Performance:Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies Vol. II

PE RFO RMANCE

Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies

Edited by Philip Auslander

Volume 11

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I (JNII( IN "hll l NI W YO HK

C ONT E NTS

VOL UM E 11

IX

Acknow/edgements

PART 1

I·irst [luhlished 20m

hy Rou l!edge

2l'ark Squarc, Millon I',¡rk, i\bingdon, Oxon , OXI4 4 RN

Simullaneollsly published in lhe USA ami Canada

hy Rout!edgc

270 Madison J\vc, New YOrk NY 10016

aOU//fc("e is UI1 imprill/ !I( /!Te ]'(jy/or & hUl1cis (iroujJ

Rcprcsentation

1

21 T lle theater of cruelty 3nd the closllrc of representatiol1

3

J AC'Q U ES DER RI DA

25

22 The tooth, tlle palm J EAN-I'R A Ny OIS L YO r ARD

Transfcrrcd lo Digitall I'rinling 200'! l dilorial m a lter an d scleclion 20m Phili[l J\lIsJander; individual

n wne rs re lain cO[lyrighl in lheir own malerial

23 Frame-op: feminism, psychoanalysis, thealre

32

BARBA R A F REJi D MAN

I'ype scl in Times hy Gra[lhicrart Limitcd, Ilong Kong

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['cprndllced or LLlilised in any rorm or by any c1eelronic.

mechaniea.1. m other means. no", known 01' hereafte['

invenled. including [lhOloco[lying and rccording, or in

any int'onnal1on slmage 01' relrieval syslem, withoul permission in

wri !ing from the [lL~hlishcrs.

13ri/il'/¡ Uh I'O/)' Cat(/¡oglling in l'uhlinr/io/1 1)ata

A calal ogue record ro l' this hook is availahle I'rom lhe Brilish I.ihru[·y

24 The dynamics of desire: sexuality and gender iD pornography and performance

57

JII.I . D OL AN

I'ART 2

Tcxtuality

77

25 The¡¡"rica l performance: iIIustration, translation, fulfillment, Or supplement'l

79

U/mI/y o(Congre.\s Ca/%gillg inl'uh!ica/ioll 1)a/a

J\ catalog record ror !his hook has hcen reqlleslcd [SnN 0-4 15-25511 -2 (Scr)

IS BN 0-41 S-25 5 1VJ (Volullle U)

M,\RVI N ('A lU S! )N

Puhlíshcr', 1'1"11:

Rekrc ll ccs w ilhin ca ch ¡;ha ptcr are: as Ihey ,[[' peal' in Ihe

!)[,ginal ('!)[[¡pl d .; work.

26 Ornma, Iwrformutivit y. ,lIId Jll!rf
'i

1'1,. N',' r.~.n ' S

( , () N , ,: N I 'l

7 Prescnce and (be revengc of writing: rc-thinldng tltcatre after ()crrida

I'AI~

109

l' S

301

Cult ur"

El IN OR F UC IIS

119

28 Performance writing

5, 1 CulfuflIl ,I'flldi{'s

303

39 Drama in 11 dramatiscd society

RIC AI. I.SO'"

29 Making motions: the embodiment of law in geslure

RA YMON I> WII I.I A M S

124

40 Why modero plays are /lot culture: disciplinary bli/ld spots

8liRNt'lcRD J , fIlJl RITTS

313

S IJ ANNON J ACK SON

41

'>ART 3

Embodying difference: issues in dance and cultural studies

c.

Bodies

155

30 The actor's bodics

157

5.2 Inlerwltural,I'fudies

175

42 Twins separa ted at birtlt'! West African vernacular and Western avant garde performa tivity in tbeory and practice

D AVID GRAVER

31 The body as the object 01' modern performance J O N ER ICK SO N

JA Nh

I> BSMOND

359

'YNTIII A WARO

32 Strategic abilities: negotiating tite disabled bOOy in dance

188

ANN C OOPER AL BRIGI-I T

33 Feminine free fall: a fan tas)' of freedom

207

43 Western femi nist theory, Asian Indian performance, and a notion of agcnC)'

DAR y 1. e lll N

PART 4

Audiences/spectatorship

217

34 Dramaturgy of the spectator

219

MARC O D H MA Rl N IS

236

35 The pleasure of the spectator ANN E U BERS FELD

36 The audience: subjectivity, community a nd the eahies of listening

249

AI.I CE itA YN ER

37 O dd. anonymous needs: tite audience in a dramatized socicty

269

II ERIIEln JlI.¡\U n~c

of media culture

282

'" I/AIII'I II "'I ,AVI R

l '1

382

AV¡\ N T I-I I MEDURI

44 IntercuJturalism, postmodernism, pluralism

N iT A T A1T

.'\8 Sped.alorhll tlu.'ury in lit\!

334

11

395

A CK NOWLE DGE M ENTS

Thc Publishers wo ulcl like to thank the foll owing for penn ission lo reprint Ihcir material: Thc University 01' Chicago Press for permission to reprint Jacques Derrida, "Thc theater 01' cruelty and the c10sure of representation ", in WI"iting on ')¡ffel"ence, translated by A lan Bass. (Chicago: Uni versity of Cbicago Press , 1978), pp. 232 - 250. © 197R by The University of C hicago. Thc University of Wi sconsin Press for permission to reprint Jean-Franyois Lyotarc\, " The tooth, the palm", translated by A nne Knap and Michel BenamoLl, SubStance 15 (1976): 105 - 110. © 1976, SubStance l nc. The Johns Ho pkin s University Press for permission to reprint Barbara I:reedman , "Frame-up: fe minism , psychoanalysis, theatre", Thealre Jo ur!1al 40(3) (1988): 375- 397. © 1988 by The Johns Hopkins University Press. The Johns Hopkins University Press fOI" pcnnission to reprint Ji ll Dolan , "The dynamics of desire: sexuality amI gendcr in pornography and perform­ ;\I1ce", Tlmllre .Journal 39(2) (1987): 156- 174. © 1987 by The Johns Hopkins lJniversity Press. The Johns Hopkins U niversity Press for permission to rcprint Marvin C arlson , "The,Ltrical perfornlance: illustration, translation , fulfi llment, or supplement?", 'nlealre .foumal 37( 1) (1985): 5- 11. © 1985 by The Johns Hopkins University Press. The Modcrn Languagc Association for permission to reprint W . B. Worthen. "Drama, perlormativity, amI performance" . Puh/icaliolls oj"the Modern '"(/11­ ~/I(/g(' A.I'.I'ol'ÍalionI13(5)(1998): 1093, 1107. © 1998 byThe Modern Language Associatioll.

Thc M; lss;¡ chu sclts InstiluIC 01" Tcch no logy Press ro r permi ssion lo rep rint Uino r F uch¡¡, " Prcscl1\:c an d lhl: rcvc ngc 0 1" writing: ret hin ki ng thea lre after Dcrriua" . "" (/ l)l'II lillg ,~rf \ .1/1/11//(/1 9(211 ) ( 1 9R~ ): 161 173. (O 1985 by New Yml- ll l1i vl:rs ily ill1\ llhl: M ,I s~ : II"IIII ~clh (nsl illll C ~) r réchll ol ogy . 1\

1\1" NI/WI Id)(' H .I I·NI "

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The Mus:sa c hu~dts lnstituh; o f T"cl:hn o logy Prcss for pen nissio n to rep rint R ie Al lsop. " Perl"ormance writing" , Per{orming Arl.l' JOllrna!21(1) (1999): 76- 80. Ü 198 7 by The J o hlls I Jopkins Universily P ress .

: amh rid gc 1I11ivnsily Pn.:ss :lItU tilt' cs t ~l tc uf Raymo nd Williams for per­ missi o n l l) rcp rint Ra ym onJ Willi ams. " D rama in a dramatiscd societ y" . (Cambridge : Camhridge University Press, 1975), pp. 1 21.

The ./ournal ol COl1lempo/"{fry L egal /sslles for permission to repl-int Bernard H ibbitts, "Mak ing m o tions: the embodiment of law in gesture" , Jour!7a! o( COl1lemporary Legal ¡ssues 6 (1995): 51 - 81.

Thc U ni ve rsity of T oronto Press for permission lo reprin t Shannon Jackson, "W hy 1ll0dern pla ys are not culture: djsciplinary blind spots", j\1odern Drama 44 (2001): 31- 51. © 2001 The l..Jn iversity o r T oronto.

T he National Communication Association (formerly the Speech Co mmun­ ication Association) ro r permission to reprint David Graver, "T he actor's bodies". Texl 0/1(1 Pe/j iml1ol/ ce Quarlaly 17(3) (1997): 221235 . © 1997 The Speech Co mmunication Association. The
Thc University ol' Minnesota Press for permission to reprint Jane C. Desmond , "Embod ying difference: issues in d ance and cultural studies". Culwral Critique 26 (1993 - 94): 33 - 63. 10 1994 by CuJtural C ri tiq ue. The National Communica tion Association (formerly the Speech Commun­ ication Associ ation) for permission to reprint C ynt hia Ward, "Twins sepa rated at birth? West A:friea n vernacuJar and Western avant garde performativi ty in theory and practice". Text and Perfórmance Qucmerly 14(4) (\ 994): 269- 288. iD 1994 the Speech Communication Association. The author for permission to reprint Ava nthi Meduri. "Western feminist theory , Asian Indian performance, ami a notio n of ageney" . Womel1 (/1/(1 Perfárnwnce 5(2) (1992): 90-- 103. The Massachusetts lustitute 01' Technology Press for permission to reprint Daryl Chi n, " Interculturalism . postmodernism, pluralism", Perfórming Arlo\' .!ournalll (3 )112(1) (1989): 163 - 175 . © 1989 Performing A rts Journal.

Disdaimer The publishers have made cvcry cffort to contact authors/copyright holders 01' works reprinted in Perfimnance: Crilical COl1cepls in L iteral)' and Cultural SllIdies. This has not becn possible in every case, however, and wc would welcome correspondem:e from those iudividuals/companies who \Ve have becn unable to trace.

Note I'hotographs induded in the original books / articles havc not been reprintcd herc.

Thc Massachust:tts Institute of Technology Press for permission to reprint Herbert Blau, "Odd, anonymous needs: the audience in a dramatized soci­ ety" (Part One), Perf{¡rming Arls ./0 u rI1 al 9(2/3 ) (1985): 199 - 212. © 1985 New York Univcrsi ty a nd the Massachusetts In stitutc 01' Technology. T hc altthor ami Ca mbrid ge lJnivc rsity Press fo r pcrmission to reprint Eliza­ b¡;lh Kltlver, "Specta tM ial thcory in the age oC med ia ulI llllre" , Ne ll' n/eal /'o f/(Ir/ I'r h ' 11 ( 111) ( 1(95) : ~ Oi) 11 1. [1) 19<)<; Cnrnbridge 1I ni versi ty Pr~ s. '.1

2]

T HE T H EATER O F CRU ELT Y

ANO THE C LOS URE OF

REPRESE N TAT IO N

Jacques Derrida SOllrec: Jaeqllcs Derrida. W/'iril/g {/lId /);[[e/'el/('e. Translalcd by ¡\lan Bass. Chicago: Uni vcrsity "r Chicago Prcss, 197X. pp. 2~2 250.

Unique fois au monde, paree qu 'en raison d'un événement toujours quej 'expliquerai, il n 'est pas de Présent, non - un présent n' existe pas. (Mallarmé, Quanl au lil're) ... as for my forces, Ihey are only a supplement, the supplement ol' an acutal state, it is that t here has never been an origino (Artaud , 6 June 1947) " .. . Dance I and consequently the theater I have not yet begun to exist. " This is what one reads in onc of Antonin Artauo's last writings (Le théatre oe la cruauté, in 84, 1948). A nd in the same text, a little earlier, the theater of cruelty is defi ned as " the affirmation I of a terrible I ano , moreover, implac­ ahle I1ccessity.'· Art aud, therefore , does not call fOl" destruction, for a new l11anifestation of negativity. Dcspite everything that it must ravage in its wake, " the thcater of cruel t)' I is not the symbol of an absent void." lt a/firms, it produces affirm ation itself in its full and necessary rigor. But also in its 1110St hiddcn sense. the sense most often buried , most often diverteo from itsdl": "implacable" as it is, this affirmation has "not yet begun to exist." It is :¡lill tn he horn oNow a necessary affirmation can he born only hy being r~: horn 10 ilsdl". For Á rtaud. the ruture of the theater- thus, the future in ~cnc ra l is opcncd on ly by 1IH.! a naphorH which da tes frolll the eve prio r to hirth. T hcat l'ka li ty Ill 1l.s1 lruv\:rl'lc unu n:storc " exislencc" and " f1esh" in each DI" I1 11: ir aspc..:ts. Th us, whntl'vcr 1."11 11 he suid nI' lh c nody ..:an be sa iJ 01" tht tl u.:ale r. Ás wc k ll IlW. Á. rl Ull d I¡ ved lIu: ntnrrnw 0 1" a Ji sposscl:1~ i lln : Iris propcr

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hoJy . Ihc pro (X'11 y a lld (llO p rÍl.: l y \ ) r h i ~ hot!y. liad h~'~ 1l .!clk" 1111 111 111111 ;11 hirth by Ihe IhiL:ving goJ wlH) \Vus bo rn in onk: r " l o pu ~s h ll l1!-.d l ofr / as me."1 Rcbi r th dOll b t le~s occlIrs lb ro llgh !\rta ud n:calls Ih is u lÜ: n a ki nd 01' reeduca lioll o f lhe o rgan s. But ihis rccdllcalio n pcrmits Ihe- acccss lo a lile befare birt h and a fte r dealb (" ... thn.1Ugh d ying / 1 have fina l1y achieveJ real irn morta lity," p. 110), a.nd nol lo a death befare birth a nd after Ilfe. T his is wh at disl ingll ishes th e a ffirrn ation 01' cruel ty frorn roman tic negativi ty: lhe d ifferenee is slight a nd yel Jeeis ive. Lichtenberger: " 1 cannot rid myself 01' th is idea lha l 1 was dead bcforc I was bom , and that through death 1 wi]1 retu rn to thi s very sta te .. .. To die and t o be reborn with the rnemory of one's former cxistence is cal1ed fainting; to awak en with other organs which 1l1 ust fir st be reed ucaled is called birth. " For !\rtaud, the primary concern is not to die in dying. n ot to Ict Ihe thi eving god divest him 01' his life. " And 1 beli eve thal thcre is always somco nc clse, al the extreme moment 01' death . to stri p us of o ur ow n li vd ' (A A. p. 162). Simila rly, Westem theater has been sepa rated from the force 01' its essence, removed from its affirmatil'e essence, its vis affirmatil'a. And this dispossession occ urred from the origin on, is the very movement 01' origin, ofbirth as death. T hi s is why a " place" is "Ieft on all the stages 01' stillborn theater" ("Le théatre et I'anato mie," in La rue, J uly (946). The thealer is born in its own d isappcarance, and t he offspring of this movem ent has a name: mano T he thealer of cruelty is lo be born by sepa rating death from birth and by eras­ ing the name 01' man oThe th ealer has always been made to do that for which it was not madc: "The last word on man has not been said . ... The theater was neve r mad c lo dcsc ribe man and what he does.... El le théálre esl ce

qlll.:s IIUII ul" 111\': t hclI le ! ,11 Cl uc.:ll y "r ils pn!:;c llt in ~x i ~ l (!nl:C a mI ils impl ac ­ ahk Il\.:ccssi ly, has th e val llc \J I" ;¡ Iris/orie q ucstion . ¡\ hi storic queslioll nol hcca usc il cou ld he inscri bcu with in w hat is called Ihe history of theater, not hccau sc il wou lJ bc cpoch-mak ing wilhin the becomjng 01' theatrical form s, or bccause il wo uld occupy a position wilhi n the succession 01' models of I hcu trica l reprcsentation. This q uestion is historic in an a bso lute and ra dical sCl1 se. It all nounccs lhe limit of representation. T he lhealer of cruelty is not a representation. It is life itself, in the extent to which lite in unrepresentable. Lite is the 110nrepresentable origin of represen­ lation, " 1 have therefore said 'cruelty' as I might have said 'life'" (1 '0 , p. (14). This lite carries man along with it, but is not primarily the life 01' mano T he lalter is only a representation oflife, and such is the limit-tbc humani.:jt limit -01' the metaphysics 01' classical theater. "The theater as we practice it ca n therefore be reproached with a terrible 1ack ofimagination. The theater mLlst make itsclf the equal of Ji fe- not an individuallife. that ind iv idual aspect of lile in which CII¡\ \{MT ERS triumph, but lhe sort of liberated lite which sweeps away human individuality and in which man is only a reflection" ( TD, p. (16). Is not the most na"ive form 01' representation mimesis? Like Nietzsche-a nd the affinities do nol end Ihere-Artaud wants to have done wi th the imilatil'e concept 01" art, wilh the Arislotclean aesthetics 2 in which the metaphysics of Western art comes into its own. " A rt is not lhe imitalion of1ife, but lite is the imitation 01' a transcendental prin cipie which art puts us into communication wilh once again" (OC 4: 3(0). Theatrical art should be Ihe primord ial and privi1eged site of this destruc­ lion 01' imitation: more than any other arl, it has been markcd by Ihe labor of total representation in which the affirmation of life lets itself be doubled and emptied by negation. This representation, whose structure is imprinted not only on the arl, but on Ihe enlire culture 01' the West (its religions, phi lo­ sophies, politics), Iherefore designa tes more than just a particular ty pc 01' theatrical construclion. This is why the question put to us today by far cxceeds the bounds oftheatrical technology. Such is Artaud's most obstinale affirmation: technical or theatrological reflection is not to be treated margin­ ally. The decline of the theater doubtless begins with the possibility 01' such a dissociation. This can be emphasized without weakening the importance or interest 01' theatrological problems, or 01' the revolutions whieh may occur wilhin the limits of theatrological problems, or of the revolulÍons which may occur wi th in lhe limits oftheatrical technique. But Artaud's intention indicates lhcse limils. F or as long as these technical and intratheatrical revolutions do !lol pcnetrate the very fo undations ofWeslern theater, they will belong to the hislory
patín (¡('!(ingclI1dé, qui musú¡ue de tremes par harbes métalliques de barhelés !lOUS ll/uil1ticnt ('n aal de guerre conlre /'homme qui nous corsetait . ... Man is quite iJl in Acschy lus, but still t hinks of himself somewhat as a god and does not wa nt lO cntc r the membrane, and in E uripides, finally, he splashes about in Ihe mcmbra ne , forgetting where and when he was a god" (¡bid.). lndced , lhe e ve ofthe origin ofthis dec1ining, decadent, a nd negative West­ crn theale r l1lust be reawakened and reconstituted in order to revive the implac­ abk lH.!ces!:ii1.y of affirmation on its Eastern horizon. This is the implacable nccessi ly 01' an as yet inexi stent stage, certainly, but the affirma tion is not to be elabora ted lomOrrO\\!, in so me "oew theatcr." Its implacable necessily operates as a pennanent force. Crue1ty is always at work. The void , the place that is empty and waiting for this theater which has not yet "begun to exist," thus measures only the strange distance which separa tes us from implacable neces­ sity , fro m the presenl (or rather the contemporary, active) work 01' affirmali on. Within the space 01' lhe unique opening 01' this distance, the stage of cruelly rears its enigma for us. A nd it is into this opening that we wish to c nter heTeo If throughout the world today-a na 50 many cxamples bcar wilnes5 lo lhis in the m ost strik ing fashio n-a l1 lhea tricaJ audacity declares ilS fi de1ity lO A rtaud (correc tl y or incorrectly_ but Wilh incrcasin g ' insistency), t hcn lhc

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queslinn of justitil:a lioll amllegal ity I1 111St also be raised. With what criteria ca n such a c1a itn be recognizcd as unfoLllldcd? lJndcr what conditions could an authenti e " thea ter 01' crue1ty" "begin to exist "'! T hese simultaneoLlsly lech­ nical and "metapbysieal" questions (metaphysical in t he sense understood by Artaud). arise spontaneously from the reading of all the texts in The Theater and lIs Douhle, for these texts are more solicitaliol1.1' than a sum of precepts, more a system of critiques shaking Ihe enlirety 01' Occidental history than a trea tise on thca tri cal practice. The theater ol' eruelty exp ulses G od from the stage. rt does not put a new a lheist discourse 0 11 stage, or give atheism a platform, or give over theatrical space to a philosophizi ng logic that would once more, to our greater lassi­ lude. proclaim the death of God. The theatrical practice 01' cruelty, in its aclio n amI structure, in habits 01' rather produces a nontheological space. T he stage is lhcological for as long as it is dominated by speech, by a will 1.0 speech, by lhe layout 01' a primary logos which does not belong to the lhcatrical sile and governs it from a distanee. The stage is theologieal for as long as ils structun:, lollowing the cntirety 01' tradition, eomports the follow­ ing clcments: - tbis structurc has never been modifled. All rcvolllt ions have rn ain tained it in Lact, and rnosl o ften have tended to protect \lI' rcstOfe il. !\nd il is 1he phollctk lexl. spcech: lransrnillcd d iscour5e cvcn lua ll y 11'
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ccnlcr \)1' reprcscllI;1 11 Vl' Sll llcl l1rc whid l l!llSU I\.!s the rnovemenl W halevc r the ir ill1 po rtance, all lhe pictorial, mu sical and ,'ven gC::; licul ar t'orlllS introduced into Wcstern lheater ca n only, in t he besl of C
01'

