someone a'iked , "As long as you've gone this far , why aren't you in costume? Why don't you memorize your lines'?" HOWIE: ( Tu aL/dience) Our answer was : Wh y not? MICH AL: ( To audien ce) Or, rather, "That sounds like a good idea. W hy don't y ou do that?" (They continue lo address the audience, looking dowll al their scripts when tlzey are not .~peaking) HOWIE: We used this " performance" form to report our results because it suited the conlent and the collaborative nature of our theatre study , and beca use it was what we felt comfortable doing on slage, all 01' which would differ from project to projcct.

11< )WI E: ( To Al/CHAL, \Vho turns and sits, in sta}?e le./! chair, as if'resuming ill(('rl'iew) Don ' t forget that we were in a church . The very first time the marshal carne to give us a hard time, 1 just ealled the minister and told him what had happened , and he called up the fire marshal and said. "Are you darillg lo come into the House 01' the Lord and bother His Servants'?" And IlIal was it , we never saw 01' heard from the fire marshal again .

MICHAL: We certainly aren't the only peop\c to perform social science textS. Victor Turner did it, and entered into a fruitful collaboration with Richard Schechner, in performance studies. And other people in perform ance studies, like Dwight Conquergood , do fieldwork in order to produce texts they can perform.

MI ell AL: (A s she (urns slowly (o (he audience, JJ O W /E more.l· lo the stage rig/¡( ('¡/l/ir. ) That gives you sorne idea of what we actually did in our re

HOWIE: The Iiteralure on chamber theatre or readers' theatre had a lot 01' c1ues for us on what \Ve were trying lo accomplish and ho\\' we might go about it. Writing on the rhetoric 01' scientific communication taught us how arbitrary scholarly conventions 01' presentation are. These examples showed us how many choices of performance style and method there are.

(IU'

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and the basis for our generalizations.

11< )W I F: ( Tu audience ) Audiences experience a performance differently than Ilaving a paper read at them. Performances are more fun for them. And lhey briJ1!:'. sorne vitality back into telling about your work.

MICHAL: So') \Vhy not? Why not have coslumes? Why nol do musicals? Or standup sociology?

MICI IAL: ( To (/l/dicm'e) A friend says that we may have found a solution lhe problem 01' "aJien
HO W IE: W hy not? As long as we' re editing reality into a communicable form a nyway, it's onl y a ques li o n of what th a t fo rm is. Pe rformance formats ought lO makc cverytllll! rcalizc il made us see il- how much we take for gran lcd when we writc or n:ad 01' hea r ~Qnvcn t iona l scholarly papers.

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53

IIO W II ;' rile uOlll il1i1nt.:c. 01' tlle alla lvt ic voicl).

M 1<.' 11 A L: Il!.llorillg Ihe ridmess 01' mood anJ ell1 olioll. II () WIF: Iliding the

1~lcts

01' f1eldwork.

M I( 'I-IA L: Bei ng alienated from our o",n work.

TH E E FF I CAC Y O F

PE R FOR M ANCE SCIENCE

Comment on McCall and Becker

IIOWI E: Since \Ve are always editing reality, \ve might as \Vell experiment.

R ichard A. Hilberl

( rile.\' !oo!c al N/eh o/her. walk lo Ihe cenIa oi' lhe stage. join hanc{I', (I/l(1 bOIl!. ) Sourcc: Social Proh!em,

~7(1)

(1990): 133 - 1l5 .

Notes We refer to two earlier performance pieces in this text. " Local Theatriea! Commull ities," by Micha! MeCall, Howard S. Becker, and Lori Morris, was first performed in October 1987, at thc Annual Conference on Social Theory and the Arts, in Albany, New York , and was subseqllently performed a t Northwestern University and at the Apri! 1988 mectings of tlle Midwest Socio!ogica ! Society in I'vlinneapolis, Minncsota. "Thcatres and Commllnities: Thrce Seenes." by Howard S. Becker, Micha! McCall , and Lori Morris (1989 , Social Problems 36:93- 1 )6) was first per fOfTncd at the AlIgust 1988 meetings of the Amcrican Sociological Society in Atlanta. Georgia. The text also rcfers 10 papers given at variolls meetings. Michal McCall prcsented "Looking for Work: Routine and Heroie Efforts to Find Work in the American Theatre," at th e A ugust 1987 meetings of the Society for the Study 01' Social Problems in Chicago, I1linois, and Lori Morris presented "Beyond the Casting COllch: Aetors and Directors Feeling Eaeh Other Out," at the April 1987 Illcdings of the Midwest SocioJogical Society. ., lIayden White, 1981. 'The Narrativisatioll 01' Real Events. " ln On Narralive. , ed. W. J. T. Mitchcll, 249- 51. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Kai T. Erikson , 1976. Everylhing 1/1 lIS Par/¡: Deslruc:lio/1 o! ('ornmunil)' in Ihe

IJllf/álo Creek Ffood. New Yo rk: Simoll & Schuster.

,1 Dianc Vaughn , 1986. Uncoupling: 7'1I1'11ing Poinls in Inti/l1(/le Relaliollsllip.l'. New York: Oxford Ulliversity Prcss. S J)orothy E. Smith, 1987. T/¡e El'eryday World As Problematic: A Femini.l'f Soóo lugv . Boston: Northeastcrn Univcrsity Press. (, .Iamcs Clifford, 1986. "On Ethnographie Allegory." .In Wrilillg Culture: T/¡e Poefics (/ml Po!ific.l' o/ Erl!nugr{/phy, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 98- 121. Ikrkelcy: University of California Press. 7 I'hc sflccch ofthe theatre historian is quoted fro m Gerald M. Berkowitz, 1982. Nell' IJro{/(hmys: 1'healre Across Alllerica. 1950 1980. Totowa , New Jersey: Rowman amI Littlcneld .

1111'\

Who but a spoiler would write critical commentary about McCall and Beckcr'sl engaging script? Whatever the conlent, a response paper in conventional prose seems to draw an audience right back into the sa me acadcmic lInder world that the authors are attempting to liberate us from . Therein líes my initial reluctancc to accept this assignmcnt: a eomment on " Performance Science" has to miss the point of the play going in. I could nat of course have known such reluctance had 1 not, in sOlne scnse or at some level, rcceived and appreciated tbe point of the play. Part of that point- that academic sociologists might loosen up a bit, take themselvcs Iess seriously, understand their own participatian in what they produce as know ledge, take a less pretentious altitude toward those they study, and through all of this improve the accuracy of their discipline--comes so c10se to my senliments as to exacerbate my initial reluctance: why pick on fun? This script is fun , no doubt, and it should clevate the Illood of the journal readership . 1 espeeially Iike its playful commentary about itsel!' as an example of the medium it recommends, inc1uding its use 01' this medium to discllss other cases of using it for the samc reasons the authors use it here. 1 am dclighted and grateful that there are sociologists 01' this caliber willing to engage in these kinds 01' projects. Nevertheless. there are some scrious issues embedded in this script that should be addressed . i\n initial irony is lhat these issues may not be as apparent in él performance ol' lhe playas they are in lhe script as a written docum ent, IH)W él p ublished documenl. 1 have nOl seen a performance. but frien us who ha ve suggcsl thaL I really need lo see it 10 gather its fu I! impact. T his is probahly so. a nd wcrc 1 11 ' galhcr ils l'ul1 impacL Ih e issues that emerge 1(í9

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IH \\1111 111\ lllllll 1I1I!' hl 1101 SCl'1Il ~:l'I III.¡( .11 ,111 I "¡ I V IlIis is ironil." tllL' illl thll f/; illplll' Un hel lall' 01' pel "()rll l all~'l' dlltlll!ay I,'vc n CIIJlI'lllllid IlIe lr v\!ry rcclillllllclldall llll hy suhllli!ling the Sl'ripl I~) a ¡ollllla!. Tlley J o no! arguc, ill lite scripl. tllat a plIblished seript has advantag\!s llver a pllblished arlid\!; in rael il f'ollows rrom \Vhat the authors say tha t the impact of their work will be lost in the l'Ommitmcnt to paper. This sl'ript is not, in othcr words, the IlIcdiulll the authors rel'ommend . Hence despite what the authors say concerning why performance is preferrcd over papers (including oral prcsentation), I am obliged by format to recast this script as a "paper any way:' albeit a highly innovative onc. It is this "paper anyway" to which J dircct my commcnts. !\nu so at risk of returning to academic pretensiom (but no citations, 1 proll1ise), I see the script encoll1passing two domains: sorne theo retical asser tions and sorne methodological recommendation s. There is also the sub stantive domain of the lheater research , but this is covered more in other plays which this script refers to and 'borrows from here and there. I want then to focus mainly on the theory and methodology of this piece. First, the theory. Since ethnograpbers invariably interpret and transform their data , we are told that an improved science would simply present the richness and detail 01' social life from the points-of-view of real Jife actors, making their life-worlds supreme, minimizing the role ofthe analyst. This is a view that surfaces in sociological work now and then, but it is an inl'orrect (anJ [ believe even anti-intellectual) view that goes nowhere ami l'annot provide a science. The view is frequently based on a crude understanding of phenomenology's interest in subjectivity, though phenomenologists them selves do not share the view . Nor is ethnomethodology interested in " the point-of-view of the actor" in the manner indicated in this script, although ethnomethodologists have been particularly forceful in criticizing sociologists who remake social settings in their own theoretical images. Modern theory that addresses actors' perspectives is generally more sophisticated than to merely represent, or " re-represent, " those perspectives, especially the variety of theory going under the labeJ "postmodern " or hermeneutics. Contemporary conccrn with subjectivity moves into questions having lo do with how actors can have points-o f-view at all , how there eould be anything for them to have points-of-view about, how these two converge in ongoing social practices, and so on. At least this is a tendency, though I am necessarily overlooking myriad distínl'tions and eontroversies within these traditions. But simply reprodllcing aetors' orientations either denies socio logy's uniq ue offering or appropriates actors as professional eolleagues, either 01' whil'h is objel'tíonable. Therefore: (1) No inherent advantagc ean be taken from " Iarge ehunks 01: verba!im quotatiolls 1'1'0111 . . . licld notes with only minima l interpretat íon" (p. 122), cspecially withollL :t I lI ellrc ti ~a l ilngli: ror understand ing sueh q uotes. (1 ) l.ikéwisc 1'01' CLlIllIl IUI I\L':III1IJ' ' ;1 Il l! 01' data" (p. 122). (3) N\) ()I H! wo uld ,1·. I"l' 1111lI 111I

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dispul e.: tltc el ill~·;t! Int(lUl lalll'l l 11 " lI l1dclslalld ing tite subslaIH': c" uf UIIC's sl lld y (p. 12:'), bu l Ulis sltollld 1101 he l'ulll'used witlt sociologic¡t! investigation itsdr. (4) It is certainly no sl'Íenlil il' auvantage lo provide data that members oran alldiem;\.! can analyze étccording to their own lights to get whatever they \Vant (p. 129). This reduces criteria for sociological excellence to pure nOlll inalism. (h seems moreover to l'Ontradict the elTort to capture actors' subjel't ive oricntations.) And (5) making one's an alysis "more story-like, less like an argument" (p. 128) tends toward making soeiologists just one more examplc ofwhat they are purpo rtedly studying, forcing them to miss trneir phenomena entirely. Still , these authors will surely get a lot of sYOlpath y ami agreement from audiences when they propose a maximal use of the setting in "actors' own words, " one that makes aetors seem like "real people" as opposed to theoret ical l'onstruets. Ir aCl'essing al'tors' subjeetivity really is the desired goal of sOl'iology, and if sueh objectives are arguably achievable (1 would argue that they are not) , then we need to address methodological questions concerning how best to achieve them . The authors' preference for staged production is clear enough , but why is this method superior lo even more "direct access" to actors through documentary films or video-tapes? Is no! the analyst's role minimized even more in Wiseman-type documentaries than it is in plays in which sOl'iologists do dramatie readings 01' actors' quotes or even " play actors",? Sorne dOl'umentaries do not even contain narration, for cxample, but just move through aetors' settings recording actors' versions of those settings in their course. Certainly editing still remains inextricahly a producer's activity, but it seems to me that this activity is more minimal than the active reproduc tion of actors' settings through aetors' eyes in a sociologist's managed script. Moreover, \Vhile unnarrated documentary seems to move us closer to the ideal of minimal participation by the sociologist, 1 wOllld Iike to know more about what that ideal consists of. Ifbringing actors' meanings and feelings to scientific gatherings is the preferenl'e for developing a social sl'ience, then I \Vant to know what al1uly.l'l.l' are thereupon supposed to do . (lf [ were present ing these comments as a dramatil' production , the question would go: "What are analysts supposed to do?") What would sociology consist of then? Sorne inevitable editing, perhaps, but since editing transforms the setting from what it is for actors, we should continue to minirnize our editing to ... to what? Zero? It would have to be that, in principIe, as some kind of ideal. And even though this is an acknowledged " impossibility," would we not be seeking an ideal sociology in which there would be no more "analysts' work ," only the natural data, and therefore no sociology? Or mayhe under this vision sOl'Íolo gists bCl'ome hunters and gatherers 01' other people's talk where the only professional mandatc is: never toul'h anything. never intcrpret it, never use it; just say it again. T here is sOllle residual ambigllity eonl'erning the preference for staged prod uclion . I a m struck hy l.hc conncctions between lhe authors' l'h oice and 1'/ 1

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hllllll Ihn ,1'1 111 111 II ¡¡ \'I,; ;lIliVl'd al t ll l' 1IIII tH I ,11111 Il' III(ll! lanH:nl or II ll'n l L'r wo rk as l\:pn::Sl'll llllg ll w sc thcalcr sel lingl> tl u: ,1I1 111" rs wl: rl~ exalllill' ¡lIg . 011 IIIl' \ 11111:1" hand , IlIcy SCC I11 lo be n::com menu illg pc rl"orll1am:e science a~ 11 wa y 0 1" pl"CSClllillg reslIlls ur research on any setting whalsoever (p. 126). h litis fO rl llilllllS'! 01" would any substantive research have been equally ill lúnnat ivc rcgarding how besl to present rescarch results in general ? Woukl Ihe alll h0 rs, I wundcr, have built skyscrapers and brought them to proles sioll ;.tl mCel ings had lhey been studying urban developmen t? W ould they be J iscovel"illg bacteria had they been initially studying labora to ry scienee? Would lh ey be rccomme nding these approaches as means for capturing "real slIbjedive I"eality in general, " tJla l is as a science for sociology? The logic 01' llleir ap proach , a s well as the natural history of their methodological posi linn , demands clarification . Onee again , I am quite sympathetic to those who lee! this script should not be addrcssed in such a traditional formal. The script is not strietly the theory and method piece that I am commenting on, and the authors do not exactly llIake the arguments I am responding to, at Ieast not in a systematie way. They cC/nl101 be doing that , since part of their recommendation is that we not do that. This script falls outside the normal discourse of academic journals, so some would say that one eannot or should not argue with it from within the normal discourse. TheTe is sorne inevitable truth here; for example, the ract that this script begs to be not only performed but perform ed by these wry authors meant that it could hardly be subject to blind review. 1 faced another form of that inevitability as a reviewer of the work for the journal, whcre 1 could only conc1ude: publish as is or reject, i.e., no revision , 1 think Ihat the editor made a wise choice. Yet the very appearance 01' this seript raises a famil y of qllestions about innovation and the introduction of new media into the sociologieal main slream. Ir ror example this piece cannot be addressed outside of its own ll1edillm (in which case T would have to write a.nother play), then we have to Ihink more generally about how to regard work that moves outside academic discourse to argue for making those very moves. Would anylhing un usual llave to be acceptable on that basi s? 1 can only imagine where this discllssion 11Iight lead , and 1 thank McCall and Becker for the opportunity to think a hout it. 11 ...

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54 SNA P l

Culture: a different kind of "reading"

E. Patrick Johnsol1 Sourcc: Texl um/Pmformull ce Quar/erly 15(2) (1995): 122 142.

The non vcrba l art fonn known as " snapping," has beeo me a re cognizable signifierwithin po pula rdiscourse. Afri can-American gay men an d African-A mericaJl women in particul ar are l\Vo groups who la y da im te this pe rformative gesturc and who , in rnany wa ys, have sel forth aesthetic criteria by whieh to measure its effectivencss. Situated within the context ofpopular culture, ho\\'cver, snappi ng as a discursive practiec becom es a contested signifier as various groups struggle ove r owncrs hip, use, and meanin¡!. Snapping, through its association with camp .. also problernatizes the notion (lf camp performance as trans gressive. This study describes howcertain groups define, use, appro priate, and rcap.propriate snapping as a co rnmunieative aet and how sh ifts in cultural , social , and popular contexts sign ificantl y a lter no t o nly its fun ctio n but also how it is per fo rrned and interpre ted.

Snapping comes from another galaxy, as do all snap queens . That's right. 1 ain 't just your regular oppressed American Negro, No-no-no! I a m an extraterrestrial, and 1 ain 't talkin ' none of th a t shit you seen in the movies. 1 have real power. ~" Ms . Roj." George C. Wolfe, The C'%red !vJlIseum (3)

Notes " ¡,ditor's IIO/e: Hilbcrt 's corn ment \Vas \Vritten in respo nse ,t o a version 01' the McCall Bl.'Cker paper that did not include the present " Prologue."

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African-American expressive forms and performance traditions continue to tell us much about the ways indi genous perfonnances reftect the values, bcliefs, and attitudes of a people. As Victor Turner reminds us, " A n experience is itself él process whieh presses out to an ' expression' which completes iL , . , A pe rform ance, then , is th c proper !ina\c 01' an expcrience" (11) . Therefore,

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11I ',l!lI lra l h.' ~\illy .. 1 SbV\.'IIj, 11ll' i)1,1 " IHIIII l{nllll >4 tl llc tillll, Ji l\l ,l ll' ( 'Ivd /{ Ig h h MIIW IIICIlI, 1I 1llJ Ihe CO ll tllllll'li Nllugp k political , SII\,jll l alHl cl'OIl IlIIlIl" pllwcr UlItI ag,cllcy LoJay. \Ve l':rnnnl It' llOrc how sl.Ich li l\: l:'t pCI iC llucs ¡IIlonn Arrica n-A merican cultural pc rfo n lIa IIce. Alllwug h cllltural perllll'l11élllCCS are rellective and rellcxive as they maill tain , critiqlll", slIbvcrL, or even transgress indigenous c ultural tradition s. they arlO alsll appropriated by o ther cultures. It is no wonder, then, that A frican American a rl f~) rl11s are so intimatcly intertwined with those ofthe d o mi nan! clIlllIre, it is difficult at times to disting uish them; yet, distinctions persist. A frican A mericans' use of language, for exal11ple, stil1 exisls as a distinguish ahlt: component of A merican culture. As ¡knry Louis Gates. JI'. suggests, "t he black vernac ular has assumed the singular role as the black person 's IIlt imatc sign of difference , a blackness 01' tongue. Jt is in the vcrnacu la r thal si nce slavery, Ihe blac k person has encoued private yet com munal cultura l rilllals " (xix). To extend Gales' assertion, I would indude nonverbal commun ication , for even when used alone it may communicate what specch can and more. Behaviors such as rolling the eyes ami neck . " givi ng skin ," and po king lhe lips are al1 nonverbals recognized in popular culture as " blaek" expres sions, and are used quite often to parody or to stereotype African Amcricans. Tlle same is tnle for the nonverbal behavior known as "snapping. '" T he "S NAP1 " is onomatopoetic in form , in that the word sounds like the bchavior. It consists 01' placing the thumb and the middle finger together to make a snapping sound. The behavior is like that of people dancin g to music who "pop" their Jlngers to the beat. However, the SNAPl embeds the pop wilhin a larger nonverbal structure. Along with the actual snapping of the lingcrs , the arm makes a sweeping mOlion , usually from left to ri ght , the snap cOllling at the end of the movement. When used in combinatian with words, Ihe snapping may occur at the end of each word, the arm portion varying in posilion according to the number of words spoken. In addition, the snap is lIslIally louder than that heard whjle popping one's fingers to music. The snap lI1ay be used by itself, in combination with \\Iords or with other non verbals slIcll as rollin g the eyes. In this essay , I use " SNAP1 " to indicate the non verbal bdlavior. Al one lime snapping \Vas witnessed most often amon g African-American wurncn 01' any sexual practice and Arrican-American gay meno Currently, the bdlavior is so popular that one might encounter the snap in places and among pnsons less expected , particularly among heterosexual African-American and Furopean American males. Thus, the popularity of this behavior, noted \Vell by ils depiction on television sho\Vs and in plays , led to the present stud y. T llis sludy examines snapping as an expressive form within th e com II1l1nicalive repertoire 01' Africa n-Arnerican culture, but rocuses prim a rily o n ils use wi lllin Arrican-Amcricun gay male culture. Drawing on interviews. llbsc rva lions, pup Cll llll rc/rnudi ll Il'xls. ami critica! essays, I will describe, in lllrr n' l, cva lua ll'. a nd thcullll' ; lhO ll l snapping. Wh ilc my m~ lIcra l ¡¡im is to

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brilll!. Ilris ux pn:ssi vc 1'0 111 1 II! tlll' ;r tlc ll llOIl nI" COllllll ll llicali ulI/pelfonna ncc scholars. lI1y IIhilllatc goa l is Iu illlllllinaLc lhe Illullifúrious ways in which snappin g, as a Jiscursi vc , cullural performance is appropriatcd oulsidc onc , 1' ils indi gc nolls cultures, na mely that of African-American gay meno Morc over, I wisll lo ex plore the socio-political consequences that rollow when an expressivc fonn is appropriated intraclllturally (in lhis case by heterosexual African-American males), and interculturally. particularly when the impact or gender and sexual identity subordinalc race .2

Methods The primary data were collected over él fOllr-month period through p arti cipant observation, media analysis, and interviews. Most observations \Ve re made on the courtya rd s of two large southern universiti es, one in central North Carolina and one in southern Louisiana. Othe r observations were made at a small , gay night club near the university in sout hern Louisiana, and in shopping malls in central N orth C arolin a. Media analysis consisted 01' viewing popul a r television shows and docu mentary films in which the behavior is featured . Examples indude Tongues Unlied, Martín , In ¿¡I'ing Color, and The Coloree! Múselll11. A total of ten texts were examined. Obscrvations and media analyses were expanded; then in-depth interviews with nine adults were conducted individually and a udio taped. The interviewees were four African-American gay males from central North Carolina- all in theirmid-lwenties; o ne40-year-old. African-American lesbian fe male from southern Louisia na; o ne 24-year-old, A frican·American heterosex ual female from central North Carolina; one 27-year-old, white gay male from central North Carolina; one 27-year-old , white heterosexual remale from southern Louisiana ; and one 27-year-old , white heterosex ua l male from southern Louisiana .' Each intervicw lasted approximately one hom and consisted 01' a core set 01' questions witll regard to the interviewee 's use 01' snapping. When appropriate J pro bed further to obtain spccificity about the context in which intervicwces performed snapping, their particular style, and their attitudes a bo ut who snapped and why . rinaIJy, most of the interviewees preferred to use their initials or their first name only. Ouly one chose to create a full pseudon ym .

Snapping in context What little scholarship exists on the phenomenon of snapping comes from the African-American gay community itself. Marlon Riggs's artide, " Black Macho Revisited : Rellections of a SNAP! Queen," for example, orfers él critiq ue 01' the com modifi ca tion 01' snapping in popular culture. Specificall y. Riggs ridicules Africa n-American heterosexual men (particularly those in the. media and in Hollywood ) ror e ngaging in wha l he ca lls "black m acho ism ." 17')

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tu Riggs, !\l'ricH II -!\ lIll!licall Itet ~rW¡I!Xlli tl lll¡tk" ~lI h ael'l'SS tu tlw mcdia, ldcvisi o n, and lillll.lIlalign, csscnliali zé. and Ih.lgll lc !\ lllcu lI -!\llIcrican gay male identily by only prescnling snap in a slcrcolypi ~:a l and/or parodic form. R iggs argues thal heterosexist and homophobic representations of African-American gay men posilion African-American gay men as " other. '· In addition to Riggs's work, Marcos Becquer, author of " Snap! thology and Other Discursive Practices in Tongues Un lied." contends that snapping is a kind of discursive practice that radicalizes traditional conceptions of black, gay male identity and self-expression. For the purpose ofthis study, however, 1 place snapping un de r Ihe larger category ofverbal and nonverbal art known as Signifying. Signi fying incorpora tes either direct or indirect tactic~ in verbal dueling . An cxample of indirect Signifying is when a third party stirs up trouble between friends. The third party accomplishes this feat by falsely reporting to one friend that the other has been bad mouthing him or her. 11' the friend given the false information fails to see through the ruse. he or she might confront the other friend, and an argume.nt may ensue. In this case, the third party's Signifying is successful. This type of indirection is seen most often in the "Signifying Monkey"4tales in African-American folklore. Other examples 01' indirect Signifying are talking around a subject, addressing a third pany to make a comment about a second party, or exposing something about some one by aJluding to it metaphoricaJly in the presence of others. Signifying also may be direct. Such is the case in the verbal art game known as "playing the dozens. " The dozens is a test of verbal dexterity--who can best whom through ritual insult. The game is highly aggressive and requjres audience participation. Connections to the dozens and snapping are made later in the papeL ' Certain non verbal behavior is also considered Signjfying. The infamous rolling 01' the eyes is a form of direct Signifying. in that it communicates bel ligerence, condescension , or anger. Smirking and poking the lips are non verbal examples of indirect Signifying. For example. three friends are conversing and one of the speakers is apparently Iying about something. 11' the second pa rty smirks or pokes her lips out bchind the back ofthe person speaking, but in view 01' the third party, shc is Signifying. In general, snapping, as it is used among the intervicwces 01' this stlldy, occurs in similar situations as Signifying. Howcver, there are a number of slang deriva ti ves of Signifying that broaden the function 01' snapping. BeJow is a descriptive synthesis of many 01' the contexts and terms that extend the meaning 01' the snap. 6

pla(.·c holh uf th\:sc mllk l II\(' la,,~~n dp lll:lin uf Signil'ying, along \,,·ill! Ihc dl'rival ívcs t11(l[ rulJ ow . •' Rctl dlllg' Itas a Illllllbcr 01' Illeanings. dcpcndillg 011 th \! contcxt. TI) rcad Soll1CUIIC is to scl lhclll "straight," lo put thclll in lheir place, or lo revcal a secret ahoul someone in rront 01' others in an indirect way usually in a way that embarrasses a third party. Reading has two modes: one is serious and one is playful. There are im plicit rules, similar to the dozcns. governing which mode the participants are in. Serious reading accompanies a hostile and aggressive attitudinal change. This type 01' reading is used quite often and is simply kn own as reading. In the playful mode. however, reading has other mImes such as "cracking someone's face" and " calling someonc out." To crack someone's face is also to embarrass them by revealing a ftaw in character, a lie they just told , or saying something dcrogatory about them cither to be mean or to respond to something they just said. "Calling someone out" is used in the same way , bul rarely to comment on an external flaw , say dothing or a particular hairdo; rather, it reveats the comment's inherent falsencss or a flaw in character 01' a speaker. Both face cracking and calling someone out are exam ples 01' reading in the playfut mode . They can, however, be used in the serious mode 01' reading. For instance, if someone calls someone out by reveating something loo personaJ . thcn it is taken as an insult by the addressee. While there are no explicit rules governing what can and cannot be said during a " reading session ," most participants are aware 01' what topics are " off limits" in the playl'ul mode. One of the interviewees gives an example of reading someone by calling them out about their sexuality. Atan: .. . gay people, sometimes they call others out or "He's gay" or something you know that could be either positive or negative , however we may feel about the persoll. You know if it is a person who we may think is gay and they're not coming out totally , we'lI snap about that: "Oh , he's gay" SNAP'

Based on the intcrviews eond llcted , I discovered two different flln<.:tions of sna ppi ng: " read ing" and "throwing shaue ." For lhe purpose n f litis study. I

In this instance, ealling someonc out can be playful if the parties are among friends in the know; however, in míxed company, this type ofreading is serious and ovcrsteps the bounds of social etiquette and may incite a confrontation. Cracking someone 's face can abo be L1sed in a nonplayful mode. The best cxample 01' this mode is when a person undermines the comment 01' another persol1 (usually a negative comment about a nOllpresent party) by reveating that same flaw or sOlllething worse about the addresser. The following scenario is a c1assic cxampk 01' how both calling someone out amI cracking so mconc 's fa n: tlrc lIs~~d as tWIl dilrcr~:1l1 dilllCllsiolls ofreadingonc playful, lite nlh c r scrin lls:

1711

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Reading, dissing, and t hrowing shadc

A l' IIIU p 111' !'uy JlI~1l Ml' Slll lld ll ll' (lJI l ile ·;ldlwillI· i :'-II1V~" III ~' wh~1I UllUlhc l ga y llIaJe pa~sc.:s by. I'lIe passcrby has 1111 . 1 p,1II 111 .., llIlCS lltal !lile tlr Ihe.: IIlell r Cl:tlglli / .\l:\ as cOllling I"rl)11I " Pa y l c~s SIHlCS," He l'!lllI II1L'1II s: MI : Chil\:. She [he] tryin' lo work thcm shoes li ke she got them from a real slore, knowing that she got 'em from Payless. SN AP! (laughter) M2: See. Why you tryin' to read people? The (mes [shoesJ you got on now carne from K-Mart 'cause 1 \Vas with you when yO~1 bought 'em! SNAP! SNA P! Thc other men in lhe group "ooh " and hiss. putting their hands over lheir mouths while shaking their heads . M I is left speechless, because his face has been cracked .

,I¡;k lIowkdgc Slll HC O Ill.:'s 1'1 ¡!',da ¡; 111 I h\' playlú 1 IIIOth:, IH)WCVI.:1", a persoll IlIa y Illrllw sha dc a l a pcn;oll wIIII WllOlll he or :; he is a besl friend . S nappi11g can be conjoim;d \Villl any or all 01' these commllnicative aets. Mosl of Ihc inlerviewees slIggest lhat snapping is uscd to puncluate a verbal rca di11g or dissing. The following are two excerpts from an interview wi th nne 01' thc African-American gay men that give an example of snapping first in the playrul mode, and then in the serious mode, using it as a cap or punctuation.

CS: When I was ... this was during the first part 01' my being out and 1 was hanging around a group 01' white people. l had explained it one time to this one particular person, who, every time he would try to ycrbally combat me or every time he would try to 11ght with me verbally he would snap and he wasn ' t doing it right. So, one time l read him and we were sta nd ing down stairs at the front desk in the dorm and I read him and there was this little bell on the desk , so I said, " somethin', somethin ', somethin' (SNAP! SN A P! SNAP!), DING!!!" and rang the bell and so that was it. You know, that was Iike, he just did the ultima te, he knocked you out. I t was when 1 was with this group of people that I was snapping the most. I was told this by a dude who was actually in Tongues Un/iec¡? and he says something similar to this in [ol1gues Unlied, but he would tell me how he \Vent to- he and a group 01' friends went to a night club in San Francisco and this was in the late 80s. He and a group 01' black friends \Vent to a night club and the doorman wanted them to show three pieces of ID. And this was obviously a discriminatory practice. So, instead or showing him three pieees of ID he said , " Oh , 1 have your thrce pieces of ID: SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! " And then they turned and Ieft.

In the prcceding scenario, MI was Signifying on tbe passerby indirectly to the group ofmen by calling him out about where he got his shoes. In the context 01' the group, this calling out is playful. However, when M2 reveals the same flaw about MI , he cracks M I's face, something that is not done after some one has j ust made a good score. M2 crosses the lines of playfulness beca use he embarrasses M 1 in front of his friends and blunts the humor of his comment on someone outside the group. The outcome of the reading above is "dissing." Dissing, like snapping, has different effects and meanings depending on the context in which it is used. It can mean to "dismiss" someone, as in tclling a person off, or to dismiss somcone in the sense that one person ignores another altogether-all of which are forms 01' disrespect. In the case of MI and M2, M2 "disses" MI beeause he reads him in a \Vay that MI finds insulting ami disrespectfuL Therefore, dissing is one of the effects 01' reading-these effects are interpreted negat ively or positively by the receiver depending on the social eontext and the people involved. 11', for example, someone is dissed in the presence of people outside a speeific circle of friends or outside the African-American gay eom munity in general , he or she may view the dissing as betrayal. In another conlext, however, d issing may have a communal effect if it is done within an intimate and familiar social sphere. For instance, if it is cIear to the person to whom a comment is directed that the intent of the comment is playful, the dissing is taken in good spirit. The nonverbal counterpart to reading is called "thrO\ving shadc." To lhro\V shade is to ignore a person altogether, even if the person is in immedi ale proximity. 11' a shade thrower \Vishes to acknowledge the presence 01' the 1hird party, he or she might roll his or her eyes and neck while poking out his or he!" Iips. Peoplc throw shade iflhey do not li ke a particular person o r ifili a l pcrson has dissed tlll:rn in lhe pas!. T he erfect 01' throwing shade in th is ll1unn cr i~ alStl a lypc 01' diss ill!' , bccau s\? il is wnsidered t1iSn!fipCclflll nol to

In the first example, lhe interviewee lIsed snapping to read his white friend in a playful way, in a way that did not attack him on a personallevel. C B used snapping in this instance to call his friend out about snapping too ofien, and rrom es's perspeetive, his friend could not do it " righ!." Thus, CB's snap ping (the "right" way) demonstrated to the friend how it is done. In the second example, however, snapping is used in an antagonistic fashion in order to read the doorman. The SNAP! symbolically replaces the three forms 01' ID and the doorman is Ieft with his t~l ce "cracked, and on the flOOL" eB commcnted further that in this instance , snapping was his friend ' s " ,)ITense, derense . and warning: Tm gonna get yOll . '" Stil1, in both instances , snapping is u,,>ctl lo cap or 10 p unctuate a point. A final example 01' snapping as punctuati o n is wilnesscd in the familiar wa.rning: " Don't (S N A P!) make (SNAP!) me (S NAP') rcat.! (SNAP! ) yo u! (SNAP!)

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A ¡:'f Oil!> lll' gay Ill ell tll l' sl:! IIJillg UII Ihl: sid c\\illk ~ oIll \ " , .,III!' whl:1I another gay mal e passcs hy . T1ll: passl.:'l"by has on ;1 pall nI" shOl:S Ihat one 01' the men recognizes as l:oming fn)m " Paykss Shol:s." IIe COlllmen ts : MI: Chile. She [he] tryin ' to work thelll shoes likc she got thelll from a real store, knowing that shc got 'cm frolll Payless. SNAP! (la ughter) M2: Scc. Why you tryin' to read people? The ones [shoes] you got on no\V came from K-Mart 'ca use 1 was with you when you bought 'cm! SN APl SNAP! The othcr men in t he gro up " ooh" and hiss, putting theiJ hands over Iheir mouth s while shaking their heads. MI is left speechless, beca use his face has been cracked. In Ihe preceding scenario, M I \Vas Signifying on the passerby indirectly to the group ofmen by calling him out about where he got his shoes. In the context oflhe group, this calling out is playful. Howevcr. when M2 reveaIs the same liaw about MI, he crack s M I's face, something that is not done after Some one has j ust made a good swre. M2 crosses the lines 01' playfulness beca use he embarrasses M I in front of his fricnds and blunts the humor ofhis comlllent on someone outside the group. The outeome of the reading aboye is " dissing." Dissing, Iike snapping, has different effects and meanings depending on the context in \Vhich it is used. It can mean to "dismiss" someone, as in telling a person off, or to dismiss somcone in the sense that one person ignores another altogether - all of whieh are forms of disrespect. In the case of MI and M2 , M2 "disses" MI beca use he reads him in a \Vay that MI nnds insulting and disrespectful. Therefore, dissing is one of the effects of reading- these effects are interpreted negat ivcly or positively by the receiver depending on the social context and the people involved. If, for example, someone is dissed in the prescnce of people outside a speciflc circle of friends or outside the African-American gay wm lIIunily in general, he or she may view the dissing as betrayal. In another eontext, however, dissing may have a communal effect ifit is done within an intimate and familiar social sphere. For instance, ifit is clear to the person to whom a comment is directed that the intent of the COlllment is playful, the dissing is taken in good spirit. The nonverbal counterpart to reading is called " throwing shade." To Ihrow shade is to ignore a person altogether, even ifthe person is in immedi al e proxilllity. Ir a shade thrower wishes to acknowledge the presence 01' the Ihird pan)', he 01" she might roll his 01' her eyes and neck while poking out his 01' IH:I" lips. Pco p lc throw sh adl' ifth cy Jo not Iike a particul ar pe/"liOn or ifthat pc.:rsol1 has disscd Ihem in Ihe P(l s\, T bc efrecl 01' throwing shade in this IIl¡¡ 'lIIer i~ a lso a typc u f ú issinL' . b~ca ll !-'e il i!-' c()nSidc rcd úisn:s pc<.: l rlll nol lo I 11-1

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1\:' ~, I " l 'l" IIU' 111 1hc pla ylúl Illodc, howevcr, a pl:rson tltrow shadc al a pCIM llI w, tl , WIIllII1 he ur slw is a best friendo !'inappillg can be coujvllleu with any or all of these cOllllllunicative aets. Most or lhe intel"viewees sllggcst that snapping is used to punctuate a verbal rcading 01' dissing. The following are two excerpts from an interview with one of lhe African-Al11crican gay men that give an example 01' snapping first in the playful mode, and then in the seriolls mode, using it as él cap or punctLIation. II C" lI .,wledgc SOI1 Il'." lII ay

CH: When 1 \Vas .. . this was during lbe nrst part of my being out and .1 was hanging aroulld a group 01' white people. r had explained il one time to Ihis one particular person, who, every time he would try to verbally combat me orevery time he would try to fight with me verbally he would snap and he wasn't doing it I"ight. So, one lim e I rcad him and we were standing down stairs at the front desk in lhe dorm and 1 read him and there was this little bell on the desk , so I said , " somethin', somethin ', somethin' (SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!), D 1N G! !! " and rang the be]] and so that was it. You know, that was like, he just did th e ultimale, he knocked you out. It was when I was with this group of people that 1 was snapping the most. I was told this by a dude who was actllally in Tongues Unliec¡? and he says something similar to this in Tongues UnlÍed, but he would tell me ho\V he went to- he and a group of friends went to a night club in San Francisco and this was in the late 80s. He and a grollp 01" black friends went to a night club and the doorman wanted them to show three pieces of I D. And this was obviously a discriminatory pradice. So, instead of showing him thrce pieces of ID he said, "Oh , 1 have your three pieces of ID: SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! " And then the y tllrned and Jeft. In the first example, the interviewee used snapping to read his white friend in a playful way, in a way that did not attack him on a personallevel. CB used snapping in this instance to call his friend out about snapping too often , and from CB's perspective, his friend could not do it " right. " Thus, CB 's snap ping (the " right" way) demonstrated to the friend how it is done. In the second exalllple, howevcr, snapping is used in an antagonistic fashion in order to read the doorman. The SNAP! symbolically replaces the three fOl"ms 01' ID and the doorman is left with his faee "cracked, and on the floor." CB commented further that in this instance , snapping \Vas his friend's "offense, defense . and warning: '1'111 gonna get you.''' Still , in both instances, 'nuppin g is used to l:ap 0 1' to punctuale a point. A final example of snapping as punetualion is wi tncssed in the fa mil ia r warning: " I)on ' t (SNAP!) make (SNA P!) lile (SNAP! ) rcn d (S NAP!) yo u! (SNAP!) 179

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ica ll!s, ' '1' 111 OVlT y ()U ." 111 this :;C Il SC, Ih e ~ N A I" lIIeU II ~ tlh ll \\ 111 le I acknow Icdgc your prc:scnce (JUSI ny Ihe mere acl 01' ~nappillg) , yU III cx islence is irrelevant to l11y life. T he familiar phrase that aecompa nics Ihis use or sna p ping is, ''1'11 snap you out 01' existence!" But one interviewec reported th al snapping and throwing shade are rarely used together. Although this interviewce does not use the two, I witnessed several gay men in the bar scenc using the t\Vo logethcr. For example, 1 saw a young man poke out his lips , roll his eyes, and snap when another young man joined Ihe group of fricnds of which he was a part. After that initial co ntact, he paid thc young l11an no attcntion. The forms orSignifying covered here do not begin to cover the hundreds oC others that accol11pany ~napping. These few, ho wever, do pro vide a eore pool of verbal and nonverbal communicative aets that may help one understand lhe use 01' snapping in different eontexts.

lnter¡)retatioD Al'ter I reviewed the data collected for this study, I became aware of three dimensions of snapping: its association with "effeminate" males; its com munal funct ion; and its primary function as a playful ritual. Of course these are not the only dimensions of snapping, but they are a place to begin intcrpreting the meanings ofthis behavior within African-American gay male cultures.

SlIapping in "queen" culture Many of the intervicwees believc that snapping is a "gay" thing. But more importantly, sorne ofthem believe that it is associated with a particular type 01' gay male, namely those gays known as "queens." A queen in the gay community is a male homosexual who is particularly flamboyant (" grand"), extremely cffeminate ("nelly"), and temperamental (" bitchy"). Because snapping is associated with effeminacy and usually accompanied by the stereotypical "attitude" projected onto African-American women, African-American gay men who want to present a more "masculine" image do not snap. To do so would be emasculating. CB slIms it up well when he explains why he stopped snapping.

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posilioll in tlll~ cul lllre- I would sayo Wcll, 1 lhink the more masculine one is, the " betler off " or the more attention grabbing that person is as far as sexu ally. Bul for someone \Vho is cffelllinate that isn ' t necessarily the case, except for men who are into effeminate meno So, for pcople who are kind of queeny and who do the whole girlfriend thing and snap and call themselves ''she '' and \Vhat not that can be a turn off for a lot of men who aren't . .. number one, who aren ' t secure with that ... with , displays of effeminacy by mcn and number two, for mel1 \Vho are into very "buteh" meno CB's testimony retlects the sentiment of many gay men , who are looking for the "ideal " mano The other gay men interviewed in this study as well as other gay friends to whol11 [ ha ve spoken, expressed the sentiment that they wcre not attracted to "queeny" gay men. ~ Accordin g to one c10se gay friend , "Ir [ wanted a ' woman,' [ wOllld date onc. " Effeminacy, thercfore, is not valued outside of camp and humor in most of these communities. Most 01' the effclllinate gay men to whom 1 have spoken- again , those in this study and a number of c10se friends- Iook ror mcn whom they call "trade." Trade is a man who is usually handsome and extreme/y masculine. These men are called trade not only beca use they are masculine, but beca use most often they consider themselves " straight" ; thus, they prescnt themselves as straight men who \ViII trade sexual favors with a gay male. One ofthe interviewees told me that trade sometimes call themsel\'es bisexual. when they are rcally juSI gays undercover. Whether thcse men are straight, bisexual, or gay, however, is not an issue; the point is that for the gay men who scek them out, trade is the epi tome of masculinity. Gay theorist Alan Young sees this search for an "ideal" man as problcmatic, or at least as a reflection 01' the maJe gaze, usually associated with the objectification of the female body, which rein forces the hegemony of patriarchy ami paternalism:

CB: I \Vas not snapping when 1came out initially. It wasn ' t until . .. I had been out for a little while I'd sal' before I started snapping. 'Cause even though 1 think I \Vas awarc that that's a part of gay culture or a part ofthe "girlfrieml culture," shall \ve say, beca use black women do it loo, 1 was uncom fortable with being associ ated wi lh lhat. YOll k 1111W, I d id n 't wan t to come o ff as beillg a

Sex ual objeetification has to do with seeing other human beings in terms ofthe superficial alone--·face , body, c1othes. Phrases like these, often heard among gay men, are sexist and sexually objectifying: "Those bluejeans really turn me on. " " He has a big cock." " I'm only attracted to blondes. " " He's too swishy; if 1 wanted to sleep with a WOlllan , I'd do it with a real woman." I have thought or said all of Ihese things a t one time or another. Gay liberation is teaching me how th is oppresscs 111\': and my brothers. (8)

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'1'111': para dl)\ ical allitlldc lo wU l'd Womcl1 ill lit,' ¿'!IV 1I 11111111111ily i.~ a \.:0111 plcx issue. O n lhe one hano, a gay ma n 's cmbracl: o rfC llll llinity is cdchralory ano ftattering to women especially in terms of d rag ami cvcn snapping, given its connection to black women. On the other hano, the sexist attituoe toward women calls into question whether the performance of fe mininity- through orag, snapping or otherwise- critiques paternalistic and patriarchal views 01' women or further reifies the discursive practices that keep them intact. 9 The connections between snapping. effcminacy, performance, and the politics of gender are beyond the scope ofthis study. These initial connection s ano lhe q LLestions they raise, however, are worth rescarching, for they \ViII gi ve greater insight into the use of gender performa nce as a discursive practice. Snappinf( in the ''jllllli(J'" Snapping also serves as an agency of community building in gay cultures, This notion corresponds to a tom used by gays to refer to other gays: "family." Gays use the term "family" to refer to anyone who is homosexual , out or closeted. More importantly, however, "family" is also connected to l he use of snapping. As a communaJ function, snapping is used lo compliment someone and to "out" other gays. Both of these uses participate in a shared community identification. Gays, as well as African-American women of any sexual praclice, use snap ping lo compliment someone's looks, a hairoo, or even inanimate objects. In these instances snapping is accompanied by words or popular sayings like, "work," " tear it up," and "wig is beat." Ala n told me that "Ifyou were giving a compliment to a painting or something, you may snap and say, 'Oh , that painting is worked. '" Or as another interviewee informed me, snapping is useo to compliment a person's looks, either a friend 01' a famous persono Snapping to compliment someone is not in and of itsel!' a communal activity; rather, it is lhe shared cultural knowledge ofits use in this context that makes it communaL Snapping as an outing practice \Vorks in much the same way in that it is not the act itself that makes it communal , but the recognition of the inlenl behind it. One 01' the more humorous uses 01' snapping revealed to me by the interviewees, is ho\V it is llsed to "out" another gay persono 1 witnessed this use of snapping while shopping in a ma11 with several 01' my gay friends. A s we exited a store, another young man entered. As we passcd, one of my frienos snapped at him. The young man gave a knowing look and eontinued into the ,s tore as my friends and I snickered and moved on to the next store. My friend useo the snap as a coded message to let the addressee know lhat he had been read as being gayo Reggie ca11s this use of snapping, "clocking, " or kn owing som ebody's "cup of tea. " These terms ,ue deriva ti ves of the more fami li ar "ca lling someone o ut. " Again, il is lhe shared knowledge of wha l lhe snap com lll ull icares in this pa rt icu lar conlext Ihac in my op in ion. ma kcs il comrn unal. r X'

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Thne an: lhose wh o wOllld arg lle lltal il is more fun to walch people in a snap session lhan lo parlicipale. W hal lhese peoplc do n't know is that lhey are participaling. As with many African-American communicative oevices, it is part 01' lheir participation as audience members that makes snapping effeet ive. Snapping, in this sense, is akin to " playing the dozens" (see aboye). Beca use the doze ns has historica11y been associated wilh urban , heterosexual African-American males (see Abrahams, "Deep"), one could say that snap ping is its Afriean-Ameriean gay maJe counterpart. Both are examp1es o f playful dueling and require great skil1 and audience pruticipalion. I would arguc that snapping requires even more skill than the dozens, however, for participants must demonstrate verbal dexterity as \\id I as skill of the hands. Different forms of snaps are created in "sn a p sessions" in order to demon strate originality ano skil!. When cooroinated with verbal astuteness, snap sessions make for an enjoyable performance, as the audience is usually the judge of who is the most ski11eo "reader. " The important thing to note about these snap sessions, also known as "read" sessions, is that they are fun , As Chuck, one of the African-American gay interviewees put it: "1 use it as fun. When 1 was rea11y mi:ld at somebody I just blessed them out and went about my business. I use snapping, more 01' less , for fun. You know how you play the dozens'?" Chuck brings up another interesting point about snap sessions that further connects them to the dozens. Like the dozens, there are implicit rules of snap sessions that keep lhem in the reahn of play. In snap sessions, the highest insult is to diss someone in a way that is "below the belt" by revealing a character flaw or information that is "off limits" to the general public. As stated earlier, snapping also has connections to The "Signifying Monkey" tales in African-American folklore. The monkey in these tales is wily, bel1iger ent, and irreverent. He has no respect for authority: in fact, his primary goal is to dupe the lion- the "king" of the jungle. Moreover, the monkey uses a great ocal of profanity when speaking to lhe lion; thus, the telling of these tales might offend many peop1e. lt is this "irreverent" side of the monkey that is associated with snapping. For some , snapping should be used only in certain places and in the pre sence of certain people, even when it is playfu!. Because snapping is viewed as an " irreverenl," "common," or "base" behavior, many choose not to do it in ehurch, for instanee, or in the presence of people they respect. Another interviewee, Pearlie Mae, implied that snapping is constructed as "common" behavior by those who have a middle class mentality: P.I: So, YOLllhink lhat slurrlike rol1ing lhe ncck , puUing the hands 011 l he hip , a ll d ,~Ili!rring an d stulT like that is a dass issue'! T hl.!rc 's ~I -:I:I S!\ ¡SS II \: 1here'!

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PM : S\lI IH'li lt ll''1 , 1 \111/1 I kit .. \\! il iI's so 111111':1. ¡J I I II,~ 1', '/11, ' hC~IIISL' y OIl ca 11 he ;¡ )111\11 hl;ld pCI'oO/l and slill be htl ll l !'IL' Ih\llll geoisj. PJ: This is Irlle. /' 111 a/l ex aml)le. PM : '( 'alise 1 kn o w people \Vho don't have a poI lo piss in and will slill lell Iheir children that they 're supposed to be ashamed of certain kinds 01' behavior. And then 1 know some black folk with tons 01' money, who, as one friend of mine would say, "Don't know how to act. " T hey can just
Snapping across the line I slaled earlier that snapping is used by a \iariety 01' people outside of African American gay cultures. Consequently, some gays are upset by what they con sidcr an appropriation of an art form that belongs to them , while others in 1I1L'se communities are ambivalent a bout the matter. Still other gays, ind uding o/les inlhis study, feel that anyone can snap, but only ifthey can do it " right. " Gi/'lfi'ielld cultlll'e

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aekllowled gc lhal Ihl'Y d" il wdl. 111l:Y ;m~ rduetant lo say lhal Afriean American WOIIlCII are lhe urígill al\ll s. Nonclhcless. lIlany African-American gay lIIales do 1101 havc a problern wilh African-American \\'omen snapping, because they share an elhnjc heritage- in essence, beca use they are black. This position is also shared by the heterosexual African-American woman I intervicwed. In her particular case, however, she did not realize that snapping was a behavior found in the African-American gay community until after she cam e lo college. Pearlie Mae: Well, as J've always known snapping, it \Vas always done by black women . And truthfully, I knew that certain men in my church did it, but I didn't know they were gay until somebody told me later a nd I just thought that, you kno\\' , "Oh, well that's just Keith." Keith just snaps 1'01' emphasis. Martin just snaps for emphasis. These werc all choir directors. I just didn "t think- I didn 't attribute it to them being gay because I didn't kno\\' that they were gayo But it was usually black women. And 1 didn't know 01' it as a black gay men 's tradition until I saw París is Burning lO and then 1 started wondering whether or not if the horse carne befo re the cart 01' the cart before the horse. I didn' t know whether or not black men appropriated it from black women or black women appropriated it from black gay meno ... 'Cause they both kind 01' hang out in the samc circles in the church so ... who 's to tell? Like most African-American \\lomen, Pear1ie Mae uses snapping in man y of the same ways that black gay men use it: to accentuate a reau . Other uses, however, are peculiar to the African-American gay eommunity 1ike throwing shade and outing. Pear1ie Mae says that she mostly uses it as punctuation to underscore a particular cunning 1ine: "Like if I wanna say that somebody is a tired, old , heifer wench , 1 might snap on each word in some kind 01' motion . so they'lI get the poi n t. " Personally, J've seen black women snap more in the realm of compliment. r or instance , some of my female college friends would snap if one 01' their gir1friends entered the dorm room in a partiCLIlarly nice outfit. One of them might comment. "Girl , you are wearin' Ihat dress! " (SNAP!) 01' simply. "Work, girl. Work! (SNAP!SNAP!SNAP!) ." In both instances, the ad dresser is acknowledging no! so much the value 01' aesthetic qualities of the c10thes 01' lhe addressec, as much as she is acknowledging the addressee's abi1ity lo rnake the c10thes look good , regardless of their worth . In other word s, shc is ursla g.ing Ihe c101hes and no! the rcverse- she is " working" 1hC I11.

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I ,d',(\ 11l' 1 1~'\ll' 111.11 ,\lII~ .. 11 A 11 11..' 11 L:.; 111 \VOIlI Ll l .t rI! 1I)~ p(III ,.¡ hh.' Ir'1 tlll: kml, ' ''NA !'II )i VIl, " alll::ts I IIlJ IJ l:c ll}'. Sl\!r l.!ol y p icul l y, div¡(~ 1I 1 ~' \V()III~·1l wllo are pl.' l\'l"Íwd alld wlw pl:n.:c ive 11I\.'lllsdves as largel Iha ll li !l'. !llalld , alld. to a d l'¡')l"C , privilcged . Wilh Ihis pcn;eplion also collles a lypc or altiludc- a pero ItlIll1illl lX. ir y llll will ·exemplificJ by the diva and recogn izcd by others thal I',ivés c rcJihilily lo her posilion. Sorne of these signifiers are a stately walk or l·a!! ia gl.: . a hcad hc1d high , and an arrogant attitudc. These performati vc ~ If llilk~rs ,Ire oltcn associatcd with !\rriean-Ameriean women. Th\! SN!\ P! Diva, howevcr, is an instancc where gay mcn have transformcd Ihe rnle il110 somconc who is an astute snapper, who carrics much attitude, a lld whn iH particularJy "grand." Thc character " Mi ss R oj ," rrom George C. Woll"e's 'fhe Colorcd Muscum , is an example of a SNAPI Diva:

)h ycs-ycs-yes! Miss Roj is quintessential style. J cornrow the hairs l1ly legs so they spell out M-I-S-S R-O-J. And ) dare anyone to

011

fuck with me because I will snap your ass into oblivion. I have the power you know. Evcry time [ snap, I steal onc beat 01' your heart. So if you find yourself gasping for air in the middle of thc night, chances are you fucked with Miss Roj and she didn 't likeit.

(4) Miss Roj 's succcss as a SNAp! Diva primarily depends on h,im taking himself scriollsly. even ir others do no1. The attitude, adopted frolll black women , is a IIleans toward this end. It communicatcs, " [)on 't fuck with me or [' 11 snap yOll out of existence."

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W.,111U JI lIr a guy black rna n lo do il. . , . J II(; Jotat hoy wouldn 'l necessarily be like, " Vo ." SN !\ P! S N !\P! alld start snapping, but hc'd suddenly change his attitude and throw his butt out and might go, "UI-I. (smack of the Iips) No you didn ' tt" - - that k ind of th ing a nd then go back into his regula r person ality . bul l'vc never seen them do it as themselves.

In addition , on the Fox N etwork comedy, In Living Color, heterosexual African-!\merican comedians David A lan Grier and Damon Wayans, portray Blaine Edwards and Antoine Meriwether, two effeminate men who fashion ftashy chillon blouses, tight pants, hair pou!'s , and feathered slippers- a pscudo drag garb that significs the "gayness" 01' the characters. Blaine and Antoine review films , books, and other texts similar to film critics G ene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Instead of giving the films a " thumbs up" or " thumbs down ," however, the two invcnt particular snaps . In ract, much ofthis skit's popularity \Vas due to thc anticipation by the audienee of what the snap ror thc week wOllld bc. T he two act out "gayness" in a stereotypical fashion and demonstrate random misogyny whcn they review works by or for women . When such works appear, thcy reply in unison , "hated it. " On the other hand , when they review works by men or that feature a male star, they deliver a favorable review infused with sexual innuendo. It is not surprising that the skit 's theme song is " lt's Raining Men," a popular song in gay night clubs. The following is an cxcerpt from one 01' the skits:

Pcarlic Mae: . . . I think Imight have scen it once or t\Vice and it \Vas usually in a context wherc they were getting rcady to tell somebody off about something. You know, trying to save face, usually in a group 01' people. They 've been di ssccl sOlllchow and they need to save face. But they alway;:, ¡.l id it they would change .. . , the way lhcy Jid il fll l:Y w\lI lldn ' ¡ . .. just kind 01' sna p élnd do it in IhclI 0\\.11 1ll'!SII II;llil y. Thcy wo nld eillwr aJopl l!t at

Hi . I'm Blaine Edwards.

And I'm Antoine Meriwether.

Welcomc to " Mcn on Film."

The show that looks at movies from a male point of view.

Tonight we 'lI be wrapping up the Summer films. First up is the box office smash , Total Reca/1. Blaine: Ves. This is the movie where l1luscle-bound !\rnold Schwarzencggar goes in search of his past. (Iooks at camera) Just a hint Amold: Try the c1oset! (Iaughter) Next we have Belsy'.I' Wedding. Together: (Iooking at each other) Hated it! !\ntoine: Then there 's Ghost . YOll know, Patrick Swayze was thc real stand out in this film. You kno\V, I'd breathe life into his spirit any day - even if I did have to go through Whoopi Goldberg! (rolling his eyes) Perish the thought. Yes, indced . Now we come to Dick Traey .

Bl ain c: !\ ntoine: Yo u know, I like lhe title, but the movie JUSI left me limp.

I kno w wh al yo u' rc saying. This is what I don' t gel: all the

Blaine: cha rael l:r~ li l lhcir namcs- you k now. F la t Ilcad had a

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I klerosexual African-American men who snap add a whole new dimension lo lhe behavior. Bccausc snapping is associated with African-American women , !\frican-!\merican gay males , and erfeminacy, heterosexual African-American llIales monitor their uses of snapping so as not to call into question their masclllinity and/or sexual oricntation . Pearlie Mae provides an example of howa heterosexual African-American man snaps:

Blaine: Antoine: Together: Antoine:

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Bluinc: This I)nc shoulJ have been called, "A Fish Callcd Julia."

Antoinc: Next, Eddie M urphy was back in Ano(her 48 Hour.l'. You

know. J'm sorry. T his movie just got off 00 the wrong (rack. I fccl that they shoulo have spent more time where the real story is: in the prisons. 1'0 Iike to see more about them 010 sweaty [mens] all together in them tiny little cells with no one to turn to but each other. Blaine: Ooh~ Orap the soap- I'II pick it up! (Iaughter) Antaine: HlIsh! Finally, we have Die Harder. What a way to go: ninety minutes with MI'. Bruce W illis~ Blaine: Oh yes! Don't tempt my tllmmy with the taste of Nuts~n~ Honey. (Iaughter) You know the thing I oion 't understano was all the violenee in the film. 'cause the title suggesteo a love story.

Antoine: 1 second that emotion. I think this onc still oeserves the ne\\' ano improveo two snaps up, a twist , ano a kiss. (Thc two perform the snaps ano twist, move their heaos towaro one another, pause and look at the camera). Tngether: Not! Can 't touch thi s!

Nj'-", lit' view .,1' 111,' II lIdll'll \ 'l Ilrl' ~ Id lIt l'xpl'cssioll 011 lile part 111' the pCrfPrIIll'\ is Ihm, ,, ':t I h'd as sllh,ccl lo evalllatioll ror the way il is dOlle. rM the rcl a tlvc sk ill alld clrectivene~s 01' the pcrrormer's dis play 01' cOlllpetence. Addilionally , it is marked as availabJe for thc enhancemellt 01' ex pcrience, through the prescnt elijoyment 01' thc intrinsic qllalities of the act ol' expression itself. (11 )

Pcrrorlll,l flce involvcs on lh¡: pa 'l lit' 1he performcr un ass um ption of accoll nlahili ly LO un U ud il.' 11 \.'1.' tú r lile way in whic h comlllu nicul ion is c:llricu \lu l. ah\wc ;1 11" h¡ 'W IIII ils rdcrenl ial cOll tell!. l'l'llll l lhe Iwi lll

Conceiveo in this way , the black male's aoaptation of the blaek woman 's or gay male's attitude or stance is an attempt to oisplay his " competencc" as a pcrfonner; therefore , he aspires to a particul ar aesthetie criterion . The effect~ iveness of his performance, then , is contingent on his meeting the criterion ~ Altcrnately , a display of performer incompetence may have dam aging con~ sequences to him as a performer, but more importantly to him as a " man ," especially if an alloience sees his snapping as an extention of his personality ano not as a performancc. Even though the concept of performer competence suggcsts that black women and black gay mcn are the most skilled snappers from the perspective 01' straight black malcs, their insistence that their use be construed as a performance speaks to something else altogether. This strategy sends a kino of "t his is not reall y me " message to the audience, so that no onc will q uestion the performcr's Illasc ulinity or believc him to be gayo In other woros, black men are comrortable using the behavior. but they are wary of the stigllla that goes along with it. As bell hooks suggests: " M uch black maJe hOlllophobia is rooteo in the desire to eschew connection with all things oeemeo 'feminine' and that would , of course, indude black gay men" (147). Likewise, in the "Men On Film " skit, the characters stop short ofkissing, beca use such an
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i"roll1 this excerpt one sees the insioiousness of sllch humor. This parooy stereotypes all gays as "queeny" ano promiscuous in aooition to ameliorating the woman~hating found in much ofthe gay eommunity. Within this context and within this parooie form, howevcr, the misogyny becomes hyperbolie, türther pcrpetuating the myth that womao~hating and homosexuality are conjoineo . hom Pearlie Mae's observation ano the " Men On Film " skit, two things become clear about hcterosexual black males' use 01' snapping~ First , the gesture must take the form 01' camp or parooy, so that auoience membcrs are aware that this person is " performing." This assures the black male snapper that his masculinity 01' hetcrosexuality is not called into question~ On another leve!. aoopting the altituoe and stance 01' él black woman 01' gay male, illlplics that only in conjunction with this particular attituoe ami stance is slIarring renoered effective~ In this respect, a kino of"performer competence" is illlplied. Richaro Bauman explains the notion ofperformer competence in llw t'nllowing way:

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III,vd he 1', 'i JlIII I~' , lI llhl' l " lI\ 1I ,c w i ll ~ \\1 1111 ('dlt '''l llI lr \.111 !l\.' sa id l"uf slraig h' !liad" /11 \' 11 \VII., tI) II! dISIIl IlCt: lllcnJsd vcs fllll lll ll ~· IIII1I.lh·lIlerl. ThllS, gay nll:n. c~pcl: i iJ lI :v unes \V ilo are cflcrnirrate, ar e Icndc ,,:d "invisible" objeets tllat can be uscd and discarded at the expense M thcir s ubjectivity,

White gll)' me" (,v/lipper?) snllppers Like African-American gay men , white gay meno especially those called "quecns," use snapping, The white gay maJe I interviewed associates snapping with attitude. He learned it from other gay white males who, he says, were very ftamboyanl and " queeoy ." Terry: Snapping was always, at least in my ex perience, was always associated with drag queens, and then more with . if not speci fically drag qlleens, people who are more neHy , ftamboyant queens. And then later it had a whole other kind ofreading in black culture that wasn 't necessarily gay and it seems to me that while a]] gay counter-culture could be family, initially , snapping was not sornething that all gays did. In this respect, in white gay communities snapping is mostly associated with effeminate gay males and attitude , I have witnessed many white gay men snap- snap well- in a number of different eontexts. And as Terry suggests, it is mostly used to read somebody or to demonstrate attitude. Conseqllently, some ofthe other uses fOllnd in Afriean-American heterosexual and gay com Illunities are foreign to thelll. For instance, Terry had never heard of snapping being used to compliment or di ss someone. These functions 01' snapping tend lo he lIsed primarily among Afriean Americans. During the interview , Terry also mentioned the origin issue. He originally lhought that snapping was a white, effeminate male behavior, because it was alllong this type of people that he first encountered it. Later, however, he n:considered his position. Terry: Things like A nijferen/ Wor/d, the black college life- to see it there, it suddenly registered as something different and 1 wondered who had it nrst. You know, because obviously /n Living Color is a series that l:ame on much arter my experi ence [with snapping] earlier on at Lost Colon y and lhe diva queens there--the compJetely " no l:olored" diva queens there, And so, 1 thoughL well has black culture taken this? Or are a ll those diva qlleens just doing somelhing from black culture? A nd this has been my experience before where subcultures, (;Olllltcr-cu ltu rcs. pick U f) what 's trend y, what's rashionahle from othcr cu ll ll tcs ;¡ who lc JOl sooner befon: il' lI gel lo 1")0

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jllljlllla r l' UIlIlII , 111.1 Idt'VISII1/l ;IIUJ lII11vics lll' what r1\1\' So lhat il sccmed I!, lil e: possihlc tha l allmy IiUle quccny frieuds had pick,cd Ihis up as a IIcat arrectation a neat way 01' reading, a neal way 01' sh owing attitude- rrom black friends back homc , back in college, or back wherever they carne from bccause ( certainly kne\V a 101. Then, you know, Lost Colon y might be very white , but the experience of the people there was not necessarily completely while. Terry's point is weH taken . No matter who "o riginated " snapping, it is used by white gay males in sorne oftbe same ways. This is not to say, however, t hat there are not distinct differences in use and style- differences that refleet the dimensions 01' A l'rican-American cultures.

Wltite hets 11'/10 snap White heterosexuals' snapping is perhaps the most interesting and contro versial aspect ofSN A P! culture. For those white heterosexuals who do it, it is more of a parodic gcsture, similar to African-American heterosexual males. It does not necessarily accompany the attitude and aggressiveness found in gay uses of the behavior. Moreover. lhe white heterosexllals interviewed were nrst exposed to snapping from popular culture through lelevision shows like /n Lil'ing Color. While .1 nnd their use of snapping amusing, other members of both the African-American and gay communities find it offensive particularly those interviewed in this study. The foHowing excerpt from an interview \Vith a white, heterosexual male , JB , may offer reasons why sorne find whites' use of snapping offensive: P J: When did you nrst see snapping? Or when did you first encoun ter it? JB: Can you define it for me? PJ: The snapping that you've seen me do or that yo u've seen on In Living Color. J B: That's probably where I first seen it--on /n Lil'ing Color. PJ: And when you saw jI, did you start doing it soon afler'? JB: No. Unless, ofcourse, I was mimicking what I saw. PJ: So yOLl didn't know about snapping before you saw it on /n Lil'ing Color? JB: Uh. No. I can't say that I did. PJ: So do you use it no w'? JB: No. PJ: E ver? J B: Well , I do when I am rn imick ing /n Living Color, or if I am por traying SOlllcnlll: w llo i:-. gay: I ¡Ise il thcn . 1'11

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lh a l's wll a l I ;ls::;ocialc il wi tl! . WI I\': lI 1 Ilrsl k'arnnl ah o\11 it il was 011 111 j jl'iJ/g Color ¡¡nd il was 111 a skil bdwccll ~a y g uys . P.I· D() yOll know in what LOlltexts gay men use it outsjde of the 1/1 l .iviJ/g ('olor depictions? .1 B: 1 wo uld asslIme it was like a nOllverbal rcin forcer o r eomplimenl t() • . . lIh ... an attack that they've made on someone. whether thcy're joking or not to like ... it's kind 01' like- is substitut ing ror " Now take t hat!" or " What do you th ink of t hat!" sOlllcthing like that. Ikl:III1 Sl'

Mo rc than anything cisc, African Americans and gays take offensc to the use

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arl rOIlIl.l\ccmdi ll l' lv . bel'IIIN ,,11111: \i i ~' w:; (It'p.:o pk lih e T ÓIIl\ll yc, 11](: whilc hclcfQScx ual t'elll alll IIlle l VI,'w,'e ni Ihis sludy said Ihal shc would not kd l'lllllrmtabk snapping al'ou lld hlack women: I.A : I would be less Iikely lo snap around a black female than 1 would around a black maJe whether he was gay or not. I'vc bcen made envare ofthe negative connotations and stereotyping that so me peop\c assoLÍate with minority groups. 1 woulu be com fortable snapping around the black gay men [ know, because they know me and they know lhat it is out of character for me to be culturaIly inscnsitive. But around other people, particu lady black women, 1 WQ uld be intimidateu and self-eo nscious about snapping.

01' snapping hy thosc outside their cOlllm unities when it is lIsed to parod y or 1\) :;lcreotype. as implicitly rcad in lB's comment that he only uses snapping WhL'll "portraying someone \Vho is gay." Too, some feel that because whites lih' .lB are only exposed to the In Living Color context of the snap, the parodic form becomes the norm. 1t is for lhese reasons that the two African Amcrican women in this study , one heterosexual and one gay, say they do not snap in front of white people. The heterosexual woman responded:

Pcarlic Mae: I don't like using snapping around white people. Be cause it's uh . .. I don 't know. They use it so much on TV now and it's beeome more of a stereotype for white people than just a fun kind of gesture, which is the way I've always seen it. And I don ' t like to reify that stere otype for them so I'm not comfortable snapping around them beca use they just don 't get it. Anu they don't accept it the way black folk do. The Icsbian interviewee had a similar comment: Tommye: I feel about a white, gay male or white people period snapping the same way 1 feel ahout them rapping or the same way 1 feel about lhem playing the blues. Or the same way I fecl about them vogucing or a nything clse that is ethnieally ours. There is an attempt on their part to imi tate . And once they have imitated our culture successfully then lhere is a tendency on their part to commerciali ze it.

Not all whites are as "culturally sensitive" as LA, a nd use snapping and other African-American identified expressions to stereotype Africa n-American people negatively . From lhe point 01' view 01' the African·American gays interviewed , stcre otyping is not as big an issue as performer competence. Most 01' the inter viewees object to whites snapping, bccause they feel they do not do it well , and beeausc they see it as a "black" thing. Their comments suggest that African-American gay men daim ownership 01' snapping, an impossibility given the dynamics of culture. Once signs anu symbols permeate the fabric 01' popular culture, the foundations on which the meanings of the symbols and signs are based become sites of contestation-places where they alternately coalesce and contradiet one another. On the other hand, African American.s have established performance criteria for evaluating snapping. Thc etTectiveness of snapping, then , is con tingent on meeting these criteria. According to some of the intcrviewees, such criteria indude knowing the proper context in which to snap, making sure that the snap is audihle, being creative with regard to inventing new kinds 01' snaps, demonstrating verbal dexterity to match the snap, and halting the arm at the end of the snap. With regard lo the halting 01' the arm, onc interviewee said, "W hite people don 't know how to put the force behind it. They usually just swish their wristjust any old way. You got do it Iike BAM! (SNAP') so people know you mean business." Thus , in the eyes ofmany African Amer icans, when it comes to snapping and other Afriean-American identifled cxpressions, white folk simply do not measure up .

Conclusion

Wh ilc Túllll1lye's pOSltlOll is o ne o f a n csscntialist, shc does make some important :lnd lroublin g p n in lS IIbo ul how , hislorically, white Ame rica n:; have l!o·n pll:d an u in m: lny l'IISCS slIcccssrull y muny 01' lhe a rtislic ro n ns (JI' !\rl il';¡II -Ame riC:\ 1I clJ lIl Jn: wlt"ou t ¡¡állPwkd lIinl!. lhe I'c()p k hehind Ihe

Snapping is cvcrywherc. O nce a behavior found only amo ng a 5111 all l1 umber r c.J isenfram;h iscu 1-11 t1 l1pS, sna pping has dissem ína ted in to popular culture ush cn:d tu lhe 1'(,rcl'loll t 11 1' what is hip amI rol' t hose who had no previo us

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~ nm\ lelige 0 1' il ~ e\l~ I ~ fl l" 1 11 11:; lid fI(l w lcdgcd '1111 PI 11111' pI. 1Vl. ¡I 1;1I'g(: role i 11 (e lcv isillll c ult u re, Sl lI lwl> li~ c //1 1.1I';'¡g Co/m', A!1I1'/1I/ ,I lI d / 1". I-i'/'s!t Pril/C'/' (~l n,'/,. 'ir exelll pliJ'y 111m sflap pillg is uscd as cam p aflu p'll ndy. as a rdb:liol1 )1' allilllde, a nd a~ a bunding lIIechaniSIll. l eve n saw (ul k-show host Arscllio J la ll slIap at one 01' his gucsts in <1n attempt to rcad hcr about a particular ppi ll( shc l11ade. 111 Al'rican-Al11erican gay cOl11l11unities across the country snapping is lIscd ill a ritualistic fashion , accol11panied by a complex series of rules ami I·OII!extS. These rules and contexts determine whether snapping is to be illlcrpreted as reading, diss,i ng, thro\Ving shade. cracking face , calling some \lile out , or a host of other terl11S indigenous to thcse communities. Moreover, snapping seems to ha ve a comm unal dimension oThe mere recognition o f its mcaning in context seems to pro vide a space where community building occurs. A demonstration of the importance of snapping in some African American gay coml11unities is revea led in a story CB told me. He said snap ping is such a common part 01' (heir Iives, that an organization comprised 01' African-American gay and bisexual men incorporated it into the rules that govcrn their meetings. CB: OK. I was at this meeting of a group of black gay ami bisexual men ealled " Black Men 's Exchange. " And one of the offieers \Vas at the top of the stairs- this \Vas in a house-one 01' the officers \Vas sitting at the top of the stairs and someone had evidently asked him a question which he \Vas answering. So lhe Icader of (he group who was speaking at lhe time stopped and was like, "Uh, excuse me 1 need to have everyone's attention" and blah . bla h, blah. You know, he did his littlc spiel. And the guy who was answering the question said , "As an officer of this group I am entitlcd to answer any questions which are asked of me:' so on and so forth: SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! And then every body fell out beeauseeverybody was Iike, "Oh , no . That's against lhe rules: No reading. No snapping," and 1 starled laughing. Thal was my first meeting ami I slarted laughing beca use lhat's some scrious stuff when you have lo make up a rule abo ut no reading, no snapping, we 're gonna lry to get along, blah. blah, blah. And so they solved it. They seltled it. But it was runn)' .

( 'Ws narrative reftccts both the fun and the scriollsness 01' snapping within Africall-.'\mcrican gay cultures. Whether in a "S NAP' session " or reading !'iOIIlCO()UY ror "real" in lhe streets, snapping serves a vital and functional role ill I h~ lives 01' its lIsers. These a re sccncs 01' thc celebru lory aspects of sna pping, 1t is a lso a prob k lllal ic bcha villr because \ Ir SUI1I C Ihe alisoc ia tions that aceoll1pa ny its use. SlI aPl'ing in hel e r~)SCXLl"llIs wl' lI as l'ily cu ltures is associaled wilh cf1cmin acy; 1') I

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all y c hallenges csscnl i,, !I:-1 \'leW.. 1'1' ge llder or indirectly reilíes phallo\:entric I1 iera rdl ics. The otller controversy around snapping is the essen(ialis( pcrspective cmbraccu by membcrs 01' African-Amcrican cOlllmunities, both gay and heterosexual. As an African-American I understand this sentiment. None Iheless, I realize that no lext is sacred because culture itselfis not. We live in a world in which once an utterance, expression , or gesture lea ves US, its mean ing becomes eontested , rair game ror many interpretations. Likewise. Marlon Riggs ' essay on the appropriation of snapping by pop ular. macho African -A merican men is a rivetin g and provoeative exercise of scholarship. Yet , its essentialist view of snapping is problematic. R iggs writes: Within the black gay community, for example, the SNAP! contain s a ll1ultiplicity of meanings: as in- SNAP!- "Got your point! " Or SNAP!- " Don't even try it." Or-SNAP!- "You fierce! " or SNAP!- " Get out ofmy face." or- SNAP!- " Girlfriend , pleeeease. " The snap can be as emotionally ami politieally charged as a denched fist , can punctuate debate and dialogue like an exclamation point, a comma, an ellipse, or altogether negate lhe need for words among those who are adept at decoding ils nuanced meanings . (255) This sludy examines all 01' the uses of snapping Riggs describes. However, the uses, meanings, and contexts of snapping Riggs outlines are those found among African-American gay males and, to a lcsser extent, African-American women; therefore, the signiflers 01' snapping that are recognizable to one group are foreign to another. Snapping's value, then , is contingent on lhe set ofsocially and culturally constructed value systems of a particular group of people. I-1eterosexuals , black or white, do not necessarily harbor the same value systems as gays or cxperience the world from the same subje\:t position ; hence , their use 01' snapping might bear striking differences, uses that may or Illay not rcflect homophobia , racism , and misogyny. Snapping. however, may still relain some 01' its political and social power, despite its appropriation by popular culture. In these instances. snapping resists " [becoming] part of a simplistically reductive Negro faggot iden tity .. , ." (Riggs, 255). Marcos Becquer argucs, for example, that snapping amI vogueing,11 are two art forms that transcend simple appropriation by dominant cu lture and are transformed into an empowering discourse which rel~ects the eomplexity 01' A frican-American gay culture. He writes: TlJe lti.l'(or¡m/ hyh l iJily which informs snapping and vogueing bccomcs . , . él slrah:n lh a l n.:al:hes bcyond mere approp riatio n into

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Bl:l:qutr's argllll1cnl problemaLizes the notion of appropriatioo as it is gen erally l'olll'cived wilh regard to cultural art forms. f or him , snapping and vogllcing arc too complex to be fully robbed of their indigenous usage within !\frica n-!\merican gay communilies. Unlike Riggs, Becquer does not argue fmm an essclltialist perspective; rather, he suggcsts that the complexity ofthe hdlavior, logether wi th its history, tramforms it ioto a diseourse that d oes not Icnd itselr easily lo appropriation ; therefore, the elemenls of the behavior Ihat make it empowcring for its originators remain intact. Mo reover, as John hske reminds us: There is always an e1ement 01' popular culture that hes outside social control, that escapes or opposes hegemonic forces. Popular culture is always a culture of conflict, it always involves lhe strugg1e to make social meani.ngs thal are in the interests orthe subordinate and that are not those preferred by the dominant ideology. The vietories, however fleeting or limited, in this struggle produce popular pleas me, for popular pleasure is always social and political. (2) Pcrhaps it is at those plaees " outside" social control where the indigenous Ilwanings 01' snapping are recouped . And 1 venture to say that given the persistence of African-American gay men to devise new technologies for self asscrtion, particularly that oflhe SNAP! queen, there are also many victories, holh literal and metaphorieal.

Notes Like the term "Signifying," there may be other terms used to describe this behavior. Ilowever. in central North Carolina an d in southern LOllisiana , the term "s nap ping" is the most commonly used term to describe this behavior. 2 I fOllnd that issues ofclass do not have a direct effect on snapping. One interviewee describes a context in which snapping around a eertain social eirde would be seen as distasteflll ; in general, however, one's social class does not preclllde one from cngaging in the behavior. .\ Olle 0(' the four African-American gay males interviewed outcd hirnself to me at the conclusion ofthe interview. Al l hollgh I interviewed him under the impres sion thal he was heterosex ual. I indude him in the i\frican-American gay Illale S:1I11ple.

4 The "Sig nifying Mon kcy Ta les" are widel y antbologized : howeve r, for a critical

;llIalys i~ alld discllssilln 1111 Ilre migill 111' lhe ta les, see I-I emy LOllis (¡ales , Jr. ,

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S h1l' IlIme 1111 Si ~ lIll y l1H' 'il',' e '111111111 1 Mll l'I lc ll . Ke ruall , 1\)7 _. (, Dile lo tlll.! gr\.'a l 1111111111.' 1 0 1 1 .' III1~, I1wd hy Ihe illt ervicwecs. I did IlOt use all {)f Ihll1 l1 iUlhe lolk1 wi llf dcsc rlp lil1l1. R:ll her, I chosc to presenl the Illain eategories in which I11¡U1Y otl1t:: r de nvallves or allernate sayiugs are found . 7 ]'iIIgue,\' Un/ied is Marloll Riggs' eontroversial docudrama which aired 011 PBS's "Point ofYiew" (POY) series in the sumiller 01' 1990. The film explores the lives of African-Arnerican gay males, oflell challenging the a ssumptions that Afriean Arnerican gay culture is m o nolithic and/or simplistic. rhe film fe atu res a seglllent on snapping and voguein g il! which perfor me rs demonstraLc and m ockingly give viewers "Iessom;" on ho\\! to perform the behavior. 8 The term "queen" is almost always viewed as derogatory. Therefore, none of lhe i\friean-American gay males interviewed would consider thernsel ves to be queens, though others in their communities might. Beeause there is rarely self identification with the q uee n (Wilh , of course the exception of those who have rcappropriated the term as a form o fself-ell1powermcnt , si milar to those gays who have reappropriated the terll1 " quccr"), I do II0t refer to the interviewees in this stlldy as ljueens , even though they providect lIlost of the cOlTllllelltary o n ql1een culture. 9 The politics of representation with rega rc.l to gender performance is the focus 0 1" lTlueh fell1inist and gay scholarship. For some seholars calllp performance by gay men is less a critique 01' compulsory heteroscxuality and phallocentrism and more a reinscription ofmale dominancc and woman-haling. For example, M a rilyn Frye writes: " One 01' the things w hich persuades the straight world that gay men are not really men is efreminacy of style of some gay men and the gay institution of the impersonation of IVomen, both of which are associated in the popular mirtd with male homosexl1ality. But as I read il. gay men 's effeminacy and donning of feminine apparel displays no love or identification with \V omen or the 1V0manly" (137). But Judith Butler q uest ions this view of gender performance when she writes: "The problem with the analysis of drag as only ll1isogyuy is, 01' coursc , that it figures ma le-to-fem ale transsexuality , eross-dressing, and drag as male homo sexual activities- which they are no t allVays-~and it further diagnoses male h omosexuality as rooted io llIisogyny . 'rhe femirtist amrlysis thus makes male homosexuality ahoul women , and one mi ght argue lhat at its extrelTle, this kind of analysis is in fact a eolonization in reverse , a \Vay for feminist women to rnake themselves into lhe eenter ofmale homosexual activity (and thus to reinscribe the heterosexual matrix, parodoxically, at the heart of the rad ,ical feminist position)" (127; a uthor\ italies). While my o\\'n position would appear to be more aligned with that 01' Frye (given the testimony 01' misogynist remarks made by a number 01" my gay friend s). I recoglli ze lhe eomplexity of gerlder performance and resist situating it as either critical subversion or affected theatrieality, felish. and wornan hating. I am more inclined to arguc, as does Butler, that gcnder performativity engenders an "am bivalent" rather than a stable represenlation in its ability to bolh appropriate and subvert misogynist and hOlllophobic norms ol' oppression. 10 Paris Is Buming is director Jennie Livingston's 1991 documentary on A friean American and L.atino gay drag balls in New York City . I1 Yogueing is a kind 01' dance which resembles the movements of a model during a photography shoot- a series of freeze frames. Other movernents in the dance are more fluid rcsembling that of a mime. The nallle is bclieved to have been taken frolll Vogue maga zine. which featurcs sorne of the wo rld's top fashion models. The dance originatcJ alllong urban o i\frican-!\rneric
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Part 2

HISTORY, POLITICS,

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5 DISAPPEARANCE AS HI STORY The stages of terror Anlhol1y Kuhiak

So u rcc: Th earre jou/'/w/ 39( 1) ( 1987): 78 88.