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of E le usis" ~ t rip pcú 01' the ill ll'lllI l l¡Uio ns Wl lh wh ich Ihey have bec lI covcreu , r the " pure bea uly of wh i¡;]1 PIUlo, at least o nce in this wo rlJ, mllst havc fo und lhe w mpletc. SOnOn)IIS , ~lreall1ing naked realiza lion " (TD, p, 52). Artalld is indeed spea king 01' pc rversion and not of forgetting, for exa mple, in lhis letter lo Benjamin C rémiellx: T he lheatcr. an ind epende nt and autonomous art, must, in order to re vive or simply lO li ve, reali ze wha t differentiates it from texl, p ure speech , litcratllre, and all other fi xed a nd written mean s. W e can pcr­ fectly well co n tin ue to co nceive o fa theater based upon the au thority of the te xt, and on a lext more and more wo rdy, d iffuse, and bo ring, to which lhe esthelics 01" the sta ge wo uld be subject. But trus concep­ tion of theater, which con sists ofhaving people sit on a certain nllmber of straight-backed o r overstllffed chairs placed in a row and tell cach other stories, however marvelous, is , if not the absolute negation of theale r-w hich does nol absolutely req uire movemcn t in order to be what it should- certainl y its p erversion . [TD, p. 106; my ¡lalic.\] Released from the text and the author-god , mise en scene would bc returned to its creati ve and founding freedorn . The dircctor and the participants (who would no longer be actors or speClators) would cease to be the instruments an.d organs of representation. ls this to say that Artaud \Vould have refllscd the name represenlatiol1 for the theater of crue\ty? No , providcd that we c1arify the difficu lt and equivocal rncaning of this notion . Here, we would have to be able to play upon all the German \Vords that \Ve indistinctly trans­ la te with the unique word represcntation. The stage, certainly , will no longer represenl , since it \ViII not opera te as an addition , as the sensory illustration of a text already written , thought, or Iived olltside the stagc, which the stage wo uld then only repea l but whose fabric it would not constitute. The stage will no longer opera te as the repetition 01" a present , will no longer re-presenl a presen l l hat would exist elsewhere an d prior to it, a present that would exist elsewhere and prior Lo it, a present whosc plenitude would be older than it, absen t fr o m it, a nd rightfully capable of doing wilhout it: the bein g-prescnt­ to-itself ofrhe absolute Logos, the living present ofGod. Nor will the stagc be a representation , if rcpresentation ll1eans the surface of a spectac1e displayed for spectalors. I t wil1 not even o frer the presentation ol' a present, if present signifies that which is maintained in .!roll( of me. Cruel representation must permeate me. A nd nonrepresenta tio n is, thus, original representation , if rep­ resenta tion signifles, also , the un foldi ng 01' a volume, a multidimensional milie u, an exp cricncc which produces its own space. Spllcing [es-pucemenl] , Ihal is lO say, l he prod uction of a space tha t no speech could condense 01' c\llllprchcnJ (sincc spccch pri m ari ly p resuppose~ lh is spacing ), Lhcreby a p­ pt:a ls 1~1 a lime Ihal is no IIm!,c r lh at of sll-calleJ phunic Ii ncarity. IIPJ1l'als lo

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'a Ih:W 11t)1 ion nf spw.;i.~" lI lld " ;1 srwu1ic idea u f lilllc " ('I D. p. 114). " W e intc nd lo hase Ihe Ihcal cr IIpOIl speclacle bcl 'ore everylh ing cisc, a ncJ we shall intro­ duce illlu lhe spcctaclc a new no líon 01' space ut ilized on al1 possible levels alld ill all Jcgrecs 01" perspeclivc ín deplh and heigh t. and within this notion a spccific iJea 01" time will be addcd lo thal of movement. . . . Thus, thealer spacc will be ulilizcd llot only in its dirnensions and \'olume but, so to speak, in ils uIH.Jer:¡ides (dalls .I'e.l' dessous)" (TD , p. 124). Thus, the dosure of classical representation , but also the recon stitutio n of a doscd space of original represcntation , the archi-man ifesta ti o n of force 0 1' 01' lifc. A c10sed space, tha t is to saya space produced from within itself and 110 longcr organized from the vantage of a n o tb e r absent site , an illocality, an alibi or invisible uto pia . T he end of representation , but also original repres­ cnlation; the end 01' interpretation , but also a n origin al interpretation lhat no master-speech , no projcct of mastery will have permeated and \eveled in advance. A visible representation , certainly , directed against the speech which l~ludes sight- a nd Artaud insists upon the productive images without whjch llJere wOllld be no theater (lhe{/ol11ai) ·- but whose visibility docs not consist 01' a spectacle Illounted by thc discourse of lhe m as ter. Represental io n, lhen , as the autoprcsentation of pure visibility and even p ure sensibility.3 It is this extreme and difficult sensc of spectacular representation that another passage from lhe same letter attempts to delimit: " So long as the /1/ise ('/1 .I'cCne remains, even in the minds of the boldest directors, a simple mean s 01' presentation , an accessory mode of expressing the work, a sort of spectacular intermediary with no significance 01' its own , it will be valuable only to the dcgree it succeeds in hiding itself behind the works it is pretending lO serve , And thi s will continue as long as the major interest in a performed work is in ils text, as long a s literature takes preceden ce over the kind o f performance improperly called s pectade, with everything pejorative, accessory, ephemeral and external that that term ca n·ies with it" UD , pp. 105 - 6). Such , on the slage of cruelty , would be " spectade acting not as rellection , but as foroe " (OC 4: 297). The return to original represcntation thus imp1ies , not simpl y but abo ye a ll, that theater or life must cease to "represenl" an other lan guage, ll1ust cease to \et themselves be derived from an other art, from literature, for cxample, be it poctic literature. ror in poetry, as in literature, verbal repres­ cntation pur1 0 ins scenic represcntation. Poetry can escapc Western " illness" only by becoming !heater. C' We think , preci sely , thal there is a notion of poetry to be t1 issociated , extracted from the forms of wriUen poetry in which an cpoch at the height of disorder and illness wants to keep all poetry. And when I say thal lhe epoch wants, 1 <1m exaggerating, for in reality il is incapable 01" wanling anything; it is th e victim of a formal habit which it ahsolu te ly ca nnOI shakc. 11 seems lo us that thc kind of di/Tuse poetry which \Ve idcTl lify wil h na lllra l and spnnlancous enc rgy (but all n a tu ra l energies are 11 01 pllclic) IlIUS! liml lIs illleg r;¡) cxprcssi llll , ils p ll resl, sharpes! and mos! !ruly scpa raled cx pressilltl . ill llll: t\Jcil lcr" ( OC, 4: 280). ')

R 1 l' IU S I! N 1 A 1 111 N

What will speech become, henceforth, in the theater of cruelty? Will it simply have to silenee itself or Jisappear? In no \Vay. Speech will cease to gove rn the stage, but will be present upon it. Speech will oecupy a rigorously delimited place, \ViII have a function within a system to which it will be eoorJinated. For it is known that the representa­ tions of the theater of cruelty had to be painstakingly determined in advance. The absence o f an author and his text does not abandon the stage to derelic­ tion. The stage is not forsaken , given over to improvisatory anarchy, to "chance vaticination" (OCA: 234), to "Copeau ' s improvisations" ( TD , p. \09), to "Surrealist empiricism " (OC 4: 313), to commedia de{l'arl e, or to " the eaprici­ ousness of untraincd inspiration " (ibid.). Everything, thus, \ViII be prescrihed in a writing and a text whose fabrie will no longer resemb\e the model ol' c1assical representation. To what place. then , \ViII speech be assigneJ by this necessary p rescription called ror by cruelty itself'l Speech and its nota tio n - phone tic speech. an elernent of c1assical theater­ speech a m I ils wri ti ng wil l be erasetl on tbe stagc 01' crllelty o nly in the extent lo wh ich th ey wen.: ullegedly lIi(' /(/liol1: al once ci tution:'i ()¡' rccil¡¡lions and onkl's. TIJe d ir n ;ror ami Ihe actM will no lu nge!' w kc dielalitlll . .. (,hus we \11

11

In my vie,v no o ne has the right to call himself author, that is to say creator, except the person who controls the direct hanJling of the stage . And exactly here is the vulnera b le point of the theatcr as it is thought ofnot only in France but in E urope and even in theOccident as a whole: OcciJental theater recognizes as lang uage. assigns the faculties and powers ol' a lan guage. permits to be calleJ language (with that part icular intellectual dignity generally ascribed to this word) only articulated language. grammatically articulateJ lang uage, i.e .. the language of speech , and of written speech, speech which , pro­ nounced or unpronounceJ , has no greater value than if it is merely written. In the theater as we conceive it, the text is everything. [TD , p. 117]

1

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shall rC I10UnlT the lhcatrk .t) SlI pc rslition nI' lhe text ,tnd the diclalors hip 01' 1he writer" (TI), p. 124) T his is als u the end 01' the diclion wh ich made theater illtn an cxcn.:ise 01' reading. The entl 01' the I'act that fo r "certai n thealrical amatcurs t\Jis means thal él play read alfords just as defi nÜe and as great a satisl'aclion as the same play performed" (TD, p. 118). \-Iow will speech a nd writing fllllcti o n then '! They will once more become g('.\'lure.l'; and the (ogim{ and discursi ve intentions whkh speech ord inarily uses in order to ensure its rational tra nsparency, a mi in order to pu rlo in its body in the direction of meaning, will be reduced or subord inated . A nd since this thert of the body by itself is indeed that which lea ves th e body to be strangely concealed by the very thing that constitutes it as Jiaphanous­ ness. then lhe deconstitution 01' diaphanousness lays bare the f1esh of the \VorJ. lays bare the word's sonority, intonation , intensity - the shout that the artieulations of lan guage and logic have not yel entirely fro zen, that is. the aspect of oppressed gesture which remains in all speech , the unique and irreplaecable movement which the generalities of concept and repetition haYe lIeyer finished rejecting. We know what value A rtaud attributed to what is called in the present case. quite incorrectl y- o nomatopoeia. Glossopoeia , which is neither an imitative la nguage nor a creation ol' names, takes us back to the borderline of the moment when the word has not yet becn born , when articulation is no longer a shout but not yet discourse. when repetition is /I{mosl impossible, and along with it, language in general: the separation 01' concept and sound, 01' signified and signifier, of the pneumatical and the grammatical , the freedom of transJation and tradition , the m ovement of interpretation , the di fre rence between t he soul and the body, the master and Ihe slave, God and man , author anJ actor. This is the eve of the origin of languages, ami of the dialogue between theology and humanism whose inex­ tinguishable reoccurrence has never not been maintained by the metaphysics 5 01' Western theater. Thus , it is less a question of constructing a mute stage than of constructing a stagc whose clamor has not yet been pacified into words . The word is the l'adaver of psychic speech, and along with the language oflife itself the "speech hd'ore words"(' must he found again. Gesture and specch haye not yet becn separated by the logic of representation . " 1 am adding another language to thc spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the lan g uage ofspeech its \lId Illagic , its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterioLls possibilities Irave been forgotten. When I say I will perform no written play, I mean that I will pcrl'orm no play based on writing and speech, that in the spectac\es I produce rhere \-vill be a preponJerant physical share which could not be l';rptured and written dowll in the cllstomary language 01' words, ami that l'vcn Ihe spnJ..c n ami writtc ll portions will he spoken and written in a ncw ~C Il SC" p. I I I ). Wh at \)1' thb; " l1ew se nsc",! Ant,l ti r'i l , Wh"ll or Ihis new lhea trical writ ing? 11m. bt le!' will 110 lou gc! m:c ll py tlrc Iilllilcd posi tio ll 01' simply bcin g the

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nolali o ll 01' worcls, huI wi llcover lh\! \!nlin.! ra ng<.: 01' Ihl s lIéW lallguuge: not only phonclic wri ting amI the transl:ription nI' spccch. out also Itieroglyphic writing, lhe writing in which phonetic elements are coordi nated to visual, pictoria l, ami plas lic elemeots. T he notion 01' hicroglyphics is at the cen te r of the F¡rs/ Munifesto : "Once aware of Ihis language in space, language of sounds, cries, lights, onoma topoeia , the theater must organize it ioto veritable hicroglyphs, with the belp 01' characters and objects, and make use of their symbolism and interconneetions in rela lion to all organs and on all levels" ( ro, p. 90). O n the stage of the dream, as described hy F reud, speech has the same sta tus. This analogy requires palient medilation . In The Interpreta/ion (~' Dr('ams and io tbe Metap.\ychological S upplemenl lo /h e Theory (d Dreams the pla ce and funCli o ning ofwriting a re d elimited. Present in dream s, speech ean only beha ve as an element among others, sometimes li ke a " thing" which the primary p rocess manipulales according to its own econom y. " In this process thoughts a re transformed into images, mainly of a visual sort; that is to say, word presentations are taken back lo the thing-presentations which corres­ pond to them, as if, in general Ihe process were dominated by considerations 01' represel1/ahilily (Darstellbarkeit). " " It is very noteworthy how liule the dream-work keeps to word-presentations; it is always ready lo exehange one word for another ti11 it finds the expression which is most handy for plaslic representation " (SE 14: 228). Artaud loo, speaks of a " visual and plastic materialization ofspeeeh " ( TD, p . 69) and ofmaking use ofspeeeh " in a con­ crete and spatial sense" in order to " manipulate it Iike a solid object, one which overturns and disturbs things " (TD, p. 72). And when Frcud , speaking 01' drcams, invokes sculpture and painting, or the primitive painter who, in the fashion of the Cluthors of comic strips, hung "small labels .. . from the mo uths of the persons reprcsented, eontaining in written charaetcrs the speeehes which the artist despaired of represenling pictoria11y" (SE 4: 312), we understand what speeeh can become when it is but an element, a circum­ scribed site, a circumvented writing within both general \Vriling and the space of representation. This is the struclllre of the rebus or lhe hieroglyphie. " The dream-wnlen t, o n the other hand , is expressed as il \Vere in a pictographie script" (SE 4 : 227). And in an artic1e fmm 1913: " For in what follows ' speech' must be lInderstood not merely to mean Ihe expression of thought in words but to inelude the speech ofgeslure and every other melhod , such, for instance , as writing , by which mental activity can be expressed .... Ifwe reflect that the means of representation in dreams are principa11y visual images and not \Vords, \Ve shall see that it is even more appropriate lO compare drcams \-vith a system 01' writing than with a language . In fact the inlerpretation 01' dream s is compl ete1y analogou!> to the deciphennen t of an aneient pictographic seript slIeh as Egyptian hieroglyphs " (SE 13: 176-77). 7 11 is difficlÚI to kllOW Ihe ex lenl lo which Arl.Hld. wh\) l1ncn rclcrrcd to psydlOana l y~ i~, hall a pproac hcd the Ic:{t 0 1" Fn:ud . II is in nll y ('vC IlI IClIlarkahle

As concerns psyehoanalysis and espeeia11y psychoanalysts, Artaud was no less careful to indicale his distance from those who believe that they can retain diseourse with the aid of psychoanalysis , and therehy can wield its initiative alld powers 01' initi a tion . For the theater of eruelty is indeed a thcater of dreams, but of cruel dreams, Ihal is to say, absolutely necessary and determined dreams , dreams calculated ilnd givcn direction, as opposed to wha t Artaud believed to be the empiri cal disorder of spontaneous dreams. The ways and figures of dreams can be lI1astered. The surrealists read Hervey de Saint-Denys. ~ In this theatrical Ircatment of dreams , " poetry and seienee must hem;eforth be identical" (TD , p. 140). To make them such , it is certainly necessary lo proeeed according lo lhe modern magic that is psychoanalysis. " 1 propose to bring back into Ihe theatcr this elementary magic idea , taken up by modern psychoanalysis" (rO , p. 80) . But no concession must be made to what Artaud believes to be Iltl: raltering 01' dreams and of the uneonscious . It is the law 01' dreams that II1l1s1 be produced or reproduced: " 1 pro pase lO renounce our empiricism of illlagery , in whieh the unconsl:ious furn ishes images al random, and which lite roet arranges at random too" (ibid.). Because hc \Vants " to see sparkle and triumph on stage" " whatcver is part Ilr the i11egibilily and magnetic raseination of dreams " (CW 2: 23), Artaud Iltnef'orc rejects thc psychoanalyst as interpreter, second-remove eommen­ lallll, Itermcnelll , or theoretician. He would have rejected a psychoanalytil: Iltcalcr wi lh as Illllclt rigor as he condemned psychological thealer. And for 11n' sa mc rca';¡)J)s: hi'i réjeclioll ()r a ny secret interi o ri ty, o f the reader, of di lcl,; liw in h; rprdali(ll1'i 01 \ Ir psyd l\IUram alurgy . "Tire su!7cOI1SCiOllS will nol pl ,t)' ,llIy Ir lll' ruk M I sta):,'. W e vc )¡;\l1 cl1 0ugh 0 1' Ihe L'onfusion engendered

1"'

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Iltal he d c:.cri hc'i 11 1\: pla y ¡II SPWdl :lIId u l wriling on the stagc 0 1" eruelt acconling lo l' rClld's very Icnns, a hCllu wlto al lhe limc was hardly elueid­ all'd , A ln::ady in Ihe Firs/ M wti(,'s/o:

It is not a q uestion of suppressing the spoken langllage, but of giving words approximately the import­ anee they have in dreams. Meanwhile new means of recording Ihis languagc must he round, whetber these means bclong to musical transcription or lo sorne kind al' cod eo A s fo r ordinary objects, o r even the human body , raised lo Ihe dignity 01' si gns, it is eviden t that one can draw one 's inspiration from hieroglyphie characters [TD , p. 94)... . Eternal law!), those 01' aJl poetry and a H viable language, and , amon g other things, of Chinese ideograms and aneienl Egyp­ lian hieroglyphs. Hence, far from restrictin g the possibililies of theater and language, on the pretext that I wi11 no! perform written plays, I extend the lan guage 01' the slage and multiply its possibilities. [TD , p. 111) 1111 , IAN(;t I:\( ¡I : OJ '1111': ST ¡\ GI::

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between author and a uó ierH:e lhro ugh the mcd iulll (,r p rOlJuccrs Ull d Jctors, Too bad for analysts, stutlents of the sou l a nd su rrC!al isls ... . Wc are dc lcr­ mined to safeguard the plays we put on against any sécret commenta ry" (CW 2: 39)Y By vi rtue of his situarion a nd his status, the psychoanal yst wo uld belong to the strucl ure of the dassica l stage, to its societal fo rm , its meta ­ physics, its religion , ctc. The theater 01' cruelty thus would not be a theater of the unconscious. Almost the contrary. C ruelty is consciousness, is exposed lucidity. "T here is no cruelty wi thout consciousness and without the applica llon 01' conscious­ ness" ( TD, p . 1(2). And this consciousness indecd lives upon a m u rder, is the collsciousness 01' lh is mu rder, as we suggestod above. Artaud says this in "The f<" irst Lelter on Cruelty": "It is consciousness lhat gives to the exercise ul" cvery act 01' life its blood-retl color, its cruel nuan ee, sim:e il is understood th a l lile is a lways someone's dea lh" (TD , p. 102). Pcrha ps A rlaud is also protesli ng against a certain f<"reudian description of drC¡lIlls as the su bstitutive fulfillment of desire, as the funetion of vicarious­ ncss: lhrough the Ihea le r, Arta ud wa nts to return their dignity to dreams and to ma kc 01' thcm some lh ing more original. more free, more c!/Iirma/il'c than an activity 01' d isplaeement. Tt is perhaps against a certain image of F reudian thought thal he wriles in the Firs/ M aní/es/o: "To eonsider the theater as a second-ha nd psyehologieal or moral fu netion , and to believe that dreams them se1ves have only a substitute function, is to diminish the profound poetic bearing of dreams as well as of the theater" (T D , p. 92). F in all y, a psyehoanalytic theater would risk bei ng a desacralizing theater, and thereby would confirm the West in its projeet and its trajectory. The thealer of cruelty is a hieratie theater. Regression towa rd the uneonscious (cf. TD , p. 47) fails ifit does not reawaken the sacred, ifit is not both the "mystie" experience of " revclation" and the manifcstation of life in their first emer­ genec. IO We have seen the reasons why hieroglyphics had to be substituted for purcly phonie signs. Jt must be added tha t the latter commul1leate less than the former with the imagination of the sacred . " And through th e hierogl yph of a breath I am able to recover an idea of lhe sacred theater" (TD, p. 141). A new e piphany of the supernatural and the divine must occur within eruelty. And nol despite but th a nk s to the eviclion of God and the destruction of the theater's theologieal machinery . The di vine ha s been ruined by God. That is to say, by man , \Vho in permitting himselfto be separated from Life by God , in permitting himself to be usurped from his own birth , became man by polluting the divinity orthe divine. "Fo r far from believing that man invented the supcrn a tural and the divine, 1 think it is man' s age-old intervention which has ultimatel y eorrupted the di vin e within bim " (1'D, p. 8). The restora tion of d ivinc cruelty. hence, musl travcrse the murder of God , that is to sayoprim­ a ri!y Ihe m urder 01' lh e man-G ()d . ll PCrh
hilll . W hal lIl igh t tbe Ih l:.IIICS o llll lidl!l it y be. evcn ul110ng lh ose who invoke A l taud in Ihe mil itanl <.Ind noi sy 1¡lsh ion \Ve all know'! We will con tent lIursl!l ves wilh naming these themes. W ithoul a doubt. foreign to the thea ter 111" cruclly are: l . AIl non-sacred lhea ter. 2. AIl theatcr that p rivileges speech or rather the verbo all theatcr ol"words, l'ven ifthis privilege becomes that ofa speeeh which is self-destructive. whieh once more beeomes gesture of hopeless reocc urrence, a negalil'e relation of speech to itsclf. theatrieal nihilism , what is still called the thea ter of the absurd o Such a thea ter \Vould not o nl y be consumed by speeeh, and wo uld not dcstroy lhe functioning of t he classical stage, but it also wou ld not be, in Ihe sense understood by Arta ud (and doubtless by Nietzsche), an a/firma/ion. 3. AIl abstrae/ theater which exc1udes something from the totality of art, and thus, from the totality of lifc and its resources of signitleation : dance. lIIusie, vol ume, depth ofplastieity, visible images, sonority, phonicity, etc. A n ahstraet theater is a theater in whieh the totality 01' sense and the sen ses is not consumcd . One would incorreetly conclude from th is th at it suffices to accu­ lI1ulatc or to juxtapose all lhe arts in order to crea te a tOlal thealer addn::ssecl lo the " total m an " 12 (ef. TD, p. 123). Nothing could be furthcr from address­ illg total man tha n an assembled tot ality. an a rtificial and exterior mimicry. Inversely , certain apparent cxhaustions of stage technique sometimes more rigorously pursue Artaud 's trajectory. Assuming, which we do not. that there is some scnse in speaking of a fidel.ity to A rtaud , to something like his "mess­ agc" (this notion already betrays him) , then a rigorous , painsla king, patie nt and implacable sobriet y in the work of des truction , and an economical acuity aillling at the master parts of a still quite solid machine, are more surely im­ pcrative, today, than the general mobilization of art and arlists, than turbulence or improvi sed agitation under the mocking and tranquil eyes of thc poliee. -1. AII thealer of alienation. Alienation only consecrates, \Vith didactic illsistence and systemalic heaviness, the nonpa rticipation 01' spectators (and l'wn nr direetors ami aetors) in the ereative aet, in the irruptive force fissuring t he spacc 01' thc stage. The Velji·cmdUll!;Scfldd ' remains the prisoner o f a dassical paradox and 01' " the E uropean ideal of art" which " attempts to cast thl~ mind into an attitude distinct from force but addicted to exaltation" (TD, p. 111). Sincc " in the 'thea ter 01' cruelty ' the spectator is in the eenter and th e spcetacle surrounds h im" (TD, p. 81), the di sta nce ofvision is no lon ger pure, ,·anllot be abstracted from the totality of lhe sensory milieu; the infused s(lC\': lator can no longcr (,o/lSlilul e his spectacle and provide himself with its \IhjL!cl. Thc rc is no longcr speetator or speetaclc, but/estival (eL TD. p. 8S) . All lhe lill1ils I"urrowi ng classical theatrieality (re presented/representer, signi­ Ilcd/sil!l1 ilin, a !JI hm/tl ircc lor/acl (J rslspcct<1to rs, stage/a udience, textlinte r­ p rc l :llio ll, ele.) WC I e Cl hictlo ll wtaphysieal prohibi lions , wrinkles, grimaces , Ill·t lJSe~ I he symploll1s n I" Ii;'ar bcforc lhe dangc rs 01" lhe le st ival. Within the 'Ipal"\.· 01' tlll' fcs tival ,'pel\cd hy ,ralls!,H:ssio ll , the d i ~I' lncc 01" rc prescllt a tio n

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1:,

sho llld no lun g~ r he cX lcntl ahk. r he fes lival (ll" crucll y tlll s ,111 1\lt)lli gh, ~ anu pro tceti ve barriers befo rc the "él bsolul~ d angcr" wh idl is " Wilholll li HHltla ­ tion ": " ) m ust have actors wllo are first 01' a ll be ings, thal is to say, wllo on stage are not afraid of the tTlIe sensatio n of the tOllch 01' él koife and the convulsions ahsolutely real for them- of a slIpposed birth. Mounet-Sully believe::; in wha t he does and gives th e iJlusion 01' it, bul he knows that he is behin d a protective barner, rne- I s uppress t he protective barrier" (Ietter to Roger Blin , Spetembcr 1945). As regards the festival, as invoked by A rta ud , and the menaee of that wh ich is "witho ut fou ndat ion ," the "bappcning" can only make us smile: it is to the thcater o f eruelty what the earnival 01' Nice might be to the mysteries 01' Eleusis. Th is is partieularl y so due to the faet that the happening substitutes politieal agita ti on for the total revolution pre­ seribed by Arta ud. The festival must be a political acl. And the ae/ of politieal revolution is thealrú:·al. 5. AJI nonpolitical theater. We have indeed said that the festival must be a political (lel and not tbe more or less c10q uent, pedagogieal. and superin ­ tended transmission of a concept or a politico-moral vision of the world. To refleet- whieh we cannot do here- t he political sense of this aet and this festival , and the image of soeiety whieh raseinates Artaud's desire, one should come to invo ke (in order to note the greatest differenee within the greatest affini ty) all the e1ements in Ro usseau whieh establish communication between the criti que of the c1assical speetacle, the ~uspeet q ua li ty 01' ar! iculaliol1 in language, the ideal 01' a publie festival ~ubstitllted for representation , and a cerlain model o/" society perfeetly present to itsel f in small eommunities which rend er both uselc~s and ne farious all reeo urse to represel1la fiol1 at the deei sive Illomcnts o/" sociallire. That is, all reeourse to political as well as to theatrieal rcpresenta tion , replacement. or delegation . lt very precisely could be shown tha t it is the "represen ter" that Rousseau suspects in The Social Contracl , as well as in the Letter lo M . d'A lernhert, where he pro poses the replacement o f theatrieal representations with Pllblic festivals laeking all exhibition and spectaclc, festivals without "anything to ~ee" in whieh the spectators them­ seJ\'es woul d beeome aetors: " But what then will be the objects of these enterta inments? ... Nothing, if you please .. . . Plant a stake erowned with flowers in the middle 01' a square; gather the people together there, and you will have a festival. Do better yet; let the spectators become an entertainment to themselves: make them actors themsc\ves." 14 6. AII ideological theater, all cultural theater. all eommunieative, inl erpre­ tire (in the popular and not the Nietzschean sensc, of course) theater seeking to transmit a con lent, or to deli ver a message (of whatever nature: political. reli gio us, psychol ogicaL metaphysical , etc.) that would make a discourse 's meanin g intelligible for its listener~l< a message that would not be to tally e;~hall sted in the acl and presenllense 01' the stage, th al wo uld not coincitlc with lhe slage, thal cou ld be repealetl witholl t it. I Jere we lou<.;h upon wha l sccms lo he Ihe pro follnd csscnCl' 0 1' Arl a Ul.J'~ projcct, his hisl orico-llI..:t: lph ys ical

dl:t'ISi o ll .. Ir/(I/Id Ir(lI/lt'tI 111 ['fUI'I' fl 'ln'l/l illl/ il/ g el/C'ral.'" 1 '0 1' hi m. rüpctition was l'.., il, ull d (lile could dou htlcss lIIguni'Zc an elltirc rcadi ng 01' Iw; texts around Ihis CU II 11.: r . Repet il ion separatcs fl1lU\ prcsence, and life frolll themselvcs. This epaJ'al ioll is 1IIl' ecollomical and ealculating gest ure of that which dcfers I"'d l' ill ordcr to 11Hlintain itself, t hat which reserves expenditure a nd surren­ ,krs lo !Car. This powcr of rcpetition governed everything that Artaud wished In ckslroy, ano it has several names: God, Being, Dialecties. God is the l'Iernity whose death goes on indefinitely, whose d eath , as diffcrence and I epctition wi thin lifc , has never eeased to menace Ii fe . lt is not the living G od, but the Dcath-God that we should fear. G od is Death. "For even the infin ite IS dead , / infinite is the lla me 01' a dead man / who is not dead " (84). As soon . I ~ there is repctition, God is there , the prescnt holds on l O itself and reserves II scl f, that is to say, eludes itself. "The absolute is not a bein g and will never Iw one, rol' thcre can be no being wi thout a erime committed against myself, Ihat is to say, wit hout ta k ing from me a being who wanted one day to be god whcn this is not possible, God being able to manifest himself only all at once. ,'iVl'n that he m anifests himself an infinite number 01' times Juring aH the IIIlles of eternity as the infi nity of times and eternity, whieh create~ perpctu­ ily" (Septem ber 1945). Another name of re petiti on: Being. Being is the fo rm ill which the infinite diver::;ity of the forms and forees 01' life and death can indcfinitely merge and be repeated in the word. For there is no word , nor in gl!lIcral a sign, which is not eonstituted by the possibil ily o f repeating itself. A ~,igl1 whieh does not repeat itself, which is not already divided by repetition in ils "first time," is not a signo The signifying refe rral therefore must be ideal and idea lit y is but th e assured power 01' repetition- in order to refer to the sallle thing ea eh time. This is \Vhy Being is the key word of eternal repetition , 1he victory of God and 01' Death over Iife. Like Nietzsche (for example in 7/U! Uirl/¡ ol Philo,\'ophy), Artaud refuses lo subsume Life to Being, and inverses lh~' genealogical order: "First to Iive and to be aecording to one's soul; the prllblem 01' being is only their consequenee" (September 1945) "There is no ~'rcatcr enemy of the human body than being." (September 1947) Certain IIlhcr unpublished texts valorize what Artalld properly calls " the beyond of h.:illg" (February 1947), manipulating this expression of Plato 's (whom Artaud did not f~lil to read) in a Nietzschean style. FinaUy, Dialectics is th e move­ IlIellt through whieh expenditure is reappropriated into presenee - it is the .'conomy 01' repctition. T he economy of truth. Repetition summarizes negat­ IVlly , gathcrs and maintains the past present as truth , as ideality. The truth is always that which can be repeated. Nonrepetition , expenditure that is reso­ IlIt t: and withoul relurn in the lIniqllc time consuming the present. must put an L' IHI to karrul discursiveness, to unskirtable ontology, to dialectics, "dialecties 1.1 n ;rt ai n d ialccti.:s] bcing: that whi.:h finish ed me" (Septem ber 1945)17 Ikl Jcctil.:s is always tl ml which has finis hcd LIS , beca use it is always that whidl I(//,(",\' ¡1I/0 {J('co l/lI l (l UI fl' jl'cti nn 01' il. A'i it uoes our a ffirm ati on. T o 1,*C l dca lh as n:p':l ili l\t 1io; lo :Jl t¡II I\ dC;\l h as :1 prescn l ex pend iture without

It,

I '1

1( 1: 1'1( 1!.sl l N 1'¡\ 'IIIIN I ct llfll. Alid IlI vl:r~cly. This is a 'ic[¡cma Ilral Iw vel's (\ I"llll lll l NI~'I/"'l h~' ~ Il'pdi­ lion of a l'lirtna tivn. P u r\! I.!xpc llui turc. a bsululc gcncrosily ollcl itl), 111,' lIllicily orthe pr\!Scn ll o ucal h in order lO ma kc the presenl a ppear liS SI/clt, ha s already begun to wa nl to mainlain lhe p resenee ofthe presentohas a lrcady opened the book anO memory , the lhinking of Being as memo ry . N ot to want to main­ tain lhe present is to want to preserve thal which constitutes its irrcplaceable a nO mortal presenee, that within it wh ich can not be repea ted. To consume pure difference with p1easure. Such, redueed to its bloodless framework , is the matrix of the history 01' thought co nceptual izi ng itself since 1legel. 18 The possi b ility 01' the theater is the obligalory focal point 01' this thought whieh refleets traged y a s repetiti on. The menace of repetition is n owhere else as well organized as in the theater. Nowhere else is ane so c10se to the stage as the origin 01' repetition, so c10se to the primitive repetition \vhich would have to be erased, and only by detaehing it from itself as if from its double . Not in the sense in whieh Artaud spoke 01' Tll e T/leater a/1(/ ils Douhlc,19 but as designating the fold , tbe interior duplication whicb steals the simple presence 01' its present aet from the theater, from life, etc., in the irrepressible move­ ment of repetilion . "One time" is the enigma 01' that which has no l11eaning, no presence, no legibility. N ow, for Artaud , the festival 01' cruelty could take place only one lime: " Let LIS leave textual eriticism to graduate students, formal eritieism to esthetes, and recognize that what has been said is not still to be said; that an expression does not have the same value twice, does not live two lives ; that all words, once spoken, are dead and function only at the moment when they are uttered, that a form, once it has served, cannot be used again and asks only to be replaced by another, and that the theater is the only place in the \Vorld where a gesture, once made, can never be made the sa me way twice" (TD, p. 75). This is indeed how things appear: theatrical representation is finite, and leaves behind it, behind its actual presence, no trace, no object to carry off. It is neither a book nor a work , but an energy , and in this sen se it is the only art of life. "The theater teaches preeisely the usclessness orthe action whieh , once done, is not to be done , and the superior use ofthe state unused by the action and which , reslOrcd, produces a purifica­ tion " (TD , p. 82). I n this sense the thea ter of eruelty would be the art of dif­ ference and of expenditure without eeonomy, withoLlt reserve, without return, without history. Pure presenee as pure difference. Its aet must be forgotten , actively forgotten . Here, one must practice the aklil'c Vergesslichkeil which is spoken of in the second disserta tion 01' Tite Genea!ogy o/ Morals , whieh also explicates "festivity" and "cruelty" (Grau.I'amkeil). Artaud 's d isgust with nontheatrical writing has the same sense. What inspires this disgust is not , as in the Phaedrus, the gesture ofthe body , the sensory and I11Demonic, the h ypom nesiae mark exterior to the inscription of truth in the sO Ll I , but, on the co ntra ry, writi ng as the site 01' the inscript ion 0(' lruth, lhe lher of lhe living bod y, writing a'i idca lily. repet ili o n. Plato c riLici/cs writing as a hoc.ly; Arl auu criticil-cs il as Ihe eras ure of'lhl' hoJy. nr th\! livill,l' ges lll rc

IX

1 11j

wllid\ I ;¡¡"'cs pl;l\':c IInl y \l llce \V l lll lll' IS ~ Jl¡¡ C\.! ilsclr ano liJe pvssihi lily nI' III Wl ilil l1l 111 gCI1l'ra l. Th is is wlly " We ~Il\lu lc.l ge t rid uf our slI per:;titious \, dll;¡lillll .,1' 1\,:,'< ls alld wri llcl1 púel ry. Wrilten poel ry is wo rlh readiog on ce, .llld Ih,'11 Shlllild IlI..: dcstroyed " (TD. p. 78).

111 Ihlls elllllllcrali ng lhe lhemes 01' infid elity, one comes to understa nd very II1 "ddy Ihat Iidelity is impossible. T here is no t hea ler io the world toda y whidl rullills Arta uu 's des ire. And there woulJ be no exce pti o n to be maJe hit Ihe altcmplS maJe by A rtaud himself. He knew this better lhan any o ther: 1111: "g rall1mar" of lhe theater of cruelty, oí' wh ich he said that it is "to be 1, IIl1ld ," will always remain the in accessible limit 01' a represe ntation which is 11111 rcpctition , of él re-pre~e nt a tion which is full p resence, which does not 1 ;Irry ils double within itself as its death , of a presen t which does not repeat 1I sdl', that is , 01' a present outside time, a nonpresent. The present o ffers itself .1 '; slIch , appears , presents itself, opens the stage of time or the timc 01' the lagc only by ha rbo rin g its own intestine diffc rence, and only in thc interior Illld úf its original repetition , in representation. In dialeclics . Artaud knew this well: "a eertain dialectics. , ." For if Ol1e appropriateJy l'IJllecives the horizon of dialectics-o utside a conventional Hegelianism­ III le understands, perhaps. that dialectics is the indeftnile movement of finitude, 1'1' I he unity 01' life and death, of difference, 01' original repetition, that is, 01' 1he origin of tragedy as the absence of a simple origino In this sense, dialectics I'i Iragedy, the only possible affirm a tion to be made against the philosophica l "1 ('hristian idea of pure origi n, against "the spirit of beginnings": " But the .piril of beginnings has not ceased to make me commit idiocies, and I ha ve 11111 ccased to dissociate myself from the spirit of beginnings which is the ( 'IIristian spirit" (September 1945). What is tragic is not the impossibility but Ihe necessity ofrepetition. Arlaud knew that the theater 01' cruelty neither begins nor is completed \Vil hin the purity 01' simple prescn ce. b ut rather is already within representa­ 1illll . in the "second time of Creation," in the conAict of forces which could 11111 be lha t 01' a simple origi n , Doubtless, cruelty could begin to be practiced wil hin this conAict , bul lhercby it must also let itself be pcnelraled. The origin j " always penelraled. Such is the alchemy of the Ihcater. Pcrhaps bcforc proceeding further 1 shall be asked to define what I mean by lhe archetypal, primitive theater. And we shall thereby approach lhe very heart ofthe matter. Ifin fact we raise the question (Ir lhe origins and raisol1 d'e/re (or primordial neeessity) ofthe theater, we lilld . IIlc laphysically, the m a teri a liz ation or rather the exterioriza­ Ilo n 01' a kinJ 01' cssen ti al dra ma. a lready di.\jJosed and divided. oot su lTlu¡,;h as ll' lose Ihcir .:ha ra¡;ter ;,Lo.; principies. but enough lo co m ­ prisc o in a slIbslanl ial am i adivc 1; lsh ion (j .c. reson an tly), an infinite pc rs peclivc nI' l'OI1 Hi¡;\:; , Id ;11I;!l Y/,C :S lldl a d ra ma philoso phically is 1'1

1{

I1l'ltl l.. 1 N 1I\II(lN

il11po~ sibl \:; o ll ly puel ll;ally .. .. And Ih iscs'ic l1l lal d lil lll ll, W..: ~\ll lIl' lo reali¿e. exilits, ano in lhe imuge or something suh llul Ihun ('n:aliol1 itselr, something wh ich m us[ be represenled as lhe rcs ul l o r one W ill alone- and lVilholll conjlicl , We m usl believe tha t lhc cssential drama , the one at the root o f all lhe G rcal Mysteries , is associ ated with the second phase of Creation, that of difficu1t y and of the Do uble, lhat of matter and tbe material i7ation of the idea. Tt seems indeed that where simplicity and order reign , there can be no theater nor drama, and lhe true theater. like poetry as well , though by other m ea ns, is born o ut 01' a kind 01' organiz ed anarchy. [TD, pp . 50- 5]]

111/

1111

\ lId II \\W I a lll goillg (1' ~.ly ' I'I1I\'llJillg wh iL:h, pcrhaps ,

is go illg lo st upiry l1H1ny pe,\p l~ .

I am tlll' CflCl11 y

orlheater.

I haVl! always bc~ n.

A s Illuch as J love the theatcr,

I a 111 , ror this very reason , eq ua lly its enemy .

\Ve see him immediatc1y afterward: he canno t resign hi mself to theater as rl~pclitio n . a nd cannol rcnounce theate r as nonrepe tition: The thcater is a passionate overtlowing a frightful transfer of forces from body to bod)'. Thi s transfer can no t be re produced twiee. Nothing more impious than the system 01' the Balinese which consisls, after having produced lhis transfer one time. instead of seeking another, in resorting to a system of particular enchantments in order to deprive astra l photography ofthe gestures thus obtained,

Primitive theater ami eruelty thus also begin by repetition . But ifthe idea ofa thealer without representation , the idea oflhe impossib1e, dbes no t help us to regulate theatrieal practiee, it does, perhaps, perrn it us to com:eive its origin , cve and Iimit, and the horizon of its death. The energy of Western theater thus lets itselfbe encompassed within its own pos~ibility, which is not accid­ ental and serves as a co nstitutive center and structuring locus for the cntire hlstory of the West. But re petition steals the center and the locus , and what we have just said of its possibility should prohibit us from speaking both of death as a horizon ami 0 1' birth as a past opening. Arta ud ke pt himself as c10se as possible to the Iimit: the possibility and impossibili ty of pure theater. Presence, in o rder to be presence and self­ presencc, has a lways alrea dy begun to represent itself, has always already bcen penetrated. A tlirmation itself must be penetrated in repeating itself. Wh ich mean::; t ha t lhe murde r ofthe father which opens the history ofrepres­ cntation amI lhe space 01' tra gedy , the murder 01' the father that Artaud , in SUIll , wa nls lo rcpeat at the greatest proximity to its origin but on/y a single lilll(' this Illurder is endless and is repeated indefinitely. It begins by penetr­ aling ils own commentary and is aceompanied by its own representation. In which it erases itself amI confirms the transgressed la\\'. To do so, it suffices that there be a sign, that is to say, a repetition. Underncath this side 01' the limit, and in the exlent to which he wanted to save the purity 01' a presence withoul interior difference and without repeti­ tion (or, paradoxically amo unting to lhe same thing, the purity of apure difference),20 Artaud also desired the impossibility 01' the theater, wanted to erase the stage. no longer wanted to see what transpires in a locality always inhabited or haunted by the father and subjected to the repetition 01' murder. Is it not Artaud who wants to reduce t he arehi-stage when he \\'fites in lhe Here-/ies: " 1 Antonin Artaud, am my son, / my father , my mother, 1amI myself " (AA , p. 238)? Th al he thercby kept himse lf at the limi l of lhea tricaJ possibil ity, a nu that he simullaneo usly wHnteu to p rou ucc ami lo annihilate lhe sl age. is what he knew in th e nl()st extreme way . Dccember 194():

Theater as repetition of that which does not repeat itself, theater as the original repetition of difrerence within the conflict 01' forces in which "evil is Ihe permanent law , amI what is good is an effort and already a eruelty added 11) Ihe other cruelty" such is the fatallimit 01' a eruelty which begins with its Ilwn representation. Bccause it has always already begun , representation therefore has no end. Bul one can conceivc 01' the closure of that which is without cm!. Closure is the circular limit within which the repetition of difference infinitely rl'pcats itself. That is to say, closure is its play ing spaee. This Illovelllenl is Ihe movement of the world as play. " Aml for the absolute life itself is a !:!me" (OC 4: 282). This pl ay is cruelty as the unity 01' neeessity amI chanceo ' 11 is ehance that is infinite, not god" (Fragmental¡ol1s) . This play 01' Ji fe is a rtistic. 1 1 To think the c10sure of representation is thus to think the cruel powers of death and play which permit presence to be born to itse1f, and pleasurably to nlllSU llle itselr through the representation in which it eludes itself in its dc rcrral. To think the cl osure of representation is to think the tragie: not as III\! r('prcsclltation 01' rate, b lll as the rate of rcpresentaÜon . Its gratuitous and ha scJcss nCl:\!SSi ly. A nll it i~ h) Ihink. \Vli y 11 is 1;/111/ lhat , in its closure, representation n m tllHlcs.