"The terror ret urns like sickness to lurk in the house," laments the chorus in the opening of the Oresleia, " th e secret anger remembers the child that shall be avenged ." Terror always returns to the OresLeia Iik e a sickness, like the terrifying pathology orthe Return itself: memory, repetition , the return ofthe Same; the murdered Iphigeneia, the Other, or the Enemy wh o "is repetition " , precipita tes the " anamnesic horror of the repetitive play of disa ppearance," disappearance itself.' Terror's primary force and aspect in the theatre is disappearance . Wh en disappearance threatens in the theatre, that threat engenders terror. When terror erupts in the theatre, it is typically figured in a kind of disappearance. As disappearance, as aphani.l'i.l'/ terror comes in many l'onns. Sometimes it is suggested in the compressed cruelty of wit, sometimes in an excess ofviolence approaching atrocity. Likewi se, our definitions or terror and our concepts of disappearance take different forms, and emerge with varyin g degrees ol' ferocity , depending upon the performance under consideratioll. The trope Quel11 Quaerilas, for instance, which some critics cite as the moment of theatre's re-emergence in the West after the decline of the classical world, represses the terror of the crucifixion and disappearance, and repositions it in the sanctioncd terrorism of the Church 's censorship of the drama durin g the Middle Ages . But this order 01' terro r is different from th e absence of the single comma in Marlowe's Edward IJ that cngenders the appearance o f Lightborn. the author and executor 01' the horrifying disappearance of the King. Similarly, the intense cruelty of \Vil circulating in and around the appearance and dis-appearance of the body in Restoration comedy -- the pa noptic , d isciplinin g wit of Con greve's Way o/lhe World and Etherege's M(/n o( Modc - prud uces ils OWIl peculiar and particul ar kind of tcrror, quite J islinc l ('rom . bul ill lis way 1111 less ha rrQwing lhan, th e organized, regulatcd, 201

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More rccen tly. BCl:kcll ha s brm lg hllo panllyzing C>. IICl1l1tICS Ihe d'fcl:ls 01' Ihe .\'uppre.l'sed lerro r tha l S t rindberg and Ibsen ex p lo n:d. wllilc wrilers like Genet ano Pinte r allow lerror a more self-consl:ious - a nd overtly violent free-pl ay. We m ight contrast lhe claustrophobic, cxhausted fury o rStrindberg's Dance of Dealh, for example. with the menacing violence ofthe two slrangcrs in Pinter's T he Birlhda)' PaNy. Evcn lhe eruptive, though st ill paraplegie. rrenzy of Ham in Beckett 's Endgame appears to indicate that lerror as violence has resurfaced in Modern ist drama .] Mueh earlier. A ntonin Artaud sought a comprehensively terrifyin g di s appearance by eliminating altogelher the re presentational structure o f theatre grounded in " cla ssical" texts. Artaud revolted against the lheatre's over dependence on these texts, a dependence that he felt prevented performa nce from attaining its rad ical , excoriating end: to evoke a hyper-Aristotelian catharsis, he had reeou rsc to the cruelty of a te rro r beyond pity and beyond representation - the Plague. Terror in the theatre is different from terrorismo According to Andre Breton (apparently inspired by his friend Vache), " the si mplest Surrealisl act consists 01' dashing in lo Ihe streel , pislol in hand , and firing blindly, a s fast as you can pull the trigger. into the crowd.,,4 This " simple" Surrealisl act is meant to awaken spectators lO their own "debasemenl" and to the exhilaral in g dan ger - and beauly -.. of pe,jór/11wu:e menaóng arl. As I will show mueh later in this essay , a sjmilar desirc finds its most grap hic expression loday in the work of those body-artists who use real , and often excessive, violenee as a means of reprcsentation in lheir performances. Unlike lhe theatrc that cvokes terror, these terrorizing wo rks desire for disappearance to show itself and by the same token , to reappear - in a repetition or return of the Same,

lhreatening to destroy lhe performer's body, and producing a visible sign

01' terror in the body. A similar aspiration fuels the complicities 01' media

with the intoxicating plague of transnational terrori sm in post-industrial

culture. " What is the theatre ," \\'I'ites Blau, "b ut the body's lon g initiation in the IlIystery of its vanishings?"5 There is perhaps nothing so terrifying th a n lhe kllo\Vledge that my body will forsake me, that lhis f (/171 is vulnerable to pain , lu dcalh . Or that another, \Vith a single word or calculated glance or hidden uhscrvation , can call my appearance. or my actual being, into qucstion. " ( hah: rnyscll~ r look so ill today," says Loveil in Etheregc's Man o/Mode, and hl'r servanl Pert responds revealingly. " Hate the wicked cause on't, that base m,m I Mr. Dorimant , who makes you torment and vex 1 yourself continu a lIy. "1, 111 the inlcrnational thcatres of Sta le terrorism the extreme limit 01' DOIimanl 's inquisulo rial gazc Ih e interroga tion - may even in itiate rea l dis ap¡x:.rrance in dea lh (how ma lly dcalhs in El Salvador in I986'!). Perform ance

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Ihe sl ugc, I1 li r llll ill p- llI.l ti lllll ,llll' in cvc l yday lik , COlldllCls ils husilless in Ihe rac!.: orlhis th, cu l. ill Ihl' llI lIh"' lI cc llf'lhis " iniliali oll ," trying in momcnts , lo 1~II':c lhe facts bul fu I' nlOl C urgc nlly, lrying lo for gel facl entirely ll/(/I fact in parlicular, glimpsed in " lhc backward half-Iook over the shoulder. " Terror opcrales in this theatre 01' lhe sccll1ingly unspeakable, and the apparently unrcpresenlable. UII

1 The lheatre' s entire structure - lhe voiced breaches between and within characters, the abyss separating actor aDd audience - attests lo its in volve menl in lhe deep psychic schism that results from what Jacques Lacan calls " the mirror- stage," thal point in psyehic devel opmenl in which the fragmenlcd sclf appears momentarily wholc in the vision of the Other, eilher as a literal mirror-image, or as the body of another person o In this relation, the O ther wields a powcr that one finds both reassuring and terrifying, for it constitutcs onc' s sen se of one's integrity and of what is most gratifyingly familiar , but at the same time il keeps that integrity perll1anently out 01' one's control and thereforc pcrmanently illusory. Disappcarance in the theat.re rclies on this latter asped of lhe Other. 1 F 01' Lacan , the Olher consists partly in that placc outside of the self tha! is Ihe " Iocus 01' the inscription of the Law," lhe concealed spacc of Ihe uncon scious formed by repression . As such, "The Other," like meaning itself, has no distinct sile. It will retain the allusiveness of interpretation , and a lways escape - like language from closure. Since this unlocatibility produces terror. one seeks protedion in becoming inaecessible oneself. Herbcrt Blau puts it succinctly: "The silence of another - intolerable. The only defcnse is the silence \vithin. "~ But this isjust another kind ofterror. one which the self imposes on itself. Hieronimo, in The Spanish Tragedy, demonstrates how grue some sllch lerror can be. Afler his son's incomprehensibly wanton murder. his despair drives him to bite out his ton gue. terrorizing his own body. It is just such a displ ace menl by lhe speaking subjecl into the law , into the locus of lhe Ot.her, (in thi s case, the law of silence) Ihat produces aphanisis. When I speak from the loeus of the Other, r disappear to ll1yself. As the Other demands through force that we show ourselves, we experience oLlr "fadin g," the threat 01' our disappearance , a threat that Lacan calls "!cthal." And il is lhis particularly !clhal aspect of the Other, the perception 01' the Other as the Enemy , that gave rise to Blall 's exhaustive work with his group Kraken: The encmy \Ve wanted lo know is the sinisler aspect of the Olher, the Familiar, lhe D ou b!c, lhe Sceret Sharer, perhaps all that survives 01' lhe Beloved wh al makcs your hair sland on end. Y

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111 I he I " 1\~ rIlV. IIIl' fa ll l\ li ;rr iI Y,, 1 I ht' ( >t IrlT Ilre Sl'lJM \Ir I hr I )II I\'r as IIrilTon~d sdJ'. dr lrcle lll. blll also Ilre sall1c is rcu-shit ü;u by Il!lIt Ifal· trollal ditTcrcl\cc, tlral splillfen:d SCClllld nI' an.: lhat represenls lig hl-yealo.;. !'he Olher. slill SllllJchow the Samc. i::l 1l0W radica lly altered. changcd , lite -threatening, like one 01' lhe ghosls 01' Dunsinane, or like the imagc 01' Oesdemona in Othcllo's cye arter he!' imagined adultay. a " wcll-paintcd passion " - the fo rm still rccognin ble, but lhe d(ffáence making " your hair stand on e nd. " There is rH> kno wing ir lhis allerity inheres in l11y perception or in th e Olller: eertainty can only exisl in the kn o wlcdge of lhe Other. This shift in pen:eplion, the assumption of this aspect of the Other, is critical beca use it both c1arifies one aspect of the Other - its seemi ng enmity, or ils enmity as seeming - and obfuscates the larger tleld ofthe O ther by intro ducing yet another variable, anothcr variant in the precession of its masks. Bul even within the rcstrictions of its definition as the Enemy , the Other is slill impossible to grasp. impossible to know . The more familiar the Enemy looks, the more threatening, more dangerolls , it becomes. Familiarity is the most dangerous 1iability in the confrontation with the Enemy. In a com mentary on the theatrical project built around the concept o/" the Enem)', Blau writes, "Our greatest temptation would be to embrace sorne spectre of the Enemy prematurely, while the mortal Enemy, scornful in the realm of archetypes, was laughing at the presumption." lo Since the Enemy threaten s to exterminatc the selr, it becomes a matter of survival to distingui sh it from the Other in which one recognizes oneself.

The Enemy might be fiction , chimera, product of paranoia - yet something more than our own psychic field distorted, made mon strous 01' feeble by the perversions of dread, an inverse reverence. . .. The Enemy 's mas k is inscribed b), history \Vith lines dra\Vn by our earliest childhood fears. The idea of the enell1y is what was dreamed for us before \Ve dreamed. Our dreams retort to our denials: \Ve are being dreamed. The Enemy is doing the dreaming." Finall y, l3Iau's work recognizes in its search 1'01' the Enemy thal the Enemy simply be the paranoia of the search itsclf. "The very wnception of lhe Enem y might be the Enemy," he sa)'s; but all the sa ll1e " there is the l'orJception, " 12 lila)'

When r place myself in language - the Other's loeation - announcing my presenee there , and vanishing to myself h('/"e, disappearance efTects pain . ¡\(;(;ordin g to Laftotte in DalllOn 's Dcath, pain "ll1easures time .. . finely, it splils él sixtieth ofa second."" The 1110menl orterror, like the instant ofpa in is a Illomen t 01' zero time and inlinitc uuration. Although terror can 0111 y () (;(;UJ in hislory. it is tdl a:; " nrü.cd sing ularity, existing o lJtside all pl)$sible n'prcscll t:rtiol1 . In lh\:) aclu al tilTlC I lr at1crror and ptt in occur, I J i ~tory ca nccls il sclr. p \;r ~s itscl r " lI ndcr crII "" II ' .. d iN ;r pp¡;a rs. "Tite.: 'i11l;tIlC'i t IWi JlI ~C urr:rill 01

11I,s" JlI ' I'.\ lt .\Nr ' JI A!-I Ii IS'I'O ln :rlld lira)' il stil' ()Ill y 1)1 ;r :.illj!.k al(H" lIlakcs a rCJll in C rl';rlioll I"ro¡n top lo boll om .·' I~ In pai n \Ve CX pcriCIlCC hislory as pure snbjccl , isnlaleu and dctachcd ; wc cx pcricncc history, in other \Vords, as a-historiea\. But pain is an instancc 01' wh a t Laean \.:alls the Real , a term designating the actual con ditiolls of lil'c as they penetrate the mind and body unmediated by the Symbolie. Fredcric Jameson puts it succinctly: "the Real in Laean ... is simply History itsclf," where the terll1 "!l istory " refers to the experience of the subject. 1S In terror the Real seems, paradoxically, to split from history, sheared away in an in sta nt that appears - in the b1ink of an eye - as histor)"s end. The recuperatio n 01' that eml, and the reification of terror into hi story as historicized "fact" 01' image is the Terror, or the practice of the terror, terrorism o Terror threatens the Symbolic, discriminating order of language by forci ng either the di sintegration of lang uage. or its reduction to silence. To again paraphrase Bl a u: Samuel Bedett has sho\Vn us again and again that the theatre reall y may have nothing to sayo But the terror that infects perform ance is not the same as terrorism o Terrorism is an inv asive technique; it is effective as a technique only when it appears as a symbolic rupture in the Symbolic, " rational ," " nor mal " order of things - a gun held to the bead 01' a hostage-pilot, for instance, communicating in this threatening display before the television cameras the symbolic structure 01' the hostage situation . The effects of lerror , by contrast, appear as an actual (thus unrepresentable) rupture 01' the Symbolic or Imaginary by the Rea\. As such , it can never be a " technique. " The manipulation ofterror by the forces that create real states of Terror or terrorism must ultimately Ieave terror unchanged, unspoken. Only the image 01' terror, the mask 01' the Enemy. is subject to revision. The space of that revision is performative, \Vhether the performance is theat ricalized. or privatized - in torture a nd disap pearances, for example. But revising the image 01' terror in performance should not be confused ,,,ith changing the reality. Although the image ofthe Terror has been changed , or displaced , or " revised ," the real terror, the terror that ha s silen(;ed per formance itself, remains hidden (as it must) . It is thus al\Vays up for question whelheT our modes of theatre and performance are laboring against terror, or against the image of the Terror as terrorism o Terrorism seeks to separate the seemingly inseparable - the Real from the historical and to obliterate the transcendental signitler " history" in the ecstasy 01' a moment in which the Real seems to ex ist without its Historical "aura." In that instant of transformation , a moment of slIstained Real-il)', dcmand \Vould fully satisfy dcsire . The terrorist impulse is at once an impulse to the suhlime and an impulse fo r dealh cnacteu in the present performative; hul il becollles, fln ally, lhe O the r Theatre 01' Cruelty , lhe Other Theatrc gcncraled by Plague. sincc as lhe lerrorisl aet necessa rily bCL:ol11es an elec tfIJlI;nllll' /II" c!ifll ed l\pcc l a~ k . ils Il1eu trical im pulses ¡ '('l/ XC' lo /J(" llimlre , but more o n Ihis hrln '1 leo

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In the midsl ul' lltcsc ahslra.:lio!ls alld appari.:l1 l l'1' 1I11. lIh ~ II\ II IS , Lcrror, musc ofthc Encmy, may ([ppear un lllt:atcd, unrcpn.!sclllahk. lll lllalllcablc, bul it remains real; like the Enemy, it "has a name." Howcvcr ulIspcakable the moment of tcrror mighl be, the Enemy has its methods ami techniques , ib reasons - no matter how unutterable these may seem . Although the moment of terror exists in the Real , and so is outside language, we ael as though it can be understood - a Utopian twist, perhaps. We study, if not terror, then terror's existence in its effects, its strategies, its ilIusions, its masks, in the cruel and tcrrifying traces of its History upon om minds and bodies - in short. what Marx might simply have calIed History itself. Robespierre, in Danton 's Dmlh , articulates this distinction : The wcapon of the republic is terror. the strength of the republic is virtue. Virtue: for without it , terror is corruptible; terror: for without ir, virtue is powerless. Terror is an outgrowth of virtue; it is nothing more than swift. rigorous, and inflexihle justice. [1. iii.) In the theatre we see the distinctions between masterlslave , self ami Other. Enemy ami Beloved, virtue ami terror blur ami begin to disintegrate. And it is precisely in lerror - the terror 01' disappearance in the binaries - that distinctions threaten , on the one hand, to collapse inlO the totality of the Same, amI on the other, to collap.\·e the totality of the Same itself. The difference between Statc terrorism and terrorism against the State - a diseourse between Others. This distinction is posited quite clearIy in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin when he differentiates the l11ono!ogü: language of the Sta te , which tries to impose the violence of perfectly mediated uniformity (Law) on the language of a society - Robespierre's monolithic appropriation of the terms "virtue" and "terror" - from that same society's use of a performative, heleroglossi(" language, which tries to disable the monologues of power through the endless slippages and differentiations 01' common speech . 16 The intrusion of a more sclf-eonsciously "wmmon " speech into theatre ami performance has been one of the halImarks of modernismo But as Blau notes , \Ve have seen the slow decay of this "realistic" speech into morc ami more primitivist versions of colloquialism, "proto" language , and finally aphasia ami silence. Words thelllselves have been disappearing. The decomposition 01' language through the history of the theatre is best seen , perhaps, by comparing the ebullienee of speech in earlier periods with the arid, aphasic, repetitive "dialogue" in Robert Wilson 's work , or the " ontologic hysteria " of Richard Foreman's librettos. lt is almost as if modern ami postmodern performance, sensing the terrorizi ng inadequacy ofl a ng uage, has . like Hieron.imo, bitten out its to ngue. Both the Te rror and terrori.~m , as words, as symbols of the real terror - the un:spcak able. a-historka l. lI nlltlJ11cahle in v
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always "thel Ih ulI Ill l"Il hc!\l, I lIl lIlI ~¡'; kll or call1lol 1)(' si gllilicd. 11 cxhihits Ihe I'ull fo rce ,,1' tlll' Hl'ltl . I l' ll lH", whell :signilicd, is re positiol1l.:d in lhe Syll1holit: orde r, wlterc il cca scs lo be whal it is. Il bccolllcs reificd, histori cil.cu , and in its hisloricizatioll. it rorcdoses itself. In its tTUC nature terror is randoll1. Like tcrrorism as it is theorizcd by lean l3audrillard , terror "no longcr has any objectives, ... nor any determinate enemy .. . . Terrorism is this: it is novel , and insoluble, only because it strikes wherever, whencver, whoever. " 17 As terror Illoves into signification ami becomes understood aS the Terror or tcrrorism, it becomes an annihilating violence in the service of knowledge (virtue) and power. It contains as its inscription the law of terrorism - the absolute necessity to communieate the incomlllunieable as incommunicable, or, as Lyotard might put ir, to represent the unrepresentab1e. Terrorislll uses the incolllmunicable to ground a discourse of power in an absolule coercíon 01' the body. This difference 01' terror from itself, this alterity ghosting the word itself, concealing violation within its mark like a tattoo on the body, forms the basis of terrorism's ideology and political technique. T he spectacle 01' terrorism to which terror gives way is essentially a pro duct of the political order. a world as Guy Debord writes, "at once present ami absent which the spectade makes visible . .. the world of the commodity dominating all that is lived." ,sThe terrorist , the newsman , ami "anti-terrorist" law-enforcers are all illlplicated in this process of " colllmodification ": all he1p to maintain the continued efficacy of terrorism as a political tool , as an implement 01' the Symbolic, informational order the Law of terrorism , or terrorism as cultural object. Terror's Illovement from the Real to the Symbolic - terror into terrorism gives it political force . As it exists in the Real. terror can have no literal mean ing, ami as it comes to rest in the Symbolic order, it can no longer be what it was when it was felt as real. This is the rcason , I think , that terrorism necds, ami has always insisted upon , the performative mode. According to Blau, "The illusions 01' performance are still horrifically intertwined with the per formance 01' illusions. The terrorist act has always been designed thcatricaIly. " 19 But it is crucial to remember that although the two impulses terror in the theatre and the theatre of terrorislll - may meet somcwhere in the present performative, the two impulses are not the same. lt is also important to keep in mind that today Statc terrorism (by far the more virulent 01' the two forms 01' terrorism) typicaIly relies on the non-theatrical in-visible techniques of torture, c\andestine operations, disappearances, and night-time bombing runs.

rr Laca n defi nes the O thcr (F.nemy) as a manifestation in/ofthe Symbolic order. Jean Ba udri lJarJ plal:cs the sillllllacrum in an 01'(/(''' oj"simulat;ol1s that secms to be someth ing li kc a ~ll lla J1sc u l' the Lacan ia n Real and Sy mbolic what he )()7

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calls the hy pe ll cu l, hlll WI! I,t " PI ll'i1 IS Illon.: a S tllc !tl/It'. 11'/1/" 0(1, " the rca l is 11tH o nly whal can IR' IQllUdll \Jl'J , l)IIt thal Ilik c la ll!(lIilgl"'1 whidl is al ways ul n!ady rcprod uccu . rile hY Pcl' rc¡¡1. "ill Baudrillard revcrscs Ihe lIsual order of thc sigllilier ami lhe sign ilied. IIe says that the diffe re ncc lx:lween S/s is an illUlmry product 01' the capitalist ethos that differentiates hetween use vallle an u cxcllange value and favors the "reality" of the latter, as it does the sig ni licd over the signifier. But in the post-industrial capitalism of our time, rcly illg more and more heavily on the exchange of sigilo\" as commodities, (he s igll ilicr - a seemingly symbolic entity takes up the reaJity ofthe signified (or thc rcferent?) into itself, and erases the difference. What is real, then, is what ~ 1 1l he (Iike the signifler) perfectly programmed, eontrolJed, and reproduced caéh and every time from a preexisting symbolic model or "simulation ." T lwre is thus 110 " rea lity" or Real in the Lacanian sen se; what is real refers haá each and every time not to somelhing, but to a model , a program, a sillllllated hyperreal : " It is rea lity itselftoday that is hyperreal. ... it is reality thal disappears utterly in the game of reality. "11 The logic ofthe simulacrum prccludes thealre in as much as the latter is an Illlaginary/Symbolic construct that stands in the place of the (repressed) Real. Since Baudrillard collapses such distinctions, there can no longer be a theatre that refers its iIIusions back to " reality." "End of the theatre of representation , the space of signs, their conflicts, their silence .... ' It 's a theatre,' 'It's a movie, ' old adages, old naturalistic denunciation. These say ings are now obsolete."22 Even Artaud is displaced, existing only as the cokl "releren/ia/ of cruelty. "2, Terrorism, according to Baudrillard, has now subsumed theatrc into its order of simulation: terrorism is "o llr Theatre of Cruclty, the only one that remains to us, perhaps equal in every aspect to that al' i\rtaud or to that 01' the Renaissance. "24 The logic of the simulacrum applies qui,te well to the current "hyperreal" phenomena ofterrorism. Terrorism has for some time been a bsorbed into the semantics the "simulations" - of media. Terrorism, that "Thea tre of Cruelty, " owes its existence, aceording lo Baudrillard. to the various media that pro ducc il. Although terrorism may be, as scholars in international affairs are fOlld ofsaying, "a theatre, at least in its embryonic stages, "25 in Baudrillard's lhollght terrorism, when it is not "theoretical," is not so much an exploitation llflhc media by terrorists, as it is the exploitation ofterror (ami eventually the lcrrorist himself) by the media: an attempt by the media to utilize the images 01' terror as a means of reproducing to infinity the marketable thrill of an unsreakable, ,\fJeCl([Cu/ar acL The production of the terrorist by the media is ¡¡ fUIle!ion of the orders of simulation that transform the pure expenditu re 01' lhe real terrorist ae! into consumer product (the sellable video image). Tnrorism is lhus dependenl uron a system 01" information wh ose coh ere nee is det crl1lilled hy lhe logic o f sim lll acra - the endless precessio n 01' images wilosc sign ifyill g runcl iOIl is a illICu lm ly ti 1 others images, olher simulacra. Jn Ihi s wllrld , po la ritics or ri!'hlllnd Idl (light tlnd wro ng'!) a re collapscd in lo a 'IlK

11I ."i ¡\ ''1'Li\ ' U \N'-"¡

,\ ~,

111 \ ' 111( '

sillgk, um:ndillJ.!,dw lli ," Idl' IIII l ,1i 1I11 , l g¡,:~ tlll' IlIla gt:s lll""IJ¡¡:telTllrisl," wilo has cc;.¡ scd lo n: prc!wII I iIIlV lhÍll!', but a namckss, endlcssly Illirrored IlOIl clllily \",ilh vaguely SCllli lic lcaL urcs lhe Enemy reduced to whal B1aumight call "the Enemy lhal a p pears hy dcl ~lult. ... The Enemy that comes out to meet faintheartedness . " 2(. What does it mean to simulate real terror, and pain? What are the model s rrom which terror emerges? Which discourses have truly absorbed the pain of torture and the wounded body? Baudrillard discusses such q uestions briefly in Simula/ion.\", but only from the standpoint ofone whofeigns pain, not from the standpoint of the one who actually experienccs it. Baudrillard admits only the hyperreal pain of simulation, " for guilt, anguish and death there can be substituted the total jo)' of the signs of guilt, violence and dea th ." For Ba udrillard pain and terror have also bccome hyperreal. But once the logic of the simulacrum - the endless precession of identicaJ images ·- makes the Real disappear into th e hyperreal , theatre in to terrori slll , pain into the signs of pain, \Ve stand face to face once again with the Enemy, the real Enemy, not the silll ulation '\vho appears by default. " When the Real disappears, we disappear to ourselves. We do not return to simulation , though: we return to the simulacrum's lerror, a terror generated by the threat of violcnee by the Other. Although there is terror both in the real-time terrorist act and in theatre, it does not follow that there is any easy equation between the two. Ifthere is a link between the terror of terrorism and that in the theatre, it is not in the surface similarities of theatricality, but in the necessity of the immediate body, the body that is, in Blau's words, "dying right in front of your eyes." Blau 's work has focused on the obdurately imlllediate body, the body that " stinks ofmortality," but whose presence and identity continuously elude us in a ghostly play of appearances and disappearances: Remember me, says the Ghost (who is after all only an actor, with his own history ofliving speech), withdrawing. the words echoing in the tablet where, even if scratched in the actor's blood , the speech is only the shadow of an appearance whose identity is suspect Y The osciJlation between an insistence on the irremediable physical presence 01' the actor, coupled with an absolute suspicion 01' the signiflcance of that pre sence, places Blau's work at the laceratin g edge of the " problem " of the Real - its indistinctness in Lacan , its repression by the " hyperreal " in Baudrillard : the Real as History that insists itself as the ground of ollr thought and expcricnce. ror Blau , the theatre is the space and time within which that pro blem is explored in all its dimensions , in all of its impossibilities. Ir t hea tre has heen repressed in the o rde rs of sim ulacra, we m ay forget t he sil1llllalion lhal i.\ lhua lre : lhe doublin g, mi rroring, replicating structure 01' rc:h~arsa l anJ rcpdi lill ll il! r \) rl"ll rm<1m;e; lhat p ro~ess (lf silllulation that '(1)

IlIS¡\I'I'I I.\lt ,\Nt ' I'J .\1'1

n :!il"l l l\l \

embouies the EIlL'rtl y tI.I 1 I,: I'Cl l1 11)1\ , "11ll' lill'-dcIl YIIIJ' turn' 11 1 a l'adavcrous return ."z~ While it is 11111': lllal, according to Bauuri llllld. Ill é doubling in theatre is uifferent from lile "verliginous hyperreality " nI' Ihe simulacrum , that initial breach in the perception of the theatre is t he beginning ami the return of simulation; anu in that return. as al the enu . there is the Enemy and death. A Theatre 01' Crue1ty seems unneccssary when reality has outstrippcd what is most cruel in the theatre, when "the en ormity ()f fact almost corrodes the realil y and valuc 01' arl. "29 Rccently though, there ha ve been so me atlempts to re-establish the reaJity 01' terror in performance in lhe face 01' its commodific ation anu repression by meuiation and simulation. It is perhaps in bouy-art thal the ¡mage 01' terror has most visibly re-entered pe rformance. The scars, marks and mutilations appearing in the works 01' Stc/arc and Burden. the needles and treadmil1s and binding ro pes in the performance work of Linda Montano, the kiss and the bite in the work 01' Vito Acconci, and the repeti tion 01' similar violences in countless Iesser known performance \Vorks, all indicate a desire in performance to mark the body with the design 01' its specific historical necessity as proof of its reality. But marking the body in performance alienates it rrom itself anu forces it to become a sign (or rather, a sign 01' a sign) 01' its physical presence. lts theatricalized wou.nds put it again at a uistance from itself, producing in its informational designs a literal ecs/l/.\y that attests to a desire for the sublime in the representation and cancellation of the bouy 's history. This is quite similar to the desire in terrorism for a sublime produced through the oblitera tion of History. But this distancing also reifies and commodifies the body. Like simulation , it sells the violent image and transmutes expenuiture into production. We need only tum lo Baudril1ard's "white Iymph" of television lo remind ourselves how easily "real " pain anu " real" wounus are packaged and sold in post-industrial American capitalism . t\lthough the images 01' violence sometimes seem to challenge OUT capacity to absorb them, absorb lhem we do - at first with trepidation, perhaps, but finally with complacence, cven oblivion.

III S'I'I1IU

ni \lsl scri l~ w.. ly q II~ ~ I \l 111 "I~' 11 11.: a 11 i li t( lIf I hose sa me illlagcs. nI' nltrer illlagcii PI' tlH: vio la l\!d blldy. ílH thcy l'Ollle lo us in cu nlelll porary perform anl:C. t\lthollgh th e lC ITOI ll f llw wotllllkd body may be " real" to the perfonn ance arlisl. lhal rl'alily is inslanLaneously cancel1cd in systems of exchangc Ihal constilute t\merican ca pilalism beca use the infticted wounds exist prim ar;!y (1.1' specwcle. Contrary 10 this, the terror 01' aphanisis in the theatre is what Blau calls a "ghosted" terror ·- a terror that is real , but that only becomcs perceptible, parauoxically, in uisappearance, in the fading residue of a prcs ence in the returning memory , in those traces that play over the suspect appearance of the body:

IIrdn. we

Jn the dreaming body of the actor, the living image of the displaced person: sclf time memory consciousness desire. The theatre is always beginning over, that' s lhe trouble . Where do we start?'o The return 01' theatre is the return of a terror that resis/s spectade, or that uses spectacle as a place 01' perfect concealment. "The spectade," says Debord , " is the moment when the commodity has atlained the total occupation of sociallife." 3\ As the \Vounds become deeper, our ability to endure the sight 01' the gore becomes stronger. This is the lesson ofvio1cnce-as-image . Through repetition , the images ofwhat was once, so me where, real violence -- whether as news event or as body art - lose their repugnance, and become more and more saleable as they become an entrenched parl 01' the symbolics of media or art. Theatre anu performance become the victims 01' this process when they lose sight of the difference between /he representa/iun u//error and lerrurism as represen/alioli. But they resist the eommodilkation of violence when they name the Enemy who threatens uso Naming the Enemy is the necessity to which we are condemned; the formula tion of the Name is what kecps us alive to life anu to death and to history. "While \Ve might prefer lo deny the Enemy 01' call il by other names .. . somewhere . .. there is an Enemy and the Enemy has a name. ",2

Though terrorism may be, as Blau says. design ed as theatrc, though it may be a simulation, a hyperreality , it is not theatre; neither is it instal1ation , performance art, 01' any " an form " that selects the living/dying body - the real body , even if"derealized" _. as its material. Terrorism may be documenta lion of some performative act that occurred somewhere, once, and perhaps il is lheatre/performance for those bodies piereed with shrapnel, bumt with lJaralm , violated with electric cattle prods, but \Ve will never know, beca use it is nol ollr theatre.: we. with extremely rare exceptions. were never there . Slill. the crealion of terrorism as a commodity has serious implications for all modes 01" performance lha l a ltell1 pl to employ lhe terrorism of " actua l" v i o l~ ncc as a central conccpt. (¡¡ven Iha l Ihe media endlessly reproduce illla gcs 0 1" lClTorizcd bouics lúr Ihe hCl1cti l 01" lhe poli tica l i1IlU ec\)nolllic

Aesch ylus, Ores/eia. "Agamemno n," transo Richmond Lattimorc (Chicago: Uni versity 01' Chicago Press, 1953), 153, 155. Herbert Blau . "The Remission of Play ," B[ooded Th oug/1I: Occasio/1s o/ T/¡ eal er (New York: Performing Arts Jo urnal PLlblications) , 69. 2 In L.acanian terms: the disappearance 01' self in the field of the Other caused , in par!. by the inll.:rnal split 01' a risin g demand/desire. This demand causes the self to situate itself in lhe localion orthe L.aw, al' authority , which properly belongs to the O the r. The sdfthus "disappears" lo itself. For a fuller lreatment ofthe concept of the Ol h..:r in Laca n . see A nthony Wilden' s translation of L.acan's "The Function 01' L.an!! ua gc in Psyd lOana lysis ," as wd l as his own commentary on lhe Other, in ....·p(.(.dl (//111 1. (/II ,í!, lIl/g l' il t /'.\ 1·("/¡' ''lIw ll'.I'i.l' ( Ba lt imorc: .Io hns 11 0pk ins U niversilY ('ress. 1(IX 1).

10

' 11

Notes

.,

'

.

,

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• · t'I ~ 1

1"

1\" 1 1 1 I

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.\ 1 rl';¡Ji lt,.: Ihv liahilllv , d 11" 11If' ,1 ' '¡I1 !~ I, ' kllll hk\: kll OI 1" dL·\' IIII\..lu h ,1 varivty ph':Il DIIIClla ill Ihe tl n lll HI 1 :1111 h"I'llIg Ihal Ihv insight s )~¡¡ i lu;tI 11) JI~ IJlg Ihis ICrln in a h\!u risli..: S\: IISl: IVdl , '¡h\'1 Ihe IIIcvil :tbl.: altcn lla ljo Jl '¡"lJIeallillg callscd by ils repelilion. Indccd . I hope lo 1('\1 Ih.: effica.:y uf llsing wch a lerm lhcorelically in a historical allalysis o" 11ll: tlrallla. rhere are countless possible histories 01' the drama; the hislory 01' leITor is only one. 4 Andre Brelon. lvlalli(es/o!'s o( Surrealism, transo Richard Seaver a nd Hclen R. L
10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Georg Buechner. Dar/Ion 's D('(//II, in The Comple/e Co/lec/ed Works, transo and

ed., Henry J. Schmidt, (New York: Avon, 1977),72. 14 Ibid. , 63. 15 Frederic Jameson , "Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan: Marxism, Psyehoanalytic Criticismo and the Problem of the Subject." in Li/eralllre (/n(Í Psychoana/ysis, ed. Shoshana Felman (Baltimore: Johns H opkins Press), 384. 16 M. M. Bakhtin, "Discollrse in the Novel ," in The Dia/ogic Imagino/ioll: Four Hv,\(/ys, transo Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, (Austin: University ofTexas Prcss, 1981). 1'1 )can Baudrillard, JI! /he Slwdol!J o/Ihe Si/en/ Majorilies, Foreign Agent Series, cds. Jirn Fleming and Sylvere Lotringcr, transo Paul Foss et al. (Ne\V York: Scmio tcxl(e)), 55. 1~ G uy Dehord, T!w SOl'Íe/y oI/he Spec/oc!1' (Detroit: Black and Red), 37. 1() Blau, Bo(lies, 272. 2() ,lean Baudrillard, Simu/a/;olls , Foreign Agent Series, eds. Jim Flerning and Sylvere Lolringcr, transo Paul Foss el. al. (Ne\V York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 146. 1 Ibid. , 147- 48. 22 Ibid , 104. 23 Ibid. , 72. 24 l3audrillard, "Our Thealer ofCruelty," Sell1;Olex/(e), IV (1982),108 - 9. 25 Yonah Alcxander, "Terrorism and the Media: Some Considerations," in Terror ;.1'11/.' Th('ory {//u/ Pracl;ce, ed. Yonah Alexander et al. (l3o[ollder: Westview Press, 11)79), 170. 2(, UIHU. Woor/ed Though/, 133 . 27 Ibid .. 82. .:X Ihid ., (,1). 2') n lau , Dor/;!'s. 257 . 10 BI;¡l.I. !Uoor/cd T'llOugll/ , 112. 11 I>cborJ , nI(' ,.. . o !'ic/r o/ /11" Sfic('/ac/I', 41. l' 111:111 !lur/irs. 1.1(1.

1"

56 HISTOR 1CAL EVENTS ANO TH E

H I STORIOGRAPH Y O F TOU RIS M 1

Michal Kobialka Sourcc: }ollr/1a/ o/ Thea/r{' mld J)ra/l1{/ 2 ('1996): '153 174.

lt is sometimes llecessary to turn against our own instincts and to ren ounce our experience. - GiHes Deleuze, "Painting and Sensation", The lJeleuze R e(/der 1995 was the year which commcmorated not only the end of World War 11 by marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Iiberation of Auschwitz in January, the bombing of Dresden in February, the faH of Berlin in May, and the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August , but it was al so the year which witnessed the end of a war that should have never happened, or rather, a war that no one ever expected to take place in Europe: the war in Bosnia. 2 The commemoration ofthese historical evenls and the material presence of whal is quicklly becoming an historical event presents us with a unique glimpse into the complex relationship between the physicality of an e vent and the genealogy of its performance: the way we wish to remem ber, imagine, 01' put our imprint on it, the way we construct and organize a place where it can be seen , and lhe way we adapt it to changing conditions; a relationship that both questioned amI tested the Western concept ofhistory and historiograph y in 1995. In lhe past, history was written lo glorify the winners, to immortalize dead kings, or to assess the achievements of the masses; today , histories are writtcn to announce the split within the "we" or the lines offtight ofthe ''1'', to en unciale the diverse positions of the speaking subject, 01' to develop strategies of resistancc for the marginalized. " What we seek now", contends Jean Ba udrillard , "is nO I ~I()r y but identity, not an illusion, bUI, on the co ntrary, an aIX ul11 ulatio n l11' proo('s an ylhing lhal can serve as evidence of a hisloriL:
l' n 1

1 - I - rr ~'YI

:1I1l1 ('/l'l' h o-; Iova k l:llll d ~' hil l vs

II VL', ~\l llqll ~Sh. l.kl',11 1 l\J l n l llilh slIl , gC IIJ¡;r. IIlu,l y':' h is l ~lry a mI hl~ "" 1I 1!'ra phy are olkn I.:qllall'd wilh Ihl: mallia túr Irials and rcs pon sihili ly illOllkl lo eslablish his Imy"s ohjcl'l s 01' st ud y. pH)ced ures ror stlldying thell1, a lid a proper ma nner 01' sp~ "illg ami writing ahollt thcm. This l'ssay focuses on the mode of historicity, which organiz es, as Michel de (crteau observes, the manner in which history's objects a nd slIbjects are m cal! be thinkahlc, identified, or contrived,4 on the idea of an historical ('WII\. which is produced as a specific narrative according to th is mode, and , IIllilllatcly, on the ehallenge both ofthem present to an historian. 1 will argue Illal. I!owadays, hecause of how the mode of historicity is struetured, histor ieal ¡;vcnls, like the events 01' everyday life, lose their depth 5 and are empt ied oul by the "marketing" or "fatal strategies" amI " staff" trained to sell them .IS " " rast" . Such él transaction is legitimized hy technology a nd the media which are used to establish the general standards for the visible ami the worthy 01' lIolicc. Many of the events, which can only last for a split second before I hey 1;ldc, cannot resist, and become a part 01' the recyclahle depositories of il1 lagil!ations, ideologies, and political rationalizations at once past and present whil'h give them a/the surface permanence. Ir Ihis suggestion can compel considerations of the relationship between Ihc "procedures" and the "events" that they name, misname, make invisible, I1I igllore in the past and the present, should not we rethin k the notion of hisll1I'y and historical practice? What challenges will this investigation bring lo ollr practices as historians? 111 order to address these questions, (i) J will discuss representational prac Iil:t.:l> Ihat were and are employed in the process of absorbing two events, which look place in 1995- the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz allt! the July genocide in Srebreniea--into the system of historicalmemory; (ii) I will deal with the conAict between historicaJ memory and the reality prin cipie; (iii) I will show how a performance, Tadeusz Kantor's Si/e/ll Nigh¡ (1990), an optically sonorous event rehearsing an event, can be seen as a tactic exposing Ihc weakness ofthe dominant representational practiees that desire to "freeze Ihe gesture of thinking" ami communicate that which escapes us in the wm IIlcmorative procedures of history . This can only be done by showing that lile event cannot be governed by pre-established rules and categories that l'xtinguish or simulate its intensity. Therefore, one must not exped a reconeilia 1ion hetwcen the cvent and one's comm unicable experience of it.

ami scxll al llllC lllil lll l1I f.lIj,I.¡'\!s l .

1 I()I):'j, Two cvents, scparated by a linear passage of time and the war against rnell1o ry. cOlll e to mind 10 hUll n l liS with Iheir ami our unspeaka blc ancl unp rcscn lablc sulfcn ng a nu lO PI tl blcrnalizc the nosta lgia ami llle1ancholy Illr tlll: evcnt's prcscncl' :wd \ 11 11 ,lh jcl'1 io /l in hi slory: lhe Ii rt il.!lh il nllivcrsary 1.1

1I I ;o;¡ " I I , 1< l '

pI' lile ll hcral i() 1I ()I AII,dl~ ll lli . "\\ II'lI ll1 ,lI ul IlIl' .fuly, !lNS CX ()U IIS I'r()11I Src hl cllicl , Uosllill . Tit e l"Ollllllellloralioll \11 Ihl' I¡Hictll anniversary 01' Ihc libcration 01' Auschwitz too k p lace ill K raków and Oswi~cim on Janu.ary 26 and 27, 1995. Since liftielh anniversaries llave a spccial significance in Western culture, this particular cvent was assigncd a specific meaning, Sorne fifteen-hundred jour nalists rrolll many European countries carne to Poland to observe and to report what did ami did not happen during these two days. Prior to the main cclebrations on January 27,1995 , there appeared in the mass media a whole series 01' statements that established reference points in the not-yet-fully developed landscape of the event. Thus, for example, a Polish daily, Z y cie Warszall'y, warned that the commemoratory anniversary could be plagued by xenophobic madness and mutual accusations and indictments voiced by the Jewish dclegations against the Polish organizers and vice versa. 6 19nat Bubis, the head 01' the Central Jewish Advisory Committee in Germany, accused the Polish organizers and the Catholic church of trying to enforce "Polishness" upon the event by not inviting all the survivors but only a select few, " The Poles do not want to see any Jcws there", added Bubis. These words appeared in Leipziger Volkszeilung and were aired by many radio stations the next day. An official report asserted that the organizers were consciously treating the Jewish victims of Nazism on a par \Vith Polish , Dutch, and Gypsy victims. Another problem surfaced when the organizing committee carne forth with the idea of inviting the Nobel Peace Prize recipi ents, If all Nobel Peace Prize recipients were to be invited, Yasser Arafat would be in the group. Needlcss to say , after many arguments, the invitation \Vas not sen! to Arafat. However, many Nobel Peace Prize recipients, who did not \Vant to be associated with the controversy, politely declined lhe invita tion. Yet another point of contention was the time and the length of the prayers that were supposed to be said during the celebrations_ Bubis pointed out that the prayer of the six reJigions was originally to last twelve minutes. The Polish organizers responded that the representatives of all different religions were to pray together to symbolize the universal asped of suffering, The Jewish representatives never aecepted this explanation and organized independentlya three-hour Kaddish , an alternative to the officially scheduled prayer. The fourth wntroversy prior to the Auschwitz commemoration was the placement of a Catholic cross near the concentration campo The land on which the concentration camp is located belongs to a Carmelite convent. Avraham Weiss, a radical New York rahbi and a Jewish activist, chose this moment to c1aim Auschwitz as the Jewish cemetery. If Auschwitz were to be recognized as tbe biggest Jewish cemetery, there should be nothing there , including any C hri:;tian symbols, that could even remotely disturb the dead ano the religio lls I ccl il1 g~ (JI' those who mOLlrn the dead 7 T hcsc lúur C\ln l n lVérsics WC I'C witlely publicized in "rance, Germany, Israel , anu lhe I Init cJ SI; lI l''> ~ A p\.'rllsa l nf"prinlcdj0 ur nalisl ic mal eria ls shows tha t '1 ')

111:-; l' ~ 'K Y .

PUl . '

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"11 1 1 l' 11 . " 1

I!". ,Ñ lí ~ I ,

the langllage that was lIscd by lhe prcss I'cyeals ITlllcll 1Il 0 1 ~' ,l hulII huw thL'SL' countrics wanted Lo stagc A uschwit /. rol' thcll1 scl vc:. la lhur Ihall about thc event itself. The French press cmphasized that the fi ltict lt allnivcrsary dis dosed a dorm,mt conflict and antagonism between the Polcs and thc Jews. It accused Wal~sa of nationalism, chauvinism , and anti-semitism beca use he did not mention the Jewish victims often enough in his offkial speech . Libe/'([ liol/'S headline speaks for itself: " Auschwitz: Sclective memory ofthe Po les". Jean Kahn , the president of the E uropean Congress of the Jews, noted in Le F(r;a/'o Ihat the Polish government wanted to organize a nationalistic com m emo ration by emphasizing P olish suffering and forgetting that 9()'% of the victims we rc Jcws. The Gennan press and radio d evoted ample space to the d i$c ussio ll 01' lhe ownership of Auschwitz and to the Jewish-Polish conflict. T he Jcwi sh-Polish conflict was al so the focal point in lhe Israeli mass media. T he prc::;s in Ihe United States was full of sensational details as well as incorrcct information. The Washinglon POSI accused the Poles of being com plet.e ly inscnsitive to the Jews and their tragedy; accused the Polish guards in t he dca lh camp of raping Jewish women ; and the Polish government of t urn ing A lIschwÍlz into a temple of Polish suffering by changing its name to Osw i ~cim. ,)

1I 1S 1 (, I( 1( . "1

I VI

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1

11 I ti I

(1

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YlIgoslavia", o pen ed at the Weisman Art MuscLlm/University of Minnesota, in M inncapolis. I t is a collection of about sevcn.ty photographs by more than lilrty photojournalists representing fourteen countries. As is indicatcd in the programmc, thc collectíon " offers the public the multinational vision of thc hlllllan ramifications ofthis crisis" . " A hugc open room is tilled with photo graphs hanging on the whitc walls. Depending on the sllbject-mattcr, thcy are hllllg cithcr individually or in dustcrs. Thus, for example, a colour photo g raph 01' a burnín); town ís not disturbed by the fram es 01' other images. It l!m;s II\)t have lO uo m pele for a tLc nl ion l hc theat ricality of lhe image iS in a d ass hy itscl L tll e SUll1 l' way [1 s pcclac ul;lr a pcratic des ign ¡s. T hc Sh(11 was IlIkc n hy Pelo!' NOI'Ulitl l 011 h'b n l:lry 1'\, 1';19 1. r o r thosc w h ~) d() 11 \)1 rccal!

\Vital Ilapl1,'II\'1I Ihl!l1,.1 IIII};\' 11 1. 1.1. ,I¡'II "11 Ihe wall, 'T ,thni \,; C lcansing", ami a slllall caplioll, ''1' 111 11 11,;<, ~' II !'. 1I11 Iht' allL'iL~ nt porl L:iLy J) lI brovnik artcr the raid ami artillery al Lat.:k hy Sab dOl\1inated Yugoslav National Army Fon.:es", broadcas t t he truc mcaning of the frozen-in-time cvcnt. On another wall, "Imagcs 01' Sarajevo ", there is a cluster of five images . Thesc five photo graphs , arranged one on top, two in the midd1e and two at the bottorn, sho\V a dodor's hand holding él n ew-born baby still a ttached to th e mother's womb (Amy Lcibowitz, February 1994), a face contorted \Vith pain w hile the doctors are removing a piece of shrapnc1 from the person's back (Christopher Morris, J uly 1993), a doctor drilling manually into a fractured leg in a candle/torch-lit trauma unit of a hospital (Christopher Morris, J uly 1993), a grou p of Muslim praying at the courtyard of the Muslim Thcological Department of Sarajevo University (Thomas Kern, December 1992), and children playing basketball near a shattered officc tower in Sarajevo' s business district (Tom Stoddart, April 1992). There is no doubt that these five ph otographs accurately depict events that are particularly immensc and appalling . But they can only sho\V the most visible manifestations of the suffering caused by \Var. Trying to capture the unthinkable 011 a film ncgative, when only isolated momenls can be photographed, is él singularly daunting task. It is a task which is always already defined for a photography curator by the se1ection of matcrials and the way 01' exhibiting them. Here, these thoughts fold back upon themselves . One cannot look at these photographs individually, because the existence of other trames with in a field ofvision prevents this from happenj ng. There is no space to think , to pcnetrate the object, or to li sten to the image. One is almost forced to step back and since there is nothing to stop the line of llight the abyss between the walllthe image and the viewer is established. Within this /'espace abímc, the cluster is managcable because, when one is removed froIn the immediate and daustrophobic tield of the photograph , uncertainty , cry , pain , silence, and cvcryday activity are transforrned into a legible text of lines, abstract imagcs, composition , and contrasto Now, thjs text does nothing more than accuInulate proofs as the evidence of an historícal existence. One can hardly escape the desire to talk abo lit the ftow of the lines within and without a representational frame. At the samc tirnc, one is almost caught in the momcnt of elicíting pleasure from viewing these images--the records 01' someonc elsc's fate ami destiny. The face on thc photograph is not here to see its own shape 01' to stare at the viewer \Vith empty eyes, because it is either in another land or dead. A few hours after the opening, information travelled through the electronic networks about Srebrenica, the Uníted Nation's so-called "safe area" for Bosnian Muslims. Twenty-five thousand womcn and children were impatiently awaiting a single wo rd a bout the whereabouts of twenty thoLlsand m e no It was on ly a wcc¡' la icr Ihat SOIllC shreds of information beca me av ailable . W hat wa:; p ll blhht.'d in Ihe I\ nwrica n prcss always eanied a disclaimer that ll¡\; Utll:s nI' slIIviva l. Wllll'll wll llld "illlprcss the lOllghcSI dnd bcst-traincd

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T he COllll1lcrnoration of thefiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Ausch wit z /()swi~cim began on January 26, 1995. Some fifteen-hundred com men wtll rs and journalists were dosely obscrving the order of thc day and pon u uri llg ovcr the pressing q uestions of who was speaking, when the speech was Jclivcred, ho\\' many times was the speech given , who \Vas prescnt , who was a bsc lI!, 01' why there was only a fax transmission from Edgar Bronfman, thc president 01' the World Congress of the Jews. O n .Ja.nllary 27, 1995, the official commernoration took place in the con . ce ntralhJn carnp, Auschwitz/Oswi~cim. In order to balance the confticting chlims 01' past and present, the Polish daily, Gazeta I+"yho/'cw , published a lengthy interview/cornmentary with Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor and the N obel Peace Prize recipient. 1o

011 July 13, 1995 , a photo exhibit, "Faces 01' Sonow: I\gony in the Former

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marines" , eould I](JI he vc rilied. The ólcco lllI ls lll" 111,' S III \ 1"\IIS dudcd Ihe language 01' tite disdail1ler and refuscd lo bd ong lu ils Ilunllalive universe: the story abo lit thirty women and children , who had surrc ndered to men whom they thoughl were the United Nations peacekeepers, only 10 be lined up and killed with machine guns, the story about the fifty young men 0\ferl5 who were shot dead , the story about a mother who was forced to drink her dead son's blood. 12

n In the 1967 essay , "The Discourse of History", Roland Ba rthes ponders over lhe question of the distinction between " the narralion of past even ts , com monly subjcct in our culture, since the Greeks , to the sanction of histnrica l 'science', placed under the imperious warrant of the ' real' , justified by prin cip ies of 'rational exposition '" and imaginary narration as can be found in Ihe cpic, in the novel , 01' in the drama. 13 According to Barthes this distinctio ll is grounded in the so-called "reality effect" whose function is to veril'y, rather Ihall follow, that the event, represented in history a mi as history, has really taKcn place: The prestige of lhis /wppened has a truly historical importance and scope. Our entire civilization has ataste for the reality etTect , attested lo by lhe developm ent of specific genres such as the reali stic novel , the private diary , documentary literature, the news item , the histor ieal museum , the exhibition of a ncient objects, and , aboye all, the massive devclopment of photography, whose sole pertinent featurc (in relation to drawin g) is preeisely to signify that the event repres ented has real/y taken place. 14 This signification of the " reality effect" (l e//et de rée/; the effect of the real), as a means of proteeting consciousness from doubt, retains the possibility nf a verifi<.:ation that <.:an be d one by scholars. In The N(l/ne.l' o/ His[ory , Jaeques Ranciere speaks about a manoeuvre that shcltered hi stori<.:al studies from lhe fables of opinions. ' 1 This manoeuvre \Vas the es lablish ment of hislorical science which pl a<.:ed itself in opposition to fictionalized history and the historical novel. In order lo maintain its position , history necded lo esea pe literature, give itself the status 01' a s<.:ience, and signify this status. This eould only be achievcd when the thrce procedures were articulated in a sin gle discourse. Ranciere refers to them as three contracts with the realit dll .~ct:

'fhe lirst is th e scicn li fk con lra¡;!. which ne<.:essitates the Jiscovery 01' Ihc lale nl ordc r bCnC:ll h Ihe 11ltln ifcs ( m uer. lh rough lIJ e !i uhstlluti on u f Ila: cxac l corrc!a li,ln-, :llId II lIll1he rs 01" a compk'x r"IlCL'SI¡ rol' Ihc

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sca lc 01' tlll' vislhk ~\L I,'I II, ,lI ld ',i/cs n I" pnlitics. The second is thc narrati vc cOllllarl whil"1I l"lllllnlallds the inscriplinn orthe structures 01' this hidlkn "pa¡;c. tlr 01" lhe laws of lhis complex process, in the readable forms 01" a story with a bcginning a mi an end , with char aclers ami events. Ami the third is a political eontraet. which ties what is invisible in science ami what is readable in narration to the contradictory constraints of the age of Ihc masses- of the great regularities 01' common law and the great tumults of democraey, 01' revolutions a nd eounterrevolutions, of the hidden secret of the multitudes and the narration of a common history readablc and teachable to all . I (, With sdentifk, narrativc. ami political <.:ontraets in place. what Barthes per<.:eivcs as a " reality effect" entcred the stage and became a general re quirement. It would seem that with postmodern commitment to pluralizing political, cultural, ami ideological identities, the requirement for the " reality effcet" would disappear. I will argue however that the " reality effed' did not Icave the stage. Academies in different fields have now the whole spe<.:trum of theoretical formulations , con<.:eived to decolonize imagination, that are waiting in the new house of History , ready to be interiorized as proeedures and exteriorized as achievements , standards, or proper forms. These theoretieal formulations , whose function was to enunciate the post modern as the condition of existence (Lyotard), as an open field of specifiable relationships (Foucault), as a dynamie ami open spa<.:e of potentialities (Bourdieu), as a space of close-rangc vision (Deleuze), as a territory in which objects ean be situated but never dassified (de Certeau), as a spaee where words, eoncepts, and objects need to be wrestlcd from their "proper" mean ing or place (Spivak), are turned into a system whose funetion is to produce s<.:hemata of thought and expression that will des<.:ribe events as part 01' a constructed rcpresentational model within an assumed reality . History will always find itself in the space of hornon ymy of science and narrativc. Dc Certeau may be ri ght when he argues in 'fhe Writing o(Hislory that "[a] fad that has been recordcd and is today assumed to be historically valid is shaped from conflicting imaginations, at once past ami present".17 The two events described in this essay can serve to substantiate this point. In their respective positions, ea<.:h has a spe<.:ific time of action that provides the place 1'01' a discourse . This discourse is a field where thc event becomes visible by welcoming lhe past that is housed in the physical and narrative bodies 01' the survivors as well as ({ present that is lodged in discursive pe rformativity of that whieh bclicves itself to be the guardian of the past in the present. Pasl ami prescnt produ<.:c their own rationalizations whose fun<.: lion is lo reco rd as historil'a lly real that which will always escape any form of te rritorial grou nd illg A" l li ~ lunguage M d iscluimers sho wed, even the most grllclHml\': delails n I' Sl ,'h l\'ni~,;t "an h\! GodificJ inlo lhe genrc of dcscriptivc

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1\ lnI LI1II: 1I 1:; :11111 ()h í~'Ll I\' l: IIl1 hl :lly l'al egl)nCS lI!'o~\d 111 IlTll/ ltllllll"l thl.' m:ls IK 'lil Cl ItS. I'hls part Íl.: lIl:1I hrad lClillg (Jf all evc llt. or as lit.: ( 'l'l leall wOllld ha ve il . p i rlllóllg Ihe ucaJ bmlies 10 speak lhe language \Ve lIlItll:rSI:llld, is acccpted alld aa:c plabll.'. It is acceplable only because violcnce, as lhe Bosnia exhibi t I)oig n:lnlly illuicales, can be transformed into an apocalyplic speelaclc pre pan:u rOl' consumption and slaged to calm the dead that still haunl USo I'his praclice has many differe n t narrative forms. Consider R uth Ellen (i rlll1l:rs' " Rcmembering Poland 's Jews", published in The NelV York Times 1 0 11 Janllary 29, 1995. '1 The line below the title reads: "Schindler's Lis' and lhe ')Olh allniversary 01' lhe liberation 01' !\uschwitz have reawakened interesl in Ihe cOllntry's Holocaust sites. " The artide, a guide to lhe Jewish sites, is a 11 a veloglle thal describes a tourist's escapade to the dealh camps. The tour hegins in Kra ków. First, a short history 01' the Jews is given. Seeond, the rcmaining part of this section is devoted mostly to how to locate the sites that werc seen in Spielberg's film. On the \Vay around Kraków 's former ghetto where onc can see the very buildings that were shown on the screen, one can slop al Ihc several Judaica galleries and cafes featuring Jewish-style food and .Icwish music. Next, the tour takes one to Auschwitz/Oswi~eim , about forty miles west of Kraków, "the principal center for the mass exlermination of LlIrope 's Jewish and Gypsy population. At Ieast 1.6 million peoplc, mostly .lews from all over Europe died there " . The description ofwhat can be seen at the !\uschwitz museum follows. "It is impossiblc not to feel a chill as you walk into the camp under the iron inscription 'Arbeit Macht Frei '- 'Work Makes you Free'--arching over the gate." Once the museum with its mounds or dothing, thousands of pairs of shoes, spectades, suitcases, and toys taken from adults and children before they were herded into gas chambers has been seen, one can go on foot , or take a shuttle bus, to the so-called Auschwitz 1I located some two miles from the gateo Two other places that are recom mended are the Warszawa's former ghetto and Majdanek, a death camp on the outskirts 01' Lublin in south-east Poland . The guide would not be com plete without a selection of places where one can stay, \Vith lhe emphasis on ambience and the 1~\Ct that the hotels are " tastefully reslored " . When Baudrillard wrote his now famous essay " Simulacra and Simulations" in which he perceived Disneyland as a " perfect model of all the entanglcd orders ofsimulation " ,20 he probably never imagined how , and the degree to which, a simulacrum can be transformed into a flattened efrect once " the eclipse of the empire of the sign " was heralded from the top of the Berlin Wal1. 21 With the fiftieth anniversary of the Iiberation of Ausehwitz, the event was brought back. In this process, while rationalizations of the past and the present were producing ncw materials and meanings, the whole new system ol' eq ui va lence was also int rod uced. One no longer needs to listen to Schónberg's "S urvival of Warsa w" lo think abollt and to race onc's inabililY to cn m p rehcnd the evenls 01' Wurld W:lr 11. Now o ne ca n go lo ex pl!riencc lhe evenl ami Ihc past lhc way a 1,11 11isf exp lores .111 exotk Icrrilorv. ()nc 01' the

Iksil:m s 1111 a 1I1~' lI l1jl t\ t1 111 h' \\I ... 1I \Idllll\ 111 lIoltlcUusl ill Ikllill cllvisillllS 110 plaque'>. 110 :,I aluc.... (l nd Ih l II oI lIIe<, hUI a ga rage wllc!"c Ihc visitors could hoard s pccial red huses th: ll \'Il lI lllI lah~ thelll lo plm:cs whc rc the Ilolocausl \Vas planncd anu cxeclI ted. "(jlving pco ple a way to visit the aulhentic crilllc scene would be rar more effective Ilhan designing a giant monument]", said h'ieder Schnock , one 0(' two authors who concoived thc project Y Similarly , one reads that "with only one prisoner in custody and money dwindling, the international war crimes tribunal got sympathy but little clse today wllen it put its case before N ATO , seeking hclp to secure mass grave sites in Bosnia and to arrest more than 50 indieted war criminals and deliver them to The llague for trial " .2) Why? Beeause " the arrest orGeneral Mladic, or of Icsser figures , could cause great unrest and possible retaliation from the Bosnian Serb forces on the N ATO troops \Vho have been trying to befriend them " . Is not it true that visual or narrative effects and rationalizations are fabric ated so that the living can exist elsewhere ... '? Thus, it is no longer a question 01' a simulacrum, whieh has some kind of a physical and corporeal presence, but a question 01' \Vhat remains on the surface when the event is entrapped by progressive metaphorization . The surface is filled with incorporeal effeets that , as Gilles De\euze suggests, are sonorous (shouts and list lights between the Jewish and Polish religious groups) , optical (the panoramic view of Auschwitz, the Bosnia cxhibit), or linguistic (descriptions of controversies or rationalizations).14 As the events are reduced to effects, they lose their depth , their corporeality, and their uncertainty. Depth , corporeality, and uncertainty acquire a form of a legible experience , an image and él text that can be absorbed and is ready for a phys ical and a theoretical consumption that breathe new life and new speeificity into it. One becomes a tourist who colonizes a landscape, which was ereated by someone else ror someone else, \Vith his/her representations. Now , the land scape is a playground where our guilt can be expiated or our virtue reasserted in an almost fetishistic fashion. Is there a \vay out ofthis dilemma? How can the Auschwitz event maintain the condition of its visibility? H ow can the sorrow of Bosnia be faced'? How much compassion or charity can we ask from the dead? As the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation 01' Auschwitz/Os\Vi~cim and the July, 1995 exodus from Srebrenica demonstrate, there is no distinction betwecn the way an historical record and a current event are presentcd since both events are produced and verified by representational practices and narratological strategies. Such a distinction is on1y possible when one beli eves in the modernist myth of objectivity supported by the " reality effect " or fails to rccognize that lIlany historiographie theories operating curren ti Y in the llelo , though t h ~y haY\: rcposi tioned the bo u ndarics 01' histo ry, still fum:tion within a very lrad ilillll:ll C P !1 ~C p l nf' history- history th al requires a g uara ll tt.:\! 01' a s ile frlllll wII Il·h 1hl.. "' pl'.1 k ¡BA! s ubjcct is II)ok i ng f'or protlls a nd idc ll til v

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ill h lN/h l! . kll llwkdg\.' p/l lllllC lllJlI Il /ll1 thssCI 11 ill ll l 1\1 11 M.IVh!.'1I IS Jillally tilll\.' to ad\nuwktJgc lhat lh e m li!lna l histori¡;ul, cvc n tlt ()ltgll it sigllcd a \.:olltract with s\.:iencc, narrativc, and politic:i, i¡¡ not, a-; de O:rtcall lIotes, distinguishablc from that prolix amI fundamental narrativity that is our everyday historiography . Scholarship is an integral part of the system that organizes by means 01' "histories " all social \.:ommunica tion and everything that makes the present habitable. T he book or the profession al artide, on the one hand , and the magazine or the television news, on the other, are distinguishablc from one another only within the same historiographical rIeld whic h is constituted by the innumerable narratives that recount and interpret events. 26 These innumerable narratives are a part 01' the practices of interiorization of strategies that are made visible through the pro\.:ess of exteriorization of achievements. Pierre Bourdieu's hahilU.I' explains the relationship between the conditions of existen\.:e in a particular, speótlable, or eledcd field and the pradices 01' scholarship. Ha!Ji/u.\· is a system of dispositions that structures the pradice orindividuals belonging lo the same group, that is, it is " a systcm of inlernalized, embodied s\.:hemes which [ ... ] are acquired in the course of individual history and function in their proC/ical state, for prae/ice (and not for thc sake of pure knowledge)" .27 Accordingly, hahi/us partieipates in the prolireration of an assumed reality through the interpretation of observed and observable practiccs. These practices are engendered by a place that can be daimed by an historian as his or her own and that serves as a base from which to defend the place or prepare future attacks 2~ Following Barthes' argument regarding the " reality effect" 2~ modified by de Certeau's heterological procedurcs one may ask, however: How is it pos siblc that a narrative form daims to produce not afiction but a (past) event'? How is it possible for a scientific practice and an institutional structurc ro eonstitute a type 01' writing which makes these conditions invisible to the rcader? Ho\V is il possible to negoliate between a real event that speaks the truth (at least this is what we c1aim observing it from a referential distance) , another real cvent that lies (at least this is \Vhat we are told), and yet another real event that is etTaced by those two other real events and, consequently, loses its privilegc 01' being? It is through this stripping naked 01' the modern myth of writing and the resistan ce to representational elTects that the event can rid itself 01' the language 01' intelligibility. The resistancc to representational effects \Vas what defined the generation which witnessed and survived the carnagc 01' World War 11. This was the generation which posed the question 01' what it meant to represent after Auschwitz. While discussing the problem 01' suffering in lite ratu re, T heodo r Adorno posits Ausch witz as bo th an cr istemological a nd olltological dilcmma. On the o ne hand , il is barbarit: In wrile roel ry a fter Ausl:hwilZ, bu t literalure

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IlIlIst IC'il st Ih is \'L'ldll't hÚ..llhl '.Iilk . ¡!Ir tPk't:I !l'., 110 li \rgl..'tt illg. 011 (lIe n th ~1 lIalld, Imw ca 11 S il 11 l" illl' 1.lId 11'. V\llle witlU)(lt heill g hc trayed by the \.:lItlural hl:rtlagc lha t fail ed lo pl'L'Vl,; ttt j!c 'Hlcide alld Ihal no w prescnts suffering as a maller llf conslIlIlpllo n? Sd l úll berg's "SlIrvivor 01' Warsaw" is trapped in these murllllll'illgs. Adorno introduces the cOllcept of an autonomous work 01' arl in ordcr lo overcomc this impasse, arguing that the work 's inherent slruclure, rather than the audience's receptioll, pro u uces knowledge: "AI lhough the moment 01' pleasure, even when it is extirpated from the effect 01' a work , constantly returns to it, the principIe that governs autonomous works 01' art is not the totalily 01' their effects, but their inherent structure. They are know1cdge as nonconceptual objcctS."10 For Adorno, there is no question th a t the Ausehwitz event real/y too k place. With the concepts 01' an autonomous work 01' art, the event is grasped as the living presellce in discourses it generates and in the bodies it acts upon . The event is transformed to " know1cdge as nOllconceptual objects" , thal is, the event is not yet striated by lhe systems and conventions that stabilize its contours and estab1ish its permanence with the language ol' intelligibility.1 1 In 1995, Auschwitz lost for many ol' us its condition of Adorno's autonom ous event. Thc fiftieth anniversary 01' the Iiberation 01' the death \.:amp somer saulted the event beyond the order 01' simulaerum. The simulacrum was still the site 01' the combat between the Jcwish and Polish organizers. Theirs ",'as the batt1e of the last survivors 01' Auschwitz who fought l'or the real event. Their battle was however devoured by the representation al practicas 01' the fifteen-hundred journa1ists and commentators who recorded the order of the events and the nature 01' the controversies that had taken place. These events and controversies will becollle historically valid in years lo come. Similarly, the works of the seventy photographers 01' the Bosnia exhibit will relllain a visual record 01' an historical event that \Vas happening at the sallle time when this othcr real event was taking place. Adorno cannot compete \Vith fiftecn hundred journalists 01' with the politics 01' representation in museums. Adorno can howcver help LIS reanimate the discussi on 01' what it means to represent after Srebrenica . The events in the former Yugoslavia not only destroyed its tenLlous multi-ethnic fabric , plunging the Serbs, Muslims, and Croats into the war, but also disdosed the inadequacy 01' Europe's diplomatic and political forces . They have unequivocally shown that the paterna1istic assumption 01' European and American Ieaders that the warring parties can bc reasonable is marred with wcakness. As current reports suggest, a linear progress towards a final and peaceful resolution that would be waiting at the end of ayear-long stay ol' the Uniled Natioll troops may be Ilothing more than the history 01' desired desires. Clear1y, 1 am not sLlggesting here that Adorno's coml1lenls a p ply directly to lhe situation in the former Yugoslavia . T hey d o prov idc insig hl into the praclice of represcntin g. Adorno defended lhe AlI~c hw it/. eVl!nt hy ins istill!; 011 seeing A uschwi tt 01' the praclice of re prcscl1l ing il 11" 11 IIlHll'Il/lI'L' ptlt ul ohjccl thal uoes no t need lO cater to a )'):\

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scielllifi\., a Il all ali vu, ur ¡¡ r olilical Ill:1 il agc lllal I'tlllnl 10 )l1 ,'YeIlI gl~llOcide. (1IIstead, il Cl"eatud rep rcsenlaliolls which wo uld r , esclII slIl"li.H illg. as él maller of -.;onsumptioll.) As Jcan-Franyois Lyotard observcd. in anolher wntcxl. a reprcsentational practice nceds to invoke "the unpresclltable in prcsentation itselr, that which refuses the consolation of correct forms. refuses the con sensus of taste permitting a common experience of nostalgia for the imposs ible, and the inquiries into new presentations- not to take pleasure in them , but to better produce the fecling that there is something unpresentable" Y Ou r nostalgia for the presence of the dead so that the living can exisl else where, animates the desire to represent suffering in spite of everything. Adorno cautioned against the aesthetics that had dominated the rcpresentation of Auschwitz. that is th e aesthetics of a transparent a nd communicable experi ence. Fifty years later, it is no longer Adorno 01' Lyotard but fifteen-hundred journalists who engage in a somewhat similar pradiL'e- the practice of turn ing the event into a cOlllmunicable experience which can be thought, seen, understood. and materia lized. Re it the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz/Oswi~cim or Srebrenica, the event loses its depth by attesting to the presentable in a homogenous manner of a linguistic, sonorous. or visual language of intelligibility. According to de Certeau, the language of intelligibility, which propels an historical investigation , promotes a selection between what can be accepted and what must be forgotten in the process of representatin g the event. How ever, "w hatever this new understanding of the past holds to be irrelevant shards created by the selection of materials, remainders left aside by an explanation- comes back. despite everything, on the edges of discourse or in its rifts and crannies: 'resistances', 's urvivals ', or delays discreetly perturb the preUy order ofa hne of ' progress' or a system ofinterpretation " .3J They make 1Il1,) uspected depths visible ...

IU This resistance to representational effects brings to mind Samuel Beckett's I:·/I{(~ame. kan Gene!'s The Maids , Tadeusz Kantor's visual theatre, Joseph Iklly's paintingslreminiscences of WorId War 11 , Francis Bacon 's "A Stlldy 01' Vdúzquez's Portrait of Innocent X", Anselm Kiefer's " Rreaking 01' the Vl~ssels ", Robert Wilson 's "Songs 01' Fire" or " Mcmory/Loss". Mcredith Monk 's " Volcano Songs", Werner Fassbinder's Garhage. the ei/y Clnd Death, Peter Ilandke's Die S/unde da wir nichls vonein{/flder lVusslen, and Daniel Libeskind's architcctural designs for the Jewish Muscum in Berlin. 1\11 these works are stark examples of represcntational praetices that cxpose, ra the than rework , the nssures in the slIrrace permanence ofhisto rica l events a no in the rcfcrenti al sy!> tcm ~ anchori ng thcl1l to thc end 01' the twenti eth eentury. T lll'Y eX)1loit. ru lhe r lhal1 sulwcrt, the rationa Jily 01' history and II.!> norma liz ill)'. pn lccdu rcs ny d lill g III IIIIIS 111 wa ys lIli1 l ll1a rk wca kllcss a mi ills lahihl y in , I

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t Ir ell 1. Thcre i¡.;no IIn\:al 1'" 1~'Il"'" '' 111 " IW: II ds SOlne rcsolllt ion wait ing al lhe end . " Me l O play. l .. . I Old ..Ialldll'!. Yll U rel11aill " , says II"m l11 in Endga111e;14 a play wlrcrc Ihe <1-.; 1 01' ell lll ~ll1 plation of the POSI-1\uschwitz/l l iroshima wor/tI needs to ha ppcn in a place where the Illind can go without the fear 01' dcgrading itself. " 1 sce Illy lighl dying", responds Clov. )! This is also lhe response of Claire, 01' Innocent X, 01' a captive tortured by a desert sun and by mano so his memories would disappear within five days, of a body whose image rades away after the explosion, of hollow people-fragments thal are reinvcnting themselves from hour to hour , of charaeters silently crossing the stage transverscly , and 01' peopIe staring at the white-washed walls cutting throllgh the Berlin Wall. AII these works deterritorialize traditional repres entation 01' sutTcring and pain so the past wilI not liberate itself with eaeh new faee heaped one upon the other. They do sO by showing " nothing" that screams in the presence ofthe invisible, by forcing us to turn against our own instincts and renounee our own ex perience. and by not al!owing us to estab lish él distance from which the objects could be looked upon and eo-opted by the operations of institutionalized culture. They do so by creating nomad art of cIose vision in \vhich al! orientations, landmarks, and linkages are in a continuous variation Y' "No hne separates earth from sky, which are of the same substance; there is neither horizon nor background nor perspective nor limit nor outline o r form nor center; there is no intermediary distance, 01' all distance is intermediary." }7 The art of cIose-range vision practieed by Beckett. Genet, Kantor, Beuys, Bacon , Kicfer, Wilson. Mo nk , Fassbinder, Handke. and Libeskind, may hclp us hear murmurings orthe unpresentable in history . Kantor's theatre experi ments are a case in point. Kantor practised nomad art ever since he assumed the function 01' lhe chronicler of the events of this century: "World War I.IMillions of corpses/in the absurd hectatomb.lAfter lhe War'/old powers were abolished.[ ... ]/World War I I./Genocide,!Concentration Camps,lCrematories,!Human Beasts, Death , ITorture,! Hum ankind turned into mud/soap , and ashes,lOebasement,lThe time of eontempt. [ .. . ]/The 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s have passed.l Al! the timelI have been perceiving warning signals that ordcred me and dictated that l choose one action 01' the other- -/PROTEST,/REVOLT/AGAIN ST THEOFFICIALLY R ECOGNIZE DSAC R EOSITES,/AGAINST EVERY TI-IING THAT HAO A STAMP OF ' APPROVAL',1FOR R EALNESS.I FOR 'POVERTy '."J~ While watching Kantor's heap ofbroken images and objects on stage, and while listening to Kantor's words describing the fragments 01' his life finding their fate and destiny in the theatre of intimate commentaries, we realize that there is something disturbing in this diseourse. He forces us to acknowledge that we can lisl l!n In Ka nlor Iistening to and walch Kantor wa lching the wars, the I!Wll ls, :l ml Ihe pCllrle naradc in front orhi s ancl Qu r eyes. We li SIen to Ku nl nr lisl '·lIill ~'. 1\ 1 1I 1 ~ 1I )lllll l:.sls against ncin g accc r ted hy bourgco us 7 ,

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acslhclics. agai l1st h':lIll' ,Ihsp , hed by arlisl cc lrcnJs. 1.1 1111 ,1j.'.liIlS I Ill'ing. sY)iICIll alizcd inta \) n.lcrs. A l 11".: S:J l1 le lime. wc rcal izc Iltal "-an lDI, who is always (J11 stage, is staging a sil-in slrikc in which lhe hou:;e 01' Il islory is occ u picd. Walching him walk around lhe ohjeets and people on stage, 11l0ve thc rn. and make them repeat their aetions with the same expression on their faces ami coneentrale on the same gesture, we may learn what it means to resi~l aecepted representational forms and shapes or to walk arouod aeq uired ralionalizations thatdelímit historieal, metaphysical and transcen dental events. We may learn that, beneath the general desire to defend eonscrvati ve, demo eratic or revolutionary principIes, there are events whieh, as nonconceptual ohjeets, animate a kind of post-linear, post-narrative, and post-ideological history, in which the " post- " is not a movement towards a new rationaliza tion, but a condition of existence that begins with an " initial forgetting". W Consider, for example, the following moments in his 1990 cricotage, Si/enl Nig/¡l, in order to visualize Kantor's taetics 01' resistance. 40 The 1990 cricotage, Si/enl Nighl, depicted a place afler a disaster. "A long time ago, I was fascinated bylthe Atlantis/disaster,/by the world hefore our world,/by the only known 'REPORT' about it by Plato/and by Plato 's openingwords:/'That night'.lThen everything started anew and out of nothing."41 The stage, a simple platform, was fiJled with objeets and people. Up centre, there was a chimney 01' a burnt down house. Stage right, there was a wooden wall containing a set of doors ami a window. Stage left, there were a tablc and a few chairs. An Emballage, human figures vei1cd in white sheets, was on the floor down centre. Nino, a figure in black holding a cello, was seated stage Jeft. " Now then , here on this stage,lthe end of the world,/after a disaster,la heap of dead bodies/(there are many of them)/a heap of broken Objects----/this is all that is left " (174). It is in this environment that the world 01' the everyday was born again. Once the world of the everyday was born, the world of transcendental phe nomen a was born . The Nativity scene can serve as an exampJe ofthis practice here. When the doors opened, Helka, a woman in a tattercd white dres$ entered and came up to the windo\V. Nino began to play the cello. Helka heckoned him to stop playing and come up to the window. J'udging by her \Vords, nothing survived outside. Everything was in ruins or dead. Nino con linued to play. Angered by his indiflerence, Helka started to collect and wash lhe dishes that must have been thrown around by the guests attending a pa ny "That night", that is , the night of the disaster. Her words \Vere dro\Vned by lhe sounds of a tango that must have been played "That night " . The music stopped. "Then- aecording to the p ri ncipies 01' my theatre-·/the dead 'come alive' and play their parts as ifnothing happened" (174). The figures tried to lell lheir stories; however, it was quite ohvious that they had no recollection uf lhe pas\. Thcir attempts to orga nize the momory shreds logether came to na llg hl. Only individual word s .. nd phrases or discon nected pra yers and sOllgs in dilrerc nt lang uages wen: ¡¡lIlhey rel11embercd. Nor were tJleir allcm pt.~ at deciplwring lhe fUl1 l"1 ions 01'1111.' ohjl'l.' ts lhey ca rriec.J w ith th\!1lI sLlcccss fll 1.