'0

'1

IUo.I'HIIS J·.N lA I lo N

Notes 84, p. 109. As in the preceoing es~ay on A rtauo , texts referreo to by uates are unpublisheo. [For the abbreviations used to refer to the English translations of Artaud. el'. La pa/'ole souJllée, ehap. 6 aboye, note 8.] 2 " The psyehology of orgiasm conceiveo as the feeling of a superabundance of vitality and strength , within the scope of which eve n pain acts as a s/im ulus, gave me the key to the eoncept of lI'agic feeling, which has been misunderstood not only by Aristotle, but also even more by our pessimists" (F riedrich N ietzsche, '//1(' TlVilig/¡t of /h(' !do/s. t rans o A nthony Ludovici [New York: Russe ll ano Russell , 1964], p . 119). Art, as t he imitation of nature, communicates in an esse nti al \Vay \Vith the theme of catharsis. "Not in order to escape from terror ano pity. not to purify one's sel!' of a oangerous passion by di seha.rging it wit h ve hemence- this is how Aristotle understo od it- but to be far beyond terror a nd pity and to be the ete rnallust ofbecom ing itself- that lust whieh also involves the IlISI ordes/rue/ion. An u with this I once moro eome into touch \Vitil the spot fram which I once set ou t- the ' Birth of Tragedy' was my first transvaluation of all va lues: with !his again I take my stano upon the soil from oul 01' which my will ano my capacity spring- J. the last oisciple of the philosophcr D ionysus- l, the prophet of eternal recurrence" (ibid .. p. 120). :3 TN. That r('presentation is the auto-presentation 01' pure visibility and pure sens­ ibility. amounts to postulating that presence is an effect 01' repetition. 4 T N . On the question of pa rricide and the " father of th e Logos," cf. " La pharmacie de Platon ," pp. 84ff. in La dissémina/iol1.. 5 Th(' T/¡elller (lml II.\' Douhle would have to be confronted with T he ES.I'ay 0/1 lhe OrigiIl4Lallgl/ages. The Bir/h o/7ú¡gedy, and al! the connected texts of R oUSSCélU and Nietzsche: the Sys/em of their amliogies and oppositions wOllld ha ve to be reconstitutcd. ú TD, pp. 60, 110. In th is sense the wo rd is a sign, a symptolll 01' living speech's fatigue, oflife's disease. The wo rd, as clcar speech s ubjeeted to transrnission and to repetit io n is death in la nguage. "One could Sely tha t the mind, able to go on no longer, resigned itself to the clarilies of speech" (C W 4: 289). 011 why it is neces­ sary to "change the role of speech in the theate r, " ef. TD pp. 72- 73 , 94 - 95. 7 TN . On thesc quest ions, cf. "Freud and the Scene ofWrüing:' chapo 7 above , note 12. 8 Les nEves e/ les moye/1.\' de les diriger (1867) is invokeu at the opening 01' ].('.1' rases ('ommuniCOI1IS. 9 " M iserable, improbable psyche that the cartel of psychological presupposi­ tions has never ceascd pinning into the musdes of hurnanity" (Ietter written from Espa lion to Roger Blin , 25 March 1946) "Only a very fc\V highly contest­ able doc uments on the Mysteries orthe Middle Ages remain. It is certain that they had , fram thc purely seenie point 01' vie\\', resourees that the theater has nol COlll,lincd for centuries. but one could also find on the repressed debates 01' the soul a seience that mo dern psychoanalysis has barely rediscovered and in a rnueh less efficacious and morally less fruitful sense than in thc mystical dramas played on the parvis" (February 1945). This fragrnent mllltiplies aggressions against psyc hoanalysis. lO TD , pp . 46 47, 60. II Against the pact 01' fear which gi vCl; birth lO man ami to God musl be resto red the unit y o fevi l a nd life, orthe Snlanic am i the divine: "1, M . A nt ~)J1in A rl:llld , ho rn in M arse illes 4 Septcmber 18<)6. I arn StI tan and 1 <1111 god anu J do nOI W:I 111 :1 l1yt hin/,!. t() do with Ihe Iloly Virgi Jl" (w rilt (! n ¡'mIli R<1dcz, SCJ1 lelll h~t fl).¡ 'i )

,,

r IlHI' ''IIAIIIIl I JI 1,' n l¡ Ila; ilJl l'grnl SptT lac k el ('11

1' )(, 11 1: 1. 1'\

' q Ilris Ihelll\; is uften aecolll panied by allu­ si <JII S ttl part idpa lioll a~ UI! . illl('r~"¡I~d t~ JlI()t ion ": tllC critique ofesthctic expericnce as dislnl l'rc sl cd tll' ~S. 1I recalls N il! l/.sche·s critique 01' Kant's philosophy orar!. No more in N itltlschtl tiran in A rta ud JJ1Ust Ihis theme con lradict l he va lue of gratuitous pla y in artistie c r()ation. Qui te In Ihe contrary. I \ 1 N. Brccht is thc major representative of Ihe theater 01' a lie nation. 14 I .('I/a fu M. dA lembert. transo A llan Bloom (Glencoe: Free Press, I9(¡O) , p. 126. IThese questions receive an exte nd ed treatment in de la GrammalOlogie, pp. 235fT.] I .~ The Iheatcr 01' eruelty is not only a spectacle witbout spectator~, it is speech without listeners. Nietzsche: "The man in a state of Dionysean excitement h
¡ .-~

IU'I' 1( 1; ~, N 1 1\ I 111 N

hiulscl f. . r he child thrnw~ a Wil y his 11I y S; huI SUlIlI 111: hllll l, lI 1' alll 111 all illllll­ ce nt fr ame ('1 1' minJ. As ,non how\!v~ r as I IK: chi ld bUllds he cn ll uccls , juills i.llld forms lawfully and according lo un in na tc sc nsc 01' orucr . Tlt us Illl ly is ¡he WQl"l d contemplated by the acs thetic man , who has Icarned ["m m lhe artist and th e gencsis of the lattc r'S work , how lhe strugglc 01' plurality can ye l bear within ¡belf la w a ndjustice, how the artist stands cOlltemplative above, ,tnd wo rking wit hin the work 01" art, ho w necessity a nd pl ay. an tago nism and harmon y must pair them­ sel ves ro r the procrcation of the work or art" ("Philosophy During the Tragic Age or tbe Greeks," in E arl)' Greek Philosop¡'y, p. lOS).

22

T H E TOOTH, TH E PA L M* Jecm-Fram,:ois Lyotard S,,"rcc: Translatcd by Ánnc Kn a p and Jvlichcllknamou , Suf¡SW l1 c(' 15 (l 'n6) : 105 110.

l . Theater places us right at the heart of what is religious-political: in the IK'art of absence, in negativity, in nihilism as Nietzsche would say, therefore ill the question 01' power. A theory 01' thea trica l signs , a praetice 01' theatrical si 1',11 S (dramatic text, mi se en scene, interpretation. arc hitecture) are based (JIl accepting the nihilism inherent in re-presentation. Not only accepting it: I\'inforcing it. For the sign, Peirce used to say, is somet hin g which stands lo ·;()\I1ebody for something. To Hidc, to Show: that is theatrality. The modernit y 01' our fin-de-siec\e is due to this: there is nothing to be replaced, no lieuten­ ;111<.:)" is legitima te, or else all are; the replacing- therefore the meaning-·is Ilsclr only a substitutc ror displacement. Takc two places A and B; a move Imm A to B means two positions and a displaccmen t; now decl a re that B ~'() llIes fro m A; yOll are no longer takin g R' s position positively, affirmatively, hui in relation to A, slIbordinated to A , itsclf absent (gone by , hidden) . B is lurncd into nothingness; as an illusi o n of prcsencc, its being is in A ; and A IS artirmed as truth, that is to say absencc. Su<.:h is the appara tus of nihilism. Is theatrality thus condemncd? By repeating this apparatus in its specific Il'l\ ding, semiology continues theology , the theology of th e death of God, of :.1 ructure. 01' critical di alectics, ctc. Displacement (Freud ' s Verschiebung or Entstellung) is an energy transfer, I-Ilo'ud said an economic proccss; lhe libido invests Ihi s or that region of the hod y's su rface (which tllrn s inward to its " internal organs" also); it estab­ )¡ ~;lt t!s ilsc\r there, in position A; it moves; it settles elsewhere; in position B. SII;t11 Wlo' say B represlo'nts A? l n his Petile (fl1a!omie de l'image, Hans Bellmer LIJ.. l' S Lhis cXH mph.:: 1 have a toothache. I c1ench m y 115t, my nails dig into the )111 1111 ofll1 y hanJ. T WLl in vcsU ncn ls LlftJ1e libido. ShalJ we say that the alo'tion ..1 1hl! pa ll1l n: prcscnls 1he plls~ i()1l of lhe looLh'! Tha l it is a sign of it? Is there 11. , pIIssih¡li ty lO reven,\! 011\: ;llIlIl he ot her. a hierarchy o r one posilion over 11 1\' ( \1 h \.' l , pI )wel' ot" une over ' II\.' 01 h\; r? I"or a na to mica l and physiological

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a lid h 1I .1II Y rclh:x iol). Ilu: :l 1I"WI: I h yl''i 01 Clllll'SC . In lhc nwvc ('1' Ihl: li hiJu. nu irrcvc lsi hilil y i.. poss iblc. I hc Crtl IH:-ll IPI hid boJ y can functi on in all dircction::.. c.JO go 1'('1)111 Ihe dCl1ch ing uf I he pallll lu tha l 01' th e jaw. from the fe ar (imagineo?) 01' a I'athcr 01" mOl hcr lo l.lbesity (rea l'!) or u\ce r (rea l?) of the stomach . This reversibility I'rom 1\ to B introouces us to the destruction of tbe sign , ano of theology, and perhaps of lheatrality. 3. Reversibi lity is part 01' om social , economie, ideological experience 0 1' modern capita lism , which is ruled by a sim p le law : value. In preca pitaJistic economy, the prod uct, production, cons umpt ion (which a re not even se pa r­ ateo as d istinct spheres) are related as si gns or as sign-making activities to positions d eem ed origi nal or pre-existing: the object, work , the destrllction or circulation of objects are thollgh l of wit hin a M ystiq ue or within a Physics. being thcre by and for another thing. Part 01' Ma rx's work perpetua tes th is semiotic theory of precapi talist economy , notably by using the category 01' use-value (of commodities, but especiall y of labor power). But the present experience of growth economy teaches us that so-ca11ed economic activit y has no anchoring in an origin, in any position A . Eve rything is excha ngeab1e , reciprocally, onl y under the conditions inherent in the law of value: work is no less a sign than money, money no more than a house o r carothere is only a flux metamorphosing into billions of objects and currents ·-such a teaching from politica l economy must be comparcd to what libidinal cconomy teaches us: both political economy a nd libid inal economy in so much as they shape our m odern Jife, suppo rt cr iticism and the crisis of the thca ter. A semiology wOllld inhibit the cri sis and gag the criticismo 4. Rcading Zeam i's treatises in R . Sieffert's translation , and at the same timc Artaud ano Brecht, whose ana lyses and concurrent failures still dom­ inatc toda y's theater , I am learning how theater, put al the place where dis­ placcment bccomes re-placement, whcre libidinal flux becomes representation , wavcrs between a scmiotics and an economic science. In th e tirst books of th e Fushi-kaden, the earliest (c. 14(0) Zeami multiplicd discontinuities; he divided up, the lite oflhe actor into periods, the year into seasons, the day into moments; mimicry into types, the repertory into genres 01' nó (of JIIaki, 01' ashura, of women , of the real world . .. ), the diachrony of the theatrical show in units (kyógen, /1(1) , assembleo according to an unchan gca ble seqllence jo-/w-kyú, the stage space into pl aces ascribed to sllch and sllch a role and to such and s uch a moment in the action , thc sound space into regions , the mimic ry into poses. the very public itself into categories, etc. This materi al is every semio­ logist 's dream; cverything is discrete a nd coded , each unit of one order referred to a un it 01' another and of al1 other orders; the whole game seems governed by the t\Vo principies o f the primary 01' signiíicati o n (i1vare ) and of the search ror th¡; g rca lesl agreement (.I'óó). To fully realizc thc sign sy'ilem. lhe acto r hi mscJ f had t ~) o isappcar as prcscncc: weari ng a mask. his ha nde; hidden ,

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wlll'lI plllVillg WOIII !.!II s roles; I IIl' IIUWt'1 U/I'I//') 01 Ihe pcrl'onnancc W as con­ "l'lved as ahsolll l¡; inl crprct;ll llln. l hal 1$ III say, nOIl-in tcrprClalion: a nd whcn pla y ll1g 11ll' I\llc 0 1' lIIadll1cn wi l hlll lt a mask, he would underl i ne the diftlcu1ty oi' pcrl'onllilll! llIadncss by allllsions to posscssion. thererore irnitating the pt)s<;cssor-dclllon , without howcver ralling into the expressionism offacial fea ­ 11 11 es "whc reas there i::. no nccess ity to imitare the facia l express ion; it happens howcver lhat in changing one' s usual expression , one com poses rus cOllnten­ alll:C. Thal is the intolerable sight." l ntolerable in that it ma kes visible the invisible. it confuses bOllcs with sk in, subs tance with secondary effects, it viola tes the hicrarchy of social and corpo ral spaces distanced into front and had o into illllsion and reality. The extreme nihilism lurking in Buddhism is what pllshes th is semiotics to its limit, transformin g the signs into signs of nllthing, ol'the nothin g that is between the signs, between A and B; said Zeami, 11 is in the intervals between the actions he performs, be they spoke n. sung, danced or mimed , thus in moments whcn he is doing nothing, that the actor IS lruly a signo signifying the very power 01' signifying which is a deviation and a void: a puppet. Zeami cited in this connection a zen form ula about puppets which refcrrcd the Westerner to Rook VII 01' the R épuh/ique.

.., However the semiotics of Z eami Seems traversed , sometimes thwarted hya very differcnt drivc, a libidinal drive, él scarch for intensiveness , a desire l'tIr potency (isn 't it necessary to express nó as potency, i\lachl , might , in the Nictzschean sen se, in the same sense that Artaud takes cruaUlé?). Th e llame .,1' Ilower Uleur) is given to the search for the energetic inten sifiea tion of the thcatrical apparatus. The elements of a total "language" are divided and linked Illgether in order to permit the production 01' effects of intcnsity through ,; li ght transgression s and the infringeme nt of overlapping units. The signs are !lO longer looked al in their representative dimension , they don ' t even repres­ \'nt the Nothing any more, they do not represent , th ey permit "actions," they "perate as the transformers, fuel ed by natural and social energies in order to produce affects of a very high intensity. ]n this way, we can understand the ;r ppearance (a li!tle later) in Zeami's work of lhe themes of the unusual , of the lIuidity and the unpredictabl e effectiveness of acting, of th e unca1culable si!lniflcance 01' seizing the right moment; aboye aH th e fact that the f10wer (//cl/r) of interpretation is no thing, is only effervescent (shoiretaru). The well­ Iri~'d procedures (kojitsu), which correspond to the unit y ora culture which is ,t1so a cult, lhus make room 1'01' a flux in motion , for a displaceability , and fo r ,1 kind ofcrTcctiveness by means ofaffects, which belong to libidinal economy. 11 . Thc hcsitation ofArtaud was the samc as that ofZ ea mi . But it leaned the 1.lher wa y. I\rtalld so ught to des troy not so mllch the Ita lian, i.e. European I{ c!la issancl.:. thcalrical appal'í1 tu s. hu i a l least the p redo minance 01' arlicul­ ,lIcd lang uugc and Ihe ~ lI ppressiol1 0 1' I he hody. In (his way he expectcd to I ~'d¡sl'l) vcr a li hidinal cflil.'i\: IIVV .,1' Ihc pcrl'ormam:e: " powcr. " "underlying

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cncrgy," Ihe pow¡;r lo displ au: thé ul'lb.: ts wllk h W OI '" hy 11r~' di li p\¡I Cl~ IIH;l1t nI' weJl-ordered units: " the sccrct 01' the tht:alcr in spau: is dissolltl llce, tbe dis­ crepancy 01' voice lim bers and the diakl:tical occoTlca tcna lio n 01' discoursc." Here is evidenee o f something very closcly ap proaching li bidinal economy: " in the ardour oflife, in the lust of life, in the unreasoned impulse oflife, there is a sort of initial mea nness, the desire of E ros is a cruelty bcca llse it b urns contingeneies, death is üruelty, resurrection is cruelty, transft gurati on is cruelty, beca use in al! directions and in a circular and closed \Vorl d, there is no r oom for true death , beca use ascension is a tearing away, beea use the c10sed space is teaming \Vith Iifc, and becau se every stronger Iife passes through other lives, thus devollring them in a massaere which is transfiguration and a positivc good." But on the wa y to this gcneraliz ed dissemiotizat ion , Ártaud stopped a nd what stopped him was nihilism, religion , (perceptibl e even in this Lellre sur la cruolllé). For intensities to I"unction , he had to ma nufacture a " tool " which would again be language, a system 01' signs, a grammar of gestures, of hieroglyphics. " That is what he thought he found in Eastern theater, particu­ larly in Japanese and Balinese. Thus he remained a European, he repeated the "invention " of an agreement bet'vveen the body and the senses, he repeated the great discovery 01' the uniting of t he Eros-libido with the libido as dcath­ wi.sh, he repeated his "e thnograph ie" mise en scene here on th e Eastern stage. But the Eastern schoolmaster, no less nihilistic than hi.s Western pllpil , had to also " invent" th e paradise, whether Buddhi.st or any other, ofnon-duality. In this way the mutili ation that Artaud is fleein g comes back to him by way of Balinese hieroglyphics. To hush the body with the writer 's theater, dear to bourgeois Europe of the 19th century, is nihilistic; but to make it speak the lexicon and syntax 01' mime, song, dance , as the nó does , is again a way of annihilating it; a bod y completely transparent , skín and flesh of the bone which is spirit, untollched by all displacemcnt, events, líbidin al denseness . Not to mentíon that modern Europe does not have at its disposal any Iwjitsu , a ny certified mean s of conveying the affeets; it wants signs and speaks 01' them a t the very moment that it lacks them . This is why Artaud put more emphasis on the sacred than did Zeami .

ill ils 111111 , 1I1110dllces ill lo Brl..'l.:lr lid ll plllywl'ili llg and sel!uograph y, a COll1 plex appilral lls, 110 h.:ss pn:l.:ise , Ilrat Blcelrl defilles a ~ distan ci alion . D istanciation .Ippear:; In be an ex t reme case 01' ni hilisl11 , lhe ador perfo rllls such and such ;lU acti on il! such and such a siluati on, bul his tcxL his acting a nd the whole lIlise el! sccuc lake hold 01' this action in order to show that it could be a uot lrer: "lo act out aU the scenes in terms 0 1' other possible scenes." This is a pmccss Ih a t red uces its object to nothing, much as the recounting o f a wit ness I)U Ihe street comer, far from actualizin g the aecident, di stanciates it through discoursc. Itere Brccht can also ca ll upon Eastern thea ter (especially C hi­ IK'se): "it is evidentl y a matter 01" repe tition by a third part y of a process, o f a Ikscription admittedl y artful. The artist shows (representing someone in a I agc) that this man is beside him self, and he poin ts to completely ex.ternal ...iglls lhat prove it (for exampl e, taki ng a lock of his hair betwecn his teeth alld biling it off). But no ni hilism can realize itself, alI nihilism m ust rem a in I'digious; where there is a gap between A a nd B (the nihil) , there must al so ;tlways be the link between A and B (to connect it, the religio). W hat performs , Iti rc1igion in Brecht is the language apparatus of Marxism: the \vh ole theat­ I ical cnecliveness which he anticipa tes, relies lIpon a system 01' beliefs, not I )lIly the bc1ief that lherc exist sociological determinations that eorrespond to cClmomic structures, bul the belief that these determinations form the deep Il'x icon and grammar ofhistorical passions, that they produce and govern lhe dlsplacement of a ffects a nd the investments of the theatrica l alldienee. T hat is why this theater is called epic thea ter. Bu t ours is no longer a time of the e pie ;lIly more than of tragedy or of savage cruelty. Ca pitalism destroys all the endes, including the one that gives industri al workers the role ofthe historieal 111'1'0. The Marxism of Brecht = an epic grafted onto a critique. After a cen­ tllry 01' International Congresses and half a century o/" Socialist States, \ve 1IIIIst say: the graft has not ta ken , neithe r as dramaturgy, scenography, nor as IV llrld politics. M a rxist sem iotics is as arbitrary in the theater as is any other ,L' nr iotics for correlating the perl"ormer a nd lhe performed and to allow the ,'o llll1lunication of the audience with itself through the mediary 01' the stage . ).i

7. Will the theater ha ve lO limit itself to a critical function? the only one allowed by the cri s i ~ of modernism? That \vas Brecht's solution . To him , it is not cnough for the rnovement of the hand to make a silent allusion to the toothache, effectiveness is defin ed as a process of undcrstanding or ofrealiza­ tion , that is to saya process of appropriation, of espousing the cause (posi­ tion A). The theater aims a t m ak in g us recognize that there exists a structure connecting the tooth a nd the list , connecting such ami such a beha vior 01' M other Courage lo such a nd such an infrastructure, and such and such anot her behavior lO such amI such an ideology. The theatrical cffecti veness. defined as knowleugt!, is med iH \.cd by '\:onsciencc ." "C'onsdcnl.:c" is. in facl, a precise lunguagc upparu lu s. Ma rxisl materialism: lhis arpa l all ls \)rlallf!.uag~, ~

Alienation itself, a nihili stic, religious and again Marxist category, must

" lo' Ihought through affirma tively . The impo rta nce 01' aliena tion is not that it I1n illts out thc distanee from an origin , fro m a lost nature , its importance is 111 Ihc way Marx a nalyzed it in the introducti on to the COlllrihutio!1 critique .1" 1'/"/'ol1o/fúe politiqie in the Grundrisse in (the unpublished) Chapter VI of "'//liIUI /: as imlilTerence 01' mall towards his work and of work towards its 1111111, 01' 11l0ncy 10wanJs that which it ca n buy and of the commodity towards . 1'. 1I1 \IIH~ tary coun lcrpa rl (and its posscsso r). This indi llerence is the experi­ .111\: ut" Ihe prclhm linallcc 01' exchangc val uc. We must sto p thinking 01' it as (tre Illss 01' S\1I11ct hing. lhe loss 01' tht: d iITercnl:C, that is to say 01' qualification , r.11'I l]l ra lít)' . IISUgl!. l1lt:ani llt' a~lcCtnCn l . flOsscssion . Ra ther let's th ink of it f1p·,l ll vd y. l!li s i Il JiITc,~cl1c~ 1c:l\ ls 11, lihld inlll cconom y. to a direct linkin g 11)

tel IIIt! s IlN ', ',\ 'I ' IUN

wililOllt r~r n.:!'jC lll tl l iOll llr I h ~ pulilil'all'I,OIl lh \lllY wil ll ithldll htl ~'l·( lIll lO l y . Thc thcory 01' valuu pUls us po Lcn tia lly nit o" 11 oll-hil.llü rl:hkal ci11.: 11 la 1iUII , whcrl~ the tooth a nd the paJm no longer have a relalionship 01' illusion alld trulh, t.:ause and effect, sign iner and sign illcd (or vice versa) , b ut lh ~y coexist, inde­ pendently, as tra nsito ry ÍDvestments, accidentall y composíng a constellation halted for an instant, an actual m u1tipli¡;jty of s tops in t he circula Lio n 01' energy. The tooth a nd the palm no 10nger mea n anyt hing, they are t'orces. intensities, present atTects. 9. An energetic theater woukl prod uce events that a re effectively discon­ tinuous, sllch as the acts lloled ra nd omly o n slips of paper themselves being lots, drawn by J ohn Cage and proposed to the interpretors ol' Thealer Piece. Likewise what this theater necds, in stead ofsóó, ofagreement between dance, music, mimicry, words, scasons, time, the public and nothing, is rathcr the independence and tbe sim u1taneity of noises-sounds, of words, body arrange­ ments, images that characterize the co-productions of Cage, Cunningham, Rauschcnberg. By eliminating the sign re1ation and its hol1owness, one makes the power relation (hierarchy) impossible, and consequently, what beco mes also impossib1e is the so-called do mination of the playwrite + metteur en scene + choreographer + stage-designer over the so-callcd signs and also over the so-called spectators.