The soull ds of I he ['"I !,u I ¡'l llIlll't! I hl' fl g ll n.:s beguli lo dallce ill a rhylhlll Ihal broug hl abOll1 l!tl.! d i"; !; 1I11 ¡:C h lH: ~ 01" Ihcir pasl individ ua lilies, now l'xpressed lhro ugh a slo w llI¡lVCllle lll, a ljuick movcment. now ajerky movc IIIcn!, or a circular IIHJVClllcnl. 111 thc meantime, I1cJka and Nino continued lo clcan up the room. The sounds of the tango were muffled by the opening noles of " Si1cnl Night". Aman on his knees entered the room. In his arms he carricd a baby. He left the baby in the middle of the stage. All , except for Helk a and Nino, left the stage. O ne of lhe figures returned and offered the baby to He1 ka. Not fully convineed , Helka accepted thc baby. The music increased to provide a background to this Nativity seene- N ino with his cello stood next to Helka holding a baby in her arm s. Tbe scene was observed and commented upon by the figures, now called the neighbours , whose heads could be seen through the doors and the window. Suddenly, the music died and with it the illusion ofa perfect harmony. Helka left the baby on the floor and returned to her previous activity. The music returned and with it the "stor)''' that circumvented the everyday reality- Helka \Vas offered the baby once more, and the Nativity seene was repeated . The music died again and so did the harmony, the stor)', and the topography of this " olher" space. The sequence was repeated three times. Finally, to end lhis unsuccessful "staging" of the event, a soldier wilh a gun entered the room and forced Helka and Nino off the stage. It is noteworthy th a t Kantor's rendering 01' that sequence. though a rel ative unfolding of the event synchronized \vith lhe lempo and rhythm 01' " Silent Night", \Vas not anostalgic reconstruction 01' the biblical story. The sounds of " Silent Night" made Helka and Nino assume the traditional func tions of the Virgin Mary and Joseph; however, the illusion 01' scriptural harmony \Va s ruptured when the music disappeared . Having repeated unslIe cessfully the sequence a few times, Kantor made us realíze that "everything is but a recollection ; a rccollection full of bitterness and tears, because of its futilíty. This futility and impossibility can be seen in the act of repetition . Nino and Helka act as if they played a difficult scene: from the 'everyday ' situation, they move into the past, to that night that bappened a few thou sand years ago . It seems that a miracle happened , but 'Silent Nighl ' ends abruptly ". A soldier with a gun interrupted Helka 's and Nino's desire to eonstruct an event through a repetition of actions and gestures in order to orient themselves in K antor's unstriated spacc. The \Vorld of miracles was not the only \Vorld that was constrllcted by the figures on stage. The crueifixion and the revolution seq uences were the two that received a particular lreatment. At one momen\, the doors opened and a procession , led by aman carrying a wooden cross on his shouldcrs, entered. A mong those who walkcd in the procession were the figures from the opening seq uence. Th e :-lagc bccamc Golgo lha. T he procession stopped. Nino watched how lh e eross W;ts cl'cdcd . I Ie look cu a ro und for a pcrson who could play the rmrl 01" lht: "C' rucllietl (hll" t ·:lnn(;lo , a faclotlllll, ad vised hi111 . F irst . N ino

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(175) As the heap of broken images and objects on stage uneqllivocally indicate, any event that is transformed into a readable place has its own reality index of what can be understood , made visible, rationalized and can manifest itsel f as a series of effects. As effects, these events and objects are indefinitely reproducible , or as Jcan Baudrillard suggests in The lI/usiol1 ollhe End, are indefinite1y reeyclablc. 43 To go back lo the questions that I have posed in this essay- the events described here, each in its own way , can make us feel angry, inadequate, 01' helplcss. They can be viewed by us from Ihe isolated place from which \Ve will speak of being marginalized, subjugated, or silenced by the falal strategies 01' the governments or by various practices that have been created for us and absorbed by us through the aceepted representational sehel1lata. But this is precisely what I want lo avoid while speaking about historical events. The fiftieth anniversary of the liberation 01' Auschwitz and the exodus from Srebrenica impress lIpon LIS the urgency 01' remembering the stories not yet w.-ilten 01' transmittcd thl'ough the informatic systellls of fifteen-hundred journalists. slria tcu hy csta blishing a distance, inva riance alld points ofiner tia. o r lurncd illlu L'(} lll:l:p lllal nbjccls with an assigned emotional, intellec tual , or n:al \I~~ V:d Ul' J lil' \\ 11 111'11 . Ih c stria tcd , ¡¡ntl the conce plual rcprescnt '}

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Slllllll'OlIS. Ih~' opl ica l, alld Ihl' li n¡plislk ~ lI ¡-J ac~ ,,1 ,111 1!Vl' 1I1. 11 is ollly a Iqm:senlaliollal (1ladicc. bCI\:1't 01' a soo lhing ri/u/'I/I'IIII , dOll hlillg. or ill1ila tion. lhal establishes lhe l110ment 01' breaking away I'mm Lhe historiogra phy of tourisIll and its already consumed image.44 To el iminate the "sensalional" means to recognize that the event stri kc in the house 01' History is a permanent condition that speaks and pursues the language 01' the tactics of resistan ce -a radical operation against be ing enuc1eated by the ideology of the past and the theory of the present moment. The theo retical formulations, often practised indiscriminatcly under the banner of postmodern commitment to pluralizing and fragmenta tion, entrap the events. By so doing. they bring in the events as the forms by which, as tourists, \Ve experience history to protect our eonscioLlsness from doubt- consuming it, demanding the ownership of representation through symbolic gestures, cffacing the anxiety of nonconceptual knowledge and leaving us al a loss ror ethical or committed action except as trophies fmm a tour through the simulated images, which need not even be accur ate, as long as their etTects allo\V us to establish the nostalgic desire for the real. Consequently, maybe, there is only the event strike left since it forces us to acknowledge ils conditions of existence, rather Ihan the politics 01' gain or loss; its movement and position vis á l'is the acquired rationalizations 01' thc past and present imaginations, rather than ils fixed position in Ihe landscape 01' order; its challenge 10 what we \Vould like to make visible Ihrough its corporeality and materiality in order to reconcile ourselves with life and death; its function in problematizing our language 01' intelligibil ity and field of visibility in which we make Auschwitz and Srebrenica mcaningful, \Vorthy of record or notiee, and visible; and to enunciate these displacements and realignmcnts which, thus far, have been replaced by the historicity of the past and present imaginations and its contract with the scientiflc, narrative, and polítieal order. Maybe, there is only the event strike left, since "we no longer make history. Wc have become reconciled with it and protect ir like an endangered masterpiece . Times have changed. We have today a pcrfectly piOLlS I'ision of the Revolution cast in terms of the Rights 01' Man. Not even a nostalgic vision, but one recyc1ed in th e terms ofpost-modern intellectual comfort".45 Maybe, there is only the event slrike left, since, when the strike is crushed, Ihere will only remain "appear ance, and then again, appearance: for the rest take up the bodies, what else is there to say? Except thal not to say it fhen is to start thinking about po\ver".46

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\ I IlIis di sc w'SIIII I \\. 111 11 111(' III I 'lll1pkh \\ 11 11"111 IIIClllltlld ll g .k:III- i"t'all<;ois LyotarJ\ 1;'111/,1'/"1/'1'1/1 S", '/I'II 11 ;1/ 1\ 1),1 \ 1.1 Wc hh ( 1l:i1li ll h ll\' 1\1,'\ I ln l, l)¡IIS Ilnpl..ills l llli vul sil y Pruss. 1(}I}:! !. d l~ , 1 11 1111 2. 1')KI) \!.""lIY. " (l¡ ""' II''' I VII ~ "1 1'1 11 ,IA: IIIF ,lll er ¡\lIscJ'¡ wil t" , Lyol:l rd pen:ei ves Auschwitz 14 Ihid, . 1:1'). as 11 1\:' '"clclI v:! !!\: illtl e "l lI n 'tI lI i1 0 Wl!slc rn thou/,!ht " , Ilis diseo llrsc dra ws attention lo Ihe pll l'll scs l11al '"Iill!.. Il lllu" A uscllwilz: '"we", "die" , "1 decree it", Thcsc phrascs , 15 Jacqlles Ra ncicrc. ¡'lJe M II/ II!..\' of'J li.l'lory: On II/e PO('li('.I' (}f lVlli lt ,/,,(~f!,'(' (M innuapolis, MN: lJniversit y 01' Minneso ta Press, 1(94).2, accmding lo Lyo tard, 10SI lhcir Illeaning and power as immobilizing norrn at ive 1(, Ibid .. 9, slakmenls bccausc 01' the demise of the pre-war systc llls of power. See Tite 17 /'l/e IVriling ol HislOry. xv, Ly olurd Reoder, ed. Andrew Be njamin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1(89), :160, 92, J2 Jean-h'anr;ois Lyotard , Th e Posll11odel'l1 Exp/ained Correspondence /982 1985, 1X "Srcbrenica: The Days 01' Slaughtcr" . the reconstrllction 01' the Fall 01' Srebrenica. Irm1S. Don Barry, Bernadette Maher. Jllli,1I1 Pefanis. Virginia Spate, and Morgan hascd on survivors' accollnts. NA ro and United Nations docllments and inter ThoTllas (Minneapolis, M N: Universily of Minnesota Press, 1(92), 1S, views in Bosnia. Serbia , Washington , and New York. is divided into the foll'owing 13 TI/e Writing oj'f-lislOry, 4.

calegories: the attack , the 1''111, the refugees, the killing. the h un t. the warehouse, 34 Samuel Beckett. El1.dgol11e (New Yo rk: Grove Press, 1958). 2 ,

Ihu reaction , the Americans. See Stephen Engelberg and Tim Weiner with further :15 Ibid .. 12 , ruporting from Raymond Bonner in Bosnia and Jane Perlez in Serbia , " Sre brenica: 36 " Several notions. both practical and the o retical. are suitable for defining nomad 'rile Days 01' Slaughter", T/¡e Ne w York Times, October 8, 1995: l. 5- 6, art and ils slIccessors [ , , ,l. First, ' elose-rangc' vision , as dist inguishcd from 1') Ruth Ellen G rubers, "Remembering Poland's .Iews", T{¡e N e lV York Times, Travel Section , January 29. 1995: 8- 9, 19, long-distallec vision: second , ' tactile' . or rather ' haptic' spaee, as distinguished from optieal space, Ifaptit: is a better wo rd than t"etiJe since it does not cstablish 'JO Baudrillard, "Simulaera and Simulations", .Ie(//1 BOlldri//ard: Se/eCled Writing.l' , an opposition between t\Vo sense organs but ra ther invites the assumption that the ed, and with intro. by Mark Poster (Stanrord , CA: Stanford lJniversity Press, 1(88), 166- 84, 171. eye may fulfill this nonopti cal function, " See T/¡ e De/euze R eader , ch. 19, for more detailed definitions of nomad art and ha ptic space. ;,1 See Ide%gy ({lid Power in the Age (d' I.enill i/l Ruin.\' , eds, Arthur and Marilouise 37 Ibid. , 167, Kroker (New York: SI. Martin 's Press, 1(91), ix, 38 Tadeusz K,lIltor, "Lessoll 12 ", A JOllrney Throllgh Ot/¡ er Spaces. ed" trans. , and 22 Stephen Kinzer, " Berlin Given Un usual Idea For a Holocaust Memorial" , T/¡e New York Times January 28, 1996: 4, with a critical commentary by I'v lichal Kobialka (Berkeley, CA: Univcrsily of California Press, 199:1), 258- 60. AII referenccs 10 Kantor's essays alld theorctieal 2] .rane Perlez, "NATO Baeks off Helpin g Bosnia War Crimes Panel", T{¡ e Ne1l' York writings refer lo page nlllllbcrs in thi s volume, Times, International , Saturday , Janua ry 20, 1996: 5. See also Chris Iledges , " Arter 39 T/¡e Po.\'t/11odern Exp/ained, 80. ti le Pea ce, the War Against Memory" , Th e Nell' York Times. Week in Review, 40 For a delailed discussioll of this cricotage see M, Kobialka, "Of Losl Memorics January 14. 1996: 1, 6: Jane Perlez, " Problems Hamper thc Cri me Inquiry in Bosnia Conflict," The Nell' York Times , January 28, 1996: J, 5. and Nomadic Representational Pnlctices" . .Iouma/ o/Drumati(' Theory ol/d Criti ciS/11 (Fall 1(94): 179 93, 24 Gillcs Dcleuze. " What is Event'?" , The De/euze R eo!ler, ed. and with an intro , by 41 "Silent Ni ght" , A .Io/lrney , 174.

Constantin V, Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 199:1), 42- 5\ 45, 42 Tadeusz Ka ntor, Ó dOllce /I//it (unpublished m s .. n.d.), n.p.

25 See, for example, Crilica/ Th eory and Pe/j'or/11ance, eds, Janelle Rainelt and Joseph 43 Baudrillard. TI/e l//lI.\'ion ol t/t e End, 27.

Roach (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 19(2); Pe/jfmning Fem 44 Deleuze observes that rito/'lle//o , or Ihe refrain , is " territorial assemblag~ that

ini.l'ms: Feminist Criticar lheory alJ(/ 'l//ea/re, ed. SlIe-Ellen Case (l3altimorc, MI\: oricnts one in the unkno\Yn location, "The song is like a rough sketch 01' a calming Johns Hopkins University Press. 1(90); Auing Out: Fel'llinisl Pe/formal/ ces, eds. and stabiLizing, ealm and stable, eenter in the heart 01' chaos. [ , , . J Bird songs: the Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan (Ann Arbor, MI: Miehigan University Press. bird sings to mark its territory. [ . , . l The refrain ma y assume other functions. 199:1); Arnold Krllpat, Eth/locrilicism: Ethllograp{¡y, /-lislory. Liter((lUre (Berkelcy , amorous, professional 01' social , liturgieal or cosmie: it always carries earth with it: CA: University 01' California Press, 1(92); Tite BOllnd~ o( Race: Pef.\peclil'es on it has a land (sometimes a spiritllal land) as its eoncomitant; it has an esscntial J-ft! gemony ((m/ R esista/l ce, ed. Dominick L
4R. " O T' hcodor Adorn o. "Coll1l11ilmenl " , T/¡e E\sentia/ Fronkjill'l ,";e/100/ Reacia. ed ,

A ndrew Aralo & (':ikc (¡c hllardl (O :< fn rd: Ril sil Blackwcll , 1978), :lOO 18,

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at U.S. Holocaust museums

Vivian Al. Patraka SOlln.:c: IJin Diamond (ed .). l'eljimnu/1cl! (lml Cul/ural Po!irics, London: ROlll icdgc , 19%. pp. 89 107.

No term is fixed farever in its meaning (unless it has become invisible through disuse) ; rather it constitlltes a set of practices and cultural negotiations in the present. Thus the narrative of makin g meaning out 01' the term " Holocaust" continues. The public performance of the term among Jcws is multiple, vary ing in different cultural sites and bein g used for differing political agendas and pedagogical purposes. The search for the best term to designate the Jewish genocide outlines an attempt to mark both its historical specificity and its uniqueness. This uniqllencss has been Iinked to the extent ofthe per petrator's intentionality, the degree to whieh the state apparatus legalized the devastation , the measure of its use 01' " technological weapons of destruction " (Stannard 151), and the n umber of peop1c killed . But every genocide, in the particularitics of its specific history, is unique. And whilc each genocide is knO\vn by this distinct histary , it also is understood in the contcxt of other genocides even though these relationships are not ones of simple analogy ar eq uivalence. While both the terms " Holocaust" and "genocide" \Vere originally conceived to respond to the events in Europe against the Jews, genocide quickly took on the status of a generic, both describing the persecutions of other groups during this period and providing a mean s for deflning actions a gainst gro ups that would constitute genocidal dcstruction . Morcover, however pro prietary the c1aims on the use 01' the lerm Holocau st ha ve becn in sorne q ua rters. the evocative power 01' the term has beg un to exlend its use lro pnlogically lO con lcmpo rary c{)nsiderati o l1s (11' ¡hlO dcslf uclio ll nI' groups o lher Ihan Jews.

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Pcrhaps tlt is is pl \!l' lsdy lll'l'lIl1 'll IItr 1(1111 !u: IIOl:ide f'ulIl:liulIS as a ddillliling gcnc ric , while I IulllclIIIsl hllIlW' \V iiI. il all tlH: prn tocols 01' lhe llnspcakablc, tbe illcolllmcn slI ra lc, ;lnd a se ]]!'c 0(' lI11lilllitcd scope lo the pain and injuslice. 01' perhaps Ilolocallst COll nl)lcs noljusl lhe violent momenl ofeliminalion 01' a whoJc peopJc, but all th<Jt goes into it: the bcginning of terror and circulat ing discourses 01' opprcssion and exclusion , the constructing of a sta te appar atus 01' oppression and the disinformation it produces, the incarcerations, the annihilation, and then the revolting denials and c1eanups. The entire array 01' cultural, social, and political forces amassed to effect genocide may be his torically cmbedded in the term Holocaust. No historical referent is either stable, transparent in its meanin g, agreed upon in ils usage, 01' even engaged with in the same wa y by any large group of people. One way of contextualizing the current movement of the term Holocaust is by invoking M ichcl de Certeau's distinction between a place and a space in his application of spatial tenns to narrative. For de Certeau , the opposition between " place" and " space" refers to " t\Vo sorts of stories" 01' narratives about how meaning is made. Place refers to those operations that make its object ultimately reducible to a fixed location , "to the heil1K fll er e 01' something dead , [and to] the law of a place" where the stable and "the law of the 'proper' " rules. Place "exc1udes the possibility of two things being in the same location ." "Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it , situate it , temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalent \Vay. " Thus space is created "by the actions of historical suhjecf.\'." These actions multiply spaces and what can be positioned within them. Finally, the rela tionship between place and space is a process whereby " stories thus earry out a labor that constantly transforms places into spaces 01' spaces into places" (117- 18). De Certeau's distinction between a place and a space is crucial to my argument in the \Vay it clarifies the differing strategies of attempting to move people through a landscape whose meanings are uniquely determined , in contrast to providin g an opportunity ror contestation and multiplicity of associa tion . Though the domain 01' the Holocaust is mass death , the narrative(s) cre ated about il need not make it an immobile, tomblikc place nor create an inert body 01' knowledgc intended only to conserve and preserve. Producers 01' public discourse on the Holocaust can actively engage in redefining this space so that , as 1'11 presently show, even the seemingly standard definition ofthe Holocaust as relatin g solely to Jews comes under interrogation at sites as formal as Holocaust museums and their fundraising materials. And while I do not mean to be facile about the terrible stakes involved in memorializing these events, a narrative space for producing knowledge of the Holocaust one that \Vould construct its conSUl1lers as actively engaged in producing I11ca nings m ighl he a powcrrul means to prolo nging remembrance . Even if SOllle conlclllporary !'IOII PS do ddiberalcly use the tenn Holocaust in a way J cs il.'.lieJ lo cO lll pele \Vl th 1)1 ~ VC Il e rase lhe origi oal refcren t, ir we assert an '1,\

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functions as a kind 01' controlling or hcgcmonic discuu rsc uf sulTcring that opcratcs at the expense of the sulferings 01' other groupiS. Instead, the notion of spacc, rather than mutually exclusive placcs, could signify a discourse on the l lolocaust in which genocide stories of difTerent groups could occupy the same locale without necessarily ejecting or evacuating the original refer ent of Jewish history and suffering. Even so, r wonder whcther so much 01' the history of the Jewish genocide, the meanings attached to it, even t11e ethical, cultural and linguistie protocols of where to look for meaning about such events , is so deeply embedded in the word f-I olocaust as to make the Jewish genocide a paradigmatic frame for other genocides located with the termo Given all of these risks, it is worth considering how the refcrent of the Holocaust is configured by contemporary American Jews. Oespite the very palpable differences among us, both culturally and politieal1y, it is still the case that many of our responses to the images, objects, and words connected to the Holocaust are "hard wired ," provoking automatic emotional mean ings and an a ttitude of reverence. This makes it hard to get beyond a con sensus on the agony, the loss, and the mindful viciousness that produced them so we can discern the actual discourse generated about the Holocaust and how it functions. Some of the strategies of this discourse are manipulative; they solicit our anguish, horror, and fear as the grounds for asserting larger meanings to which we may not wish to assent. But neither avoidance of the places in which these "fixed" narratives reside nor simple dismissal is, 1 think , uscful. For this would risk separating us from our own emotions about the Holocaust, entombing them in these monumental stories so that they are no longer available for either examination or ehange. Instead, we have to ereate spaces for critiq ue within and among those seemingly inevitable emotional hardwirings and the places to which they get connected. I offer the discussion belo\\! as a step in that direction. I explore how the referent 01' the Holocaust is currently being configured at sites in the United States where a cultural performance 01' Holocaust history is being staged for public consumption the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington O.e., and the Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. My purpose in doing so is to honor this history, but also to renegotiate its effects by rethinking the set ofpractices set up by these two important museums for the sake of both the present and the future . I also want to vie\v eaeh of the museums against the background of their mass-mailed fundraising letters to explore some of their ideologicalunderpinnings. In doing so, 1 \V,LOt to mark both the ideological underpinnings that a re fuJfilled by each museum ami thosc that are dislodgeJ , wbelhcr deli berately by the designers or by museum goers themselves.

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111 ordcr lo c1icil u o natiolls, 111\.: fUlldraising materiab for the United Statcs Ilolocaust Memorial M uscull1 in Washington, n.e. indicate what the mu seum promiscs to accomplish - a self-presentation that represents the main thrust ofthis institution (BaI558), prefiguring many orthe strategies dcsigned for the museum itself. 1 believe the target audience for these fundraising letters is, primarily, the American Jewish community, while the lctters identify the target spcctatorship fol' the museum as the public at large. i\ captioned photograph locales the museum by its proximity to the Washington Mon ument as a means of validating it spatially as a nat ional project. Quota tions by Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush about the Holocaust further authenticate this undertaking, along with a 1945 statement by Eisenhower not as President, but as General and liberator - asserting that he could give " firsthand evidence" of the horrors he saw "if ever there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda '." Also included 011 the ftyer is an official-Iooking image of the 1980 Public Law to create an inde pendent federal establishment that will house " a permanent living memorial museum to the victims of the Holocaust" ("a short walk from our great national memorial s" and hence, implicitly, connected to them). The effect of this is deliberately to blur the boundaries between the privately sponsored and the governmentally mandated. Of course , any llolocaust museum must enter into a dialogue with the country in which it is located and the positioning of that country in these events, but the O.e. museum's emphasis on its geographies ofannouncement is insistent. i\ clear anxiety about denials ofboth the events of the Holocaust and its moral significance for Americans is embedded in these recurrent c1aims for legitimacy, even if some 01' the hyperbolic language can be chalked up to the discourse of fundraising, which in itself constÍtutes a kind of melo drama of persuasion. Inevitably. an American Holocaust museum is caught 011 the cusp ofhappened here/happened there, a conundrum, as James Young formulated it (Y (mng 1992), over whether American history meal1s events happening here or the histories i\mericans carry with them. Prcsumably, then, learning about the events of the Holocaust, precise/) beca use they didn't happen here, crea tes what one newsletter calls a "mean ingful testament" to the values and ideal s of democracy , thereby inscribing it within the history of American democracy. ifnot American history per se. It could be argued , then, that in this museum the Constitution is to be viewed through the prism of Jewish history as much as Jewish history is to be viewed through the prism ofthe Constitution . Thus one orthe central strategies 01' the museum is to asserllhc way in which American mechanisms oflibcral delllo cratic govllrn nw llt. wOll ld prevent slIch a gen ocid al adion frolll occllrring

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il! llal' Il l!ill,,'¡\ SI:í lcs a ~ WL' II as pal lHl lly lo llVCJl.I ¡t , 111' 111" 11.0.; . Vi¡;WI:r , Ihe ,,1' Ihe vil' lillls uf gC II ~)c i Jc \Vi lll Iha l 01 Illl' VIl' llJIS in Wo rld Wal 11. T h i!) laltcr i1iipeL:! wt)u ld enhalll'e wha! Phili r GOlllcvilch describes as Ih e 1ll1lSCunÚ projcd to rei nforce "lhe ethical ideals 01' American po litical culture by prcscJ1ting the ncgation 01' lhose ideals" as \Vell as our historica! res po nsc lo lhem (SS). In fad, images of American troops !iberating the L'\l tlccnlra tion camps constitute part 01' the final exhibit 01' the museum as well as the opcning tactic 01' the liolocausl exhibit proper, where all lhat is seen ami hcanJ is presented through the eyes and ears 01' the liberating soldiers. I:wn the sllrvivor testimony playcd for LIS in an amphitheater at the cnd 01' tlll' exhibit prominenlly includes one narrative by a Holocaust survivo r \Vho eventually married the soldier who liberated her. Indeed, this marriage ell1plotmenl seems to embody a crucial strategy of the whole museum , with .Iews and Jcwish history (thc feminized victim) married to American demo LTacy (the masculinized liberator). Recalling that the American liberator in lhis survivor testimony is Jcwish as well , I must note another, more implicit enaclment in the museum, that of consolidating an American Jcwish identily by marrying the positions of liberator and victim. [1' what is critical for the museum's project is to extend our fictions of nationhood by the premise that a democratic sta te comes to the aid of those peoples outside its borders subjected to genocide, then the conferring 01' liberation beeomes the story of American democracy. To assert this story entails backgrounding the masses of peopJe \Vho died befare liberation (as opposed to the pitifuI remnant left). It entails foregrounding the assumption that waging war ean actually accomplish something and , more precisely, that saving Jews, Gypsies, Leftists, Catholic Dissenters, Homosexuals, and Polish forced labor from the Nazis was one of the goals 01' World War 11 , rather than a by-product ofwinning the war by invading the enemies' territory. I could dismiss the museum 's overall strategy as a simplistic appeal to hege monie structures of governanee. But to do so would be to den y that the museum l11usl engage United Sta tes viewers with an ethical narrative 01' national identity in direct relation to the Holocaust. The alternative is to risk becom ing a site for vicwing the travails of the exoticiz.ed Other from elsewhere ("once upon a time"), or, even worse, "a museum 01' natural history for an endangered species " (Bal 560). Moreover, the museum itself does not produce this idea of liberation from genocide as a completely unproblematic and unquestioned historical reality. Within the physical and conceptual envelope of its democratic discourse , the museum offers viewers a display of documents, including actual telegrams, that communicate ho\\', as late as February of 1943 , with the Final Solution fully operational in ELlropea n death camps, the State Departmen t tried lo shut down the channels for receiv ing information about Wh a t was happ~ ning to E.uropea n Jews (Beren ha um 199~ 161 2). This policy of sllpp re~sio n 01' illformalion aonu l and dcniul M ¡¡ id lo hlrnpean .Iews was chullclIgcd unly pl'l~ pél'l ivl!

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hy lile illl ell se Ill lJlII l)1 ~r\' ll, lIl1 llll lllllJ ~' II C'u slll y I)CP:HIIIICIII wlll)se d'forls finall y cllllllinatcd in R.wdlllr'h PII IIJ'S bllllary 11)44 "Report In Ihc Secrcta ry lorllle T rcasuryl 011 Illl' ¡\cq llicsCC IH.:C orThis (j(lvcrnlllcnl in lhe Murder 01' IIlL' .Jews." Tu llIakc a IOllg, pailll'1I1 slory short, in January 1944, Secretary 01' Ihe TreaslIry Morgenthau took Ihis information to Franklin D. Roosevelt, persuadillg h il11 to establish lhe War Refugee Board by threatening (in a pres idenlial election year) lo release docllments pertaining to the government's suppression of information and assislance (Berenbaum 1993 163· 4). Despite lhe references to its proximity to national memorials in the fun draising materials, the museum is aetually c10sest physicaJly to four mundane looking government buildings, incJuding t he Treasury Building diagonally across the street. M uch has been made of the way the mllseum copies the blocky functionality of these buildings in its initial entranceway, beca use this entrance is a false one, withollt a roof, while the actual doors to the musellm are located several feet behind it. Thus the faeade of the building recrea tes the solemn , neocJassical , and universalizing style ofthe government buildings around it , but marks its relationship to lhem as architecturally false . However, the documents isslling from lhe Treasury Building during the 1940s manifest another relationship, one based in precise historical detai l, previously suppressed. This creates a ehronotopic connection, i.e. , a scene of interaction produced simultaneoLlsly out of temporal and spatial relation ships. between Ihe two buildings and the histories they contain. In offering this information, the museum construcls a localized hislorical contradiction lo its own ideological cJaims about how democracies respond to genocides, thereby eomplicating the narrative of our national identity and, in so doing, turning an ostensible narrative place into a space 1'01' negotiating meani.ngs. However, while my reading of the actual museum emphasizes sites for constructing multiple meanings and relationships , the fundraising material s recaJl the larger ways in which the exhibits are to function. One flyer promises the museum will orchestrate our emotions in the mode of a spectacle designed to command attention , transfix spectators, and narrativiz.e in advance the experience 01' those who approach it: "You will \Vatch , horrified " and " you will weep" over this " heroic and tragic story ." There is al so an overpowering sense of desire in all these descriptions, a need to create an utterly convincing spectacJe that will say it all, stop time and space, prevent denial and make lhe suffering known. Ofcourse, no representation can do that, even ifwe hear the "actual voices 01' dealh calllp survivors teH 01' unspea kable horror and pain." Ilow could the unspeakable of genocide be spoken? l-lo\V could the interior ity of individual suffering on a massivc scalc be turned into an exterior, if respectful , spectacle? Perhaps the consuming desire 1'01' the real in representa tion , for thc convincing speclacular, is inverse1y proportionatc to the pro cess 01' genocidc ilscl l', which is not speclaclllarized , bul silcnt, dispcrsed, cnncealeu. :lnd th: Il il:\ 1 BU I Il lí,; pe rsona l a rtil~l cls lhal Ihe letkrs daim will be clllléClCd in \Hl~' 01 1111' 1J 1I1 ~1 \'llJlI \ loonls Ihe suilcascs, h .. ir brushcs. rtI7.()J'S , 11)

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phlllngril phs, 11 1111 il~S , dlllls, 11Iys, sh ucs. eyc¡: IOI ssl'" II lI d \Vl'ddlllll n ngs J e spi le Ulcir viv id llIa ll'rialil y, ale lillally o nly lhe :> 11101 11 delJJtU l> III Il llnihilatit lJl thal point tn lhe inevit a ble apsc lH; e 0 1' complete rcprcscn lu lioll. Ami ye!. in practice, evcn lhe sites 01" arlifacls whose meaning is inlended lo be self-evident can become spaces, instead of places, changed by the paths visitors lhemselves create as hislorical subjecls. The museum went lo great pains, inc1uding revising its architectural plans, to exhi bit a fifteen-ton frei ght car used to deport Jews. Walking through it offers us a physical trace of the frightenin g d a rkness and daustrophobic agony of the 100 people crushed into this and other such cars. But as 1 moved toward this traincar on lhe second day ofmy visit to the museum , l \Vas approached by a marricd coup lc, Mrs. Sonya Zissman aud MI. Harold Z issman , who noticed I was speaking into a tape recorder and came to tal k to me . Both had been involved in resistance in rural Poland. They criticized the museum for overemphasizing victimization in its portrayal of the Holocaust, while not inc1uding enough material on Jewish acts of resistance in its exhibit. Pointing to the freight car, Mrs. Zissman told me they had been part 01' a group that had managed to blow up several trainloads of German soldiers. She grinned at me and said, "We gave them hel!." They also both wept; this isn't a happy story. The live performance of survivor testimony by the Z issmans, "unmanaged" as it was by the museum proper. powerful1y produced me as an engaged witness to their history, forcing me to negotiate their " unofficial " story \Vith the " offi ciar' one surrounding it. What this conversation especially marked for me was how the museum 's larger project of locating itself within a narrative of democracy displaced representations of acts of resistance by Jews in order to embed its narrative in the frame of American Iiberation. In other words, ideologically speaking, liberation requires a victim; there don 't have to be resi sters.

In the process 01' evaluating aspects ofthe U .S. Memorial Holocaust M usellm , l' ve asked myself "Just what would you have such a mllseum do? Position spectators as complicitous bystanders') As potential perpetrators of genocid.e? W ho would come to slIch a museum'?" The answers to these questions are not self-evident. Locale and 1'unding sources playa part in shaping what a Holocaust museum shows and who sees it. That the United States Holocallst Memorial Museum identifies itself as a national project, imbricates the Holocaust into our national narrativcs, and keeps a tight focus on the history of the Holocaust. suits its Washington , D.C. locale and its federal grant of extremely scarce land. Although pri vatcly funded , its quasi govern mental status helps produce what is and is nol displayed with in ils walls.

rhe Iklllla ~ I I\" ' lh MII ',l" lIl1l l1 n 'I.lkl . lIl1 ~ 1" (nC¡¡ lcd illllIS Á llgdl:s, adj al'l'1I1 lo Ihe Si mon W I C!l~' lI l h,,1 ( ~' III ~'I (ltI which il is orga n i/ allllllall y cOllncclcJ). It \Vas b uill \) 11 priva lc Ialld, hlll ICL'ciwd cOllsidcrable lÚl1ding frollll heStalc nI" C ali fornia. As a n.:s ull. Ihis IIlUSClIlll has a more in sistent cmphasis on 11l~dagogy and is l1Iorc c.xplicitly targcted for school children and adolescents , allhough adjaccnt claims ror extrcmely current technologies of representa tion are dearly intended to lure the public at large and attract funding from private donors. Under the rubric ofteaching tolerance by providing examples of intolerance, it can display injustice in the U nited States and indude a multiracial awareness of past and current American events. Lt also responds to its more immediate locale, L.A. , as a site of racial and ethnic tensions and includes those tensions in ils exhibits (witness its speed y creation of an exhibit on the L.A . Uprising). While responding to the local , the museum abo loca tes itself as an internation al project lhal globally documents past and present violations of human rights. In accordance \Vith these projects, the fundraising letters sent to private donors prior to lhe museum 's opening employed a primary strategy opposite to that ofthe U.S . Holocaust Memorial Museum: The Beit Hashoah Museum of To\crance would represent the United States as a site of " bigotry and intolerance," that is, as a potential place 01' genocide, with the Holocaust as the most horrific illustration 01' where intolerance could \cad. While the D.e. museum quoted U .S. presidents to authenticate its project, the Beit I-1ashoah 's Charter Member fundraising flyer quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. : " Like life, racial understanding is not somethin g that we find, but something that we must create. " Thus the Beit Hashoah articlllates the history ofthe Holocallst to an American landscape of prejudice and racism , a more liberal narrative that, to S011lC degree, troubles our scnse of national identity if not, as \ViII be noted later, our fictions of nationhood. Moreover, given its c1ai11l to respond to and represent the international, the nalional , and the local , the focus ofthe museum is as diffuse (despite the presencc of Holocaust exhibits that take up a fair share, but by no 11leans most, of the museum 's space and much , but not al1, ofthe fundraising descriptions) as the U .S. Memorial Holocaust Museum 's focus is speciflc. This diverse range of arenas configured under the rubric of into1crance is represented in the fundraising materials which describe the path of this museum as follows : First, visitors are confronted by ethnic and minority stcreotypes as a means to challenge their current au,itudes and perceptions. Second , they enter a Tolerance Workshop \Vhere they are given an " authentic social dilemma " and asked to choose and motivate others to moral action. Third , visitors view " stcreotypical ethnic and racial depictions !'rom early movies, " hear demagogues vilifying minorities, and " meel" via video " individuals \Vho have made a difference. " Fourth , "in a series ofil1uminated, computer-synchronizcd tableaux," visitors "go back in time" to experience "the cvents ,,1" 111-: IIt\h)~¡¡lIs1" and Nazism. F irth , ami fin ally, visitors stand

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Tbe Beit Hashoah M useum of Tolerance and its fundrais ing materials

ti Il' plil',1 ul l it.: ( ;a l ~ ~ (1 1 AII M.:hwil l :l lId lIé;!1 III ~ " p ln" , 1,1 Iloloctlll sl viclillls speak ur "Sil 1'Ii.:ri IIg alld IlcruiSIIl." While I call apprcciale lhe goa ls l) f a Ilol OcaUSlll1l1 SC lIl1l lhal sceh to serve not only as a place to mell10rializc victims orpCrsCClIli oll. b ul as a taboratory for combating hate, violcnce. and prejudice in the present, I note several problems in the strategies proposed to achievc this. The eon linucd insistencc that the museum presents "reallife" obscurcs the way it is adjllsting lhe para meters 01' a discourse. Moreovcr, while "persecution and devasla ti on " have been the results of both anti-Scmitism and racism, the museum risks creating an abstract eqllivalence between the two by configuring both as " an internal ized mattcr 01' prejudice" (Bournc 14) When tolerance beco mes a person al matter, it cannot, for example, take into account the way raci sm fu nctions as " a struetural ami institutional issue " within a system ofpower " hierarchicall y structured to get the maximum benefit from differentiation " (14). Showing this system of exploitative differentiation is especially critical for a museum about gcnocide, since it is just this system that would proAt most from the construction of competing narratives about the sll/Tering of variOLlS groups, creating the divisiveness of what Berenbaum called "a ealculus of calamity" (1990 34). 1 recognize this is exactly what the Beit Hashoah Museum 01' Tolerance is trying to avoid , but [ don't think it takes its goals far enough. And missing from the museum 's landscape ofintolerance are the violent out breaks 01' homophobia no\\' occurring in the United States, as well as much mention of sexism : in praclice the museum privileges racism as the site 01' intolerance, which is not surprising if its purpose is to forge Iinks with other genocidal situations using the more traditional notions of "group" that govern definitions 01' genocide. Finally, the threat of genocide and even actions deemed potentially genocidal may not be the best measure for evalllating the everyday oppressions to which people and groups are subject, ami such a treatment may even serve to minimize the importance of daily oppressions, especially when they are not in line with a teleological narrativc of escalating violence . And. despite its emphasis on the interactive, by ending with the gates of Auschwi tz the museum takes the space it tries to open up for a consideration ofthe interconnections among oppressions and recontains it into a (computer synchronized) place. Auschwitz becomes a monumental metonymy for the Holocallst , for all anti-Semitism(s) , and for the consequences ofintolerance. Using AlIschwitz as an emblem 01' all anti-Semitism(s) may actually obseure the current mechanisms by which they funetion. Using Auschwitz as a meto nymy for the conseqllences ofintolerance facilitates the museum's Eurocentric gesture oflocating its history of genocide only in the twentieth century. In so doíng, lhe mllseum erases the historical reality that not only could genocide happen here, it ha,\' happened herc, if not with the same obsessi ve de libera te ness assoC'lated with lh e F ina l SOllllioll. !\ museum with the goals af this one m ust ta kc inll) accOll nl lhe massi ve gcn ociu al a nnih ila tio ns in lhe !\mericas.

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allu ill pall ic.:lt!a t. 1I1l' 11111 11'11 1,, 1.11\·, ll Jllllllílll:d againsl illdigc nlllls pl'o p lcs ami ngai nsl A rllCil ll Ndl llll l" .. hI H· 1\', Why does/I' l il'! Is S h' lWII I ~ gC llllcidc wilhill ollr bordcrs "going too far" rol' sllch a m uscllm? Mlll'l.! gcnc rally, sholllJ we assume tha l ir the Jewish genocide ill Luropc were backgroulllkd in a site dedicated to showing intolcrance, other genocidcs, indigenous to the United Sta tes, would inevitably become rOl'cgrounded, historieally more visible?There are African American ami Native American TllUSellmS slated for the Smithsonian Mall, but, as Philip Gourevitch has noted (62), no Museum of Slavery or Trail of Tears museum . Perhaps recognizing the contributions of specific cthnicities, emphasizing what t heir continuing presence and vitahty offers us as a natíon , constitutes a celebr a lory means of covering over what was done to them and who and what has been perma nently lost. Our democratic discourse must repress highly visible representations orany genocide that occurred within our own national borders. In order to sustain its fietions of nationhood ami its imagined community, it must produce yet another set of highly visible representations of what it marks as a genocide occurring "elsewhere." From this perspective, it is the very performance of hegemonic democratic discoul'se, more pertinently our own " hard wired " flctions of nationhood , that we would need to interrogate and revise in order to make genocide " at home " visible. But that still doesn't fulJy aceount for what is shown at the Beit Hashoah as the last big exhibit before the Holocaust wing and how it is situated: the multisereen feature on the civil rights struggle, "Ain 't You Gotta Righe", directed by Orlando Bagwell , who also directed the series " Eyes on the Prize." Between the civil rights film viewing area ami the Holocaust wing, there's a peculiar little film displaying the Iives ofthe rieh in the I 920s. It' s like a sorbet, a palette c1eanser between two gourmet courses. W hy this rupture? Perhaps beeause historically, the directional signals are different : tbe eall for African American civil rights is the call for removing the last vestiges 01' genoeidal slavery (when is massive slavery not genocidal'l); the e1imination of civil rights 1'01' Jews in Germany is the beginning of the escalation toward genocide, a teleological narrative that \Vould not suil the African American examplc. The introduction to Natiol1alislI1.1' and S exualilie.l' notes a conver gence between the " persistence 01' nationalism explained as a passionate 'need ,'" ami " the rights ol' sexual minorities legitimated through a discollrse of civil Iiberties" (Parker et al. 2), suggesting Ollr deep ideological and polit ical investment in the arguments of legal personhood. Moreover, the call for extending democracy to everyone fits with our "imagined communities ofnationalism" even if this assimilative model , drawing as it does on the ex perience ofwhite ethnic immigrants to the U.S .. fails to describe the circum stances 01' th ose brollght here forcibly lo genocidal conditions or those here before liS submilh:d lo lhcm . The historical reality of slavery existing legally within dcmocracy d " es nol lil our national ideologica l fictions and is there rore al ways aln·, ld .. 111 dllll)'1:1 n I' bt.: ing :iupprcsscd .

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ro SUIlW dt'g l\:c, IItCII , lil" IIl mJcI 0 1' civ il riglll " ,Iud 1IIIl' lj\m'i,! lIScd hy Ihe IlI1lSCIlJ II , tl lOl/ gll ccrlaillly uscJ'ul, glosscs ove l' wry dlll~'ll'lIt histlll'i<.:s alld obsclIres Ihe idcological inlerwnncdiolls 01' gcnociJal cvcn ls lllal "happcneu here" and "happencd there:' lo other words it is problemalic lo assume tha t because of the history of the Holocaust, Jews can function as the bcst guides to the larger landscape of inlolerance in this country; such an assumplion imparts an overarching sYlllbolk signifkance to the events of the Ilo locaust. And yet, to the degree that this Illuseulll and this ethnicity aSSllllle the responsibilities of representing oppressions beyond their own , they make a gesture more unparalleled in the U ,S. than dismissals of this museum as a Oisneyesqlle themepark wo uld acknowledge , T h is museu m, though f1awed , is at least an ambitiousnrst step toward putting the mechanisms 01' oppressio n (and not simply diversity) into public discourse.

Perform ing presence, absence, and traumatic history at U.S. Holocaust Museums It is the museum-goers (along with lhe guards) who constitute the live , per forming bodies in museums. They are the focus of a variety of performance strategies deployed by museums for the sake of " the production of know ledge taken in and taken home" (Bal 56). Some of these strategies produce the passivity ami faseination of "gawking," some induce a connrming sense 01' "seeing" by covering o ver what cannot be " seen," ami some position us to struggle lo see al the same time we are conscious 01' our own difficult engage ment in "seeing." Ifthis applies generally to mu seums, it has speeial signifieance for museums that rep¡'esent the Holocaust. In a museum ofthe dead , lhe critical actors are gone, ami it is up to liS to perform acts of reinterpreta tion to make meaning and memory. To some degree, then , the usual museum situalion (us lookjng at objects) is deployed!cxploited lo underscore the "goneness" of which they are only the remains. That is, a Holocaust museum can constitute a particu lar metonymic situalion: inanimate material objects documenl and mark the "goneness" and the loss instcad of simply substituting for them through representation. In this case, the enormity of lhe absent referent is neither contained nor scaled down through a representation lhat daims its presence over lhe terrible absence produced by genocide.

Holocallst museulIl as pe,.já,.matlce site Along with the notion of a moving spectatorship, the museum is a perform ance site in the scnse that lhe archilect, the designers, a nd l he managemen t of the museum produce representati ons lhrollgh objects and so prod uce a space amI a subjectivity for the spcctalor. T he m llseum is él compl icated, crowued stage, ,t1 ways so k ilin g a ccrtain apeclaltlria l ga/,t: lltro ugh ve ry li l

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Pelfo,.mance pÚlce alld space How is the concept of De Certeauian place versus space related to these museum si tes? For my purposes, place refers to a pre-scripted performance of interpretation , while space produces sites for multiplc performances of inter pretation which situate/produce the spectator as historical subject. Perform ance place, then, is narrativized in advance , soliciting us to perform the script that is organized for and given to uS. A clear example of such a performance place is the entrance to the tolerance section of the Beil Il ashoah . We are faeed \Vith two sets 01' doors by which to enter - one set, outlined in bright red light, is marked " Prejudiced" ami one set, outlined in green light, is markeo "Unprejudiced ." In actuality , the museum makes the deeision for us : the " unprejudiccd" doors are jllst a prop, unusable, and everyone is herded through lhe "prejudiced" doors when the computer-synehronizcd exhibit mechanism opens thcm. Although linked to a single narrativc, place is more than that: it is a single performance of interpretation elicited by that nar rative, in this case a foreed acknowledgment of our own inevilable status as prcjudiced. Moreover, our bodies are implicated in the task by performing lhe rcq uired movement. De Certeau maintains that we aU live in places but should think of them as spaces. The liberating move that allows us to understand the experience of evcryday Jife is a move from place to space. When linked to performance , the de Certeauian model would suggest lhe dirference between a pre-scripted performance and a site that invites multiple acLs of interprctation. Indeed in de Certeauian space, interprctation itself beco mes a kind of complex performance, a way of experiencing subjectivity. The environment 01' the museum is also performative: not only does it permit multiple acts of inter pretation , museum design also provides multiple sccnarios for lhese perform ances - scenarios whose rcJationship to each other is not narrativized in advance. In one sense ..ve can undersland representation as a place concept, while performancc is abolll space. But in another sense, both place and space constr uct lhe :mbjc\:l as a perrormer. If both are perrormances , lhe place 01' performance is mor!! likcly lo be rigid, more abouI lhe spectacular or the q uesl lúr the Real , whL'rl'~I 'i PI'I f'" r mance space suggesls Illul tiple crisscrossing

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p~ lf lllll1: IIWC ~, Ihe pOSSlbl l1t y Ill'illkl pn:tll lioll S Ihlll " IIl'I ' lO llIlIllhl' hisloricily 01 Ihe illu lvldllal slIhjcu Throllg ho lll Ihe o,e 1l1llSCIIIIl, an:hitcclural d Cla il l.:lc.:alcs a perform élllce envirOllmcnl ror Illultiplc, overlapping spaces of interpn:tatio n. This cspeci ally pertains to the Ilall 01' WitIlCSS, a huge. skewed, multi-storied , glass-topped courtyard at the center ofthe musellm to which museum goers have free acccss (and which contains the museum information desk. sorne spaces lo rest, antl so on). In this hall , repeating architectural detail reverbera tes associativel y: the curved archways al' brick and metal suggest a train stalion for deporta tion; windowli ke structures with geometric plates of metal coveri ng them suggest the small spaces of restricted visibility to the o utside world left a rte r the ghettos were c10sed up; metal barred windows and protruding single bulb li ghts suggest the outsidc of a concentration camp (and structures resemblin g g uard towers sllrrollnd the glass-topped courtyard ceiling); metal doors shaped like ovens (repeated in the doors to the archive downstairs) along with metal slatted niches, whose slats open inward , suggest the crematorium itself. These associative details resonate with the literal images docllmenting these his torical events , but rather than seeming pre-scripted, they provide a sense of surprise and discovery, howcver ominous, for the speetator. lndecd , walking through the O.e. mllseum is performative in just thi s sensc of discovery. There has to be a cognitive moment when the spectator realizcs she is doing it (spectating), when she realizes she is in a doing. One such cognitive moment at the O .e. museum hinges on how its designers localed the video monitors showing archival film footage. The monitors at Aoor level are positioned in sllch a way that spectator crowding is required even to see what is on the screen. On the middle ftoor , which includes the most elaborate depictions af atrocity , sorne of the manitors are placed in a kind of raised \Vell , so that spectators already clustered tightly around the well are jostled by those who come later who crowd in fairly aggressively to see what the m o nitors depict. Once there, we view videos of grotesque medical experiments foreed by Nazi doctors upon concentration-camp inmates. Physical agony and humiliation witnessed on screen combine \Vith our awareness ofpushing, or having been pushed , to see. What this performance environment does is allow us to experience our subjectivity in unusual ways: when we crowd around the monitors , we beeome voycurs (and not a community ol"witness). Our curiosity tu see is itself thrown back at us and we are challcnged , 1 thi n k, to create a more self-conscious rclationship to viewing materials about atro city, to take more responsibility for what we've seen. Close by this video well , in a glass enclosed space with benches where we hear Auschwitz survivor testimony (no visuals) , the museum explaits spatial possibilities differently. Here, in order to make out the words, we must share looseleafs containing xeroxed teslitllony with other m usc um-gocrs. T he o nl y other thin g to look at in th is spacc is (he respo nses 01" o lhcr spcclators to th is pa inl"ul materia l on alroci ty T h ~ po tc lllial rDr ph y"i cal inl irna cy ill the design

uf tllis exhi hi l ~("Ial.\· \ I ' I II ~~: I ¡¡ ¡lo- 1111 ~· \\ll llIlIlIlit y 01" wilncss: as sl rangc rs Wl: a rc oonfrlllllcd wilh Ihl ' I H~"~' I I ~'~ 111 IIthns , otller bodics with wholl1 \Ve must cOllpautc. WI.! C X rC I IC I!~C IIIlIltipk pcrspcctives, the scnse that no single per spcctive cal! absorb Ihis informatioll. In the Ikit Ila shoah. on the other hand. due to its more explicit pedago gical purpose , the spectator's experience is more akin to the delimiting place of representational theater. The materials in the flrst half of this exhibit are cnclosed in raised dioramas, suggesting information that can be contained by a single representational frame. Each diorama incIudes the same three fi gures .. an historian. a researcher, and an exhibit designer - cast out of plaster, 3/ 4 sized (scale as a way 01" manipulating perform a nce space) , and unmoving. They could function in a self-referential way to make vie\vers enva re of the constructedness of the narrati ve being presented , but they actually constitute another nxed frame for making mcaning. Although the three "characters " can't "perform" physically on stage, media technologies such as voice-overs represent them, and fllms and videos that relate Holocaust history do the performing. Moreover, eaeh diorama exhibit is computer-synchronized: each lights up and , after the timed presentation is finished. blacks out, just like a little theater. Groups 01' spectators led by a volunteer \Val k from the no\\' darkened site to the next one lighting up (against the darkness of the larger spaee for spectato r movement) in the prescribed path. This mode of framed display means spectators have more equal access to the Holocaust informa tian , but the guarantee of a n equa! place to eaeh viewer comes at the price 01' restricted movement, passivity in response to " the show," and a place every one engages in and moves through in a standardized way.

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histo,.y ami "mUllageahility"

The exhibition was designed, in a number of places, to make you feel confused , disoriented , closed in. The same way that the people who lived during the Holocaust felt. It 's narrow in more than one place during the exhibition. You think everything is go ing aIl right, you've come into a lot of spaCe, and then all of a sudden it gcts na rrow again. 1t crea tes a mood . The whole exhibition. M useum guard at the United States Memori a l Holacaust Museum . speak ing to the author You have to personalize the story. We are using technology to thal end. Rabbi Marvi n Hiel', founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. about lhe Beit Ilashoah I In ans wer to lhe q UCS ti1l11 nI' " ll ow can we know the I-I ol ocau st?" both l11 u::;eu ms try III II l1p;l l l \.. Il\lw lcd gc. not o nly abollt lhe history of these even ts,

hlll ,I bo lll how Lo Il.'rlll.'IIIII('1 11r('1I1 ():.¡ Il'lIsi h ly, III¡- PIPI~'\' 1 ,.1 1111111 IIIIIS\!IIII1S is to ma ke t h ~ IIl1lnallageahlL' hislUfy 01' I he I h,I(l¡;ól usl 1II:IIIoI j!l\Lblc, Mudl orlh e U ,S, M\!moriallloloca llsl Muselllfl pr\!S\!l1 ls lile hisLory orlllL' Il oJocausl as an accretion 01' dctail - shocs, dOCUIllCII Ls, p lrolographs, artil~lctS. The irony is that in an errort 10 make the uumanageable managcab1c, to givc a sense ofpresence, ofplace, the n.e. museum conveys the incommensllrabil ity of loss by making the density of dctail unmanageable for the spectator. We are forced to enact this unmanageability at what I refer to as the tower of pictllres. During the exhibit. \Ve must cross via walkways through a tower of pictllres that is taller than the exhibit's three stories. The enlarged photo graphs, tak en bet ween 1890 and 1941 , convey the quality of Jewish life and culture that was extinguished in the Polish town of Ejszyszki where no one Jewish survived. O ne virtue of these pictures is tha t they represent how tbese people wanted to be seen , rather than how the Nazis made them look or how they 100ked when the liberators found them . But while the photographs' arrangement in the strllcture ()f a tower keeps directing us to 100k up, the top photos are so high they recede into invisibility. So we rehearse with OUr bodies not only the immeasurability of the loss, but the imperfect strllcture or memory itself. The museum's choice to inc1ude a roomful of nothing but piles of shoes produces another experience of unmanageable detail. The piJe of shocs. a fraetion of the masses of shoes collected by the Nazis, metonymically repres ent the murdered peop1c \Vho wore them and thus the unmanageability of the history to which they point. Because they are maHeable enough to retain the shape oftheir owners with , here and there, a frivolous bow or tassel , each shoe provides an intimate remnant of an individual, which multiplied by thousands, coveys the magnitude ofhuman 10ss w,i thout becoming abstracted or aestheticized. Moreover, in their very materiality the shoes mark presence as much as absence. Despite constantly blowing fans, the shoes smel1 fro m their own disintegration, and thus involve our bodies in making memory. T he smell of the shoes is organic, like a live body, and in this way they become performers, standing in for the live bodies that are absent. To borrow Peggy Phe1an's words in Unmarked, the shoes, as objects made to perform, do " not reproduce" what is 10st, but "rather he1p us to restage ami resta te the etTort to remember what is lost." The performéltivity of the shoes "rehearses and repeats the disappearance ofthe subject who 10ngs always to be remembered" (Phelan 147). In fac!' the O.e. museum seems to acknowledge in its very architecture that such a modernist project of accretion is only a rearguard effort to produce manageability. The sense of this history as absencc and as 105s echoes through the great empty halls that alt("rnate with the densely detailed exhibits. These large spaces 01' absence become part of the performance space: rhe horrific notion 01' abscnce, which is a l1 one can rca l1y ex. perience 01' Ih e slaughtcr, is built inlo th \! m uscull1 a rcllitect llrc itsclf". Ed ilk c prod uces

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body. .si ne\! he unly simlllalcs to leralll:e in Ihe tir";! place, sillllllalillg him 011 multiple scrcclls (likc a crcaturc with multiplc media parts threatc ning t~, impinge on our rrames 01' rcferenec) is an etTcctive visual deeonstruction , as wcll as a comment on his cultural ubiquity. The techniques 01' simulatioll (combined with the 1960s-type exhibit tech n ologies of the '/4 sized plaster-cast figures in thc dioramas) employed to pcr form live presence are more problema tic as uscd in t he Holocaust scction . If, gene rally at tbe Beit Hashoah , wha l is bea rd by visitors is priv i1eged over what is read , this is especi all y true here. M usic is used to narrativize our emotions in ad vance throughout Ihe exhibit. Actor voicc-overs, most o ften performing survivor test imony, are heard throughout as wel/. We are offe red a kind of " you are then:" melodrama of plaster figures seated at tab1cs in a cafe (not in a diorama , but at our level) with voiees of actors representing the figures' eonversati ons about whcthcr thcy should flee 1930s' Germany. We thcn are given a narrative of \Vhat happened to caeh of them, so it turns o ut thesc were "real" people whose situations are being simulated to crea te a theater of identifieation for us . Finally, onc diorama eonta ins a holographic image of the table at Wannsee at which the Final Solution was planned . Thc tab1e is littered with glasses, filled ashtrays, and so on, whi1e voice-overs convey the Na zi presence. 1 know this "scene " ought to induce horror, but when 1 saw it , 1 was hlscinated by the simulation itself and by ho\V they made it and faintly embarrassed that [ was peering at it as ] would into a department-store window. Yet this is not surprising. Because in simulation there is no longer a link to the referent the copy passes itself off as the real, thereby covcring over the historical trauma of the incommensurable absence of the genocidal refercnt. More successful is another section ofthe muscum cal1ed the Other America. It inc1udes a large wooden eolored map ofthc U.S . that charts the locations, state by sta te, of250 hate gro ups . By touching a computer screen, visitors can choose to learn more about each group , but the entire body of information becomes unmanageable for a vievier. The map, itself fri ghteningly effective, is made more so by the use of computers, thereby constituting a combination of lo\\' and high tech that creates an unman agea b lc space. In general, the Beit H ashoah has a postmodern proj ect 01' presenting history as a fto\\' ofinform ation. Sometimes it is a "one-way fto\\," ofinforma tion (places for single performanccs of interpretation); sometimes there is a "m ultidireetional distribution 01' cultural and data flows " (spaces ror multiple performances of interpreta tion) (Penley and Ross x- xi) . Interestingly, onc of the most extensive sites for multiplc performances at the Bei t Hashoah occurs in hyperspace. When visitors com e in , they are directed to the top floor of the museum first. T his fl oor con tains an a rch ival collect io n room , wi th the rest of it devoted lo computer sta ti ons. Vol unlecr grcctcrs 01' vario us a ges a nd

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Note I \Vould like to th ank the following people for their editoria l adv ice and encourage ment: Elin Diam ond, Peg Loude, Jill Dolan, and Vid a Penez ic. 1 thank Kate Davy, Hilary Harris, and Peggy Phelan for accompanyin g me on my t rip to the Bcit Hash oah. I espccially ackn owiedgc my researchers, Mary Ca llahan Boonc and Annettc Wannamaker, whose work \Vas funded by Graduate Research Assistance Award s from Bowling Grccn Statc lJnivc rsity. A s quoted in .I;t llles AnJl'rsIln ' s " 1\ hi g h- tcch tour through hate," Orange Cllun l)' R.:gisler, ., I .la 11 , I IJI)I

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f{t.·fl,'rcnccs Ba!. M i ~ kt.! (1()()2), "Idlillg, SllllWillg, Showing o fr." ('rilÍ<'I¡{ /I/I/túry 18 (Sprin¡!, 1(92): 556 94. Beit Hashoah Mtiseum ofTolerance. FlInuraising Ietters, cspecially bctween 1991 and 1992, Berenbaum. Michael (1990) 'The Uniqllcness anu Univcrsality of lhe Holocaust," in A ¡\1osaic o/ Viclims: NO/l-Jews Perseculed amI Alurdered hy Ihe Nazis, New York: New York LJniversity Press. - - (1993) TI/(' World ,\1uSI Kl1ow: 1I1e !-!istory oj"lhe HoloCC/usl as lold ;11 Ihe Uniled SlaleS Holo('lIlISI MemoriollvluseulII , Boston: Little, Brown. Bourne, Jenny (1987) " Homelands of lhe Mind: Jewish Feminism and Idcntity 1'01 ities," Roce (//ul C!a,\".I'. 29.1 (Summer 1(87): 1 ,24. Certeau, M ichel de (1984) The Praclic(' o/ Evny (/ay Lile, transo Steven Rendall, Bcrkeley aml Los Angeles: University 01" California P ress, 1984. Gourevitch, Philip (1993) " Behold No\\' Bchemoth: Thc Holocaust Memorial M useum: One More American Theme Park ," Harpers 287 . 1718 (July 1993): 55 - 62. Parker. Andrew, Russo. Mary, Sommer, Doris, and Yacger, Patricia (1992) Naliollal i.l'I11S amI Sexualilie.l', New York: ROlltledge. Penley . Constanee and Ross. Andrew, eds (1991) Technowllllre , Cultural Polities Series. Vol. 3, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Phe1an, Peggy (1993) Unl1'/orked: The Po/ilics i¿/'Per/o/'ll1llnce, New York: Routledge, 1993. Stannard , David E. (1992) Ameri('(lll Holocausl: Colul11hus ond Ihe Conque.\'1 or ¡he NelF World, New York: Oxford University Press. Unitcd States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Fundraising letters, especially from 1991 through 1992, inc1uding its "Charter Supporter Acceptanee Form. " Young, James (1988) Wriling ul1d Rewriling Ihe HoloCllusl: N((rralil'e ((/1(1 lile COllse quences o/1nlerprelalion, B10omington: I.ndiana LJ ni versity Press. - - (1992) "Amcrica's Holoeaust: Memory and the Politics of Identity," presented at the panel. "The Holoeaust and the American Jewish 1magination: Memory, Text, and Myth :' Mode rn Language Association C onference, Dee. 1992. - - (1993) The Texlure of¡\;[emory: Holoc(/us( Mernorials and Meuning, New lJaven: Yale U nivcrsity Press.

58

SPECTACLES AN O SCENARIOS

A dramaturgy of radical activity

Lee Baxundall Sourcc: T/¡ e ])/,{//II(/ Rerifll' 13(4) (1969): S2 711.

Reprodllced here is the main body of text from the arüde published in The Drama Revie\1' 13(4) (1969). The original articlc also induded a number of photos and commentaries which are not included in this version. [A constitlltional republic] cannot forever withstand continual car nival on the streets ofits cities and thecampuses ofthe nation. Un\css sage debate replaces the bc11igcrent strutting now used so extensively, reason will be consumed and the death of 10gic wil1 surely fo 11 o',\'. Vice President Agnew, Honolulu Address to the Young Presidcnts Organization, May 2, 1969 There is so much upheaval in the world, it's more theatrical than the theatre. The theatre is in a state 01' unrest and \Ve' re all trying to find out what its function is. Mildred Dunllock, N. Y. Times , Janllary 18, 1969 Action from principie, the pcrception and the performance 01' right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist \Vholly with anything which \Vas. Henry David Thoreau , "Civil Disobedience" In an essay on revolutionary drama in TDR (T42), I indicated, with the term "revolutionary," a relative hanoflll ofmajor plays which-· - more thall depict ing sociallife criticall)' and in a manner to express oespair 01' perhaps anger at the way things are- take an adoeo ano very difficult step, which is the depi d ion 01' crrective revolutionary cond uct upon the stage. Study 01' these plays suggested lh'-lt thcir authors had beco me capable of proollcing them onl y uno cr Ihe illl pl ~'S:-' u l' r~vl1l l1ti()llary examplcs in life .

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Bl ll'Íl y II\¡; a l tll.!\' \( 1\II..1 l l~L1 \111 .101111 Re.:d Áltll llll,,1r !t I · pl,I)1' , \""1 e pCllÚlllICd al the P\IlV illlTl vw n Pla yc r:;. llw If¡(',lfl'/III / 1I1/ /l ldl wly '\1) \1 11 clailllcd RCl:d 's attcnlion, alld his ura rnal ic gcn ills fÚlInd reali/'¡Itinn in Icvnlllliollary actioll. !-l is case appcars, in today's pcrspect ive, lo be an yth ing bul LJ niquc. We sccm to have entercd an era in which the human dramatic potential is to be rcali 4 eu foremostly in life, and for Iife. T he stage once again follows along. It tries with audience participation experiments and guerrilla theatre to bccomc more Iikc the drama 01' history. What follows is a dossier: several photo-analyses of the perfo rmance 01' history in tenns of the essential drama tic ingredient. And two argllmen ts conservative and Iibertarian-to represent the opp osed boches 01' values anu knowledge which now animate the actors of lhe world stage.

1 ( Tr([nsCripl vI' Ihe Edmund Buriel' l\-femoriol L eclure ¡ór jC)69, delil'ered 10 (l Meeling ojlhe Ram' Cvrporaliol1 hy (f Spec/ade Manager.) Gentlemen, we gather at a most difficult time. The principies a nd causes 01' the prosperity and consensus 01' our system are bejng g uestioned. In many cases the most promising 01' our young people, white and black, are respon s iblc. 1 don 't kno\\', perhaps sorne 01' your children are mixed in ... [general laughler]. The problem is not that the malcontents exist; for they always have, a nd shall. The vexation is that our radicals once obligingly limited them selves to the spokcn and printed \Vord, for the most part. And today they do not: they ([cl. They do these spectacular things which get in the press and on te1cvision and heat up others. Then they have the temerity to come into our courts c1aiming that to burn a draft card, or to hurl blood in the Dow Chemical headquarters, is " symbolic speech "-·-a kind ol' communication protecled by the Bill of Rights! Thus the ncw radicals are exploiting, or bctter pcrverting, the natural and usually wholesome tendency of our public to react strongly to events-- not \Vords, events-- as a drama. I advisedly say "perverting;" for traditionally, as we all know or should kno\V, the social dramaticism has belonged to uso It has been a key and vital bulwark of government. Dismay is justified, inasmuch as the New Left---how consciously is not yet dear--has discovered the performance e\ement 01' politics for its o\Vn ends [distrcss ;n lhe hall]. The annual Edmund Burke Lecturc honors a great theorist ofthe preserva tion of Anglo-Saxon government. He counsels liS from across the years , in our latest crunch . The universality and timeliness af Burke are scen in the stress he gave the fact that a lucid theatricality is essential to maintaining the consenslls. I need but guote fro m his Reflections Of1 the Rel'oluliol1 in Franee to illustrate, 1'01' example, wbal fl ows from an undermining 01' our effective monop oly control of dramaticism: " Now all is lo be ch anged . AII the pleasing illusions, which maJe power J,!cll llc. a nll o bedience li beral. wh ich harmonizcJ

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inlo polili¡;s Illl' SI.:ullllll' lI l·l wllK h Iwa u\ll'y ano S(l nCn priVall: sO\.: icly , are lo be Jisslllvcll by Ihis n~w ~" lI q IlCI illJ¡, clllpin: orlighl and rcason. A1I lhe de¡;ent Jrapcry 01" lire is lo he J'I\(Jdy tOril off ... " The radil:als wc fa¡;c, gentlelllcn , speak disdainfully 01' "thc puppet show 01' stalc," as once did Burke's opponent, Tom Paine. Thcy invent ror lhemselves, and even go beyond, the tai.:tical insights of Paine, e.g.- "A single expression, bold ly conceived and uttered , will sometimes put a wh ole company into their proper feelings, and whole nations are acted upon in the same man.ner," to quote The RighlS of M an. O ur opponents thus armed, gentlemen , we mu st affirm and newly promulgate the r ules of our traditional stagecraft, T he Rand Corporation relies on you, urgently, to ta ke and perform the dramalistic insights in your industries, military bases, universities, anó 0ther walks oflife. Bear in mind that Plato termed statecraft the highest art. First, and to take nothing for granted: is politi¡;s performan¡;e, and every day aclivity dramatic? Our language-- the American idiom especiall y- seems to conflrm it. We speak 01' a theatre 01' \Var, makjng a scene, properly acting in the spotlight, staging an event from behind the scenes. This might merely be misleading though ornamental metaphor. That il is not is affirmed by the peers and compatriots 01' Burke through the ages. Plato, the Stoic philo sophers, Roman authors, and medieval writers such as Salisbury, declared with Shakespeare that "al1 the world 's a stage." And general1y, they go on to concur with CaJvin that the world is " the theatre 01' God's glory"--- one performs according lo di vine will, that is, a high or (usually) low role in the Great Chain of Being. This is an essential item, whether or not dressed out in a rcligious garb , from our point 01' view. 11' time-honored thinking on this matter is correcL can we discern a/únction 01' theatricalizi ng politics not to be had by governmenl in any other way? Permit me to analyze this point in perfcct candor. Minced words would not be respected by you, who well k now hOlvjew in effe¡;t take basic decisions for and reap the basic beneflts from the society as a whole. The importance of performance to our politics is sUl1J11led up in the phrase 01' Thomas Hobbes: "reputation of power, is Power. " Not merely force and status, but the skillful sholV 01' force and status achieves our hegemony. Those who rule are a small minority , always. They- we, therefore-have not sufflcient pooled powers to maintain a righl attitude among the majority , so to prevent civil wars, unlcss the otherwise scant personal status and capacity ror violence 01' those who govern are multipled geometrically by a usage ofhistory as theatre, to which the term .\pectac/e may be applied. Some among us may object that in the last instance not fine words nor shOlv of force, but the actual violence 01' a poli¡;e and army keep a fragile order-as in Vietnam, Watts, Detroit, 01' San F rancisco Stale College. True: a goveming class is ¡¡na lIy slIslaincll by 1hc obeJience 01' a host 01' warrior recrui ls_ But t hese a rell rawlI l:II'!'\:ly I'n HII II I(: II ndcrclasses, a nd it is a call tio ll to recal1 that

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al prl:ca rious 1\10 11 H': llls lile salaricd Ic.lgioll s 01 <,;lI fl,llIdl l,,¡:d VIO I\!Il\;C Illay wawr, ignore tllcir du ti cs. eWII go over to "l llé pcoplc." TIIlI,~ onler in a st afL' is always more tenuous lhan appears, and Ihe reputal io l1 ~) r power especia Uy has to be nurtured in those whose violence wiH be called upon , when the spectac1e has faltered in the other domains, Walter Bagehot, a founder 01' modern politicalliberaJjsm, put it as follo ws in 71/e El1gfish COl1slilution, 1867. "The ruder sort 01' men ," Bagehot said. must he finagled into a " reverence " toward the regrettably " plain, palpable ends of government" by the usage of "theatrical elements." To this end the state has uncounted stages, plot-lines, and " routincs." A1f of course is not pomp and intimidation. The show is sugared with enter tainments; mitigated by allowance ror private diversions; and indeed, best secured by seeing that many 01' the ruled , the armed forces especially, are assigned gratifying and in sorne respeets commanding roles to play. The Great Chain of Being may be preserved and beautified best when most confused among tributary chains ofcommalld and obedience all mixed into one another. Thus Thomas Hobbes wrote in his Leviathal1: "The Athenians were taught (to keep them from desire 01' changing their Government) that they were F reemen ." Couple that thought with the aphorism at one time widely dis played in orficer training schools, and attributed to General Eisenhower: "Leadership is the art ofgetting men to do what you want them to do, because they \Vant to do it." Neither rorce nor show of force, then, can of themselves and on all ocea sions guarantee a pliant civil population or warrior c1ass; where it may be aflorded the show ofliberality becomes as important. Ultimately this liberal ity can be defined as a spectac1e made of prerogatives left to others, whic though channelized, few, and insufficient- owing to the apparent stability of your system 01' spectac1e, the ruled are led to believe they could not equal or get in any other way. Force or liberality, whichever the profile 01' power displayed: the whole 01' the spectacle is distilled and celebrated in the drama of the central authority figure, and conversely, th.e head of state's example instrllcts authority in its condllet on the tributary stages. The theatrical principie knowll as empathy coordinates this minimizing, this harmonizing of the performance style dif ferences you wOllld expeet between the greal stage and the many small. Vicarious experience and emulation , as \Vell as mystifying impression and admiration , marry for example the man at the head of the family to this man at the head 01' the state. Admittedly we have lately hit a crisis-of-empathy snag. Lyndon Jobnson stepped down solely beca use his performance was too widely jeered. Aside from the dramatistic failing , his polities were " funetional " and are bei ng earri ed on, b ul that is just lhe poin t; Ihe dramaticism is not an "~Is ide , " iLis fun c tion aJl y integral. A d ecade 0 1' so ago Ihis could not llave occurred. T hc public was no l ofTcrctl CI)l1lrclÍ llg dralTléltistie sty lcs ilnd il sl.:arccly kllcw 1'\(1

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how il aétcd. NllW 11Ji' III ,Id ,,( ~ I U I l' 1I111~1 play lo divelgl.m t amI com pcting cm palhy wallls ,1111 0 11.)' 111,' ~,pl.:\,: lalllrs ¡¡nd Ihesc, in truth, :sc<.lrccly may be recOJlcilcu in a singk III ,lJl 's p\!rl'ornlallcc. LllOk al MI'. John son's replacement. Unfórlunalely, his hi.~lriollie inslincl is most expressed in the thrusting of ballcd lists into the air while his head becolllcs losl in the sllitjacket .. . [.\'OI1lC suppressed faughtcr]. Plain Iy the necded dererence to Ihe drama of the Presid eney continues in trouble. As perhaps never before our supremaey on the tcrrain of social dramaticism is heekled and flaullted , challenged or ignored. W e must not countenance any loss of our lease on this psychological property; for it constitutes the holding corporation through whieh our otherwise scan ty personal powers secure the property order of society generally. We d o at least still enact the everyday hegemony within the public school systems, the arllly training camps, and the like. Although even here a small ir potently dangerous minority is out of hand , the majority continue on the whole to absorb their exercises in spec tac1e obsequiousness. And clearly we still have the greater lucidity. The radicals, I believe, do not conduct c1asses in their performance prob lems and techniques; nor have they done theoretieal work which would be of consequenee, for their thinking seldom seems to go beyond vague refercnces to life style. Where the radicals remain instinctive, \Ve of course possess un counted management training schools and seminars, Dale Carnegie Courses, etc., for study and rehearsal of concrete performance polities. We have sociologists \Vho strictly write and are resouree consultants on "social inte gralion " through dramatistic interaction- for example, Erving Goffman, author of The PreSel1LaÚOIl o/ Se/l in El'cryday Lile, a eommendable work which offers radicals no guidanee whatsoever in their trend of dramaticism . It is this edge in lucidity which should prove decisive for us. Normally it d oes, through history . Let us get firmly in mind the asset ofa monopoly on tutorship in history as theatre. During all the centuries of organized society the ruled might, and would, imbibe their outlook and demeanor unwittingly through performance opportunities within and between the cJasses; rulership has never taken the chance that its youth would stumble onto the precepts of spectacJe, left to themselves. Perhaps thc first well-ordered stratum of spectacJe tutors . >lhe Chinese mandarins, are described by Max Weber as " keepers of the rites" who through many eentur'¡cs conferred status honor on the slyle orlife oftbe privileged by teaching and refining thc ceremonies which sanetified power. Plato was such an instructor, although he had to compete with philosophers more prized by the rising merchant elass. We sLill accept uncritically the contempt with which Plato spoke of the Sophists, these tutors of a culture opposed to th e Athenian ari stocracy and which beeame, indeed, a forebear of ou r own esta hl ish mcn l. D uring Ihc Rl:II;li ss;¡ lIl.'c. (';¡sti g li ~)O c deft ly distilleu the esscnce of per roml~\II cc insil'h l 111 1'1/1' /io nl, u( tI/(' COllrti('r. Let's nol ign ore Machia vell i. S'/

I k hCI.'il lIl ~' '!tI pllhllc Iy d \! IIOIIII ~~d, alld ,1 \ id lV 1.111 plllilw:l 1 philoso ph "l civil i/ l'd hlllds ror d l.!¡;;lu l.!s. h l.!¡;il lISC 11l' :;rdL \lU I IlllolflolllgC lically bo ll! lhe Ledlllicali lies allu Ihlo' show power. For cv¡; ry SlI dJ " lIallle" lul\lr, Ihe specLacle has been prcserved through Lhe lIlarshallillg 01" llIi1ny IhollsilnJ s 01' the unpropertico eo lIca teo to the lask (jf intenscly instrucling Ihe SO rlS M nobility, ano later 01' the high bourgcoisie, in religion , oepo rtmen l. ami Ihe "science of rhetoric" (yo u will recall that even tooay most college thea lrc study remains locateo in Depa rtments of Speech). Edllcation has changeo, religion waneo , But counterbalancing this, fecall that a number of recent giants in the human sciences have actllally helped reinforce the theatre of Goo 's glory. Danvin presented himself as a religi olls mano Sigmuno Frcuo argueo Íll his later works that all but an enlightened few must be vouchsafed their sacreo dramas ano au thority figures whom they will rcvere ano \Vbo can essentially ac! for them . James G. Frazer orew from the vast stuoy of primitive myth for his Golden Bough a lesson repeateo by most anthropologists to our own day: men must have sacreo orama if social integration is to be preserved. Gen tlemen, we still enjoy the assistance of highly-skilled spectacle tutors ano of thinkers of great reputation. The arts, which become more pervasive all the time, likewise build tbe rcputation 01' our legitim acy, Edmund Burke was not in error when he saio, "the theatre is a better school ofmoral sentiments than the churches." Excuse me- fa hauering or slriking lI'ilhoul has made hearing difficult}- would somc one check out the reason for that noise? The artists nowadays conccive many " auoacities." They quickly use the tcrm "revolutionary" for their work. Sorne want to universalize the license permitted their stratum . These enos, however, are frustrateo ano art chiefty lenos reinforcement to social integration, oue to empathy ano another psy chological property noted by Aristotle. catharsis. Can't that noise be stopped? [The heuling ane! 11011' yel/ing has distracled Ihe audience .] Empathy and catharsis permit the public, I say, vicariously to live and timorously to purge, all in one operation, their curiosity aboLlt the most oangerous kinds of denied experi ence. The spectaclc of allowing the imaginative events to be staged, shown, or written about meanwhile builds the reputation of government for liberality and stability. Pinally, a ftoLlrishing cultural sccne comes to appear to the great majority as the sol e terrain for the serious practice of h uman aesthetic capacity. This iIIusion diverts many raoicals as well from real izing the aes thetic dimension of their politics. l shall speak more loudly. Can art ever surmount these factors to act dangeroLlsly upon om encapsulating spectacle? To 00 so it \Voulo have to depict, 1 be\ievc, vivid models nf directly emulable conduct more viable , vigorous, ano gratifying than that ofspectacle society and irreconcilable with it. We know, gcntlemen, how rare is the artisl who manages to this extent ro release himself from spectade ob~eq u.iousness . And if he ap pea rs- probably due to thc encouragemenl ami eX
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111' Wrll ~ Iwl '}1l lli r pu blic , d cspill' IIll' le!:!u l ulld íllfml11:t l weh 01 spccl;¡ c!c d l n. l. ~ 01 1111 p IC N~ IIr CS lo lile cOtI If ll 1)': wOllld lile Pllblie sylllpallH:tic tll hi s pUl lldl ¿! 11I WU III lo absnrh itselr in his surrogate nI' an allernat ive co nd uct'? Wo uldll ' t Ihe Pllbl ic thus pronc lo break wilh Ihe spec lacle prove impatienl 01" all liclio ns, however emulable and laudable they Ihink them') Thus Ihe arts appear always beneficial, or at least harmless to public order. . . . Can we ha ve, please, an eno to the commotion outside? .. . [The doors I1m'c bursl open b!a('k (lnd II'hilc youlhs shouting slI'urm everyll'here lhey seem lo demana . . . ) 1[

(To an oclirisl II'ho s!wl! be kl1OWI1 as "Rimhaud Viva/ll, " our Ihal1!cs{or Ihe Io!lolI'ing, al1dj(¡r !11aking al'ui!(lhle lo LIS lhe Bl/rke Leclure Iranscripl.) A fresh vision of 1984: the world 's populace liberated , you and everyone performing neeos and abilities with one another freely - except for the spec lade managers ano addicts, who oespite themselves carry on as too ay in theatrcs especially oesignateo for them . The Rano Corp. expert talked straight as he knew, No erap about progress !hrough pluralism with fun politics for all , no pray together to stay together in the greatest society ever. But their unoerstanoing 01' "dramaticism " enos with the grimaces they agree to pass for smiles, ano Yeats' "coat upon a stick." They con their show of powers from the tattered promptbook of a court trageoy they do not quite unoerstano, but even less know how to put asioe. We have tooay the chance to grow joyous naked, to continuously ois cover ano invent ourselves in the concerteo white heat of expressive realiza tion; and stiJl the spectade managcrs think themselves wise, as they mumble each one their paraphrascs 01' the woros uttered by Henri IV when tolo he hao to turn Calholic lo bccome Henri IV: " Paris is well worth a mass. " In the performance of yourself to others many see only a burden, if not the betrayal of an inner "real" self. PiranoeJlo's theatre universalizes the bafftement and rage 01' that sense of betrayal. Failing to recognize its origin in the spectac\c genre which makes you naITOW ano stupid, PirandeJlo pro jected his oislress onto every mode of sell' enactment. He embraceo, more over, the pseuoo-alternative 01' the Fascist State, which was in fact more of the same. We create the oramaturgy of raoical activity. Dramalurgy retains its oictionary sense: " the art of making ora mas ano placing them properly on the stage; oramatic composition and representa tion ." We aoo Ihat the world stage takes precedence ano that most human beings, freeo of spectac\c obseq uity, could well compose ano realize in activity their rool nat urc . Rtldicc/! is Ihus to be unocrstooo in its original sense: "going to the rools. " ('[ass dllllli ll al iOIl ami ils spectacle socicty sharply frustrate, C¡ l)

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SallJor PClr\ l1 . 11r ~'1 11 1111' .1 11;11 1 11I1L:1 'i.\-o lllli'lIlary wlw Jicd n n lile halllcf idJ in I X4X. I': ngcl s' play w¡r ~ pel I'PIIIlcd bclÚ n.: I he <. ¡c rman wo rkcrs' llllion 01' BnlsscI:¡ in IX47. 'lhc texl Itas bccll It)sl, but a witness rel:alls the "amazing clarity " with which the Ilecessary l:ourse 01' the February, I x48 uprising was foresecn . Trotsky, in lvly Li/e, recalls the stunning efreet a visit ofChristmas mummers had upon hill1 when he was seven. During cvening tea they invaded his father's farmhouse on the South Russia steppes and recited the piece "Czar Maximilian. " Trotsky pursued the actor of the Cza r and made him dictate the part to him . "A fantastic world was revealed to me, a world transformed into a theatrical reality." Thereafter he recited and composed dramatic verses frequently . Scnt to school in Odessa, "my first visit to thc theatre was Iike no other experience, and beggars description ." One summer Trotsky spcnt weeks rehearsing a Pushkin play. At seventeen he collaborated on a d rama abont the Russian Soeialist movement. " full of soci al tendencies , against a back ground 01' the conflict of generations ." Ju ~t month s later he first transposed his consciousness to the task of founding and leading a dandestine union of work ers. He was the dramaturgieal uynamo ofthe 1905 Revolution . To understand those skills, we may look at a strategic scenario he wrote out a few months prior to the events.

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Tear the workers away from the machines and workshops: lead them through the factory gate out into the street; direet them to neighboring faetories; proclaim a stoppage there; and carry new masses into the street. Thus, moving from factory to factory , from workshop to workshop, grO\ving under way and sweeping away poliee obstacles, haranguing and attraeti.ng passers-by, absorbing groups that come from the opposite direetion, filling the streets, taking possession of the first suitable buildings for Pllblic meetings, entrenching your selves in those buildings, using them for uninterrupted revolutionary meeti ngs with a permanently shifting and changing alldienee, you shall bring order into the movemcnt of the masses, raise their confid ence, explain to them the pllrposc and the scnse of evcnts; and thus you shall evcntually transform the city into a revolutionary eamp this, by and large, is the plan of action. Brilliantly actable, this text is the result of a c10se analysis of the political "factors" so often conceived as abstractions. Lenin was in hiding during many crucial days in 1917, and Trotsky was again the most motive figure, if not quite as predominantly as in 1905. His book 011 19 17, Th" RlIs.\·ia l1 {<(' I'o/ution, is a virtual promptbook of radical drama(ll rgy. T n)ls,,"y rr ma l ko; ror cxample the liule latitudc left to the spectacJe mana gers O !lI.:C l 11 1111'" l'~" r, llin!~: " ( he scripts ror l he rnle~ o f Ro manov ano

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( 'apel wcre IlI csu ihcd by th¡: I'c l1c m l dCVl' lll lllIIl' l1l ll t Iltl h ,~I" 11l " m ill a; o nly tlll'lIlIam.:cs ori lllcrprclat iolll dl to the 101 n llhc ac: t (tl~ . I hl' Il'llcl s' sccn ~lI ill invenliwness is hrought out a<; during Ih e I,'ebnlary oVl'rthrmv. when a unit of the Icared mounted Cossacks appea red bcro re ti group 01' una rmcd workcrs. who "took ofT their caps and approached the Cossacks wi th thc words: ' Bro thcrs- Cossacks, he1p the workers in a struggle for their peacea hk demands; you see how the Ph a rao hs treat us. hungry workers. Help us!' T his consciously humble manner. tho se caps in their hands--what an aceurale psychological ca1culation! Inimitable gesture! The whole history of SITee t fi ghts and revoluüonary victories swarms with such improvisations." Lenin was not known to have ta ken more than a spectato r's interest in theatrc , and the fl amboya nce orTrotsky was alien to him , though he respected its efficacy . Gorky , howeve r. has recorded that Lenin used both laughter and temper masterful1y to shape an intimate discussion ; and his public spea k ing stylc, if unembeJlished , \Vas "a very work of classic art. " In brief one might say that Lenin deeply distrusted spectacle and eve ry radical tendency toward it- "the human yearning for the beautiful , uramatic and striking," as he once wrote. On the other hand he stressed scenario acti on: as in his fam ous instructions of Summer, 191 7, which urge repeatedl y that ins urrection "mus t be trea ted as an art, that one must lVin the first success and then proceed from suecess to success, neve r ceasing the (dl'ensil'e against the enemy. taking advantage of his confusion , etc." Given a matrix of scenarist intiative, elements of radical dramaturgy were valuable , Lenin held . For instanee: workers once havin g actually gone out 011 strike, " the sight 01' their comrades eeasing, if only mome ntarily. to be slaves and becoming the equals of the wealthy is infectious for them ." And finally : " revolutions are festivals of the oppressed ." The Frcnch Revolution of 1789 was spectacle vs. scenarism from start to finish. George Plekhanov remarks justly that as the culture 01' the monarchy went under, the " aesthetic requirements" of the citizens, " far from stifted," turned rather toward a " poetry of action" and " thc beauty 01' civic aehieve ment. " The seizing 01' the Basti lle , the signal event , was provoked by a show of mercenary troops deployed near Paris by thc K ing. An unemployed actor Ca mille Desmoulins--tra nsformed an angry but aimless mood among th c crowd at the Palais-Royal into a pledge by every individual to adopt armed resistan ce; he plucked a leal' from a garden tree as a sign 01' his commitmcnt; shortly all the trees were stripped . A playwright, M a ret , among Dcsmoulins' listeners urged the next action : close every theatre, spectacle and ball that evening. This was done , the rebels creating their own theatre of the streets. T\Vo nights later the Bastille fel!. lndeed the theatres of Pa ris were barometers 01' the contlict 01' po\Ver ami va lues, as the struggle to put Beau marchais' M ariage de Figaro on the stage. fi nall y succcssful in 1784_ had a lready proven. Now DesmolJ lin ~ . Mi rabeau . Da nlon . ll1uch or lhe n:V()IUlioO(lry pa rt)' " enl e frort ~ tu llave slagcd Clltlr!c.\· [X

hy M a 1Ic J llsq']¡ (lrt' II I ~1 Il h ~ I"·l l , ld l..' 0 1 whal lille!' a lld illlagcs would holel Ihe slagc w a ~ a... 1111 (111 11)' 1. 1 lil e ~I.:cn arios 01' vitupcralion and combat in Ihe Ihca trc slall'i with Ics lIIIs Ihat rt'achcd Lo Versaillcs. " Ir Figaro killed the aristocracy," Dantoll rCIJlarh'd as the new play Illade its debut , "Char/es IX will kili the royalty." Mr. Edmund Burke rather agrecd . He \Vas shocked the author had not becn clapped in chains. The King meanwhile had been taken virtual prisoner ano brought by multi tudes from Versailles to live io the Paris Tuileries, following a peculia rly inept spcctacle 01' disrespect for the nation- actually staged during an uproarious banquet in the palace theatre! It is impossible here to give further aecount of the French dramaturgy, or ofits transformation into a new mode of spectacle representin g the requirements of the bourgeoisie victorious. Equally it is impossible to describe here the subtle, profound analysis permeating the books of Marx and Engels (The Eighleelllh Brumaire (~f Louis BO!1uparle by Marx is a good introduction). I want not to ignore, though . that Marx found the beginnings of a liberating dramaturgy in the ero tic nexus. " Love . . . first really teaches man to believe in the objective world out side himself," he wrote in The J-fo/y Family of 1845. lt " not only makes man an object, but the object a man! " He adds, in 7'l7e German ldéV/ogy of 1846: " Philosophy, and the st udy of thc actual \Vorlo, stand in the same relation to one another as masturbation and sexuallove." The conscious poet of this dramaturgy of one-to-one has bcen Louis Aragon; he calls it " the intimate theatre." A campaign to eno its repressive privatization , ano to pervade society with the values discovered in the sexual congress, is being led by the new rock groups. As Jim Morrison ofThe Doors says:

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When I sing my songs in public, that's a drama tic act , but not just acting as in theatre, but a social aCl, real actiol1. A DOOH; coneert is a public meetin g called by us for a special kind of drarnaLic discussion and entertainll1ent. We make concerts sexual politics. The sex starts with me, then moves out to incluoe the charmed circJe of musicians on stage. The music we make goes out to the audience ano interacts with them ; they go home and interact with the rest of reality, then [ get it all back by interacting with Ihal reality. When \Ve perform , we' re participating in the creation of a world, and we celebrate that creation with the audience. Beyond the present war scenarios and beyond the privatizing and pr.i vational peace scenarios: What [s Our Program? It is this. To employ the now ac hieveo material and lechnological abundance of our planet as the basis 01' a uni versal i2cd peace sccna risll1. Given the prcscnt a nu growing abundance. and lhe success 01' our war sccna n os (lnd lit is IIlIi Iy 11 1 ' lhj~t ivc a no s ub jcclive lactors spells Úle abolitio n

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llfclass SI I(';¡l; ty WI! I;llllld liVl: a padlk pCIrt lllll l'Jl t t~'Vll l l1t¡ PII I'Oll'lIlials alld cllnllicls wOlll d b\! hasslcd out, alld roo l hU01UII I1Cl.!ds ¡h us IlIlIillcd, wilhnul basie reeourse to violellce 01' the repressi vc show Qf iL Thcn: ~CC I1lS no rcaso n why this social dramaturgy of a creative and non-violent stUl1lp cannot serve as, in the phrase of WilJial1l James, the moral equivalent to waL The concomitant is, of course, that the human aesthetic capaci ties shall no longer bc relegated chiefty to the Other W orld ofthe stage play, artwork, poem. novel , etc. On the one hand , the making and contemplation 01" Aesthetic: Objects will always have a felt funetion for us. Experience and expressioD in life can rare1y be as distil1ed and achieved as in the compression won in this activity, espccia1Jy by unusually gifted men and women . On the other hand, in o ur preseot social order the aesthetic traitl; of experience are c1earl y far out of kilter- alienated [rom the \Vorld of the everyday, preserved as in aleohol by museums , cultural centers , a specialized breed ofmen. Tbis scarcely is normal. In so-called primitive societies, every aspect 01' the Jife of ever y member of the social unit is imbued \Vith aesthetic ex pression , there is not even a concept or word for \Vhat we have reified as "art." Our Jives are impoverished of the aesthetic qualities of rhythm and grace and harm ony . We are sick for the lack of coherence and intensity of expression. What we \Vant-and a return to the drawbacks 01' "primitive" society is not necessary, of course-is the integration of the aesthetic with man's other capacities. Herbert Marcuse calls for a new "aesthetie ethos" in his EI'soy 0/1 Liheratio/1. Surprisingly, Marcuse omits any idea 01' the performance of self \Vith others: he takes his model from painting, rather than theatre which has to be the para digm. Schiller's letters on aesthetic education were more to the poinL HOlr/o Ludenl' by Johan Huizinga is an important historical account 01' the "play" element in social contest. But the best previsions 01' universalized scenarism are pcrhaps found in Charles Fourier's notion of cahalisrn, and in Marx 's passage in volume 111 of Capital on "the art 01' consuming labor-power." Marx , noting the introduction 01' "seJf-actor" machines to industry (auto mation), believed the supervisor 01' complex factory produetion would even tually function on the model of an "orcbestra conductor." "An orchestra conductor Ileed not own thc inslruments of his orchestra, nor is it within the scope ofhis duties as conductor lo have anything to do with the '.,vages' ofthe other musicians . Co-operative factories furnish proof that the capitalist has beco me ... redundant as a functionary in production " and may be replaced by the "combinat.ion and co-operation of many in pursuance of él common result. " In feudal France, Marx adds, the production manager was known as the régis.leur (still the German name for a stage director). Fourier speaks to our time away from work and ofrered, said Marx, "the presentiment and imaginative cxprcssion 01' a new wor1d. '· Hi s ca baJist passion- " rar removed fro m ¡hc insipid cal m whose charms a re c~ to lled by morality" to be reéllizcd in the flllll rc. cnlai1cd thc sccnarisl notion in elllbryo:

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The l:a h a l l Sl lc '1," 11 ¡,¡ 1111' Illiv dl'~ li l1 ;¡IICl II 01 Il HIIl, Plo ll lng dnllblcs his rcso un;cs, clIl;lI)!I.'S !ti, laclIlL ws. ('unl r ar\! lit e ItJlW uf a formal social galhcri ng, ils I1I1)ral. slillcd, languishingjargon, with the tonc 01' lhesc sallle peoplc uniled in a cabal: thcy will appear tran sforllled to you: yOlt will admire thcir terseness, their animation , the quick play 01' ideas, the alertness of action, 01' decision; in a word , the rapidity of the spiritual or material motion. The spectac1e managers wilJ believe this to be nonsense. But theír show can not survive. Not in this time when a black youth in Watts, asked his attitude about serving in Vi etnam , replics: "Man, they ain't going to put me in that movie, even ir they make me the star! "

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F IG HT ING I N T HE STRE ETS D ramaturgies of popular protest, 1968-l989 Baz Kershm SOUI'CC:

Neu: T/¡eOlre Quan erly 1~( 5 1) ( 1997): 255 276.

Everybody would agree that agitational polítical theatre has fallen u n hard times, but whether this is due to a changed political clima te, a changed theatre, or a more politicized relationship bctween compa nies and funding bodics remains a m a tter for debate. Here, Baz Kershaw adopts a latera l approach to the prob lem , look,i ng not at dramatizcd forms o f protest but al prolest as Hn action which has itsclf become inereas ingly theatricali zed - in part owing to its own tactics and choices, in part to the ways in which med ia coverage crea tes its own version of politics as performance. After looking at the major focu ses o f protest in two decad es afier 1968, Baz Kershaw examines the ways in which political and performance theory has a nd has not addressed the iss uc. Presently Hea d of the Department of Thcatre Studies in the University of Lancaster, his previous publications include Engineers o/Ihe lmaginatiun: Ihe WeI/are SWle Handhook (with Tony Co ul'l , 1983) and lhe Polilics o/ Pel/o rmance: Polilical Tltealre as Cullural llller venúon (1992).

'Another ¡'ictory like ¡lIat and ¡ve're dOl1efor. ' Pyrrhus

1 The end of 'political theatre',? For sorne time now the idea 01' ' political thea lre' has been in cnsls. The ideological Tcla tivities introd uced into critical discourse by postmodernism , post-struclura lism, po s t-c() l oniali ~m , even (Cixo us hclp us) post-femin ism have profollndl y upset lhe orl hodox ics tha t yoked poli tiQ; a nd thea lrc logctbe r )()/)

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IllId :1 way 11111 IlIt I/ I//ItIYI, ' ~11~: I I I'd h y Ihe de;11I1 1'hI;t l! wa" 110 gu illsayll l}' Ib .11 !lill lllI:S had Iill,dl J u ne 1'0 1' Ihe ill\ellti(lIlal fallm;y when he Illurdcl'l!u LII\! tl utllOJ . h'UCll ult liad shown inconLrovertibl y tha! powcr is evcrywhc rc, De rrida Ill ay ha ve 1111 coup1ed the signified from the signifiers forever. Lyolard had raised incred ul ity abollt meta-narratives to a new order of intcl1sity, Butler had demo nst rateu that even gender is a cultural construct, and Baudril1ard possibl y hall eappetl it all by banishing the real. Yet I was stiJI seeing 'political' performances thal seemed to me to have both the potential for extensivc local ideologieal cffect l//1(1 to offer models 01' practice that could subversively adapt to many ditrer ent types of eontext. What is m ore, their political force was generated by a polyphonic sem io tics as d iverse as any mounted by even the most abstrusely allusive eompanies 01' the new avant-garde , and they were accessible and popular in ways that even Brecht would probably have admired. One such show was Welfare State Inter national 's G/asgo l\! Al! DI Up' _. a lantern procession of 10,000 people which for me demonstrated that postmodern forms eould have much greater polit ical resonance than even their most sympathetic apologists tend to assume. 3 If the evolution of such forms could be related to wider socio-political histories - recommended by Raymond Williams as a project central to ollr understanding of the power of culture to shape society 4 - then perhaps the new paradigms 01' critical discollrse could be acknowledged without having completely to abandon the hope of making generalizations that will stick about the politics of performance. To achieve this, though , would require a new analytical methodology appropriate to the fonns to be studied, and as the problem 01' ' political theatre ' was in part a product of the identification 01' the political in theatre, then perhaps a simple reversal of the terms might turn the methodologieal trick. Rather than search for the political in theatre it might be lIseful to investigate the theatrical and the performative in the political. A study of the perform ative occasions which are Iikely to be recognized by everyone as political und radical - say, pro test events might provide sorne grounds for a revivified politics of performance. Taking a Icad from John Lahr and Jonathan Price's now forgotten L(('e 517011', and picking up on sorne points that Richard Schechner had raised at a 1990 conference in Lancaster, I embarked on an analysis 01' post-war rallies , demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, pcace eamps, vigils, and so on. 5 lf one cOllld identify a changing dramalurgy ofpopu/ar pro[('s[ in the past forty years or so , then this might shed so me light on the wider cultural histories 01' the period o From this starting point grew a fascination with how the symbolic and the real may have become reconfigllred in their relations by innovations in the politics of protest, and a gradual realization that an undcrstanding 01' such reconfigllra ti o ns may resol ve sorne of the i ssu~ raised by the Current crisis for traditi ona J concepls 01' polü ical lhcatre. 1I, )w. II\L'I I, 11!lldl l

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So \\I hat ~all Ih~' dl.lIl ~'IIII' IPI III. ell pllp lll;1I pl\lt ~s t IlIarcll\"s, d\.:1I10I1stra Imn s, (I~c upatl\ lll"'. 11,11 ' Id l 11" " lt\l lll Ihe L'liltun:s uf lhcir time'! More prc ciscl y, what Illighl "ud l fO llll S si!! lIify al IlH)l11cnts 01' crisis in history , when radical social a nu p~) liti clI l cha ng,c is 01' appcars to be immanent? Ilow do the lúrms ol'popular prolest cmbody thdr historical context through thcir location in identifiablc traditions; and how do those same forms crack open traditi on s, disrupt socio-political expectations, ami produce new kinds ofpubl ic discourse in our increasingly mediatized and globalized world?

2 The forros of popular protest I will address these questions throllgh an investigation of a few selectcd events: the Grosvenor Square demonstration in London 01' March 1968 , the White Ho use demonstrations in Washington of May 1970, and the fall 01' the Berlin Wall ami the Tienanmen Sqllare occupation 01' 1989. 1 have chosen these partly for the apparently transparent relationships that they bear to their historical ' moment'. in that they are commonly noted by cultural histor ians as indicative ofmore widespread or popular discontent. and as signals 01' deep rirts and schisms in society.6 The relationships between micro and macro politics. speciflc events and general histories, can be framed in man y ways, of course, bul the version informing this type oí' analysis is one of .l'ynechdoche, as a part 01' the social (protest) is made to stand for the whole (society) . I suggest that this may be an especially appropriate perspective to take on protest events in the late twentieth century beca use, Iike terrorism. they havo become integral to the production 01' the society of the spectacle, or. jf we follow the logic of situationism a couple of steps further , evcn lhe society of the simuJacra and the hyper-rea 1. 7 In this version of the cultural economy, the synechdochic spectacle of prolest challenges a syslem of allthority in iLs ()W I1 term.\', beca use in such societies the di.\p/ay 01' power - its symbolic representa lion in multifarious forms of public custom, ceremony. and ritual. and then their reproduction throughout the media - has become in sorne sen ses more important to the maintenance 01' la w and order than authority's actual powers of coercion and control. x In such a culture, the synechdochic nature 01' protest events may produce enormous polítical potency, for they double society back on itself, as it were: they present a reflexive critique 01' the foundations 01' authority by showing that the assumption of power by the state, for example, may ultimately be based on nothing more substantial than the chimera of presumption or a predisposition to violence. J would argue that protest has gained this new kind 01' potency - particu larly in the multi-party democracies - because liberal democratic systcms weave political conflict into the very fabril' ofsociety. It follows !har. especially in highly mcd ia li 7cd 'iOciClies , the perfo rmative becomes a major clement ()f the daily slrugg lc Cm p\)wcr alld against
1I11 ' llId ll1~' Illl' IH'W 1' lI l'S IhwWllll p 111 11\1' W:ll..~ 1II 1'1 )411 n l.IV h~ dl:'i\.·lIbed wilh s(lllll: :H':\.' \I raey :t I> ' p l:l I'ortllll li ve U \!1lI 0C lil l: II:S' 111 II, d l.'l 1" IlIdkafl: IlI tw l'u ll lhcy rci y UpOIl va riollS lypcs 01' pcrfÚrlllalll.:C lür I he IIlaillh;lIallcc 01' lhell polilical proces:;cs. M Ofieover. late-capilalist libera l democracies rein l'orce this lenucncy by making the market so central to their social organi ;.-;ation. Although lhe ' per formance' of companies, firms. shares, employees. institution:;, etc., may be rneasured prim a ril y in mundane material and/or statistical ways, the no tion that they are 'players' on an economic or industrial or civil 'stage' is oflen implied by the llsage. Late-capitalist multi-party democracies produce societ ies in which performance is central to all socio-political processes. producing a ' performa tive society' YIn such a society the performative becomes a powc r fuI weapon 01' political eonflict. and therefore the aesthetics of perform ance are relevant to the analysis of politica) especially politicaUy conflictua l events.' o This is why a dramaturgy of protest events may pro ve to be an effective key to an understanding of major socio-polítical change in the la le twentieth cen tury.

3 Grosvenor square, London, J968 I take this event as a starting point for detaiJed analysis beca use it can bc located in rclation to two great modernist traditions of protest, and the con trasts between them may help to e1arify the dramaturgic nature 01' mass public protest. It took place in March 1968. when , following a eN D rally in Trafalgar Square, 25,000 people (Vanessa Redgrave and Tariq Ali arnong them) marched under the banners of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign to protest against the Vietnam War outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The demonstration is generally considered to be a watershed in the history of British contemporary protest beca use it became very violent." Certainly media representations projected onto it a near apocalyptic sig n.ificance. The following commentary from the Pathe News film report is typical: London : it started as an anti-VietnamWar demonstration in Trafalgar Square. About 10,000 ga thered . Most of them were young, most 01' them were sincere - they wanted peace.... Vanessa Redgrave, as usual , was in the vanguard 01' the would-be peacemakers, but also there were troublemakers ... a hard core with intentions to drag the majority 01' well-intentioned demonstrators down to their sickening leve!. . . . And so they marched through the Sunday streets of Lon don to Grosvenor Square, and the American Embassy. R iot was being incited. Al Grosvenor Square, police ... waited - their inten tion to keep the peacc, preven t trouble. B ut at the head and in the midst 01' the advancing COlltlllll lhe hatc-makers were at wo rk. This

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'('he similarilies implicd bclwccn lhe non-violcnt protcsts 01' M ahatma GhanJi and lhc well-practised tactics 01' lhe Campaign 1'01' N uelear Disarmament are I'airly obviollS, and examples ofmarches that gather numbers to end in a rally with speeches would have been familiar to the British public from earlier Pathe Ncws coverage of, 1'01' example, the Aldermaston marches: and the tone of guarded respect in the film's commentary on this part of the mareh - ' their motives seemed honourable' - indicates the pO\ver of this tradition 01' pcace fui protest as an acceptable component of democracy. By contrast, the near virulent condemnation ofthe events in Grosvenor Square suggests something much more disturbing to the conventional British psyche than a few bloodied heads , even ifthey do happen to belong to the friendliest ofbobbies. The p ub Iic is being warned off some imagined and far more sinister threat to British society. A brief analysis of the relatively simple symbolism 01' the dem o nstration will lake us some \Vay towards an explanation of this revulsion. Obviously Grosvenor Squa rc was choseu for the climax 01' the day 's events beca use the American E1llbassy represents the United States, the then world-Ieader in developing what was com1ll0nly called by radicals the 'capitalist military industrial complex ' ." Thus, the attacks on the Embassy were, metaphorically speaking, not simply ai1lled at American action in Vietnam , but also at the economic, social, and political system that was the source ofthe growing British affluence of the 'sixties. 14 This was not simply a revolt against a foreign inva sion of a far-off eastern country, but a representation of the potential for bloody revolution at home . The revolutionary implications 01' the e\lent may also have been reinforced in the popular imagination by such songs as the Beatles' 'Revolution, (1968) and the Rolling Stones' 'Streetfighting Man' (1968), as \Ve" as by the counter culture's shallow lionization 01' Che Guevara. In political cireles the connec tions between the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and far-Ieftist groups sllch as the Socialist Labour League (which in 1969 became the Workers' Revolu tionary Party) and the lnternalional Marxist Group were well-known. These links are a e1ue to the source of the demonstration 's main dramaturgy. Not long before the Russian revolution of 1905, Trotsky had written: To make the workers quil their machines and stands; to make them walk out of the factory premises into the street; to lead them to the neighbouring plant . .. to go thus from factor)' to factory, from plant to plant. incessantly growing in numbers, sweeping aside pol ice barriers, abso rhing new tllusses . . . crowdi ng the Slreets, taking posses sion of builUi Il j!s ... I'nrl¡fying 1hose buildings ... holding continuolls :'/1

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n:vulll t 101l¡1I y Ill~ci illg!i wi 1h a IIU iCllces l'OIIl IlIJ' ,11 h I .'11 111 [' . . ;u 1IIlSi Ilg thcir spiril . .. lo tUl n 11l1ally , t.he cntirc dly ill lo olle Il."volUliollary camp, this is, broadly spcaking, the pl a n 01' act i(IIl , I" The Grosvenor Square protest, Ihen , appears to have been based 011 a dramaturgy of complete revolutionary opposition, in which the enemy _ the antagonist - is assumed to be known : the war in Vietnam, America n im perialism, westem capitalism. ' (' lts dramaturgy, though, deviates significa n tJy from the last seene of Trotsky's seenario: if lhe prote.stors had ever inten ded to lead up to a 'revolutionary meeting', oreven ereate a 'revoJlItionary eamp' . they were thwarted by the authorities. Paradoxically, perha ps, the dcmonst ra Lion ended up as él paJe refteetion 01' its overt object: t be actual confusion and chaos ofthe war in Vietnam, which of course the us government had fairly successfully disguised (at least up to the Mai Lai massacrc of 1969), was reproduced as ' bloody war' on the streets of London. The symbolic pro test slips, perhaps intentionally, into a scaled down version of the irrevocably real violence that it aims to prevent. This contradiction, together with the ract that the key antagonist for th e protestors is not clearly identified in the symbolism of the march, make it unusually open to deliberate misreadings by commentators. The lack of él clear object renders the subject - the protagonists - vulnerable to casy re identification: instead of a rccognition of, say, coherent politicians who know how to unite action and ideology - the Ghandi model - we have rabble rousers, hooligans, opportunistic thugs, 'hate-makers'. The significance 01' the event may thus more easi]y be turned against the authors beca use they had not clearly ' written' the central metaphors 01' tbe drama. In a sense, they had lost control over the relationships between the symbolic and the real beca use they assumed a transpareney that could not be sustained in the face of the contradietions produced by events.

4 MethodologicaJ considerations This analysis of the Grosvenor Square protest rai.ses a number of metb odological issues for the construction of dramaturgies 01' protest. Firstly, the relationships between protest events and their socio-pol,itical context may tum out as by no mean s as transparent as protestors might wish them. This is not simply a funetion ofthe Derridean d[f/erance ofsigns, their undecidability, but also ofthe instability ofsignification (or meaning) that the performativc P always promotes Divergent interpretations of the wider cultural signific ance of the same demonstrations seem to bear this out, as we shall see. So while we may be able to identify dramaturgic sourees for particular demonstrations the Ghandian and Trotskyile in the case ofGrosvenor Square - their destina lÍon, so to speak , Olay alwa ys surpnsc us th ro ugh a fresh in 11ec tiol1 o f old o r an invent ion 01' n~w Ibnn:.. In thc!)l' wuys the Illcssy complexl ty 1"1)

;1I 1111"lIn lillI~ !1l lltllll t. lII lCS:I\ ,c1;J llyc ly IIl1l HcCCuC nl l.:U ;tS prolest eWllts plt Id II\ \'S , 111 nlll'l)" lIy IIL'II l'x\; hall gl' b I.: IWCl! 1I sYlllholic ¡tcLÍnn ami soc io-po litical n.:ali ly. ;tlld (1m: wllich cnllslanlly ddies closure, I.cc pill g opcn Ihe possi hilili cs fl) r rc-illlc rpn:tatiol1 and challgc. Such a prospect seCI11 ~ particularly approprialc ror an analysis of cvents whose outcome, as they \Vcrc happening, was steeped in profound unccrtainty. Secondly. while the pcrformativity of protest mély always evade the closure of interpretation , the analysis of protest as performance may reveal d imensioos to the action which are relatively opaque to oth er approaches. lt is obviously an assumption of my argument that most forms 01' contemporary protest excluding perhaps the most spontaneoLls outbreaks 01' violencc - are in part shaped by performative considerations. Though they often involve a good deal 01' spontaneity, they also follow scripts or scenarios. Moreover, contemporary protest almost always assumes an audience, 00 lookers for whom events are ' played out'. It is almost always other-direeted , and therefore often reftexively aware of the symbolic potential of its own sometimes al1 too real action . 1t follows that in the analysis ot'protest evenls we should always be alert to the particular ways in which they are reftexively articulatcd to their socio-political context. In this respect , at leas t, perform ance analysis may discover aspects to protest whieh resonate with their historical moment in especially telling ways. Thirdly, in discussing pro test events we are almost always dealing with mediations of those events rather than the events themselves. However, for the kinds 01" event we are considering this is not necessarily a di sadvao tage, beca use in its desire to capture the high points of the ' news' the media may wdl play into the hands of the people creating the events. The media teod to pick out the performative preci sely because the performative stages the dramas that the media consider to be the ' news'. 01' course, since the late 'sixties there has been a rich traditiol1 of radical theory and practice that has ce1ebrated this key charaetcristic ofthe society of the spectade, beginning with Guy Debord and the situationists, and Abbie Hoffman , Gerry Rubin, and the American yippies . Their ideas are in turn related to Marshall McLuhan 's theories 01' the media, to Herbert Marcuse's sociopolitical philosoph y, and beyond that to the traditions ofthe Frankfurt School. 18 My fourth point concerns the aesthetics 01' the performative in protest events. We are dea1ing with forms in which spontaneity and improvisation are 01'ten very much to the fore, and this is partly beca use large numbers of people in situations 01' conflict are very difficult to organize. But it is also beca use the unexpected and the surprising are especially potent tactical - amI sometimes even strategic - wea pon s ro r challenging authority and disrupting ,i the spectacle. ) So a general c1ram at urgy of pro test events, an aecount 01' their pe rrorma tivc ~ tnl ct lln;s. is Iikely lO look very lI nl ike anything outlincd by Arist otk:.

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I '.ven giVl:1I ex am rl e~ ;" II CI) LI S ( ,I'tlSVC IIIlI SlJlI , If( ' \\1 11\ h 11 11 1IIIIIIIhc hrcu k away lO lhe Squan: a ppeared lo he foll ow ing a lilu.:H I' II IIl\klllist sccnarill, il would sound oJd to suggcst lhal such cvents an; orga m/,cd lo lhe prin cipies of a unitary actio n, or th at cveryone involved is wo r king 0 1"1' a sinJ.:le script, nr its equivalent. T here may be seripts, or at Ieast quasj-scripts, but thcy migh t be onl)' loosely rclated to cach other. In similar t~lshion we should probably be talking about an interweave 01' actions, an)' one 01' which may dominate the event for a time a charge at police lines, say -- but whieh will inevitably be reabsorbed in a series ofmultiple actions that are running simultaneously. In other words. we would be constructing a dramaturgy which stressed qualities such as multiplicity, discontinuity , abrupt eruptions 01' drama tic intensity, sudden shifts and changes of direetion , tempo. foc us. If it wasn't already going out 01' fashion, we might even be tempted , as d ocs R ichard Sehechner, to draw on c haos theory in order to spot the strange a ttractors, Mandelbrot sets, and fractal boundaries in the swirls and eddies of you r average demonstration, which often appears to incorporate random happen ings within a somehow coherent disorder. 2i1 Jt is this paradoxical quality _. the order within disorder, the disorder arising out of order - which is at the heart of protcst evcnts as paradigms for the cultural economies of their times , for in a sense they aim to latch onto the cusp of major histOJical change at the moment in which it is happening. Y o achicve that they must develop dramaturgies which dra", on tradition lo produce a more or less recognizably orderedsocio-political action while never foreclosing on unpredictability, the potential of disorder. It is that dynam ic which, given the right place and time, articulates them to history in ways that are often revealingly unprecedented.

5 The White Housc, 1970, \'ia París, 1968 Just two months after Grosvenor Square, Paris was beset by an even more violent uprising. Les (>l1énemenl.\' de Mai in 1968 are usually seen as the high point of counter-cultural protest, combining ambitions of political revolution with a desire for totally free expression. c l Protest graffiti coupled the perso nal and the political in symbiotic and 01'ten erotically-linked ecstasy - 'The more J revolt, the more l make love' an especially popular one. Politics and art are supposed to have merged together as news-sheets , posters, and banners pro liferated, and as situationist slogans underlined the theatrc in the events n Yet the marriage ofpolitics and art happened perhaps more in theory than in practice. It is true, of course, that Jean-Jaques Lebelled an attack on the Odéon theatre which was occupied for the duration and becallle a I"ocus fo r the whole revolt. But the theatricalization of this particular protest waS perhaps doser to costume drama than to the radical symboli c disru plion or the spectade envisagcd by D ebo rd. Richard Neville indicates as lll11ch pe rh aps lUl winingly - wh ~n he poin ts O llt Lha t: '1"/¡1

nl(· l)d~'\l lIlInllp. llillll \'(,1 .1111 11/";1 IJln~ Ih ~' rev\1lt l:J1gullcd 11011 IlllivCI<;it y 1C'IIII \lI y I ,, ~. W,II dlP lw t!('parlIllL'1l1 was ra I1sackcd ami dO/.\!Il:; liu:éU Ihe ICM ¡,lal> dl t%cd as CCl1luriolls, piratcs and princesses. The thcatrl~ ca rn \! illto lit\! strccb. '.\

want to sllggest, then, that the overtly sym bolic gcstures of the Pari sian lIprising were less crucial to its dramaturgy than the actual fighting in the streets: the dominant images 01' the protest are the barricades, the petrol bombs, the torn-up paving stones, the wrecked cars - not the graffiti , nor the costumes. As with Grosvenor Square, the scenarios ofthis revolt were rooted less in the exhortations of the Situationist Manifesto or in Debord 's analysis in the society 01' the spectacle than in Trotsky 's promptbook for insurrection. his report on the R ussian Revolution. 24The PaJisia n uprising 01' 1968, like the Grosvenor Squarc protests, \Vas still, l thin k, prim a rily re\ated to the tradi tion of modernist radical dramaturgy . To find examples of a contrasting dramaturgy 01' pro test we need to turn to the United States in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies, when the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements coalesced to stage demonstrations that, at their best, had all Ihe polyphonous eloquence which Bakhtin had claimed for classic carnival, plus original forms 01' theatriealized spectacle that, true to Debord 's recipes for symbolic revolution, fashioned new rclations between the imaginary and the real. There are many examples, but I will briefty focus on one discussed by Schechner: the occupation ofthe White House lawn in W ashington by many thousands of demonstrators on 9 May 1970. ~5 This followed the Kent State University killings 01' 4 May and the first bombings of Cambodia, and so had a great potential for violence. However, all the confticts that did ensue ",ere entirely symbolic, and it is precisely this contrast between the nature of the object 01' revolt -- violence and war - and the style of the event that marked it out as a significant moment in the development of new dramaturgies 01" protest. rirst we should note that the demonstration combined the identification 01" the 'enemy' as in Grosvenor Square - the White Housc and the us Govern ment - with the occupation of his territory. the White Ho use lawn , as in Paris: but it lacked the directly violent eonfrontational tac tics of both. Ratber. the conftict was played out sJimbolically, sometimes in anger but mostly in an atmosphere of celebration. Schechner rightly links this celebratory ethos to the development 01' the so-called Woodstock Nation - the hippy movement for love and peace - and he stresses its carnivalesque qualities: The I"rolic - with its characteristic whorling choreography, the dis persal of orderly ranks into many intense and volatilc groups, the show of privatc pleasurcs satisfied in public places subverted and mock ed th e 'H!II- R I~lll an II1LlnUlllents and pretensions of imperialist Washi nJ!lOn , '1. 1'/ :j

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in lhe wall.: r in wll ich Ihl' IIlclIHlrial lo sla lc pl\l lcclcd Iihaty WBS retlccted. T his gcneratcd pop ular plcasure. Hli Ihe colll'l:live body 01" lhl: populace ironicaJly oblilerated the evanescenl imagl: or what to them was lhe state's false promise of freedom. But it was also in the more direct confrontations of the event that the principies of a ne\V dramaturgy can be deteeted. Ea rlier in lhe morning President Nixon had himself come out o nto the la\Vn to talk to the demon stratol's. Aecordillg to Schechner, he was greeted with shouts of'Fuck Nixon! Trash Nixon! ' and a few lifted up dustbin lids witb his picture stuá on their underside. The metaphor in this moment 01' high drama is b oth witty a nd sinister, as it rests on the ambiguous sign of the lids as shield s and as ironic picture frames for the President's image: as we might say, political elevation brought lo\\' through a l:Omedy of dirt and darkness. Such parodie mockery is the stuff of the carnivalcsque, but the context pushes the drama beyond carnival in at least t\\'o crucial respects. Firstly, the transgression of the demonstration (unlike in carnival) is decidedly not licensed . This is not just time out from the mundane and everyday, framed by the law and the state: it is. in a sense, new or perhaps stolen time - time (amI space) taken on the terms of the demonstrators, not contained by the la w but beyond the law (at least until the police and troops move in). Sccondly, it is more precisely other-direeted than carnival, for not only is it a face-to-tace statement against the most powerful authority, it is a gesture made for the media , an image that can be quickly captured and transmitted through the \Vorlll 's airwa ves, reproduced and read across national bound aries. Thus the drama aims to utilize the prol:esses of globalization to magnify the wit, determination, bravery, and tal:tical skill of the protagonists - the demonstrators. And through these processes the imaginary (the President in a dustbin) and the real (the President in the White House) are placed in new relationships for the spectator. In the wake 01' this demonstration , another dimension of the ne\\! protest dramaturgy was created in Washington . By 1971 around 1,500 supporters of the Vietnam Veterans !\gainst the War campaign had set up a camp on the green around the Washington Monument. From there small groups of vet erans marched in doublefilc around Congress and through the streets of the capital. They wore white-face, carried toy guns, and had their real purple hearts, silver stars, and other \Var decorations pinned to lheir combat fatigues . According to Lee Baxandall. as they marched they shDuled:

llrtltc wccho , lite Vl' l N IllI l'W 1"l"1I Illcdals amI papcrs onlll the slcps DI" ( ·ongrcss. 1'1

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' Where are our dead brOl hers" Wc 're (o~l"illg rDr Ollr 50,000 brothcrs. I-Iave you seen lhemT . , Iwll ikl \lI IICI ll"llu r~s 0 1' velerans paraded mock Vielnam e:>c pll ~nn ~rs, 1I:lIId1\ Ill'd hc hi l1tJ IhéÍ r hal'ks. past ! " /II

Thc combination of the camp and these enacted provocations shift this protest into yet newer dramatul'gic territory . Relations between the real and lhe imaginary are deliberately distorted: the raet that these are real veterans living under canvas much as they would have done in Vietnam validates the play-acting, yet some 01' the play-acting is done ' fol' real' . The camp and the pcrformanccs melaphorize the Washinglon streets, which become both an e:xtension of the Vietnam jungle and a limbo for dead soldiers searching for their lost comrades. We might thus justifiably talk of an imagin a t ive hyperrealism which challenges the spectator \Vith both the immediacy and the distancc of the \Var, carrying an intensity which may make the action im possible both lo accept or reject. This dramaturgy aims lo by-pass the ralional, subvcrting the logic of critical containmcnt, in order to provoke an unprecedcnted response. Signific antly. it is not, as it were, recommending an action: it is giving opportunity for revulsion/fascination with one of the vilest wars in human history, but by confounding the real and lhe imaginary so thoroughly tha t it lea ves the nature of any subscquent action open to the spectator. This is a protest which leaves lhe ruture radically undecided.

6 A oew dramaturgy and its theorists So urces for this new dramaturgy can be identificd in the work of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, \Vhich combined Brecht and the techniques of commedia dell 'arte to prod uce popular political theatre . In the mid 'sixties the Troupe's founder, Ron Davis, first used the term 'g uerrilla thealre' lo indicate an action that aims to ' tcach , dircct towards change, be an examplc 01' change'. Guerrilla theatre was distinguished from more traditional polil ical theatre (excepting sorne agit-prop) by being staged in the environment of political conflict - the streets of ghettos. the grounds of governmenl buildings - whence the analogy \Vith real guerrilla warfare: but it wa s allied to tradi tional political theatre by being often didactic in purpose. Equally influential was the Bread and Puppet Theatre, which introduced archetypal and satirical imagery to street protesls. lIsually in the form of giant puppets. These combined the techniques of religious spectacle \Vith ideas dra\Vn from !\rtaud, and so had a less specifie symbolic charge than the stereotypes of guerrilla theatre . Similarly, the Living Theatre aimed to subvert l'ational analysis by turning speclators into participants in exccssive thea trical actions. T he ri tua lized. hiera tic gestures of ecstalic or sublime experi ence were supposcd LO signify a rcalily in which
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Illl' law all d l'x plui la tlo ll simp ly !l id II U[ \.' .\I~l Il kl lld .. 1 I'UII ,' lIlIlIl alli slic IIlppia. 'l'; These sOlln.:es rm tlJe dram<.llurgy nI" la le 'siXlícs pro lest CVCl1ls varioll sly comb ined Arecht and Artaud to produce a polilics ofccstasy, fUI1 , or ccleb l'a tion. Brecht's notion 01' geslus (the moment 01' action which perfectly expres$C.<; social relations) can explain the penchant for the quickly read im age; whí lc Artaud 's idea of cruelty (the transcendent disruption of recei ved realitil!l;) may illuminate the forms of excess which were often on display. M oreover, both theorists (though in different ways) spoke of the powe r of the sym bolic to penetrate the real, to intervene so fundamentally in the real as to render iL~ hegemonic oppressions entirely transparen l and so subject to radical changc. Drawiug on such sourccs, lhe central focus of protest dramaturgy shifted in the early 'seventies away from t he modernist notion of an attack on n known enemy in the name of revolutionary progress towards a more im pro visatory and hyper-real scenario style. Although protest was still directed against authority, it increasingly aimed to produce for both participants and spectators an image or an ex'perience that gave a glimpse ofthe future as purc freedom from the constraints of the real, a hint of utopia at the very moment in which it engaged in the messy business 01' street marches and peace cam ps. Hence protest, whether in the form of procession or occupation, beeame multi-vocal, polyphonic, as much an expression of difference as of unity. A nd it could achieve this beca use, in a sense, the symbolic content of protest \Va s repositioned in relation to the real: while earlier protests usually drew primari ly on po!itical sources for their dramaturgies, in the sense of political theory o r ideologies, these later events derived much of their dramaturgical power from theatrü:al origins. This adjustment offocus opened up a much wider perspective on the potential of protest: in a sen se the imaginaJ} became more important than the possible, and the visionary more persuasive than the rationa!. We would expect such a significant re-orientation lo produce its own brand of theorist-practitioner, and the most outrageously funny ones, at least in America, were lerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman , Icading members of the yippies. (Richard Neville is perhaps their closest British equivalent.) Schechner notes how they were committed to the theatricalization 01' political acti o n. In Re lIo/utiO/1 fór the fiel! ojlt , for example, J-loffman wrote, in typical an archistic vein, that ' Drama is anything you can get away with .... GuerriJla theatre is only a transitional step in the development 01' total life actors .'2~ In almost identical vein , Rubin argues that 'Life is theatre and \Ve are t he guerrillas attacking the shrines 01' authority .... The street is the stage. You are the star of the show and everything you were once taught is up for grabs.' 30 These claims take the sociological theatre-life analogy most full y developed by I-I offman into a new d imensiono where the symbolic and the real overlap to prod uce new forms 01' political protest a nd ncw arenas for action. In t his d imension the verbal aphorism am) lhe paradoxiea l image a re c rucia l weapons, ane! IlolTman wu;-¡ a master o f lhei r use . .' 1'/1,

1I W; IS 11'11 11l1ól Mwlll ' < \ 1'1111111 el d loll :1 vipPÍl: w.. :-¡ a hl ppil' wll o\ 1 hCl.:n hit lhe head hy ¡¡ pll llll'II1!1 1I And he illsligU lcd (lne of' lhe IlHlsl n:,sollanl cXHlnples 01' 1l0Jl-violclI l pl'llt l.:'i l :1l.:lioJl: iJl lite earl y 'scvelllics he and a fcw colleagues visiled Ihe p uhlic galll'ry 01' the New York Stock Exchange. F ar below lhcm thc l'loor was full 01' busy buyers and sel1ers, markct cxecutives dressed in neat suits and wearing dignified tieso J-1olTman and friends pro cceded to scatter real dollar bilis from the gallery , which gently drifted down like lea ves onto the heads of the marketeers. Within a minute trading had come to a full stop as the executives jumped and scrambled for the bilis. The Stock Exchange was shown for what it actually is: a grotesque dance of greed. 3 1 1111

7 Carnival and protests It has becomc an orthodoxy among performance analysts to associate perfor mative excessiveness with notions of carnival and festival - bacchanalic riotousness. Thus, in 'The Street is the Stage' . Schechner draws on Bakhtin to explain how both protest events and celebratory gatherings ma y activate the basic functions of carnival , (<1) by transgressing, up-cnding, mocking, and by other mean s destabilizing the images and the structures of authority of th e society within which they occur, and (b) by returning the participants to a social order which , whether the same as before or modified , has been rein 32 forced by the pleasurable 'time oue, the holiday from law In many events, such action may be confined to the symbolic realm, in which case there is Iikely to be httle (if any) change to the structures 01' power and authority in society. But in somc events the irrevocable happens , ,in the f0I111 of'violence ... or the playing out ofirreconcilable differences'. Schechner forcefully Iinks this prospcct to the idea of sacrifice, and approvingly quotes René Girard , who argues that ' the fundamental purpose of the festiv
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111(, who k pll rpllsl' u f I l lUCh (.;() lIklll p O J':1J Y r'n)l\,;s l 1I,, ' , Il\'~' " I" ,u.; lii('w Cflil'Oll'Y hy in vcnl inl:,! unp n.:ccdelllCu ~yrn h,) ljc-rcal cOlll ig lJlal l\ 'lIs. Secondly, Ihe len dcncy lowards structuralisl amtlysis dn wn plays Ihe ideQ logical conlcnt, the polilical significaJH:c of particular evenls as part 01' a wide r hislorical process , As a rcsult evcnts as differcnt as the New Orlca ns Mardi Gras and the occupation orTicnanmcn Square are given a notional equival ence. Of Course there are some similarities of form between the t\Vo types of event, but in Schechner's account the linkage at times teeters uncomfortabl y c10se to ahistorical formalism. The 'art' in the events appears to becollle more important than the purposes for which it was probably created. Such analytic characteristics as these place Scheehner flrm Iy in the ' ritua lisf ca mp identified by C1ifford Ceertz in his celcbrated essa y on blurred genres, wh ere he notes that the ritu alist approach to analysis 'can ex pose some o f the profoundest features of social process , but at the expense of making vividl y disparate Illatters look drably homogenolls', ,4 Geertz goes on to suggest that the underlying epistemological problemati" in this approach is revealed as a 'separation of data from theory', which , however, cannot ' prosper when explanation comes to be regarded as a matter of connecting action to its sensc, rather than beha viour to its determinants '.15 Schechner's view of protest as ritual is not crudely determinist in this sense, of course, and he recognizcs that protest can contribute to profound socio poljtical change. But his c1aim that ' revolutionary street actions are rare exalllples of history in its molten state,'6 reveals a curiously hypocaustic per spective on human action, which separates it from its sense: how else might we understand a view of history as normaliy consisting 01' some kind of solid state? What J am arguing for is an analysis which articulates the dramaturgy of

pro test to the complex proccsses of global historical change in the past forty

ycars. !\n approach which mainly stresses the aesthetics of protest, especialiy

through its links to the carnivalesque, offers él usef~11 model , but its con

centration 011 forma! similarities tends to detract from protest's place in the

majnr idcological struggles of specific periods. Connecting 'action to its

sCllse' in this way is not simply a matter of noting the immediate and explicit

purpnses 01' particular protests - Grosvenor Square as a reaction to the war

in Vietnam, lor example -- but of trying also to discern how they are a part

01' any historical paradigm shifts which may be under way in the moment of

Ihcir happcning.

The relationship of late 'sixties and early 'seventies protest to the first of Ihe major post-war counter cultures offers some purchase on this problem: Ihc paradiglll shift can be detected in v.1estern democracies through the reposi lioning of gencrational forrnations via, for example, the increased educa lional opportllnities and gro wi ng pu rchasing power of the you ng. 37 HC1lee, lhe co nlrasls bctweell the pro les! ma rc h (CN D/Grosvenor Sq ua rc) and the PC¡WC ca mp (Vietnam S" lidarJl Y ('all1paig n/Wh itc HO ll sc) o lllli ncu aboye 'X II

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kinds nI' tiJlldspan : néc(h;~1 lo rashiulJ IICW rclatiolls bctwccn Ihe s)' mbo lic and lhe real. But Ihis Iype uf' theorization now needs Lo bc tested against contrasl ing cxamples, such as the East Europea n protests which led lo the fali orthe Berlin Wall and the cataclysmic events or Tienan men Square in 1989.

8 Eastcrn protests in 1989 How much of the new dramaturgy, if any , filtered through lo the protests that contributed to the downfall of communism in East G ermany and the reinforeement of hard-line brutality in Tienanmen Square? In the West the intervening years had seen a wide variety of developments, 1'rom the Greenham Common Peace Camp to the q ueer-rights demonstrations 01' Ga y Pride. !-low might the evcnts of 1989 relate to these developments, and did they add any new dimensions to the dramaturgy of protest? 1 do not have space here to go into much detail , so 1 can only offer a few brief, incomplete, and perhaps provocative sketches to suggest tbat they did add a new range of synechdochic relevance to the forms 01' postwar protest. First the Berlin Wall. Its fall was preceded by a series of mainly peacefu l demonstrations in the chief cities of East Germany . These had begun in Leipzig in August and Septe1l1ber 1989, following regular Monday evening ' peace services' in Saint Nikolai's Church. Each week the crowds swelled in Karl Marx Platz, but, according to a studenl organizer, they were always 'wondering what to do or say'. '!; A similar mood seellls to have gripped other demonstra tions, inc1uding one of the most significant- in Plauen, on 7 October when the fortieth anniversary of East Germany was marked by a visit of G orbachev to East Berlin. Over 20,000 people gathered in Plaucn 's central square, a qllarter of the city's population . For some time they simply stood around, 'lIllsure why exactly they had come '. until a young man from a local school dimbed on top of a small stone statue next to a thealre and held up a sign reading. ' We want freedom! ' He was joined by another student who raised a black-red-gold West Gennan flag . The crowd applauded and began to chant ' Germany , Germany!' Suddenly aman dressed in a trench coat forced his way through the crowd, ripped down the flag, and punched its carrier in the face. At this moment, according to one spectator, the crowd became unified .") Such accounts of lhe demonstrations hint at a dra1l1aturgy that is cspecially context specilk and may be a reflection of the lack of direct contact with the West imposed by Ih(: Easl Gcrman regime. Their i1l1mediate source in the protcstan l churdll,!S Il la y hd p lo ex plain the form 01' ' peaccful witness ' that thcy sccmed Llllak\,! WI: muy lalk parat!oXi¡;áll y al:wul a dra ma ofinaction , in 'X I

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WhH'h II H. :; 1nlljJ, hl rO," \'i:l ld P/(·SI.'II CC uf IlIl gl.' ~OIl!,I~'~'itl ll ll lr, \\'1111/1 0 ubviously c-x pn:sscd illll lll.:d latc goal UI' lal'g~l bCu r's willll'sS lo a dcc pl'l' a nd vagllcr lInrllllil/cd need: so evclI lhe slighlesl signs ofreaclioll Ihe single agenl in lhe symbolic lrench-coal - sparks off a proccss of cxtensivc unification, a fiood of' yearning for an absent idea/. Maybe lhe dramaturgy here is rootcd in the rites of Christian religion: the waiting for a sign through which a sudden conver sion can be delivered? W hat then \Vas finally delivered was both stupendous in its symbohc charge and perhaps ironical/y trivial in its actual expression. T he rall 01' the Berlin \Val/ marked the end of the Cold \Var; the crumbling bricks ami mortar signalled a possibl y permancnt postponement of nuclear A rmageddon. Yel the dramaturgy 01' the fa ll 01' the wal/ was nothing if not vacuously undynamic. Jt was great to see people chipping the wa l! away with everyday hammers and chisels, but bulldozers and cranes with demolition bal/s would have more accuratcly reftected the magnitude 01' the political collapse. So what the demonstration of freedom actually amounted to was a scramble to get onto the wal/. And maybe the most memorable collective image was a thin line of people who were holding hands and going nowhere (oppositc). So the fall 01' the Berlin \Vall seems to have produced a dramaturgy in

which there is an enormous gap between the real - the means of surmounting

or demolíshing it - and the imaginary- the freedoms which its collapse

appeared to promise. And maybe this ís reflected in the gestures with which

West Berlin welcomed the newly freed East Germans: free cinema tickets.

bottles ofbooze, and a hundred marks each to spend in the shops that werl',

for once, kept open all night. Such, perhaps, is the ironic outcome of a

dramaturgy that quickly shifted from the structure of religious rite to the

limited - and absurdist - free-for-al/ of the late-capitalist marketplace.

And what about Tienanmen Square? J hope it will not seem indelicate to attempt a short analysis ofsuch a tragic pro test, but its dramaturgíeal forms were ofien designed for q uick reading, and so brief commen ts may be appro priale to its theatrical impulse. While the oecupation lasted for over two Illonths between April and June, many 01' its most potent political moments look lhc shape 01' short dramatic 'dialogues' which seem to have been designed lO rcsonate by contrast with the lengthening duration of the oeeupation _ lheatricalized high points which give symbolic shape to the whole oeeupation Ihrollgh experimentation with direet political action and imagery. .Ioseph Esherick and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, in a thoughtful and thorough L'ssay on the theatrieal qualities of the occupation, argue: As essentially non-violent demonstrations that posed no direct eco nomic or physical threat to China's rulers, the power ofthe protests dcri ved entirely from lheir potcncy as protests which could symbol i~r! ly undcrminc the regimc's Icgitimélcy and move members orJarger a lld more econ omicully vil; r! d a'ilics to la kc sympat hclic action . 1O

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I\lI d Ilu.:y dra w ;llIl'III II ill l•• 1111 ' , " a ' 111'111:11 11 10111CI1 ls orchcs lratcd hy Ihe sludcllls: Ihe presc lILIIIIIII ,,1 pelllllllls. Ihe dial ~)gll c<,; which arose f'rnrn Ihe hllng.c r 'ilrikc, alld lhe L'lIl r;11I ~C illlu 1he Sqllarc 01' I he Goddess 01' J)cmocracy amI Freedolll cach ~)r which tlrew 011 Chinese traditions 01' political public action. For cxample. the prcscntation of the petition which dcmanded an explanation 01' the resignation in 198701' the pro-democracy General Secret ary 01' the C:ommunist Party emerged 'out of traditions of remonstrance and petition stretehing back for millennia' . The image of three students kneeling on the steps ofthe Great Hall ofthe People would have a profound resonanee for the Chinese people. and so , the party leadership's failure to acknowledge in any way the petition , . . \Vas a major violation of ritual. and it significantly increased public anger against official arr ogance.4 1 Esheriek and Wasserstrom al so note how a later visit to the hospitalized hunger strikers by party leaders was a more adroitly performed 'ritually required aet of compassion', but one whieh had already negatively been framed by the earlier televised dialogue between student leader Wuer Kaixi and Premier Li Peng: The eostuming was important: [Wuer Kiaxi] appeared in his hos pital pyjamas. So, too, \Vas the timing: he upstaged the Premier by interrupting him at the start. And props: later in the session, he dramatically pulled out a tube inserted in his !lose (for oxygen'?) in order to make a point. 42 The guerrilla-theatre style inventiveness in this scene \Vas reinforced by the fad that hunger striking \Vas a relatively recent addition to the repertoire of Chinese pro test , an introduction which also signalled 'how internationalized models for dissent had beeome', But whether dealing in aneient or recent forrns, the students demonstrated the superior control of protest l1ramatur gies needed in a highly mediatized \Vorld , both by ironically turning official Chinese political ritual back on itself and by ex tending the potential 01' direct action through globally televised agit-prop. Their grasp of these teehniques indicates a taetical order in their strategie disorder which delivered a clcar political advantage over the interests of the state. In deseribing Tienanmen during the occlIpation Schechner adopts the language 01' the Chinese government to point IIp its links with carnival. He notes that the authorities labelled the occupation luan , or chaos, and he claims that 'meaningfu l theatrieal luan is a potent weapon .· He then uses imagery associated wi th c h¡ l()~ Uleo ry lO ma ke a contrast betwcen the occu pation a nd ofllcialuscs 01' lIJe S411HI'C. wlrich ge nerall y take the ro rm of geometric parades liuch as m ilil llly 1I1;lI l.!h hys ;lIld ::.i milar di:¡play:, . lK 1

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Obviously there was sorne ofthis celebratory acrion in Tienanmen; the stude n!/) were there a long time, and had devised ways to am use thel11selves lO releasc the tensions of the situation . But Schechner's account - like the swirl ing patterns he imagines bl urs the historical and ideological achievement of the protestors in their highly eontrolled and imaginative uses of the symbolic to pose a threat that was 1I1limateiy felt as all too real by the Chinese authoriti es. The traditional a nd the international were stllnningly combined in the m ost spectacu la r 'dialogue' of lhe occupation, with the appea rance 01' the Goddess of Democracy and Freedom. Constructed by students from the Beijing Aca demy 01' Art, the Goddess 1'01' three weeks faced the giant picture of M ao. symbolically blocking his view of the Monument to the People's Heroes. As the M on ument is a 'sacred symbol of the Communist regime '44 the position ing ofthe Goddess offered a direct questioning ofthe validity ofthe Chinesc government's power and proposed a revision 01' the nature of Chinese demo cracy for the future. IdeologicaJ.ly speaking, the thirty-foot high icon was appropriately multi vocal: Esherick and Wasserstrom note its obvious allusion to the Statue of Liberty, which the western media and the Ch inese government tended lo stress to the exclusion of other meanings. But they also point out that the image alludes to the rough-cut styles of socialist-realist sculptures of revolu tionary heroes of communist tradition, and may well have been reminiscen t 01' the giant statues of Mao which were paraded through the Square in the 'sixties. In similar vein , the icon reminds Scheehner of the Bread and Puppet Theatre effigies used in anti- Vietnam War demonstrations in the 's ixties. [n faet, the Goddess is 'a potent pastiche of imported and native symbolism '. ~s This makes the icon more complex than traditional agit-prop imagery: it imports into that tradition new ironic and satirical inflections that link it to the more celebratory ami carnivalesque aspects of late twentieth century protest. But also it reflects a developing internationalization and globalizatio n 01' such protest, in two linked ways. First, the discourse of the Goddess is international in its combination 01' signs dra\Vn from both eastern and west cm cultures; second , it is globalizcd because it is c1early de.l'igned to speak cross-culturally through the media, and so becomes a focus for identifying Ihe nature 01' the protest in relation to shifting global political formations . This \Vas a demonstration for democracy , but not for a democracy that \Vould simply mimic western modcls: this was a demonstration for a Chinese rorlll ordemocracy, which, a s Esherick and Wasserstrom make clcar, is Illuch m ore wedd cd to notio ns 01' 1/1';/1' than those of the westcrn liberal dem Qcra cies, which lcnd lo ~' rcss plura lism. Fo r lhe C hinesc, as perhaps rO/' weSlern 1X , ~

li'lllinist ~ , lh.,: J!\.·lllk l lll l' lit' llro r;laur l' \Vo l/Id alrll us l ccrla inly carry thal l:xlru chargc. Thl,! slaluc W,IS slllaslll.!d IIp hy lhe Iroops ami tallks, and now , Illaybe, it hardly figurcs in Ihe popular \Vestcrn illlagination as a symbol 01' resistance : ror the image that is already beginning to dominate representations of the Tienanmcn protests in the Wcst is resonant in quite different \vays to the Goddess . This is an image of enormolls individual bra very, as a solitary man, shopping bags in hand , blocks the awful progress of a line 01' tanks on their way to the Square. The moment is a wonderfully powerful one ror the dramaturgy 01' prolest. This is partly beca use it cchoes earlier weslern resistance Lo the colonizing tendencies of eontemporary states in the Prag ue Spring of 1968 , and so reinforces the globalization of protest. But also, as a mediatized image con lending for the 'meaning' ofthe Tienanmen Square occupation, it reflexivcly underlines the need rOl' conlÍnua! struggle for freedom and justice, as it is itsclf part of an international discourse through which the contending forms of demoeracy are shaped. The eontrasting images of the solitary man facing up to the ta nks gives an indication of the ideological issues at stakc in this discourse. The [¡rst image, which is the one most disseminated in the West, literally foregrounds the role ofthe individual in lhe drama of protest, heightening notions of heroism as an exceptional traiL The second image displays the a\Vful context of the heroism , and shifts it to\Vards different dramaturgical territory, raising q uestions about ho\V the solitary man could possibly have gai ned the courage lo confront a whole arrny (notice lhe helicopters in the background). The panorama 01' latent violence forcefully implies many inl'isihle an/ag onis/s, the 'other' of the protesting students in Tienanmen Sq uare which the lonely protester represents. The image changes the ideological focLls of the drama - ami wilhout diminishing individual heroism it gestures towards its source in the collective action of a mass movement. On the global stage cre ated by mediatization, representations of pro test become part of the struggle between different versions of the democratie process. In Ihis new glohal context. the Goddess of Democracy and Freedom ami the lone man facin g the tanks may together suggest that resistance and trans gression can thrive across space and time, however diffcrently they are inflected by the circumstances of particular cultures - as male , remale, or some other gender; as eollective, individual , or sorne other formation . Through globaliza tion, protest may become a phenomenon which partly transcends cultural difference and strengthens resistance as a universal possibility , Whilsl \Ve may gladly accept that there are no transcendental signifiers in lhe d ramaturgy ofprotesL or a ny other di sco urse, it does not no\V necessarily follo w that , whe rc rm lilics a nd eth ics mee!. relativislll rules the world. The rOllTIS oC rrcctllll11 111ay hc rcla tiw . bllt. just possibly, the need for freedolll. like Ihe nccd Il)1 IUIH I II Ió1 V he :t Osolll le.

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wli ilc I Iie slp!',all!, Ihl: llI '.d\~' .. , 1111'11 h\·..·III1 \~· !I\O ll' aplioristic allJ pUllning. Satirc alld caricatlll"C wcrc wcldcd 111 IIl1d gcs ~lI ggcs ting desired idcals and utopias. A 11 tl1l:, sig lla l:; I ha I dv iI dl::; lrc wa s becOlni ng more sophisticatcd, complex, mulli-faceled ami so IIlore /"('/1('.\;1'(' and Ilexibly organized. In general terms, it is lhis kind 01' deep cultural shift that has tended to render traditional forms of'political theatre ' rcdundant, because civil desire has , as it were, re-shaped itsclfin postmodernity, shaking increasingly free ofthe meta-narratives which had given those forms their meaning and utility. 54 It would be too easy just to suggest, though, that the dramaturgy of protest in the late twentieth ccntury simply participa tes synechdochally in a wider paradigm shift from modernity to postmodernity, because sueh a daim would paradoxically suggest theoretical closure in a discourse - a dramaturgy which is centrally about disclosure, both in te rms of disrupting the spectade 01' hegemony and in terms 01' opening up new forms 01' ideological exchange between civil society and the state, new social movements and institutional power. Whilst those exchanges are always to a greater or lesser degree pre figured by tradition , they are also more or less aimed at creating new spaces for radical discourse in its widest sense. That is to say, the dramas 01' prolest always aim for a radicalliminality which draws authority into a ne\\' rclation with the potential for change initiated !Jeyond ;Is dOl11a;l1. This can be seen most dearly , perhaps, in extreme forms 01' protest such as 'wildcat' strikes, riots, and civil disobedience. The Los Angeles riots that followed the beating of Rodney K ing, the British Poli Tax Riots and refusals that were to lead to the downfall 01' Margaret Thatcher .. such actions aim always to be metaphorically and literally 'beyond the pale', olltside the norm ative boundaries that the law and the state would enrorce. It is that Iiminality which can give protest a potent ideological transcendence - beyond subver sion, beyond resistance - beca use in liminality may be found lhe very figure of new notions 01' rreedom. That too is, I hope, a kind 01' protection against the potential for the drama turgy ofprolest itselfbecoming a handmaiden to reified meta-narrative. And that, ultimately, is why the dramaturgy 01' protest may provide an espe cially useful key to an underslanding 01' the kinds of major historical shifts which have, as they say, changed the political face of the world in lhe past fi fty years.

Notes and references Versions of this argument have been explored in Graham Holderness, ed., The Polilfes of" Thealre al1d Dranw (London: Macmillan, 1992); Sue-Ellen Case and Janelle Re inelt. eds. , The Per!(¡rmlll1c(' o/"Power: Thealrical Discourse olld Polilies (Iowa: Univcrsily of lowa Prcss, 1<)91). 2 Por a rcl cv;¡1I 1 disCIISsi')[I, sce Haz Kc r ~ haw , 'Thc Politics of Pcrforman c-'C in ¡¡ PostmlldcrIl Áp\!' , iJl / III,¡f.."· il/l~ /)('r/; Jf/ I/ollc{'." o C,.iliml R('(/der, cd. Palrick Campbell ( Ma llc h c:'I\,'r: M ; III ~ I II'\,I \' t I l lI i vcn;il Y Pl(;SS .

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Miehig¡lI l P rcss, 1')92 ): ro r ;111 Kersha w, or. cit . 4 Raymond W illiams , Cullltre (Glasgow: Fonta na, 1981), cspccially C hapler l. 5 John Lahr and Jonalhan Price, Lile Sholl': HolI' (o See Theatcr ill L¡fe ({/UI Li/c' il/ Th cu ter (New York: Viking Press, 1973): Richard Sehcehner, 'Invasi on s Fricnd ly and Unfriendly: lhe Dramaturgy 01' Direct Theatre' , in Janelle G . R einelt ami Joscph R . Roaeh. eds .. Crilical Theory 0/1(1 Per/imuunC(' (A nn A rbor: Uni ve rsily of Michi ga n Press , 1992); and The Street is the Stage' , in R ich a rd Seheehner, Tlle FlIIl/re o/Riluol: W'rilil1gs 0/1 CI1IIl1/'e ol1d Perjimnallce (LoTldon: Routledge , 1993 ). In so me ways my arglll1lent eonst itutes an ongoing con versation with Seheehner's ideas, and if at tim es the tone gets more than a littlc immodera te il is because. paradoxieally, 1 have mlleh respect for th e pionee ring nature ofhis work. 6 f or th e 'sixtics, see Robert Hewi so n , Too M uch: Art and Sociely in Ihe Sixlie.l', 1960 75 (London: Methuell, 1986); for the 'eighties, see Lee Feigon, China Risil1~: Ih e J\lJeaning (~l Tienal1men (Chicago: Lvan Dee, 1990); Peter C hipo wski , Revolu {ion in Easl ern Europe (London : John W iley, 1991 7 See Guy De bo rd , The Suciely of' Ih e Spectacle (Detroit: Blaek and Red , 1977): Jean Baudrillard , Simula/iolls (New York: SemiotcxtleL 1983). 8 Sec, for example: Miehel FOllcault. Discipline (I/1{1 PI//lish: Ihe Bit/h o/Ihe Priso/l (New York: Vintage Boo ks, 1979): Baudrillard . op. eit. ; Jolm Fiske, POWef P!ays POlI'er Works (London: Verso , 1993); and Roy Strong, wh o indicates a long his toricallineage in Arl ami POll'er: R enaissa/Jce Feslivals, 1(¡50 /850 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984) 9 See Baz Kershaw , ' Framing the Audie nce fo r Thcatrc', in Th e AUlhority oIlhe Consumer, cd. Ru ssell Keat, Nigel Whiteley, and Nieholas Abcrerombie (London: Routledgc, 1994). 10 See J ohn Orr and Dragan Klaic, eds., Terrorism (//1(1 Model'l1 Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1990).1 am grateful to Clivc Barker for drawing my attention 10 this lively eollection . 11 See, for example: Kenneth O. M o rgan , Tlle Pcople'x Peace: Bri/i.l'h lJislo ry 1945 1990 (Oxford: O xford University Press, 1990) p. 294 (though Morga n ,s ecms to confuse the relatively peaeefull October 1968 demonstration with the one in March) . 12 British POlhe NelVs, 19ó8 aYear 10 R ememher, videotape (London: Ingra m , 1990) . 13 The c\assic account is Theodore Rosza k, The Making (!( (1 COl/l1ler Culture: Re/lec lioll.> O/l the Technocru t ie Socidy and ils YOlllhjúl OPf!OSiliol1 (New York: D oubleda y, 1969). 14 Frilncois Beda rida , A Soc/a! J-/is/ory oI England, 1851 1975 (London: Meth ue n. 1979); Arthur Marwick , British Sociely S inc/! 1945 (1Iarmonds\Vorth: Pelica n , 1982) . 15 Leon Trotsky, The Pro letariat and thc Rcvollltion ' , in T/¡e Age o( Permanen/ Revollllion: a Trot.l'ky AllIllOlogy, ed. Isaac Deutscher (New York : Dell Publishing, 1964). 16 See Tariq Ali. 1968 ol1d Ajier: 111side /he Rel'o!ulioll (London: Bl o nd and Briggs , 1978). 17 See Jaques Derrida, Trom P,l)'chc - Invention 01' the Other', in A els o/Litera/ure, ed. Derek A ttrid ge (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 340 ('The very m ove ment o fthis fabulous repetition fthrou gh the logie 01' supplemcntarityl can , through a merging 01' ehanee and neeessi t y, produce thc new 01' an evcnt. NOI onl y wilh Ihe singular inven lio n 01' a performati vc, sinec cvcry perrormative prcsupposcs convcnti o ns

wh al we 1'¡1 1I d"I:I>I ", II II \"l h1l 1 1 I¡': Dc h\Hd, (jI'. ei!. ; ~I'C hcluw lúr 11 \lfllll:l1l and R u bin : M!l rshall MeLuhan. Unda slandil/g Media: /lt e /:"s tell.I·/UI/.I' oj' M all (Ncw York : Signct, 1964): Hcrbcrt Marcusc. Eros (11/(1 Cil'ili:'.(I/ioll ( 1,()l1don: Spherc. 19(9) and Ol1e Di,nensiol1ul N/an (London: Spherc, 19(8 ); Tom Bo tl o morc, Thc Frankjúrl S'dwol (Chiehester: Ellis H o rwood ., 1984). For a useflll critique of the I-'rankfurt School. see a\so John B. Thompsoll , ldeology (I/1{1 Alodern Culture (Cambridge: Polit y Prcss, 1990), Chapter 3. 19 Scc Mic hel de Certeau, Th e Praelice oI El'eryday Lije (Bcrkeley: U niversi ty of California Press, 1984). 20 The basie text is James Gleick , Chaos: Making a N elV Sciel1ce (Lond on: Sphere, 1988). 21 For usefully meas ured a nalysis, see Phil ip G. Cerny, ed. , Social Movemen /s and Prolesl in Frall cc ( Lo nd on: Franccs Pinter, 1982); and Ke ith A . Reade r, The Muy l Y(¡8 Evenls in France: R eproduc!ions ond 1n terprelalion.\' (London: SI. Ma rtin 's, 1993); for m o re descriptive accounls, sec Roger Absa lom, Franee: Ihe ¡l/ay Event.\', 19ó8 (London: Longman, 1971); Patrick Seale and M auree n McConvilIe, Frenell Rel'Olut;o/1 19M! (Harmondsworth: Peng uin, 1968). 22 Sec Sadie Pl all t, The ¡\Josl Radical Geslure: /h e Si/ualiol1isl [nl emalional in a Pos/modern A ge (London: Routledge, 1992), especially p. 133 -41. 21 Richard Nevil\lc, Play Power (St. Albans : Paladin , 1971), p. 37. 24 Leon Trotsky , TI/(' J--1islor)' 01' Ih e RlIss;a/1 R pl'ollltio!1 (Lo ndon: Gollancz , 1935). 25 Scheehner, op. eie 26 Ibid. , p. 65 - 7. 27 Lec Baxandall , ' Spectac\es and Seenarios: a Dramaturgy 01' R adical Aetivit y', in Radical PerSfleclil'e.1 in ¡lie Arls (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), N ote Lo I1lus. 12. This essay was the main inspirati o ll for Ih e plesenl argument. 28 R . G. Davis , The Sal1 Franscisco j\nme Tro,l/le: ¡he First Ten Year\' (Palo Aifto: R ,lmparls Press, 1975); Slephan Brecht, Thc Bread amI PUppel Theal re, t\Vo vols. (London: Methuen , 1988); Pi erre Biner, The Lil'ing T/¡eUlre (New York: Avon Booh, 1972). 29 Abbie HolTman , Rel'olu/ joll /iJr Ihe Hell 4 11 (New York : Dia l Books, 1968). p. 30, 183, quo ted by Schechner, op . cit. " p. 64. 30 Jcrry Rubin, Do 1/1 (New York: Sirnon and Sehuster, 1970) , p. 250, quoted by Shechner. op. eit. 3 1 For the theatrieal eontext to thc yippie interve ntions, see R. G. Davis's essays o n gucrilla thcatrc in T he Sa/1 Francisco ¡\1il11c T roupe: The Pir,,' Ten Years, op . eit.: Henry Lesnick, Gllerrilla StJ'ee/ Thmlre (New York : Avon Boo ks. 1973); Arthu r Sainer, 7he Radical 111ea/re NOl1'!Jook (New York: Av on Boob, 1975); John Wisernan , Guerrilla Th ealre: Scel/arios/ilr Rel'olutio/1 (New Yo rk : Anchor, 1973). 32 Thc ground-brea king work is Miehael D . Bristol, ('amiva! and Fhealre: Ple"eian Cullure (lmllhe S/rI/clUre olAulhorily in R enais,wl1 ce Englal1d (London: M ethuen , 1985). 33 Scheehner, op eit., p. 47. 34 Clifford Gecrtz, Local Kl1oil'ledge: Fl.Il'lher Essay s in 1n letprelil'e Anthropology (1.ol1dol1 : Fontana, 1993), p. 27. 35 Ibid ., p. 34. % Sehechncr, op. eit. , p. 86. 37 See, for exa m p le, Michael Brake, ('0111/](//'{//il'1' rO/llh C ullUre: ¡fJ(! Socio logy (JI Y Oil!/¡ C III/llre I/IJ(I )'O/l//¡ SlIhmllllr('s ;/1 AnJ('J'ica, Brilain. and Canoda (I .ondon: Ro ulkd gc. 1')XS): Sillar! Il all and T o ny JctTcrso n , cds., R esislul/ce T/¡rough

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40 Joseph W. E shcrick and Jcffrcy N. WasscrslrolTl. 'Acting ou t Democracy: Polilic,iI Theatre in Modern China', T/¡e ./ollrl1al ojA.\'iall Sl.udies, X LI X, No. 4 (Novcmbc r 1990). p. 839, also in Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and E1 i:zabeth J, Perry, eds .. PoplIl{fr PrOle,\'! (/1/(/ Po!iliwl Cl/Ilure i/1 ¡\Jodan Chin(/, second ed. (O xford: Wcstvie w Press 1994).

41 1bid., p. 842.

42 Ibid., p. 841.

43 Schechner. op. cit.. p. 88.

44 Esherick and Wasserstrom, op. cit., p. 841.

45 Ibid, A fuller description which underlines the eclectic style of the Goddcss call be found in Han I'vlinzhu., Criesfur J)ell/oC/'acy: Wriling (//1(1 Speechesji'om Ihe /989 Chinese J)emoeracJ' /vlot'e/1/CI11 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 342-- 8; and by Tsao Tsingyuan, in Wasserstrom and Perry, op. eit., p. 140- 7. 46 Scc, for examplc, Alce Gordon, 'Thoughts Out 01' Season on Counter Culture', in Inlrodul'liol/ lo Conlemporary Cullural SIl/dies, ed. David Punter (LlDndon: Long man, 1986): Bernicc Martin, A Sociolo,gy o(ConlemjJor(/I); Cullllral Challge (Oxford: Blackwell', 1981); Frank Musgrovc, Ecsla,l)' (jl/d Holines.\': Counler Cullure and Ihe Opel1 SOclely (London: Methuen , 1(74). 47 Sce C hipowski, op. cie. and Wasserstrom and Perry, op. cit. 48 Quoted in Roberi Hewison, Too Much, op. cit., p. 147, 49 Ibid., p. 148. 50 Scc, for exalllple: David Held,Models o/ J)ell1ocracv (Cambridge: Polity Prcss, 1987), especially Chapter 7. 51 For an entertaining account, see George McKay, Senseless Acls o/ Beauly: Cul lures 01' ResiSlal/ce sinee ¡he Six/ies (London: Verso, 1996). 52 See John Fiskc, Power Plays POlVer Works (London: Verso, 1993). 53 See, for cxample, Peggy Phelan, Unl1wrked lhe Polilies o/PerjiJ/'/l1once (Londo n : Routledge, 1993); Elin Diamond, ed., Perj'ormo!1ce ({lid Cullural Polilies (London: Routledge, 1996). 54 See Steven Connor. Posll11odernisl Culll/re: (1/1 IntrodUClio/1 lo Ihe Theories O/lile COl1lemporary (Oxford: B1ackwell, 1989); and David Harvey, The COl1dilio/1 of' POsllllor/cmily (Oxford: Blackwcll, 1990), A particularly useful approach to thi.s issue in rclation to the dramaturgy 01' protest is provided by McKenzic Wark, Virtual Geograp/¡y: Living wi/h Glo!Jol ¡"Iedia El'el1lS (Bloornington; lndianapolis: f,¡jdiana University Press, 1994), [ am grateful to Tim Raphael 01' Northwestern University for dnl\ving my attention to Wark's work, unfortunately too late rol' ii to have the impact 011 my argument that it deserves.

>tI)

60 '"THERE MUST BE A LOT OF FISH IN THAT LAKE" Toward an ecological theater Una Chaudhuri

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Like any cultural theorization today, that ofa possible ecological theater will take place in the shadow of the approaching millennium. And of course, the reverse is also true: the millennium itself will be greeted-onstage and off- in an ecological idiom. Onstage, the countdown that had haunted the Western theatrical imagination since mid-century- the countdown to the big bang with the mushroom cloud-has now been replaced by something even more unnerving-the ticking time-bombs 01' ecological disaster. Certainly. the apocalyptic angels visiting the American stage with increasing frequency are closely linked to eco-catastrophe. In their paralyzing mixture 01' prophetic vision and belatedness, they recall Waiter Benjamin's "angel ofhistory," who seems to anticipate the ever-dawning ecological consciousness of our century: the angel, says Benjamin, sees history not as a chain of events, bul rather "a single catastrophe, piling wreckage upon wreckage." He '\vould like to ... make whole whal has been smashed [but he cannol, beeause] a stonn is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his \Vings \Vith such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This slorm irrcsislibly propc1s him into the fulure to which his back is turned, whi1c lhe pile of debris befare him grows skyward. This storm is what \Ve call progress." The angel of American history confronts something both less poetic and more deadly than the debris that accumulated at the feet of Benjamin's "Angelus Novus": it is a mountain 01' garbage. The trashing 01' America (and the world), with its calamitous effects on the future, is lhe overarching trulh 4 ui te Ii tera lly uf Jose Ri vera's recent angel play Marisol, which exemplifi ci> ~) n c lit' ¡he m lls l Cülll'll1u n forms 01' eeological lhea ler, namely, an lIntlerlying and Jy<; lllpit.: \'cII/¡Il' i¡.;;tl cO ll dit i()1l pcrvaJ in g l he W(lr1J 01' lhe "1 \

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play. l.' rnlll thl: pollllll:d sl rcUl lIsorlk StOl'k Ill;\I In 'S lPWlIl D Ikdl:tt'sasheall" and lx:yond , a largd y l1 ~gal ivl: ecological visioll pcrl1lca h:s thl: thealer 01' this cenlury . Pervasive though il is. the specifkally eeological meaning---as opposed lo the mere theatrieal presenee - of this imagery has remaincd occluded, un rel1larked, a faet that derives frol1l the disastrous coincidence, in the seco nd half of the 19th century, between the age of ecology and the birth 01' natural ism . Along with other discourses born of the age of industrialization, 19th century humanismlocated its shaky foundations on the growing gap betwecn the social antInatural worlds, constructing a fragile edifice that could suslai n itself only at the cost of actively ignoring the claims 01' the nonhul1lan. As Alan Read puts it in Thealre (/l1d Evcrydav Life: " Nature is so problel1latic to cultural disciplines it has to be ignored for fear ofits effects on the status q uo between powerful and subservient nelds of inquiry.·' In the theater, naturalism (and then , more tendentiously. realism) hid its complicity with industrialization's animus against nature by proffering a wholly social account of human lite. While asserting the deterministic force 01' environl1lent, naturalism concealed the incompleteness 01' its definition 01' environment. By defining human existence as a seamless social web, natural ism was unwittingly acting out 19th-century humanisnú historical hostility to ecological realities. Though its thematics kept in touch with nature through images of cherry orchards, wild ducks, and polluted baths, the ideological discourse of realism thrust the nonhuman world into the shadows, from which it emerged in the ghostlike form of strangely menacing-- yct inanimate objects. The junk-strewn , garbage-choked stages of Pinter, Mamet , Shepard, amI others, revealnaturalism's anxiety- Iong concealed- about the widening gap between the human and the nonhuman. The unattended garbage that accumulates on the margins of the realist stage is one of the sites for a possible ecological theater. A new look at this hitherto neglected material--a view./i"o/11 the garbage-dump, as it were would also reveal the extent to which lhe countertradition of modern drama (including Surrealism , Epic theater, Absurdism) makes its case against 19th century humanism by setting its explorations of the human condition , be they psychological , political, or l1letaphysical , within a recognition of the insistenl c1aims of the natural world. However attenualed that world might appear (a contested valley here , a denuded tree there) it is nevertheless there, demand ing that any social or philosophieal systems we evolve recognize its presence, acknowledge ilS radical otherness. Other prospects for ecological theater are offered by plays that-- in opposi tion to realism 's predominant tendencies- - Illanage to bring ecological i ~~l1cS to centcr stage. A growing number 01' contelllporary plays treat ecological issues cxplicitly. yielding whal Lynn Jacobson has called "an ceo-canon. " begi nning with that " grandaddy I)/' cnvi ro nlllental pla ys ," 11/1 f\"¡/('III I' ,h('

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1>('(Ip/l'. Tite prohkll l w ilh I hc~c plll Ys is Ihat lhey lry In cxisl within a I"caler acslhctie ami iJ(:'lIl ogy (1I:lJllcly. again . 191h-ccntllry humanism) lhal is, as I shall argue below, prograllllllalically anti-ecological. One soll1lion to lhis problem is to join ccological concerns with lhe protocols 01' " site-specific" theater. ereating works lhat Jirectly engagc the actual ecological problcms 01' particular environments. Jacobson describes the work of groups such as the Dell'Artc School of Blue Lake, California. the Merrimack Repertory Company 01' Lowell , Massachusetts, and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, each of which has intcrvened in the prcssing ecological debates in its community by stagings of c1assic, contemporary, or new texts . From these accounts there emerges the outline 01' a new materialist-ecological theater practice that refuses the universalization and metaphorization of

nature . Vet another oplion, ecology as metaphor, is so integral a feature of the aesthetic of modern realist-hnmanist drama that, paradoxically, its implica tions for a possible ecological theater are easy to miss. I ts very ubiquity renders it invisible, a fact brought out brilliantly in Tony Kushner's Al1gef.~ in America , which might be said to take place (at least from one importanl eharaetcr's point of view) directly under the hole in the ozone. Harper, the only female among the play 's main characters. is alone in understanding that the plagues devastating the physical and cultural Iife of America are not unrelated to certain man-made diseases of the planet. In a way that recalls the eeo-feminism of Mary Daly and Carolyn Merchant. Harper sees what none 01' the men in the play do. that in tearing at the delicate ecology ol' earth's atmosphere we have been destroying our organic "guardian angels. " The angel who appears at the end of part one constellates many American fant asies and mythologies, but the single most significant thing about it is the chilling implication that its deseent lo earth is through the ozone hole: even at the end , it seems, Al1lerica's vision of itself must follow the pathways 01' its habitual destructions. Necdless to say, these deslruetions have a long history , both within America and without. ln the theater, the onset of their most virulent phase was dia gnoscd at the turn of the last century by Chekhov 's Dr. Astrov , who seemed to subscribe lo something like a Leopoldian land ethic and aesthetic, but who was callght. as many literary ecologists have been, between the contradictory pulls of nature and culture, 01' a human-centered ecology and a truly land centereJ one. Astrov 's passionate appeals and tireless efforts on behalf of the environment are counterbalanced by his fantasies of progress ancl his general reliance on rationalism, 01' whose pathological relation to ecology his com pulsive mapping is an apt symptom . For all his innate love 01' the l'orests, Astrov can no l read his cco-maps ccologically , as a visual narrative of the ongoing dcslrllcli'lll \Ir 11:11 me hy human bcings: ralher, he rcads thcm as rcconJs "t" 1.:1.11 1111:11 d l 'I Il'Il' nl'Y , sIIy ing that "Ir then! wcre highroads and

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Tire V;"i ll Il S I ~; IJI~; ;IIld 1111 11 ,,'q llllllls ,)1' Tligorill\ speccll acllla!!y COI1 lain th,: prospcl:1 \) 1 ;11 ' ;'''lhIII UIIS Ilrl'al l!f c\.:()logy , localing Ihe constitutive disjuII \.:lio ns uf dralll:! tlH)Se hcl\Vecn [cxt amI meaning, acting and being, performance ami place within that fundamental rift, which intruues here so IInexpccledly and so cOl1lically, between humankind and nature, and which, in terl11S of the drama (but not only in those terms), l11akes 01' nature a mere sctting-"scenery. " This rupture between human beings and their natural environment is a perceptible subtext in a great deal of post-Romantic drama, especially in the works of lbsen ami Chekhov. But critical awareness 01' this subtheme has been slow in coming, the issue having been obscured or confused by the sup posed environmentalism ofnaturalism. In his essay "Social Environment and Theatrical Environlllent: The Case of English Naturalism," Raymond Willia ms distinguishes between "illustrative" naturalism ("properly described in terms of 'setting' and ' background' ") ami the " symptomatic and causal environ ment in high naturalism," in which "the lives 01' the ch a racters have soaked into their environment [ami] ... the environment has soaked into their lives. " But the sort 01' rupture between charactcr and environment 1 am pointing to occurs not before or after but lVi/hin this hyperenvironmentalist moment 01' naturalismo Because, as Williams makes elear, this hyperenvironmentalism is in the service 01' a social drama (in which the stage represents a space " shaped by and shaping social history") it ignores--or even actively conceals .. the " non-social" parts of the environment. To put it bluntly, naturalism is anti nature; environmentalism (in Williams's sense) is anti-ecologicaL The point that Chekhov is slyly making through Trigorin and the fish namely, that the discursive formations 01' nature and art are now so utterly disjunct as to be non sequiturs· is made more directly in a very different context, in the afterword to a play written almost a hundred years la ter: Bryony Lavcry's eco-feminist Origin (~l//¡e Species, developed for the British feminist company Monstrous Regiment. Describing the process of construct ing the play, the author writes:

1 ditin 't 1I1lderstand it at all. But 1 enjoyed walching. YO ll acted SO gen uincly. !\nd Ihe sccl1e ry was bea lltiful. Pause. Thcn: nltlsl he a lot 01' fish in that lakc.