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Il' I'I;I\':(J IIICIII ,,1 p Ctl tlll ll:II IW olllh\.: 'PlI lsldc " Ihe Illoth achl? l1ll lhc " inside ," 11\ I l'111\'~l'lI \ alio n by Ihe d~ tl chll1i' n f lhc Ib t. BIIllhc bllsi nesti or an energetic IIn'a lel is 1101 \u Illa ke allusioll IPl he Hching loolh when a dcnched fiSl is the IHII III, 11tH 111 t: levcrsc. lIs b usiness is ncither lo suggcst that such and such II l l'a ll ~ slIch alld slIch. nor lo say it, as Brcchl wanted . J ~ b usiness is to produce Ilre hi!'.hcsl in h:nsity (by excess or by lack of cnergy) of wh at there is , without IIll l'lIli n ll . Tltut is my qucstion: is it possible, how?

Notes '/I IHII /)('~ D is(JIJ.I'ilils pul.l'ionncls. Pe rmission grantcd.

I i\ pUII is hcre intcnded: licu-len a nt = place holder.

10. So-called spectators, beca use the notion ofsuch a person or such a func­ tion is itse1f eontemporary \Vith lhe predominance of the re-presentation in sociallife; ami specifically ofwhat the modern West cal1s po1itics. The subject is él product 01' the performance apparatus, it disappears when the apparatus disappcars.

11. As for the thcater as place, this affirmative thinking ofalienation imp1ies not only the bankruptcy 01' the hierarchized re1ation stage/house, but that of the hierarchized re1ation of inside/outside. For all theater is an apparatus duplicated at least once (sometimes more than once; Humlel , Moral-Sade , La prochaine foisje vous le chantcrai: it could be reversed , it could be displaced: actors playing in the wings, the audiencc seated on stage) thus made IIp of t\Vo limits. of two barriers filtering the coming and going encrgies; one limit (1) which determines what is "exterior" to the theater ("reality") and what is " interior," a second limit (2) wh ich, on the inside, disassociates what is to be perceived and what is not to be perceived (underneath, stage 1ights, wings, chairs, people , .. ). C riticism, involved in the new theater, addressed itself essentially to the problem of the se.co nd li mit (2) , as staging and architectu ral experiments proveo But the crisis is now that of the first limit (1); stage + house/"outside." It is a selective lim it, pa r excel1ence; sound s, lights, wonls. eyes , C¡U'S, poslures. (ano lherefore (lIso in capitalism , Ihe wa llels) gel sOlted ou t so thul wlw t is a Lih iJi nal disp lacllment muy yicld 10th\.: Ic-prcsc.:n lulivc \O

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Was it always so difficult lo orien t oneself. to place oneself, to choose sides, to step into a fram e? Consider the scene of The Taming o{the Shrew. i\ woman surveys the scene, A page, dressed up as a woman , surveys the scene. A boy, dressed up as a page, dressed up as a woman , surveys the theatre of which s/he is a part. The character beside him lusts for him . lt is, \Ve are told , his part. And so, and yet, " \Ve" lust for the page/woman, the page of woman , the scripted wo man , \Ve entertain the sexuallonging, enjoy the masqucrade of femininity, den y our own construction within this carnivalesque version of aristocratic/ sexist/sadistic theatre which gazes at itself and fondles its own power re1a­ tions. AmI as we watch these eh.aracters \Vatching these plays within plays located somewhere within the a lwa ys e1 usi ve bo undaries of Th e Tam ing vI the Shre11', as we sil silen tly in t he protcclÍve darkness and fultlll om role a::; sanclioned voye llrs, o ur ga.ze always rcturn s to that enigmpcl.' l aclc in

whil'h s/h~ a ppca ls as aU lÜellt'C, ill wllich w\.~ a prea r as auJic nce, e rasing d isli lldiolls pc tWCCIl play ami rca hl y'! A nd yct is not Ihis ambiguolls god­ .I v,,!; hOlh IlIll C level gender uncertainty is engaged by this figure, much as it was when \W lirsl disavowed, after having perceived , genital diffe rence. f" reud wo uld 1I.!:ld in lhis page proof of the male subject's perceplion ol' the little girl as \'; I-;lrated, ami so of the \Voman as al ways a lready a ma n in d.rag- tll e li ttle 'i rl as a little man . 1 We may read altogether differcnt ly, and fi nd in this cbar­ ¡¡l"Icr the character 01' sexual difrerence itself, a surplus as well as a lack. The 1'lIardian ofthe " t r uth" ofsexuality- which is always \vithhcld beca use always 0111 imposture the page flirtatiously, fraudulently suggests consummation IlI d tantalizes with the fiction of difference. lnasmuch as we all mist.ake, IlIisrccognize sexual identity, we are all , like Sly, taken in by the play. Yet the lh ama of the page is the drama of lang uage ¡tself, which suggests not onl y 1IIL' lIlasq uerade that is l'emininity, but the inevitability of the la\\' of form , the IIIl'diation of sexuality by cultural representation , and the power of language 11) inscribe the raw energy of the drives. Is the relation 01' the sexes the quintessential trompe toei/? Most 01' li S are Llllliliar with tlle story Lacan tell s of the engendering of the subject througb I.lIlguage: a little boy and [ittl e girl are seated in a train facing each other a nd ' ,11 see opposing sides of the station which they a re approac hing. " ' Look ,' says 1111; brother, 'we're a l Ladies!' ; 'ldiot!' replies his sister, 'Can' t you sel' we're at I il.:lltlelllen. '" As Lacan observes: " F or these children, Lad ies and Gentlemen wlll hc henceforth two countries towards which each of tbeir souls will strive "11 divergent wings, and between which a truce \ViII be the more impossible ',IIICC lhcy are actually lhe sallle country and neither can compromise on its ,,\Vn supcriority without detracting l'rolll the glory 01' th e other."" Lacan bere ' "g)!csts how language amI sexual dil'ference are intertwined: perhaps less IIl1pnrtant than the misdirection of these little souls is the arbitrary identi­ II L':ll ion 01' these bodily egos and so th e misdirection of their libidinal energies, y,'1 allotber fonn 01' !11(;connaissal1ce , Lacan draws two identical doors with 111,' words "Iadies" and "gentlcmen" written under thcm to remind us that the '11' lIilicr docs not "sta nJ fo r" the thing, but only makes sense in relationship 111 ,IlIot\Jn signilicr. Similarly, male and remale, regardless 01' biological dif­ IUl.: lln:s, aré prou lIcls 01' a lin guistic sign ifying system , so that male is neces­ .i ll ily " nnl lCmak" and k m a k "\111 1 male. " A s Jacqueline Rose observes: " In 1 IIC'II U'S acc() llll 1, s~xu al idclI tit y lI pcr a t~ as él law it is something enjoi ned 111 1111(.' SlI b lCL' 1. Fnr hi m, llw Im:llh at illd iviJ ua ls mll st line up accordjng to an 111'PIIS ll i' )1 1 (hav lIIg \Ir 111 11 h:I VIII ¿;' 1111: p[¡: dl u¡, ) mak.cs Ihal d C~lr.'"

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F RAME -UP Feminism, psychoanalysis, theatre Barhara Fl'eedman Sourcc: Thealre Joul"I1o/40Lll (1 <)XS): 375 397.

In the dark 1 orient myself in a familiar room when I can seize on a single object whose position I can remembe r. Here obviously nothing helps me except the capacity of determining positions by a subjective ground of distinction. F or I do not see the objects whose position 1 should find , and if someone had played a joke on me by putting on the Ieft wha t was previo usly on the righ t while still preserving their relationships to each other, I could not flnd my wa y in a room with otherwise ind istinguishably equal walls. But I 500n orient myself th ro ugh the mere feeling of a difference between my left ami right sides. - Kant, Critique ()( Pra.ct ica/ Rea.\"ol1, 295

As iI.kll l il y
« ;;111(11' "IICC IIII'll y I.ISsC~~l'S I ll l'~ l lIlIl'd gouls o r feminismo psycho.lmd ysi s,

dc\:ulls IllIl"li tll! il! lile poslnllldclIlil'i t l'llt erpri sc. insofar as a Uare similarly 11Il'dll-.Ucd IIpO ll suhve rtillg 111\': ligul'Cl lioll ofdilTcrcncc as binary opposition. "tl llctll ralrSIlI .uld sl'llliolics, Ibe Iwill harbillgers anJ now culprits of post­ llli llh'lIlisl tlreory, process experiences into polar oppositions which ofTer an IlIlI Siu lI ll r Alterna Livcs nature/culture, passive/active, m ale/ fem a le-rather tllll lI a wllt inllUIl1 of dilTerellces. The deciding gesture for the avant-garde II I\:or isl n:mai ns Derrida's critiq ue ofthe metaphysical basis ofthe di vi si on 01' 11 1\' sig n into signifier and signified, form and con ten t, writing and speech, " 'I "l:Sl~lltati on and presence, as welI as his critique o f the tra nscenden tal .II"lilieJ or sujet supposé sa voir- whether Man, God, o r History- who stands IIl1 lsidt: them and guarantees their stabili ty. The problem here is not onl y IlIl' prctcnsc that the significd is somehow immune from commutability, 1111111 bcing transfor11led into another signifier, but the way in which such " ppllsitions dcpend as well on a subject who conceives or perceiv es 01' these ,Id rcrenccs while standing somehow outside them. F urther, this organization 111 ex pc rience is not only ideologically coerced but cocrci ve, insofar as it 1001I 1I:S und binds a larger fie ld ofdifTerences through repressive and repressing 1. 1\"1il·S. and in lurn pri vi leges and proc ures one term at the expense 01' the !tIJ a:r, be it Male versus remale or Consciousness versus lhe unco nscious. 1h'C\lnstructive techniques fu nction to unsteady ifnot dismantle such opposi­ II¡'"S, and the revival 01' feminist and psychoanalytic theory owes much to 11I,'ir slIccess. What surprises in G allop's formulation is her use ofthe word "theatrical." Wlly is polariz ation "a thealrical represeutation 01' djfTerence"? Whereas 111,' rclationship of ideology an d genre is hardly Gallop's subject here, the llk lllification of theatre with a defensive, ideologically complicit ordering of JI 11 h.: rt:llce constitutes a serious challcnge to those for whom theatre offers 111 l'piste11lological m od el or mode of inquiry. Is theatre the guarantor of 11<,1a1 ities-part and paree! 01' the "great se11liological myth 01' the versus"­ 111 , as Barthes contends, designed to subvert them?7 ls deconstruction theatre's Il\l'lIly or its doublc? Is a feminist theatre possible, or possibly a contradiction 0111.1

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I hose in scarch 01' the poor monster, dramatic thealre, will d iscover it thc role 01' the scapcgoat for Wcstern humanism in a new-fangled IHI~ tlll\ldcrn morality play. Accused and found guilty as a machin e of the I I I\' alld an cnemy 01' the peoplc, drama is charged with the job 01' carrying IWII Y Ilre l'ourfolJ sins of phallocentrism, humanism, individualism, and Iq"l.·sc ntatiol1 along with its demisc. In this con test 01' lhe avant-garde with " ·.dl \)11 lhc ¡¡ci d 01' rcprescntation . theatrc has indeed been hoist on its own 1'\:li lld ij Lo ng dcridcd as one n I' Ihe last bastions 01' humanism in li tcrary ll llll l\ ~s. olle u f Ihe few free ¡,ones wlll.:rc character, plo l. and even presence 1I .t'lI collkl lravcl 11 nd isl 11 rl1\.:d. lll1SllspccleJ, a nJ un::; uspccting, theatre is onl y 1111\\ 11 1 lile ¡')fOCCS S ,ti saving 1,,('11' I¡y deny ing ilscl r. T ravcling incognito as 111 1111 i111:,'.

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w' )1I1d yOll WCIC .I~ I w,u ald 1a; I\C yll\l be." is rc placl'd by lhe mo lto , tllat tlla l is, i ~ ." we :ice IlilW í:l 11llctly a~ wd l a:; tra gcJy promotes the inter­ !,II'Lltioll 01' idcll ti ty il ~ dl!$liny . As a psydlOa nalyst amI lcacher 01' Frelldian theor)', Lacan 's rcading of 1I11111 u Il psychic dcvclo pment also rehes heavi ly upon tradit.íonal narratlves o f Wl'stCrtl drama . a nd so is colored by lhe same sense of transcendent Ja w or l h\'cs ~ ity whil.:h lim its its potenti al for envisioning change. Lacan 's prima ry IlI tcn.::-;1 is ill the sp1itting and so procllring 01' the subject in language as it Il lI pinges 011 human psychic functioníng . This leads bim to be as interested in tlll' illstability of'sexllal identity as ego identity, and to see both as a fun ction .1' \ division alld reprcssion, of the ordering fictions by mean S 01' which the "¡'.\! as slIpplelllcnt gets set into place. Lacanian theo ry has pro ven especia11 y lI~erll l rol' describing how masculinity depends upon wo man as bolh the I .I>;t ra led Other and as externalized lack. J\.n d thi s model of woman as lack ll )rtstituted the basis of the ea rly analyses by feminist theorisls 01' trad ítional pha llllccntric narrative and cinema. rhe most in ll uential feminist analyses of cinema aud narrative have been ,L'I rorth by Laura M ulvey and Teresa de Lauretis, both 01' whom expose the Wll)' ill which the pleasure ofthese genres depends upon and in lurn develops "I.: rcive identifications with a position of male antagonism toward women . IlIso!'ar as theatre incorporates many 01' the scopic and narrative pleasllres as I II ll'ma, thcse formulation s- however Iimited - also apply to thea tre, and yet Ill ay also help to c1 arify the differcnees between the ways in which theatre .\l ld cincma stage difference . Since the male is traditi ona lly envisioned as the IIl'a 1'I.: r of the gaze, the woman represcnted as the fetish ized object of the gaze t M 1IIvcy), the gaze itself emerges as a site of sexual difference. The c1assic 1'l m~lIIatic gaze splits us into male (voyeur) and female (exhibitionist) . Seeing, r\:m rding to this staging 01' the cinematic apparatus, is always already a 1ll,ltkr 01' sexual differem:e. Insofar as c1 assic theatre incorporates not only .)1l'l:.laclc but narrative ·--so that the maJe is represented as a mobile agent as \V,' II as a bearer of the gaze, the femaJe as the object to be actively trans­ 1"lllIcd by hi m- action as weJI as sight has implicatíons for the study o f 'l:lI dl'r ideology . Not only pleasure but plot is derivcd rrom maJe fantasies wllicll depend on the scopic and narrative exploitatioll 01' woman: she is the IIl1r ltpin in the system whose losses propeJ lhe relay of looks and whose sins IIIIIVl' lhe plot fo rward . In question , lhen , is the reliance oftheatrical desire on t[¡ l' ktis hizcd spectade of woman and the narrative of her domination and 1'lI lIlshmcnt.. Can we ever cscape The Taming oj'l/¡e Shre\V? ¡he join 01' Icminism and cinema has dearly proved productivc for the , I il iqllc 0 1' Iradi lioll al ci nema and lhe construction of a vant-garde tllms alike. ....'1 wlt l: rl~aS l:inema can challcngc Qr deco nstr llct the symbolic by dissolving 111 dl~ plJrsil\g lite illlagc, traJi lil) ll a l thca lrc i:;; necessarily m ore tied to the l'Iy ll 11 lOl il: lo lh(; ego, thl.: imilgc. Ihc uni tHry individual. Whereas theatre ¡\lh''i ti o m, lllc valid ity <,r l1l .t s ).. !) ¡,y virtlll! ~l !' tl u;i r a hility l O be exchanged. it \'/

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1I psychoanalysis and feminism si lllilar1y expose the arbitrar)' and divisi ve 11 ,"slrllclion ul' subjccl posi tio l1 s. both are similarly constrained precisely by tl l,1 1 whidl lhey wo uld cha llgc . ('on lcm porary psychoanalytic theory offers 11I 1"\:IITlpl c. inaslTl llch 41:-' Icmi ni sh who elllploy Lacanian methodo logy are in 1'1 111 II:IIlH.'d hy ;·1 d is~'\I \l I ",e lll\ . ISII al iOI1 a nd phall ic si gnifie rs wh icb they may w.~ 1I 1101 S\!i!k 111 1~l'n)du.:l.· \p\lI I H I ~ hl:rc is .ra ne Ga llo p's assertion that ir

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Il Ilpl h Icminism and psychoan alysis face the central question 01' how to in ter­ \l' ne in the cultural reproduction of sexual differenee without al ways already Iwing entangled in it ·a problem posed not only by a play like The Taming ,'11/1/' Shrew bu t repeated in the wri ting on Shrew; not only by feminist and Ih vchoanalytic theory but within the theories themselves. What feminism ,llId psychoanalysis share is the goal of reconstrLlcti~ng subjectivity [rom the d' '> 1uptive perspecti ve of the unconscious and sexuality, language a nd ideo­ I,,~,.y. so that it never rests sta ble or secure. Each discipl ine acknowledges the ,JI IIlIacy 01' the signifying dependenee of the subject on t he O ther. and is , 1\\IIIllitted to devcloping ways 01' re-visioning the subject in rel a tionship to IhL: (>thcr's gaze. Yet thal ver)' paradigm has also stymied productive feminist rl"l ll\"lIlulations of subjectivity, insofar as "safe" descriptions of a phalloeentric .lIde\" have taken the plaee 01' prescriptions for change. !"he play 01' the eonstitutive gaze in postmodern theory usual1y registers as .1 \Villy paradox rather than the trap 01' ideology containing and preventing • hll ll gC. Thc bind 01' the constitutive gaze has surfaced most notably in Julia "llsh.:Ví.l 'S dcscriptions of the problem of how to convey on the side of lal1­ ' II;l gC and representation lhe experience outside of it. 11 Assuming that \Vomen 1t ,l w hccn exduded from the scene 01' representalion- how to place that \ rl\'ricncc in representation? The eonstitutive gaze is characteristic 01' cinema 111 Iltal il slages Ihe desire to see oneselfsecing onese1fthat never gets outsidc Il w ll".