We had come across a piece of information to the effect that if we think of the entire span ol' time as a calendar year ... human beings as a species make their appearance in the last three or four seconds before midnight on the last night 01' the yeal'. ... or sorne time ... \Ve toyed with the idea 01' presenting a show in which the actors sat quite still for 99 per cent 01' the time , while a voice described the Big Bang, the appearance 01' stars. of the Ea rth , the creation 01' micro organisms, the death 01' dinosaurs, the arrival 01' reptiles, birds, l11ammals ... and then for the last few seconds 01' the piece ... when h uman cOlIsci ulJ sm:ss is rormcd . .. the two actors would rush about Ihe stagc 1'if:' 1r 1inl'. f:rllill g oul , inventing weapons ami generally creat in g Ihe 'lI; l yh~ 111 1111 wl" d l IllII spc\.:ics is rcsponsib1c. Wc kit as a

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form it held a certain trulh ... but lIlight be sOll1cw hal IIl1dramatic for 99 percent 01' the time. Wc are él specics that is most interested in ourselves ... So the play is set just before midnight on the last night of the year, the end of the day and llnless we do something about it ... possibly the end of the world. In learnjng the lesson that Treplev failed to learn- that passivity ano nOll intervention before the facts of natural life are not particularly dramatic Lavery also arrives at a sense ofho"" ecological realities might neverthe1ess be given drama tic form, if only through a metaphorical exploitation of the thcater 's OWll rcalities 01' space and time. But if the theatcr can suggest metaphors for ecologieal coneerns, eeology can also furnish metaphors for certain kinds 01' theater. This option is exem plified in sorne artides by Bonnie Marranea , who eoined the expression "ecologies oftheater" to dcsignate a theatrical tradition, starting with Chekhov and continuing through "Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder, Sam Shepard , Maria Irene Fornes, Lee Breuer, Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson and Heiner M üller," which is marked by "its embrace of performance space, and rejeetion of selling." Marranca briefty deve10ps this opposition according to avant garde values, contrasting the "c1osure" of setting with the "dynamism" of spaee. However, the latter qualifies as "ecologieal " only in the abstraet sense ofsug gesting global intereonnectedness, and a wider framework for experiencing and el'alualing human acliol1 than did setting. ("In its three-dimensionality it assumes the attitudc that human behavior has global significance and reverberates beyond the single gesture. ") Marranca's imaginative and often lyrical approaches to theater ecology show both the value and the limitations 01' metaphor in this context. There is no doubt that ecological concepts like interre1atedness, holism , and organkism provide powerful descriptive tools 1'01' dealing with innovative theatcr work like Wilson 's. Indeed , as Max Oclschlaeger arg ues in his recent book The Idea o/ Wi/dernes.\': Frol11 Prehislory 10 lhe Age 4Eco{ogy, the remarkable coineid ence between pattcrns orpostmodern thought in general (especially its e1imin ation 01' mind-matter amI subject-objeet dualisms) and emerging ecologiea l models are conspiring to move us towards a new paradigm of knowledge. Oeschlaeger develops the phil osopher Richard Rorty's idea 01' conversation as an epistemological model to argue provocatively that contemporary "wilder ness philoso phy and literature is the cutting edge by which naturc's experimcnt in humanity is transforming itselffrom the modern to the post-modern era. " George Sessions makes a similar c1aim in "Shallow and Deep Ecology: ¡\ Re vie\\' oftbe Philosophical Literature," saying that "a new world-view and social pa radigm is being born." crcated by eco-philosophcrs who "do oot ti nd it pos si ble to e ngage in thc luxury l)fhol d ing that ' Ihe prorer stu uy 01' ma n is ma n ' ." Ilowever, Ihe mclap lw ricalllsc ()r(X;~)Il)gy can SOl llCli lll CS lIlis rcprcsent the acllla I eClllogica I iSSIIl's a I ha no. 111 a Illore rc(;cn 1 p i l'~C ~II hl i1kJ "Dra lila IlII'gy '1) ~.;

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l-wlween p\llitical. dhil:al ami crcativc proecsscs a nd living within natllrc. whiL"h incvitahly is a tranSrorl11atioll ornature." By ma ki llg spacc on its stagc rOl' ongning aeknowledgl11ents ()f Ihe rupture it participates in- the rup turc bdwccn nature and culture, forests and books, sincere acting and real li sh the thcater can become the site 01' a much-needed ecological conscioLlslless. The theoretical sources 01' an ecological theater may be found wilh in thcater history itsclf. and it is with one such source that 1 wish to conc1 u{]c. The theatrical implications of the general eco-philosophical problem 01' classitkation --are we human beings a part 01' nature or not?-.. is stageJ with astonishing prescience in Ibsen 's play The H/ild Du('k, in the figure or thc indoor wildcrness. The theatrical implieations 01' ecology, this curious spaee suggcsts, will involve renegotiating that tension between symbolism an d Iiteralism that is the hallmark 01' theatrical art. Most readings of the indoor wilderness- by critics as well as by the play's charaeters - tend to be symbolic, except for the one exemplified by old E kda l, lúr whom the 10ft is, litera11y , the answer to a question that incrcasingly ennrrontcd a11 Europeans in the two centuries 1eading up to this one: " How can aman like you-···such an outdoorsman- live in the middle 01' a stuffy city , cooped up in these four wa11s'?" Thc 10ft is old Ekdal's way ofnegotiating his enforced alienation from- his dispo'\"session o(:-"all those other things, the very roots of your soul- that cool , sweeping breeze, that free life of the moors and forests , among the animals and birds. " What is simply a "waste and wilderness " to his son Hjalmar is to old Ekdal a place ofbeauty. mastery, fulfi11ment. Ekdal takes nature seriously, litera11y. In response to the news that the woods ofhis childhood are being cut into, he says, "lt's a dangerous business, that. It catches up with you. The woods take revenge." Ibsen ' s play shows what Harrison locates in Vico's account ofthe origin 01' civilization, namely , the disastrous link , in the West 's cultural imagination , between the wilderness and human institutions. Vico 's " fabulous insight." says Harrison, was that the "abomination of forests in Western history derives aboye all from the faet that, since Greek and Roman times at least, we have been a civilization of sky-worshippers, children 01' a celestial father. " The dark , enclosing forests were the antithetieal spaces for this civilization: "the first human families had to clear the oak trees in order to plant another k ind 01' tree : the genealogical tree. To burn out a clearing in the forest and to daim it as the sacred ground ofthe family- that, according to Vico , was the original deed of appropriation that first opened the space 01' civil society. Il was the first decisive ad, religiously motivated , which would 1ead to the l'ounding 01' cities, nations. and empire. " Thisfirst version of home, like its lat e parodic variant in tbe Ekdal house hold. is p redicated on the destruction ofthe woods. In Ibsen ' s play. se! long arter even genealogical trees have become endangered, Gregers's iH-eoneci vcJ a tlúln pis to re¡;onstruc t lhe fall1 ily on a new basis is a ha 1t le \.11' trccs : thc ma l!ica l wtlods ur I lo idal are tu he rqllaced by Gre/:wn¡'s "Calll" the Ideal,"

his vcr'i ioll nI' the hihl k al 1' 1t'~· DI K nowkdge. It is a hattlc 01' t\Vo rc1igions. pittillg the Christian raith (h"wcvcr seculari/.ed) in «n abstract and ideal Otber World against Old I': kdal's pantheistic worship offorests. It is a co nLest bet ween the symbolic and the literal. The Ekdal 10ft may have been inspired , in part, by that peculiar 19th century building. the glass house. As Georg Kohlmaier and Barna von Sartory write in HOl/ses of G/as.\', their study 01' this phenomenon , the glass houses that were built at great expense and to enormous public delight constituted a kind of " theater 01' nature," where "the scientific control of natural processes --the basis 01' the new ind ustry- was realized with the use 01' glass, iron and steam in the cultivation 01' plants." Partly expressions 01' the coHective European anxiety about Ihe colonial exploitation of the world , partly recog nitions of industrialization 's transformation 01' nature into a commodity, these " museums" displayed the "masterpieces of nature " lo a delighted and increasingly c1ass-diverse audience, maskin g the " dismantling ofnature [that] took place behind the scenes , [while] the longed-for paradise retreated to even greater distances." Ancestors ofthe greal World Fairs lo come (the first 01' which took place in Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace in 1851) as weH as of the huge organized amusements of later mass entertainment. the glass hOllses figured forth a new relation of the human and natural worlds, making the latter a privileged sign of the superiority of the former. Preserving and tending nature in this spectacular way, Western man staged himse1fas lord ofthe imperiled green world . But the glass house, as space, did not fail to register the contradictions 01' this hypocritieal fantasy; as Kohlmaier and von Sartory say , the " greenhouse was a place of retreat from the real world , but at the same time it was full of the politics 01' the day." The eco nomic tension s and c1ass conflicts of a rapidly changing society played a role in the projects for "people's palaces" and "strategic greenery" lo offset the ever-worsening plight of the working class:

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Man was, according to belief, a work force yel more Ihan merely a work force; he was a thinking, feeling , physical ereature who in the stOl1y expanse ofthe city had become almost entire1y hired labor and who had cut himself off from his true nature. The purpose of this utopia [the glass house] was to give this nature back to him. The way to that should not be a return to nature bul a step towards a human ized industrialization in \vhich agriculture, nature amI society were to be provided for. Thus the eOl1lrolling power 01' an aggressivc capitalism underlies the s ur l'aL:e sell timcnla lism \)1' ti \(: I' kua lloft as mLlch as il did that of the charming winter pa la u:s M 11)1: III H~ . 111 hoth , capilalist cx. ploita tion be it 01' forests or peo r lc ICqilll l". 111,11 1I 1I11 1!l' he: arti li L'ia ll y rcprouucetl . prl~scrvcd. anu displ ayed .

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Theater eeology, l bclieve, will cull rur a IlIrll IlI\v:ll d ... IlIl' literal, a pro graml11atie resistanee to the use of nature as I11claplHll. To re-literaliz'-! the 10ft is to read it as a representation only- and preeiscly- o rthe wilderness. The 10ft is a reproduction, a copy, and this identity is Teinforced hy rhe fael that it is located directly behind a photography studio. The figure ofphotography. that quintessential representational mediul11 ofmodern times, frames the 10ft as well as what the 10ft in turn frames: namcly , the wilderness. Through this configuration, the question that is raised by Ibsen's strange space is not " What does the indoor wilderness stand for'? " but rather, "What does representation the f~lct itsclf of mimesis, of mediation -~o to the meaning of nature'?" It is the other side ofthe quesrion articulated hy Benjamjn: "Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the q uestion of whether photography is an art. The primary question--whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art - was not raised. " The Ekdal 10ft is not a symbolic but a .\y mplomalic space, in which--as in the modern world itself- the categories of nature and artifice collide and distort each other. The exemplary product of this collision is a structure tha t has become rather familiar lo us by now, a hllndred years after Ibsen's play: the artificial environment. Perhaps our experience 01' this phenomenon may shed sorne retrospective lighr on Ibsen's prescient model of the paradox of a man-made nature. The main featllre of this paradox is that advances in mimetic technology (ofwhich photography was only the beginning) produce fake worlds 01' irreducible slrangeness. The simlllated worlds of contempor ary mass entertainment--the theme parks, world showcases, safari parks, tropical shopping plazas, and so on·-hecomc ever more uncanny as they become more perfect. As the technologies ofrepresentation approximate ever more cIosely to techniques of reproduction, the world that is being recreated so preciseIy recedes ever more quickly from our grasp. To recover il \ViII require the same thing as to save the planet, a sort of conversion , a remapping of humanism along lines sketched out dimly in Ibsen 's play. For, unlike the simulacral artificial environments 01' our day , referring only to themselves. the 10ft reproduces an original that- -thanks to Old EkdaI's literalness- manages to assert its power. Ekdal 's perspective suggests an eco-friendly ideology similar to what Robinson Jeffers calls, pro voeatively, " inhumanism ." Neither antihuman nor inhumane, this perspect ive starts from a conviction that the natural world is no more primarily a source of symbols and metaphors for the human condition than it is merely a source of raw materials for our consumption. It has an independent existence and an autonomous power that makes us its creatures and sllbjects. As \Ve in this century ha ve found out increasingly , and to our horror. when nature is violated, the woods do indeed take revenge . As Old Ekdal alone sees, in l bsen's play. naturc holds en ormo us power over uS. T he theater. which has long supported humanism's tendency lo ohscurc that po",cr, can a Iso becom c Ihe site 0 (' its revc!at ion. lO .'

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Many year s .1I1('r 1"1Il'1I1 11I 1I1 11'.l d "" lite possihility 01' those tish in amI bt'yond Ihe IhCillcr . Ihe Ih~'. ll l· 1 111 cw lllgical dystopia produced the foll owing vision, in Pintt~r's suggcslively litkd play The Carewker: 1>/\ V lES

ASTON DA VIlOS ASTON DA VIES ASTON

Looks a hit thick.

Overgrown.

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Yes o

What you got, fish '!

No . There isn ' t anything in there . Pause.

As the millennium approaches and wcjoin Pinter's charaeters in their horror stricken vicw ofthe natural world , we must pause to share Trigorin's yearning: there muSI he a lot a fish in that lake.

References Benjalllin , Walter. I1fulllil1l1liol1s. Translated by Harr-y Zohn. Ncw Yo rk : Sehoeken Books. 1968. Chekhov, Anton. FOllr Cireal Plays hy C!u!ldlOV. Translated by Constanee Gamett . New York: Bantam Books. 1958. Freneh. Roderick S. " Is Ecologieal HUlllanisrn a Contradiction in Terrns'l The Philo sophical Found ations of the Humanities under Attack. " Ecological COI1SCiOllSlless . Edited by Robert C. Sehultz and J . Donald Hughes. Washington, D .e.: University Press of Allleriea, 198!. Harrison , Robert Pogue. Fores!s: The Slwdo!F o/ Civilizalioll. Chicago and Londo n: University of Chicago Press. 1992. Ibsen , Henrik . TI/ e Wild Duck. In FOL/r Majo,. Plays. Transla ted by Rolf Fjeldc. New York: New American Libra ry , 1965. Jacobso n, Lynn. "Green Theatrc: Confessions ofan Eco-reporter. " Americ(ln Thealre, Vol. 8. No. 11. r:ebruary 1992: 16- 25 , 55. Kohlmaier. Georg and Ba rna von Sa rtory. J-!ouscs of Glass: A Nil1l!/l!el1/h-Cenlury Building Type. Translatcd by John C. Harvey_ Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M IT Press, 1986. K ushner . Tony. Angels in AlI1l'riCl/: Jvfillcl1l1iul1I Approaches. New York: Theatre Communieations Group, 1993. Lavery , Bryony. Origil1 o//he Species. In Play.\" 17-" WO/1/el1 , Vol. 6. London : Methuen, 1987. Marranea . Bonnic. "Reading Chekhov ." Thl!alrell'rilil1gs. New Yo rk: Performing Arts Joumal Publications, 1984. _-o" Robert Wilson and the Idea of the Archive: Dramaturgy as an Eeology."

Per(orming Arls jounwl. 1993. Oelschlm:ger. Max . Th e /dco o/ JVildem ess: Frol/1 Prehislory lo Ihe Age cd Ecology. New Ilaven a nd I.ondon : Yale Universi ty Press, 1991. Portero Roy. 'T iclJ uf D rc:lms." Tite Nc:lI' I~epllhlic . July 5, 1993 ::n - 36. Rcad , Alan. T I/I'lIl n' lIl/tl H I,.'fI 'c/III' Ufi': AII Elhics (~r Pcrfim11!lI1!'e . London and New Yurk : RoUlkd )!c. 1110 \ 10 \

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Ri wl'a , JOS":, M(//i.l'lIl. 111 ," "/1'1'/1'(/1/ 1I1<'(/(I'e, Vol. 10, No , /!,~, .Il1ly!AuguSI 1'J')\. SCSSiOIlS, Ge orgc, "Shallow and Ikep Ecology: A Rc view PI' Ihe I'hilllsophical l.iter. aturc," E{'()!ogim! ClJ/l,I'ci(}/lSlles.\', Edited by Robcrt C. Schllltz and .1, D o nald Il1Ighcs, Washington, D,C.: Univcrsity Press of America, 1981, Williams, Rayrn o nd, "Social Environment and Theatrical Environment: The Casc 01' English Naturalism," English nl'(/I/'Ia: hmns (IlJd nl.'l'e!opmelll, Edited by Marie Axton and Raymolld Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. White, Lyl1n, "The Historical Roots 01' Our Ecological Crisis," Scien ce, Vol. 155, No. 3767. March 10. 1967.

61

BR ECHTIAN TH EO RY/

FEM INI ST TH E O RY

Toward a gestic feminist criticism Elin Diam()nd

Sourcc; Tj)R: The .!oumal o/ Performan ce Sludie.l' 32(1) (198 8): X2 '14.

This essay begins and ends with a short text on pointing. [n the 1930s, Gertrude Stein and Alice Taklas. on their American lecture tour, were driving in the country in Western Massachusetts. Toklas pointed out a batch 01' c1ouds. Stein replied, "Fresh eggs." Toklas insisted that Stein laok at the c1ouds. Stein replied again, "Fresh eggs." Then Toklas asked, "Are you making symbolicallanguage?" " No," Stein answered, 'Tm reading the signs. 1 love to read the signs". (Stimpson 1986: 7) One might d'evote an essay merely to unpacking this statement rol' its histor icaL discursive, and sexual resonances. Let me just say that Toklas's irritation seems justified. She is pointing to c1ouds; they have an ontological. referential status (/.1 c1ouds, but Stein playfully crosses ontology with textuality, object with symbol, referent with signo Acting the sclf-conscious spectator, Stein produces a reading and says t11at ¡!wl is more pleasurable than any Massa chusetts c1ouds. 1 am concerncd with how we point to and read signs in the theatrc, and by "we" 1 mean fcminist critics and theorists and also students of Brccht's theatrc theory- an unlikely group, but then this is part of my argument. 1 would suggest that feminist theory and Brcchtian theary need to be rcad intertextually, for among the effccts of sLlch a rcading are a recovery of thc radical potential of the Brechtian critiq ue and a discovery , for fcminist theory, af thc specifici ly 01' theatre. ' ;\ I the o lltscl I shOli ld say 1hut like (rcrtrude Stein 's clouds, feminist thcory 'IIl U Rmchti;¡1I Ill l'OI v 11 1\ ' 1l1\wing. changin g discourscs, OpCIl lo Illultiplc mi

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rcadings. Thc 1Illlbn:l!a tcrlll " fcm inist thw ry" ¡;,lVCI :; k lllinist fillll thcory, feminist literary theory , psychm11lalytic f<.' minist thcory, socialist f'eminist theory , black feminist thcory, lesbian feminist theory, cross-cultural fCmini ~ 1 theory·- --many ofwhich combine undcr different rubrics with different topoi, different political iofleetions. Yet perhaps al! theories that call themsel vcs "feminist" share a goal: the passionate analysis of gender in materia 1 soci al relations and in discursive and representational structures, especially theat re and film , which involve scopic pleasurcs and the body. Brechfs theatre theory, writtcn over a 30-year period, constantly reformulates its concepts but it , too, has certain concerns: attention to the dialectical and contradic tory forces within social relations, principally the agon of class conflict in it:s changing historical forms ; commitment to alienation tcchniques amI non mimetic disunity in theatrical signification ; " litcrarization" of the thcatre space to produce a spectatorlreadcr who is not intcrpolated into ideology but is passionately and p1easurably engaged in observation and analysis. Now feminists in film studies have been quick to appropriate elements of Brecht's critique 01' the theatre apparatus. 2 ,In Summer 1974, the British film journal SCl'eel1 published a Brecht issue whose stated purpose was a consideration 01' Brecht's theoretical texts and the possibility 01' a revolu tionary cinema. In Autumn 1975, Laura M ulvey published hcr influentiaJ essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" in which, employing psych o analysis "as a political weapon ," she argues that Hollywood film con ven tions construct a specifical1y male vie\ving position by aligning or suturi ng the male's gaze to that 01' the fictional hero, amI by inviting him thereby both to identiry narcissistically with that hero and to fetishize the femalc (turning her into an object 01' sexual stimulation) (1975: 6). In rejecting this dominant cinematic tradition, Mulvey powerfully invokes Brechtian concepts: The first blow against the monolithic accumulation 01' traditional film conventions [ ... ] is to free the 100k 01' the camera into its materiality in time and space amI the look 01' the audience into dialectics, passionate detachment. (1975: 18) Oemystifying representation , showing how amI when the object 01' pleasure is made, releasing the spectator from imaginary and illusory identificatio ll S - these are crucial e1ements in Brecht's theoretical project. Yet we feminist s in drama and theatre stlldies have attended more lO the critique of the gaze than to the Breehtian intervcntion that signals a way of dismantling the gaze, Feminist film theorists, follow-travcling with psyehoanalysis and semio tics , have given us a lot to thin k a bout. bu t we, through Brechtian theory, have something to gi-ve them: eL fema1c body in representation tbat rcsists fetish iza tion amJ a viable pOsition for the kmak spec tator. \0(,

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In tlIis CM~:t y, 1hl'lI , I 11,1 H' 1" 11 )111' pll'iCS . O nc. :tll inlc rtcxt lIal rcadi IIg 01' h:y topui nI' fCllli nist tllCl1ly: )' l.: lldL" l.'l llltlllC amI sex ual dill'erenee; questions 01' :tuthority in WIlI\ICII's writiu!! alld womcn ' s hi~tory ; spcetatorship and the body - with kcy topoi in Brcchtian thcory. Velji·cmdul1g.l'eITek/ , thc "not, b ut," historicization, and Ces/u.\'. Two, cmerging from this intertexting, a proposal ror a theatre-spccific feminist criticismo I call it "gestic criticism" amI close the cssay with a brier example (my seeond text on pointing). Somc q uick qualifications ami c1arifieations: I realize that feminists in drama stlldies might greet this coupling with some bemusement. Brecht exhibits a typieal Marxian blindness toward gender relations , and except for some interesting exeursions into malc erotic vio1ence, he created conventionally gen dered plays amI too many saintly mothers (one is too many). Moreover, the postmodern critique or Brecht by Hciner M üllerites should not be ignored , particularly the rejeetion of the Brechtian "fable" whieh M üller describes as a "dosed form" that the audience accepts as a " package, a eommodity" (Weber 1980: 121). This essay brackets both Brecht's plays amI their retrograde (ami unBreehtian) stagings in the German Democratic Repllblic amI the West over the last three decades. My interest lies in the potentiality 01' Brecht's theory for feminism , and, as I mentioned aboye, a possib1c re-radicalization 01' his theory through feminism oIn current literary theory, especially from the English Left , Brecht's eoncepts have beco me weapons in campaigns against mimetic linearity (sec Dollimore 1984), bourgeois na turalisl11 (see Barker 1984), ando in a fine reading by Terry Eagleton (1986), on the side of deconstructive rhetoric. Even Toril Moi (Oxford-based Norwegian), in her notorious Sexual/ Tex/ual Politics, parses the feminisms by enlisting Brecht's debate with Lukacs on the question 01' socialist realism to challenge Anglo-American (:fitics 01' Virginia Woolf(1985: 17). Strange bedfellows perhaps, but the point I wish to make is that these critics have understood that Brechtian theory in all its gaps and ineonsisteneies is not !iterary criticism , but rather a theorizing 01' the workings 01' an apparatus of representation with enormOllS formal and polit ical resonanee. I think we should be long past the point 01' accepting Martin Esslin 's view tha t Brecht's theories " werc merely rationalizations of intuition , taste, amI imagination" (1971: 146), or Erie Bent1cy' s view that the theory is a didactic distraetion from Brecht's true art (1981 : 46ff). Herbert Blau has the best ifnot the last word on theory-versus-practice debates: "Theater is theory, or a shadow 01' it. [ ... ]1 n the aet 01' seeing, thefe is already theory (1982: 1).

Gender, Vcrfremdungseffekt The cornerstone 01' Brecht's theory is the Verfremdungscffekt, the technique of defamiliarizing a word, an idea , a gesture so a s to enable the specator to see 01' hear il af'n:sh : "" rc prese ntation lhat al ienates is olle which allo ws LIS to rccogni zc it'i s llhi ~'v l hul:t t Ihe s:tmc time makes it seem lIll familiar" (Ilrecht Il)(A 192 ); "t h\' Á ti " 'l ll' '' li ',I ~h nI' t IIrning an ohject rrom sllmething orJinary \11 !

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alld i11 11 llcdia lc\y acccssibk: il1lo Slllllclhing pecllli¡u . sI' rI..i llg, ;lIld 11l1l'XpCCled" (1964: 143). In pe rformance (he actor "a lienalcs" ralhcr lhan impersonales her character: shc " quotcs" or demonstrates the character's behavior instead 01' identifying with it. Brecht theorizes that ir the performer rcmains outside the character's feelings. the audience may also, thereby remaining free to analyze and form opinions about the play 's "t~lble," Verfremdungseffekt also challenges the mimetic property of acting that semioticians call iconicity, the Ülct that the performer's body conventionally resembles the object (or char acter) to which it refers. This is why gender critique in the theatre can be so powerful. Gende r refers to the words, gestures, appearances , ideas, and behavior that dominant culture understands as indices 01' feminine or mascllline identity. When spectators "see" gender they are seeing (and reproducing) the cultural signs of gender, and by implication, the gender ideology of a culture. Gender in fact provides a perfect illustration of ideology at work since "feminine" or "masculine" behavior usually appears to be a "natural"- and thus fixed and unalterable- extension of biological sexo Feminist practice that seeks to expose 01' mock the strictures of gender usually uses sorne vcrsion of the Brechtian A-effect. That is, by alienating (not simply rejecting) iconicity, by foregrollnd ing the expectation of resemblance, the ideology of gender is exposed and lhrown back to the spectator' In Caryl Churchill's play Cloud 9, cross dressing. in which the male body can be seen in feminine c1othes, provides A-effects for a gender critique or the familial and sexual roles in Victorian colonial society. In lesbian performances at New York's WOW Cafe- I'm thinking or HollyHughes 's Lady Dick and Split Britches' Upwurdly Mohile Home- and in the broadly satirical monologs of Italy 's Franca Rame, gender is exposed as a sexual costumc, a sign of a role, not evidence ofidentity. Recall ing such performances should remind us of the rigorous self-consciollsness that goes into even the most playful gender-bending. I\ -effects are not easy to produce, but the payotTs can be stunning. When gender is "alicnated" or fore grounded, the spectator is enabled to see a sign system as a sign system-- the appearance. \\Iords, gestures. ideas, attitudes, etc., that comprise the gender lexicon become so many illusionistic trappings to be put on or shed at will. Understanding gender as ideology-·as a system 01' beliefs and behavior mapped across the bodies of Jemales and males, which rein forces a sociaJ status quo·-is to appreciate the continued timeliness 01' Vcrti"Cmdungserfekt, the purpose of which is to denaturalizc ami dct~lmiliarize what ideology makes seem normal, acceptable, inescapable.

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oppOSiliolls hlll aS;1 po s~lhh' I d l'H.:I1 Cl: lo dil"ICrclwcs wilhin :-;cxlwlity. Ilakc my l:lIC Iwn: par lly fn lllllhe puslslrllcturalist privilcging 01' "dit'fcrence" across all rcprcscnlalional syslcll1s. parliclllarly languagc. Derridean deconstruction posits lhe disturbance 01' the signifier within the linguistic sign 01' word; the scemingly stable word is inhabited by a signifier that bears the lrace of another signifier and another, so that containcd within the meaning ofany given word is the trace ofthe word it is not. Thus the word is always different from itself, 01', as Barbara Johnson patiently teases out its connotati ons. "difference " refers not to what distinguishes one identity from another- " it is not a difference between [ ... ] independcnt units [ .. . ] but a difference within " (1980: 4). Texts, she argucs, are not different froll1 other texts but different from thcmselves . Deconstruction thus wreaks havoc on identity , with its connotations of wholeness and coherence : if an identity is always difrerent from itself it can no lon ger he an identity. Sexual d(fference , then. might be seen to destabilize the bipolar oppositions that constítute gender idcntity. Psychoanalysis offers other cues. Despite the normative tone of his gender distinctions, Freud also makes elear that lhe drives and desires that constitute sexuality do not add IIp to a stable identity: [W]e are accustomed to say that every human being displays both male and remale instinctual impulses, needs and attributes; but though anatomy it is true, can point out the characteristic of maleness and fema1cness, psychology cannot. For psychology the contrast between the sexes fades away into one between activity and passivity , in which we far too readily identify activity with maleness and passivity with temaleness, a view which is by no means uni versally confirmed. (in Watney 1988: 16)

Gender critiq ue in artisti<.: and discursive practices is ~) ftcn and wrongly confused Wilh another topos in Ii!m in isl theory: sex ual dirfc r\!llcc. I wo uld proposc thal "sexua l c..I ini!rCIl\."c" hl' lInd¡;r-;lo()d 1101 as a WIII III VI Il l"or I!cl1lkr

In fact the Frcudian account 01' the diverse identifications and effects 01' childhood sexuality lIndermine the idea of a stable-gendered subject. To paraphrase Gayle Rubin , women and men are certainly different. but gender coerciely translates the nuanced dirrerences within sexuality into a structure of opposition: male vs. remale, masculine vs. reminine, etc. (see 1978: 179). In my reading 01' Rubin. the "sex-gender system ," the trace of the difference of sexuality is kept alive within the sterile opposition of gender. 1 am suggesting that sexual difference is where we imagine, where we theorize; gender is where we live, our social address, although most of us , with an effort, are trying to leave home. Le! me put it another way: no feminist can ignore the social and political battlefleld of gender, but no feminist can ignore the facl that the language of the battlcfleld is a system based on difference whose traces contain ollr m ost r(lwcrful desin:s. Keeping Ji lTcrclH.;Cli in view imacad 01' conform ing to stable represen ta tions of idcn lily, ;'lId 1i/l1\¡II~ I ltrlsl ' diflá('/lcc'\" lo (f practical politics are key to Brcl:hl\ Ihcmy nI' 111(' " 11 01 hlll ," a fl:alurc o f alicnatcd actin g lhal 1 read

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inLcrLcxLually \Vilh lhe scx-gcnucr SysLclll , "Whcn lall ~I d orl aplwars 011 slagc, besiucs what he actually is doing he \ViII at all cssclIlial points discover, specify, imply what he is not doing; that is he will act in such a \Vay that the alternative emerges as dearly as possible, that his acting allo\Vs the other possibilitics to be inferred anu only represents one 01' the possible variants , [ ... ] Whatever he doesn ' t do must be eontained and conserved in what he does" (Brecht 1964: 137), Each action must contain the trace of the action il represses, thus the meaning of each action contains difference. The audience is invited lo look beyond representation- beyond what is authoritatively put in view- to the possibilities 01' as yet unarticulated actions or judgments. Brecht 's early plays, partieular1y In lhe .Iung/e o{ Cilies, thematize the "not, but": " I'm never anything more than half," says Mary Garga, \Vho doesn 't have the plcasure 01' joining the men in what Brecht called "the idealist dialectie" 01' the play 01' "the pure joy 01' fighting. " Contemporary feminist plays by Michelene Wandor, Caryl Churchill , and Adrienne Kennedy also thematize the "not, but" in their sex-gender referents, but it would be inter esting to query sex-gender nuanees in ¡\![easure lor Measure, The Master Builder, and No lV/an 's Lwul to name only three. The Brechtian " not, but " is the theatrical and theoretical analog to the subversiveness of sexual difference, becallse it allows us to imagine the decon struction of gender--·and all other- representations. Such deconstructions dramatize, at least at the level of theory, the infinite play of difference that Derrida calls écrilllre- the supertluity of signification that places meaning beyond capture within thc covers 01' the play 01' the hours 01' performance. This is not to deny Brecht's wish for an instructive, analytical theatre; on the contrary, it invites the participatory play of the spectator, and the possibility for which Brecht most devoutly wished , that significance (the production of meaning) continue beyond play's end, congealing into choice and action after the spectator lea ves the theatre.

History, historicization The sex-gendcr system requires contextualization. The understanding 01' \Vomen 's material conditions in history and the problematics of uncover ing " \Vomen's history " are topoi in feminist theory that Brechl's theory of historicization greatly informs. Of course there must be limits to this disclls sion: Brecht was not writing history, but as a student devoted to the MarxisL "c1assics" Brecht understood social relations, particularly c1ass relations, as part of a moving dialecLic. The crux of "hisloricization" is chango: through A-effects spectators observe the polential movement in c1ass rcJations, dis cover the limitations and sLrenglhs o f Iheir o\Vn perceptions, and begin lo change their lives. There is a double 1lI0vcmcnL in Brechlian historicization 0 1' pre~erv ing Ihe "dis ting uishing Illark s" 01' Ihe past anu m:k n(M lcdging, even foregroLln ui ng. the
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Brecht says tll,,1 :oi pcct ut o!:', :,llIlIdd IlCl'OIl1C hislorians. he rcfcrs both Lo the slx:clalor's dctachlllcllt, Ilel "eIIIIGII" posiLioll. a/UI Lo Lhc facL thaL she is writing her own hisLory evell as shc absorbs l1lessages from the stage. Historicization is. lhen, (/ lI 'a)' of.l'ccing and the cnemy of recuperation and appropriation. Olle cannot historicize and colonize the Other or, as Luce Irigaray would have it, "reduce all others Lo Lhe economy of Lhe same" (1985: 76). Brecht considered bourgeois illusionism insidious because it is guilty of precisely Lhat: Whcn our theatres perform plays of other periods they like to anni hilate distance, fill in the gap, gloss over the differences. But what comes in our delight in comparisoos, in distance, io dissimilarity which is at the samc time a dclight in what is c10se and proper to ourselves? (Brecht 1964: 276) In historicized performance, gaps are not to be filled in, seams and contradic tions show in all their roughncss, and Lherein lies one aspect of spectatorial pleasure- when our differences./i-om the past and IVilhin the present arc palp able, graspable, applicable. Plays aspiring to realistically depict the present require the same historicization. Realism disgusted Brecht not only because it dissimlllates its conventions but beca use it is hegcmonic: by copying the surface details 01' the world it offers the illusion 01' lived experience, cvcn as it marks off only one vcrsion of that experience. 4 This is perhaps why the most innovative women playwrights refuse the seamless narrative of conflicting egos in c1assic realism. Consider Adriennc K'c nnedy's FUl1l1yhollse of' a Negro 01' The O\VI An.l'wer.l' which lurch and reach through memory/fantasy staking the real in obsessional repetition and in fragmentcd characters who embrace and speak from Lheir di1'fcrence. Kennedy rejecLs the Brechtian fable- narrative progress is meaning\ess in her worlds·- -and instead dramatizes gaps and con tradictions as, precisely, the black woman's experience of history. Brcchtian historicization challenges the presumed ideological neutrality of any histor ical retlection. Rather it assumes, and promotes, what historians are no\\' c1aiming: Lhat readerlspectators of " facts " and "evenLs" will , like Gertrude Stein reading the c1ouds , translate what is inchoate into signs (and stories), a move that produces not " truth ," but mastery and pleasure.

Spectator, body, historicization H isLoricization in facL puts on the table the issuc of spectatorship and the performcr's bnd y. According Lo Brechl. one way that the actor alienates or dislances lhc "u uicncl! I'rolll lhe characLer is to suggest the historicity of the dlaradc r in cnn t lUs l lo Ihe actor's ()wn prcsent-time sclf-awareness on stage. Thl~ acl lll I11l1s l IH It (¡ Jsr IH'\:.e lJ" in lhe characler blll ralher demol1.1'lrale the \11

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charactcr as a l'ullctioll 01' parlil'lliar SOCillhislorica l rl'latHHIS. a conduil 01' particular choiccs. As Timothy Wilcs pllts it, actor ami :tlldiellce, both in present time, " Iook back on" the historical character as she fumbles throllgh choices and judgments (1980: 72). This does not. however, endow the actor with slIperiority, for as Wiles later points out this present-time actor is also fragmented: "Brecht separates the historical man who acts from the aesthelic function of the actor" (1980: 85). The historical subject p/ays an actor pre sumed to have superior knowledge in relation to an ignorant character fmm the past, but the subject herself remains as divided and uncertain as the spectators to whom thc play is addressed. This performer-subject neither disappears into a representation of the character /lO/' into a representation of the actor; each remains processllal , historical , incomplete. And the spectator? Aware of three tempora/ities within a single stage figure the spectator can not read one without the other; her/his gaze is constantly split; her/his "l'ou/oi/'- J!oi,." (Pavis 1982: 88)--the wanting to see ami know all without any obstacle· - is deflected into the dialectic ofwhich the divided performer is only a parto Moreover, in reading a complex everchanging text, spectators are "pulled out of[their] fixity" (Heath 1974: 112); they become part of- indeed they produce- the dialectical comparisons and contributions that the text enacts.

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The special characteristics of Brechtian reception emerge in relation to analogolls processes in film theory. In psychoanalytic film theory, the film text and the viewing-state are set in motion by unconscious fantasy .5 In Ihe darkened room, in immobile seats, the spectator enters what Jean-Louis Baudry calls a "state of artificial regression" (1980: 56), the womblike effects orfilm viewing which confuse bOllndaries and send the subject back to earlier stages of psychic development, particular'!y the Lacanian mirror phase in which the infant, lacking controlled motor development, sees its image in a mirror or in its caretaker's eyes as a coherent who/e. Misrecognizing himself (the male infant is specifically at issue here) as a complete, alltonomous other, he spends the rest of his life unconsciously seeking an imaginary ideal- and discovers him , so the theory goes , at the movies. Now the differences between the Brechtian spectator and the cinematic spectator are obvious. The last thing Brecht wants is a spectator in a "state of artificial regression," in thrall to his imaginary ideal. Brechtian theory formu lates (and refonnulates) a spectatorial state that breaks the sllturing ofimagin ary identifications and keeps the spectator independent. M uch influenced by Brecht. Patrice Pavis's semiotics orthe mise-en-scene rests almost entirel y o n the spectator: "[ ... ] the mise-en-scene is not entirely an indication of the intentionality 01' the director, but a structuring by the spectator 01' materials prescnted [ ... ] whose linking is dcpendent on the perceiving subjccl " (Pavis 1 98~ : 138). In film theory the su bjcct position is construcled readY-ll1adc rol' lhe spcctator, only his ca p~ c,;it y t ~\ rcgress is asslIll1cd . In Brechtia n lheory Ihe slI hj.:ct\ capaoity lo rugrt:ss is SUrpf'l.!ssed. Film sern iolics pusils a Spcclél lor

Wllll is giVLlIl Ihe i"lIsinll Ihal he cn:ulcs lile lillll: theatre semiotics posits a speclalor wllose acliw rcceplillll cOllstanlly revises the spectacle's meanings. But Pavis is too mueh nI' a pnstmodem ist to theorize a spectator with total authorily. I le deconstructs the spectatorial position by locating its difference within : "What we nccd ," he says, "is a theory or'reception desire' "- a theory Ihat. without positing a spectator " in a state of artificial regression," accounts fol' tbe spectalor's unconscious desire and Ihereby opens the door to pleasllr able identiflcation with stage figures (Pavis 1982: 158). What does Brecht contribute to " reception desire",! A1though he talks a lot about pleasure, il is Ihe pleasure 01' cognition , of capturing meaning; Brecht does not apparently release the body, eilher on stage or in the audience. The actor's body is subsllmed in the dialectical narrative of social relations; the spectator's body is given over lo rational inqlliry (unless there's pleasure to be had with the Brechtian cigar). And Brecht exhibits the blindness typical ol' all Marxist Iheorists regarding sex-gender configurations. Feminist theory, ho\\' ever, insisls on the presence of the gendered body, 011 the sex-gender system, and on the problematics 01' desire. It is at this point--at the point of conceptualizing an unfetishized fcmalc performer and a femalc spectator-- thal an intertextual reading of Brechtian and feminist theories works productively . Ir feminist theory sees the body as cultura"y mapped and gendered, Brechtian historicization insists that this body is not a fixed essence but a site ofstruggle and change. Iffeminist theory is concerned with the m ultiple and complex signs of a woman 's life: her color, her age, her desires, her politics- what I \Vant to ca" her hisloricitl- Brechtian Iheory gives us a way lo put that historicity on view·--in the theatre. In its conventional iconicity, theatre laminates body to character, but the body in historicization stands visibly and palpably separate froll1 Ihe " role" 01' the actor as we" as the role of the character; it is always insufficient and open . I want to be clear about this important poLnt: The body, particularly the female body, by virtue ofentering the stage space, enters representation- il is not just Ihel'e , a live, unmediated prescnce. but rather (1) a signifying clement in a drama tic fiction; (2) a part oC a theatrical sign system whose eonventions of gesturing, voicing, and impersona ting are referents for both performer and audiencc; and (3) a sign in a system governed by a particular apparatus, usually owned and operated by men for the plcasure of a viewing public whose major wage earners are male. Yel with all these qualifications, Brechtian theory imagines a polyvalence to the body's representation , for the performer's body is al so hislO/'icized. loaded wilh its own history amI that of the character, and these histories ruffle the smooth edges 01' Ihe image. 01' representation. In my hybrid construction based in rerninisl allll Brcchlian theory- the female performer, unlike her (ilmicco unlcrrarl, connot es IlLlt " lo-be-Iooked-at-ness" (Mulvey I975: 11)- t.he per lccl fctish hll l 1;111\\.'1 " llloking-at-bci ng-loo kcd-a l-ness" or even just "Iookin u- ncss.' 1'11 ,1 JlIl"l'It1i ¡¡ n kll, inist body is pa radoxica lly avai lahle rOl'

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Spcctator, author, Gestus The explosive (and elusive) synthesis of alienation, historicization , and the "not, but" is the Brechtian Geslus: a gesture, a word, an action, a tableau by which, separately 01' in series, the social altitudes encoded in the playtext beeome visible to the spectator. A gest beco mes social when it "allows condusions to be drawn about social circumstances" (Brecht 1964: 105). A famous social gest is Helene Weigel's snapping shut her leather money bag arter each selling trans action in Jv!olher COl/roge, thereby underscori ng the contradictions between profitecring and survival- for Brecht the social reality of war. This gest has beeome something of a reification , but Brecht always emphasized complexity: [fhe] expressions O/' a gest are usm.lly highly complicated and con tradictory, SO that they cannot be rendered by any single word and the actor must take care that in giving his image the necessary em phasis he does not lose anything, but emphasizes the entire complex. (1964: 198) The gestic moment in a sense cxplains the play, but it also exceeds the play, opening it to the social and discursive ideologies that infom1 its production. Brecht writes that the scene of the social gest "should be played as a piece of history" (1964: 86) and Pavis elaborates: Gestus makes visible (alienates) "the class behínd the individual, the critiq ue behind the naive object, the commen tary behind the affirmation. [ ... ] [It] gives LIS the key to the relationship between the play being performed and the public. [ ... )" (1982: 42). If we read feminist eoncerns back into this discllssion, the social gest signifies a moment of theoretical insight into sex-gender complexities, not only in the play's "fable," but in the culture which the play, at the moment 01' reception , is dialogically reflecting and shaping. But this moment 01' vis·ibility or insight is the very moment that complicates the viewing process. Because the Gestus is effected by a historical actorl subject, what the spectator sees is not a mere miming of social relationship, but a reading of it, an interpretatíon by a historical subject who supplements (rather than disappears into) the production ofmeaning. As noted earlier, the historical subject playing an actor, playing a character, splits the gaze of the speetator, who, as a reader of a complex sign system , cannot consume or reduce the object of her vision to a monolithic projection 01' the self In fact, Gestus undermines the stability of the spectatorial "selr," for in the act oflooking the spectator engages with her own temporality. She, too . bccomes historicized in motion and at risk , but also free tú com pa re lhe actor/ch uradcr's si g n~ lo "wllat is dosc and prope r to pllTsc1rr her ma terial conditions, her polit ics, q ;I

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hl'r sk in, hl:r lb,irl.'s. SIIIIII ! ' 111'1 111 lite dark , bul i!l tite Brechtian semi-lit smllkcr's thcatn:, the spl'vtallll slill has the pnssibility of pleasurablc identi fication. Th is is el'kctcd !Iot th rough imaginary projection onto an ideal but through a triangular structure 01' actorlsubject - character -spectator. Looking at the character. the spectator is constantly intercepted by the actorlsubject , and the latter, heeding no fourth wall, is theoretically free to look back. The difference , then, between this triangle and the familiar oedipal one is that no one side signifies authority, knowledge, or the law. Brechtian theatre depends on a structure of representation, on exposing and making visible, but what appears even in the Gestus can only be provisional, indcter minate, nonauthoritative. 7 This feminist rereading 01' Gestus makes room , at least theoretically, for a viewing position for the female spectator. Because the semiosis of Gestus involves the gendered bodies 01' speetator, actorlsubject , and character, al1 \vorking togcther but nel'er harmoniously, there can be no fetishiz.ation and no end to signification. In this Brechtian-feminist paradigm, the spcctator's look is freed into "dialectics, passionate detachment" (Mulvey 1975: 18). She might borrow Gertrude Stein's line, and give equal emphasis to each word: "1 love to rcad the signs." 11' Gestus invites us to think about the performer and the spectator in their historical and sexual specificity, it also asks us to consider the author's inscription . "The author's attitude to the public, that of the era represented and of the time in which the play is performed, the collective style 01' acting 01' the charactcrs, etc., are a few 01' the parameters 01' the basic Geslu.l''' (Pavis 1982: 42). 1n the case of women writers and particularly of women dramatists , the erasure from history has been so nearly complete that the feminist critic feels compelled to make sorne attempt at recovery- and here Brechtian theory, fellow-traveling with feminist theory, suggcsts a critical practice- gestic fem inist criticism- that would contextualiz.e Clnd rec\aim the author. A gestic feminist criticism would "alienate" 01' foregrou ml those moments in a playtext in whieh social attitudes about gender could be made visible. It would highlight sex-gender configurations as they conceal or disrupt a coercive or patriarchal .ideology. lt would refuse to appropriate and naturalize male or female dramatists, but rather focus on historical material constraints in the production of images. It would attempt to engage dialectically with, rather than master, the playtext. And in generating meanings, it would recover (specifically gestic) moments in which the historical actor, the character, the speetator, und the author enter representation, however provisionally.

Gestic feminist criticism, Aphra Behn In the brief' S]1a!;\,' rl'lTIi lin in g. il is impossible to tlesh out this critical schema, b ut l want I n dla\\' ""l'Illioll Il) iI gcstic momen t that A phra Behn has rroviJcu in IIIl; plll lllp , .1 h... lil :,t play, produced in 1670. ¡\ mid dle-c1ass '.1 '

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\Vomall \Vitl! rrestigiolls COIlIJel'liol1s but 110 suppOrlillg ralllily, a former spy and recent inmate in dcbtor's prison , Behn had her first p lay rroduced ror the Duke's company , originall), patented to William Davcn ant, and very much committed to the Davenant style 01' movable scenes, machines, spectacul a r tableaux, songs, and dances. The Restoration theatre \Vas fully "culinary" in its desire to lure and entertain the public exclusivel)' for private profrt. It was also, from the giver of the royal patent to the patentees and playwrights, lIpper c1ass and maleo ~ The audience, historians are finall)' tc1ling us, \vas more varicd- - and con tradictory--than \Vas previously believed . Professional men and respectable \Vomen and their maids \Vent regularly to the theatrc, as did noisy unattach ed rakes, prostitutes, and members 01' royal entourage. There had been wome n writers--the Duchess ofNewcastle, Katherine Phillipps, and Frances Boothby each had a play produced. But when Behn's 711C Forccd MarriaKc, 01' 711C Jealous Br¡deKroo!1l opened in December 1670, it was a novelty and no one knew whether she would ha ve staying power. The female performer, having arrived on the professional stage onl)' ten years earlier, thollgh she was paid a lower salary than her malc colleagues. had already proved her staying power; in déco1Jetage, in breeches, in "undress," the actress represcnted an important financiallure and provocation, especia1ly to male spectators. Conventiona1Jy, the Restoration prolog describes the state of Iiterary pro duction, complains abollt the lowly status ofpoetry, berates the audience for its stupidity, disparages the whorcs, condemns the factions 01' noisy fops , refers to any current political turmoil, introduces and/or pl ayfully positions the author, and, in a vague way, describes the play . In the prolog to her first play, Behn takes note of the factions in the alldience and genders them. She \Hites lines for a perfonner (gender unclear, but I would guess male) who enjoins the males in the audience to be leery of "spies- by implieation whores whom the author has planted "to hold yOLl in wanton Compliment I That so you may not censure what she' as writ,! Which done, they face you down 'twas full ofWit" (Behn 1915: 286). I come no\\', at last, to my second short text on pointing. Within Illoments the stage direetions read "En/a all /1c/rcss," who "POill l ing lo Ihe ludies" asks, "Can any see that glorious Sight and say I A Woman shal1 not Victor prove today'!" In that pointing gesture, the actress sets up a triangular structure- between historieal performer, the role she is destined to play, and the female spectators in the audienee. She also mentions "A Woman " a potential victor, and that seems to have a referent: the writer Aphra Behn (although it eould be one of the females in the play) . In that shared look, actor-subject , charaeter, spectator. and author are momentarily joined, and ror perhaps the first time on the English stage all four positions are fill cd by women . But not ror long. In easting él c10ser eye at the female spectators, the ad ress soon differentiates, anú in spccifically sexual lenns . Insi sling, iron ic ally pcrhaps , IIlat "Thcrc's nol a Vizard in our wh n lc C ahal" slw condem ns

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the lowcr-dass WI\l11I:S IIIl' l' ll ~ ~' I Oí 'Il ~ , " 1ha 1 scollr lin pl'l'y:' bul cnds by promising total J'c muk "SU\.: Iilk c" lo "pll:asurc you " (Ikhn 1915: 286). Whol11 thal " you" IIO\\' designa tes has become fully undecideabk. In the sexual slang 01' the day , actrcss meant whore, authoress was soon to mean whore, and both were eommodities in a pleasure markct whose major con sumers were male. Stil1, before conventional reprcsentation resumes. the signifying space is dominated by the interloeking look ofwomen . I \\fould call the actress's pointing, and the entire prolog, a Gestus, a rnoment when the sex -gender system, theatre polities, and social history cathect and become visible. For the feminist critie and theorist this Gestus marks a first step toward reeovering a \Voman playwright in her sex ual , historieal, and theatr ieal specil1eity. It also marks a site, in the text, of indeterminacy , of multiple meanings - a pleasurable moment for reading the c1ouds.

Notes An carlier version of this papel' \Vas presented at the American T hcater in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference in Chicago. AUgllst 1987. 2 J am grateflll to Barton Byg, whose excellent papel', "Brecht on the Margins: Film amI Feminist Theory " provided mHny useflll insights. :\ Without discussing gender per se, Brecht refers briefty to this phenomen on in the "Short Orgarlllm ," no. 59: "[ ... ] it is also good 1'01' the actors whcn they see their characters copied 01' portrayed in another formo If the' part is played by somebody of ¡he opposite sex the sex 01' the character will be more clearly brollght out [ ... 1 (Brecht 1964: 197). 4 Brecht elaborates in various ways on this point: "The individual whose inner most being is thus driven into the open then 01' course comes to stand for Man with a capital M. Everyone (including the spectator) is then carded a\Vay by the rnomentum of the events portrayed. so that in a performance of Oedipus one has fol' aJl practical purposes an allditorillm full 01' little Oedipuses, an allditorillm ful1 of Emperor Joneses for a pcrformance of The Empero/' J(mes" (in "On the Use 01' MllSic in an Epic T heatrc," Brecht 1964: 87). Abo: "The bourgeois theatre emphasized the timelessness 01' its objects. Its representation of peop1c is bOllnd by the aBeged 'eternally human .' Its sto ry is arranged in such a way as to create ' universal' situations that allow Man with a capital M to express himself: man of every pcriod and every colour" (in "A lienation Effects in Chinesc Acting. " Brecht 1964: 97).

5 J \Vas very mlleh helped by the extensive sllmmary/analysis 01' psychoalla!ytic film thcory in Sandy Flitterman-Lcwis's " Psychoall alysis in Film
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References Barker, Francis 1984, The Trel1ltllotl.l' Privare Bo(I,¡;: E\·soy.\' on Suhjectiol1, London: Methuen. Byg, Barton 1986. " Breeht on the Margins: Film aud Film Theory. " Paper prescnted at the annual eonvcntion of the Modern Language Association . New York , December. Baudry, .Iean-Louis 1980, " The Apparatus: M etapsychologieal Approaehes to th e Impression of Reality, " In Ap/iO/'atus, edited by T heresa Ha k Kyung, 41 - 62. New York: Tanam Press. Behn , Aphra 1915, 7711' Fur c:ed lvlarriaK(', 01" The Jealous Bridegroom, In fhe Works (1 Aphra Be/1I1, vol. 3. cditcd by M olltague Summers, 285 - 381. London . W lTl Heinemann. Bentley. Eric 1981, The Bree/u Cmnmenlaries. London: Methuen. Blau, Hcrbert 1982, Take Up Ih e Bo(hes: Thcaler al Ihe VanishillK POi/1l, Urbana: University of \llinois Press. Brecht, Bertolt 1964. Bree/1l 011 Thealre , edited by .Iohn Willef. New York: Hill and Wang. Brewer, Mária Millich. 1984. "A Loosening ofTongues: From Narrative Economy to Women Writing." MLN9. no. 5 (Deeember): 1141-1161. Diamond , Elin 1985. "Refusing the Romantieism of Identity: Narrative Interventions in Churchill , Benmussa, Duras," Thearre Jour!1a/37 , 110, 3 (October): 273 - 286. Dollimore, Jonathan 1984. Radicol Tragedy: Religio/1, Ideolog)' a/1d POlVer inthe Drama (J/ Sllak e,\ peare alld Hi.l' Conl.emporaries. Chicago: University of Chieago Press. Duffy , Maureen 1977, Tlle Pa.l'.I';o//ale Sheparde.l'.\': Aphra Be/m ( /640 89). London: Jonathan Cape. Eagleton , Terry 1986, "Breeht ami Rhetorie." In Againsl {he Grain: Essays 1975 1985, 167- 172 London: Verso. Esslin, Martin 1971. Br('(,/II: The 1Ha/l al/d Jlis Work. New \(ork: W. W. Norton. Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy 1987. " Psyehoanalysis in Film ami Television." In Chal1nels oj' Dis('ourse: Televisiol1 and COlllempo/'ary Criticisl11, edited by Robert CAllen, 170- 21 () Chapel Hiil: University of North Carolina Press. Heath, Stephen 1974. "Lessons from Breeht. " Sc/'een 15, nO. 2 (Summer): 103- 127. Irigaray, Luce 1985. "The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Felll inine, " In Thi,\ Sex Which 1.1' NOI Dile, translated by Catherine Porter with Ca rolyn Burke. 68-85. Ithaca , NY: Corncll University Press . .Iohnson. Barbara 1980. Tlle Critical Dij/erence: E'\says in Ihe CO/llemporary Rhetoric uI Reading. Raltimore, MD: Johns l'Iopkins lJniversity Press. de Lauretis, Teresa 1984. Alice Doesn'r: Femillism. Sel11iolics, Cin em(/. Bloomington: lJniversity of Indiana Press. Mui , Toril 19R5, S exuallTexlual Polili('.I': F(,/IIinisl Lilerary T heory. London: Mct huell. l\rIul vl.:Y, Laura 1975. " Visual Pleasure :lnd Narrative C inema." S('/"('('1/ 1(,. no, l

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I'avis, I'"tri<;c I() ~ ! r ""'; ",'1'1' " 1 '/1, .";'01.':" /','s,\',/)',' 11/ rllt' .'ú '", i"/"J.!)' 01' rl/(' 1''','lIlr('. Ncw Y MI<. : I'cl lpl! \l lU}' ¡\t l ', JIIIl1 il ll l 1'lIlllicatillns. R ubi n. G uy'~ 1( 7)\ , "1'111: 'J mili,' 111 Wo nH:n: Nolcs 011 the 'Politiecd Ecollomy' of Sex." In TOlVanl (/11 ,.1I/tl1rol/ologr (ir ~V{)II/ell, cditcd by Raylla Reiter, 157- 210, New 'lork: Monthly Revicw Press. Stimpson. Catherine R. 1986, " Stein ami the Transposition of Gender." In Tile Poerics oj'Ge/1der , edited by Naney K. Miller, 1-18. New York: Columbia Univer sity Press. Watney. Simon 1986. "The Banality 01' Gender." In Sexual Dif/erel1ce, edited by Robert Young, 13- 21. London: The Oxford L iterary Review. Weber, Carl 1980. "Breeht in Eclipse?" Tf¡e Drama R,cl'ielV 24, no, 1 ('1'85): 114- 124, Wilcs, Timothy J, 1980, T{¡c T{¡ealer Evel1l: ¡\;/o¡/em T{¡eoric.l' ojPeljim1/0IlCe, Chic1lgo: Thc University 01' O hieago Press,

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Performance's only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented , or otherwise participate in the circulation ofrepresen tations o/ representations: once it does so, it becollles somcthing other than performance. To the degree that performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology. Per formance 's being, like the ontology 01' subjectivity proposed here, becomes itself through disappearance. The pressures brought to bear on performance to succumb lo the laws of the reproductive economy are enormous. For only rarely in this culture is the " now" to which performance addresses its deepest questions valued. (This is why the now is supplemented and buttressed by the documenting camera, the video a rch ive.) Performance occurs over a time which will not be repeated. lt can be performed again, but this repetition itselfmarks it as "different." The doeument 01' a performance then is only a spur to memory, an encourage ment ol' memory to become present. The othcr a rts, especially painting and photography, are drawn increas ingl y toward performance. The French-born artist Sophie Calle, for example, has photographed the galleries of the Isabella Stewart Gardner M useum in Boston . Several valuable paintings were stolen from the museum in 1990. Calle interviewed various visitors and members of the museum staff, asking them to describe the stolen pa intings. She then transcribed thesc texts and placed them next to the ph otugra phs 01' the galleries. Her work :> uggesls that the descri ptio ns a lld mcmnrics 01' lhe paintings eonsti lute lheir co ntinuing " presellcc," d(!spitc Ihe absclln: n I' Ihe pa inlings Ihcmsclveli, C alk ge::;l llres

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Pcrformancc in a strict onlological sensc i~ nnnrcproLlucliw_ Il is Ihis LJualit y which males performance Ihe runt orthe littcrofenntcmporary art. Pcrforrn. ance cJogs the smooth machinery of reproductive representation neccssa ry to the circulation 01' capital. Perhaps nowhere \vas the affinity bctwecn thc ideology 01' capitalism and art made more manifest than in the debates about the funding policics ror the Nalional Endowment for the Arts (NE¡\) ." Targeting both photography and performance art, conservative politicians sought to prevent endorsing Ihe " real " bodies implicated and made visible by these art forms. Performance implica tes lhe real through the prescnce of living bodies. In performance art spectatorship there is an clement of consumption: there are no left-overs, the gazing spectator must Iry to lake everything in . Witho ut a copy, live performance pi unges into visibility - in a maniacally charged present - and disappears into memory, into the realm of invisibilily and the unconscious where it eludes regulation and conlrol. Performance resists the balanced circulations offinance. It saves nothing; it only spends. While photography is vulnerable to charges of counterfeiting and copying, perform ance art is vulnerable to charges 01' valuelessness and emptiness. Performance indicates the possibility of revaluing that emptiness; this potential revalua tion gives performance art its distinctive oppositional edge.' To attempt to writc about the undocumentable event 01' performance is to invoke the rules 01' lhe written document and thereby alter the event itself. J ust as q uantum physics discovered that macro-instrumcnts cannot measure microscopic particles without transforming those particJes, so too must per formance critics realize that the labor lo write about performance (and thus to "preserve" it) is al so a labor that fundamentally alters the event. It does no good, however, to simply refuse to write about performance beca use 01' this inescapable transformation. The challenge raised by the ontological claims 01' performance for writing is to re-mark again the performative possibilities 01' writing itself. The act 01' writing toward disappearance, rather than the act 01' writing toward preservation, must remember that the after-effect 01' dis appearance is the experience 01' subjectivity ,itself. This is the project 01' Roland Barthes in both Camera Lucida and Ro/ami Bartiles hy Ro/anel Barthes. lt is also his project in Empire o./S(rtns, but in th is book he takes the memory ofa city in which he no longer is, a city from which he disappears, as thc motivation for the search for a disappearing perform ative writing. The trace left by tha't script is the meeting-point of a mutual disappearance; shared subjectivity is possible for Barthes beca use t\Vo people can recognize the same Impossible. To Iive for a love whose goal is to sha re the Impossiblc is both a humbling projcct and an exceedingly ambitious one, rol' it seeks to fino connection only jn that which is no longer there. Mernory. Sight. Love. It must involve a full seeing orthe Other's abselKc (Ihe é1mbitio LJ1:i

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par!),;¡ l-:el'ill g \Vllldl :dti(\ \1I1 .I' l. II ll' ,Wk ll llW lcdg.II11'lIt or Ille O lhl'r's rrcscl1ú: (lite Itlllllhling p:III). 1'\11 11 . ,lck llmvleJ ge Illl~ O ther's (alwa ys partia!) prcs l:IKC is lo ackl10wlcdgc \)IIC's \)W11 (always partial) absencc. In thc I¡eld llflinguislics, thc pcrfórlllalivc speech act shares wilh the ontology of performance lhe inability to be rcproduced 01' repeated. "Being an indi vidual and historical act, a performative uttcrance cannot be repeated. Each reproduction is a new act performed by someone \Vho is qualified. Otherwise, the rcproduction 01' the performative utterance by someone else necessarily transrorms it into a constative utterance."4 Writing, an activity which relies on the reproduction orthe Same (Ihe three letters cal \ViII repeatedly signify the four-Iegged fUlTy animal with whiskers) for the production ofmeaning, can broach the frame 01' performance but can not mimic an art that is nonreproductive. The mimicry of speech and writing, the strange process by which we put words in each other's moulhs and others' words in our own, relies on a substitutional economy in which eq uivalencies are assumed and re-esta blished . Performance refuses this system 01' exchange and resists the circulatory economy fundamental to it. Performance honors the idea that a limited number of peoplc in a specific time/space frame can have an experience of value which Ieaves no visible trace arterward. Writing about it necessarily canccls the "tracelcssness" inaugurated within this per formative promise. Performance's independence from mass reproduction, technologicaJly, eeonomically, and l,inguisticaJly, is its greatest strength. But buffeted by the encroaching ideologies of capital and reproduction , it fre quently devalues this strength. Writing about performance 01'ten , unwittingly , encourages this weakness and falls in behind the drive 01' the document/ary. Performance's chaJlenge to writing is to discover a way for repeated words to become performative utterances, rather than , as Benveniste warned , constative utterances. The distinction between performative and constative lItterances was pro posed by J. L Austin in HOIV To Do Things With Words-' Austin arglled that speech had both a constative element (describing things in the world) and a performative elcment (to say something is lo do or make sornething, e.g. "1 promisc," "1 bet," " 1 beg"). Perfonnative speech acts refer ol1ly to themselves, they cl1acl the activity the speech signifies. For Derrida, performative writing promises fidelity only to lhe utterance ofthe promise: 1 promise to utter this promisc. 6 The performative is important lO Derrida precisely beca use it displays language's independencc from the referent outside ofitself. Thus, for Derrida the performative enacts the now of writing in the present time. 7 Tania Modleski has rehearsed Derrida's rclation to Austin and argues that " feminist critical writing is simultaneously performative and utopian" ("Sorne Functions" : 15). Thal is, feminiSt critical writing is an enactment of belief in a bc tte r fut urc: Ihe :te l 01' writing brings tha t futu re cJ oser. ~ Modleski goes f.. rther loo and s;l ys Ihal w ~ )lllen's Tela tion lo lhe perfo rlllative mode 01' writin g :ll1d spi..'cd l I ~ "~Jln·I:"l y inll'nsc b CC.l lI SC WQ men a re nol assured lhe 1:2-'

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luxllry 01' lIlakillg lillgu istic prollliscs withill r hall ogocc lltrisl1I, sincc all too orten she is what is promiscd. Commcnting on Shoshana Fchnan's account nI' thc "scandal 01' the speaking body," a scandal Felman c1ucidates through a reading 01' Moliere's non Jual1, Modleski argues that the scanoal has oiffer ent affects and effects for women than for meno "[T]he real. historical scandal to which feminism aooresses itselfis surely not to be equated with thc writer at the center 01' oiscourse , but thc woman who remains outside 01' it, not wi th the 'speaking booy ,' but with the 'm ute body'" (ibio.: 19). Feminist critica l writing, Mooleski argues, "worh toward a time when the traditionally mute body, ' the mother.' will be given the same access to ' the names ' -. language and speech - that men have enjoyed" (ibio.: 15). Ir Modleski is accurate in suggesting that the opposition for feminists who write is between thc "speak ing bodies" of men and the " mute bodies" of women, ror performance the opposition is between " the body in pleasure" and , to invoke the title 01' Elaine Scarry's book, "the body in pain ." In moving from the grammar of words to the grammar 01' the booy, one moves from the realm of metaphor to the realm of metonymy. For performance art itself however, the refercnt is always the agonizingly relevant booy ofthe performer. Metaphor works to secure a vertical hierarchy of value ano is reproouctive; it works by erasing oissimilarity and negating oifference; it turns two into one. Mctonymy is aoditive and associative; it works to secure a horizontal axis of contiguity ano oisplacement. "The kettle is boiling" is a sentence which assumes that water is contiguous with the kettle. The point is not that the kettle is Iike water (as in the metaphorical love is like a rose), but rather the kettle is boiling because the water inside the kettle is. In performance, thc body is metonymic 01' self, of character, of voice, of " presence." But in the plenituoe of its apparcnt visibility ano availability, the performer actually disappears and represents something else - oance, movement, sound, char aeter, "art." As \ve diseovered in relation to Cindy Sherman 's self-portraits, the very effort to make the female body appear involves the adoition 01' something other than "the booy.'· That "addition " becomes the object 01' the spectator's gaze, in much the way the supplement functions to secure a nd displace the fixeo meaning ofthe (Aoating) signifier. Just as her body remain s unseen as " in itself it really is," so too ooes the sign t~lil to reproduce the referent. Performance uses the performer's booy to pose a question about the inability to secure the relation between subjectivity and the booy pe,. se; per formance uses the booy to frame the lack 01' Being promiseo by and through the body - that which cannot appear without a supplement. In employing the body metonyrnically, performance is capable of resisting the reproduction 01' metaphor. ano the metaphor J'11l most keenly interested in rcsisting is the metaphor 01' genoer. a metaphor which upholos the vertit.:al hierarch y 01' value through systematic Illarking 01' the positi ve élnd the ncg a tivc. In order to enact Ihis ma rki ng. the m ela rh o r 01' gcn<.lc r preslI l"l"OSC:; uni fied boo ics which an: bio lul!ically dilkn.:nl. More sr cl:i lka lly, Ihc!)\! llIl il1cd

hodics arc dilr~ITl1t il1 " Ull,,''' a~pc~1 ur Ihe boJ)', Ihat is lo sayo dincrclll'e is 10l'ated in the genitals . J\s MacCannell points out about Lacan 's story 01' the "Iaws 01' urinary segregation" (/::crifs: 151 l, same sex bathroorns are social institutions which further the metaphorical work of hioing gender/genital oilTerence. The genitals themselves are forever hiooen withi n metaphor, ano metaphor, as a "cultural worker," continually converts oifference into the Samc. The joined task of metaphor ano culture is to reproduce itself; it aecomplishes this by turning two (or more) into oneY By valuing one gender and marking it (with the phallus) culture reproduces one sex ano one gender, the hommo-sexual. Ir this is true then women should simply oisappear - but they oon ' t. Or 00 they'! 11' women are not reproduced within metaphor or culture, how do they survive? If it is a question 01' survival, why woulo white women (apparently visible cultural workers) participate in the reproouction oftheir own negation? What aspects 01' the bodies ano languages of women remain outsioe meta phor and insioe the historical real? Or to put it somewhat differentIy , how do women reproouce and represent themselves within the figures ano metaphors 01' hommo-sexual representation ano culture'! Are they perhaps surviving in another (auto)reproouctive systern? "What founds our gellder econoll1y (oivision 01' the sexes ano their mutual evaluation) is the exclusion of fhe /I1otlle,. , more speciflcally her body , more precisely yet, her genital.\'. These cannot, must not be seen" (original emphasis; M acCannell , Figuring Lacan: 106). The oiscursive and iconic " noth ingness" 01' the Mother's genitals is what culture ano mctaphor cannot face. They must be effaceo in oroer to allow the phallus to operate as that which always marks, values, ano wounds. Castration is a response to this blinoness to the mother's genitals. In "T he Uncanny" Freuo suggests that the fear of blindness is a oisplacement ofthe deeper fear of castration but sure1y it works the other way as well, or maybe even more strongly. Averting the eyes from the " nothing" 01' the mother 's genitals is the blinoness which fuels castration. This is the blinoness 01' Oeoipus. Is blinoness necessary to the anti-Oedipus'! To Eectra? Does meton ymy need blinoness as keenly as metaphor does? Cultural orders rely on the renunciation of conscious oesire ano pleasure and promise a rewaro for this renunciation . MacCannell refers to this as "the positive promise 01' castration" ano locates it in the idea 01' " value" itsel!' - the desire to be valueo by the Other. (For Lacan, value is recognition by the Other.) The hope ofbecoming valueo prompts the subject to make sacrifices, ano especially to forgo conscious pleasure. This willingness to renounce pleasure implies that the Symbolic Oroer is moral ano that the subject obeys an (inner) Law which affords the subject a veil 01' dignity. Why only lhe veil 01' digni ty as ¡¡gai ns! di gnity itsclf? Because the funoam ental Other (lhe one who gove rns "l h ~ \llh ~ r -;l" ~ lH' " which ghosts the consciolls sccne) is the Symbolic MOII Il.:r. SlIc i ~ 111l' IIk ¡J ()J h ~'1 wll\)1l1 (he SlIhj\!C I wan ! ~ !o be d ign ificu; hu! shc CilIlII I11 .tpJltdl "Il hlll 1111' phallic rcprcscnl
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is IlIedicakJ un Ih \! Jisu ppear;llIcl' o f her Bcing.. '1I \'I w psyí..:llic slIhjec\ pc r~ !'lmns for a phanlom \Vho allows Ihe suhjcct vL!i ls and C1irlains ralhcr Ihan satisfaction. Performance approaches the Real through resisting Ihe melaphorical reduction of Ihe two into the one. But in moving from the aims 01' metaphor, reproduction , and pleasure to those of metonymy, displacement. and pain. performance marks the body itself as loss. Performance is the attempt lO value that which is nonreproductive, nonmetaphorical. This is enacted through the staging of the drama of misreeognition (twins, actors withín characters enacting other characters, doubles, crimes, secrets, etc.) which sometimes produces the recognition of the desire to be seen hy (anel within) the other. Thus for the spectator the performance spectacle is itscif a projection 01' the scenario in which her own desire takes place. More specifically, a genre 01' performanüe art called "hardship art" 01' "ordeal art" attempts to invoke a distinction between presence and representa tíon by using the singular body as a metonymy for the apparently nonreciprocal experience of pain. This performance calls witnesses to the singu,l arity of the individual's death and asks the spectator to do the impossible - to share that death by rehearsing for it. (lt is for this reason that performance shares a fundamental bond with ritual. The Catholic Mass, for example, is the ritualized performative promise to remember and to rehearse for thc Other's death .) The promise evoked by this perfo rmance then is to Icarn to value what is lost, to learn not the mcaning but the value of what cannot be reproduced or seen (again). It begins with the knowledge of its own failure, that it cannot he achieved.

lJ Angelika Festa crea tes performance pieces in which she appears in order to disappear. Her appearance is always extraordinary: she suspends herself from poles; she sits fully drcssed in well-excavated graves attended by a fish ; she stands still on a crowded comer of downtown New York (8th and Broadway) in a red rabbit suit holding two loaves 01' bread ; wearing a mirro r mask , a black, vaguely antiquarian dress, with hands and fcet painted white, she holds a white bowl of fruit and stands on the side of a country road. T he more dramatic the appearance, the more disturbing the disappearance. As performances which are contingent upon disappearance, Festa 's work traces the passing 01' the woman 's body from visibility to invisibility, and back again. What becomes apparent in these performances is the labor and pain of this endless and liminal passing. In her 1987 performance ea lled - appropriatel y - Unlilled DalU"e (Il'ilhfish amI olhers), at The Ex perimenta l Intermedi a Fou nda tion in New York, festa literally hung suspended fro m a pole for twenty-fo ur hours." T he perfonn ance took place bclwecn 1100n on Sal urda y May 10 ami 110011 ~)IJ SUllday 31 . ,- Ji,

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The third il1la g~ Ihcll 111ldcrClIts thl' Iirsl lwn . Tltc plojccled iJJJagl~s 01' Fcsta 's feet seem lo be an hall'-irollic, half-ucvoul allllsioll lo the history 01' rcpresentations o f lhe bloody feet orthe crucified Christ. On the one hand , (one foot?) the projections are like photographic "details" 01' Mannerist paint ings and on the other, they seem to "gro und " the performance; because 01' their size they demand more ofthe spectator's attention . The spatial arrange ment of the room - with Festa in the middle, the feet-screen behind her and to the left, the fish tape in front 01' her also on the left, and the time-eJapsed mini-monitor directly in front of her amI raised, fon.:es the spectator con stantly to look away./i·ol11 Festa's suspended body. In order to look at lhe projected feet, one has to look " beyond " Festa : in order to look at the fish embryo tape or the video monitor recording the performance itself, one has to turn one's back to her. That these projected images seem to be consumabJc while the center image is, as it were, a " blind" image, suggests that it is only through the second-order of re/presentation that we "see" anything. Festa's body (and particularly her eyes) is averted from the spectator's ability to comprehend, to see and thus to seize. The failure to see the eyelI locates Festa's suspended body for the spec tator. The spectator 's inability to meet the eye defines the other's body as lost; the pain of this loss is underlined by the corollary recognition that the represented body is so manifestly and painfully there, for both Festa amI the spectator. Festa cannot see her body beca use her eyes a re taped shut; lhe spectator cannot see Festa and mu st gaze instead at the wrapped shell of a lost eyeless body. As with Wallace Stevens: "The body is no body to be seen/ But is an eye that studies its black lid " - and its back lid -. the Nietzschean h/nlel.Fage (Stevens, "Stars at Tallapoosa "). What is the back question for women? Back against the wal!. Back off. Back out. About face. Loma Simpson's photography has recently raised the question ofthe relation between the about face and the black face . In Guarded Condil/on.\', for example, Simpson reassembles the polaroid fragmented im ages of a black woman's body. Her back faces the viewer; because the images are segmented in three sections vertically and repeated serially in six horizon tal panels, the effort to see her withoul effacing her is made impossible. While Simpson 's work is overtly about the documentary tradition of photography, a tradition which has strong ties to the discourse and techniques of criminality, in Guarded Condilions she also poses a deeper psychoanalytic response to th e violence of perception itself. At the bottom of the image march these words : "Sex Attacks/Skin Attacks/Sex Attacks/Skin Attacks. " Racial amI sexual violence are an integral part of secing the African-Amcrica n woman. Her response to a perception which seeks her disappcarance or her containme nt within the discursive rrames ol' criminality o r pathology, is to tum her back . In the middlc of her back, the wOlllan dcnches her fists and rcpeats the pose of Ma pp leth o rpe 's male moJel in Le/and Richard (1 980), JiscLlssctl in chaptc r 2. W hereas rol' Mu ppklhnrrc Ihe J1wJcI's d CIlL:hed lisl is a ges llJ "c nI{

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Illward -;d f-illlagilJ g (hi s lisl is li kc Mapplel horrc's holding the time-release shutter) , in Simpson's w()rk, lhe list is a response to the sexual and racial attacks indexed as the very gro und upon which her image rests . As in the work 01' Festa, Ihe elTort to read the image 01' the represented \voman 's body in Simpson's photography requires a bilingual approach 10 word and image , to what can ami cannot be seen. The back registers the elTacement of the subject within a linguistic amI visual field \vhich reqllires her to be either the Same 01' the containable, ever fixed, Other. To attack that , Simpson suggests, we need to see and to read other/wise. Sight is both an image and a word ; the gaze is possible both beca use 01' lhe enunciations of articulate eyes and because the subject f1nds a position to see within the optics and grammar of language. In denying this position to the spectator Festa and Simpson also stop the usual enullciative daims of the critico While the gaze fosters what Lacan calls "t he belong to me aspect so reminiscent of property" (Four Fundamenta/ COl1cepls: 81) and leads the looker to desire mastery of the image, the pain inscribed in Festa's perform ance rnakes the viewer feel mastedess. In Simpson's work, the " belong to me aspect" of the documentary tradition - and the narrative of mastery integral to it - is far too dose to the " belong to me aspect" of slavery, domestic work , and the history 01' sexual labor to be greeted with anything other than a fist, a turned back, amI an awareness of her own "guarded condition" within visual represen ta tion . 12 Unmoored from the traditional position of authority guaranteed by the conventions 01' address operative in the documentary traditi on of the photo g raph , a tradition which functions to aSSllre that the given to be se en be/ongs to the field of knowledge of the one who looks , Simpson's photographs call for a form of reading based on fragments, serialization, amI the acknowledg ment that what is shown is not what one wants to see. In this loss ofsecurity, the spectator feels an inner splitting bctween the spectade 01' pain she witnesses but cannot locate and the inner pain she cannot express. But she also feels reliefto recognize the hi storical Real which is not di splayed but is nonetheless conveyed within Simpson's work. In Festa 's work , a similar splitting occurs. Un /illed is an e1aborate pun on the notion of womcn's strength. The "labor" of the performance alludes to the labor of the delivcry room - amI the white sheets amI red headdress are puns on the colors of the birthing process - the white light in the center of pain and the red blood which tears open thal Iight. 13 The projected feet wryly raise the issue of the fetishized female body - the part (erotically) substituted fOl' the w/hole which the performance as a whole ·.. seeks to confront. As one tries to find a way to rcad this suspended and yet completely controlled and conll ned body. im agcs o f other women tied upflood one's eyes. Images as absu rdl y corn ic as Ih\! ua mscl Ncll tied to the railroad ties waiting ror Dudley DO I ¡ght ll' bual 11 11 ' dpd.. illIll silve her, and as harrowing éL" the 11'aditional hurnin 1! 01' 11 la II yl'. ,11111 wil d K'S el \CXisl wilh lIlore (;l)mmOn il1la l!cs \J I' Wll l1lCn

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lil.!J ll) whilu hospilal Ill'J ~ ill lhl.! Ilalm: 01' '\:lI nll!' la y'l h:II .I , " I'\)rce-Iced ing allOl"cxics , or whalever IIlcJicallllalaise by which WOll1Cn have beell pailll'ully dominaled alld by which we continlle lo be perversely elllhrallcd. The austere minimalism of !his piece (complele silence, one performer. no overt action), actually incites the spectator toward list-making 01' this typc. The lists become dizzyingly similar until one finds it almost impossible to distinguish between Nell screami ng on the railroad tracks and lhe hysteric screaming in the hospital. The riddle is as much about figuring out how lhey bccame separated as aboul how Festa puts them back together. The anorexic who is obsessed by the image of a slender self, Nell who is the epi tome of cross-cutting neck-wrenching cartoon drama , the martyr and witch whose public hanging/burning is dramatized as a lesson in moral certitude cither on the part of the victim-martyr or on the part of the witch's execu tioner - are each defined in terms of what they are not - healthy, heroic, or legitimately powerful. That these terms are themselves slippery, radicall y subjeclive, and historically malleable emphasizes the importance ofthe main tenance 01' a fluid and relative perceptual powcr. These images re-enact the subjec!ive and inventive perccption \vhich defines The Fall more profoundly than the fertile ground which the story usually insists is the significant loss. The image ofthe woman is without property; she is groundless. But since she is '"no! alL " that is not all there is to the story. Emphasizing the importance of perceptual transformation which aecompanied the loss of prime real estate in the Garden . Festa's work implicitly underlines this c1ause - 'The eyes ofbolh 01' them were opened" (Genesis 3, 7) - as the most compelling consequence detailed in this Ilarrative of origino The belief that perception can be made endlessly new is one of the funda mental drives of all visual arts. But in most theatre, the opposilion betv,,'een watching and doing is broken down ; the distinction is often made to seem ethically immaterial. 14 Festa, \>tlhose eyes are covered with tape throughout the performance, q uestions the traditional wmplicity of this visual exchange. Her eyes are completely averted and the more one tries to "see" her the more one realizes that "seeing her" requires that one be seen . 111 all ofthese images there is a peculiar sense in which their drama hinges absolutely on the sen se of seeing oneself and of being seen as Other. Unlike Rainer's film Thc Man Who El1l'ied Womcn in whieh the female protagonist eannot be seen , here the female protagonist cannot see. In the absellce of that customary visual ex change, the speetator can see only her own desire to be seen. The satisfacti on of desire in this spectacle is thwarted perpetually because Festa is so busy conferring with some region of her own embryology that she cannot partieip ate in her half of the exchange: the spectator has to play both parts she has to become the speetator of her own performance beca use Festa will not fulfill the invitation her perfo rmance issues. In this sense, Festa's wo rk opera tes on the other side of the same conlinuum as Rain cr's. Whereas in lhe film T risha beco ll1es a kind 01' spectator, hcn: Ihe speclal o r becolllcs a kinu nI' pe rformer.