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" the P (; Uis is wh¡t t illen ha ve éll H.! wurnclI d() IIlll . 1111: plt ,lI ll1" 11' t 111: a t t I íhule of power which ncitlwr mCI1 Iwr wOl11en have, Bul (1:-; lo ng Ihl' al tributc 01' power is a p hall us wh ich rercrs LO and can be conruseu ... wi th a penis. this confusion wi ll support a ~tr ucture in which it seem s rcasonab le that men haye power and women do not. A nd as long ~s psychoanalysts maintain the separability of ' phallus' from 'penis.' they can hold on to thcir 'phal1u:)' in the belief th a Ltheir discourse has no rela tion to sexual ineq uality, no rela tion to poli ties." 12 Those who read Lacan closely an swer t hat his phal10cenlric J iscourse is intent ionally reflective of the problems he sought to portray. Mo reover, they remind us that the speci fic configurations 01' the Symbol ic are indeed open to change in t he Lacanian schema. As ElIie Ragland-SlIll ivan observes: "We must remember that the Symbolic here does not mean an ything represent­ ative of a second hidden thing or essence. Rather it refers to that order whose principal function is to mediate between (he lmagin a ry orde.r and the Real. The Symbolic order interprets, symbol izes. a rticulates, and uni versalizes both the experiential and the concrete which , paradoxically, it has already shaped contextual1y. " J3 Yet Lacan's Symbolic was developed in the context of a specific histo rieal period 01' intelIectual tho ught, one heavily inftuenced by strllctural anth ropol ogy. As Louis Alth usser protests, " Jt is not enough to know that the Wcste rn family is patriarch ic and exogamic ... \Ve must also work o ut the ideological formations that govern paternity, maternity , con­ jugulity , and childhood." 14 JIlsofar as Lacan 's writings ignore the material and historical nature of social organiza tion and social change, they betray a d islu rbing complacency toward structuralist and phallocentric versions 01' a transcendenl law, whether in the form of the phal1ic signifier, the law 01' the fat her, or the law of the symbolic order. Lacan 's Sym bolic is heavily dependent upon Lévi-Strauss's aecount of lhe origin of our m yth of difference in íncest taboos , taboos which function to transform a state o f " nature" into one of "culture": "The prime role of cul­ ture is to ensure the group's existence as a group , and consequently, in this domain as in all others, to replace chance by organization. The prohibitíon of inccst is a certain form, and even highly yaried forms , 01' in te r\lention . But it is intervention over and aboye anythíng else; even more exactly it is Ihe intervention ."15 As an exogamy rule , the incest taboo functions to establish a system of social relati onships. Jt replaces the taboo of intrafamilialmarriage \Vith interfamilial marriage , and so seis up social roles and values. Of crucial interest here are the mythic and ideological aspects 01' Lacan's Symbolic Order, since it fails lo explain the practice it describes , repeating the very difference it purports to explain. Ob serves Jacqueli ne Rose: " Laca n's use of the symbolic ... is ope n to the same objeetions as Lévi-$trauss' account in that it presu pposes Ihe subordination which it is in tended to cxpla in , Thus wh.ile a l f1rst gla nce lhese remarks , , SCCIll most c ri lical (1ft he onkr dcscri bcd. lhey are in ,IONhe r scnsc cl)mplici t wilh Iha! ordCr. " lfo

1.;1\::11 1\ :-'y lll hlllic Illust he IIIH h! r..¡ tuOlI both ill Ik co ntcxt 01' the structuraJ ,lIIth rllrol()gy Up OIl which il d n,:w a mi thc objecl rd ut.ions theory against whk h il ddi ncd il sdr. "Taking tJIC cxperience ofpsychoanalysis in its develop­ ll11'fl t over sixly ycu rs." observes Lacan expansively, " it comes as no surprise lo 1101e lhat whereas lhe first outcome of its origins wa s a conception 01' the ~lIs tr
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I.:on ligu nl tion n I' sexu a l dif'fcll:ucc po"i Jlg. a.s eil hcl I1U ll1I1I 1 \11' Ji vine. /\1 Ihe samc timo, he n.:ganls such im poslure a s ine vitable. as lite (,:omi(.' 111l:alrl.: nI' m i.¡¡recogniti llns in which \Ve necl:ssarily exis\. Likl: Pelrw.: hio, Lacan articul­ a tes the fcminist dilem ma in lerms 01' the impos~ i n ility of brea king the mirrar 0 1' ideology, yet exempli nes in his "co rrectcd" m isogyny the problem of bcing a part of the problem he wo uld describe. He argues that womun does not exi st except as a fantasy or theatrical constr uct, ycl reines a c ultural myth 0 1' the exc hange of women as the basis of civilization. Lacan eq uates a particular configuration of soci al p ower with the symbolic order, universalizes the Oedipa l law, and identifies the pa te rnal metaph o r as the Pliv ileged level of representation itself, the inevitable lhird term that must intervene between mother an d child, O be ron- like, to bring "na ture" to a state of "cu ltu re ." F oJlowing Ro y Scharer's analysis of psychoanalytic narrativcs, Teresa de Lauretis identifies the frame here: " while psychoanalysis recognizes the ¡nherent bisexuality oftbe subject, for whom remini nity and masculinity are not qualities or attributes but positions in the symbolic processcs of (self )-representatio n, psychoanalysis is itse1f caught up in ' the ideological assigna tions 01' dis­ course.' the structures 01' reprcsentation, narra tive, vision , and meaning it seeks to analyze, revea1. or bring to ligbt. "' Xlf Lacan was the analyst most awa re ofthis problem, by necessity he was also implicated by it. Juliet Flower MacCanne1l rigbtly warns us of "the tendency .. . to over-identify Lacan 's analysis o fthe culture orthe signifier ... with his own stance 011 that culture," noting that "just as the physician may be said to be apart from the disease s/he discovers, even if s/he has been constrained by it, Lacan 's analysis of the systems formed by the signifier, metaphor, the phaJlus, stand apart from his own 'system .' "I~ The paradox in reading Lacan derives rrom the play of playfulncss in his style- ror he as we1l as his most ardent supporters acknow­ 1cdge his partiality and biases, but none can decisively fix the level at which they operate. Even Jacqueline Rose admits: "There is, therefore, no qucstion of denying here that Lacan was implicated in the pha1l0centrism he described, just as his own utterance constantly rejoins the mastery which he sought to undermine."20 We need to acknowledge both how Lacan played upon and with his own pha1l0ccntrism, and how that pleasure has its costs in a dis­ course which cannot be reproduced . " In the psyche, there is nothing by which the subject may situate himselr as a male or fema1c being," asserts Lacan valiantly. 21 The very scntence is a marvelous example 01' what Lacan is talking about·- how language directs biology, subverting the sexual drive ¡nto an identificatory one precise1y by such maneu vers as interpellating the female reader as "he," "him ," and "man ." Yet insofar as we arc not newly enligh tcned sexist males of the 1930s coyly poio ting to the way in whkh o ur di scoursc places and dis places Ihe subject, how can fem inisl lheory stlpport a voca b ulury of ph al1ic signi r·icrs? Teriliía de LLU n:Li s right ly criti q ue:> Lacanian theo ry fOI" tlll': wuy in whidl ils desc riptivc f"ealurcs al l lOO (;;Jsily b\!Collle prescripl ivl!: "i n nppns ing the

1111111 \)/" IIIl' IIIKOII Sci\HI S In tlll" 11I1I ~i llll IIf an al ways aln:ady falsl: consci­ III1SIIl:SS, thl' general crilical J isCllLl rsc bascd on Lacanian psychoanal ysi::; sub­ SCI ibes 10(1 easily ... to Iha territorial dislinction between subjective and socia l Illodes ul' pwduction and the cold war that is its iss ue ." 22 More concemed with m isrecognition as sitcs for changc, ~ Laul'elis suggests we redirect atten­ lion lu l he dialectical relationsbjp between the means by which signs aTe produced a nd lhe codes themselves , so that we see meaning as a üultural pro­ duction ·' nol only susceptible of ideological transformation , but materia lly hasl:d in historical changc."21 Feminist theory has itself been callght up in the d o ublc bind o f the consli­ IlIlive gazc. Given the increasing centrali za tio n 01' a group prcvio usty defin cd by cxdusion frolll and oppression by the symbolic order, how is tha t gro up lO tcdcline itself witho ut destroying itself? Should it celebrate the scorned values with which it has been identified, abandon those values ror those ofthe ruling l'I ass, or chall enge the entire structurc by which it has been defined , re plaeing 11 \Vith a more inclusi ve sense of difference? As Ann Rosalind Jones reminds Wi. any celebration ofthe feminine is pro blema tic in that it assumes an essen tiaJ Il:lIlinine to be celebrated, so that " theories of réminité remain fi xa ted within I he l1letaphysical and psychoana lytic frameworks they a ttempt to dislodge." 24 luce lrigaray a nd Hélene Cixous wOllld have us reverse the nega tive value assigncd to woman, locating her specificity in multiteve1cd Iibidinalenergy, 111 a reminine unconscious shaped by femate bodily drives which make thei r \Vay in the style of feminist writings. 25 Yet M onique Wittig blames néofém­ IIlilé's universalizing tendencies ror making a fetish of the bar 01' difference, .¡ lId so keeping us locked in an oppositional gender structure. Wittig demand s IlIat we " dissoeiate 'women ' (the class within which we fight) and 'woman,' IlIl' l1lyth . For ' woman ' ... is only a n imaginary formation, while ' women' is 111l': product of a social relationship,"26 a group identity capablc of errecting I hange. Yet even Wittig's political theatre, li ke much political theatre, is accused ,,1 ' various si ns, among them denying a gaze that would disrupt its own. Can klllinism be associated \Vith action which effects change, assumes the image ,,1' woman and yel simultaneously disrupts any fixed image? The paradoxes ,JI K risteva \ system, from which feminism cannot seem to escape, are very IlIlICh a t issue. ( ',,"ld it be that feminism has (mis)appropriated the Lacanian gaze, orfer­ 1111' rl~adings oftraditional drama and film that are incapable ofinterrogating Ih,·ir Oedipal basis, and lhe Oedipal basis of the symbolic? Could it be that It' llIilliSIl1 and psychoanalysis ha ve been trapped by a constitutive gaze. by a p.\ . mJox 01' lhe frame and lhe gaze which binds change in repetition and Iql r~'ssion, iD Iheorics ol" I rompe /i"ti! and dvmple regarde , in mise en ahyl11e 11I1L'llI rcs wh ic h rin g hollow? CO ll ld il be thal there is a radical aspect of 1h~': 11 1 e, wh:. t we mighl rd el' Itl a ~ " lhe,, 1rieu lil y" o r " performance ," as opposed 1.. Iltll l al ive d 1'lIm:l , t hat íl'> ~ h ill .. ctcti I.cd hy a disru pli ve mtze t hat never rests ';l~ ~; 1 1 1 c')

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thealrc bOllnd to certain representationa l models which prevent revisioning its conslruction of the subject? Since film theory has long ago addressed the limits of the avant-garde exploitation of feminism, a rehearsal of its debates may prove useful here. The problem of a feminist refiguring of representation has been nicely stagcd in the interaction between Constance Penley and Peter Gidal on feminism and the avant-garde as framed by Stephen Heath . First Penley: "If filmic practice, Iikc the fetishistic ritual. is an inscription of the look on the body of the mother, we must now begin to consider the possibil­ ities and consequences oflhe mother returning the look." Gidal replies: "The last words 01' your piece say it all. Y ou search for the simple inversion, t he molher [ooking hack. 1 consider the possibilities of the not-mother, not-falher (Iooking or nol)." Heath joins Gidal: "To invert the mother returning the look , is nol radical1y to transform , is to return to the same economy (and cinema in the fiction film has always and exactly been concerned to consider the possibi1ities a nd consequences within the retishistic rit ua l, induuin g t he conslitulil'e th rcat o f i.ts e nd a ngerme nt, t he play of cye and Inok . visinn a mi lack): Ihe Jill crcncc invcrtcd is ¡¡I so lhe dilTe re nce rl1Uilllllim:u ,. ')

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Thc s lIhkxl in th is galllc 1,1 Iwo .lg,IIIISI olle is a uo ubling 01' il s conle nl pmblclII 01' wom an. Sil1l:c the l'inc ma tic look is read b y lhese male 1hcorists as COlIstil utcu hy a lhreat 01' the lack in woman (i.c., her castration ), she hall bctter no l loo k back, 110r, by impl ication , should Penley. GidaJ's il\lpul se is cinel11atic: he wants to d issolve, destroy images o f women. (Is il not l\Iore avanl-géu de simply to delete women from films rather than to present her response lo her reflection?) Penley's response is a looking back tha t looks rmward. H er impulse is theatrical - she wants to reverse the look. wrnch l'nlails a relhinking ofthe limits ofthe cinem a tic apparat us, in sofar as cinema posits the A bsen l One- the place o f the camera- in the place 01' the Othe r as rl'lurned gazc in theatre. Especially disturbing here is the argument that the c inematie look is con­ sliluted by a threat of its endangerment which is specifically associated with \\Iomen's castra tion- a move which indicates how t he Lacanian ga¿e has been rcread through Freudi a n castration schemas to figure difference in fil m thcory. I'he Freudian theory of castration explains how the human animal assumes It.~ sexua1ity in a given social order: in a deferred reading ofhis (first'?) sight of his llIother's gcnitalia , t he subject-as-1ittle-boy interprets her "Iack" in term s uf lhe lhreat of the fath cr' s punitive, castrating " no " made good. In other worus. he associates h is mother's " actual " castration with his pote ntial castra­ 1ion . That Lacan rereads this scenario symbolical1y does not, finally, save it I!lr reminist theory . It harms in that it keeps this sexist construction al ive and IlIaintains an association of the look with a negative view o f women and her 'cx ualily. The theory is made no more palatable by the argument that. insofar ;IS we are a1l1acking, woman is even more aware 01' her ineomplete status. In its stead we m ight consider the development of gender as identificatory IIld rooted in the prob1em 01' lhe gaze. Tite disruptive gaze would derive .'cl1 d¡;r from an interruption of the male 's primary feminism. developed in Ilh.: nlillcation with the female as mothering person oWhereas the !'emale sub­ I"L:\ resolves the mother's "no" by moving from heing the mother's desire to 1l11Í/iI/ing the mother's desire , the male in our society is not free to resol ve the Itl illernal " no " in this way. Given that the infant cannot always be what the 111111 her wants. nor the mother what the infant waJ](s. given that mothering IIIV!llvcs he lping the c hild come to trust in the return of a nurturing other \\Iho can leave and disap point. the development of a way of coping with the 1110 1hn's " n o " is es pecially pressing for lhe male. Deprived of the shift Ill ward m imelic desire len open to the female, the male's route can only be a 1 lI' id disidentiflcation, resulting in ambivalence toward the nurturing object. I'his stance has its precursors in feminist app1ications of object relations 11 1I:ury. l:ernin ist rsychoanalytic theory. in particular the work of Nancy I '1Iudor,)w, il1lt:rrrcts sorne m él lc bchavior as rcsulting from denied identi­ Ix lit .llioll wi lh Ihc n urtu ring 01 lTIot her ing figu re. O bject rela tions theo ry has IIII I!-' s up.gcSlcu IlIal t hc IIHll heri llg fll l1cliol1 is nN acc~')m nl is h eu by s im pl y t1I' IWIIl!.! Ilre l'lrild IlItn ;111 ill llSi lll 1 0 1' magiea l olllllipntc lll.;<; h uI in helping lhe 11 11:

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child awcpl Sc.pa ralcness .JnJ disill usÜ.' n lh ru ug.h V;II ill LlS ' 110 " . " 1" The. dis­ ruptive maternal gaze is a ga.le wh ich rollcel::; back lo ¡hc child sOl11clhi ng other than what it wants to see, but wh kh alone m akes ídentity possible. This in turn suggesls an interesting re versa!; the greater rep ression is not 01' the mother's castration (what the ehild doesn't want to see), b ut of the subject's loss 01' fa ce (what the moth e r doesn 't wan l lo see or can't see in the child). The readin g which denies this arg ucs tha! the fa ther's interve nt ion (and not t he mother's " no ") alone ensures the masculinity tha t fh e subject desi red a ll along. The repression 01' the mother's cruó a l role in the sociali zati on process is denied. A more theatrical pa ra digm would ena ble women no t o nly to re nect how they perceive they have been perceived, b ut to look back ami forward , to see how their look.in g back is interpreted a nd dísrupted by another gaze in a continuing theatre 01' interactive reftections. Lacanian theory has decisivel y and intentionally Iimited the poten ti al ol' the mother's " no " in él variety 01' ways , then , and cinematic theory's use of tbe gaze has in tum been reduced to not bi ng short of mal e castratioll anxiety. However successf ul the applicél ti on of él phallocentrk theory fo r a reading of phallocentTic ftl ms, such a model stymies the deveJopment offilm theory and practice in Ilew directions, result­ ing in such peculiar avant-garde stances as Gidal's refusal to portra y women in his films sin ce she is always already the castrated fetish ized object. The difleren ce inl'erted ¡s nol a/way s lhe ddJerence main/(/ined. To reframe H ea th and Gidal vi a Penley is to point to her place a ncl the mother's place both within and outside the system , and to observe that neither can be so neatly circumscribed. Sin ce neither Heath nor Gidal proves capable 01' con­ sidering the " possibilities and consequences" ofthe mother returning the look, except as a reversal 01' the terms 01' the male look, whieh in itself is castrating, they project tha t threat onto Penlcy. Asks I-Ieath: "What then of the look for the woman, of woman subjects in seeing? The reply given by psychoanalysis is from the phall us. If the woman looks, the speetacle provokes, castration is in the air, the Medusa's head is not far off; thu s, she must not look , is absorbed he rself on the side 01' the seen, seeing herself seeing herself, Lacan's femininit y." .1O If Heath \vould distance himself here, his framing of P enley implies that castration is indeed in the air- that malc fears 01' a reversal 01' their own system are being projected onto a rethinking of representa ti on which begins on the oth e r side 01' the sereen. The diflerence i/1l'erted is 1101 alway s lhe ddleren ce maintained. The reply given by psychoanalysis is not always from the phallus. Penley asks about the possibílities of retu rning the look beca use sh e real izes that n o reversal 01' the loo k in the same terms is possible- except when the Woman as a con slruct 01' lhe ma le Imaginary is doing t he looki ng, in which case sh e does not look fro m lhe point 01' víew 01' women. Since Penley, fol1owing LéJ U1',1 M ulwy, i-: criliq uing film pracl ice a:; voycLl riSlic é1nd fe lish i:;ti.:. her qllcsl ion il sks r\Jr lite tl~velop­ IllL'n l 0 1' ncw ways 0'- Ilw kin ~ in e.sscnl,;i.! I he rccn!l sl l lh'llO Jl "r I III.! W OIl1 U !l'~

'; I /l' , T lt l'lIl oll \(~r's hmJy is nol i'lllI lpl y a d luractcr in a IiIm I'ctu ming a loo k, hui allHlcl! Ihe ma lcrial (HII 0 1 Wllld l a spcclac1c is co nSlructcd, th e spectacle II ~d r ;llId Ihl: IIlean<; hy wh ieh a spccl<J to r is conslructcd. To rcturn lhe look 111 Ihi ~ ~Olllcxt is to bréa k up Ix:rrormancc space, deconstruct the gaze, s ub­ \\.' 11 I he dassical organiza li on 01' showing and seeing, revision spectato rshi p, ,I ud Ic:-. trllclure lradilional ca nons, genres, an d pe rson al-political identitie:;. ()Ili.! ¡¡rg ulllen l that sta lis this movement is summarizcd by Ste phen H eath when he asks whelhcr it is " possible for a woman to tak e p lace in a fi lm wilholll representing a malc desire," since "a ny im age o f a woma n in a fil m, b\ Ihe ract 01' its en gagement in a proücss of representati on , .. inevitabl y re­ ,lId l)ses womcn in a strllcture 01' cultural oppression tha t fllnctions preci sely Ity Ihe cu rrency of ' images 0 1' woman .' ", 1 He q uotes C ixo us, who observed: I lile is always in representatio n, anu when a woman is asked to take place ill Ihis represcntation , she ¡s, ofcourse, asked to represent man 's uesire. " Yet I kath ignores the key word "askecl"; when women are not asked by me ll to I.1I..e place in a representation created by a nd for men o b ut occupy and share Illl' sitcs 01' production and consumption, a d ifl'erent econo my obtains. W omen 1,I h' place, and refigure lha t taking place, in ways that challenge traditional 1, '11lIS 01" represenlation ami gratify , as they displace, th e spectatorial gaze. I'l:nley cites Ihe films of Yvonne R ainer, C hantal Ackerman , a nd M a r­ 'fll'l ilc Duras, which " r un counter to the Oedipal structuring 01' Western 1"" ralive l"orm anu the imaginary and fetishistic imperatives orthe cinematic .I ppa ralus," cffecting changes in " narrative organ izatíon , point 01' view and I
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\ he impetus is clear: the attempt to place woman somewhere else, 'Hllside the forms 01' representation through which she is endlessly 1'(lIlSliluted as image. The probl"em is that this sets up notíons 01' drive, IlI ylhlllic pulsing, eroticisati on 01' energy pre-representa tion , a space ,I! " \l jJen viewing," which then makes film process itself socially­ ;lIId scx lI a lly innocen t. F ilm process is then conccived as something ,If'l' haie. ti los l ur rcprcsscJ can ten t ("continent"), te rms to which the lL'lI lin illc cun so clIsily be assimil utcd . as it has been in c1assical fo rms u l di sl'( lU J")il! o n Ihe Il!rll in ine
~ pct:i lk:, ou lsidc. I he dllllgers lile obviolls Tha l :;lIdl ,,"'.IIIIII!IIIS ovc rl ook tlle a n.: hait: con nol u l in ns of 1ht:sc n ol illl1 S uf cm:rgy allll rh ythm ror wom en , al t he sa me timc t ha l Illey re nder in nnec nL 1h(; o bjects and pr ocesses of rcprese nta lion whic h t hcy introjccl o nto Ihe 11 scrcen, seems again to be not by ehance.

In a cri tique of Lyotard 's e xploTatio n 01" a non thcalri'.:a l rep resenra tionaJ space , R ose pointedly remarks: "Wc have to ask what, ir the o bject itsel r is rem oved (the body or victi m ). is o r c()u ld be such él !>p acc of o pen viewin g (fetishisation of the look itself or of its panic a ntl conrusion)? A no wha t does this do for fem inism? Other th a n strietly no t hing, d ropping all images 01' wo men; or el se a n archaisin g of th e fe m ini nc as pan ic an d 00 n fus ion , wh ich is equa11 y problema tic, simply a re-introjection as feminine- t he pre-mirror gi rl - or the visual di sturbance against whieh the image of woman dassically acts as a guarantee. " 34 It would seem that theatre, via pe rfo mlance, is facing many of the same p roblems .

" 1I1I11II:llly c\dlls ive.:" " wlll!1\ il l. "II IC:' lo lhe.: pwhkm ot" l hl' subjecl," since " in l'o nl l asl lo perlün llaIlC":, I heall'l.' ca ll1Hll kccp frolll sctl in g up, stating, con­ slllu.:li ng po illlS ol" vicw" all d d c.:pcnd s un a unified subjecl which performance dCl"ullst rtlcls in lo d ';ves (llId cncrgies, since theatrc assumes ano de pends on lhe narralivity ll nd Illodels of representatio n which performance rejects in fa vo r 01' di::;continuity and spillage. 41 IJ pe rformance highlights the " rea lities of lh e imaginary," " originates within t he su bject an d allows his flow of des ire lo spcak ," lhe theatrical " inscribes t he s ubjec t in the law and in theatrical l"odcs, which is to say, in the symbolic. "42 Yct fjnall y Féral i!) d escribing a d ialectic essenti a l to theal re, not a part from il. which she hcrsclf ackno wledges by argui ng that " thea tri cality arises from Ihe play belween these two realities," and by describin g pcrfonn allce as that within theatre which deconstructs it. 43 Féral obse rves t hat " in its stripped­ dllwn work in gs , its exploration 01' the body, and its joining of time and space, plTform a nce gives us a kind of theatricality i.n slow motion , the k ind we find al work in toda y's theatre. Pe rformance explores the under-side of that Illea tre. ,,44

Is it a coincidence that defi nitions of feminis m, theatre , Lacania n psycho­ a na lys is, a nd deconstr uction are beco ming prac tically indistingu ishable? All define them selves as d isplacing activities designed to resist the s uturing cohcr­ ence 01" any fixed place. JlIli<J Kri steva argues that " th e very dich o tomy man/ wo man as (In oppositioll between two rival cntities may be unoerstood as belongi ng lo metap hysics,,35 and offers instead él pulsion between the semiotic (prc-oedipal, prclinguistic energy and desire) and the symbolic (made pos­ si ble by the sc m iotic which in turn is repressed for its establishment). To work fro m l he scm ioli c is to to adopt " a negative funct io n; reject everything finite . u di ni lc, structured , loaded with meaning, in the existing state of society. " It is to work " on the side 01' the explosion of social codes, with revolutionary lllovcments .":;6 Like Kristeva, Shoshana felman d efi nes femininit y as a " real othcrness .. . [which] is uncanny in that it is not the opposite of ma sculinity but lhat which subvcrts the very opposition of masculinity and fcmininity. "37 A vant-garde feminism's answer, then , is that woma n , 1ike theatre , does nol take (a) place (K riste va) , but rather, rev isions positio na lity itself. 38 In what sensc d oes a feminism so defined differ from deco nstructi o n? Or from theatre, which manages both to acknowledge the symbolic and disrupt it fmm wit h in, to acknowledge and subvert positiona1ity on a continuo LIS basis? Josette Féral , o nc o f the few theoreticians to explore feminist deconstruct­ ive theatre, assumes bo tll are possible- bu l on ly w hen theatre is no t tbeatTe per se.39 Fo r Féral, thealTe is on the side o f inscrip lion in lhe symbolic, w hereas pe rfo rm ance is on t he siJe of decon str ucti o n in ¡he semiolic (thus Féral's " lheatre" correspon ds lo EIH l11 '~ "drama ," amI her " pe rform ance" corrcspond.s lo EI¡lm's " lhcalre").,11l r-éra1. find s Ihca l n.! and \Wrl"lln11a nct:

The relations hip between performance art and traditional theatre is less él polar opposition than a continuum. We see k in theatre that moment when ,'m looking is no lo nger a loo k ing (as in film), but a bein g seen , a retu rn of t he look by Ihe mirror image which denies th e proeess . Whereas trad iti ona l drama achieves this by setling into motion a series 01" di splacing gazes which ·;IIl.:cccds when it disrupts o ur own gaze without showing us ho w , perform­ ;IIICC art puts theatrical co ns lruction itself o nst<Jge. 1n SW(1Il Lake, M i lll1e.l'o la ;1 sI ripper pcrfo rm s to a fascinated crowd of mcn by throwing down can.lboard ,'lItoutS of her bo dy in vario LIS states of undress; the las t cutoul is a mirro r which rcftects thcir gaze. In the performance piece WaitinK. t he author holds 11]1 sllccts upon which arc projected images ofwaitresses. and then inserts her h"dy and voice in filmed images and narratives of resta urant life, simultane­ "lIsly positioning herself as author, actor , screcn , and the so urce 01' lheir IlIlItllal confus io n and deconstruction . I .ike much theatre theory and practice, Féral's thcsis is itself symptomatic ,,1' Ihe batt1e within theatre to differentiate presence fr o m representati o n, "'llIinding LI S that insofar as theatrc stages presence it enacts the agon between Ill' llIg and representation implied in the eoncepl of enactment, and so gives 1'lIlh lo itsdf by continually reposin g that relationship. Féral highli ghts thi s t.ll·1 hy lIsing " theatricality" to designate a class which e nco mpasses both II H'1I 1ricalily and performance. and by this doubling rightl y tags theatre as a '-.1 líI Ilge or Tang1ed Loop. C riticized for assuming that perfo rmance rcaches a pll'SCIlCC oUlsidc of representali o n , shc in ract merel y observes that " perform­ " In; ~CC Il1S lo be atlem p lin g lo rcveal and to stage something that too k place 11I'1"n' 11It: re prc~cll la t i () n ~) r lhc subjccl evcn ir it does so b y us ing an already i. 1111\1 illl lcd sub jcct . ",1,> Tlt i.:. i~ IHll, linally, a l odds with. bUI rather a n o pposing IIP pll Hll h 1(1 , J)errid a 's ti rgllllwlIl ' hal : " Prcscnéc , in urder lO be presence and

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sel f- presencc, Ims al ways alrcauy bcgulI lo rCprCsí:1I 1 ilsl.:! l, h.l ~ .lI way.. al rcau y been penctrated."~(¡ T hus the paradox 01' avan l-gu nk tIJcJ lrc. in seí:~ i ng to stage a moment outside o f represe ntation one ca n not cvauc the play 01' gazes that constitutes represcnla lion . Following D errida . H erb Blau reminds us that theatre reveals " noJir.l'l time , no origin , but only rec urrence a nd reproduc tion.,,47 Trad it ional mime has long exposed tbeatre as a machine 01' D ifTerence which enacts the cod ing ano decod ing of the body , the place and displacement of presence , the construc­ tion and deconstruction of the gaze, the carving up and branding of presence (thus the ease wi th which tatoo art and various fo rms of bodily mut ilati o n make their way into performance art). Theatre has a lways suggestcd a funholl se of mirrors we never escape, a preccssion of simulacra which remind us we can never reach a body outside of representation. O bserves Baudrillard, "simula­ tion is no longer that of a territory , a refe rent ial bei ng or a substance. It is lhc generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. " 48 Thea­ tre doesn ' t hold the mirror up to nature. but is the quintessenti al simulation of simulations, a hypcrreality. Héléne Cixous offers, inadvertently, o ne of the best definitions of theatre: " men and women are caught up in a network ofmil1enial cultural dctermina­ tions of a compl c.l\ity that is practical1y una nalyzable : we can no more tal k about 'women' than about ' man ' without ge lting caught up in an ideological theatre where the multiplication of representations, images , reReetions, myths, identifications constantly transforms. deforms, alters each person 's imagin­ ary order and in advance , renders all conceptllalization null and void."49 Peggy Kamuf's " a woman writing like a woman writing like a woman,,50 is quintessentiaUy theatricaL feminist, and deconstructive at once. The performative side 01' theatre emerges here as a process of staging the disturbance and reversal 01' the gaze. Theatre is by definition not amenable to narrativos imported to contain its bent toward subversion. Tho multiple stages and plots of Renaissance and postm odern theatre alike better convey its fundion as a philosophical model , insofar as simultaneity of space amI action is best suited to its ability lO intc rrupt and stagc itself. Observes Maria M inich Brewer: "Theatre allo\Vs a philosophical discourse to shift from thought as secing and originating in the subject alone, to the many decentere<.l proccsscs ol" framin g and staging that representation req uires but dissimul­ ates.,, 51Thcatre provides a theoretical model for postmodernism insofar as it is always setting into play the subversion of its insights. A theatrical model is thus ideally suited to the project of decentering and su bverting fields of representation tha t face postmodern theory. T hi s expl ain s why thcatre is the source 110t only 01' m uch of the voeabulary 01' poslm odern theory (fra ming, Slaging, miseen scene. rchearsal anu repelition, ree nactment). but also of many 01' its key st ra tegies. ¡\ refusal 01' tIJe ()hs~ rvcr· ., stablc positio n, a fascin ation wit h rc-presen ling prest::nu:.
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,Iml yo l al lhe samc lime scc Iww (\ lIl' \ lo ok is always al rcady p urlo ined -­ lllc.',c arl' lhe hcndits ol"th ca lrc f\)r lhcory. W lly is il tha t thcatre alono has always staged identity as unstable, ex pos­ illg gcndcr and c1ass as a masquerade? Why is it th at theatre- so associa ted with sclr-rellcxivity as to become a l11eans ofdescribing it- ma nagcs to avoid the en ahyme structure, evade its own c1osure, a nd refuse its own fra mes? { 'ould it be that, inso far as theatre cannot rest in the ahyme, but stages the displacing ga ze. lhe bursting of the container by its contents, theatre o ffers a \Vay of dislodging the current eritical standstill \Vhereby we must use language lo describe a place outside it'! The qllestio n of whether theatre can stage through representation a pres­ l:I1CC prior to it must be answered through the gaze, which is no less th an a lliscovery ofthe splitting 01' subjectivity in its procu ring. Thc gaze is a discov­ l'ry that (lne is secn - that one' s look is always already purloined by the Other. " It is not true that , when 1 am under tho gaze, when I solicit a gaze, wlten I obtain it, I do not see it as a gaze .... Painters, above all , have grasped 1Itis gaze in the mask . .. . The gaze 1 encounter . . . is not a seen gaze. but a gazc imagined by me in the fleld of the Other" writes Lacan .52 Theatre's disrupting gaze reOeets any look as already taken; it stages presenee as always already represented. and trapped by another's look . Like lhe shicld he Id up lo view Medusa , thcatre ofi'ers a perspective glass by mean s of which we see the objeet of our gaze as always already reflected. Whether in Sophocles' Oedipus or Duras's india Song, whether throllgh the displaeing gaze of the Medusoid Sph inx or the displaced or out 01' synch voiees 01' staged characters in avant-garde feminist drama, theatre is always slaging the desire to own the purloined place of one's look . Theatre tclls the slllry 01' a rape whieh has always already occurred, thereby involving us in a series of gazes which splits and displaces our own. Whereas film is obsessed \Vith seeing one 's look. as in Hitchcock films which repeatedly distend and IK'cr within the space oftheir own voyeurism, theatre is fascinated by the return ,,1" one's look as a displacing gaze that redefines as it undermines identity . I'ltcatre ealls the spectatoria l gazc into play by exhibiting a Pllrloined gaze, a p.U I.C that announccs it has always been presented to our cyes; is designed only lo he taken up by them. The speetatorial gaze takes the bait and stakes its 'laim to a resting place in the ficld 01' vision which beckons it- only to have 11'> gaze fractured , its look stared down by él series of gazes which challenge I Itc place of ib look and cxposc it as in turn detined by the other. The lar va/us "rodeo. or l11a ~k which points to itsclL is the lure oftheatre, a gaze which admits 1I hclongs to lhe Ot hcr, only to become the Other of the spectator in turno 11 c inema appcals lo the ucsirc lO see oneself seeing, lheatre appeals to lhe d ~, ... ire I I I ex pose anu d ispltH':C lhe displaced gaze- tha t is, to enta ngle the "1I1í: r',, ga/u wilh \lné'~ alwa ys a lrcau y pu rl oi ncú image, to rcveal the play 01' IIl le'o¡ louk as illcvltu hl y_ inCl.·"'j;ln lly in lllol iol1 d ispla\Xd and di splaeing in 1111 11. 'lile sI, Ipl~¡¡ ... c i ~ q 1I 1t ¡lcs"l' lll ia I Ihe; II ",:. il s sIügc t he tlll l tic () f 1he place 01' ,¡

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m c'~ 1 \1~1" . Willl IH: s lri pp~1 mai lllalll I he pl,u;!.: u l lll, 1,1,," ' , .dIVII )''' alrcad y rurllli ned , so as tu preserve lhe kl1lal<: ~ r>cc tal ()r\ 1110" 111 \VI II he loo" bac" in a way th at d isplal:cs hcr g U/c? T hcatrc's mask s <11 111\) 11 111:1: that lhe "' " is al ways al reauy another; its characters assure li t> 01' their displaccment, announcing, '" am already taken ," as in "this seat is takl;n," or as in, "That was no lady, that was my wife (mother). " Theatrc is the pl ace wherc a male ruling class has been a ble to play at being the excJudcd other, to rcveaJ the sense that ''1'' is an olher. Ir theatre has o tTered men a chance to identify wil h the place of a mother':; loo k, to im ilate the mother's tlesire, and to control the woman 's looking back, theatre also offers the opportunity 10 reframe that moment from a point 01' view alien to it. The paradox of the frame and the gaze. the problem of the conslilu tive gaze in relationship to key problems of change, needs to be worked out more fulty both witb.in the discourses of feminism, psychoana lysis, and theatre theory, and in the arguments with which they are in volved . Feminism faces this problem in the Kristevan paradox of the scmiotic and the symbolic; psychoanalysis faces this problem in the rclationship of the Imaginar)' and the Symbolic; but theatre al one is capable of staging the paradox of the fra me in a way that subverts it. Unlike feminism and psychoanalysis, theatre has no altegiance but to ambi valence, to a compulsion to subvert its own gaze, to split itself through a reflected image. Theatrc comfortably allies with feminism again st psychoanalysis, witb psychoanaJysis against cinema, a nd with cinem a against itsclf, without ever fi nding a resting point except as provisional and always already undcrmineu.. Whereas feminism and psychoanalysis seek to reflect the subject from a place where it can never see itself, be.it gender, ideology, or the unconscious, theatre pro vides the tools- the stages, the mirrors, or refleeting gazes--through which perspectives are fra gmented , shattcrcd, and set into play against one another. A methodology necessarily tied to no master, theatre is quintessenti­ alt)' deconstructive, and poses a mcthodologica 1 chalJenge to feminism and psychoanalysis to escape its terms , its goals, its identity. We dose here with an open q uestion, one posed at the end 01' Laca n's seminar, "The Spli t Between the Eye and the Gaze." "To what extent," v n()w! Wh al a race yo u're ma king!: o r, T he top bulto n or y(lUr waislco
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"P\' lI llI llltl:l. Tite IlIel l: jlIC'ol' IU": .. t tll,' ;lII alyst scls IIp the ga/e; tite p~ll ien t ~JI ~IWS she is heil1¡.t héanJ alld w'll\:héd. ami so hcars and walches hcrscl dll lcn:ntly; the 'iéCOlld mi rmr is in pla y, lIli rrori ng the fi rsl , displacing and placing hody, voice, ami gul.c. The associat.i ons , have drawll here suggest that th eatre opens up a con­ "t met ive palh f'or psychoanalytic tbeory and feminist theory to fo llow- if II ll'y arc willing lo f'ully accept lhe implications oftheir Qwn displacin g gazcs. We IIced , lhal is, to reread Lacan against himself. to accept how femin ism's .'iII.e has been purloined , to interroga te the political implications 01' psycho­ oIl1alysis. Theatrical readin g is ambivalent read ing, ded icated nol to varying Ih\.' look (which simply amounts to critical pluralism) but to disrupting it, lllp)stagjng theories th rough one another. It req lIires that psych oanalysis Icad cinema and theatrc read psychoanalysis.
Notes "in' I I ('lId's 1'111' I ~'g() I//lr! II/(' Id '/'(¡, . ,\' /(//lc!ar(/ Edilillll III' Ihe Complete P.\y c/¡olo­ :1/'111 J/'/JII,.\ ' ~I 'li~III I/l 1I 1 Vo l. 11). tra lls . .I~lIl1CS Sl rachcy (London: I-Iogarth

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plltlislllllC lI 1 perso na l 111 hClsd l alld h;¡s rl!a li /cll ll1al 1IJI' ,C III.tI . 111I111c1 c l is ;1 1Illl vc rs;d 0 111; , sltc hqd n~ slla rc ,h l: I'llrllCmp l ti.. 11 hy 11 1\ ' 11 1"1 , 1 i,. '~ Wllld l is lit\' l e~se r irr so import an t a respect, alld , at k:ast in Iw ldi ng tllal ('pilllnrr , irrsisls (111 bci ng like aman" (253). 2 Lal'an , "Agency 01' lhe !eller il! the uncollscious:' terils, trans o Alan Sheridan (New York: No rt OIl , 1977), 152. 3 Jacq ~eli ne Rose, " ln troduction- II," in Feminine Sexualily: Jaeques L (/c(1/1 (//1(1 Ih e E cole Freudienlle, ed. Juli et M itchell an d Jacqueline R ose, lra nS. J acqueline Ro se (Ne w York: N orlon, 1985),29 . 4 Rose, "Inlroduction," 28. 5 See Laura M ul vey, o'Visual Plca su re a nd N arrati vc C inema ," Screen 16, IW. 3 (1975) : 6- 18; Kaja Silve rrnan , The Suhjecl (~/ Sentioli!:s (O xford: Ox ford Un iver­ sil y Press, 1983): E. A nn Kaplan . Women 0/'1(1 Film : BOIh Sides o/lIJe Cam era (Ne\\' York: Methuen , 1983); Teresa de La llretis, Aliee Doesl1'l: Ferninisl11, S emiolic.\. Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana U n iversj¡y Press, 1984); and Jacqueline Rose, SexualiL v and Ihe Field of" Vision (London: Verso, 1986). 6 Jan e G~lIop, The J)au,ghter's Sec!If(:lion, Femini.l'IF/ O/;d Psychoona/vsis (Ithaca: Co rnell U njvers it y Press, 1982) , 93. 7 R oland Barthes, R olwul Ba r/hes b.Jl R ola/1(1 Borlhes, transo Rich ard Howard (Lo n­ don: Macmillan , 1977) , 69. 177. 8 Julia Kri~teva, "Modern T heater Does Not Take (a) P lace," tran so Ali ce Jardin e
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)i r csh 19115l: arrd Il é k l1d '1\\)(1 ', I he I a rr ¡:1r ,,1 , he McU rrsa ." trans oKcilh ('O 11\:n an d /'alll" (" \he n, in NC lI l il 'lId, /o4l11ill i.I'III.I', IXI. J: lllirre Mark s ami b a belle de 'ollrlivron (A rnhc rsl : U lll wrs lty or Ma ssadwsc tts Press. 1980), 245-(,4. .!(, M on iqul' Witl ig, "Onc Is Not Bom a W oman ," Feminis f /ssu e,l' 1, no. 2 (1981): .'iO 51. 27 COlls ta ncc Pcnlcy 's I.:omme nt and Peter G idal"s reaetíOI1 are taken fr0111 Stephen lleath \ essay, " D ifference," Screen 19 (1978): 97; Heath's comment is from t he samc essay, 97 ·98. 2~ Nancy C hodo row, '[he Reprodu('(ion o/ l'vfolhering: Psychounalysis !l11!! the SOC'Ío ­ logy o( Gender (l3c rkc!ey: U nivc rsi lY oCC a lifo rni a Press, 1978). 21) See the survcy b y Jay R. Green be rg amI Steph en, A. M itcheH . Objecl R elaliOI/S in PsycllOal1!/lyfic Theory . (C a mbrid ge: Harvard Uni vers il y Press, 1983), as well as th e work of M a rga ret M a h ler. On Iluman S'ymbiosis and lite Vicissiludes o/ /ndi llidualiol1 (London: Hoga rth Press , 1969) a nd D. W . Wi nn icott , Play ing and R ealily ( Lond o n: Ta vistock. 197 1). .10 Heath , " Di ffe rence," Screen 19 (1978): 92. 11 Ibid. , 96-- 97. .12 Constance Pen ley, ,o ' A Ce rta.in Refusal of DitTerence': Feminis m aod Fi.lm Theory," in A,., afier Morlernism: Re lhinking R epreSel1 1l11 ion , cd . Brian W allis (Ncw Y ork : New M use um 01' Co ntemporary Art, 1984), 387. .1 ) Jacqueline R ose, Sexualily und Ihe Field o/ Vision ( London: Verso, 1986),209. 14 Rose , Sexl/(/lity (/l1d Ihe Fie/d o/ Vision , 210. \5 Julia K risteva, "Wo men's Ti me," transo A lice Jardine and Ilor ry Blak c, Siglls 7 (1981): 33 . .\ú Julia Krísteva , " Inte rview with Xavierc Gautlricr, Tel Quel 58 (1974), 98- 102: reprínted in N elt· hench Feminisms, ed. Elainc Marks a nd Isabelle d e Cou rtiv ro n (Amherst: Univcrsity o f M assach usetts Press, 1980), 166. n Shoshana F elma n, "Rereadin g Femininity," Yale Frel/ell Swdies 62 (1981): 4 2, \8 See K ri sleva's "Modern Theater Does Not Take (a) Place," as wel! as her inter­ view with Gauthier, noted a bo ye, where she identifies " the Illomcnt of rupl ure a rrd negatl vi ty which cond iti o ns and underlies lhe novelty 01' any praxis 'femini ne, '" and adds: " No ' l ' is th ere to assume thi s 'fcmillill ity,' but it is 110 Iess ope ral ive, rejecting al! that is fin ite a nd assuring in (sexual) pleasure the life of the concept " ( 167). \9 Josette Féral, " Perfo rmance and Theatricality," tra nso Terese Lyons. j\1odern Dramu 25 (1982): 170- 84 . ·10 See Keir Elam, T/¡e Sel1'liolics ojT/¡e(jll'e (Inri f)rama ( Lo nd o n: M ethuen . 1980),2. 11 Féral , " Perfo rm ance and Theat rica lity," 177 ··78. ·12 Ibid. , 178. ·13 Ibid ., 178. ,14 Ibid" 176. ·I.'i Ibid. , 178. ,1(, Jacqu~s Derrida , "The Thealer or Cruclty a nd tbe C los ure 01' R cprcserrtat io n," Wriling and f) ifJáe!1c(,. transo Alan Bass (Chicago: Unive rsit y of Chicago Press, 1(78).249. 1I Ilerbert Blau, "U niversals of Perfomlance: or, Am o rtiz ing Play," Sub-Sl!Il1c e 37-­ 38( 1 9~ 3 ): 148. ·IX Jean Baudrilla rd , " The Preccss ion 01' Sirnul acra," in Arl Ajiet ModemislI1 , ed. Brian W ' lllis (N ew York: New M useulTl ofCo ntempo rary Art, 1(84),253, 1'1 11éh:: lIe Ci;w u;;. "SlJrties." in N('l\' f¡' f lle/¡ Feminislns, 96. ~() Pcggy Karnllf. "W ril illg li ke a W oman. " in Women and Lal/J;uage in Lilera fllre artd ......(!('ú'lr. cd . S . M l,Co rl llell-(ji nct el al. (N ew York: Pracgcr. 1980).298.