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pkasurc 01" pn':SL'llce und pkllillldL' is WOlll1 h avill~ ti Illi" il> IlIc ullly way lo achieve il. In the spectacle 01" elldurance, discipline, alld sl'lll i-rnadm:ss that this work evokes, an inversion of the characteristic paradigms 01' pcrronn ati vc exchange occllrs. In the spectac1e offatigue, endurance, and dep1ction. Fcst¡\ asks the spectator to undergo first a paralle1 rnovernent and the n al) opposilC one. The spectator's second "perl"ormance" is a movement 01" accretio ll , excess, and the reeognition 01" the plenitllde 01" one's physical I"reedom 111 contrast to the confinement and pain of the perl"ormer's displayed body.

ni In The History ofSexualily Foucalllt argues that "the agency ofdom ination does not reside in the one \Vho speaks (for it is he who is constrained), b ut in the one who listens and says nothing; not in the one who knows and answers , but in the one who questions and is not supposed to know" (Sexuality: 64). He is describing the power-knowJedge fuJcrum which sustains the Roman Catholic confessional , but as with most 01' Foucault's \York, it resonates in other areas as wel!. As a description 01" the power relationships operative in many forms oC performance Foueault's observation suggests the degree to which the silent spectator dominates and control s the exchange. (As Dustin Hoffman ma de so clear in Tootsie, the performer is always in the femaJe position in relation lO power.) Women and perl"ormers, more often than not, are "scripted" to "seU" or "conl"ess" something to someone who is in the position to buy or forgi ve. Mueh Western theatre evokes desire based upon and stimulated by t he inequality between performer and spectator - and by the (potential) dom ination of the silent spectator. That this model of desire is apparently so compatible with (traditional aecounts of) "maJe" desire is no accident. 's Bu t more centrally this account 01" desire between speaker/performer and listener/ spectator reveals how dependent these positions are upon visibility and a coherent point of view. A visible and easily located point 01" view provides the spectator with a stable point upon which to turn on the machinery ofpro jection, identification, and (inevitable) objectification. Perl"ormers and their critics must begin to redesign this stab1e set of assumptions about the posi tions of the theatrical exchange. The question raised by Festa's work is the extent to which interest in visual or psychic aversion signals an interest in refusing to participate in a repres entational economy at all. By virtue of having spectators she aecepts at leas t the initial dualism necessary to all exchange. But Festa's performances are so profollndly "sol o" pieces that this work is obviollsly not "a solution " lo the problem of women's representation. Festa addresses the female spectator; her work does not speak él boul men. but ra ther a bout the loss a nd griel' atl cndant UpC1 1l Ihe recogn il ioll nr thc chasm

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hl'lwl'CIl pt é:-.l: tU':~' ,lIld 1 ~' III \~~,'II I ¡d lt r ll By lal\lllg lhe Il l)l ioll that WOIIICIl arc !lol visible wi tll in IlI l dOI1 I1Il:lltl Ila rra tívcs 01' history alld 111l' contemporary clIslom s 01' pcr l"nnno lll:c litnally, resta prompts new considerations about [he central "abscm:c" integral to the representation 01' women in patriarehy. Part 01" the funclion 01' women's absence is to perpetuate amI maintain the presence ofmale desire as desire as unsatisfied quest. Since the remale body and the remale character cannot be "staged" or "seen" within representational mediums withollt challenging the hegemony ofmale desire, it can be effective politically amI aesthetically to deny representing the I"emale body (imagistic ally, psychically). The belief, the leap 01' faith, is that this denial will bring about a new form of representation itse1f (1 'm thinking only half jokingly 01" the sex strike in Lysislrata: no sex till the war ends). Festa's performance work underlines the suspension of the fe male body between the polarities of presence amI absence, and insi sts that ··the woman" can exist only hellVeen these categories of analysis. Redesigning the relationship between sell" and other, subject amI objeet, sound and image, man and woman, spectator and performer, is enormously difficult. M ore diffieult still is withdrawing from representation altogether. 1 am not advocating that kind of retreat 01' hoping for that kind of silence (since that is the position assigned to women in language with such case). The task, in other words, is to make counterl"eit the currency of our representa lional economy - not by refusing to participate in it at all, but rather by making work in which the costs of women's perpetual aversion are c1early measured. Such fonns 01' accounting might begin to interfere with the struc ture of hommo-sexual desire which informs most forms of representation.

IV Behind the I"act of hommo-sexual desire and representation the question of the link between representation amI reproduction remains. This question can be re-posed by returning to Austin's contention that a performative utterance cannot be reproduced or represented. For Lacan, the inauguration oflangllage is simultaneous with the inaugur ation of desire, a desire which is always painful because it cannot be satisfied. The potential mitigation of this pain is also dependent upon language; one must seek a cure from the wound of words in other words -· in the words of the other, in the promise of what Stevens calls "the completely answering voice" CThe Sail of Ulysses," in The Pa/m al Ihe End: 389). But this mitiga tion of pain is always deferred by the prol11ise of relief (Austin's perform ative), as against relief itself, because the other's words substitllte for other words in an endless misc-cn-ahyme of metaphorical exchange. Thus the lin guistic eco nomy, likc thc fmancial eco oomy, is a 1edger of substitutions, in which additio l1 and slI hl ractioll (lhe plus and the rninus) accord value to the "ri l2.ht" wonls ¡II 111l' r ít' IIII II I1C. Onc is alwa ys otTerin g wh at o ne does not have \\\

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bl:CaUSl' wllatlllll: wallts is \Vhat u nc docs lI11t lIa vc alld lor Laca n, "tCding:.; are always reciproca!." ir lIever ·'cqllal. "I(, 1'.M:hangillg what onl: does no l have for what one Jesires (anJ therefore Joes not have) puts us in the realrn 01' the negative anJ the possibility 01' what Felman calls "radical negativity" (The Li/erar)' Speech Ac/: 143). Whilc feminist theorists have been repeatedly cautioned about becoming stuck in what Sue-Ellen Case describes as "the negative stasis 01' what can not be seen," I think radica.l negativity is valllable, in part beca use it resists reproduction. 17 Felman remarks: "radical negati vi ty is what constitutes in fact the analy /i!: or per(vrmalive dimension of thoughl: at once what makes il 011 act" (original emphases; ibid.: 143). As an act , the performance ofnegativity docs not make él c1aim to truth or accuracy. Performance seeks a kind of psychic and political efficacy, which is to say , performance makes a c1aim about the Real-impossiblc. As such , the performative utterances 01' negativity cannot be absorbed by history because their affects/effects, like the constati ve utterances about stolen paintings which Sophie Calle tums into performatives by framing them in the gallery, are always changing, varied and resolutely unslatic objects. "W/wl his/Ory call11ol assimila/e," Felman argues , "i.\" [hu.\" Ihe imp/icil/y ana/ylica/ dimensivl1 0/0/1 radical vr.lecund /hough/.\" , of all new the ories: lhe ' force' oftheir 'performance' (always somewhat subversive) and their 'residual smile' (always somewhere self-subversive)" (original emphases; ibid.). The residual smi\e is the placc of play within performance and with in theory. Within play the failure to meet, the impossibility of understanding, is comic rather than tragic. The stakes are lower, as the saying goes. Within the relatively determined limils of theory , the stakes are low indeed. Or are they? The performance oftheory, the act ofmoving the "as if" into the indicative "is," like the act of moving dcscriptions of paintings into the frames of lhe stolen or lent canvases, is to replot the relation between perceiver and objec t, between self and other. In substituting the subject's memory of the object for the object itself, Cal1c begins to redesign the order of the museum and the representational fie1d. lnstitutions whose only function is to preserve and hon or objects - traditional museums, archives, banks, and to some degree, universitics - are intimately involved in the reproduction 01' the sterilizing binaries or selflother, possession/dispossession, men/women which are incrcasingly in adequate formulas lor reprcsentation . These binaries and their institutional upholders fail to account for that which cannot appear between these tight "equations" but which nonetheless inform them. These institutions must invent an economy not based on preservation bul one whil:h is answerable to lhe consequem:cs of disappearance . The savings and loan institutions in the us have losl lhe customer's bclief in the prom ise of security. M useums whose collections ind ude o bjects taken/pllrch ased / obtained from cultures who are n QW asking (and expcctin g ) their rcturn must co nfront Ihe legaey 01" th l! ir a ppropria ti vc hislo ry in (l 11 1l1uh lllon: nu all\:cd

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Notes This notion or roUowing and tracking \Vas a fundamental aspect of C alle's ea rlier performance picces. Sec Jean Baudrillard Suile VenilienllelSop/¡ie Calle. Plellse Fo/lolI' Me , I"or documentation 01' Calle's surveillanee 01' a stl·anger. 2 See my essays " Money Talks" and " Money Ta lks, Again" fo r a full elaboration . :\ Of eourse not all pe rformance a rt has an oppositional edge. The ontological c1aims 01" perfonnanee art are what I am addressin g here, and not the politics 01' ambition. 4 Emile Benveniste. Prohlellls in General Linguis/ics, quoted in Shoshana r:elman , 7/¡e U/erary ."'' peech Ael: 21. S J. 1.. Austin, H OlV T o /)0 Things WiI/¡ Words, 2nd edn . Derrid a' s rereading of Austin also comes from an interest in the perform a tive element within language. 6 Jacques Derrida , " Signature , Event, Context. " 7 See Felman , The Li/erary Speech Ael, for a dazzling reading of Austin. 8 See m y cssay, " Recitin g the Cit a tion ofOthers" for a full diseussion 01' Modlcski's essay and performance . 9 Juliet MacCanne\1, Figurillg Lacall: Crilicis/1/ (l/ul/he Cul//./ral Unl:onsrious, esp. pp.90- 117. 10 The di sappearance of the Mother' s Being also aeeounts for the (relativc) suecess of the visibility of the anti-abortion groups. The smooth displacement ofthe imuge 01' th e Mother to thc hyper-visible image ofthe hitherto unseen fetus , is aecomplished prccisely beca use the Being 01' the Mother is what is alwa ys already exduded within representational economies . See Chapter 6 in this volume for further elab oration of this point. 11 Sorne 01' the descriptioll of this performance first appeared in m y essa y "Feminist Theory, Poststrueturalism , and Perfonnanl:e." 12 For an excel\cnt di scussi on of these guarded conditions in lelevision, netion , ami critioal theory 1'01' the African-Arncrican woman see Michele Wallaee's l/ll'isihili/y

Blue.\". 13 Festa actually began the UIl/i/led perfo rmance wearing a white rabbit headdress, which is lighter and cool er than the red ; she has on other oceasions worn the red olle and the themes of " red " and " white" are constant preoccupatiolls o fher \York . The heat during Un/il{ec/ (in the nineties) \Vas intense en o ugh that she \Vas eventu all y persuaded 10 abandon the white headdress. 14 This is one 01' the reasons " shoek " is sueh a Iimited aesthetic for theatre. It is hard to be shocked by one's own behavior/desire. although easy to be by sOllleo ne else' s . 15 In fact it lllay account for the intense male hOlTloeroticism of so llluch oftheatrieal history. 16 Lacan , no citation, quoted in Felman , T/¡e U/ erar)' Speeeh Au: 29. 17 Sue-ElIen Case, " Introduction," in Perfimnillg Femi/li.\·/II.1", ed. Case: 13. For other warnings about the negativity of feminist theory see: Linda Alcoff, " Cultural Feminism ve rSus Poststructuralism: The ldentit y Crisis in Feminist Theory" ; Laura K ipnis, '"¡ 'eminisll1: the Pnlitil:al Conscience of Post-lllodernism?": in UniF('/"sal Ahrll1dllll ' , 1;<1 . R ,,~s: ¡ltId Jtl l1l:t Ikrgstrom ami M ary Alln O(Ja ne, ""('he Femalc S pcct;¡\t )r: (",)llt ~' \l·. :l1I.! Di rccliullS," ('O/lle/"II Ohs("u/"{/ (20 - 21) M ay- September 1 9 ~N .

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63 PRAXIS ANO PE R FO R MAT IV IT Y Andrew Parker So urcc: WO/llen (lml P erfimnallce 8(2) ( I')')(¡): 2(,5 27.1.

Praxis alld performativity?1 How, a nd why, should we imagine sueh a linkage today? Does this conjunction suggest-or (why not?) perform- an idea whose time has come? In preparing my response to these questions, which seemed to me essential to discuss on this panel , I began wondering what it is that we on the left have been asking rrom performativity, what it is we are doing ,in appealing lo Ihe per/ormatil'e-- a gesture that would be performative through and through. For if, on the one hand , an appeal to the performative offers Marxist theory the possibility of a timely new direction , a renewal dcmonstrating that the theory is indeed stil11iving, stil1 present, on the other hand this appeal repeats what has become a predictably familiar gesture--déja JIU all over again . Every generation or so, western Marxists havc sought to refurbish the notion of praxis by aligning it with newer and seemingly sexier developments from other-than-Marxist domains. In "structure" and "Ianguage" and, before that, in "techné" and "existcnce," Marxist theorists projeeted new ways ofmodeling praxis sueh that the various chal1enges posed by Heideggerian and structur alist thought eould be assimilated and overcome. These strategies have had lhe advantage of suggesting that everything's up to date with Marxism , that nothing in raet is deficient 01' passé. that the newer and potentiaUy competit ive thought had already been implied and fulfilled in the older: " Oh ," we then condude without recognizing the citation , " while engaging in [fill in this blank with the la test theoretical buzzword], we actual1y \Vcre doing praxis all along!" ]t's eertai.nly a lestimony to performativity's current political and theoretical status- to Íls appeal, as it were--that Marxists now \Vould want, in turn, to get in on the act- an appropriation that acknowledges, incorpor ates, and defuses the performative's power. 2 If J sOllnd skeptical of this latest effort to make praxis a.u cour"lII , this is beca use performativity in some ways is the least plausible candidatc for sllch assimilativc redefini tíon. Though bO lh lerms are si!,'llul1y aboul '\Ioing." a bo lll \ 1(1

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rcspcct tu Its.:!r" (lknry II)X\ ¡(¡()) '\:uIlSüiollSlll'SS' ,.. ~' h a l a dcli/,l'd ;tllli thetically as the cxpericnce 01' mcdiatinn as sud\. as all abstract rcallll nI' sccondary and derivati"e rcpresentations devoid orall sdf-suffkiency: " COIl sciousness can never be anything else than conseiolls exislence, and lhe existence 01' men is their actuallife-process" (1( 147). Consciousness, in other words, can secure its own identity only by referring to something other lh a n and logically prior to itself, to somelhing entirely non-consciou s--to a d ynamic and self-present "life-process" whidl, exempt from any such need to refcr outside of itself, consigns all instances of representation to the irreality of ideology: "Ide%gy is (he who/e o/Ihe representa/ion.\' (!/human cunsciousnes,\'

in 117(' se/1.\·(, (!/m('re represenlatiol1s. ... Thepluce o/ide%gy is Ihe ol1l%gica/ dimension o/ irrea/ilY lo II'hich every mere represenlariol1 h('/ol7gs" (J lenry 1983 , 160- 161). What counts as " ideological" for Marx is thus the struct ure of representation as such, the very process by which these sterile signs and images of consciousness can slIbstitute themsc1ves for the li ving reality of praxis. Where ideology would displace this indivisible presence wilh lhe abstrac tions 01' representation , Marx's critique of ideology reverses lhis mystifying reversal , thereby restoring praxis lo its originally integral and selr-present ground. This ideological sllpervention of representations upon the real is not, however, simply an avoidable aberration, a "category mistake" (as the Young Hegelians had claimed), for Marx contended further that the images pro duced in consciousness are neither arbitrary nor autonomous but generated by the very reality that serves as their antithesis: "The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily , sublimates of their material life-process. which is empirically verifiab1c and bound to material premises. Morality, religion , metaph ysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance 01' independence" (a l 47). Ideology. in other words , not only differs ontologically from life but is grounded in it as well- in a praxis that produces phantoms alien to its own self-identical nature (see Geras 1971). The very possibility ofa critical theory wilI be staked on this daim that representations are both distinct from and secondary to the praxis that nonetheless forms their origin , for ideology's illusory "a utonomy" can be dispelled only by tracing these deceptive repres entations to their unacknow1edged source in production . Such a theory necessari ly proceeds on an empirical basis (" Where speculation ends.-.j n real life- there real, positive science begim¡" [<JI 48]); to do otherwise, to mi sta ke the philoso phical analysis of representation for the empirical analysis of pra xis, would be to condemn the work 01' theory to the steri1e practice 01' onanism : " Philosophy and the study 01' the actual world have the same relation to (lne another as m asturbation and sexual love" «(01 103). 11' Marx felt ~Ira bl e 01' discemin g this latter difference, no such conrkl cnce abo unds in wn lempora ry l"cor ies 01' performativity, for whidl lhc possibili ly 0 1' 11l"lsturbution 4.:H n ncvcr be sim ply dcrived . r irsl elabllratcu in

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inslrllllll:nlorllly Jang uagc, I IIolollger have arry tlrill)' IlIllrL'lhall an intra nsitive relaliollship wilh lhe lree: Ihis Iree is (11) IWl ger lhe l1leéln ing ofreality as human aelion , it is an imagc-at-ollc'.\'-di.ll'o,w l. Corn pared to the real language 01' the woodeutter, the language I create is a second-order language, a mctalanguage in which I shall hence forth not "act the things " but "act their names," and which is lo the primary language what the gesture is to the act. ... There is there1'ore one language which is not mylhical , it is the lan guage 01' man as a producer: whercver man speaks in order to trans form reality and no longer to preserve il as an image, where"er he links his language to the making 01' things. metalanglla ge is referred to a language-object, and myth is impossible. This is wh y revollltion ary langllage proper eannot be mythicaI. Revolution is defined as a eathartic aet meant to reveal the political load 01' the \vorld: it makes the \Vorld; and its languagc, all of it, is functionally absorbed in the making. (Barthes 1972, 145 - 46) This is not, as WiIIiam Pietz describes it, a passage that has aged very well at all (Pietz 1993, 122). Barthes's arborealism obviously reflects his initial engagement \Vith , and at this point resistance to, Saussure (whose example 01' the tree in the early pages of the COl/rse in General Linguistics opens onto the falllOlls argument that language is not a nomenclature); and Barthes's notian 01' a political language uniquel y exhausting itsell" in its lItterance remain s very c10se to Sartre's privilegin g 01" prose over poetry in What fy Literall/re! While all this is about to change radieally in Barthes's subsequent writings , the quoted passage still recalls Marx in its attempt to imagine a good " revolu tionary " langllage, a non-mythical language that for once could i!selI be an inslance 01' praxis, a language with "nothing outside itse)f"' that would redeem , in Marx 's \Vords, "the distorted language 01' the actual \Vorld" (G I 1] 8). Today an appeal to performativity wiII have replaced Barthes' s lexico n 01' transitivity and intransitivily. but the dream 01' an immanent language 0 1' action remains the same, a language without remainoer expending itself absolutely in a discrete, self-identieal moment of p\enitude. But this is where the major and irreducible difference secms to di vide performativity from praxis. For if praxis imagines this "nothing outside itself" as the predicate ofan ontologicaIly prior, self-present action, perfor m ativity obviates aIl sllch distinctions between first and second, original anu capy, being and representation , "Iife" and "Ianguage" «jI 118), world a nd word. In fact , performativity insists that its speech acts are fully worldly, b ul worldly to the paradoxica l extcn t that these aets precIude any possi b ili ly 01' origi na ry self-prescnce. W here A ustin sought to sl11ugg\c back into the performative the fOllnd ing value 01' inle nli ona l :¡elf'-pre:¡ent con:,do usncss, Derrida arglles that pcrformalivil y GIIl hCSl be colll\.:ivcu o n Ihe mooel ur 1, 10

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whal !\uslill cxe hllh.-d Ihe.' I! K'¡d !>11l'cd l. eilalioll , sillnatll l\:s pltcllOll1el1a Iltal are slnrc\ured hy al1 (ltit'l1 lary Hlld ge l1eralizable ilerahilily. It is lhis thar. De rrida lahs to bL~ im:dllci hlc sil1L:e tite performalive can f'llllction o11ly by separating itsclffnml ilsell'. lmly by citing the possibility ofits past and future instances and, in so doing, t'racturing the punctuality of any grounding selr prcsence. As Butler explains, perrormat ivity must here " be understooo not as a singular or delibera te 'aet,' but. rather, as the reitera,tive and citational practiee by which discourse produces the elTects lhat it names" (1993,2). We are far here, certain ly, from a notion 01' praxis that plaees language do wn stream from an originaIly integral souree. Indeed, \Vith performativity we do not set oul from "real aclive men "- we never, as it were, simply set oul- and the very imagination of a pre-discursive origin can now be viewed as a per formative effect: "The spcculative origin," Butler \Vrites, " is always speeulaled about from a retrospectivc position , from which it assumes the character of an ideal " (1990, 78). Have \Ve arrived , then , at an unresolvable impasse between praxis and per formativity? lvfayhe flol, as I hinted at the beginning, but I can do little more in lhe time aIlottco than to suggest eIlipticaHy that the relationship between praxis and performativity might itselr be refrallleo as a relationship internal to and constitutive of praxis- which may help lo explain why it is that praxis can genera te representations presumably alien to its own integral nature. This would be , for example, the burden 01' Derrida 's extraoroinary pages in Specters o/Marx on the performativity already lodged within use-value, the iterability that " permits one to identify [a use-value] as the same throughout possible repetitions": "Since any use-value is marked by this possibility of being used by {he other or being used anoLher til11l', this alterity or iterabilily projects it a priori onto the market of eq uivalences" that Marx had reserved for exchange value alone (Derrida 1994; 160, 162). This imagination of performativity as an enabling condition rather than a faIl into secondariness also informs. in a variety 01' different ways, J udith Butler's rccasting of construclionism as materiality, Gayatri Spivak 's elaboration 01' a value theory ol'labor (1987, 1993). and "Étienne Balibar's (1994) and Jacques Rancicre's (1994) recenl wrilings 011 lhe proletariat and the lheory of ideology. To pose the relation ship between praxis and performativity in these terms would neithcr con stitutc a timely new oirection for Marxist thought, nor would it mean déjá l'U aIl over again . But it might aIlow us to recollceive Marxism's current appeal to performativity otherwise than as an idea whose time has come.

Notes This article is lhe tex t of a talk prescnted al the 1994 M LA Convention in San Diego on a p;lll cl elllitleu " Praxis anu Performativity" organizeu by Amitava Kurnar anu .I () ~I.! M UllO¡ rOl' the Marxisl Lilerary Group. My thanks especially to thclll amll ll (;<:M lt<: Yúd iL'C rnr Ihcir vari ous invit3tio ns. Sevcra l paragraphs hcre :Irc li1'll'd vc, b;¡111I1 1"1 "111 In y lort lt011n li ll}! Re-Mar.\".

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2 It lx:ars n:calling tltal, lIot /uo IOllg a guo prOdUl'lioll (11 ,/l III,'IIIIIl~ sylllllly lll lúr praxis) enjoyed lh.; statlls l1(lW hcld by pe rfonnalivit y: '" l u I'lOdun:. lha l is lhc big verb today . And prodllction is lhe all-purposc concepl. jusI indeleTlni na le enough arollnd the edgcs lo m ovc in everywhere where other notions have been disqualified: notions like \:reation: 'causality.' 'genesis: constitution. ' 'formatio n,' 'information' (01' a material or a content), 'fabrieation,' 'composition,' and lTIany more still" (Derrida [1977]1995, 37). 3 Cf. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , "Supplementing Marxism ": "The slrongest humarlist su pport of Marxism is the critique 01' the reificalion of labor. ... In ils vaguesl yel most robust articulation il asserts that labor i!Self musl not be com modified ¡¡nd is grounded in a binary opposition between labor amI cOllllllodity" (1995, 110). 4 AII further references lO T/¡e Gemlll11 Ideology will be abbreviatcd GI and citcu parenthetically by page nUlllber in the tex!.

Rallciú n:. Ja cqll \:s. 11)<)4. /111' Nill//I·.' "1 ///.\1"''1'. ·1¡;\IIs. Ilassal1 rYklchy. Millnca-po li s: lJ nivcrsit y tl l" M Illnc.:lí\l LI I' rc~s. Scdgwick. Uve Kosllfsky. 1993. " Quccr I'erforlllalivily: llcnry .Ialllcs·s 7'he Arl o/Ihe Nov.:/." GLQ 1:1- 16. Spivak . Gayatri Chakravorly. 1987. In Olher Worlds. New York: Routlcdge. - -.1993. OUlside in lite Teaching Alacf¡ine. New York: Routledge. __ . 1995 . "S upplementing Marxism ." hl Whilher Marxism? Gfo!Jal Cris('s in Inl er nalional P erspeclive. Ed. Bernd M agnus and Slephen Cullenbcrg, (109 - 119). Ne\V

York: Routledge .

Retercnccs Austin , J. L. 1975. J-fow lO D o Things Ivilh Words , second ed. Eds. J. O. Ormson and Marina Sbisa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Balibar, Étienne. 1994. Masses. elasses. Ideas. Trans. James Swenson. Ne.w York: Routledge. Barthes, Roland. 1972. I\lyll/Ologies. Trans. Annette Lavcrs. New York: Hill and Wang. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouhle: Fe/llinisl1I {/Iul Ihe Suhl'ersion olldenlily. New York: Routledge. - - o 1993. Bodies T/1lI1 lv/a If er. 011 l!le [)iscursive Lil1iilS or "Sex ". New York : Routlcdge. Derrida, Jacques. [1971'1 1995. " .fa, or the.fáux-hond 11." In Poinls . .. : Inl erllielVs, 1974 1994. Ed. Elisabeth Weber, transo Peggy Kamuf et al., (30-77). Stanford: Stanford University Press. - - o 1988. Limiled Ine. Ed. Gemid GrafT, tran so Sarnuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman. Evanston: Northweslern University Press. - -. 1994. ,)'peClers ojNlarx. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routlcdge. Felman , Shoshaml. 1983. The Lir¡:rary Speech ACI. Trans. Cather,i ne Porter. ttha ca : Cornell Univcrsity Press. Geras. Norman. 1971. "Essence and Appearance: Aspects of Fetishism in Ma ol's C(/pil(/I." New Le.fi Revie\V 65 (January- February), 69 - 85. Henry, Michel. 1983. I\I(/rx: A Philosophy o/ Human R elllily. Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin. Bloomington: Indiana Univcrsity Press. Marx, Karl and Frederiek Engels. 1970. Th e Gerl1lollldeulogy. Ed. C. J. Arthur. New York : Internalional Publishers. I'arker, Andrew . Fortheoming. Re-Morx. Parker, Andrew a nd Eve Kosofsk y Sedgwick , eds. 1995. Pojiml1alivily (lite! Per(iml/ ullce . New York : Routledge. Pclrovié. Gajo. 1983. "Praxis." In A Dic!ionary o/ Marxi.\ l T/¡oughl . Eds. 1'0111 Bottomore et al.. (384 89). Cambrid ¡rc, MA: Ilarvard U niversity Press. Piclz . W illiam. 1993. "Fctishism and MatcriaJism: r he Limits ofTheory in Ma rx. ... In Felis/¡ism (/.\" Cllllllr(/I [)isc(llIrs( '. I' ds. Elllily A p ter
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In his utopian move beyond the Gothic revivalists ano arts-ano-crafts dreamers. Meyerhold rcexamined the role 01' artists in a society transformetl by mass production. He promoted the actor as ¡jn agent ano cxemplar - Qne might say an engineer - 01' t his transformation . The reason for lhe actor's efficacy in this role is clear: because actors (a long with oa ncers) wo rk OJl ¡heir own persons, their perfo n nances nal urally trouble the tradúioIJal tli sti n¡;li ons bctwccn mental ami manu al/abo r. as wcll as Ihose hetwccn wo rk antl play: in

tlll' n:rl'1itions 01' n! I I\': : II ~ , d .llId p~ II(lIl1lan cc. aclors ami dalll'l.:rs cnmnmc creatioJl aJld recrea lio! .. Cclebrating thesc historic racts 01' theatricallabor, Meyerholo tl rew freely on the ioeas 01' the followers 01' Frederick Winslow Taylor, the American proponcnt 01' the scientiflc management 01' inoustry, and the reflexologists, experimental psychophysiologists who stuoied the human booy as a retlex machine. From these materialist programs ano his own rich repertoire of theatrical practices, Meyerholo fashioneo biomechanics, which sought to humanize Taylorism by introoucing an aesthetic element into the perform ance of efficient movement , awakcning the actor-worker's awareness of the beauty - ano the fun - of a job well oone. "In the future," Meyerholo told his acting stuoents at the flrst biomechanical workshop in 1922, " the actor must go even further in relating his technique to inoustrial situations" (Braun , 172). To lead the way for the workers who woulo come to see themselves as artists, actors must learn to see themsclves as workers. Meyerholo saw the future, ano it worked - ano playeo. Tooay's retrospective view looks somewhat oifferent (see Law ano Goroon). Post-Soviet historians ano theater artists alike, their mouths filleo with the bitter ashes 01' a raileo revolution, have been quick to point out the oesolating ironies that mock the Russian director's prophesy. They have been slower to grasp the prescience 01' his more mooest but more cogent preoiction: by oevel oping biomechanics as a system 01' training and performance, Meyerhold positioneo his theater within a broad Soviet program that foresaw the rise 01' crgonomics in negotiating workplaces in which "Iabour is no longer regaroeo as a curse." Ergonomics is the scientiflc stuoy of work as a booily perform ance . That emphasis ineluoes enlighteneo concern ror the most effkient interaetions \Vith the work environment ano the objects in it , giving par ticular consioeration to those activities that most seriously challenge the human booy in its encounters with machines. For its part, biomechanics oBús an ergonomies of acting, incluoing creative mastery 01' repetitious motions "aimeo al achieving balance, c1asticity, rhythm, ano physical awareness" (Baer, 48). Through his work with actors on biomechanics, Meyerhold par ticipateo with other Soviet artists ano ergonomists in a broad effort to crea te "Taylorism with a human face" (Misler, 157). They brought to the problem 01' the oivision 01' mental ano physicallabor a consciousness of its aesthetic oimensions. The key woro is per!órmal1ce. To perform in this context means to expend the appropriate quantity of energy to aHain high-quality results. In the I 920s, the Centrallnstitute for the Scientific Organization of Labor ano the Mechanization of Man (Tsrr) oedicateo itself to the stuoy of kinesis - ges tures performed an o energies expended by the human booy in motion. The artist lIia Shlcpia nov. nI1\.: ()r Meycrh old 's acting students, worked as a notator for ISI I' in th e SllIdi \l 01' MlWc rnelll Registra tion (see figure bclow). Shlepianov's UCvcl \)pm\;1I1 ()I' :111 " :11,,";11)('1" or wlll'ki ng mOVl'lllcnt s was su pervHled by

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One 01' the ultimate aims 01' the Revolution is to overcome com pletely the separation of intellectual work , incluoing art, from physical work. - Leon Trotsky, Lileralure and Rel'o[ulÍol1 (1924) When Vsevoloo Meycrholo prcfaceo his biomechanical éludes for the edifica tion 01' his stuoents, he spoke in a voice uncannily like that of a Victorían sagc. More cannily, he echoeo Leon Trotsky. Prcoícting a utopian future fo r all kinos 01' work unoer the Soviet rcgime, he exhorteo the actor to prepare for a new job, actually a new vocation: "For he will be working in a society wherc labour is no longer regarocd as a curse but as ajoyful, vital necessity. In the conoitions 01' ioeal labour art clearly requires a oew fouoda ti on" (Braun, 172- 3). In these resonant phrases, the Russian theater artist evoked the terms of the 19th century aestheticians 01' labor. They hao wanted to reímagine work as a creative activity, ano had exalteo the beauty of all those processes, however humble, that proouce the lovingly manufactureo artifaet: "Art," said William Morris, paraphrasing John Ruskin , "is the expression 01' man 's pleasure in labour" (385). Meycrholo sharcd something like their visionary faith in the artist as the role mooel of nonalienateo labor, but he fortified thcir prophesies by oeveloping the practical working mcthoo ca lled biomeehanics.

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Alexei Gastcv , uirector of TSIT . They sought to analyze bodies under actual performance conuitions in order to identify and eliminate superftuous or harmful movements. In a uifferent but relateu studio, the Choreological Laboratory of the Russian Acauemy of Artistic Sciences (RAKhN), fo l 10wers of Isauora Duncan studieu the "art 01' movement - not only dance, play, acrobatics, rhythmic gymnastics. crcative gymnastics, anu 'plastic' 01' artistic movement, but also the movements 01' labor, physical euucation. calisthenics, anu sports" (Misler, 158). What these Soviet theorists anu prac titioners anticipateu was the eventual success of policics based on the insigh ! that workers whose performance uepenus on their bodies abo have mi nús: anu l'urther, that their creative potcntials can be releaseu by engaging thcm with the material anu conceptual processes that unuerlie the beauty 01' thcir work. 1n Principies o/Scientijic Mal1agement (1911) , Taylor hau set forth a theory ofTime-anu·motion efficiency that emphasized standaruization ofwo rk pro cesses "instilleu by coercion or by ba bit" (Wollen , 43). Ta ylor's rormali vl.' inftuence on the engincering dcpartl1len t 01' lhe f'o rd Moto r Company, whi dl notoriollsly 11Irtlcd its wo rkGrs into cogs inlhe la rge l" m'H.: hine or the asscmbly

linc , provokcd sa ti ris ts li ke Aldolls IllI:d ey ll) pupulat\.: thc ir dystopias with Taylorizeu zombies. Critiques nI' S cimlijic Managemem howevcr, of'tcn miss the point that Tayl or's error was 110t in his premise that ergonomic enlciency is both attainabJc and desirable, but in his c1assist insistencc that managers are the only ones who know what constitutes efficieney. Ile correctly identi fied the importance of " working cycles" in the pulse of man-machine inter actions , but it remained for others to argue for the indusion of the ereative anu critical views of the workers themselves in the analysis ol' these cycles. Meyerholu , who ueveloped a Taylorist coneeption of " acting cycles," was an early contributor to this trend . In "The Actor ofthe Futme and Biomechanics" (1922), he insisted that " the entire creativc act ShOllld be a conscious proccss" (Meyerhold, 198). Consciousness of the p rocess makes the actor a creator and a collaborator, joining an ensemble devoted to the quality of the physical production. Embeddcd in such a goal is an idea that industrial theorists can learn l'rom thc arts: the creation of a high-quality prouuct increases (not uecrcases) prouuctivity - "costs decrease beca use of less rework, fewer mis takes, fewer delays, snags; better use of machine time" (Deming, 3). The more the actors' or workers' minus and bouies share in the attainment 01' physical mastery , the more effective their prouuctions anu the more prouuetivc their work . In this paradigm, minu and body must perform as one. As I argued in The Player'.I' Passion: Sludies in Ihe Science of ACling (1985) , the search for a better understanding ol' the physical basis of the "eonsciolls proeess" of performance drew Meyerholu 's attention to reftexology. Beginning with Ivan Sechenov's Rejlexes <J/ the Brain (1863), Russian reftexology developed a strong research tradition baseu on the physiological study 01' retlex aetion and retlex inhibition (the neural communieation that tells which musc1es 1/01 to move) . Sechenov's pioneering work was further developed by Vlauimir Bekhterev (Foll.lldations 01' KnOlvledge aboul the FUl/ctiol1s 01' lhe Brain, 1903- 7) and 1van Pavlov (Col/diliol1ed Reflexes, 1927). Broadly speaking, the reftexologists believed that all actions and emotions had a physiological basis. They saw organisms as reftex machines responding alltomatically to stimllli anu subject to eonditioning into habit. They analyzeu complcx biological behaviors, inc1uuing work among several nonhuman species, as isolated retlex ares organizeu into "chains" or seqllences ol' interuependent reftexes . About nest-builuing among birus, Pavlov wrote: "To 100k upon this as reftex we must assume that one retlex initiates the next following - 01' , in other \\'ords , we must regaru it as a chain reftex" (9- 10). By studying photo seqllences, Pavlov observeu the process ol' a cat righting itself as it falls fr0111 a height: first the head tUrtlS indepenuently, sending a ripple effect of retlex action corkscrewing along the length ol' its bouy - a chain ol' rel1exes, one firing ofT the nexl. Similarly, Bekhterev studied what he called sequences of " associated motor r~n l!Xl!s" iJl SUdl animal behaviors as mimcticism ( Ro ach, lO l ).

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Meyerhold's notes outlining a "Prog ram of Biomechanics" in 1922 reveal his awareness oí' the key issues in the science 01' reflexology: The human organism as an automative mechanism

Mimeticism and its biological significance (Bckhterev)

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The implications 01' this research for acting and working are variolls. First, there is the idea that the behaviors of the laboring or playing body are connected by reflex chains. In Meyerhold ' s biomechanical exercise called "Shooting a Bow," for in stance. as the arm moves to load the bow, balance is shifted to the front fo ol. Then, as the bow is drawn, balance is shifted lo the back foot: a "connection. scquence, [and] mutual dependence" ofrcflexes set into self-completing motion spontaneously. Second, there is the importancc of " sllbconsciously habitual acts ." As Diderot long ago disl:Overed , the paradox of the actor resides in "dual consciousness" - the subordination by means of rehearsal of most per formative activity into habit. Habitllalization 01' corporeal motions enables the actor to gain conscious control of the entire process and all its effects. Paradoxically, the feeling of spontaneity is achieved by the rigorous trans formation of action and gesture into unconsciolls automatisms . The key herc is the active retention 01' the alert consciousness -. the administrative ghost in the reflex machine - as the sovereign creative executor. Biomechanics encour ages th is relen lion by consciously structuring tripartite sequenecs as "acling ,--ydes" o r "aclin g cha im;" : "Firsl lhcre WélS to be a momen l DI' prepa ra tion (intention) rnr lhe acti on. the n thc rh ysical pcrforlllilll\;l: (JI" Ihe acliml ilsol r l·lx

(reali zation), and finally the moment of reaction in which the sensation caused by the action in turn caused a new moment of preparatíon (in tention) " (Roach , 20 1). Third , reflexology suggested the perfection over time ol' the man-machine interface, a perfection in which machjnes and human bodics would adjust to the presenee of the other to serve human ends. Those cnds includc the extraction of the maximum amount ol' freedom from Ihe rcalm 01' necessity. They also ínclude the creation of a sense of pride and satisfaction in the quality 01' the work being performed , individually and collectively. In the revolutionary exhilaration of the early Soviet period, advocates of ergonomics based in reflexology believed that they were preparing the way for a future that truly worked. I concur. At the same time, I must concede that the world that they envisioned in their thcaters of utopian possibility is not the world they got. Ironically , the developlllent of labor theory and practice under capitalism since the 1950s, which performance theorist Jon McKenzie calls "high performance," attests to the widespread adoption of the Soviet neo-Taylorist and post-Taylorist ergonomicists ' basic principIes. especially the empowermenl of \Vorkers by rethinking (and redoing) the distinction between mental and manual labor. In his influential treatise on modern management, Out (Jj" {he Crisis, W . Edwards Deming explains the success ofthe high performance paradigm in the "Japanese economic miracle" sinee World War 11: The whole world is familiar with the miracle of Japan , amI knows that the miracle started off with a concussion in 1950. Before that time, the quality 01' Japanese consumer goods had earned around the world a reputation for being shoddy and cheap. Yet anyone in ollr Navy will testil'y that the Japanesc knew what quality is. They simply had not yet bent their cfforts toward quality in international trade [that is , in mass-produced consumer goods 01' the highest quality]. Suddenly, Japanese quality and dcpendability turned upward in 1950 and in 19 54 hall captured markcts the wor1d over. The new cconomic age hau hegll ll. Whal happened? Thc answer is that top managc Illclll nC¡;;tll lc cllll villl'cd Ihal l)uali ty was vilal fo r ex port, and that lhl:y (.;\1 \1 111 a l'l " 111)111 ';11 11 11.' ~w ilcll . T hcy Icarneu , in conlercllec aftel" \ 1')

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confercm:c, SOlllct hi ng abollt thcir rcsponsibilitics lúr Ihe :u.:hicvcmcnl ofthis aim , and that they must ta ke the lead in this ail1l. MIII/(/gc/1/e/'/1 a/'/dlaclory \vorker.l' pUl lheir/órces logelher lor qua/ily andiob.~'. (486, cmphasis added) By establishing Quality Control Cirdes in manufaLturing plants and assembly lines, Japanese industry drew on the expertise and appcaled to the pride in part, a n aesthetie pride _. of workers, foremen . engineers, and execlItives. Together they worked through problems of produetion , the human-mach inc interface, and design ergonomics, eventllally incorporating advanced robot ics into the prodllction process in harmonious interaction \vith a highly educated, motivated , and quality-conseiolls work force. As Meyerhold pre dicted, high performance, like biomechanical acting, needed to become a "consciolls process, " engaging lhe creativity as well as the muscular memory of the worker. Today IV ads tOllting Saturn automobiles, hclpfully defioing the word ergonomics for the viewers of i\ne 's l\lom/ay Nig/¡l FO()lhall, em phasize the return ofTaylorism with a human face, althollgh not under that name, lO American manufacturing: "Happy workers build better cars, " runs the jingle. Is the futllre finally working? High performance is supposed to replace the extreme rationality and coercive top-down managerial stylc of Taylorism with on-the-job creativity, collaboration , and decentralized decision making. But as Jon McKenzie notes in Peljórm or E/se, lhe development of a performance-based cybernelic "white-collar society," even in the scenes of its most opulent success, does not simply replace the "stratum of discipline" wilh the "stratum of performance." "Though performance displaces discip line, it has not entirely replaced it: the performance stratum is under con struction , and discipline , though in decline, remains operational" (17). 1n a global labor marketplacc ruthlessly exploitative 01' its most vulnerable workers - to the poultry processor or sweatshop wage slave, even Huxley's parody ofTaylorism must look good - lhe future seems poised, as the Victorian sages of previous century saw themselves amI their contemporaries poised, "between two worlds ·- one dead, the other powerlcss to be born. " At this crucial juncture, what the reawakened study of Meyerholdian biomechanics might orfer is a resurgent theater of utopian possibility. In rhealer's "Utopia and Theater" isslle, Erika Munk and TOI11 Sellar posed the question: " Is a powerful aesthelic experience itself a foreshadowing 01' utopia?" (6) . Perhaps the qllestion might also be put the other way arollnd, M eyerhold's program of 1922 posited a powerful aesthetic expericnce emcr ging from the efficient rhythms or unalienated labor from the interacting bodies and machines 01' lltopian imagination. Biomechanics accordingly promised to ready the actor to conS lrllct él role as a skilled worke r co nstrucls a product -- quiekly, accurately, and completely. Oiehard defe nde r" 1)1' Stanislavsky-based élctor-lrai ni I11! I11Clhods ima c inc lhe crc:,lI ioll ora role in a 1'.(1

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rehearsal process as 1I1lllUlIICd as llt~' Illaslcr's OWII. In lhe al.~c 01' high per formance productivity, lhey IUXllriatc uve!' lhe one-of..a-kind artif~ld pondcr ously fabricatcd by trial and error. But when cvery rehearsal adds to the overall cosl of production - in this the unsubsidized American and Russian theaters find themselves in similar binds - might biomcchanics emerge as an alternative method of training for rehearsal and performance? 15 a system 01' standardized training for actors that lowers lhe per-unit costs oflivc perform ance entircly utopian ? 11' it is not , then actors and dancers, as exemplars of the aesthetics 01' work , might return to the vanguard ioto which Meyerhold wanted to rush them 75 years ago. Inspired by their example, high performance under capitalism might be ready to reach the goal that Trotsky set for the Bolshevik Revolu tion: the erasure 01' the distinction between mental work. including the arts, and manual work. In this future , as the sages foretold , aft wOllld be the name that human beings give to the beauty of their labor. I am indehled 10 lon M cKenzie (lnd loe Bizupfur .\'Iimu/alifl!; conversalion.l amI ,I'harecl malerial.l' ;n lhinking lhrough ¡hi.\' es.\'ay.

References Bacr, Nal1l:y Van Norman, ed, 7'l7elllre in Rew¡ful;o/1: RU.I's;lI/1 A V(//1I-Gl1rde SlOge Des/~1;Il, 1913 lo 1935, New York : Thames and Hudson. 1991. _ _ " Dcsign and Movcmcnt in the Thcatre 01' the Russian Avant-Uarde," in Bacr, p. 34 to 59,

Braun , Edward. Meyer/¡o/d: A Re llolUliol1 in Thealr e, London: Melhuen , 1995.

Deming, W, Ed\\'ards. 0/./1 of¡he Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Mil Press, 1982.

,l loover, Marjorie .l. lvfeyerhold: The Arl of CO/lscious T/¡('(/lI'e, Amherst: Uni\! . of

Massachusetts Prcss, J 974. Law, Alma and Mel Gordon . k!ey er/tolrl, DSel1.1'le;11 I1l1d Biol11ec:lllln;('s: Actor Trl/;nillg ;/1 Rel'olttliollary Russ;a, Jeffcrson. NC: Md :arland , 1996, Jon McKenzie, Per{orm or E/se: Pel/órmwzce. Tedrl1%gy, am/lhe Le('/ure Afaclril1e, Middletown, CT: Weslcyan UP, forthcoming. Mcyerhold, Vscvolod, M eyerhold 011 T/¡elllre , Ed, and transo Edward Braun . Ne w York: 1-1 ill and Wang, 1969, Morris. William. Prcface to John Ruskill. " Thc Naturc of Gothic," in Rusk;n: Tit e Cril;ca/ J-/eri/{/ge. Ed. J , L. Bradley , London: Routledge and Kcgall Paul, 1984. Misler, Nicoletta. " Dcsigning Gestures in the Laboratory of Dance," in Baer, pp,157- 73. Munk. Erika alld Tom Sellar, "An lnvitatioll lo Utopia. " Tlr eawr 26 , nos . 1 a nd 2. (1995): 5- 6 . Pavlov, lvan. COl1dir;oll"d Nef/e.,'e.l': 11/1 ftll 'esl;glllion o{ I/¡e PhY.I';%g;co/ A('I;I';ly of lite Cerehra/ ('orICl', !,ondoll : Ox l'nrd lJ p , 1927. j{o¡(ch, .Ioscph , T/It ' I'/o)'f '''',\' 1'0 ,\,\';1111 : ,'>'llIdie,l' o{lhe S('iell('e o{A (' I;/1g. Ncwark: U niv. nI' Dc1aw:ln: Pn,;s".

l'l~ "

.vi 1

III~ IORY ,

P O I. IT I(' S, P()IITI C' A I

¡C' IIN()MY

Taylor, Frcderick Winslow. Pril/ciples IIj'Sl'iel//i/ic M anag('///('II/, New York: Ilarper, 1911. Trotsky, Leon , LiteralUreU/1(/ Revolu/io/l. Ncw York: Russell & R ussell' 1955, WOllen, Peler. "Cinema/Americanism/the Robot:' in ¡\;foderni/y al1li ¡l.;fas,l' Cl/I/l/re. cd. James Naremore and Patrick Brantlinger. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.

p.42- 69.

65 RHYT H M ANO THE

PERFORMANCE OF

ORGANIZATION

R ichard A. Rogers Sourc~: T exl (¡nd Pe¡/órIllIlI1CC Qllarlerly

14(3) (1994): 222- 237.

Rhythm is a form of discourse central to social organizat ion. This essay weavcs together a var,iety ofanecdotes, ethnographic analyses, ",¡bor histories, and critical theorics around the cen tral theme 01' rhythm in ordcr to hear the relationships between organization , epistemology , consciousness, and body without positing one of these e1ements as foundational. This approach expands and complica tes the understanding of what constitutes "organization" and calls ror a greater accounting in COmI11Ull ication theory 01' the role 01' physiological slructures in human sociallife.

Charlie is a factory worker at the Electro Steel Corporation. He tightens two nuts on square pieces ofmetal that pass by him on a moving belt, a task for which he is equipped with two wTenches, one in each hand. Charlie has difficulty keeping up with the pace: itching, sneezing, and a bee distract amI put him behind . When lhe foreman yells at him to keep up, Charlie appears to want to protest but he cannot -rhe line doesn ' t stop amI he would only get further behind. When the lunch whistle sounds, the line slows and then stops but Charlie cannot. His body jerks out oC his control, synchronized with the now-absent rhythm of the moving line. Charlie's body has been subordinated lo lhc rhylhm 01' the machi ne. In lhe afte rn oo n, lhe president of lhe comp a ny orden, Ihe line's speed ine reascd lo it s 111a x illl1l1ll se! lin g.. Charlie cventually goes cnuy from tbe pace 01' lile wor k 111 hi ~ ill "u llil Y. "l' jUlIlps u nto lhe ti ne and enlcrs Lhe inlerior 01' l]¡,: mach iIIC . 1\.. 111' j'.!lL' \ 111 illl 11-' 11 Ih\' 1l100chi ne's in le n o l ~cur s he cllnlinlles lo IS2

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Illeans of pCl'forming 01 " UIII / ;llioll. Whal arl' lhe ill1J1lications 01' hcaring rhythm as cl'ntrall cJ orgallizalillll ? What happcns ifwe hear rhythm as a kind of discoursc. knowJcdge. ano po we r'1 Discursive formations, as described by Michcl Foucault, pro vide a set of rules to distinguish truth from falsity. Rhythmic sensibilities, similarly, dis tinguish order from chaos; rhythm is one 01' the basic dividing lines between music and noise. largue that rhythm is a discourse , that its performance is constitutive of an "order" ; therefore , rhythm and the forms of music licensed by a particular rhythmic sensibili ty are no less important to the maintenance or a social formation than " truth. " Rhythm is a kind of knowledge , and know ledge is a kiml of power. Just as "subjugated knowledges" operate against and outside any particular discursive formation . therc is more tban one kind ofrhythm- rhythms that discipline, control, reproduce an order, and rhythms that subvert, resist , enact a different order. My task here is to begin to hear the ways " scientific" (rational, capitalist, totalizing, modernist) power/ know ledge formations use and enact rhythm. to specify the affiliations between those formations and a particular rhythmic sensibility. Making these connec tions audible not only adds to a critical undcrstanding 01' the mechanisms underlying certain forms 01' domination , but extends an awareness of the transformative potential of nondominant amI resistant rhythmic sensibilities beyond the sphere of the " merely" aesthetic.

M usic, order, and entrainment Jacques Attali defines music as the imposition of order onto noise, " as noise given form according to acode" (25) . The kind of order- and hence what will count as " music"-- varies from one social formation to another. For Attali , the order present in music is intimately related to the largcr social order and its organizations, such that the connection be tween music and power is an everpresent theme. M usic both represents and enacts the imposition of order, the channeling of human energies and drives , and is therefore a tool for maintaining a social formation. Attali writes: Listening to music is listening to all noise, realizing that its appro priation and control is a reflection of power, that it is essentially politica!. , . . With noise is born disorder and its oppositc: the world. With music is born power and its opposite: subversion .... AII music, any organization of sound is then a tool for the creation or consolidation of a community, of a totality.

(6) The basic lll cssa gC uf 111 lisie, accordin g to Attali, is that order and barmony exist., whih.: all y P¡II tÍt: lll il l 111I1Sit,; L:il hc r affirms lhe status 'luo 01' suhverts it Ihrolluh I he p llH III l. I Íllfl n r " !I,)i : ;~~:"1

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The connections bet",cen rhyt hm (a~ one componenl Or;¡ musical oroer) ano power are maoe evioent in a variely orcxamplcs. Janc Goooall rccalls lhe chimpanzee who began banging two empty kerosene cans together and within two \Veek s became the troupe's dominant male (Hart). Siegfrieu Kracauer analyzes how the popularity of chorus lines in the I 920s functioned to make the homologous and repetitive nature 01' factory work tolerable by transforming it into an aesthetic. During the I 920s, 1930s, an d I 940s, numerous studies were undertaken to understand the erfects ofmusic on factory production and o ther tasks such as typing (e.g., Kerr). More recently, the producers ofmuzak have used "applied seience" to in crease productivity and consumption and othe r wise control people 's moods (Yela njian ; Jones and Schllmacher). While other qualities (tone, ha rmony , instrllments) are crucial to these uses 01' "functional music," most analysts and critics hear rhythm as a central component. An important phenomenon occurring in ano around rhythmic pattern s is entrainment. Christian Huygens forrnulated the law ofentrainment from his observation that two rhythmic patterns 01' devices (such as lwo pendulums) placed in c10se proximity quickly lock-up: within a very short time their rhythms become "entrained." The menstrual cycles of women living in c10se proximity, for example, orlen become synchronized. The members of Kodo , a Japanese folk arts performing compan)' best known for their drumming, usc long-distance running not only to synchronize the rhythms of the indi vidual (brcathing, heartbeat , hands and feet) but to entrain the group into él common rhythm. The proper performance of their highly complex dr um compositions requires that the drumrners breathe as one. The power of entrainment to channel and coordinate human energies is demonstrated in the c10se link between rhythmic music and work. One of Kodo's compositions, for example, is developed frorn a traditional Japanese fishing song. used to s)'nchronize the fisherrnen's efforts as they pul1 at oa rs and haul in their nets. In the Caribbean, groups of African men digging ditches use songs lo coordinate the swinging of their hoes, both lo avoid injury a nd lo maximize their productivity. On the Hebrides Islands off Seotland , the women of a community manual1y massage newly-woven wool c10th in orde r to soften it. Sitting at atable \Vith an unwound bolt 01' c1oth, they " wa ul k" the \\'001 , simultaneously rnassaging and circulaling it around the tabl e. syn chronizing their col1ective activity by singing. 5 A central part of socialization processes is the entrainment of bodies. dai ly routines , and aesthetic sensibilities with the rhythms ofculture. Thesc rhyth ms may be intimately linked to the rising and setting sun or to mechan ical representations of time (the 9 to 5 grind). They may be Iinked to the seaSOIl!i (planting, harvesting, gathering, hunting), the moon a nd lides (fish ing, sa ili llg. harvesting sea weed) , som atic fu nL1 ions (ea ting, derecation . urina lio n , m ell struation, gesta tion . sJeeping), o rgan izat io nal calcndars (quarterly rc po rts. yea rly audits, the weekend , lhe Sdll' o l yea r). or cyclical l'con o mic chulIgc (encrgy priccs, tax J \:aJ lil1cs il l1 d rc rullds. holitlnv sh ()ppill g ). T hcy ,lrc lin kcd i~n

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to the rhythms ofspcech and lhc proccss by whieh people bccomc habitualizcd to producing those rhythmic patterns physiological1y. And thcy are linked, 01' course. to the musical sensibilities 01' particular cultures.

Em"ainmem a.~ pOJl!er Mickey H art , percussionist for the Grateful Dead and philosopher of rh ythm , tel1s two stories about children , entrainment, and power. The first took place at a summer camp for underprivileged children from the Oakland ghetto. He brought a truckload of percussion instruments to the camp, set them up, and invited anyone who wished to join him . About twenty-five kids showed up. Jt 's interesting how long it takes people to en train. These kids locked up al'ter about t\Venty minutes. They found the groove . ano they al1 knew it. You could see it in their faces as they began playing louder and haroer, the groove orawing them in and hardening. It lasted aboul an hour. These things have life cycles - they begin, build in intensity, maintain , and then dissipate and dissolve. When it was al1 over everyone started laughing and c1apping. They were celebrating themselves and they were a1so celebraling the groove. A1though they had no words for it, they knew that they hao created something that \Vas alive , that had a force of its own , out of nothing but their own shared energy. (238) Tbc second, similar story involves a group ofmental1y-handicapped children as a part 01' a program to build self~esteem. I'd fil1ed different tables with ditTerent instruments, raules on one table, concussion sticks on another, then demonstrated lhe sounds of each and let the kids choose the one that most appealed lO them. At first they were tentative, almost fearful. But lhc sight of me, acting crazier than any of them, bealing on my hoop drum and making an imal yel1s ano obviously having a hel1 of a gooo time, overcame their resistance. Within five minutes \Ve were a percussion orchestra; within fifteen minutes we'd entraineo. Just a brieflinking up, but they al1 felt it, beca use they al1 stopped and looked around bewildered . It was amazing to watch. They went from noisy ecstasy back to their old condition in seconds. They no longer trusted the instruments. (Hart 236) In lhe co n l ~ X I 01' Al tali's arguJ1lcnt about Illusic, order. and power, these rcspollst:s Iti kc 1)11 addi lill n:J1 siglli fitu ncc. T hey each rcp re~en l a partia! awa rc ncss 01' Ihe Ili" -,id," n i IhYllll l1 . ¡;'Il lrailllllcnl , a nJ "orgHn i7t1 l ioll " i n gene ral. \ ;;"

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ne side is cOllll1lunal adion , grou p identilication , cllllc¡;tive stn:nglh. T he other is Attali"s sense of musie as power, a top-dOW1l lúrrn of co ntrol, Taylori sm, Foucault's "di scipline": Wha L the ordinance o f 1776 defi nes is not a time-tabl e- the general fram ework for an aetivity: it is rather a collec/ive ond ohliKalory rhylhm, imposed Fom Ihe oUlside; it is a " programme" ; it assures the e1aboration 01' the aet itsel!'; il CO l7lro l.\' i/s dcvelopmcnl anc! il.\' ,\'lageslrol11/he inside. We have pa ssed from a form ofinjunction that measured or punctuated gestures to a web that constraÍns them or sustains them through theÍr entire sLlceession. A sort of ana tomo chronological schema of behavior is defined. The act is broken down into its elements; the position of the body, limbs, articulations is defined ; to each movement are assigned a direction , an aptitude, a duration; their order of succession is prescribed . Time pene/ra/e.1 lhe body {//1(llVi/h i/ al! lhe meticulous conlrols o{ pOi ver. (Foucault, DiscljJlil1c 152; emphasis added) Time is not simply set up as a structure, as in a time-table. In discipline, as with Charlie, time invests tbe body through rhythm and entrainm ent. W hal remains to be elaborated is what sense 01' time , what kind 01' rhythm.

Taylorism and Fordism: rhythm and the control of production In his historical analysis of the changing sense 01' time req uired by industrial capitalism, E. P. Thompson distingui shes " task orientation" from " timed labor. " Under task orientation, typical in many pre-industrial contexts, lhe rhythms of \Vork appear to be "natural ," motivated by observed uecessities: twice-daily milkings, ploughing, harvesting, and so on. However, when some One is employed to do these same tasks the attitude toward labor lInder the task orientation appears wasteful. With wage labor, time becomes mon ey: having purehased the labor power of a worker, the employer beeomes inter ested in transforming labor power into actual labor. Moved into the context of industrial capitalism , this interest in transform ing purchased labor power into labor beeomes intensified. Richard Edwa rd s identifies this interest as the primary motivation behind capitalist moves to control the workplaee, tran sforming it into a "contested terrain. " Henry Ford nicely summarized the posit ion ofthe capitalist: "The idea is that aman must not be hurried in his work- he must have every second necessary bul not a single llnnecessary second" (82). As Foucault puts it, "Time measuretl and paid must also be a time without impurities or defects... , Preei sion and applieation, are, with regularity, the ru nd amental vi rl ues of disciplin ary lime" (Discipline 151). Labor needs to be squeezed 01' all its potential and I1t in to the rhythms of industrial proclllcti lln -·rhythms relativd y d ivon:cd rrom lhe ' 'i~

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seasOIlS, wcalhn, II'adil hll\¡d 1.. ,lidiIY:', di inl-in g patLef'lls, blllOd suga r I¡;vds - rhyl hms " wilh o ut i111 pU rilil.:s 1lI dd'ccts ." Bernard Doray, in his si udy nI' Taylorism and 1:ordislll in France, traces the disciplinary technologies utilized to achieve this effieiency and regularity. Initially, upon gathcring workers togcther in man ufactories to appropriate thcir labor, lhe attempts to regularize work rhythrns were ofthe order ofFoucal!llt's " time-tables": external programs arbitrarily imposed upon the workday and enforced with fines or other punishments. These prograrns took the form of establishing the length 01' the workday , the times work \Vould begin and end , and tlnes to be Ievied for particular violations. The table system represents an important leap in the disciplinary techno logies related to the control of work rhythm s. Previously, the production proeess had remained fairly eompaet or unified- in othe r words, a worker could generally carry through \Vith most if not all the steps in production a nd henee still be conneeted with the results 01' their labor. The table system was the first step in fragmentin g production. The production proeess is divided among, for example, 10 workers sitting along atable. Eaeh worker completes one or a small series of operations and passes the material s to the next person until the product is complete. The work could now be synchronized: the differentiation of tasks allows for the equivalenee (non-differentiation) of time. This enhances the ability of foremen to spot " problems" in the work force, in that a person who \Vorked too slowly could easily be identified ami the output of two or more " tables" eould be directly eornpared. However, the table system shares with the previous "time-table" approaeh the means of enforcement: penalties by the employer or their agents. The enforcement of the rhythms of work is still pcrsonalized and therefore readily pereeived as arbitrary in its judgments and exercÍse. As with the table system , Taylorism instrumentalizes the worker and frag ments the production process. The eore ofTaylorism is not the infalllous time and motion studies per se, but the di vo rce of knowledge from practice. Throughout The Principies of Scienl!/ú: Mal1oRemen/ , Taylor bellloans the fact that most tasks were done according to " rules of thurnb" passed down from one generation 01' workers to another and further developed through the individual worker's experience.(' " Praetically in no instance have they been codified or systematically analyzed or described " (Taylor 32). Two assulllp tions enable the substitution 01' this " rule of thumb" kn owledge \Vith " sci entific" knowledge. First, "there is always one method and one irnplemen t which is quieker ami better than any of the rest " (Taylor 25)- Foucault's pure use of time. Second, no maltel what the task ·-from handling pi g iron to working with complex meta\cutting machines- the worker best suited to carry out thc task in practice is ineapable of llnderstandin g the seience behind the ta sk. The pllrposc 01" time and mot ion studies is to rnake absolutely unifo ml thl: s p~'\:Í li cs \' (' wli.. 1 is lo he done. how the task is to be carried out, anJ huw lonc ClIlll 111 u Vi'1I 11' 11 1 should la kc , S uch unifonnily would prevent , ,\1

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the ability 01' work ers lo gct aW(ly wilh tlle intelltioJ\al slmvillg 01' w(lrk I he "soldiering" which so inccnsed Taylor. Acwrding to Ed wards, however, Taylorism failed to accomplish thc fundamental goal 01' the capitalist: the transformation of purchased labo r power into labor. Workers continued to " soldier" and , quite simply. " follght [Taylorism] to a standstill" (103). Taylorism did. however, introduce the advantagcs of keeping knowledge about the production process out 01' the province 01' the \Vorkers , resulting in the continllation if not an increase in the fragmentation of labor processes under Fordism. As Ford himself put it , "The man who places the part does not fasten it. .. . The man who puts in él bolt does not put on the nut; the man who plltS o n the nut does not tighten it" (83). The vast majority ofwork bccame unskilled and the complete alienat ion of the laborer from their labor was achieved . Fordism advanced rrom the grollndwork laid by Taylorism in several ways. For my pllrposes, however, a simple but accurate description is that Fordism is Taylorism with an assembly line (for more detailed accounts, see Doray, and Edwards). Taylorism rationalized the labor process and instru mentalized the worker's body but failed to solve the control problcm . The assembly line was needed to accomplish that. Doray explains that the table system imposed a uniform discipline on workcrs yet remained " an expression of living labour" : work originated from the workers, and them alone, albeit under the constraints 01' punitive discipline. With the mechanized assembly line, matters are very different. Its pace is set in advance, and it is external to the workers: it is an expression 01' a machine-system . From this point ofview, the line is far from being an automated handling device; it is part 01' a homogeneous system, and a means 01' incorporating the activity of men into that of machines. (65) An assembly line " gears" living labor to its own rhythms and those rhythm s are uniform o Workers must not only work as fast as the line; restrictions on their workspace and movements means that they must also work as sl ow as the line- only one pace is allowed . Power and control are thus transferred from the supervisor to the linc itself. Social violence is displaced into the technological field : The line established a technological presumption in favor 01' the line's work pace. Struggle between workers and bosses over the transformation oflabor po wer into labor \Vas no longer a simple an u direct personal confrontation ; now the connict \vas mediated by lh e production technology itsclr. Workers had lo oppose the pace M the Iinc, no t the (Jirect) tyrann y 01' their bosscs. (Ed wards IIX) 1(10

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The means of conlrol IS 111. IUll ge l' persollal huI slruclural, lcchnical. nI<' rhy lhmic CO/llro! o( prot!l/dio/l l/{f.l' !w('// rci/ied hy il.\· l/1alcriali::alion in I!U' /1/adrine. Tillle-tables are obsolete. redundanl because "power was made invisible in lhc structure of the work " (Edwards 110). The worker- -at least the part of the body involved in production- ·-is objectified. The machinc "i nlll trates the spaee-time of living labour, reifies it, and incorporates it into its o\Vn system" (Doray 82). With the assembly line , t he eyborg as a pro ductive entity is born .1 Machinic, rhythmic uniformity has been achievcd . The worker either operates within the rhythm of the line or is replaced . Attali argues that musical forms will correspond with the larger social order and , in particular, the dominant mode 01' production. The parallel between the rise of capitalism and the movement 01' music out of the com munity and religious ritual and into concerts, in which music became both a commodity to be purchased and a spectacle to be observed by a passive audience, was no hislorical accident. Similarly, practieally simultaneous with the first use 01' the assembly line were the beginnings 01' the mass distribution of recorded (i .e. , uniform, commodified) music and the initial experiments with "functionalmusic" to increasc factory production. If rhythm can be used to crea te collective, coordinated action, it can be used to impose such coordination , as with Taylorism and Fordism. However, if speeific rhythms can be used to impose order onto bodies, to discipline them , alternative rhythms can be anti-disciplinary. Music and rhythm can disrupt, propose an alternative order. In the 1920s, during the heyday of Fordism and the early years 01' functional music, jau was being attacked as an evil influence, a cause 01' crime, suicide, nervousness, and "cannibalistic rhythmic orgies." It was African, barbaric, animalistic, even the result of a communist plot to undermine Christian civilization. " It tends to unscat reason and set passion free" (Anon., qtd. in Merriam 243). A different rhythm - that is, a rhythm from a dirferent rhythmic sensibility, a different form of order and social organization- has a profound effect on the body. Hence, the attacks on jazz (and, later, rock and roll) as 'jungle music," as too overtly sexual. In short, they wcre too rhythmic--that is , they had the wrong kind 01' rhythm , they performed the wrong kind of bodily organization. Jazz and rock originated, at least partially , from antagonistic elements within a highly stratified and heterogeneous social formation (L. Jones). Because they arose rrom the experiences of Africans forcibly brought to North America and contained traces of African music and spirituality, the music and dance ofjazz and rock were embodiments 01' "theories ofthe flesh" (Madison) alien to mainstream Euro-Americans. However, having developed within an American context and drawn from European musical traditions, jau and rock \Vcrc no! simply "alien " expressions, but manifestations and enactmcn ls of el .I'(mgg !e over Ihe forms 01' organization by which the ener gics 0 1' bl)Ji cs \\'11 \1 111 h~' cll alJ lH'k:d . Rh ythm a nd m usic. thcrefore, became pr imar)' sit \.!, l ,f ' wt' j,t1 ' .11 I'JI" lc hll cXlIm ple. ElIJ'o-Amcricans appropriatcd lid

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!\frican-American forms 01' dance, l> uch as thc (lIuid , horizonlaL scnsual) Lindy IJop, and disciplincd thcm , resulting in a dancc like Ihe (jerky, vertical , rigid) Jitterbug, Thcse rhythmic forms were performances ofconftictual organ izations in North !\merica n inoustrial society (Cleavcr). Music ano dance were sites ror a oialogue, both antagonistic ano cooperativc, between Euro American and African-American theories ofthe flesh: that is, between differ ent epistemologies, rhythmic sensibilities, fomls 01' oroer and orga nizati on.

Order and rhythmic sensibiJitics: West African polyrbyt bms One culture's rhythm is another's noise. A culture's rhythms- which are not limiteo to " music" in the narrow sensc are both representations ano per formances (enactments, completions) ofthat culture's means 01' organization. Think ofthe oominant wcstcrn conceptions ano valuations orrhythm. Rh ythm is composeo of equally oivioeo, oiscrete units of time. It must be countcd evenly ano the stress placeo on the main beat. A uoience members al, for example, a symphony performance must be very quiet, physically passive. The conouctor, stanoing in front, directs the musicians, keeps the beat that everyone must "get with. " The percussion section is general1y hiooen in the rear ano can speno much ofthe time quietly counting, flipping through pages ano pages of pauses in anticipation of the ringing of the triangle, the clashing orthe cymbals, the ro1l ofthe tympani . Harmony, after a1l , is far more import ant than rhythm. " lt is the progression of sounos through a series of chords or tones that we recognize as bcautiful" (Chernoff 42). Rhythm is merely a necessity, allowing the cooroination neeoeo for the "real " music to OCCUf. Conl'ronteo with the polyrhythms ofWest African music, many Europcans resort to phrases such as "completely incomprehensible," "1 woulo beco me lost ano oisorientelL" "syncopated past comprehension," ano "the music is so monotonously repetitive tha t it just du1ls the senses." John Chernoff 's analysis of A.lrican Rhy lhm (J1U1 Aji'ü:an Sensibilily oemonstrates the immensé variability, not just in the speed ano time-cyc\e 01' rhythms (e.g., 12/8 as opposeo to 3/4 or 4/4), but of funoamentally different sen ses ol' rhythm anu how they affect what it is possible to conccive of as " order." West African polyrhythmic music focuses on the complex interweavin g o f contrasting rhythmic patterns. These patterns often souno incomprehensible to western listeners who cannot ioentifl' what Ihe rhythm is. K There seems to be no main beat, which is confusing for a western sense of rhythm as a single. unifying force. African rhythms are not only multiple but incomplete, Chernolf argues. Ifit sounos like there is something missing it is becallsc thcre is--the listener (usllally a oancer) m ust mai ntain the missin g rhythm tha t completes the polyrhythmic " tapestry:' T he tistener must be activcl y engaged in making sense of the mllsic. YOl! d OIl 't k f!ep the time, yo u complete it. These African rhy th m:¡ "re nol scparale. di sl:rcte. indcpendenl en til ic.li, each rhylhm defines 111\.' othc!'s . !\:-, a ~o llscql/ell cc. il is cXlrl'rnd y dinicllll

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ror any onc musiciall lo play Iheir parl 1I11lcss Ihe whole enscmble is playing. In this form 01' organization, rhylhm is something to be responoeo to, not something to " get \Vith ." In this sensibility, "time" is not a single, objective phenomenon as in western music and culture. " The establishment ofmultiple cross-rhythms as a backgrouno in almost all Afriean music is what permits a stable base to seem fluid" (C hernoff 52).9 The listener in African music must beco me a participant (most commonly through oance), must be able to aetively meoiate the rhythms. "The music is perhaps best consioered as an arrangement of gaps where one mal' aoo a rhythm , rather than as a dense pattern ol' sOLlno . In the conflict of the rhythms, it is the space between the notes from which the oynamic tension comes" (113 - 114). Chernoff also argues that this rhythmic sensibility is an enactment of a communal sensibility : In the mooel of community presenteo in an African musical event, integrity is ioeally a combination of oiverse rhythms which must remain oistinct, ano the power orthe lllusic comes from the conllicts ano conversations 01' the rhythms, from vivid contrasts ano CO/l1 plementary movements. The music is j ud geo in terms 01' the success 01' each performance, that is, by how well the formally establisheo relationships of the rhythms are continuingly open to fresh ano vital participation . (160) For example. accoroing to Chernoff the best improvisations by "master orummers" in this tradition are oesigneo to draw attention to other parts of tbe ensemble more than they seek to emphasize their own rhythmic lines. Style is a matter of communal integration as much as a highlighting 01' the inoivioua1. lo Whether Chernoff's seemingly utopian mooel is an accurate oescription is ol' Icss concern (to me) than its ability to help in col1ceil'ing allenwtive \Vay s o/perjórming organi:::alion through d(f/erenl rhyllu11ic sens ihilities. 11 If we can begin to imagine oifferent types ano functions of rhythm , perhaps we can imagine a different sense and/or valuation of order and oifferent types 01' social organization . Thcsc different rhythmic sensibilities, forms 01' organization, ano sen ses 01' what constitutes oroer are inseparable from epistemological systems. To uncover the connections between the western rhythmic sensibility oiscusseo above, the form 01' organization epitomizeo by Foroism, ano the sense 01' oroer embooieo in western epistemology, I turn to Nietzsche. Nietzsche oistinguishes between the wil1 to truth , which characterizes the dominant wcstern epistemo logy since Pl ato, amI Ihe wil1 lo power. T hc wi l1 111 Irlll h n;lii:s l/ po n ccrtain presuppositions; most importantly, it casls Ihe wntl d II h'i:lh H I1 J Ir uths as bo lh sing.u lar amI s table as seU' iJCl1ti ca llJ('/I¡g.1 1\ 11 , 11111,' '. IlIill u p ks lil l111 th¡: bll sis I'or sóencc a mllogic:!\ ¡I, \

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More than ep.istemology is involved here--mind and consciousness are implicated as wel!. Ethnomusicologists and others have long been interested in the connection between rhythm and consciousness. In many cultures (sorne c1aim alI). rhythm , often produced with drums, is utilized as a tool to visit the spirit world , to journey, to trance, to heal- in short, to en ter "non-ordinari ' sta tes of awareness. From the Dionysian ritcs to the healing ceremonies 01" the ! Kung, rhythm is used to alter consciousness. At a physiologicallevel , drumming can be heard as an "auditory d river. " The ear is a direct receptor for the brain. Drums scatter sound across a wide runge 01' frequencies , causing the sound to decay rather quickly. These short, sharp pulses spread across the spectrum 01' sound our ears pick up, in a sense " overloading" the hearing mecha niSIll a nd inducing tra nce by altering normal brainwavc patterns: quite litcrally, brain wave pattcrns cntraio willl the external rhyt hms, a.Ilering the physiological fou lllIat ion lor consci'lUS awarene.,'I S (N e hcr).

Thcse physilllogical a pproachcs \\'\luld Sl'CI11 to indicatc that ccrtain rhythrns llave an intrinsic ability lo altcr human consciollsness in certain ways. Ilo\\' cver, Gilbert Rouget 's cross-cultural study or Music amI Trance, as well as lhe position on order I have bcen dcveloping through Attali and Foucault, would indicatc that the effects 01' ccrtain rhythrns would be culturally relative. This does not have to deny the role of physiology, however: biogenetic structural ism (Laughlin et al.) provides a framework for theorizi ng a c1ose, interactive relationship between physiology, consciousness, and soeial forces (e.g., lan guage and rhythm). Biogenetic structuralism and neurophenomenology' 2can be used to under stand how the body is "c ultural all the way down " (though not only cultural). Leonard Hawes reviews these scientific understandings of the brain to dem onstrate how cultura l patterns are, literally, inscribed in our neural pathways. Early in the developmental process, the neurons in the brain are undiffer entiated. Through cognitive development , some neural pathways are grooved and reinrorced-- canalized - through activity while others atrophy from lack of use. Hence, to take one example, language patterns (involving certain neural patterns) become inscribed at the neurostructurallevel. Not uncoincidentally , biogenetic structuralism uses the tcrm "entrainment" to describe the process by which neurons link and combine into complex networks in response to environmcntal inl1uences (Laughlin et aL). Following this modcL our bodies are entrained at the level ol' biology and consciousness into a particular set of orders through the perfornlance of organ ization , e.g., rhythmic patterns. Exposure to radically different performances 01' order and rhythm would seem to rcquire alterations at the levels of both biology ami consciousness. Thesc alien orders would go against the grain , as it were, of the existing patterns of canalized synaptic pathways that form the neurological foundation for consciousness, perception , and experiencc. Laughlin et al. argue that a " model " (their term for a particular neurognostic structure) can- within the constraints ol' the " genetic em'c1ope" (hard-wircd genetic limitations)- be reentrained, adapted to changing environmental conditions to become isomorphic with external stimuli. Hence, various levels of organization- from the ccllular to the synaptic to the organismic to the social , from the biological to the phenomenological to the cultural-- can be entrained , exhibiting varying degrees of isomorphism . Thc parallels between descriptions of the neural system as "grooved ," "hardened," "canalized" and Hart's description ol' " the groove drawing them in and hardening" can be attributed to coincidence, common cultural metaphors, or an interchange of metaphors between dil'l'erent discourses (e.g. , science and music). Or they can be heard as isomorphic structural relation ships betwcen a social ritual of rhythmic cntrainment and the entrainment of neural sU·lIclures. NCU rllns hccomc inv()lved in hierarchy a rter hiera rchy 01" ne ural nClwolk:; ;lIul " Ilt os~' Ih.'twork s 1"1I nc lio n as li ving org(lll-izations" (La ug hlin \;1 al ', 1 ) 1 1I ~'~l' 11\.!lwMks pnlV iJc lh\.! J"\Wndal iollS ror human

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subjects who , in turn, organize themselves socially. Thesc organizations, 10 complete the bio-social oialectic, create stimuli tll al entrilln , oisentrain . ami reentrain neural networks. Rituals ano other organizeo social activities can be useo to alter con sciousness through "alltonomic driving" - a conditioning (entraining) ano activation of "non-oroinary" nellrological structures that provide the ncu ro chemical basis for non-ordinary sta tes of consciousness (Lallghlin et aL) . ln N rican ano Carribean possession cults, such as those founo in Ilaiti , rhyth m - produceo by orulns, bells, rattles, c1a pping and oancing- brings on the possession 01' the dancers by oris/ws, oi vine beings. The celebrants oance ano as the possession begins, they begin to stllm ble. T his period of uncoordin a tion is unoerstooo as the transition phase between the human and oivine states. In the terms ofbiogenetic structuralism, the neural pathways are being disentraineo from their " ordinary" state ano reentraineo into their "non ordinary" (i.e. , oivine) state. Both behavior and consciousness are thereby altered . The neurological mooel 01' "possession" is lea rned and remain s oormant until activateo through environmental stimuli- in this case, specifit: ritllalistic rhythm s. (Perhaps Chaplin intuited a similar process when he had the monotony ano increasing speeo of the line drive C harlie "erazy."') Similarly, Rodney Neeoham notes that percussion accompanies various transition events (rites of passage) in every known culture: birth, death, initiation, marriage, sacrifice, oeclaration of war, accession to offlce , harvest, etc. He hypothesized a connection between percussion and transition but had no explanatíon for the link. Biogenetic structuralism provioes one such explanation: rhythm as a powerful tool for entrainment, transformation . reorganization. Ritual inscribes itself onto our neural pathways. Cultura l patterns are, often literally , orummeo ,i nto ollr heads. Knowleoge, experience, consciousness, ano identity are prooucts of a di a lectical interplay , in this case between ncurological structures ano various social and physical environments. At any point , a oialectic exists between existing models (neurQlogical structures, the proouct of previous modeh> ano environmental factors) and lhe environment. This perspeclil'c recognízes lhe ahsolule importuncc o/ encu/luralion while ulso hearing lh e hody as ([/1 ([('Iil'e player in Ihe proces.\". The mino is not a blank slate passivel y inscribcd with cultural patterns: and haro-wired, a priori biogenetie str uctures are not oeterministie.

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and produce o rder, olle 1'01111 01' whidl is rlrythlllic (paUc rns (h w ugh time). These rhythms beco mc cncoded in the pathways 01' (he brain and ncrvous system. Neural pathways provioe the biological basis rol' consciollsness: thc harnessi ng and repression (canalization) of the booy's drives constitutes the subject. The oominant forces withín any social formation wil1 be imperfect in their entrainment of sllbjects for at least three reasons. First, they must conteno not only with the limitations of the plastieity of human organisms bu!, if the booy-society relationship is unoerstooo oia1ectieal1y instead of as a simple oetermination, they must also engage in a constant struggle against the body ano its drives as a n (/ctive force. Second , in our ro mplex- thal is, multicul tural , fra gmenteo , stratifreo- society. subject-positions are ol'er-determined , creating the possibility ror gaps ano contradictions in subjectivity. Subjects are entrained into a variety of rhythms whieh may not exist harmoniously, creating conflict, chaos or simply cancelling one another out like two off-set wave patterns. Third, rhythm can be used as a counterhegemonic force, cre ating a lternative pleasures, neurognostic structurcs, mooes 01' consciousness and subjectivities. Think , for exal1lp1e. of what may happen to a subject immersed in the rhythms 01" another culture. Mickey Hart recounts the effect of West African rhythms on E uropean bodies in this way:

Just before enlisting 1 hao oiscovered the mllsic of Babatunoe Olatunji, the Nigerian drummer who lives in New York .... Whenever 1 played this music at one of Raphael's parties, the room \Voulo transformo It \Vas as though the rhythm of the orum \Vas calling something up from these s1eek cosmopolitan bodies that hall bcen asleep. (91 )

Rhythm is one important factor underlying or influencing, as \Vel1 as connect in g, social organization, epis temology. co nscio us ness. amI physiology . Th e socio-eeonomic structurcs of a given social form a tio n are em bodied in a nd performeo through vari0 US orga niza ti ons the famil y, lhc workplaL:c, rdi gion . rit ua l, cn tcrtain mcTl t. a nu so OIJ. T hcsc o rganil.U lio ns pro viuc. irnpnsc.

The performance of a different order proouces a oifferent subject and state of awareness. Energies, previoUlily represseo 01' channeled toward certain ends, can be released ano redirecteo. I-Jence the attacks on jazz ano rock by the ioeological allies of Fordism. Consciousness is not only influenccd by " non-ordinary" rhythms, such as those used in shamanic rituals for spiritual journeying, but by "everyday" (common sen se) rh ythms that are performcd in any form 01' social organization (language, ritual, work, musi~;, etc.). Why woulo the rhythms ano breathing patterns of Western European eh oral music, the speech patterns 01' midole class American English, or the 60 hertz eycle 01' overheao power Iines affec( consciousness any less than thc African rhythms ofBabatunde Olatunji affccteo Ilart's weste m fr iend s'l I lo w can \Ve not be cyborg-subjeets (booy-machine co mplexcs) a lllid sl IIhiqll illlll Sly Il1ccha nizcd anucOl1l puterizeo environments? I h:aríll)' I hyl lll ll ,, 'o ,1 lí 'I ni ( \1' disc\l lIrse a llll a ll enaclrncnt 0 1' social o rgan i/.a tioll Ct! l lIt'Ij .... ill l íl ,' 1I l l1 nhl' l (il il\lpli(,':l tiolls . Illost 0 1' wh ich have no( buen

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cxplorcd by lhe fidti 01' c(lnll11l1 n i ~é1lion in gC lleral alld pcrlúrlllOlncc ami organizalionéll studics in particular. Fírst , openíng o ur cars lo rhythrn chal lenges common undcrstandings 01' what constítutes " organizatían. " pointing to a wide range 01' divergent cultural fonns . frorn rnachinery to conversation to music to the workplace , which utilize rhythrn to produce a kind 01' arder. Second, rhythm complicates and enhances our sense of the connections betwecn organization and other elements 01' human lite. In particular, the body must be accounted for as an active force and the mind/body distinc tion problclllatized on other than él purely philosophicallcvel. Finally, rhythm holds potentia l for those intercsted ín developing altcrnative forms of organ ization as well as making interventions in cxisting organizations. 8

Notes As this definition or "organization" implies, and as will become evident in Ihe range 01' examples in this essay. I use Ihe term lo encompass more thall " formal " organizations such as the modern workplace. 2 My use 01' epistcmology hen.: builds off or ils Iradilional sense as the study 01' knowledge. I am following Nietzsche's suggeslion Ihal an epislemology is not a deseriplion or how things are o r 01' how humans do in fact k no\\', "bul an imperative concerning what shou/d eoullt
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Ihe assclllbl y Hne wa s ( 'lra 11r ~ ~ w\n k sonJ,! In eunl rasl lo I he ~i n gillg 01' lhe Ilebriúcs wool-makers 01' l he C'a n b bcan d ilch -diggcrs. lhis song is I\ot only characlerized by a nlélchinic rh ylhm bul is imposcd on lhe \Vorkers instead 01' produced by thcm . Many 01' lhe dominant rhyth ms in contemporary \\'estern culture-and they are quite consislent with the wcstem musical sensibility I o utline below--are meehan istic: clocks. wo rk , transportation , cntert,ünmcnt , electrical currcnts. Many of th e domillant rhythms 01' our lives - our bodies, our organizations, our musics · have beco me machine- based alld machine-driven. \Ve ha ve entraincd, to some dcgree, with the machine, perrorming or being perfo rmed as cyborg-anizations. \Ve have marwged to isolate ourselves, as th~ industrial ca pitalists so strongl y desired. Crom the rhythms 01' nature a nd "community." The extent and implica tions 01' such entrainrne nts demand further research by organizational and other scholars. Tagg provides a speciflc example of this type o r po lyrh ythm: a rnetrie unit or 24 sub-beats " bei ng consistently used to produce a complex 01' simultaneous metres like 3/8, 2/4. 3/4. 6/8, 4/4, 2/2, 3/2 ,4/2 (and possible additive aSYT1lllletric subdivi sion s or these) o n to p o r each other" (289). Koettin g prov idcs a basic overview of African music tha t demonstrates ho\\' many composilions can and must be given a single meter. such as 12/8. while such an identificati o n also disrupts an under standing of a ny individual rhythmic line. Koetting, dra\Ving on lhe work 01' Kwabena Nketia , argues ror a single. basic rhythrn in much African drummin g, él nd thereby conlradicts C hernoff's interpretation . Interestingly . lhe English \Vord " rhythm" can be traced directly to the Greek rhy llmlOs, deri ved rrom rhein , meaning "to ftow ." This sen se, ho\Vever. has been overshadowed by notion s of di sc rete units 01' time , reg ular variations between stressed and unstressed beats. etc. Joni Jones's \York on t\frican theatre provides él useful complement to th e rh y thmic sensibility I am wo rking with here. He r discllssion o r Ihe importance o r improvisation and lhe narrowing or the ga p between (active) performers and (passive) observers not only parallels the model or community describcd by Chernofr, but serves as an illustration of how th e enactment or such a sensibility might manifesl ilself. In the terms I use here, she works to enact an alternative ronn 01' organization. o ne which is c10ser to
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parlicular, many orthe proponenl.S orlhese v iew~ llave loclIsed (lIt lile relaliollship betwcen ritual and consciousness. I should note lhat Lauglllin el al. , while l1laill taining such a dialeclical view, give m uch greater weight lhan 1 to hard-wired cognitive struetures.

References Attali , Jacques. Noise: The Po/itical Eco//(J/lIY o( AJusic. T rans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1985. Browne, Angela. W/¡w Ballaed Womel1 Kili. New York: The Free P, 1987. ChernofT, John Miller. AFia/ll Rhylhm alld Aji'ican S ef/siIJilily: Aesl/¡elics al1d SOelal ACI;on in African Nlllsical Idio/1/,\'. Chieago: U of C hicago P , 1979. leaver, Eldridge. Sou! on /ce. New Y ork: Dell , 1968. Doray, Bernard. From Taylorism 10 Fordism: A Raliol1al l'vfadne.l·s. Trans. David 1\'1acey. London: Free Association Books, 1988. Edwards, Richard. COl1le.l'led Ten'ain: Tlle Tml1.ljimnalioll o/ fhe Workplace il1 lhe TWenlielh CenlUr)'. New York: Basie Books, 1979. Ford . Henry (with Samuel Crowther). /vfy Li(e alld Work . New York: Garden City Publishing. 1922. FOllcault, M ichel. Discipline ({fld PUl1is/¡: T/¡e Birlh O/lite PriSOI1. 'fmns. Ahlll Sheridan . New York: Vintage, 1977. Hart, Mickey (with Jay Stevens) . Drul/1ming al Ihe Edge o/ Magic: A Journey inlo lhe Spiril oj'Percussiol1. New York : Harper Collins. 1990. Hawes, Leonard. 'The Politics of Articulation and Critical Communication Theory." COlI/ll1ullica.t.io/1 Yearhook J5. Ed. Stanley A . Deetz. Newbury Park , CA: Sage, 1992. 582-594. Jones, Joni L. "Improvisation as a Performance Strategy for Afriean-based Theatre. " Tex/ a/l(1 Peljármaflce Quar/erly 19 (1993): 233 251. Jones, LeRoi. Blues People. Negro Music in While America. New York: William Morrow, 1963. Jones. Simoll c., and Thomas G. Schumacher. "Muzak: On Functional Music and Power." Crilica! SlI.Idies in IHass Communica!ioll 9 (1992): 156-- 169. Kerr, Willard A. Experimellls on/he Ej{ecls o( il,fusic Ol! FaC!ory ProduCI ion. Stanfon.l, CA: Stanford U P, 1945. Koctting. James T. " J\friea/Ghana. " W(Jrlds o/Music. Ed. JeffTodd Titon , et al. NcIV York: Schirmer Books, 1984. 64- 104. Kraeaucr, Sicgfried. 'The Mass Omament." CrilicaL Theol')' und Sodely: A Reader. Ed. Stcphen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner. Nc\V York: Routledge. 1989.145 - 154. Laughlin, Charles D., .John McManus. and Eugene G . d' Aquili. Br(/il1. ,'"»l11hol ({/1(1 Experience: TOll'ard a Neurophellomel1ology o}' Human CO/lsciousness. Boston: Shambhala , 1990. Madison , D. Soyini . "That Was 1\1y Occupation': Oral Narrativc, PC['forrnance, and Rlack Feminist Thought." Texf alld Peljiml1ance Quar/er!y 13 (1993): 213 - 232. Merriam , J\lan P. Tlle Arllhropologl' o( M usic. Chicago: Northwcstem Up, 1964. Nccdham. Rodncy. "Percus~ion and Trilllsil ion. " }?('ada ill ('olllp(//'(/Iil'c Rcligion: AII An/hropologic({1 AI'IIrIJ(lch. hl. W illialll Ll;!s~ ;1. 1l'lJ éd . Ncw Y\, rI. : lIa rpcr & Ro.... , 1'l72.YlI.1,')7.

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NclH.:r, J\ndrc\V. " A l'h ys illlll¡.(ll:.al I-, xplanall[)1I ,,1' I llIusual Bchavjor ill ( 'crelllOllies Invol ving D rullls. l ' /1 1/11/(111 Ufolog.\' .\., (1l)(,2): 15 I 1(,(l. Niet zsche. F riedrich. 'f'/¡e ~Vill fo Power. Trans. W aJter Ka ufmann and R . J. Hollingdale. Ne w York: Random House, 1967. Plato. Greo/ Dialogues o/Plato. Trans. W. H. D. Rouse. Nc\V York: New American Library, 1956. Rouget. Gilbcrt. !I/usic and Trance: A Theory oi the Rel({/ian.\' ()elll'eell l\hl.\'ic ({mi Posse.l'siol1. Trans. Brunhilde Biebuyck. Chicago: U ofChicago P, 1985. Speer, Jean Haskell. " Waulking o' lhe Web: Women's Folk Performance in the Scottish Isles." Literalure in Perfármal!ce 6.1 (1985): 24- 33. Tagg, Philip. "'Black Music: 'A fro-AmecÍean Musie' and 'European Musie. "· l~Op Idur iHusic 9 (1989): 285- 298. Taylor, Frederick Winslow. The PrincipIes (J/ Scienl!(ic Manogement. New York: W. W. Norton. 1911. Thompson. E. P. '·Time. Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capita1ism." Past ulld Proml 38 (Decernber 19(7): 56 - 97. Turner, Victor. Froll1 Ritual to The(//re: T/¡e Hllm({n Seriausness o! Play. New York: PAJ Publica tions. 1982. Waterlllan , Christopher Alan. Jitjú: A Social History and Ethnography o/all Afriwll Popular kllls ic. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. Yelanjian , Mary. "R hythms ofConsumption." Culfural SIL/dies 5 (1991): 9197.

"-/ 1

nn:

66 T H E PERFOR M ANCE

OF PROOUCTI O N A N O

CONSUMPTION

M iranda .Joseph Sourcc: Social Texr 16(1) (1998) : 25- 62.

Introduction: production and performativity The core ofthis essay offers a reading of several of Marx's central arguments, showing the continuity ofproduction with signification and performativity. 1 bring the insights of poststructuralism \Vith regard to the performativity, constructedness, and discursivity of identity together with a modified but nonetheless substantially Marxist view that social organization is implicit in the organization of production, broadly construed. The argument moves in two directions, sho\Ving the performativity of production and lhe product ivity of performance. On the one hand, 1 expand the definition of production to indude a range of activities not normally considered production; on lhe other hand, I am concerned with the central role of corporate prodllction and of products tha t fl ow throllgh the marketplaee in prodllcing identity and community. At the condusion of the essay, I shift focus from Marx's texts to a set oftexts that argue an opposing view, that try to distinguish performat ivity from production. These antiproductivist theories see production as onl y reproductive, not dialectical or dynamic, amI locate freedom and liberati on (from production) in an exterior spaee, a representational excess frequentl y named fJe/forrnance. Through a critique of these texts I mean to point to what I hope \ViII be a more useful emancipatory strategy, a strategy 01' participation. My goal in expanding the definition of production, while attending to lhc broad effectivi ty of production more na rrowly consí rued, is lo address the relaiionship between exploitati o n ane! dominatio n, belwee n the economic (Ilarro wly conüeived ) a nJ lhl! social (wh ich in .1 hroaucr üonccpliOIl 01' l he eco ll omic, such us tha l proposl'd by Marx. mllsl Ix~ rcad as ;¡ prodllclivc 1;:'

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lhe volulltary as \Vell 'lS paid partLclpation in l1on prolil l'llrporations lhal absorbs the bulk 01' political and cultural activism in thc United ~:H alcs. Ilaving recognized the diversity 01' production, I recognize the diversity 01' subjects produced therein : l emphasize lhat production produces not only workers but f\mericans, loyal and proud General Motors employecs, \\lomen, and gays and Icsbians. fu my rcading, Marx's dialectical theory is a thcory 01' a neccssarily non totalizcd society in which multiple articulations 01' the society contradict each olher and yield new arrangemcnts. The new in this story comes not frolll some ex.ternal nonrationalized realm of emergent truth and freedom but from thc constraints 01' the presento Reading Marx in this \Vay allows me to construct a version 01' production that very nearly aligns with performati vity as Judith Ilutler has elaborated it. Butler invokes the speech act definition 01' "a performative [as] that dis cursi ve practice lhat enacts or produces that which it names;2 perform ance does not cnact preexisting meanings but rather constitutes meanings through action. ' She a bo employs the drama tic connotations of performance as "a stylized repetition 01' acts" witnessed and believed by an audience: a " reiterative and citatio nal practice."5 Unlike speech aet theory , which, as Butler and Mary Louise Pratt have both argued, tends to assume the existenee of a " choosing and constituting subject," Butler uses the theatrical, witnessed aspect of performativity to shift focus amI see " the social agent as an object rather than the subject of constitutive acts."6 In Rodies Tha/ Maller, Butler regularly defines perfonnativity by emphas izing that it is "production"7 and not "consumerism."~ (By using the term consumerisl11 she invokes connotations oí' the liberal , individual, willing, choosing subjcct, whereas the term i.'ol1.1'umpliol1 , as I use it, is meant to suggest a subjcct constructed by that consumption.) Performativity is exem plified not in the \vhimsical wearing 01' one drag, one set of clothcs, on e day and another drag the next, but rather in the punitively circumscribed enactment oC gender roles .~ f\l:l:ording to Butler, "the al:l:ounl of agency con ditioned by those very regimes 01' discourse/power cannot be conflatcd wi th voluntarism or individualism, much less with consumerism. "10 Kath W eston argues lhat understanding gender as a performance, as drag, focuses too much on the display of consumer goods such as clothing and not enough on gendered roles in relation to production , employment opportunitics, and so on. 11 But .1 would argue that, in Butler's theory, restricted and differentiated participation in production \Vould be accounted l'or as one ol' the central performances that produces gendered subjects. It is in the productive reenadment ofnorms that the possibility or even the necessity of the production 01' innovation occurs- a potentially, though nol by any means necessarily. su bvcrsivc change. Butler locates (opposilion a l) "agen<:y as a reitera ti vc 01" rca rl iculaltl ry pracl Ít;l.!. immanent to powcr, and nol él relalion 01' cx (crllal ¡\ppositi(ln lo IXlwcr." "'['he s ubject who would ~

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rcsisl sllch [rcglllalory, cOllslrllillill l..: ln M lIls is ilsdrl~ll abb l, irllol produl'cd, by such norms. "IZ Ralhcr Lltall lhlll king 01' produdion a:s el Il1l~ch u llil:al or rulc-bound system (JI' reprodudion 01' salllencss, whal Buller calls 110/"11'1.1' might usefully be understood in Pierrc Bourdicu 's terms as "habitus, the durably installed gencrative principie ofregulaled improvisations," which are subject to an "art of performance" in order to be successfully reproduced." The habitus may tend to reproduce itself, to produce " practiccs which tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective conditions of the production ofthe [habitus]" itself, but there is plenty ofroom here for things to go other ways as wel1. 14 The multidimensionality of the habitus, or the multiple arliculalions determining any given situation , creates contexts in which conflict, innovation, and change are frequently features of the produc tion of social relations. In taking up Marx's analysis 01' production , in expanding produclion to apply to a wide range 01' practices, and in interpreting production as a performative practice, I hope, with Butler, to emphasize the opportllnities for iliberatory social change made available wilhin production even while offer ing a critique 01' the constraints-,often oppressive innovations rathcr than preservations- imposed by the mode 01' produdion,

The relationship bctween production aod social relations: discourse, materiality, and practicc In The German Idc%gy Marx argues that in general subjecthood and sOl:ial relations are implicit in the production of the means 01' subsistence and in the needs that each new product brings into existence, whil:h in turn generate new produl:tion. By emphasizing the produl:tion ofnew needs Marx makes it clear that he is not tal king about some sorl 01' biologistil:ally necessary material subsistence production but rather the production 01' whatever has l:omo to SCCIll nccessary in a given sociely. Marx 's argument against the primacy of consciousness in prOdlll:ing soóety is not now cogently an argument about the immateriality of con sciousness but rather an argume~nt against claims for its independence or a priori status vis-a-vis the social. He insists on placing ma teriality in the determining role and makes consciousness its by-product spel:ifically to tic consciousness to society, to the actions and practices that people engage in (and not to make a moral point about the importance of material survival over and aboye the life of the mind , nor a logical point reaffirming the minu body split): From the start the "s p iril ~' is affliclcd with the l:urse of being "bur dened" wi lh malter, which here makes ib a ppearance in lhe form 01' agit aled laycl's nI" S, Ihal cxisls also rOL olhl~r men , ami ror r; ~,

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that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well. . . . CO I1 sciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product. 15 Marx does not wield materiality against the c1aims of social construction but rather in his arguments for it: matcriality equates with hum a n practice. Con sciousness, culture, religion , language, and polities are aU social (in his sense material) products. products of peoplc making their world togeth er through their actions and interactions. Using materiality in this way to mean practice, Marx makes it clear that materiality is inseparable from discourse . In the passage quoted herc, Marx argues that discourse is always already material. Later, in discussing the commodity, 1 \vill show that Marx also argues that materiality is always alrcady discursive. Marx argues that individual subjecls are the simultaneous products of the production of objects: Production must not be considered simply as being thc reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form ... of expressing their life. As individuals express their life so theyare. 16 Not only is the individual's identity formed/expressed in production but the collectivity, social relations , are also determined through the mode of pro duction. 17 "There exists a materialistic connection of mcn with one another which is determined by their needs and their mode of production ." Division(s) of labor are immediately social divisions as well as technical divisions , which differentiate the interests of individuals from one another and create "cleav age between the particular and the eommon interest. " ' ~ Thc implicitness of subjecthood and social relations in production might seem to suggest an essentialist notion 01' identity and collectivity, in other words, that identity and collectivity have one necessary (economic) deter mination ; but th¡jt is true only if the objects being produced have a stabl e essence, can be reduced to sorne singula r identity or effectivity in relation to which only one subjectivity redounds to the producer. While it is possiblc, even typical, to read Marx in this manner- the teleological narra ti ve in which the theory is embedded certainly suggests that Marx read himself in thar way'~-I think that that reading is reductive and specificalJy flattens out the dialectical analysis of social processes Marx offers. Marx's theory of the simultaneity of material and social production (or of the multivalence of every produc li ve act) can m ore interestingly be ta kell as a phenomenological theory not un Jike that of B utler, for whom you are wha l you do, which is to sa y h üw yO ll appear, through your act ions in lhe world. In this view, it is the po tenLiall y diverse perfo rma livily 01' proJ uclivc act iv ily amI 01' products that matlers.

17(1

TI-lE PER_FORM AN CI : 01 : I' RODUl' 'I ION ANI> (,()NS U MI' T ION

Thc multivalencc of thc cornmodity The capitahst for111 01' the subject/object dialectic is eommodity production and is described by Marx's theory ofvalue. Not only is production multivalent in that it produces both an object and a subjcct, but under capitalisrn it is multivalent in the sense that , according to Marx , it produces use value, value, and a potentially infinite array of exchange values. Marx ' s opening move in Capilal is to analyze this multivalence. As a use value, the commodity is to be scen in its particular, concrete, apparently material aspect , and yet it must be a social use value, that is, something that is recogniza bly useful in a given society (sinee Lo be a corn modity it must be exchangeable, if not actually exchanged). G a yatri Spivak argues (with. not against. Marx) that use value (especially the use value of labor) cannot be used to ground or c10se off a chain of signification, much the way Butler argues (against Lacan) that materia'iity in general (and the pcnis and the phallus in particular) cannot be the guarantor 01' stabilizer of lhe signifying chain that seems to follow frorn it, but rather that materialíty can only seem to be that guara ntor by being posited as such within discourse. which puts discourse before and not only after materialíty .20 The point of both of these diffieult deconstructive arguments is lo show that the posited origins 01' meaning are in fact socially eonstructed and his torically determined and that in their particular forms they tend to sup port particular arrangements ofpower. Spivak's project, and my own , in showing the social (discursivc) detennination of use value , is not intended to em pty it of its materialíty or to make use values appear expendable , as if people don't need to subsist. Rather, the point 01' her argument is to crea te a ver ~i()n 01' Marxian analysis that ties the "polítical economy 01' the sign " (the rcal rn 01" domination) , which scems to have so captured tho minds of F irsl World acadernics, to a more traditional Marxian analysis that can see the exp loita tion occurring in the international division of labor. DominaÜ oo is enacled through the technology of exploitation. Or, to displace the dominat iolll exploitation binar)' , I would say, the production 01' monetary surplus va lucs depends on production in its most inclus.ive articulation as all human praxis. Likewise , I want to read the diSCllrsive aspects 01" commodity production not in order to leave the realm of needs, inequality , exploitation , and opprcssion but rather to offer an adequate account 01" the social relations produced tberein. More important to Marx in many ways than usc value is what he names simply I'{¡fue . This value is determined not through the social process 01' inscribing the object as IIScfll1 in its particlIlars, but through the social proccss 01' prod uct io n ilsclf; this valllc is an acco unt ot', an I:x preSSilln or " form of a ppearalll:c" or, the la b~)r thal we nl ¡nto 11luk il1 g the cOlllm~)dil y .~ 1 W hilc Ma rx cmrhasii'.c'i Ihal v:dllc n: pn:sl'lI ls only I h~ (uhstl';l\,; t sud all y IIl'l:~S~a l'y)

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ti!" labor, bl..'(;:lII SI; IlIat ljualltily is dq)cnJ cn t (I!! III\.' kvd to whicl ! prod uclive forces have heen dL:vcloped in a givcn socieLy (i .L: .. UII how the thing \Vas ma(k). valuc abo. in a sellSC, cxprcsses the quality oflabar involvcd , (Il is. lhL:lI. nol (m'ly possible to show ho\V use value is dependent on cxc hange value but. eonvcrscly, how exchangc value falds back into material specilld ly as wel1.) The development af productive fon;es is based not only 0 11 somc naturally increasing human ability but on the historically contingent nced to control labor and labor's resistance.22 Marx saw the production process itself as rccast through the reintcrpretation of it as él battle between c1 asses. as opposed to , ror instance, a cornpetition among workers . So while abstraet value is deterrnined by concrete productive forces, those produetive forees a re again not SOIl1C essential origin of meaning but rather a produet 01' social pré:lctices and struggles. Exchange vaJue (as opposed to value, which is abstract labor in its abstrael statc) is the form 01' appearance of value in the particular language, lhe particular coin, of a particular society or at least 01' a specific transaction; an exchange value is so many dollars or yen or coats. lt is therefore precisely a discursive articulation, a culturally and historically specific manifestati on ur value. In examining all aspects ofthe commodity Marx makes it c1ear that wh at is being produced are meanings, that is, social values, things that perform in the context of social practices, for example, a eonsumption or an exchange. Bul how many praetices or potential meanings did Marx take into consideration? While use value is potential1y a wide-open category, Marx shows re1ativel y little interest in its potential diversity; he is primarily inlerested in the use l O which labor power in particular is put, how its use value produces surplus values. Marx's discussion ofsurplus value- especially when that value appears in the form of profit or money and is llsed for private consumption rathe r than as capital- points to an array 01' social meanings and value distinct fro m a narrowly defined economic sphere but not independent or autonomous 01' it. In the 1844 Manuscripts, for instance, Marx describes the ability ofmonet ary wealth to act as the equivalent ofbeauty, intelligence, physieal carability. talent, morality , and so on. Marx, however. doesn't theorize these other values adequately; as ma ny fell1inists have pointed out, by focusing , especially in Capilal, on the use val ue 01' labor po\ver and exchange value , Marx limits his analysis lo a very na r rowly drawn economic realm. He does this for a particular reason: to providl! a basis ror the revelation of exploitat'ion through wage labor, which he sees as the primary form 01' oppression under capitalismo Exploitation depe nds 011 the interplay of use value and exchange value. (The use value 01' one d ay'~ labor minus the exchange value 01' one day's labor equals a q ua ntity 01' ~u rp l ll~ value. ) l3ut as has become widd y arrarent, cxploitalion has not displat:cd lhe r rorllls 01' opprcsSion; capi la lism has in ract inco rpo ra led <1 11 sorb \11' other social hicran:h ics illlll jts " llC ratiolls, qll:lllll ly

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In order to aceount ror the diversity DI' oprressions iIIha biting capitalism, it is necessary to look beyond direct commodity production and beyond a dualistie analysis ofvalue. (Marx's work is not a fetter here but merely under developed.) In undertaking this task, feminists have analyzed the productive labor that goes on outside Ihe faetory and monetary market conlexts. Theor ists of"consumer" society have analyzed the many other kinds ofvaJue besides use and exchange that travel wilh the commodity in its production. distribu tion, and eonsumption cireuit; these theoüsts also recognize labor outside the faetory which is done in great part by women though in raet must be done by everyone - the labor of consumption.?3 Ferninists such as Christine Delphy and Marilyn Wa ring have observed that neither Marxist nor neoc1assieal eeonomics manages to value (as produets 01' socially necessary labor) or account for (in national economic statisties) large categories of goods and services that are central to the lives of r eo p1e and, for that matter, to the functioning of eapitalism: these categories inc1ude human reproduction , housework, subsistence farming, the environment, and volunteer work (generally for nonprofit organizalions). They note that not only are these goods and services not recognized as val ues, but the produeers, frequently women , are not recognized as valuab1e either. Government pol icies do not respond to the needs 01' these producers, who live in subordinate positions within families whose monetary market participants are its ranking members and public face. 24 The point of these feminist arguments is to suggest that gender oppression has a determining role in relaÜon to the economy. Delphy, for instance, des cribes women in French peasant households who produce goods th at cannot be distinguished from cornmodities - they may be brought to market or used at home- and who produce these goods not for a wage but in a sense ror free , 01' for subsistence only. Delphy claims that these women can be eonsidered slave labor, whi1e husbands or fathers are petty bourgeoisie, trading goods in the marketplace. The distinctions hcre do not depend on the nature of the product/produetion but primarily on gender. Rather than mark determination in one direction or another, I am intcr ested in noticing that gendering occurs Ihrough productive practice~ , through the performance-·-the enactment, witnessed and inscribed monetarily or not - of production, understood to include these nonmonetarized activities. What is important in this analysis for me is the fact that the goods and ser vices and the produeers of those goods and services share an evaluation that articulates neither use in any narrow sense, nor labor time, nor exehange value. but rather discourses 01' gender, ol' public and private, of the monetary and nonmonetary. The marking 01' gender depends on one's role in relation to production and cven srecifIcally lo capitalism. Social divisions and gendered individual and collccti vc subject ivi tics do not have some independent pre cxisting life bUI ure full y i1ll1l1:lllcn t in (prod m:cd by and prod uctive 0 1') Ihis productive act ivity. \ I rl

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nw klllillisl arglllll\'llts IhallJlllllJ1arkl'1 adivilics, su.:!! a~ I\'produdioll , artO pmuLlclioll orCIl tite possibilily (with which Ihcsc Icmin ists werc no t r)articu lar/y Lllllcerncd) for a Ituge range of pnvate, social activities lo bc considerctl pl"mluctillll. Ir child socialization 01" heterosexual sexual acti vity (inscribcd as l1lonclarily valuable productive practices only in the demimondes of paid child care and prostitution) can be recognized by thesc feminist argumenls as valuahle labor. lhen gay sex is also certainly analyzablc as a valuable, pro ductive ac!: productive of relationships, identities, communities, and social spaces. The anonymity and randomness of gay mal e sexual activily at ccrta in points in gay history seem to me techniqucs that produce a n imaginary expanse 01' iden tification , not unlikc the newspaper in Benedict Anderson's ll/lagined C0l11l11uni'ies. 25 This scxual activity has defined and daimed a variety of public places - certain streets, hlocks, and parks, as \\lell as bars and bathhouses as gay comlllunal space. This social production feeds almost immediately back into production in the narrowcr sense of monetary surplus value production. Donna Harawa y has said that "the body is an accumulation strategy," a point that David Harvey has elahorated in his recent work, exploring the construction of the body as variable capital through the sites of production, exchange, and con sumption?' However, the strategic production of speciAc but diverse bodies as capital requires thc complicity of discourses not nOlmally named produc ,ioll. As Janet Jakobsen puts it, with referencc to Weber's " Protestant ethic," the realm ofvalues (i .c. , religion, culture, and domination in the form of "fam ily values") enters- at the site of the body- the supposedly value-free realm ofvalue, the economic. I would simply add here that not only are individual bodies an accumulation strategy a nd thus the site ofthis values-Iaden produG tion process, but social bodies, social formations. f'amilies , and communities are also accul1lulation strategies. 27 But one needn't look outside commodity production for the production of values other than use and exchange and th us of subjccts other than wage laborer and capitalist. The importance of social production for economic production is evident in the elaborate efforts made by capitalists to influence idcntity and community structures. While sorne feminists argue that Marx iSIl1 has failed to give adequate atlcntion to something going on simultane ously \Vith, but external to, direct commodity production (i.c., reproduction), theorists of consumer culture makc a more historical argument, suggesting that capitalism itsc1f has changed, that thc nature of the products being produced has changed, and that what is significant about thc products ha!> changcd. lean Baudrillard and olhers have descrihed él shift to a stagc of capitalism in which protit depcnds not on lhe prod uction process, 01' the exploitation or lahor, but ralher on lhc conlrol OrCOnSlIl1ler desire through ad vcrtising, th ro ugh control or "lhc codc," lhc Clll irc sym bolil' onJe r ?~ Frcdric Jamcso n arg ues lha lhe prodlletillll ofcu llurc " has hccome in te¡,.rra led ¡n lo cOll1modily prod llClioll

generally" hccausl' il has SUdl a signilicanl rok I.l) play in Ihe prodllction pr innovative commoditics, so that "cultural production [has hccome] an arena of fierce soci al conflict" and there is a " new role for aesthetic dellnitiolls and interventions. "29 But as I see it, the issue here is not so much lhe cOll1modillca tion of discoursc, of media , art, ami inforll1ation, but the discursivity 01' the commodity. Baudrillard notes that the status or identity-confe rring q ualily of the com modity is not manufactured in the factory but rather in lhe consumption process. Thus it is control over consumplive rather than produclivc labor (through advertising or, less overtly, through cultural products Iike television programs rather than through time docks and shop fl oor managers) that is important to the production of surplus value. The labor of the consumer contributes the greater sharc ol' surplus valuc. an unlimited share since it is based on signification and not on human labor capacity within the twenty four-hour day . The status-, idcntity- , and community-conferring aspects of a commodity might be seen as pan of its use va,lue, or in another view as part of its cx change valuc. in the scnse lhat the commodily is traded in a marketplace 01' status, identity, or community (a market that is nol merely metaphoricaJly related to the commodity market but is crucially enabling to it). To view it in either of thcse ways raises questions about the distinction between use value and cxchangc valuc . Exchange looks Iike just another possible use for a commodity or all uses look like exchanges in the sense that a commodity (an expression of value) is being invested (used for exchange) to produce a given result , which result will then be turned around and invested again to turn anothcr proAt of sorne sort. The problem with this conflation ol' use and exchange value is that, while it conforms to Marx's definition of exchange value as a socially determined value abstracted from the particulars of the object, it doesn't conform to his definition of exchange value as an abstrac tion of labor, unless labor is redefined to inc\ude sign production. This redefinition of labor puts the appropriating consumer on a theoretical par \Vith the factor)' worker, the so-called producer. Marx rccognized Ihis con sumptive labor in the Grundrisse:

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The product only obtains its " Iast finish " in consumption. A railway on which no trains run , hcnce which is not Llsed up, not consumed , is a railway only [potentially], and not in reality . .. . Consumption produces production .. . bccausc a product becomes a real product only by being cOl1Sumed ... . the product, unlike a mere natural object, provcs itsclf to be. hecomes, a product only through consulllption ... only as objcct rOl' thc active suhjcCt, '0 Marx, ho wew r, a Iso rccogni/cd Iltal llw idcn lily o r prodllclion ami cons um p liun lhal OIlO cOllld ;llliVl' ;11 lll\·on·til'a lly was IIl cn.:l y theorclical idl'lllily,

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bascu nn s\:cing él sm;idY as a sin gular subjl!t:l. O f1ú! Sl!l' lI as lh~ al:li vlly ul" many individuals, product io n ano l"ons umption are clcarly sq)¡lratcu by d is tribution ; " the producer's rclation to the product, once lhe latter is I1nished , is an external one, ano its return to the subject depends on his relalion to other individuals." JI So while the expansion of production to indude consulllption is crucial , it is also important lo note that production is a ditTerentiatcd process. "Consulllptive" labor is productive, but it is organized very differently th a n " productive" labor: it is not organized , procured, or cxploited as wage labor. rn expanding production to include wOlllen's work . priva te activi ty , ane! sig nification 01' performance, the dcnnition of the techn ol ogy of oppression , whal Marx called exploitation , also must be expanded. First of all , exploitation must be distinguished from appropriation , a tenn that has been used to accuse dominant groups of taking and profiting from cultural forms that belong to some subordinate group, As Ámy RobLnson arg ues , the logic of appropriation reinvokes and relies on a discourse of private property, which is precisely the discourse that functions to separate subordinate groups from social goodS. 32 According to Marx, exploitation is not appropriation ; it is nol the taking 01' property that properly belongs to someone else. One should be able to enjoy seeing someone else make gooJ use of the product of one 's labor, and in Marx's view , one would if one did not see that someone as Other, if one recognized one's communal relation to that Other. The wage labor system is technically fair: the full exchange value of the labor is paid to the laborer. As Marx argues in "The Critique of the Gotha Program ," its exploitativeness would not be cured by increasing the portion of goods distributed to the direct producer; the direet producer would still be exploited beca use he would still not have control 01' the means of production. He would still be controlled by, opposed to. lhe capitalist Other; he would still be in competition with other workers and would still be subject to a division 01' labor that divided his particular interest from the general interes1. The key to exploitation, then , is that it is a practice partici p ated in by both the dominant and subordinate parties for the apparently voluntary (and thus value-free, unjudgable) transfer of power to thc domin ant party. How does this work when applied to consulllption? Consumptive labor is procured and exploited through active subjection in the expression o f needs. desires, self, identity, and community; as producers seem to freely se ll their labor, consumers freely choose and purchase their commodities. D The exploitation occurs insofar as by freely choosing, consumers contribute to lhe accumulation of capital- and thus to the power 01' the owners 01' lhe means of production- and enact the cultural and social formatio ns in which their choices are embedded but whi ch Lhey uo not control. The consume r\ free choice is constraincd and p rod uclive nI' f"urther constrajnl s. 14 Sta t us. for exa mple. as BOllrdicu rcco¡,.mi zes. is Il()t only a cOllscqucncc of" srccil ic

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economic f"actors . fadors thal limil or cnablc a variel y 01" social pcrf"orIllam;cs such as the purchase 01' status-conlcrring: uommodilies. but is a Illolllcnl in a trajectory. Status ilsclf opens or sh uts o ff ecoll omic opportunity_jobs. cduca lÍon , and social access. 15 As conditions of productive labor are the site 01' strugglc between worker and capitalisL so the conditions and illlplications of consumptive labor have been the sile of struggle, A body 01' work in the neld 01' cultural studies has attended to the deploYlllent oflllass products in particular or innovative ways in the e1aboratian ofthe subcultural communi ly identity .16 But the redepl oy ment of such uommunal images by the corporate producers oi' the commod ities has also been notable ,37 The prob1e1ll with the Gap-incation l~ of gay culture. or with the incorpora tion of hip hop into sneaker ads. is not that someone has sto len a cultural forlll that properly belongs to one group but that corporate appropriation of the given forlll or style makcs it at least in part alien to and against those who generated i1. Queer Nation , for instance, felt that it had to "out" the Gap ror its lIse of gay celebrities and styles. As Lauren Berlant and Elizabcth Freeman explain. The New York Gap series changes the final P in the logo of stylish ads featuring gay, bisexual and suspiciously polYlllorphous celebri ties to aY . . , . the reconstructed billboards ... address the company 's policy of lIsing gay style to sell cJothes without acknowledging debts to gay street stylc,"¡ In speaking of "debts," Berlant and Freel11an suggest that Queer Nation is objecting to appropr.i ation , as ir gays had property in the styles they developed by deploying mass culture products sueh as blue jeans and white T-shirts. But if the question 01' exploitation is more a question of control than one of acknowledgl11ent or debt , then lhe issue he re is what social relations a re advanced when gays and lesbians purchase their jeans, white T-shirts. and leather jackets in the I1rst place. And in analyzing the reapproprialion of the style by Gap, one wonders whcther gay people are empowered , their articula tion of society promoted along with the particular cJothing itellls, or whether the existence 01' ga ys and lesbians is erased or closeted , And , while hijacking the corporate means of production of the discursive value of commodities can be a powerful intervention , participation in dis cursi ve production can also be " conciliatory. [in the] mode 01', for instance, [Marshall] Kirk and [llunter] Madsen 's plan to Illarket 'positive' (read ' toler able ') gay images lo straight culture. "40 In either case, the very differentia tions that collllllllnilics Illay scek lo cnact with their consumptive production may n ot be exle rna l lo or opposilional to capitalist production but may very well be tlle e1a hunllto n uf' ils tlW II n ~ce ssaril )' incrcasingly dense 3j'ticulations 01' d ifkrcncc. nI' lIicllcs :llId 01" l:I lI llI llIllIitics l1f con sllmcrs amI prod ucen; . \i'; 1

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The evo/vin¡: relatüm of cllpitlllism to cOlllfIJl1nit)' In both The German Ide%gy and Capital Marx writes at length on the pro cess of the progressive reformation of society undcr capitalism , which brcaks down existing communities and communal forms, freeing (and obliging) indi viduals to sell their labor and to be refunctioncd as necessary for the capitalist dcvelopment of prod uctive forees . He notes that big industry .. . destroy[ed] the former natural exclusiveness ofsepar ate nations . .. and resolved all natural relations into money rcla tions . .In the place 01' naturally grown towns it created the modern, large industrial cities which have sprung up overnight. 41 Ultimately. this tllrns out to be a good thing: the eonditions have been created so that under communism individuals are free to aet according to their desires in relation to a "universal ," " world-historieal" human association, unimpcded by locality or relations of hierarchy , dependenee, or dominance. Only then will the separa te individuals be liberated from the various national and local barriers, be brought into practical eonnection with the material and intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position to aequire the capacity to enjoy this all"sided production of the whole earth (the creation of man).42 Unlike many late-twenlieth-eentury Icftists, Marx is not nostalgic for older communal forms; describing the extraordinarily destructive effects 01' thc introduction of industrial technology and capitalist logic by the British in India, he \\Tites, Wc must not forget that these idyllic viHage commullltles ... restrained the human mind within the sll1allest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of su perstition. enslaving il beneath traditional r ules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. . . . these little communities \Verc contaminated by distinction s 01'

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cask and by slavery. that they slIbjllgatcd man to I.!xternal circlllll stances instead ofelevating Illan to be the sovcrcign 01' circuinstances.'ll Likewise, afler di scussing the faet that the English Parliament had fin all y decided to regul are the economic exploitation 01' children by their pare.nls and thus destroy the traditiona l rights of parents over their children. Marx argues: However terrible and disgusting the dissolution . under the capitalist system. of tbe old family lies might appear. nevertheless. modern industry , by assigning as it does an important part in the procelis of production , outliide the domesti e sphere. to women . to yo ung persons, to children 01' both sexes , crea tes a new economic founda tion for a higher form 01' the family and of relations between the sexes. 44 The pOliitive opportunities provided by the disintegrative effects of the ocvelop ment of capitalism have been noted by feminist and gay historians, who havc shown how industrialization freed young women froll1 parental autho rity and allowed gay people to congregate in urban eenters outside the reach of the patriarchal and communal situations from whieh they had come. This research does not suggest that capitalism, in dissolving communities, len people "alienated" but rather that it cnabled them to create communities on ne\\' (and in their accounts more voluntary) grounds .45 However, as I began to argue earlier, these new communities also serve an evolving capitalism in particular ways. The dissolution oflocal and idiosyncratic communities eoincided with the process 01' corporation building, culminating in Fordism,4G whieh involved the rational ization and massification both of production processes (the Taylorization 01' work processes, the introduclion of assembly lines) and 01' consumption (the family wage and the eight-hour day were meant lo eneo ur age \Vorkers to consume the products they made) . As Alan Trachtcnberg argucs, this massing of capital and of labor also tended to articulate a rcl atively obvio LIS and simple division between work ers and capitalists .47 This simplicity \\las factually complieated by the vast class of managers , pro fes sionals, and so on necessary to make these corporations runo And , as Harvey points out. Fordism created él dass 01' relatively privileged white maJe (if often immigrant) workers and undcrdasses 01' African Americans, Asians , and \Vomen. 4~ Nonethc1css, I would guess that Trachtenberg is correct to the extent that the ideology ofwork was likely dominated by factory producti on . Ilowever , corporations have ror él lon g time been sites 01' eomplex subject con struction . a co rn plcxi ty that cu ls agai nst such simple binary oppositions. Thi s corpora te slIbjcc\ \!o nstrllcl ion has bccome more obv illllS in the recent

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shirt away from I-'ordist mass production ami toward wllal has hccn ca lleJ posl-Fo/'disl1l orjlexihle acculIlulatiol1. Harvey dates from approximately 1973 the brea kup of"Fordist-Keynesian" "configurations 01' political-economic power" and a shift to " new systems of production and marketing, characterized by more flexible labour proccsscs and markcts ... geographical mobility and rapid shifts in consumption prac tices," He argues that , starting in the 1970s, technological changc, automation , the search for ncw product tines and market niches, geographical dispersal to zones 01' easier labor control, mergers and steps to accelerate the turnover time of thei r capital surged to the fore 01' corporate strategies for survival. 49 According to Harvey , the merging 01' massive multinational corporations has come to depend on diverse communalIy structured production and con sumption. The proliferation of corporate strategies to promote rather than suppress diversity , ranging from affirmative action to diverse representation on television , operates to stabilize, not disrupt, the sys tem .50 Niche marketing and the shift from durable goods to services and media have been the popularly recognized aspects offtexible accumulation. So there has been , for instance, a proliferation of long-distance telephone sen/ices that operate under the sign of sorne particular community, in so me cases claim in g to contribute some part of their income to organizations promoting the interests ofthat community. I am aware, for instance, ofservices d aiming iden tification with progressive causes in general, women, Latinos, gays/lesbians, and Christian conservatives. Over the last few years, the American Family Association has sent out several direct maitings promoting the "Lifeline" lon g-distance service. One such mailing read in part, Dear Friend, It is not my intent to make you feel gui1ty, but I thought you would want to kno\\': 1f you are a customer of AT&T, Mel or Sprint, you are helping promote the immoral, anti-family causes that the Amer ican Family Association has been fighting for 17 years.... The good news is that there is a way to fight back- and help J\l-A at the same time.... Lifeline is deeply committed to helping Christian ministries like "FA. In 1994, AT&T tried to fight back by target-marketing gays and lesbians wi tb a direct mail campaign . The packet they sent out inc1l1Jed a lavender anJ rainbow-colored brochure colors widely uscd lo signify gay culture él nd "gay pride"- featuring pictures o f gay couplcs, unel gay pcople with, úr tal kin g o n the ph onc too their parenls. T lll:se imagcs wcrc accompa nicd by lhc slog,U1S " Lel YO ll r T rue Voice (le 1karu " amI " I I's T ime a C ham!c." T his packct also

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im.: ludcd a I~,ct sheet on the history 01' A r&T's gay cmployces ¡Issociation. What is beingsold is not so much phone service as participation in a givcn community. But post- Fordist flexible acculllulation dramatically shifts the structures of production as wel1 as consumption. One of the principal trends of corporate capitalist activity has been the rclocation of hard-core industrial production away from more "developed" regions and into formerly less industrialized arcas where labor is cheaper and reglllations are fewer. 51 This trend creates a new relationship between labor and capital in developed areas such as the United States. Work ers are articulated as bein g in competition with workers elsewhere in the world , both those employed by the same company and those employed by other companies, The corporation cGln c1aim that the other com panies will use their cheaper foreign labor to put this company out of busi ness, which wil1 be bad for these ",orkers too. (And in faet such competition has even been fomented between workers in different regions of tbe U ni ted States.)52 Corporations use this situation to elicit a cooperative approach to col1ective bargaining (that is, to gain concessions), to encourage a sense of investment on the part ol' the workers in the profitability 01' the company, which the company backs up with more or less token profit sharing and man agement sharing. Both nationalist and corporate identificatory discourses 1 can be and tend to be articulated in this process. 5. Interestingly, these etTorts to articula te worker and company interests as coincident come precisely at the moment in which workcr loyalty is pro foundly threatened by the increasingly evident lack of 10ya1ty on the part of the corporation toward its employees. Not only are corporations willing to move plants overseas; they are also busy downsizing and outsourcing, replacing full-time, benefited workers with part-time, temporary labor. Jobs that once seemed to carry Iifetime tenure are now vulnerable to the latest economic news. M ichael Moore's documentary film Roger amI Me (1990) bemoans precisely this loss of a sense of company loyalty, as wel1 as the loss of actual jobs, among General Motors (m,1) \\'orkers in Flint, Michigan, \Vho were subjcct to a seemingly endless series of plant dosures in the 1980s. In ils own public relation s efforts, a series of ful1page ads in the New York Times (probably not the paper most frequently read by
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In drawing prod uetion narrow ly ano rcprese nlin g t hese lW~l rcal ms as inJc pe m.lent, Ma rx is hcrc drirpi ng wi lh inmv showing liS capita lislI1 as it sCCs

itscll'. Wilhin capitalism, t!te inequities 01' prodl1ction aprear to he limited to the factory ami appear not to determine (01' bc detcrmined by) social rela tions, which appear to bc free. It is preciscly thc implication 01' the realm of exchange in producti on that Marx needs to argue for in Capital. To say this another way , Marx is here making an argument much like the one I wish to make for the complicity of production in a narro\\' sense (manufacturing in this quote. the production of monetary surplus value in my argument) with production in a broadcr sen se (the whole social organ ization of production, exchange, and consumption). Marx characterizcs the ideological process that makes the marketplace and the state appear independent of production as fetishism . Fetishism is a two-step process: first the subjcct objectifies itself in some \V'd.y. through sorne product; then this product is alienatcd , that is, it appears to ha ve, in faet docs have. an independent life and acts as a power over the producer. The COI11 modity is a fetish in that the value 01' the commodity in cxchange (i .c. , its relations with other things) seems to inhere in it and scems not to be a pro duct ofthc producer. This results from the fact that the commodity's valuc is social; it is only as a product 01' the whole society's productive abilitics and relations that the particular commodity gets its value; its valuc is not due to the actions of the individual produccr alone. But the produccr thinks he is producing the product by himself and isn't aware of his rclations with others in the society (or at least that is how Marx's story goes). "A definite social relation between men ... assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a rela tion between things. "S(, I would suggest that many social formations might be analyzed on the model of fetishism : communities created through production (through labor 01' participation) appcar to be independent, organic en ti ti es over and against the subjects who produced them . This is true for identity-based groups in two ways. First of all , the participation and activism of group members is erased if groups appear as ongoing, se!f-generating, 01' eternal entities. Second, beca use of their Sl1pposcdly organic nature, ethnic-, national- or identity-based com munal formations are frequently articulated as providing an alternative to the alienated rcalm of production ; in other words, they are undcrstood as independent orthe larger social relations ofproduction within which they are situated. As Marx says, civil society (his term for the realm of production when contrasted \Vith the state rather than with the markct) seems by con trast with the fetishized communality of the state to be a rcalm of "atomistic, antagonistic indi\iiduals,"57 when in fact civil society is where people enact their mutual dependence ami have their real relations. Likewiso, I would sug gcst that while civil sociaty appcars to be a realm oC organic and independent cornmunities, it is in fact whe re these cOlllml1nitics are constitl1ted through their interdependenl p roJ lIcti vc pracl ices. Marx's a nalys is 01' fCL ishbm migh l ma kc il Sl!i!111 (!tal the ni arke( (m :;I.atc) is men:ly (he itkolo)',ica l pi ojl.:ctioll nI' (he prm lll\:\ iOIl prm,;.c¡¡s, ill which th-:

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distinct small ami divcrsc grollps lo coalcsce and in¡;orporatc. I wOllld slIggcst that the shift away from mass rationalization opens the way not only rol' older kinship structllrcs to rcinhabit production but for newer social grou p ings to inhabit the corporation , to manifest themselves as a corporation . The diversity of groups useflll as niche market consumers can turn around and lIndcrstand tbemselves, assert themselves, as prodllcers. Vario LIS communities -- gay, racial, ethnic/immigrant, religious, and so on- make pcrfectly good corporatc-productive rubri¡;s; so Korea n m a rkets, lesbian auto repair shops. lndian gas stations, "minority-owned " (A frican American) cngineering and construction firms, and A,sian American swea tshops are examples of produc tion and distribution sites that facilitate the !l ow 01' ca pital by organiz ing themselves on the basis of, and thus producing, the community with which the business is identified. They become the site and structllre through which the community enaets its very cxistencc.

The dialectical dy1/amic.~ oI socialfó,.mations So while thc disintegrative process of individuation occurs, new communal formations are simultaneously constitllted . Marx focuses on the marketplace and the bourgeois "liberal " state as sites of new (if alienated) communality. What are the relations bctween these multiple and divergent articulations of social relations? Marx argucs that under capitalism, the realms of production (construed as manufacturing) and exchange (the marketpla¡;e) appear to be independent of ea¡;h other. Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour power, we therefore take leave for a time 01' this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode ofproduction .... this sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase oflabour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden ofthe innate rights of mano There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities . .. we think we can perceive a change in the physio gnomy 01' our dramatis pcrsonae. He, who before was the money owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour power follows as his labourcr. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back , likc one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to cxpcct but·-a hiding.5S

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01" pwple thal ought to uxi sl alld be explieilly have bl.:comc the eq uivalence and interch angeability ol' l hin g~ (01' citi/.c lls). Bul as he analyzes the interdependenee 01' these two real 111 S il hecollles clear that the relation betwecn these t\Vo spheres is nol a relation 01' IInidircdional dekrmination in which the reality 01' producti on determines t 111.: idcological marketplace. They coproduce and support each other: Ihe ma rkclplace is the realm 01' individualism and appa rent free ch oice through whiGh individuals freely en ter into exploita tive (productive) relat ions. Surplus valuc cannot he generated without the interplay of the two processes. 11] addition . production and exchange yield two very different and equally ~(') nscqucntial visions ofthe world. Whilc the production realm yields an arti clIlalion 01' c1ass subordination , the marketplace and the state provide any siluation with alternative potential articulations: the discourses of rights and 01' nation are salient examples. The realm of production and the marketplace cxceed each othe r; civil society and the state exceed each other and come to be :Jnla gonistic, dialectical, dynamic túrces. It may be that onJ y in combinati on \Vith righls discourse can c1ass subordination be articulated as c1ass confti cl. /\nd the inequality 01' the production process makcs the enactment of equal ily in exchange impossible: people's ability to participate in the market can hl:COllle extremeJy limited , thus creating a segment 01' the population that does IHlt huy the discourse of eguality. Both views of social relations are equally H~al. and although they are bolh necessary túr the realization 01' capital they all' nol structurally stable 01' coherent. They are in a relation 01' antagonism as \Vdl as coproduction, in which, as two very different articulations ofsoci l'ty, lhey genera te social change. l'qllalil y and

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[/\s] the various intcrests ami conditions 01' lite within the ranks 01' the prolctariat are more cqualised .. . lhe collisions belween indi vidual workman ami individual bourgeois take more and more lhe eharacter of collisions between t\Vo c1asses. There upon workers begin to forrn combinations (Trade Unions) against the bourgeois: they club logelher in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent association in order to make provi sion beforehand for these occasional revolts . ... The real fruit of these battles lies, not in the illlmediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped by the improved Illeans of communication that are created by Illodern industry and that place the workers of differ ent localities in contact with one another. The bourgeoi:·üe finds itself involved in constant battle... , In all these battles [the bourgeoisie] sees itself cOlllpe].]ed to appeal to the proletariat ... ami thus to drag it into the political arena. The bour geoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own eJcments of polítical ami general education. 59

rOl itsel f, u ltimaleJy in Ihe pr(l~IIICII\ln 0 1' gl)OU¡¡ h UI il11meuialely as a n;:volu t ion;1I y fo rce. is a k:ngl hy 1'1 p\'\.,·~S

The story told herc can be read in a couple of different ways. It can be and has been read as a story 01' essentialism and determinislll- of real material conditions (as sorne real essence or truth) producing a necessary result. Or it can be seen as describing and rhetorically promoting a process of con sciousness raising, in whieh people both within and without the given dass must witness, narra te, or practically inscribe- not necessarily verbally- the conditions ami collectivity of the c1ass in order for the c1ass to form as a self conscious actor. Marx's description of the evolution of the revolutionary c1ass from geographically local rebellion to a worldwide revolution , through means of communication supplemented by "experience" of collectively taken actions and " political élnd general education ," suggests that at each crucial turn it is the discursive/practical inscription of experience through/in the appropriation (Iearning, education, enactment) of existing forms and methods of collective action (i.e., political partics) that allows the movcment to gro\\'. The textual locus for the argument 1 am rnaking about the discursive formation of ¡;Iasses in Marx is usually the 181h Brumaire, and especially its discussion ofthe lumpenproletariat. Marx sees the proletariat forming through " rubbing together in the factory ," which is why he does not see a revolution ary role for the lurnpenproletariat, a diverse and dispersed mass (not quite a class and not produccrs). The lumpenproletariat have not been brought togethcr into a productive collectivity, which they can then reappropriate or re narrate for new cnds; they lack the prior connection within the reaJm of product ion that would sllp Po rl an ceonomic determinist theory of their funct ioni ng as a \.:ohcn.: nt d ass. A'S Pd cr Slu ll yhr'l"s cxplains, "T he lu mpen ~CCItl:i ltl fi gurc h:ss ti d¡1SS ill any S(;IISC tha l \) II l! IIslIally IIl1dcrstanJ s lha n a

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lionary proletariat. This e1ass is produced through a process 01' (practica!) consciousncss raising based on participation , first in production and th en in resista nce. The co-operation 01' the wage labourers is entirely brought about hy the capital that employs them , Their union into one single pro ductive body and the establishment 01' a connexion between their individual runctions, are mallers foreign and external to them, are not their own act, but the act of capital that brings and keeps Ihem togethcr. 'x T hc IransrorTnation or lhi s cilllcctivily fmm working ror capila l lo workin g

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1'.1 llllp IlIal is a lTlI':lI ahll: 11) polili..:al illtil:lI lali o n."('U Ih : hllllpo.:ll proklarial is wllslillll Ct! as él dass by and 1( )J' l3o napartc 's perfo rrnann : 01' polilical hege IIIOlly. l\1arx's prcsclllalion 01' " Bonapartism ... opens up thc doma in 01' polilics amI lhc state as something other Ihan a reflecti on."61 It is nol c!cm Ihal Marx was rcady lo recognize the full import ofthe discursive, parlicipal ory , performative process of dass formation that he describes. Its full import is Ihal capilalist societies are not split along one single axis but rather gencr ale colleclivilies that align or agonize on Illa ny incoherenl, unassimilable fwnls. As noled in the previolls section. while M arx 's theo ry ofi ers a glirn pse 01' the rnultidimensional dynamics of social formati on. he Iimits his view to Ihe proccss 01' monetary exchange and Iherefore misses the releva nce 01' other silcs of production to Ihe process 01' exploitation . Because of Ihese Iimitations in Marx's texts (and later orthodox Marxisms) many Iheorisls have rejected his analysis altogether, finding a so urce of subjcctivity and social relations outside of production . While largue that the innovations and elaborations of conternporary capitalisl production , especi alIy when taken to include activities outsiJe the factory, to indude consump lion can be analyzed as the site of a great diversity of social rc\ations, others havc chosen instead to reject productivism as a mode 01' analysis a nd look dscwhere . Laclau and Mouffe and Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis see lhe discourse of rights rather than the discourse of cIass as the more potent force 1'01' social change, as able to both generate and coordina te , into a unified counterhegemonic formation , various " new social movements."62 My own argument is that this is not so much of a break with Marx as Lacl a u makes il out to be and that the discourse of rights appears within a productivist analysis . However, accounting for rights discourse is not enough . It is the particular diversity of collectivilies and conflicts that really needs to be ac counted fOL I \Vant no\\' to tum to theories that aceount for heterogeneity by locating it outside of production, by opposing production and performance, production and liberation .

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The re is a line of argument running from the Frankfurt school to some recent queer theory that attempts to account 1'01' the diversity of social movements, the diversity 01' axes 01" antagonism, by positing an exterior to production; these critiques posit production as creating a "one-dimensional. " rationalized, hOl11ogenized , and hegemonized society, and they look for ex pressions of helerogeneous--connoting "free"- hllman intelligence, spirit, imaginati on , anJ sexualily lo break lhro ugh lhe d i~cipIine 01' produetion. "The ' helero gcneous' inclllues everything ' rcsulling from unprod llclivc expenditure,' evcryLhing lhat 'h o mogcnculi -;' SOCi¡;ly dclincs as 'wasle' or lhat il is ' powcr Io.:ss lo assilllilat c."'('¡ In t!lis vil:w, Ihe unprodllcl ive. cq lla lcd wi lh lhe

hl'lcrog¡;nco us , is eclcbratcd as havin); a libcralnry pOlclltial. The assllcialion ofholllogeny witll hegemony is a false OIlC, as ll1y argu111cnts about the import ance ofdiversity lo contemporary capilaJiSI11 uC1110nslrale, bul it is pervasive in lhe line 01' thcorizin g I am addressing. The currcnt version of this critique can be found in scattered assertions ofthc " hetcronormativity" ofproduction (meaning nol that it is based on or produces heterogeneo us norms, but just the opposilc, that it is based 011 and reproduces the hegemonic homogenizing norm 01' heterosexuality). and in celebra tions of heterogeneity, homosexual itv, and theatricaIity as subversi ve of dominant discourses. In "Unthinking Sex," Andrew Parker weaves togcther the various threads ofcontemporary arguments that charaderize unproductivi sm , performati vily. and homosexuaIity as heterogeneous and thus liberatory practices. 64 H is weaving techniq ue is that 01' suggestive slippages, 01" metonymic associa tions: he states thal Marx 's nolion 01' productivity is modeled on procrealion('S and that, citing the Marx-Engels correspondence, Marx sees homosex as anal (" Iumpy "), wasteful , and Ihus unproductive ;('6 Parker argues thal Marx sees homosex as a mere recirculation (ralher than produetion) of goods , adding no "allle/ '7 such as goes on amid the lumpenproIetariat, the SClllTI , the heterogeneous, metonymically associated mass. Parker further associatcs this lumpensexuality with theatricality, \Vith the parody 01' production: 6~ he cIaims that, in the 18117 Brumaire, Marx criticizes the French political scene as a " farce " because politics seems to have lost its realist representational relationship to c1ass divisions, that is, to production. w WhiJe a link between performance and unproductiveness can be found in Marx (ami Adam Smith), wbo cJaimed that theatrical performance, like aH service work , was un pro ductive in a technical sense because " it vanishes in the very instant 01' its produclion ," it is cIear that such vanishing products are precisely what con temporary capitalisll1 thrives on. And there is another reading of the 181h Brul11uire that shows that Marx recognized the political productivity of Louis Bonaparte's farcical performance. iO Parker cIaims that he is doing somelhing different, in generating this chain of verbal associations that ultimately connects homosexuality (very narrowl y evoked as maJe-male anal penetration and a queeny theatricality) with un pro· ductiveness , from prior Marxist (Frankfurt sehool) dealings with sex, which see natural scxuality as repressed under capitalisll1 (i.c., a regime of producl ivism) . But Parker's rhetoric, which condemns Marx for his (indisputable) hOll1ophobia and his (highly disputable) antitheatricalism, enacts a very similar move; it seems aIso to condemn production and productivism. !t's just that it is Marx's productivism rather than capitalist production that is doing the reprcssing ofsubversive sexuality. Associations belwecn h omosexllalily and heterogencolls, free, subvcrsive, unralionalizcd unp rod uctivi ly are well cstabli shed in Ihe carlicr Frankfurt sehool thco ry lo which Pa rkl.:r rdás . In The Dio/ce/it o/ Enlighlenmenl, Max Ilorkhcim\!r ¡¡lid " h¡;odur AJ~)rn() cla bora l\! lhe vicw Iha! capi ta list

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A queer interlude--performatiyity: productive or anti productive?

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I"OdIU:lioll Itas ,·OIO llill.!d "lOt e alllllllon: 01' an otltCI WII:>~' II ~' ~ Itlllllan lik or spiril. includ ing kll ow lcugc. I:lIltural proJudion, amllci sun: lime. lll obi li7ing a 11 01' I Ilcsc aspccts 01' life al:l:ording to a rationallogic 01' pcrfonnam:e- in the adll1inistrative sense of job performance, measured according to the needs 71 01' capitalist production. In Eros ((mi Civiliza/ion, Herbert Marcuse wo rk:; 0111 this same analysis of capitalist rationalization in relation to sexuality. Marcuse argues that "the perfo rmance principie" is " the pre-vailing historical 1'01'111 01' the reality principle";72 "the reality principie," as defined by F reud. is tltc con.f'ormation of man's drive ror plcasure to the social and natura l realit ics in which he Jinds himself. Marcuse: We designate it as the performance principie in order to emphasizc that undel: its rule soeiety is stratified according to the competitive ceonomic performances 01' its members .. . . M en do not ¡¡ve their own lives but perform pre-established functions .... Libido is diverted for soeially useful perfonnances.. .. Bis erotic performance is brought in to hne with his societal performance. 71 '''rhe perversions thus express rebellion against the institutions which guar alltee this order."74)t is interesting that the term perFormance here has none of lite liberatory connotations that it takes on in contemporary queer theory. My point is that heterogeneity, undefomled human nature expressed throug h hOl1losexuality, is posited as external to production. However, because ofthe l'xtcnsive reach ofthis regime ofproduction, that "outside" is ver)' difficult to [illd. Adorno suggests that evidence ofthis nature or spirit or psyche can only be found in relativcly private artistic expression such as Iyric poetry. In The Mirro/' oI P/'oductiol1, Baudrillard, like Parker, develops this criti que of the totalizing and repressive nature of production in the direction of Marx, arguing that like the political econom ists, Marx cclebrates production and thus does not ex pose the way in which man is alienated by being iden tilled with his labor power (and notjust by the sale ofthat labor power). 75 It is not the organization 01' production (which he very narrowly imagines as wage labor) but the system 01' meaning that values only production that is oppressive in Baudrillard's analysis. According to Baudrillard, freedom is to be found not, as Marx would sug gest, through production (i.e. , through binary dass conflict), but through suoversion ofthe code by diverse oppressed groups: ethnic minoritics, women, youth, sexual perverts. Revolution must involve heterogeneous exp.ression, wasteful gift exchange (pure expenditure rather than accu\1lulation. fi nal consumption rather than productive consumption), and nonprocreative sexo (J'II just note again that contemporary capital ism uses final cO!1s um pti on to llIake roo m ror more prodllction .) For Ba udrillard lhe extcriMil Y rrolll which this heterogcneou:i ex pression can OCC\II' is a produc! 0 1' lh\.: sy:; !l'1ll itself. \' ).)

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Suhvc rsion is hol'll t\¡ere. an clsC'II'//l'/'e . ... Scg.regakd, disl:rim inaled against , satellitized- [youth, blacks. womenJ are gradually rclcgatcd to a position 01' non-markcd tenns by the structuration 01' the system as a code.7() And yet Baudrillard does ascribe a peculiar freedom to this forced exterioriza tion; the "unmarked" are able to rebel against the code rather Ihan demanding equality within the terms of the code , so these groups would seem to have sorne source of subjecthood other th a n tbeir exclusionary construction by the codeo My questio n is what that source might be. The link between performance and unproductiveness found in contempor ary q ueer theory such as that 01' Parker and Peggy Phelan, whose work I will address shortly, is made by constructing two analogies: first between repres entation and production , and second between political and symbolic repres entation. As Spivak points out, the structure 01' analogy is problema tic here, producing a conflation of the two forms of represention which erases their complicity. Cultural representation, she says, has the structure of subject predication, while political representation rclies on "rhetoric-as-persuasion. " It is the \York of critique to see when these two things wor k togcther, when hegemonizing polítical representation "behaves like" subject predication. In erasing this complicity, Spivak argues, the analogy obscures discontinuities within the subject and defers that subject to a space of silent unrepresent ability.77In the analogic model , representation is understood as a (re)productive technology operating wühin the symbolic. The falsity, the insufliciency, oppres siveness, and homogeniz ing character of any realist (political or cultural) representation of a social group is emphasized, based on (post) structuralist arguments against the referentiality of the signifier (this is to go no further than Baudrillard), and theatricality is promoted as a nonrealist and thus a less hegemonized , repressive, possessable, co-optable form of signification . A Brechtian sort of performance is singled out for praise here: a performance that announces its own constructedness and thus disrupts the realist truth c\aims of productivelrepresentational hegemony. Parker and Stallybrass fOL~ US on Marx's discllssions of faree and parody; Peggy Phelan talks about performance that ineludes " the marked reproduction ofthe real prodllction" (i.e. , representations of things used to make the artwork are induded in the work itself).n These theorists disagree about what antirealist theatricality makes poss iblo. Parker seems to suggest that it is the free play ofsignification. Stallybrass is interested in giving the political relative freedom from economic deter mination , ma ki ng available diverse forms and sites for social protest and political activity. Phelan and Baudrillard. however, suggest that theatricality Crees political subjects frQlll rep resentati on altogether and thus offers access to the (supposedl y) inac(,;cssihle ( Laca nia n) RC
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th\.: real rea lity amI Phelan likewise belicves ill the possibility oj' a that rcally cxposes the Real. 111 UI1/11arked, Phelan celebra tes the political potential 01' thc in visible. which she daims is relatively free , as against the co-opted, predetermincd . prcassilllilatcd visibility that identity-based political movements make the mis take 01' cndlessly striving ror. Her argument makes BaudriHard's Lacania n formulation explicit. 79 In her terms, "the code" is "tbe SYlllbolic," and that which is unmarked, or unsymbolized , exists as the unappropriated Real , "full being itsdf , , , forever irnpossible to realize within the frame ofthe sYlllbolic, "XIl Phelall's argumcnt depends on splitting the world into two levels. But unlike Man's levels, the rnarketplacc and production , which are dialectic ally agonistic articulations , equally real amI equally constructed, Phelan's lcvcls are ranked , with false and oppressive representation standing against the good but unrepresentable reality , The Real that is being (mis)represented, both excessively and inadequately, is a truth , an origin, a guarantor ofsome sort. For her and for Baudrillard this Real is the source of unrationalized subjecthood, It is the locus of liberatory exteriorityY Phelan sets up a dichotomy that is very similar to that proffered by the rrankfurt school theorists: on the one hand a totalizing hornogenizing production system and on the other the liberatory un(re) productive , named he re "perforrnance,"o2 p~~lfonnancc

Performance, insofar as it can be defined as representation without reproduction, can be seen as a model for another representational econollly, one in which the reproduction of the other as the Same is not assured Y Performance dogs the smooth machinery of reproductive repres entation necessary to the circulation ol'capitaJ, , , . Live performance .. . disappea rs into memory, into the realrn of invisibility and the unconscious where it eludes regulation and control. S4 The notion that performance is unproductive beca use it is live, becaLlse it is produced and consumed in the same moment, beca use it is not a materi al commodity (even while, as the Rea l, it is in the structural position 01' purc materiality, unmediated by discourse) is , as ( think I' ve made clear by now, simply \Vrong: performance is just as \Vell able to bear value (use, exchange, surplus, status) and to produce subjects and social formations as any materi al comrnodity, arguably better able: " the commodification 01' images of th e most ephemeral sort would seem to be a godsend from the standpoint of capital accumulation. "~5 In order to claim that perforrn am;e resists exchange value, or eq ui valence, and thereby approaches the unrcprescntabl e Real itsell', Phelan Jiscounts thc work 01' the audiencc; their producl ive co n:;um ptio n 01' the work. their acl 0 1' witness, is rol' her the mere mcmory 01' sOlllclhing p rcsen led hy SOIll COIl C cIsc, I()(,

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Shc can not rccognizc th~~ alldi~~nl'C's l'OnSlIlIlptioll as prod llc tioll, l~lI' thcll il would not ol'lcr the escapc I'rolll rcgu/ation anu control that she seeks. k (, In losing the audiencc, though, shc loses Ihe theatrica/ aspect 01' the artwork 's performativity (both its reiterative and witnessed, and thcrefore social, aspects) and is left with the spcech act connotations (that it enacts that which it names) .X7 As Mary Louise Pratt points out, by focusing on "e,\ cessively private" dyadic examples of communication, speech act theory loses the abi/ity to recognize that "people always speak from and in a sociafly constituted position .. . in w'hich the s ubject and context mu tually determine each other ongoingly."xs Performance, for Phelan, appears to be the act of a fuI/y con stituted subject, a subject thus unavailable for articulation with a liberatory collcctivity and unable itself to articulate resista nce.

ConcIusion The reading 01' Marx I have suggested works against the vie\V that production would produce a totalized society and against the view that representation or production would ever be reproduction of the same. But I am also very doubtful ofthe existence of some sort of heterogeneous exteriority to produc tion from which subversion rnight com e. Butler, using Laclau 's formulation of social dynamics as antagonistic articu/ations, argues that what appears to be exterior, to be "the Real ," what can bring one particular social formation into crisis, is actuafly just another discursive schema g9 As Parker correctly points out, it is impossible to repeat after Foucault . , . [a story of] how a natural or potentiafly liberatory sexuality has been set upon , rcpressed , com modified 01' otherwise constraincd by the institutions of capitalism : as if sexuality were not always already institutional, existing only in historicafly sedimented forms and discourscs. 90 Likewise Stallybrass, Cltlllg G eo rge Bataille to describe a Marxian vicw. argues that "'social hctcrogeneity does not exist in a fonnless and disoriented state,' but is itsclf structured through its relation to the dominant hornogene ()lIS rorces. "91 What Laclau 's and But/er's arguments, circumscribing subversion within signification and social rel ations (making it a product of sociality), mean to me is that critique needs to continue to focus on production. But what aH the theorists I have reviewed here have made clear is that a critique ofproduc tion nceds to look at sign production as \Vell as material production , at the performativity of production, at the circulation of social formations as \Vell as at goods. F ro m M a rcuse through Ba udrillard to P helan. concern shifts from production as a rationali7 ing system to the Lacanian Symbolic and its reproduclivc capacily as Ihc syslcll1 by which sub.icCl:; are o peration a lized. 1') I

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In place 01' this shift. my own argulllent intcnds to put produclion and signi fkation into a necessary rclation with each other and not posit the political economy of the sign as superseding political cconomy. A ttending to lhe pro ductivity of performance. Baudrillard and the Frankfurt sehool theo rists argue that sign production prirnarily functions in the service 01' capi talism (they just also tbink it can have an independent ex.istence) and that capitalism mobilizes, enforces, and materializes discursively a rt iculated soci al d ivisi ons, Attending to thc performativity of production, a Butlerian reading of Marx makes it possible to recognize the opportunitics as well as the constraints available within production .

Notes There is no adequate way to acknowledge Russell Berman 's contribution to my ability C1nd d.esire to think thTOUgh these issues ; it was made over the course ofma ny years of respectful but challenging conversation and argument. This piece is the fortuitous result oft he fact that in the spring of 1994 t\Yo fabulous reading groupsjust happened to be going on at Stanford University , one on Butler's Bocfies Thal NJaller and lhe other on Marx. 1 would like to thank all the members ofthose groups for their insights but especially Regenia Gagnier for facilitating the Marx group, Eric Schocket for being my principal interlocutor on Marx, and Morris KapJ.an . who made the Butlcr group happen . I am vcry grateful for the tremendous work Marcia KlolZ, Lee Medovoi , and Ben Robinson put into the initial formulatio n of this essay. More recent con ver sations with Janet Jakobsen have bcen crucial to my finally " getting it" about exploi lation and domination. Sallie Marston has offered excellent editorial suggcstions. And I would like lo Ihank Neil Smith and others on the Sociol Texl editorial board for pushing me lo c1arify Ihe relation between econom.ic production ip a narrow sense and social production in Ihe broadest sense.

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7

See Judith Hutler, "!\gainst Proper Objecls," dijJerences: A ]ournaloj'Ferninisl Cullural Sludie.l' 6 (summer/fall 1994): 1 26; Janet R. Jakobsen, "Embodying Family Val ues: Quccr N ation? Christian Nation"" (unpublished ms,); Clnd Gayatri Spivak. "Sca ttered Speculations on the Question ofValue," in he.- 1/1 Olher Worlds (Ne\\' York: Methuen , 1987) for other discussions of the complicity-versus-a na logy Issue, Judith Butler, Bodies T/wl M aller: 0/1 Ihe Disl'ursil'e Limils oj"Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993), 13 . J udith Bl1tler, "Perfonnative Aets and Gcnder Constitution: An Essay in Phenom enology and Feminist Theory," Thealer Journal40 (December 1988): 521. Ibid., 519-20,

ButleL Boclies, 2.

Butler, "Performative !\cts." 519: Mary Louise Pratt, " ldeology C1nd Speech Act

Theory ," Poelics Today 7, no. 1 (1986): 59 --72, In /Jodies Tila I kl({\ ler Butler distanees herself from the term Iheatrical, wh ,ich she uscd in the earlier essay and in Gel/der Trouhle , apparently as part of her efrort to shed the connota tion of prcex isting subjecthood. She frequentl y substitutes the word produl'liol1 for COI1Slruclioll in this book , again as a way (Jf emphasiz.ing consl raint against cOJlnolations of vo luntariSIll, The lem l prod¡¡nion appears ma ny, m:lny tinws thrOllghout the tex!. gc nerally in lisIs (Ir

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phrases attempling to gcncratc the particular version 01' social construclion she has in mind; malerializa/ion is allot her important term for hcr. 8 Butler, Bo{lies, 2, Ci nd y P att on ('Tremble, Hetero Swille," in Fe({r o( a Queer Plunel, ed. Miehael W arner [MÍllJlea polis: Universily 01' Minnesota Prcss, 1993]) also recognizes that the perfonnativc nature of identity means not that one is free to be any idelltity but rather that to achieve identity one is eOllstraincd to follow its rules: " Identities s uture those who take Ihem up to specific mOJal duties. Idenlities carry with them a requirement to act, whieh is felt as ' what a person like me does'" (147). 9 Butler, Bodies, x. 10 lbid .. 15, 11 Kath Weston , "Do C lothes Make the Woman? Gende r, Pe rformance Theory, and Lesbian Eroticism, " Gender,)' 17 (fall 1993): 1- 21. 12 8utler, Boclies. 1S, 13 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline oj"u Theory o/Prac/ice (Cambridge: Cambridge Un iver sity Press, 1977), 78, 20, 14 Ibid .. 78, 1S Ka rl Marx . Tite German ldeology, in The lvJ({rx-El1xels Reada, 2d ed. , cd. Robert Tucker (New York: Norton. 1978), 15S. 1 use the Tueker anthology as the source for all Marx quotatiolls except those taken from the Grundrisse, Tueker was used most often in the c1asses and reading groups in which I first read Marx , so these are the transl a ti ons that determined my interpretations 01' Marx. lJ] eomparing Tucker's version with the Ben Fowkes translation 01' Cupital, vol. I (New Yo rk : Vintage, 1977), I have found Fowkcs's language simply less lively, so I have stuck wilh Tucker. 16 Marx, Germal1 ldeology, 1SO. 17 Ibid. , 157. 18 lbid. , 160, 19 Thanks to Ru ssell Berrnan for this insight. 20 Spivak, "Seattered Speculations," 158- 59. See especially Butler's "Lesbian PhalIus <Jnd th e Morphologica l Imaginary," iJl Rodies Tlzal Maller. 21 See Diane ElsOoll , "The Value Theory of Labour," in Value: The R epresentalion o( La!Jour in COpillllism , ed. Diane Elson (London: CSE, 1979), on the relation between various "aspects" and " form s of appearance" of labor, value, and the eornmodity. 22 Erncsto Laelau and Chanlal Mouffe (Hegemo/1y af1(1 Socialisl Slralegy: Towards a Radical Derllocralic Polilics [London : Verso, 1985]) make this point: "S ince the worker is capablc of social praetices, he eould resist the irnposed control meehanisms and force the capitalist to use different techniques. Thus, it is nol a pure logie 01' capital which determines the evolution of Ihe labour process; the latter is not merely the place where capital excrts its domination, but the ground oi' struggle" (79) 23 Picrre Bourdieu , for instance, has described not use or cxchange value in the Marxian sense, but status or what he calls the "distinetion " value of the comrnod it,y, argu ing that eornmodities are eonsurned and traded ""ith the goal of accurnu lat ing "cultural capital " (Dislil1clion: A Social Crilique oIlhe Judgemel11 o/ Tasle [Cambridge: Harvard University Prcss, 19841). Both ofthese approa ehes create a lot of troublc for the use/exehangc valuc binary and thus for the analysis of exploitation, which I will have to rewo rk to aceolllmodate this expansion of the purview 01' p rodut:l i()11. 24 See Chrisline Ol'l p]¡ y ( 'IOSI ' !tI 11011/1 ': " Ml/lailllisl / fl/(dl'sis o/ W()///('11 ',1' Of1J1 r('s siol1. trallS, alld cd, 0 1:111:1 1 cU lJard (!\JlJi\crsl: U Jli vc r ~ il y 111 M ~I SS
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Warillg's argu nl\.:.lIts :l1l~ prilllarily a case Condilion o/ Poslll1odernily, 2R9). a g:linst Ihe discipline 01' eeonolllics ami gellerally do lIot elaborate a new theory uf 3S As Lauren Serlant and Eliza beth Frceman C'Queer Nation a Jity," houllclary 2 19 valuc. 111 I'act , sbe ofTers Iittle self-eonseious diseussion of ho w she knows th c ~t: [19921: 149-80) point out, the Gap has, for many years. d Olle a prominent adver things really are valuable, resorting to commonsense appeals to the value. ror tising carnpaign using gay celcbrities and gay styles to sell its clothing to straight exalllple, oftime spent physically laboring, 01' of the beauty of untarnished nature, people. eaeh of which--physical work, beauty-is, just Iike money, a system of value lha! 39 Ibid., 168. hierarchizes not only things but al so people, 40 Ibid., 163. They refer to M arshall Kirk a nd Hunter Mad sen . Afier Ihe Bc¡{l: HO\\l 25 Benedict Anderson, Imagined COI/IIT/Unílies (London : Verso, 1983). An/eric(f Will Conquer lis Fear a/1(/ Ha /red oI Gavs in Ihe '90s (New Y ork: 26 David Ilarvey, 'The Body a s a n Aeeumulation Strategy," En vironmel1l a/lll Plan Doubleday, 1989). /I/ng /J: Sol'iely (//1(1 Spar:e (fortheoming), The Ilmaway q uo te is from DOllna 41 Marx, Germa!1 Ideology, 185. H araway and Dn vid Harvey, "Nature, Politics, and Possibilities: A De bate ami 42 Ibicl., 163--64. D iscussion." Environmenl 0/1(1 Plal1níng /J. Society am! Spar:e 13 (1995): 510. 43 Marx, Brilish Rule in Indw , 657 - 58. 27 Jakobsen, "Embodying Family Va lues," 7-8, 44 Marx, Capilal, 415. 28 .lean Baudrillard, Tlle klirror of P roducliol1, trans, Mark Poster (St. Louis, ivlo.: 45 See, for examp1c, John D ' Emilio, " C.lpila lism and Ga y ldentity," in The Leshial/ Telos, 1975). am! Gay Studies Reacler, ed, Henry A belove, Miehele Aina BaraJe, and David M. 29 Quoted in David Harvey, The COl1llilion o/ Poslmodernily (Cambridge, Mass.: Halperin (New '{ork: Routledge, 1(93). and Louise Tilly and Joan Wallach Selltt, Blaekwell, 1990), 63. Womell, Work . alld Ihe Filmily (New York: Routledge, 1989). 30 Karl Marx, Grundrisse, t!'ans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973). 91. 46 Culminaled is probably the wrong \\lord here as the evolution from post-Civil Wa r 11 Ibid .. 94. robber baron capitalism to post-World War 1I Fordism was not a eon tilluous or nccessary proeess and was shaped by intense and violent labor struggles an d by the 32 Amy Robinson, "Forms 01' Appearanee ofValue: Homer Plessy and the Po1itics of Privacy," in Pe/jiJl'/11Il1lce (//1d C¡¡I/lIra/ Polilies, ed, Elin Diamond (New '(ork: Great Depression. which instigated a dramatic restructuring oflabor-capital rela Routledge,1996 ). tions. Martyn./. Lee accounts for the shift from pre-Fordism to Fordism as a shift U See Marx, Capill/I, 338: "The owner of money must meet in the market with the frorn an extensive to an intensive mode of acculllulation. See his CO/1sumer Cult ure free labourer, free in the double sensc.. that as a free man he can dispose of his Rehorn: T/¡e Cullural Polilies o/ConslIlI1plio/1 (New York: Routledge, 1993),73 labour-power as his own eomrnodity, and that on the other hand he has no other 74, eornrnodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation 01' his 47 Alan Trachtenberg, The JI/corporalio/! o/ Amaiea: Culfllre am! Sociely il1 Ihe labour-power." Gi!ded Age (Ncw '{ork: Hill and Wang, 1(82), esp. 70- 100. 34 The laek of freedom involved in their ehoiees has been analyzed by Baudrillard, 48 Harvey, COlldiliol1 olPosll11odernilY, 138. ¡'"Iirror of Produelion; Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Tlze Dialeelie oi 49 Ibid., 124, 145. Elllighlenmenl, transo John Cumming ( New York: Herder and Herder, 1972); 50 I bave gleaned a general charaeterization 01' post- F ordism and flexible accumula Herbert Mareuse, Eros aild Cil'il;zalion: A Philo.\'op/¡ical Inquiry illlo Freud (New tion from Harvey's COlldilioll ofPosllI/odernily. His eharacterization of changes in York: Vintage, 1955); and Stuart Ewen, Caplains o/ COllscioll.l'lleS.l' (New York: the location and composition of eOIn modity produetiori Is reiterated by Lee in McGraw-H ill, 1976), All are concerned with the construetion of the eonsurner b y COl/sulI1a CUIIl/re Re/)()m, whieh is not surprising since both rely on "regulation the eapitahst produeer. To the extent that cultural studies seholars suggest that it sehool" theorists, principall y: Miehel Aglietta, A Theory o(Capitalisl Regulalion: is through diseretionary spending that subcultures 01' individuals express them nze U s. Experience (London: Verso, 1987); Scolt Lash and John Urry, The Elld selves, they rnake the rnistake of assurning that there is some preexisting, choosing oj Organized Capila! (Cambridge: Polity, 1987); and Miehael J. Piore and C harles subjeet. Kim Gil1espie argues that in any case most people have very little discre F, Sabel, The Secolld Induslrial Dil'ide: Po'\"sibililies jor Pro,\Jierily ( New Yo rk: Basic, 1984). There are disputes over the extent to which "eore" devel oped coun tionary income, thus their ability to express themselves through thcir consumptivc praetiees is quite limited (personal eornrnunication). l am arguing that it is pre tries have aetually deindustri a lized, the extent to which serviees and infonnation cisely these differential constraints that make consumption a subjeet-constructing have replaced durable commodities, and the extent to which mass produetion has behavior and that expressive possibilities are derived precisely frorn a system of been replaced by small-seale batch produetioTl. Paul Krugman makes an argument eonstraints, aga inst the dominance of deindustrialization in particular CFantasy Eeonomics," 35 Bourdieu, Dislinclioll, Nell' York Times, 26 September 1994, Al 5, and Peddling Pro,\perily [New York: 36 See, for instance, Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Deeoding," in Cullllre, Afedia. L II/1 Norton, 1994]). And Lee acknowledges that "the argument that the sort ofmass gUllge, cd. S. I lall, D. Hobson. A. Lowe, and p, Willis (London: Methuen, 19R2). produetion/mass-consumption eeollomy whieh dominated the post-war years is 12838; Diek Hebdige, Sulmillure: T!ze ¡lvfe(/ning o/ Slyle (London: Methuen, now in rapid decline simply dnes not stand up to empirical scrutiny" (111). Harvey 1979): a nd John Fiske, "Jeaning of America," in his, Underslol1ding Popular and Lec bolh dismiss the eoncerns 01' the doubters by noting that while these Cullure ( Ne w '{ ork: Routledge, 1(89), 1-22. changes may not be statistically J omill
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slalislicaL dlllllillaJolcc IIIl'allS is lhal lile sodal relalions illlplícd hy Ihcse lIew I"OrlllS (11 PnlOUclil)1I pmbahly exceed and motivate Ihe implemenlalioll ol"these rorllls. <; 1 Ilarvcy, ('(l/ulilion o(PosllIlodernilv, 147. 52 ;\11 ariiclc ,in lhe Ñew York Tim~s about the slrike, over outsourcing. at one (,cller¡1I Motors parts plant in Al1dersoll, Indiana, reported , "Local luníonJ oflicials are heavily infiueneed by lhe national leadership, b ut their re-election dcpends on how well they serve their sfmll eonstituencies. T hat so me 01' the ouhourcing GM wanted to do á t A nderson involved sending work to olher GM plants did not lessen the localunion leaders' anxiety about the declining number o r jobs in their community" (James Bennett, "Job Cuts and Grassroots, " New York TiI1f('S. 17 August 1994, natL ed., A 17, 19). Ilarvey points to the faet that towns and eities aet in an entrepreneurialmode, eompeting \Vith each other for tax base by going lo great lengths to gel businesses to sdtle within their borders (Condiliol/ o/Posll1Iodernitv, 171). 5] My sources for this eharacterization of labor-capital relations are (1) the reeent debate over the North American Free Trade ;\greement (N A FTA ), whicII 1 absorbeo tnrough media representations (primarily the New York Till1es and National Publie Radio). and, !llore important, (2) infonnal interviews with 111Y rather, who, as a labor lawyer ror AT &T, participated ,in AT&T's triannu a l national eolleetive bargaining. During the 1992 bargaining proeess, he gave me a patient and thoughtful lesson in how AT&T , which sees i\self as a progressive leader and inn.ovator in busjness practices, viewed the cl rum s 01' labor unions- as regressive, not in the modern \Vorld--,ano in the various rhetorieal anofinanci aJ techniques AT &T brought to bear to get the unions to get \Vith the program (downsizing, outsoureing, etc.). Prominent among these \Vere (1) discussions of competition raeing the eompany; (2) stock as part of wagcs; (3) less hieran.:hical shop fioor management ; and (4) outplaeemenL education, ano retraining programs. 54 Harvey, COl/dilion o/Postmodernily, 152.

55 Marx, Capital, 343.

56 It is not clear to me that people are as unknowing as l\·1 arx suggests. As Slavoj

Zizck argues, \Ve all act as if we did not know , which is effeetively as gooo as a laek ofawareness (The Suhlime Oh¡ecI o/Ideology [Lonoon: Verso, 1989], ]1). 57 Marx, 0/1 Ihe .fewislt Queslio/1 , 51. 58 Marx, Capilal, 398. 59 Marx, Ala/1i/eslO, 480-81. 60 Peter Stallybrass, "Marx and Heterogeneity: Thinking the Lumpenproletariat," Represel/talion.\' ] 1 (summer 1990): 88. 61 Ibid. , 91. 62 Samuel Rowles and Herbcrt Gintis, Democrllcy a/1d Copilalism: Property, C OI/1 lI1/1n;1 y, amllhe COl1lradictiOllS (!! !'v/odem Social 7111Jughl (New York: Basic, 1987); Laelau ano MOL/ffe, Hege/l1o/1y. (l] Stallybrass, "Marx and Helerogeneity," 81. I-Ie is eiting Georges Bataille, " The P sy chological Structure 01' Fascism ," Visiol7s o/Excess: Seleuer! Writillgs, 1927 1939, ed. Allan Stock!. transo Allan Stockl , Carl Lovitt, and Donald Leslie (Minneapolis: University 01' Minnesota Press, 1985). 64 Anorew Parke r, "Unthinking Sex: Marx. Engels, and thc Sccne 01' Writing," in Fear ora Qu('er Planel, ed. Miehael Warner (Millncapolis: Un·i vcrsity of Minnesllta Prcss. 1993). (,5 011 this point , he cites I lanna h Arendt (TIte Human COl1dilior! IGurden C ily. N, Y : Oo u bleday, 195(1), w ho lI1 ukcs a rather dirrere nt antiproducti vist argu IllCllt hascd on Ihc nolioll Ihal I'I"Hlllelilln is Ihe realm 01' nccessity and t hal whal

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is Iruly humall is the pu lil ical rcalIll purged 01' all ncccssil y. She ll1akes a further distinction betwc~n lhe rcpelilive labor 01' reprodudion and the produc tion of works 01' art, which is neither truly unproouctive nor mere animalistie existence. As 1 noteo earlier, Marx OOCS not count heterosexual reproduetion as proollc tion per se. In fac!. he scems to feel , not unlike Maril yn Waring (lf' Womel'l Co/./nled, 286), that the inscriptioll of sexual relations in market terms is a corrup tioll of what should be vallled on its own oistinct terms (1844 Mal1uscripls, 105). But I am not here particularly interested in Marx's views ofhetero- or homosexu ality exeept to the extent that, as Parker argues, they l'orlll a metaphoric basis ror his analysis of proouetion ano unproductivity, respectively . 66 Parker, "Unthinking Sex ," 34-] 5. 67 ¡bid., 25. 68 Parker relies heavily on E ve Kosofsky Seogwick in his a rgument here, citing her asscrtio!l of the tie between self-display and sexuality in the nineteenth century (straight lIlen do not engage in self-display). Separately, in explicitly antihomo phobic projects she docs engage in celebrations 01' heterogeneity: for instance, Epislell1olo~ies (J/llie C10sel (Berkelcy: University o fCalifornia Press, 1990) begins \Vith an elaboration of the sheer variety of possible sexual preferences (ano poss ible oetinitions of sexual preference), al! o f which ha ve been condenseo into the binary hOlllo VS. hetero; and Tel1del1cies (Durham, N. e. : Duke University Press, 199]) begins with an attempt to separate out the di verse picces ol' identity that have all beeli conoenscd into genoer. Howevcr, I am not sure that Scdgwiek ties heterogeneity, theatrieality, and hOlllosexuality to an antiproductivist stance as Parker does , siJlce she also c1aims to be faseinated with the proouetivity 01' perforlllativity- the ability 01' the speeeh aet to proouce the reality it describes. 69 While Stal!ybrass uses the 181h Brunwire to locate iu Marx a recognition 01' the ilTlPortanee of the politieal (a representational or oiscursive reallll \Vith some inoependence frolll econo m ic determinism), Parker foeuses on Marx 's conoemna tion of this independenee and thus finds Marx in a self-contradietion, rejeeting performative, oiscursive, and rhetorieal strategies even while he uses them. I'm not sure what the point is of catehing Marx in this self-eontradietion: it seellls to me Illore political!y useful to see Marx reeognizing ano offering a useful strategy than to posit Marx as the enemy ano to throw out, along with Marx' s clcar and repugnant homophobia- ·whieh Parker has very valuably uncovered- ..his very potent
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IJi lC\; ili lll l Ihcy ;I re pn:clscly IIpl IP llk ill g lo cx lniority, bul I ti llll lile tnm 1'\ (','\\, rOl 1.1I 1: 1' I ll y~ 1 ical alHllll ysti l'y in ¡1" yd anoth er invocation 01" l ile clllcrgcnce 01' some IlIill g oul 01" nolhing. ~ :; Ihe rule 1hat I'hclan gives to performance is not far from the role Thcodor Adorno ("'Lyric Poctry and Society," Te/us 20 ¡sumlllcr 1974]: 56 - 7 1) sets out ['or Iy ri e poetry: both are expressions 01' that ullformed human spiril l referred to carlicr. Ilowevcr, in both cases this role is so elearly delllarcated by the rcal rn 01" Ihe produced, the formed, that one can read the quality ofthe formed world by lhe Phifip Ausfander n;llure of the protests of this unformed subjectivity. ~ '\ Phclan , Un//wrked, 3.

~4 Ibid., 148.

Sourcc: T I¡e Dran7(J Review: Tile .lowfwl 01 Performance S ludie.l 41 (2) (1997): ') 29. 85 I larvey , POSI!1IOc!ernilv, 288.

~() Phclan does recognize that the notion that performance does not produce is somcthing 01' a fantasy. She is aware that her own \York for instance turns per I"onnancc into production: "Writing about it necessarily cancels the 'tracelessness' inaugurated within this perrormative process" (Unmarked, 149). ~7 Shc cites in this context J. L. Austin's discussion 01' pcrforlllative utterances a nd In thinking about performance in relation to American law , I choose to focus specifically focuses on th e p romise (ibid., 149). Pratt specifically cites the focu s on 1hl~ promise as a tip-off to thc assumption 01' the intentional a priori subject on copyright and the law of evidence beca use these branches of jurisprud L1nderlying the theory ("Ideology and Speech Act Theory," 62). ence address that relationship most immediately. Copyright governs t he ~~ "ratl, "Ideology and Speech Act Theory," 63. ownership and circulation of cultural objects and therefore determines the ~') lIutler, Bodies, 194, citing Laclau, Ne1\' Refleclions 011 Ihe Rerolulion o( OU I' Timé conditions under which performance participates in a commodity economy. (I.ondon: Verso, 1(90). As such, it is the branch of jurisprudence that deals most directly with the 'l() I';¡rkcr, "Unthinking Sex," 21. In "Praxis atld Pcrformativity" (Womell (//1(/ Pe/, /iml/
67

LEGALLY LIVE

rnoves frorn considering performance prirnarily in terrns of cultural economy 10 questions thal touch on what Peggy Phclan calls "the ontology ofperform

ance" (1993: 146 · 66). In order to be protected under Title 17 of thc United States eode, other wise known as the 1976 Copyright Act , a work must be "fixed in a tangible mediurn of expression" that renders it replicable (that is what copyright means, afier all). The definition of "creation" in Title 17 reflects this requirement: "A work is created when il is fixed in a copy [ ... 1for the first time" (sec. 1(1). As far as copyright law is concerned, a work exists legally only insofar as it ha s been replicated : ir a wllrk has 11 0t been reproduced, it has not yet been created . T he re ure no "o r ig in a b " unJc r copyright law: " Thc lerrn 'co pies' incl ll des the m a te ri a l llb lCl.:l I , . I in w hic h lile wllI'k is hrs l li xcd " (sec. 1(1).

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Wllh Titl \: 17, w~ hOl ve ulllcH:d tlll': n:alm nI' BHLldrill ard '~ .., hlllllanull1: I!w ry l:Opyl ig hlablc w(lrk i¡; "Iways already a reproduction 01' ilscl l'. T ill\! 17 is also a \Vork 01' perrormance theory. Historil:ally, copyri ghl la w has n:l'used In grant to performance the status 01' intellectual property. Thc ('opyrighl Clallse 01" the United States Conslitution (Artic1e 1, secti o n t\, dallsc ~) granls to Congress the power to secure " to Authors J the IJxdusivc RighllO their respective Writings [ ... ]. "1 Although Congress a nd lhu cnurts ha ve shown thelllselves, over the years , to be willing to conslrue lhe concept 01" a "Writing" quite broadly as " any physical rendering of!he frLlils ur nea li ve. intelleclual or aesthetic labor" (Go/ds fein v. Cali(iJl-nia [1973] as qllnlcd in Miller and Davis 1990: 3(4), they have never granted tb at sta tus lo "intangible expression ," which is to say, pnjormed expression .2 The copyright statute's definition 01' fixation stales that "a work is 'fixed' I ... :1 when its embodiment [ ... ] js sufficiently perlllanent or stablc to pcrmit it lo be percei\'ed. reproduced, or otherw ise communicated for a pcriod 01' more than transitory duration" (sec. 1(1). Live performance, which 1'.\islS only in the transitory present moment, is thcrefore exc1uded. Simila rly, thc slatutory definition of "puhlication " sta tes explicitly that inasllluch as .. 'puhlication' is lhe distribution 01' copies [ .. . ] 01' a work to the public [ .. . J a puhlic performance or display 01' a \Vork does not 01' itself constituLe IJllblication " (sec. I () I ). 3 Both definitions reAect the fundamental purpose 01' ('llpyright, which is to rcgulate the ownership and circulation 01' cultural objects. Although Title 17 specillcally mentions "choreographic \Vorks" as llllL' typc 01' protectable work 01' authorship (sec. 102a), this is true only for 4 dlOreographic works that have beennotated or otherwise recorded A danc thal cxists only as a live perfonnance or a speech that was presented to an audience but never written down or recorded cannot he copyrighted (Miller and Davis 1990: 3(3). A performance that exists for no more than a transi lory period ca nnot be o\vned and is therefore ncither a pub1ication nor protectable under copyright. The hazards thc concept of fixation crea tes for performance are illustr ated by the much publicized case 01' Brighl Tunes Music Corp. 1". J/arrisong. MI/sic. Lid. (420 F. Supp. 177 [1976]) , in which former Beatle Georgc Harrison was slled for copyright infringement beca use 01' the strong resemblance of his song "M y Sweet Lord" to the earlier song "H e's So Fine. " The questiol1 01' wht'ther the two songs are "substantially similar" (the legal standard 1'0 1' infringemcnt) hinged in part on the presence 01' a " unique grace note " in Ilarrison's song that had also appeared in the earlier piece. As the judgc recounts in his decision. this grace note appears on the firsl recording 01' Ilarrison 's song, made by Billy Preston , and on the sheet music prcpared rrolll lhal recording. but not on Harrison 's own, Illuch bctter-kno\Vn reco rd ing or Ihe sheet musie derived fro lll il ( 180). Even though it is likely lhat the SIICU:SS 01' I larrison's own J"C<.:ord ing 0 1' Ihe son g \Vas what p rom pled the suil (f\)llil willg Ihe rrinci plL' Ihal " Wlw rc there's a hil , Ihe re's a wril"). Lhe judgc

h ) \) k thL'lirsl lixalioll 01' the sOllg. Ples loll's rccording, 10 be the o bjecl ulldcr scruliny. According tu ll urrisoll 's \l.:stimony, the presencc or ahscnce 01' that particular nole on Preston's recording was attrihulahle lo performative accident: "[Billy PrestonJ might have put that there on every take, but it just lllight have been on one take, or he lTIight have \'aried it on different takes at dilferent places" (181). I t was Harrison 's misfortune that the particular take on which the sheet music deposited for U.S. copyright was based included the incriminating note. According to the judge, Harri son himself takes a performative view ofmusic: he "regards his song as that which he sings at the particular moment he is singing it and not something that is written on a piece of paper" (180). Copyright, however, acknowledges only fixed texts, not intangible performances. The result in the Harrison case was that one moment 01' performance. frozen in textual formo becallle the song " My Sweet Lord" in the eyes of the law. The copyright statute 's refusal to recognize performance as intellectual property has been articulated broadly in the statutory concept offixation and in terms 01' specific performance genres through case law. W riting in 1950, one appellate judge observed thal "There is a line 01' cases which holds that what we may call generically by the French \\'ord representation ,- which means to perform, act , impersonate, charactel'ize, and is broader than the col' responding English \Vord,.- - is not copyrightable [ ... ]" (Supreme Record.\" 1'. Decea Record.\" [90 F. Supp. 904 (1950)], 9(9). Until a 1971 amendment to the law, ror exalllple, sound recordings were uncopyrightable beca use they were considercd, in the \Vords 01' a 1912 decision , "captured performances" (Gaines 1991: 131; 270 n.80). Supreme R ecords applies this doctrine to theat rical performance: " the mere portrayal 01' a character by an actor in a play which is the creation 01' another is not 01' itself an independent creation" and therefore cannot enjoy copyright protection (908). The most often cited l'eason why copyright protection does not apply to performance is that to grant a performer exc1 usive rights to particular performed gestures or intona tions \Vould scverely 1imit the vocabulary available to other performc rs and thus "impede rather than promote the useful arts" (BO()lh 1'. Co/galf'-Pall/1olil'e [1973J as q uoted in Gaines 1991: 124). I f such a right of ownership in perform ance existed, "We would have to hold thal Mr . Charles Laughton, ror in stance, could claim the right to forbid anyone else from imitating his creative mannerisms in his famous characterization of Henry VII 1, or Sir Laurence Oliviel' could prohibit anyone else from adopting some of the innovations which he brought to the performance 01' Hamlet" (Supreme Record.l" ln(". v. Decea Record.l. Ine .. 909; see also note 7 bc1ow). This view 01' performance is not universal among American legal thinkers. Cheryl Ilodgson , for eX
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rw m lhe lc:\[ ilscl r :1m] lkscr"cs nx;ognitiün as a writin!; (1 1)7 ) : 569 72). As I hld gsoll ackllowlcdgcs , however, lhe lJnitcd States Cüngress has neve!" scc n lil lo ITl.:oglli/,C perlormance as protectable under copyright. F rom lhe poi nl 01" vicw ortlle copyright statute as it stands, performances are not writings (post slructllralism 1I0twithstanding) and, as f'rench legal seholar R obert Hom burg pllls il, a "performer is not an author" (as quoted in Gaiues 199 1: 135). Co/wllhia Broadcasling Sys/em, lile. 1'. fleCos/a (377 F. 2d 315 [1967]) is a good case lo examine in this conte:\t beca use it offcrs a particularly clca r illllstration 01' the legal status of Iive performance. Victor DeCosta, él Rhodc Islaml mechanie with an enthusiasm for the O ld West, developed a cowbo y character he called Paladin, which he performed at " pa rades , the openings amI finales of rodeos, auctions, horse shows [ . . . ]," etc. 1fe would also d is tribute photographs ofhimselfin costume and a business card Tcading " l la ve Ciun Will Travel, Wire Paladin, N. Court St., Cranston , R . l." (3 16). A lter he had performed this eharacter for ten years, he saw a lelevision program called !lave Gun Will Trme/ in whieh the main character, played by Richard Boone, was a cowboy called Paladin whose costume, business card, and per sonal idiosyncracies (e.g., his use ol' a chess knight as an adornment and of a derringer in shoot-ollts) were identical to those created by DeCosta, save for lhe address on the cardo DeCosta sued the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) for pirating his character and won a judgment that \Vas reversed 00 appeal. The appellate judge did not reverse lhe jury's decision because he felt that no piracy had taken place. To the contrary, Judge Col'flll sympathized wirh DeCosta and agreed with the jury that the resemblances between the two Paladins were more thanjust coincidence and that CBS had stolen the Paladin character from DeCosta (317). He nevertheless reversed the decision on the g!"ounds that lhe federal copyright sta tute only protects works that can be reduced to "some identifiable, durable , material l'orm" and that "the plai n lifl"s creation, being a personal characterization, was not reduced and co ul d not be reduced to such a form" (320). Because DeCosta's Paladin existed only as a live performance, he could not prevail , despite the striking resemblances between his eharacter and the telcvisi on show's. The judge observed lha t DeCosta could have sued CBS for duplicating his business card, the one fi xed and tangible artifact of his perfon1lé1llce, but sincc he had never copyrigh ted lhe card, he had no cause 01' action (321). That the copyright stalute does not grant standing to live performa nce as intellectual property is very clear. A close examination ol' situations in wh ich performances are f1xed through sound recording suggests that although the underlying text and, since 1971 , the recording ilselfmay be copyrighted . th e {Jcr/flrman('/' on the recording ca nnc)1 be. 1n Suprerne Recordl' \1, Df('C(/ Recordl', olle record cOlllpan y sucd anu lher f'or producing a reco rdi ng 0 1' á sOTlg tha l SUPpl)Séu ly imi ti;l lcd lhe li rsl l'o lll pally\ reco rd ing 01" lhe sa mc song .' Th c iud ge l"olllld , howcv\,!r, I h a l Ilw (ir!>1 wrnpany coulJ ll(J t ;¡ssc rl a " ri u.ht (JI"

ownership in a musical arrangement," by which he ll1eant \lol jusi (\11 instru mental or vocal score but the whole sty1c 01' lhe performance on lhe record (909). Supreme Recordl' was decided well before the 1976 revision of lhe copyright statute, which includes the following, more extensive limitation: "The exclusive rights 01' the owner of copyright in a sound recording [ ... 1do not extend to lhe making or duplication o f another sound recording that consists entirely of an independent fix ation 01' other sounds, even though such sounds imitate or simulate those in the copyrighted sound recording" (sec. 114b). Jt is unlawful lo duplicate a recording in which you do not hold the copyright, yeí it is perfectly legal to replicate the performance on that recording in order to make your own recording ol' it. 6 T his examplc serves to show that even a performance that has been fixed and rendered replicablc through reproduction is not protected by copyright. Virtually every com ponent of a sound recording can be so protected: the underlying text, the arrangement of the te:\t, and the recording itself all can be copyrighted. The only thing that cannot be is the peljór/11al1ce of the text or materials in question , which can be imitated with impunity.7 The same is true for other recorded performances, such as video-tapes of choreography, which can be deposited with lhe Copyright Offiee. Although the choreography itself is thus protected against copying, the particular performance of that choreo graphy on lhe tape is not protected. Whilc Balanchine (as an " author") might be able to copyright his choreography of The Nu!c/"{/ckel'. no dancer could copyright his particular interpretation or performance of the Mouse King in Balanchine's ballet. Nevertheless, there have been a number ol'decisions over the years in which performers apparently have been determined lo have rights of ownership in their perforl1lances, live and recorded. Go/din 1'. C!arion PIJ%p/ays (195 N.Y.S. 455; 202 AD I [1922]), for example, is a case in which the magician who invented the "Sawing a Lady in Hall''' illusioll successfully sued to pro tect his exclusive right to perform it. In 1928, Charlie Chaplin won a decision against another actor, Charles Amador, for imitating his Little Tramp char acter in fIIms. Ber! Lahr won a judgmenl against a company that used a voice that sounded like his in a television commercial (Lahr 1'. Adelt Chemical Co. 300 F. 2d 256 [1 st Cir. 1962]). An important recent case is Mid/er v. Ford M%r Company (1988), in which singer Bette M idler sued the autol1lobile company and its advertising agency for using a singer \Vho sounded exactly like Midler in a cOl1lmercial. She lost her initial case but won on appeal. ~ It is important to observe that although the cases J just cited all had the effect 01' extending legal protection to specific performances (a magic trick , a dislinctive eharacter) or performance sty1cs (speaking and singing voices) , nOne 01' these cases actually establishes a performcr's right of ownership in perfo rma nce as a w\)rk nI" :lulhorship, l':ach was Jecided 00 a different basis, n l)t1~ under lhe copyrigh t slalll lc. 111 ClIlII,lin l' AlI/adOr (93 C al. App. 358 , 69 P. 544 W)2:-i j), I he ":\111 11 sl al~d \!x pliei lly lha l " lil e case ul" plainlifT does

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tk pend oal his righl lo the exclusive use 01' lhe role, garb, amI ma nner· iSllls. ele.: it is hased upon fraud and deception. The ri ght of action in s uch a caSl' arises from the fraudulent purposc and conduct of appellant and injury callsed lo Ihe plaintiff thercby , and the deception to the public [ .. . (269 1'. 546). This understanding 01' the case arose from the fact that not only had Amador imitated the Little Tramp, he had also billed himselfin the fil m~ as C harlie Aplin. The decision stemmed from the concJllsion that Amador had practiecd fraud and was gui1ty of " llnfair competition in business," not fmm Ihe theory that Chaplin had a copyright in his performance as lhe Little Tramp. The original dismissal of Lah,. \l. Ade/! Chemical was re vcrsed 011 a similar basis: the appcals court fOlllld that llsing a voice that sounded likc Lahr's cOllld constitute " passing off" and , therefore, unrair competition. T he decision in Coldi/l also was based , in part, on grounds of lInfair competition. ('Iarion Phot o plays had made a film revea ling how the illusion was achieved; Ihe court round against the company on grounds 01' unfair competition , si nce dislributing th e film would rcnder Goldin 's illusion worthless and thus de prive him 01' " the fruits of his ingenllity, expense, and labor" (202 AD 1, 4). Midle,. 1'. Ford Mulo!" Company (849 F . 2d 460 [1988]) Iikewise does no t hold that Midler has a copyright in her vocal style. JlIdge Noonan sta tes hlllllLly in his decision that "a voiee is not copyrightable. The sounds are no t ' Iixed'" (462). In this case, the decision was made on the basis of a California slalule enshrining what has come to be called the right 01' publicity- Ci vil ( 'ode, Section 990, also known as the Celebrity Rights Act- originally designed lo allow the esta te of a deceased celebrity to continue to control the use o f Ihe name, voice, signature, photograph , and lik eness o fthat celebrity. Jud ge Noonan interpreted this sta tute as protecting a living celebrity's identity ur personhood and found that Midler has a property right not in her voice 01' performance but in her identity, her self. " A voice is as distinctive and personal as a face," he wrote . "The singer manifests herself in the songo To impersonate her voice is to pirate her identity" (463).9 Performers have the right to be protected from fralld and unfair business practices; they may even have property rights in their identities. None of these ri ghts is equivalent , Irmvevcr, to a copyright in performance. The central difference between copyri ght and the right of publicity is that while lhe former protects \\'orks of authorship, the latter protects pcrso nhood and o therefore , applies only to those whose persons have market valLle: lo celchrities. Judge Noonan ' s decision carefully spells out Midler's c1aim to cclchrity by summarizing her career, quoting her revie\Vs, and indieating her slatus as él cultural icon appealing to baby boomers . In the last paragraph 01' Ilre decision , he states: " Wc need not and d o not go so fa r as to hold thal cvery imitation of a voice to auvc rtise merchandise is actionable. Wc holl.1 on ly tha! when él dislincti w vo iee Df a prolcssiol1éll singcr is wiJely kn own ól lld is J llliherald y imila tcd in Ullil'l !\) '{ ell a product, the sell ers have ap p ro pria tcd whUIIS 11 01 Iheirs I '" ( .1() 1). This implics Iha l ove n ¡fa n aJ wrlisi n"

agency sel oul deliheratcly lo replica le tire voiee 01' an unknown singe r in él commercial, that singer would not enjoy the same rights as Midler beca use, unlike Midler's, that singer's identity has no generally established value. Jane Gaines observes that the Midler deci sion "signaled a new devel o p ment in intellectual property law, one that had been evolvin g since the 1950s but that was not recogni zed in common law until the early '70s: the right of publicity paradigm " (1991: 142). The origins ofthis development can be traced back even further in case law. lo The illll sionist in Culdin 1'. Clarion Phulop/ays, for in stance, was able to control the performance of th e Sawing a Lad y in Hall' illusion beca use the illusion and its title " have become identified with plaintiff's name to such an extent that theatre managers and the pu bl ic immediately connected the t\\'o " (202 AD 1, 3). DeCosla, too, ca n be seen as a stop in the evolution of the right 01' publieity paradigm and has n uances that are worth examining in that light. In his DeCosla decision , J udge Coffin did not discount the possibility that a character co uld be copyrighted and even imagines "a procedure ror register in g 'characters' by filing pictori al and narrative description [o f them] in an identifiable, durable, and material form " wilh the Copyright Otlice. 11 Wh y then does he say not only that DeCosta could not preva il beca use he had not " reduced his creation to afixed form " (Miller and Davis 1990: 305) but al so that " the plaintiff 's creation, being a personal characterization [ ... ] could no{ be reduced to sllch a form " (320, emphasis added),? The answer lies in the judge's use of the phrase " personal chamcterization ." In discllssin g thi s matter, the judge reveal s himself to be a fairly sophisticated performance theorist , conversant with the coneept of "everyday-lite performance. " " AH human beings- and a good part of the animal kingdom--create characters every day ofthcir lives, " writes Coffin, but he goes on to say that the kind of character people often invent " for their o\\'n and others' amusement [ ... ] is so sli ght a thin g as not to warrant protection by any la\\'. [ ... T)o the extent that a creation may be ineffa ble, we think it ineligible for pro tection aga inst copying simpliciter under either state or federallaw" (:l20). Thc judge's reasoning concerning everyday-Iife perfo rmance is sOllnd: to create a situation in \vhich one person could seek legal remedy beca use another had copied his Hal10ween costume or hi s hum orous performance a t the ofllee watercooler c1earl y would be intolerable. This reasoning extends logically to professional performance as wel!. What is interesting in DeCosla , however, is the judge's refusal to treat DcCosta 's creation as anything more lhan a " personal characterization " on the order of a Hal10 ween costume even though it turned out to be con siderabl y more than that to CBS. Coffin notes !hat, in the original tria!. DeCosta' s attorneys had cited

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several ca ses I .. ·1 tlr~)llnd tllé general proposilinn that it is an ac li onahlc WI"\)Jlg lo a pPlIlp riulé " nd exrl~l illh c rrod uct a nolher\ t:rca livc clfur l; b ul ¡III SCCII1 111 i" vol v\! dist il111u ishahlc Wrtl ll l!.S uf at

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k;¡~1 \.:qllal ni \.:VCII slI f)Crinr !'iigl1ilkancc. Mo..;1 reS I 1)11 Ibl.: InrI 01' " pa ssi l1g ofT": arp roprialiol1 not 01' lhe creatio ll b UI 01' Ihe value alladl\.:d to it by public associatioll [ . .. ] by misleading tlle public inlo Ihinking that the dcfcndant's otTering is the product of the plaintilT's established skil1. (317- 18)

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J\n author does not have to be wel1-known, or even published. to enjoy copyright protection for her work , but a performer must be sufficiently famous so that someone else \Vould scek to purchase her identity to enj oy prolection 01' her performance under the right of publicity paradigm. Even thcn, that protection is not ofthe performance as a work. but as an extcnsiol1 01' thc pc rformer\ identity, construcd as ha vjn g val ue in itself. Although it i:-; not cica!' lhat it is de:¡irabJe tü formulale a genera.l propc rly right ill perform ance. 111l~ suc.c.css 01' Lhc right 1' 1' r llhlicily ptlr:uJ igm s uggesLs Ihat an y 'lttClllpl

tn do so would havc lo lake Ihe lack lhal all performance::; arc mallikslaliolls 01' the performer's sc\f and that, therefore, the unlicensed use 01' any perform ance is an appropriation 01' the performer's propcrty in her idcnti ty, T his is a highly problematic position from the pcrspective 01' acting and performance theory , in which the relationship hetween the performer's identity and her performance is much thornier and more ambiguous than the law would seem to allow. 12 While some performers nlay see their perfonnances as manifesta tions of identity, others may prefer to see their performances more as " works of authorship" separate from themselves. Arguably, the ambiguity of the rela tionship between self and other is at the heart of perform a nce; to eliminate that ambiguity in favor of defining performance as necessari1ly a mani festation of the performer's sc1f wouJd be a reduclive enterprise. In saying this, 1 am not suggesting that the law is wrong about the nature of perform ance, though it would surely benefit from a review of performance theory. The more important point is that the law, through its particular historical evolution, has constructed the concepts 01' performance and performer, and therefore 01' performers' rights , in particular ways which may not accord with the ways that acting and performan ce theory have constructed these terms through their own historical evolutions. The suspicions of theorists who see performance 's evanescence as a site 01' resistance to a cultural economy based in reproduction seem justified by the vagaries of sorne of the decisions I've cited. George Harrison certainly learned the hard way that copyright law has no respect for what I-1enry Sayre has called the "aesthetic 01' impermanence" (1989) . The lesson of DeCo.l'ta is that. in a capitalist representational economy, the entity legally defined as the "a uthor" of a creation is the one that ca n extract proflt from it. 13 Midle,. and related cases raise troubling questions about property rights tbat seem to accrue on Iy to a celebrity elite. Given these considerations. it is easy to under stand the appeal of seeing performance as a discourse that escapes and resists the terms ofthis cultural economy. That sword is double-edged , however, for it is al so not difficult to sympathize with performers who might want to put that economy to work for themselves by acquiring greater control over their creations even though that would mean sullying their performative purity. Copyright la\\' shares with performance theory the premise that live performance exists only in the present and has no copy, that it is constituted by an ontology of disappearance (Phelan 1993: 146): that is why it is not protectable under copyright. To copyright law, an undocumented perform ance is Iess than invisible: inasmuch as it has no copy, it was never created; it does not exist at all. As \Ve have seen, even performance that hat been flxed through reproduction is not actually governed by copyright--- only the underlying texts a nd lhe lixation itself are protected. Decisions in which performers appea r to have been accorded rights of ownership in their per fo rmances lum 0111 10 ha ve b cc lI milde 0 11 other gro unds, whether those ol' f.... ud , 1I1lrair ~OOlpc l il ip n . ()J lite I i¡! hl orpllhlicity. not on Ihc basis oran idea

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Certainly. therc was no "passing otf" in t his instance: unlike Am ador's implying that he was Charlie Chaplin. CBS had no reason to state or imply Ihat its Paladin \Vas DeCosta because DeCosta 's name and reputation were 01' no value to CRS. Although Coffin does not exprcss Lhis conclusi ol1, it is hard to bclieve that it played no role in his formulation of the concept 01' "personal characterization." 1 suspect that if DeCosta 's performance had been professional rather than avocational and he had become famous for it (like the illusionist in (Jo/din) , the result of the appeal would have been different even before the advent of the right of publicity paradigm beca use then CBS unquestionably would have poached something 01' establishcd value. The irony of DeCosta is that the plaintiff could have prevailed had he proved that CBS had poached a creation of established value but, beca use DcCosta was not a celebrity, the value ofhis creation could be proved only b y the fact that CBS found it worthy of poaching. The ¡\lidler decision makes it even c1earer that a present day DeCosta could expect to have a right of ownership in his performance only if he were a celebrity and CBS had some thing to gain by appropriating his ideotity, not the character he created. 1n a discussion of whether ordinary people can benefit from the right of publicity, Gaines finds that the law enshrines a paradox: Before exploitation [ ... 1 the ordinary person and the unknown actor can be said to have a right of publicity thaL. in its dormancy, is both there and not there. It is inherent at the same time as it I'nosl be produced hy exp/oitatiol1. What I mean is that in currcnt legal thought a person does not have publicity rights in him or herself unlcss, at one timc or another in the course 01' a career, he or she has trans ferred these rights to another party. (1 99 1: 190; original emphasis)

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Ihal p~ rrOnll¡¡II\."l: a... ,>udl IS \l\vllabk. 11 is rair to say, 111 \:1 1, 111;11 ¡'c~allsc livl! pl.: rlúrlllam:c GIIlIlOI be co pyrig hll:J , it escapes ownership, cOllll1lodificalio n. and \llha proccsses 01" regulation within a reproductive cap ilalist economy. Whelher Ihalmakes performance a site oflllcaningful resistance to th al eco 11l>1lly is more problema tic. lf performance may be said to slip th rough the Iúga lnct 01' copyright, it does so because that nel was designed specifically not lo catch it. Whatever resistance performance's ontology of disappearance 11lay cnable has bcen allowed by the very cultural anu political uiseo urses it is saiu to resist. Roth Patricc Pavis anu Peggy Phelan see performa nce's evanescence amI its subsequcnt cxistence only in spectatorialmemory as placing perform ance olltsiuc the purview of reprouuction and regulati o n. As Pavis puts it. "The work_ once performcu_ uisappears fm ever. The only memory which one can preservc is that of the spectator's more 01' 1ess distracted perception [ ... (1992: 67). Phelan extends this observation into the political realm: "Without a copy, live performance plunges into visibili ty- in a maniacally charged prcscnt---and disappears into memory, into the realm of invisibility and the IInconscious where it eludes rcgulation and control" (1993: 14S). The re1ationship of the view of memory s uggested by these performance Ihcorists to the concept ofmemory implicit in copyright law \Vould seem to be OIlC of opposition. As Pavis suggests, the version of performance that li ves h~:yond the moment is distorted and inaccurate, a product of "t he spectator's 1110re or less distracted perception." Ph ela n va lorizes the unrelia bility of spec· tatmial memory beca use it gives rise to unrecuperably subjective versions of p~:rrormance that are faithful to perforlllance's ontology of disappearance. ( :opyright law, by contrast, valorizes technological memory (fixation) beca use it provides an ostensibly reliable record of the protected object against which claims of infrin gement may be judged objectively: either the questionable object is "s ubstantially similar" to the protected one or it is not. I4 U pon closer cxaminatíon, however, it becomes clear that this opposition between pcr I"ormance theory and copyright law is only apparent, for copyright finally privileges human memory over technological memory as \Vell. Even when a pe rformance is fixed in tangible form , the tangibl e version has no absolute authority. If a question of copyright infrin gelllent were to come up, it \Vo uld not be possible to resolve that question simply and self-evidently by looking at the reproduction ofthe performance. In order to enter into legal discou rse, lhc performance must be retrieved from the tcchnological memory-form in which it is preserved and subjected to the vagaries of human memory and interprctation. 15 In llorgal1 ji. MacMillan, /ne. (1986), the esta te ofGeorge Balanchinc sucu a pllblishing company for printing photographs of He NulCrCltker that the cstaW c1aimcd violated the copyright in his cho reography, a video tape 01" which he hall SlIbmitted a long wilh his copyright appli ca lion. "The trial co m t slalcd tllat dwn:ogm phy iSCs~l" lI liall y lile nlOvcment ol" Slcps in a da nce a nd

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Ihal plJol ogra plJs 1IICf'c1y caldl dallu;rs al specific illslants in limc. Then: f~)rc, lhe courl reaso ncd , photog raph s could not capt ure mOVClllent , which is thc csscnce ofchorcography" (Hilgard 1994: 770 - 7 1). Thc appc1late court relt that the trial court had not employed lhe appropriate standard for infringe mcnt and sent the casc back to be tried on its merits. The appellate eo urt proposcd t\Vo theories of how ph otographs mi ght infringe on ch oreograph y, the second 01' which is of interest here. "The court stated that a photog raph could e1icit in the imagination 01' a person who had recently seen a perform ance lhe fto\V of movement imllledia tely preccding and follmving th e split second recorded in the photograph" (Hilgard 1994: 776). Although the case was settled before it \Vas decided on a ppeal , ]-]urgan is the only extant decision in a copyright infringemenl case involving choreography under the 1976 sta tute . One legal scholar suggests that: "The court's approach would providc a chorcographer with a c1aim based on an observer's recall of the movement surro unding the moment captured in the photograph " (Hil gard 1994: 780 8 1). 11' In this interpretation of ]-]orgal1, spectatorial melllory is far from being out of the reach of regulatory processes; in fa.c t, it is pressed into service by the law. (Even if the deposited videotape, rather than spectatorial memory, were used to decide the case, the comparison between the photographs and the video would still be made by means of hum an memor)' , for no human being could look at the vidco and the photos simultaneously.) Whcn it comes to the evaluation of copyright infringement c1aims, huma n memory is not th e safe haven from reg ulation and control that Phelan proposes. Rather. it becomes a mec!wl1isl11 ./ó¡- the en(ó¡-cement o/ regulatiol1. 17 Performanee 's ontological resista nce to objectification uoes not make performance a priv ileged site of ideol ogieal resistance to a cultural eeonomy based in capital and reproduction. If performance persists only as spectatorial memory. then it persists in precisely the form in which it can be useful to the law that regul ates the circulation of cultural objects as commodities . Not only is memory an agent ofcontrol, it is a site ofregulation as \Vel!. In Bright Tunes lv/lIsic Corp. 1'. ]-]arr¡soI1Xs Alusic, Lid., the court did not find that Harrison had deliberately plagiarized the earlier song but concluded that " his subconscious knew [ ... ] a song his conscious mind did not remembcr. [ . .. ] This is , under the law, infringement of copyright, and is no less so even though subconsciously accomplishcd" (180 - 81). In such cases, memory and othcr psychic operations are subject to policing. The very undependabi1ity of memory becollles the object of legal surveillance. Even the processes by which subconscious materials enter into consciousness and the relation between the subconscious and memory beco me matters oflegal scrutiny. In Harrison 's case, a subconscious melllory of a performance made itself manifest in a \Vay that rendereu hi11l subjcct to legal discipline. Argu ably, mem o !"y is the very found a tion 01' la w. not just in the sense tha t Anglo-Am erican C0 111 n1\1 n law is " an in!:icripti o n of the past in the prcsen t" ((j oodrich JI)l)O· Ih) hlll in Ihc largcr SClISC British legal scholar

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loss 111.' sIIlfL'rL'd I . .. I )ll c vL'ntL'd hinl !'rolll artinning, cxplailling, or daboratillg lIpOIl his out-oJ'-courl statemelll jusI as surcly and

cnl11plctely as [ ... :1 his death would have. 1M IClllory governs law nol as a series 01' established particularities, precedellls that will always differ from circum stance to in fi nite cir Clllllstance, but as "essentiallaw," as a method of handling, defi ni ng "nd dividing a system of argument. [ ... ] Memory establishes legal institlltions and not the banal specificity ol' individual cases [ ... J. (1990: 35)

(846)

rRJespondcn t's solc ucc uscr was lhe John Foster who , on May 5, IlJX2 , iuen tilieJ respo nJ en l as his a llacker. T his Jo h n Foslcr, how cwr. J iJ nol les lí!')' al n'sIH IlIlk'II I's lrial : lhe pro fo ll nd mC lllory

Brenna n's contlation of id entity, presence, and, indeed , existence itself with memory reaffirms the central role of memory and performance as mech anisms of la\\'. In Brennan's analysis, it is no! because certain conten!s had been erased from Foster's memory that he \Vas "unavailable as a witness. " Foster had retrieved and arliculaled those contents while in the hospital ; they were known and had served as the basis for a trial. Rather, it was Foster's inability to perjó/'/11 the retrieval of lhose memories in the present moment of the trial, to " affirm, explain, or e1 aborate upon" whal he had said earlier and outside the courtroom ,l'J that led Brennan to declare thal the trial court should have considered Foster to be functionally deau and his hospital bed identification inadmissible hearsay. In the interest of intellectual honesty , I have to underline that Brennan's opinion was the dissenting one and that the Court found that the adlllission of Foster's identification of his assailant had been proper despite his loss of memory. At first glance, this circumstance problelllatizes my thesis: if mem ory is the deep structure of law , how could the Court accept the testilllony 01' an amnesiac witness? The constitutional question at issue in v. Owens \Vas whether the defendant 's Sixth Amendment right to confront his acc user, known as the "confrontation dause," had been violated by Foster's " unavail ability as a witness" due to memory loss. J ustice Scalia, writing for the majority, found that as long as cross-examination of Foster had been possible, there \Vas no Sixth Amendment violation. His argument was that '"Meaningful cross examination [ ... 1is no! destroyed by the witness' assertion of memory loss, which is 01'ten the very result sought lO be produced by cross-exalllination [ ... ]" (838). Regardless of its merits as law , whieh are open to question, 20 Scalia's opinion supports my contention that the performance of recollection is the essence of testimony. In Scalia's view, to assert memory loss in the courtroom is to perform recollection, albeit in i:I ncgative way that makes the opposing attorney ' s job very easy. If testimony is the performance of recollection, the purpose of cross-examination is to discredit that performance specifically by showing that it has no legitimate daim to being a performance of recoltec tion , \Vhether by demonstrating that the accuracy of the witness's memory is open to question or by showing that the witness has, in fact , no memory 01' the events at issue. Thcre is no disagreement between Brennan and Sealia on the theoretical q uestion 01' whether testilllony is a performa nce of recollec llo n. Rather, they d isagree on the critical q uest ion a f \V hether Jo hn Foster s ho uld he ucscribeu as havin g !'aih.:d lo givc slIch a perfo rmance (Brennan) or as having givcn a hlill pc rfúrl1l ¡II I1';C Ihal hclpcd Ihl: IIlhcr sitie (Scalia). Por

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I,cgal memory , then , is not just a ma tter of bei ng able to cite preceden ts relevant to specific circumstances. Memory is the deep structure of a language nI' la w whose utterances takc the form of specific aets of recolleetion. 11' memory is the langue of law , then performance, the enactments that con stilute a trial , is its paro/e. To give testimony is to perform recollection , lhe retrieval of memory , in the performative present moment of the trial. A text hook analysis ofthe legal concept ofhearsay describes the function ol'witnesses as lhe "recordi:ltion and recollection " of pereeived events: this proeess of the storage and retrieval of memories is the basis for in-court testimony (Graham IlJ92: 262). The text of Federal Rule 01' Evidence 804a offers fllrther support fm this characterization of the witness function. The Rule presents the fol lowing definilion 01' " unavailability as a witness": "Unavailability as a witness" ineludes situations in which the declarant - [ . . . 1 (3) testifies to a lack of memory of the subject matter 01' the declar ant's statement; or (4) is un able to be present or to testify at the hearing because of death or then existing physical or mental illness. (in Graham 1992: 376) In other words , from the point of view 01' the federal courts, a witness who is unable to perform memory in the courtroom is indistinguishable from a dead witness 01' a deranged one . l ~ In his dissenting opinion in Uniled Sta les \'. OIVel1.1' (108 S. Ct. 838 [1988]). a ci:lse concerning John Foster, a savagely beaten prison guard who had iden ti[ied his assailant while in the hospital but, subsequently, could not remelll ber the attack though he could remember making the identification , Justice Brenmm sllggests that inasmuch as Foster had had no Illemory ofhis assai lant at the time of the trial , he had not even been present in the courtroom:

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BlI'llIlall, a had Jlt.:rlo ll llalll'l' is nI) Ix:rl'orlllam;c al :tl l a po mt 01' vicw wi lh wltid , 111¡III Y p0rfM lllalll;c eriLies wOllld no dOllbt be in ~y lllpallly. 1:cd t:ral R ull: 01' Evió encc (, 12. conccrning the use 01' dOclIl11ents to "rcl'n:sh Itlte witncss' sJ memory " in the courtroom , also clearly illustrates the pre IlIilllll placcd within the legal discourse on the idea that testimony is a prescnl performance 01' memory retrieval (in G raham 1992: 210). S Ul:h docllments lII ay he lIsed only to stimulate the witness's "indepcndent I'ecolleclioll" 01' the isslIc al hand: they may not flll1l:tion as sl:ripts from which witnesses recou n l lhcir rcwllcctions (Rothstein 1981: 49). The judgc must be persua ded tha t "lhe witm:ss's statement, springing from active , eurrent (though revived) reeol Icctiol1 \ViII bl: the evidcnce [. , .]" (45). If tbe judge feels that the witness is leslifying " from what purports to be a revived present memory when his leslimony is actually a reflection, conscious or unconscious , of what he has read rather than what he remembers," the judge has the right "to reject such lestimony by finding that the writing did not in faet revive the witness 's recollection" (Graham 1992: 213). In order to constitute val id testimony, the wilness's statements must be persuasive as present performances 01' memory rl't rieval. Sorne American jurisdictions forcibly extend the same logic to tbe proccss by whieh a verdict is reaehed by forbidding jurors from taking wrillen notes on the trial. Their deeision-making thus becomes a perform ance of memory retrieval guaranteed to be unprompted by written texts (see Ilibbitts 1992: 895). Inasl11uch as memory is brought into legal discourses as both a policed si te ami a meehanism of regulation , Phclan's proposition that memory eludes r.:gulation and control seems true only 01' materials stored in memory and I/¡'I'('r relriel'ed from it. As long as a memory remains stored , it apparentl y has no engagemcnt with mechanisms 01' regulation and control. But once a memory is retrieved, it can no longer c1aim to take up a position outsidc lhe reach 01' those mechanisms but becomes both a subject and a mean s of regulation and control. 1l' a witness cannot or will not retrieve memories of lhe matter at issue, the court considcrs that witness to be unavailable to the legal discourse and , therefore , to be dead , If Georgc I-Iarrison had not re lrieved "lle's So Fine" from his memory , even subconsciously, his psycruc proeesses would not have been the subject of a court decision . " Visibility is él lrap [ ... ]," Phelan wams, "it summons surveillance and the law [ ... ]" (1993: 6). Although Phelan is referring here to visibility politics, not mcmory, lhe making present of memories surely must mn the same risk- once thcy emerge from the safe haven of memory , recollel:tions beeome visible and , lherefore, subjeet to surveillance and to being pressed into service as testi Hllm y, As soon as a memory is retrieved , it becomes available to the law. T he question that emerges from this analysis is: At what point in the prnccss 01' menwry re l rie val docs lhis risk actuall y a ppea r? Does a m cmory ht:!;olllc vi~ ibl e a nd , thus. SUnl lI l@ th¡; la w, si mply by bein g rct rieved , l') r is visihilit y lhe k:gal.iy 01' lltl: 1I11l llll'IIt at which rhe retTié vcd m ClIll l ry l'x plicill y

elltcrs inlo discourse? 111 olhl'l' \Vords, is il possible rOl' ti memory lo rcma in iafc from surveillance at some l1loment after it has becn retrieved but befo re it has bcen entered into discourse'? My argument is that therc is no such moment, that memory itself soJieits disco urse. Title 17 states that a copy of a work need not be deposited with the C opyright O ffice for that work to rel:eive copyright protection, but a copy must be deposited to support a claim 01' inrringement (secs. 407a, 41.1 a). Thc sole purpose 01' storing a copy of the work in the governmental memory bank is to enter it into (legal) diseourse. It is pcrhaps for this reason that Jacques Derrida suggests that in order for performance to escape objeetification , ., [ts aet must be forgotten , actively forgotten " ([1966]1978 : 247). U nli ke Pavis and Phelan, both ofwhom seem to see memory as functioning outside 01' reproducti on, at Ica st where perform ance is concerned, Derrida suggcsts that the reeording 01' an even t in memory is itselfa form ofreproduction. The memory thus assumes the form in whil:h it can be appropriated by such regulatory agenl:Íes as the law . In order to escape the eeonomy 01' reproduction , performance must not only disappear. it must also be excluded from memory. Thc question 01' when memory roay be said to enter into disl:ourse and thus summon the la\\' is addresscd by Goodril:h , in a provocative passage:

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The path 01' the law is that 01' experience, in the words 01' one Americanjudge. Could \Ve not take that to mean that we live the law, that what is interesting and at the same time frightcning about the la\V is precisely that it is integral to experience, that it is everywhere present, not as command or faeile rule but rather as an architeeture of daily Jife, a law 01' the street. an insidio us imaginary. In terms 01' any phenomenology 01' the law in its forms 01' daily life, \Ve would need to study the images 01' possibilily, the imagery, the motive and affcctive bonds that tie the legal subject quite willingly, though not neecssarily happily, to the Jimits of law , to this biography, to this persona , to this body and these organs. (1990: 9 -· 10) Goodrieh's f oucauldian suggestion that law is not a secondary overlay on individual experiencc but a constituent 01' that expcrienee itself has important implieations. From the perspective afforded by Goodrich's aecount, it becomes clear that the cxperiences sto red in memor)' were themselves shaped in rela tion to the law as part 01' the phenomenology 01' daily life. Perhaps Goodrich's referenl:e to the legal subjeet's persona can be taken to suggest thal the psychie functions 01' memory storage and retrieval (01', in legal parlan te, recordation and recollcction) also do not oecur outsidc the context (JI' la\\' as a cOllstitucn t 01' experience. In view 01' Goodrich 's discus sion 01' thc phenomen ol ugy 01' law , il is clear lhat Illelllories do not summon lhc law hy hecom in g vis ihle nI" by hcing cnl crcd into diseoursc, beca use there

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is 110 11101111:111 al wh il'!l l a IIH': lIlory cxisls prior to its inscription in and by law al Illl' phL'll(lnlcllologicallevel. The content ofany memory has already been sllaped by law as part or the phenomenology 01' daily Jife. In that sen se, all IIlL'IIwry is inhabited by the structures of law, is always already entereo into k-ga l discourse. Thl: extent to which memory is both embedded in and structured by legal discol!rs(, problcmatizes it as a site 01' resistan ce to that same diseourse. Much I he sal11e can be said 01' Jiveness, the ontological q uality some performance Iheorisls see as placing performance outside 01' a cultural economy governed hy rl:production. I have already stated that the witness's live pe rformance 01' lIlemory retrieval in the present moment of the courtroom, not the informa tion retrieved , is the essence of testimony. A procedural isslle that has also provoked Sixth Amendment questions is the propricty 01' using depositions, wrilten or on videotape, in the place oflive testimony in the cOllrtroom. Even decisions in favor of the use 01' depositions generally , and or videotaped dC]lositions in particular, reflect the law's strong preference for live witnesses. For examplc, the Georgia Court of Appeals judge who ruled that "the laking of the deposition of an expert witness to be used at the trial [ ... ] by IIleans ofvideotaping" is an acceptable practice stressed in his decision that: " 11 is weJl to remem ber that the tak ing 01' a deposition [ ... ] is a substitute, at h\'sl , rol' the actuallive testimony ofthe witness" (Mayor \l. Palmerio 135 Ga. ¡\ pp. 147 [1975], 150). I ndeed , mosl of the court decisions that have allo\Ved 1111: use 01' depositions at criminal trials stipulate very dearly that this practice IS acceptable only when the witness is legitimately unavailable to testify live. ' 1 In Slores 1'. Slale (625 P.2d 820), heard by the Supreme Court of Alaska ill I ()¡jO, the court overturned a conviction in a rape case on these grounds, lilldillg that the prosecution had not made sufficient good-faith efforts to ~L~Cllrc at the trial the presence ofthe doctor who had examined the victim and whose testimony had been presented on video while she was vacationing. 22 The higher court's interpretation ofthe prosecution's strategy was that: "The sole purpose of taking the deposition was to create former testimony to be lIsed in lieu of live testimony . We will not sanction sllch an evasion of tb e constitutionally based preference for livc testimony in open court [ ... ]" (X27) . T he la\V's preference ror the live presence of witnesses , implied by the cOllfrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution , is clear. Writing ror the dissent in SI ores 1'. Sta/e, Justice Matthews argues that "lhe critical question is whether there \Vas a significant diffcrence between I he Icstimony as it was actually presented to the jury on the videotape and as il rnighl have been presented had DI'. Sydnam appeared in pe rson at Stores' Irial " unO) . Justice Matthews's position \Vas that inasmuch as Ibe circum slalH':CS ()f the taping were 'iim il a r lo those of lhe trial (the same atlomeys W¡;n: present, as was a trial judge,
that jurors' perception 01' a Ii vc \Vitness is not ncces~arily the same as their perception orthe same witness on video and that "with videotape, the witness cannot be cross-examined in the context of other evidence and testimony which has been presented al trial" (829). It is interesting that Justice Connor did not argue that the doctor's testimony Ivo¡ild have been different had she appeared live, only that it might have been, and that that perfonnative possibility was grollnds on which to reverse the original decision. Justice Connor's opinion insists on the importance of live performance to the legal proceeding: the witness's live presence before thejury and the possibility that something could happen in " the maniacally charged present" of the trial that did not happen on the videotape are isslles of sufficient momen t to require the reversal of a rape eonviction.

·l lO

As 1 have described it here, the relationship 01' performance to current American jurisprudence is complex, especially when considered through two different bodies of law. One way 01' sllmmarizing these complexities is to compare implications abollt the status of performativity in a copyright case with those in a case focused on evidentiary issues. Georgc Harrison's argu ment, in Bright Tunes, that a song is not a I1xed text but an evanescent performance fell on deaf ears, with the result that the textualized version of one performance ofhis song became the song as far as the law was concerned . When Justice Connor argued in Slores that the fixed (videotaped) version of the doctor's testimony- which 1 have defined as a performance of memory retrieval-was not an acceptablc substitute for her live presencc, he seems to respect the ontology of performance in a \Vay that copyright does not. In the former case, the possibility of what 1 have called performativc accident is effaced: the song is identified with a written tex\, regardless of how that text came into existence. In the latter instance, performative accident is valorized: the doctor's testimony is valid only ir given under circumstanccs allowing for sllch accident. Despite this apparent contradiction , the argul11ent tha I ,performance ontologi.cally resists fixation is accepted at a fundamental level by bolh branches 01' the law. Because it cannot be fixed , performance has no standing under copyright. Thcrefore, a cultural object such as " My Sweet Lord " cannot be defined as (J pellormancc for the purposes of copyright litigation. The same recognition, that performance cannot be fixed without ccasing to be performative, yields the procedural preference for Iive tes ti mony over videotaped depositions. Herbcrt Blau has noted the strong desire in current theory for "a language 01' 'pcrformativity' that will outwit, baffle, 01' abolish the regulatory functions that work in the name 01' the law" (1996: 274). In my view , the fact that the grollnding of performa nce in a n ontology of di sappearance is as fundamental lo lhe 1I11de rstanding 01' pe rfo rmance in and of the la w as it is to many a¡;coU nls of pe rforma nce cmc rgi ng from Iheo ry pro blematizes this desire . Sl)mctimcs, t h nlc ~ i n~ 1" wh id l Bl all alhu.ks rcs lI lts in a Ihco rCl ie<,1I privilegin g

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111' rh.:rl'nnnalll:e's cxisll'lIn; Illlly in the present 1ll0lllc nt a llll its subscqUClI1 ,Itlra ~c in mcmory, This privi\cge uerivcs from a daim that these ontological Ijl llllities pcrmit performance to evaue the regulatory uiscourses 01' a cul Imal cconomy based on reproduclion. 1 have shown here that Iiveness-· performance in the present- and memory are central meehanisllls by which Ihe law that governs that economy is actualized and are privilegcd teflns within the diseourse 01' law. Far frorn constituting si tes of resistanee to the law, memory and performance are woven deeply into tbe fabric o f law. both theon:tieally and proeedurally, 1na double gesture 01' reeu peration. A merica n law uenies performance legal standing as intelleetual property and recuper ales it as central to the legal process itself

Nutes Obviously, the context in which the relationship between copyright and perform ance is most frequently discussed is that orthe rights ofauthors ofplays and other performance texts. Title 17 grants to authors an exclusive right " to do and lo authorize" public performances of Iheir works (sec. 106.4). There have becn some interesling controversies , especially over Ihe pasl ten or so years, foeusing on plaY\\irights \Vho assert their rights against productions whose interpretations 01' Iheir \IIork they dislike, (1 discuss one such controversy again st a background of changing information 't echnologies and Iheir impact on the concept of intellectual propert y in Auslander 1992.) Because 1 am concerned here wilh the status 01' performance per se under copyright, 1 will not address the issues arising from disputes over texlual interpretalion be yo nd this note. A more technical commenl on the legal slatus of playseripts appears in note 3, Recently , there has been a successfulmovement within American law to extend the rights of visual artists over Iheir produclions, modeled on the French legal concept of droil moral (moral rights). Inasmuch as droil moral derives from a conception ofthe work ofart as an extension ofthe artist's personality, not a work crealed by but separate from Ihe artis!. it bears a certain rese11lblance to the American1egal doctrine of right ofpublicity, which 1 discuss belo\\'. (For a general discussion 01' droit llloral and comparison with American law, see DuBoff 1984: 224 - 39. ror a more theorelical and historieal comparison of droit moral with copyright, see Saunders 1992 passim,) Droit moral is very attractive to artisls, in part beca use il gives artists the right to control Ihe integrity of their \Vork, "10 prevent their IVorks fr om being allered , distorted or dcstroyed" (DuBoff 1984: 233), A 1990 addition lo Title 17 extended these rights lo visual artisls (Visual Arlists Rights Act of 1990, sec, 106a). In order for droit llloral to extend lo pcrforllling artisls. they would have to bc character ized as "aulhors," As I point oul here. this is a vexed question. Perfonne rs who are in thc business of interpreling texts created b y others certainly should hesitate bcfore supporting droit moral legislation for writers. Under droit moral , an author need onl)1 c1ailll thal a performance of her texl di slorts it to block publie prcsentation of that performance. As David Saunders observes, o pponents 01' lhe illlportation of droil moral into American la \\' stress the impossibililY 01' deflllin g an objectivc slandard for distortion and the consequcnt potential for caprici o us ness on lhe part of auth OfS (01' thei r heirs) in determining which uses of a text are acocptable and which are no! (1 9()2 : 2(7).

"1

1.1 tl A I I Y I I V I ' My ()WIl OpilllOIl is Ilral Ilu r eullural ell vil"lllllllent WlllrlÚ hendíl fl'llm Ihe ,:xlel1siol1 nI' Ihe c\lllcepl 01' "compulsory lice nsc" into thc real m 01' dralllatic and other performance lex ts. "lhis doctrine derives from early copyright legislalion concerning sound recording and ho lds that lhe composer 01' a piece of music has an absolu le right to delermine \Vho makes the firsl recordin g 01' that piece (sec. 115). Once lhe eomposer has liccnsed one recording of lhc piece. howcver, anyone elsc \Vho wishes has the right to ml1ke subsequent recordings of it , provided thcy pay slatutory Iicensing and roya lty fees (Miller and Davis 1990: 314). Although I'm sure there would be problems to be confronted were this doctrine to bc applied to dramatic and other performance texts, 1 feellhat. ultimately, it wou ld serve the interests of free and creative expression. 2 1I is important to stress that 1am focusing he re on the federal co pyright statute, It is possible for indivi dual states to recognize intangible expression as property under COllllll on law Of to enact sta tutes that offer such proteelion. Since state '1aw cannot eonfliet with federal sta tute, sta tes ca n not extend copyright protection to perfonnances but can formulate olher ways oftrealing performance as inlellectual property. This has been donc chiefly through Ihe concept ofthe right ofp ubli city. reeognized by many sta tes. 1 discuss this eoncept and its relati on to copyright belo\.\'. 3 [n a report presented to the America n Bar Association in 1981 , a eommillee look ing into "prob1ems o f creators of \Vorks 01' fine and applied arts" makes tile following obseTvation: " Although the exhibilion of a motion picture or lelevision film does nol in and of itself eonstitute publication , ofTering to distribule copies 01' the picture or 1111m to a grollp of persons for pllrposes 01' public performance wOllld constitute publication" (American Bar Association 1981: 6). By an alogy, eve n Ihough a publie performance of a play does no t eonstitute publica tion , making the play avadable for producti on (by placing it with a script service. for example) presumably \Vould constitllte publication even ifthe play were being eir culated in manuscript forrn and were " lInpublished " in the sensc 01' never having been printed by a publishin g company. 4 According to Adaline J. H ilgard, the fixation requiremenl is particularl y vexing for choreographers bceause " none of the ava,ilable means of fixation- video, written notation , o r computer g raphi cs- is entirely satisfactory." She also notes that some ehoreographers fea r that flxing their wo rks will cithe r transfonn th em into " museum pieces" o r make it easier for olhers to pirate them. To some degrce, chorcographers prefer to rely on the dance world clIslolll of ostracizing choreo graphers wh o steal frolll others rather than dependin g on copyright protection (1994: 766- 67), Perhaps for these reasons . Ihe federal copyright statute"s protee tion 01' choreographic \Vorks has been lested o nl y once. in Horgal1 l'. AlaC!\1illall, lile. (1986) , a case that was sellled before being decided on appeaL [ discuss /:Iorgan, and Hi'lgard's analysis 01' it , belo w and in note 16. 5 Supreme Record.\· (1950) is fascinating for reasons that go beyond my focus here . In its decision , the court compares Ihe t\Vo recordings and notes "that the Supreme reco rd is clearly identified as 'a raL'C 01' blues and rhylhm' recording. while the Deeca record is ' popular' l · . , l." The judge characterizcs the " race" rec ording as inferior to the "popular" one, which he describes as possessin g " clearer inlonation and expression" and making use 01' a "more precise, complex and better organized orehestral backgro und" (912). Anyone familiar with the vexed history of mce relations in American popular music might wonder to \Vhat extent the judge' s eharacterizalion of l"he " race" record as inferior was a product 01' musical raeism, More important. pe rhaps, is the possibility that Ihis case constit utes an attempt to use the lega l systclll lo red rcss the problc rn 01' white anists "covering" successful recordings by black arlisls a lit I rl'¡¡pin g Ihe he lldils 01" lhc hlack artisls' elTorts by

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virtue 01' the superior distribution and a,i rplay granted to "popular" (i.e., while) reeordings. This problem would become even more aeute \Vith the adwnl 01' the rock and roll era in 1955, especially givcn the propensity of white a ttists and their produeers to fail to pay royalties to black songIVriters. (For a summary discussion ofthis situation. see Szatmuy 1991: 27 - 31 .) 6 Allhough it may seem extraordinary that the law explicitly pennits the imitation of exisling sound works, this c1allsc is reflective of the underlying principies of copyrighl as they pertain to written texts. The copyright statute protecls "original IVorks ofauthorship" (sec. 102a). As Miller and Davis note, hOIVever, "a work of origina lit y necd not be novel. An allthor can elaim copyright in a work as long as he created it himself. even if a thousand people created it befo re him. Originality does not impl y novelty; it only implies that thc copyright c1aimant did not copy from sonieone clse" (1990: 290). In principlc, if a writer \Vere lo produce a book that \Vas identical , word for \Vord, \Vitl,¡ another. previously copyrighted book and could provc that shc had had no access to the earlicr book and that her work IVas purely the result 01' independellt erfort, she could have a copyright in her book. despite its lack 01' novelty. Similarly, as long as the producer 01' a recording does not copy an existing recording but makes a ne\V recording that sounds identical to the existing o ne, the new recording is eopyrightable as an "independent fíxation ." Although the til'O circumstances are not idcntical (ü¡ the case of the book , the resemblance between the older and neweT texts must be coincidenta l; lhis is not the case for identical sOllnd rccordings), the concept of "independent fíxation " can be understood as the correlative of an "o riginal IVork of authorship" in the realm 01' sound recording. In both cases, the faet that lhe later object lacks novelty is no obstacle to its being copyrighted, as long as that lack ofnovelty is not due to illicit copying of the protected object. 7 The practical ramificalions of this c1ause were brought home to me by a compact disc entitled Ba.ek lo Roek N Ro!!, an anthology of American pop songs from the I960s. Most ofthe recordings on the disc are recreations ofthe original record ings by the same singers, who have earned their livings for the past 25 years by perfonning their early hits . Kl:ep in mind (hat the owner of the copyright in a sound recording need not be the perfonner; considering the practices of the lllusic and film industries, it is in fact lInusual for performers to own the co pyrights to their ol\'n recordings. Ifthe copyright la\\' permitted the o\Vner ofthe copyright ,in a sound recording to prevent others from making another recording that sounds the same, the performers on this disc could be deprived of a significant portion of their livelihood. This clause also pcrrnits musical ,lItists IVho trarfíe in pastiche, sueh as the Manh ,¡ttan Transfer and Bette Midler (about whom more below), to make records that do, indeed , sound like other records; it enables performers \Vho, by whatcver trick of natme, sound exactly Iike other performers to record ; and it presumably diseouragcs rl:cording artists from Iitigating OVl:r l1latters of style. (My examples derive primarily from musical recordings, but the principie exlends to all typl:S 01' sound recordi ngs.) ~ As Judge Noonan noted in his decision , the commercial in which él voiee like Midler's \Vas used was part of a series knolVn within the agenc)' as "The Yupp ic Cam pa ign " in which "the aim \Vas to makc an emotional connection with Yuppics, bringing back lllemorics 01' \Vhen they IVere in college" in the 70s. The agency USCO a dilTerent song in caeh cOlÍlmercial au d tried to reeruit the artisl who ha d origi nally popularized it to ren:cord it. W hen M idler declined to rercwrd " Do Y\ l (j Want T o Dance ," a song sile had originall y rewrdcd i,n 1973, lhe agcncy eJllploycd li la Ilcd wig. \Vh" had D ile!: worked ror M idlcr as a back-lIIJ singer, lo

imitate Midler's voice for the commcrcÍ<11 (Mid/a 1'. F(/rd lv/olor ('o/!/J!(/I/Y 84<) F. 2d 460 [1988], 4(1). 9 In Sinalra 1'. Goodl'ear Tire and RIIMa Co. (435 F. 2d 711 1.1970]). Nancy Sinatra lost her case agains l the compally and its advert ising agcncy for using a recordin g o r"These 800ts Are Made for Walking" that sounded like her own. Since Sinatra did not have the benefit 01' California's Celcbrity Rights statute, she advanced a ditTerent argumcnt: "that the song has been so popularized by the plaintiffthat her name is identified with it: [ ... J lha! said song [ ... ] ' has acquired a secondary meaning' [ ... (712). " Secondary mcaning" is a concept derived from trademark law referring to " a mark lthat] has been used so long that it has come to be synonymous with the goods or sen'ices \Vith which it is connected l ... (Miller alld Davis 1990: 1(5). Sinatra argued, by analogy, that the c10se association of the song wilh her performance of it means that the song inevitably refers to her. Had this right been recogni zed, Sinatra would ha ve had control over all performances of lhe song, since any rendition of "Th ese Boots Are Made for Walking" would presumably evoke her as a secondary 111eaning. The central difference bel\Vcen Sinatra's argument and Midler's is that wh ereas Sinatra was c1aiming a kind of ownership in the song itself as a consequence of her having executed a farnous performance of it, M idler's c1airn was based only on her proprietorship of her voice. T he appellate judge upheld the original dccision against Sinatra beca use granting her the right to control performa nce of the song on these grounds would eonllict with the federally sanctioned rights 01" the copyright holders in the song and its arrangement to do so. " Moreover." the judge observcd . " the inherent difficulty 01' protecting or policing a 'performance' or the creation of a perl"ormer in handling copyrightcd material licensed to another imposes problems of supervi sion that are almost impossible for a court of equity" (717- 18). For a detailed analysis of Sinolm and a comparison 01' it with Midler, see Gaines (1991: 105 42). lO See Aptlebaum (1983: 1570 -74). Gaines (1991: 187·-91), Levine (1980: 130-38), and Wohl (1988: 44750) for overvicws of the right of publicity and its origins. Gaines, Lcvine, Hnd Wohl discuss the right of publicity in relation to lhe right to privaey, while Apflebaum compares right of publicity with copyright. Whereas Levinc and Wohl arguc for broad construal of the right of publicity. Apfleballm claims that rigilt of publicity can only be appropriately used to protect "\Vorks of authorship not fixed in tangible form" (1983: 15(3). In Aptlebaum\ view , all other applications of right of publicity are preernpted by federal copyright statute. Gaines suggests that the ri ght of publieity may not have evolved organically throllgh common law bul may have bccn codifíed to justify cxisting economic practices in the entertainment industry , then provided \Vith a genealogy in case law after the fact. If so, 1 am eontributing to the latter process in the discussion that follows. 11 Only characters that are very specifk in their devclopmenl can be copyrighted :

r

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The general idea of a character is unprotected. Stock figures, prototypes, or stereotypieal figures likewise are lInproteeteJ. [ ... 1Characters be come more protectcd as they become more detailed. But the attribution of general qualities- such as strength or cmotional features ···· s'LIch as compassion-·is not suffkient to gain copyright prolcction. (Miller and Davis 1990: 344-45) 12 In a cOlllparal ive d isc ussiilll ,,1' the rclalioll nf sclr to I'Crforlllalln: in ¡he thcilric$ (11' S t¡lIlisla vski , Il rel'ht, ;¡Ild C; I'olnwski. 1 s ll, ~~'CSI 111;11 alrhClII ~ 1t Ih;II rclaliollship

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IS ";lIutigul'cd ditTc rllllll y ill cach case, each theorist grounJs performance 111 a l'IlIICCpl lIt' " ~clf" lhal preccdcs pcrformance. My deconslruction 01' lhese thcorics lillds Ihal all 01' Ihose "selves" are, in faet , products 01' the performance Iheorics Ihey are said lo ground (Auslander 1995 [1986]). 1\ I:m an o Ulslanding analysis 01' cnlertainment law as a product 'Df amI a means 01' suslaining capitalism, see G aines (1991, Jius,~ün). 14 Thc binary opposition between unreliable human memory and reliable tcchno logical memory I <1m lIsin g here is gencrated by the juxtaposition of Phelan and !'avis \Vith copyright la\\', not from m)' 0'1'1\ epistcmology. lf anything, I find lechnologicalmemory, espeeially in the form 01' computer hard drives, to be every bit as unreliable and subject 10 degradation as human memory. 15 As \Ve saw from Ihe Rodn ey Ki ng trials.. this also holds true for criminal or civil trials in which vidcotaped ev idence is used , Again , the rep roducti on oflhe event at issue is no t permitted to "speak for itseIL" Rather, it is tested against the mem o ries of Ihe witnesses. and the discursivc eonstrllction ofthe videotapcd evidence that emerges from the " Ii ve" courtroom performance is what counts. I diseuss why this is so in terms of the underpinnings 01' evidence law in thc last portion of this essay. 16 Hilgard does not write approvingly of thi s deci sion. She finds substantial fault with the Horg({11 court and suggcsts an alternate standard for infringement of choreography: "an artist must copy both the movemen t and timing of a piece for a court to find copyright in fringement" (1975: 787). This wo uld mean that no sta tic representa tion of dance movcment in phot ography o r painting could in fringe the copyrigI1t on the choreography depicted . 17 Gaines's suggestion that one reason sound recordings were not recogn izcd under copyright laIV is beca use it was tho ught that the unreliability of aural memory would make the reso lulÍon 01' claims of in fringcment overl y subjective further reinforces my point (1991: 117- 18), 18 The legal system's dependence on mem ory is illustrated different ly by the law's ambiguity where false claims of memory lapse are concerned. As David Greenwald has pointed o ut, judges ha ve a tendency to treat witnesses wh Olll they suspect of such a false claim as fully present and ava,ilable fo r cross-examination and im peachment despite lheir technicaI unavailability (1993: 194) 19 Una Chaudhuri has pointed out to me that the spa/ial dimension is perhaps a~ important here as the /emporal o ne I empha size: to be valid, testimon y must be presented within the ritual space 01' the courtroom as \Vell as during the present momen t of the trial. 20 Claire Seltz offers a thoro ugh go ing critique ofScaJ,ía's decisi on, arguing that "the Cour!'s reason ing is erroneous, extreme, and not indicative oflegislative history or preceden!" and ereates "the illogieal possibility that all out-of-court identifieations of any cooperative witnesses, regardless of the vallle 01' the cross-examinati on achieved, will be admissible at trial" (1988 : 867, 897 ·98). Although far genller in tone, David Greenwald 's analysis ofthe case is also critical ofthe decision , which he faults for invoking a fal se preccdcnt and misinterpreting an am biguity in the Federa l Rules 01' Ev idence (1993: 178, 186). Although Seltz and Greenwald agree that the OlVells deci sion displays fau1t y lega l logic and sets a da ngerous preceden!' neither argues that lhe eourt came lo the wron g conclusion eoncerning the particular case. Both commenlaton¡ agree thar, beca use Poster retained partial mem o ry 01' the circumstanccs 01' his attack amI idcntification , he could be effectively cross-examincd conccrning the basis amI credibility ofth at identifieation and lbat Owens therefore suffered no Sixth Amend menl violation (Seltz 1988: 888- 90; G reenwald 1993 : 179). As G reen wald notes . a

126

I.H iA I I \

II V I '

caSt~ ill whieh Ihe witncss clllild nol even n:lml!l dx:r lIIa king 11It' idclI !Jlieil I11 111 wou'ld dcmand a dillcn:nt analysis (1993: 17'), 1R7) , 21 In addition lo justifying the usc of a deposil ion, the IlIwvailabilily ¡J I';I willl t"" cnablcs a val'icty oftypes ol'testimony tllat would ollterwise bc eOl1sidcred h C:l IS;I Y to be admittcd (Federal Rule 01' Evidcnce 804b , in Graham 1992: 379- 94) . 22 A U ,S, Supreme Court case almost cxactly contclllpontncou s with S/orC',I' llllllCd, in part, on the sallle qllestion. In Olzio 11. Rohert.\' (448 U .S. 56 [1980]) , thc \:11 11 rl addressed, among other evidentiary issues, the questio n of whether or nol Ilw prosec uti oTl had made sutricient good-faith effo rts to secu rc a wi tll1ess bcl"lln: introducing her testimony fr om a preliminary hearin g. Justice Bren nan 's dissenl focuses entirely on lhis qucst ion. 23 Thc idea that admissible pri or testimony should havc been given under "tr,ial- like" condition.s emerges in Illany decisi olls, as does debate over whether or not the cireumsta IIces of pretrial depositions and preliminary hearings are sufficicn tl y trial like ror testimony given under them to be admissible. Whethcr or not the witness is availabl e in court to tcstify abo ut the previous testim ony also has a bearin g on what kinds of prcvious testim ony are potcntially ad rnissible (see note 21).

References Ame rican Bar Associati on 1981. COlllrnittee Report: Di visi on 111, C ommittee No. 304. Ap tkbaulll , Marc J. 1983. "Copyright and the Right 01' Publicity: One Pe~ in Two Pods'!" George/olVlI LlIlI' .!ounwI71: 1567--94. Auslandcr, Philip 1995 11986]. '''J ust Be You r Sclf': Logoccntri~m and Difference in Performance Theory." In Acling í R e ) Considered: Theories uncí Prac/ices, edited by I'hillip B. Zarrilli . 59 - 67. London : Routledge. - - 1992, " Intellectual Property Meets the Cyborg: Performance and the Cultural Politics 01' Technology. " Peljórming Aus J ouf/)a/ 14, 1: 30- 42. Blau, Herbert 1996, Contributi on lo Forum on Interdisciplinarity . PMLA 111 , 2: 274 75. Derrida , Jacques 1978 [1966]. "The Thcater of Cruclty and the Clos ure of Repres cntation" 11\ W/'i/ing ({mI Dif(e/'el1ee. translated by Alan Bass, 232--50. Chieago: Un iversity ofChieago Press. O uBolf, Leonard D. 1984. Ar' 1.(/\ 1' in a NUlshell. St Paul: West Pllblishing Co. Gaines, .Ian e 1991. COI// es/ed Cul/ure: 7he J¡nuge, /he Voice, (//7(//he Lull'. Chapel Hill : Univcrsity of North Carolina Press, GooJrich, Peter 1990. Lilllguuges ojLaw: From L ogif'S o/lv/al/ory /0 NO/ nadie Masks. Lon don: \Vcidenfeld amI Nicolson. Graham, M ichael H. 1992. Federal Rules oI El'idellcc in a Nl//shell. Third edition. SI. Paul: \Vest Publishing Co. Greenwald , David 1993 . "The Forgctfui' Witness." Unil'e/'si/y (!( Chicago La\\' Revie¡v 60: 167- 95. Hibbitts, Bernard .l . 1992 . '''Coming lo Our Senses' : Comm unication and Legal Expression in Performance Cultures" EII/o/'y ¡ ,(/j I' .louma/41: 873 960. Hilga rd . Adalinc J. 1994. ''Can Choreogra ph y il nd Copyrigh t Wall/ T ogd hcr in the Wa kc of Ho rga n v. Mac Millan , Inc.'!" I llIil'cr.l'i/l ' uf' ( 'II/(/imtil1l1/ J)(/vi.l' LI/II' R nic\\' 27: 757 ¡';9.

1'l'1

11I ;'I llIlt ' ,

I ''-' I .J IIII . ~ .

I'CII , I .I I I ' ,\I

I , I ' U N I II\I Y

11".1;,.,,," , { 'IiL' l yl 1. 11)1''- " 1I" l; lI c~' llIall)rol'crl y Pcrlúrlllcr's ~I y k A Quc~ 1 1"01

'\ "WllailllllL'1I1 R ¡;l:lll.' "ili ~lll. allt! Pro tcL'tion." DCllrer Lu\\' .Iollrl/al52: 561 -94.

I Ii Vill li, Maria l':. I')~(). "The Rigllt 01' Publicity as a Means 01' Protecting Performcrs'

Slyh:." rOI'ola o(/,os Angclcs Lol!' Rl'1'iew 14: 12963. Milk: r, l\ rthllr R., anu Michaelll. Davis 1990. /l1lelleclllal Properly: Patenls, Trade IIltIr/.:,\, {/I/(I ('ojiyri,,,hl in ({ NUls"ell. Sccond cdition. SL Paul: Wcst Publishing Co. 1';lvis, Pal rice 1992. Theolre ollhe Crossroad\' O/Cullure. Translateu by Lorcn Krllgcr. I.ondon: Routledge. I'hclan, Pcggy 1993. Unmarked: ril e Polilics o{ Perjim¡¡{/nce. London : ROlltledgc. Rnthstcin, Paul F. 1981. t'l'idel1ce il1 {/ N ulshell: Slale (lnd Federal Rules, Sccond cditioll. SI. Paul: West Publi:ih ing Co. Sallnders. Da vid 1992. AUlhorship (lnd Copyright . Lo ndon: R outledgc. Sayre, Henry 1\:1. 1989. T/¡e Ohject o/ Peljórmance. ChiL'ago: University of Chieago Press . Seltz, Claire L. 1988. Cascnotc: United States v. Owcns, 108 S. el. 838 (1988) . .!ou/'/w! (!( Criminal Lall' llIld Criminology 79: 866 - 98. Szatmary, Dav id P. 1991. Rockill' /11 Tim e: A ,<,'oóol lIiSlory o(Rock-al1d-Roll. Sccond cdition. Englewood ClitTs: Prentice Hall. Wo hl, Leonard A. 1988. "The Right ofPublieity and Vocal Larccny: Sounding Offon SOllnd-Alikes." FordllOm LWI' Reviell' 57: 445 ·· 62. I,egal Do<.:urnents nrigl-tl Tunes lV/lisie CrJlp. 1'. Horrisongs Alusic, LId , 420 F. Supp. 177, 1976. Ca!i/iJrnia Civil Code, Section 990. Olllplin 1'. Amar/or, 93 Cal. App. 358 , 269 P. 544, 1928. ('olwllhia Brol/dc{/sling S»s lem , 1111'. v. De Cosla , 377 F. 2d 315, 1967. Federal Rule of Evidence 612. Federal Rule o/ El'idence 804a, 804h. Coklin r. Clarion Ph%plays, 195 N.Y.S . 455; 202 AD 1, 1922. !lurgan v. ,\!Il/cMillal1 , 1986. /,I/hr 1'. Adell Chel1lical ('1)., 300 F. 2d 256, 1st Cir., 1962. ¡\!Iayor \l. Palmer¡o , 135 Cia. App. 147, 1975. ¡'v/idler v. Ford MOlor Compony 849 F. 2d 460, 1988. 01';0 v, Ro!Jerls, 448 U .S. 56, 1980. U S. PuMie Law 94 553, 90 StaL 2541, 19 O<.:tober 1976 [Ael for Ihe General Revisiol1 of' Ihe Copyrighl LuwJ. l/S Puhlic /,({IV /O/ 650,104 StaL 2749.1 Decernbcr 1990, Visual Arlisls Righls Acl 011990. Sinalra v. Coo((vear Tir e 01/(1 Ruhher eo., 435 F. 2d 711 , 1970. ,'llores v. Slale, 625 P.2d 820, 1980. Supreme Record~ 1'. J)ecea Record\', 90 F. Sllpp. 904, 1950. Uniled SlIlle,l' 1'. Owens, 108 S. Ct. 838, 1988.

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