1'\

It 11 1' /l ES HN I \ I 11.1N 5 1 Mil nu M iniel! Iln.:wct, '· "cl lul ltl illl' III1.!tlry ," 1'1'1'1 /11',' '/,,1 /1/1/1 1 i¡ (l'IX '1) : 11>, 52 .IucqUi.'S tacan , " I\IWI1l\ll'flho sis," r /¡ I: ¡'¡I/II' F IIII¡{i/l lII'l/ / rd ( Ú /lfI'JI /S ¡',H 'C'!IO Ana!y.I';,\', t ran so I\lall Shcridan ( Nl'w Y\Jrk: N NhlJ1 , I()XI), X4, 53 X, A udoua rd. "Q uestions ami A nswcrs," foll o wi ng Lac;¡n 's " Ihe Split Betwec n th e Eye and the Gaze," in Foul' FU/ldalllen/a! CO/lcep/s. 77, 54 Freud, " A n Au to biog raphical Study," tran so James Strachey (New Yo rk : Norto n.

T HE DY NAM I C S OF DE SI RE

1952), 47 , 55 Lacan . " Tbe Split Betwee n the E ye and the Gaze," 78. 56 Muriel Rukeyse r, " Myth ," in 7he Collected Poems (New York: McG ra w- H ilL 1978), 498,

Sexuality and gender in pornography and performance

(Ir

24

Jill Dolan

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174,

foclIS 01' eontemporary fem inist eritieism is on the rela tionship between systclll 01' representation and issues o f gender and sexual ity. F eminist critics .11 ~ lIe tha t the nature 01' representation is altered by the gender of perfo rmers .llId speetators, as \Vell as by their sexual preference. Both gender and sexuality , ,, II lg the dynamic of desire into play, in ro rming the narrative's structure, the 1 1'11 ,dllction 's "look," and the relationship between spectator and spectacJe. Thc role sexuality plays in performance and in the visual representation o f WI'!lll~11 as sexual subjects 01' objects is an issue intenseJy debated wit hin lhe Il'lIlinist critical community. This issue has prompted the creation of two I'p posing positions on the function of pornography within the culture. These (lllsilions arc rcprcsented by lesbians \Vho support the cultural production of ,1'\ 11;11 fantasies- for some groups, often in the form of Iesbian sadomaso­ 11 11:-;1ic rituals and pornograph y- a nd anti-pornography feminists who a rgue Inl kgislation against porn ographic images of womcn , contending that i1\1 1 111 1graphy etTuses sexual violence against wOlllen in the society-at-large ,2 I hel e is a third , com plex position that Illay encompass stanees aga inst censor­ 111)1 011 thc one hand , and yet not subscribe lo s/m practiees 011 the other. But 1111 Ih..: purp oses o r this artiele, that position will remain on the margins , since iI dlles !lot roclIs so much 011 notions a boLlt representation as on those of I l v ll I ights . I his artide will briel1 y revie w' the opposing positions in the pornography Il!'hll l\;. appl yi ng thcir pri ncipies to various forms of performance and the ~ 1 '~ lI a l n: rn.:scntalion of'wOf11 cn ' s scxua lity . From performance art and erotica, 1I1I 11I1), h k:s hia 11 pe lf orma nce 11 ne! IcsniHn porn ogTllph)', a range of materials \' di r11u:
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Lac.k O" iIIu:r.ions: thc anli-pornognll.hy debute.' and cultural reminisl performance T he m odel anti-porllography law drafted by Andrca Dwork in a nd Ca lherine M acK innon defines pom ography as " the graphic sexua ll y explieit subord ­ ination of women through picturcs and/or worus. . .. '" T he law goes on lo enumerate the various conditions und er whicb the representalion of women is considered pornographic, focusing on sex ual objectifica tion as the p li m ary delemlining factor. lo aD accompan ying statemenL Dworkín c1a rifies the iss ue of subord ination in term s of an imbaJance of po wer: S ubo rdination is a social-po Jitical dy na mic consisting 01' several parts. The first is that there is a hierarchy. T here's somehody o n the top al1d somebody 011 the bottom . . . The second .. . is objectification. The third ... is submission ... the fourth is violence.4 ror Dworkin , the insertion of power into social ~p olitical and sexual situ ­ ations automatical1y establishcs a hierarchy that leads to violence agains t women . Feminists who embrace this position as an arg umen t against pom o­ graphy are often al1ied theoretically and pol itical1y wi th the movement caJled "cultural feminism ." Cultural feminists tend lo valorize what they see as innate, biological1y based di rrere nces between men and women . W omen as the " life source," for examp1e, and men as destructive warmongers are distinctio ns commonly drawn by cultural feminists . Sínce the feminist antí-pom campai gn is based on an analysis that sees male sexua lity as in herently aggressive a mI violent, the cultural femjnist stance is sympathctic to the anti-pornography position.; Because male sexuality is problem atic \Vithín the stereotyped , polarized version ofthe sex/gender system that distingui shes this analysis, much cultura l feminist performance art attempts to evade the issue of sexuality and desíre by privileging spirituality. If power adheres in sexuality , and cultural fem ­ inists assume power leads to violence against women , it becomes politica1Jy and artistica1Jy necessary to attempt to disengage representation from desire. This de-sexualizing is partieularly impo rtant to heterosexual cultural fcmi nist performance arti sts, wh o view the disarming of dcsire as one ofthe flrst steps toward the " femini zatio n" of the maleo 1n cultural fem in ist performance art. then , the body is idealized as a. spiritual vessel, and sex ua lity l s reduced lO re productivity, often symbolized by wOl11en ' s contex tual ization in na tu re. Performance artists like Leslie Labowi tz and Hanna h W il ke ma in tain this personal , spiritual, biologistic approa ch to politics anu re presenta tions 01' the body. O pting no! l o examine differences a mong WO Inl'll based on racc, c1as:i, a mI sex ual prefe rence Ih rough po litica l ana lys is, [hey flrnpo~e un il'ying, essent ial femalc co n ncclions lha l wiJ1 u nÍle a ll PCOp ll' ii! 'lp iril ll;11 pClICC . In S"ro ll tim.' ( 11)XO), tú r \!xamp lc, lahowil7 invi les SpCV lilh 'I '¡ 11 1111 ti l' ll'cllh u lJSC

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~;l'ttin g. WI1 (;I\' shc is " muJc ;t 11l! ¡,{,ftl y lil ," wa lering her sp rollls . l'crl'ornló IlIL\' ;lrl hi!>ll)r ian Moira RO lh . w ho ~ll1l(l o nc1i the n: trcLlt inl n nalure and spiri l lI al­ ¡t y. sa ys, Certainly she is expressing 1101 only her OWll nced. bu l one increasingly sharcd by olhers, both men and women. fo r psych ic and spiritual no urish ment in such a painful moment in l1islory.(' rceding the spirit, however, disrcgards the per vasiveness 01' extern al gc nuer codes and markings that opera te on the body 's com mun ica tion 01' mcani ng . Wilke also privileges wo men's biologica l, natural capa bili lies o ve r an ex am ­ ination of the cultural construction o f gender differelll.;es in her re rfor111ance arl. Li ke most culturaJ fem inists, Wi lk e universalizes her irnage 01' wOmen 's hodies, ignoring the specificity of the historical m o ment wi th staterncn ls li kc "Women ar e the same everywhere in the wo r ld . ,, ) Her c1aim tha t Women are "biologically superior. ! can have a ba by, you can 't" indica tes her prescri p­ tions for the ideal cx pression and fulfi Umen t of wom a nh ood. Wilke bcl ieves Ihat in order To be the artist as well as the model ror her own ideas, whelher sexua1Jy positive or negative, she [the artist] must also resist the coercion 01' a fascist feminism , whi ch devolves on traditional politi cs and hierarchies in fe mi nist guise rat her than self~rea lization wi th respect to t be ph ysical superiority 01' wOmen as the Jife soun.:c s Whi1e Wilke 's assertions sound like a mystical , spiri lual charge, at base, this touted superiority 01' women transl ates merely into procreation. Lmplied in this an alys is is !he m aintenance of tradition a l family structures and gender roles. No attel11pt is made 10 deconstruct the biologistic view of wo men . There is no critique ofthe cu ltural construction 01' sexuaJíty o r gcnder implicd in Wilke's manifesto. Moira Roth and Lucy Lippard trace (he origins ofthis tradition in feminis t performélllcc art to the practice 01' cOllsciousness-raising, the predominant cultural form ofthe early women's movement.~ The é1utobiographical nature 01' feminist performance work in the 1970s was in line with a poli tic based on sharing personal experience, and on searehing for commonalities among women. Since women share basic biology, the nude female body became the literal a nd metaphorical site in performance art for wOl11en 's unification. Thc preva1cnce of nudity in the work reflected the movement 's concern with a ltitud es to ward women's bodies . Nudity in pe rformance also pa ralleled t he ím pelus in wo men \ tic t iOn and pQelry to artk ulate women 's newly-hea rd voi¡,;es by e vint.:in g whal wa:; cl)n silh:rcd él symbo1ic rec1 am a tio n o f wo men's subjcdivily througll tlle h\)\ly. '1'111: hudy/a rt l'on~ep l also ste1ll1lled from the n lllU!':t1 tC ll1i lli ,~t il11 ru bl' lu ~''''r"~~' WO III l! Il's in nlllc t1iflc rcnccs f rolll 1llen ,

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a nd lo sigrll ry a lk pall lll'~ t"rPllI lhc Ill Ol e Villkll l 11 .111 11 11 111 n l' l1 l.1 k pcrlilllll a nce
JusI as Ihe sc>./gl.!lIdl:l l>yHh'lIl ¡.. ,1 I'IlItula l \.."ollslrllct io n mandatco to serve 'iI)l:ill-P\lli lí¡:a l l:nds, t!l.:sÍlc í:, ulso co nstrllcted ou l of cultural con texts. As (ia ylc R lI bll l nOles, rcferring In h Hlcault, "Desires are not preexjsting biolo­ ¡'kal entilles, bUl rathcr , . . . lhey are l:on:;tituted in lhe co urse o f hist orica lly !;p\!cific sociul pracliccs." 1) Dcsire an d sexuality, as cultural constr ucts, also IIl1luellcc gender formation . Rubin adds,

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Genoer alTeets the operation o[ the sexual system, and the sex ua l system has had gender-specific ma nifestatio ns. B ut although sex ana genoer are relateo , th ey are not the same thing, anu they form the basis of two oistinct arenas of social practice. 14 Visual represen tations of women illustrate the overlaps and djstinctiolls hdween sexuality anu gender. ano ehart the operation 01' desire in relayin g IIIc¡lIlings between images and viewers. The magazi ne Eh/os, for example, hills itself as "erotit: entertai nment for womcn."I S In other words, it fowses lll! lhe relationship between gender and sexual desires by aiming its ero tic I·lllllent at heterosexual \vomen reaoers, not men o It reverses the traoitional lIl:mler roles the pornography industry reinfort:es by portraying men as sex ual 1)hjects and women as the viewers. Fidos's eoitors are cJearly aware 01' the problems inheren t in representa­ IHm , ,1I10 attempt lO address thc sexual objectilkation of \Vomen in porno­ '1 aphy by reversals that would objectify the male for women's visual pleasure, Wnmen are de picted in na ture , and the images of naked men are meant to kll1inize men by placin g them in parallel positions. In a manner similar ro 'ultural feminist performance art, Eidos implies that stripping people to their Ilude booies will also strip away the layered cultural constructions of botb ·.cxlIaJity ano gender. Women's sexuality is portrayeo as gentle, em otional , ,llId non-aggressive. The images of men propose that immersed in nature ano ,piriluaJity. men can be tall ght to give up their aggressivc, violent sexuality ,llId hecome fe minized as artístic nudes. Thc magazine assumes the same purist, vaguely self-righteous pose that 1 haral:lerizes cultural feminist performance art. SexuaJity ano desire are di s­ .III1H:d, their power dynamit:s purportedly erased by th e inscription of both IlInk and femaJe gender into a natural. dispassionate, spiritual space. There l·, 111) fantasy implied in the magazine's sccnarios, ano few interactions are Il' pn:senlco . The images are cerebral, rather than ero tic, more a comment on lile cu itors ' careful avoiuance of what the culture considers po rnographic Ihall Ihe prodllction of a different kind of sexual excitement. The images do IH,I rcally work as a new pornograp.hy . l'"Iolica SIIt:h as Eid(ls tries lo generate politicall y correct sexual im ages by 11111 ti ¡¡yillg t h\! body as a :.pi l il lI al vessel a nu by simply reversing maJe genoer !111"ilhmi ng, 1" conlrast, pl..rlilflnal1l.;c a rtist Karen Pi nley works to d isrupt 11.ld llilm;¡1 pllrn ngra phy by IlbS lllldi ll g lhe CXch

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\,:l lIl'd " 1 I ,1k1.: lo Smd llll l! (ill~ I'asscd f'n ll ll YOll r Ass," 'Tm a n Ass M an," ,11111 "Yu ms I Ip My Ora nJl y s Ass" iJl whieh F inl ey dU l1lp~ a can 01' yams .lwr her na keu bu ttoeks a nu ICls il Jrip into her boo ts- shc slIbverts porno­ uaphy' s rcp rcsc nlalion ll f uesire with images that confound mainstream sex lIalil y by shífting lhe typica l balance of power."1J Her aggressive d en ial tlr Ihc power dynamics of legitimate sexuality- tha t is. hcterosexuality , in wllidl mcn are powerful and women are passive- a ngers male spectators, \Vilo orten throw lit cigarettes at her. Finley refuses to participate in lhe rul es 01' representati o n by objectifyi ng hcrsclf. In performance, objectifiüatio n impl ies a n active m alc spectator who is inv ited to identi fy with the narra tive's hero in his search for the fulfiIlmen t •Ir his ucsire. 21 Finley d oes not offer he rself as a passi ve object. She rorces me n lo be passive in the face of her rage, ami she desecrates herself as the object of Ihcir desire, thereby mocking their sexuality. Her refusal to play the game kavcs the ma te spectato r nowhere to pl ace himselfin rela tion to her perfollTl ­ ;llIn: . He ca n no longer maintain the position ofthe sexual subject who views 1111': performer as a sexual object. Finley 's wor k revises the power balance in traditional pornography, by Il'prcscnting her body as subordinate to her own wiIl. She changes the axis o f Ihl: power exchange by dai mi ng sexual powcr for herself. Cultural femini sts asslIme sexual power forms a hierarchy that leads to violellce against the \Vllll1en who cIing to its lowest rungs. but such a hierarchy develops only whl'l1 there are sexual subjects and objects available to rank and trade. Finley has laken her body off this representational eom modities markct by refusing 111 appear as a consumable object. Karen Finley breaks from cultural feminist performance art traditions that l'va dc issucs of sexuality and power. She cIearly is not speaking for global Iclllillism. nor growing sprouts in a gesture toward \V'orld peace, but she is stiIJ J1 l1 hlicIy performing issues that are ultimately personal. She describes her arl .I~ Ihe cxpression 01' personal pain and rage, of emotions she caonot resolve IlIl clkclually. She performs in a trance, unrehearsed. Analysis seems to be 1I1 1!-.sin g fro m he r primordia l Ooze. Allhough sexuality and gen de r are shat­ Il lcd and I11caningless in her narratives, what remains is a qllivering mass 111 1Il1nameab le. ruptured ftesh-- the human \Vaste of sexuality, gender, and IWI fúrl11an ce. The shock vallle in Finley's work foregrounds cultural con­ ',lllIdi ollS in él negati vc, brutal way that evcntually forces spectators to look

"Yay .

Fin k y Pllrl'(l11TIS in gcnder-mixcd clubs, bul !hwarls IWI L·Ij) ~I.',ua r IIIlIk spcc­ IUlOr"S desil é hy ha sing h CI n;1I !'u I ives in grolCliquc !'ll'rWI ~1I111 11 1 (11'11. ¡rlllll llCCS

I ikc lhe Mcphistophelian scientist in D avid C ronenberg's remake of The 1 /1 ' (1 ()Xú), Finley cCln only transport herselfto lower and lower, more debased 1, 1I 11l<; or life . lleca use she is mired in the corporeali ty ofher own flesh as it has I It'l'l1 ;¡bll!)cd in lhe system 01' rep rcsentatioll, she never takes J1ight in to sexua l .1I 11 11'l'nd c r f~l ntusies 01' libcral io n . 1 Ill lcy's omissinn 011' li bc lut iw tUlltusics a ll ies itsel r wi th Ihe posilion 01' the ,1 1111 pum rc" dllisls. A lil'C 1\:IHlls. 11 1 II\.:r n il ique lll' Ihcir tl ll.d ysis, \Vrites Ihat

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Whatever might spew from the \Vound in the psyche Finley describes is the language of pornography. But sbe remlers the pornography impotent. In this id -speak, shi uin g, vomiting, and fucking arc ull eq ual. Desire attaches to disgust. I ')

IUI I'ldHl II Ñ 'I' ¡\ 1111 N

an li-pom IClIl1n lslS have lorm 01' fanlusy which

as fal' as Icgí-; Iiltlllg ltg¡i ll lt,1

1' 111

thi:

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The structure of desire. by necessity. differs across sexual preference. Porno­ graphic narrat ives or any kind 01' performance for sex ual partners 01' the same se)( construct a d iffcrcnt relationship between performers and spectators on the basis 01' gender roles. rn lesbian performance, the rcprcsentation of desire is often startling betAluse of this di fferc nce. Lesbia n sexuality is given voice and imaged in tbeatre, where heterosexual male desire has historical1y reigned in the form of the male gazc. In the lesbian context, playing with fantasies of sex ual and gender roles offers the potential for changing gender-coded structures of power. Power is not inherently male; a woman who assumes a dominant role is only male­ like If the culture considers po wc r as él solely male attribute. When a lesbian performer assumes sexual power in the lesbian performance space. the re­ assignation of meaning becomes subversive. C reatin g a stage motivated by ditTerent kinds 01' desire aJlows experi­ mentation with style. roles , costume, gender, and power, and affers a ltern­ ative cultural meanings. Lesbian performance, in its particula r East Village Manhattan variety, foregrounds the subversion of the dominant culture'!, gender-polarized images of sexual power in the context of lesbia n desi re. Lesbian performers, writers, and directors parody dominant cultural images of gender to deconstruct gender-specific conduct élncl codeso Lesbian performances in Manhattan's East Village is housed prim ari ly at the WOW Ca fe, which now occupies a f100r in a nea rl y-a bando ned wa re­ house bui lding 011 East 4th Slrcet, across from LaMama. W hen the Cafe began in 1982, it offered a place for mastly lesbian women to meel. to J rin k caflee ar b uy beer fram an impromptu kitchen, and to be cn lert uined by informa l performances. rol' a time. Il!Sbia n perrormcrs hascJ at WOW ,liso pc rformcJ al o lh\!r Easl Vi llacc pC lfnrmam:c cl uhs. which rnaUl !"\lr , 1 1hea l "l' cxpericllce

1I0t IIl1 lí " c a proglcssivc UIIIIIl'I Ipl Ihen ;luJicIICCS. '\ On a ny givcll wcekclJll IIlg hl :-.pcct the entertainment it offers. I: xpanding the boundaries 01' gender roles is a given both in the perform­ anees and the WOW space, in which the spectators, as well as the performers, Wl~ar costumes that push at the construets 01' gender-specific codeso Since the spcctators al WOW are mostly women and mostly 1csbian, the performers' manipulation oftraditional sexual and gender roles is mirrored in the audience. ()f'ten, women known in tl le community to be more " masc u1ine" in manner and style will arrive to see perfo rmanees dressed in "feminine" costumes- or vice versa. This blurring is mirrored in performan ce. where for the speetalor. part 01' the fun is frequently seeing someone she kn ows assume her opposite "hutch" or " fem me" role on stage. To be " fe mme" is an option for lesbians Ihat 1:llIs a tone end of a more fI uid gender role contin u um that oflers " butch " as an option at the other end. Exaggerating the trappings 01' traditio nal femin­ ille and masculine gender roles in performance highlights their unnaturalness as cultural constructions. This attention to gender costuming is key to ehit 01(/1 With Carmelila ( IlJ84), an on-going lesbian performance structured as a talk show. Hostess ( 'armelita Tropicana (Alina Troyano) is a lesbian performerdressed in temale drago as are many of her invited guests. These pe rformcrs foreground the !le nder role 01' women in heterosexual society and w ithin the lesbian com­ IIllInity by exaggerating the gcstures and costuming of the feminine woman as ' I(;mmc." The concern \Vith costul1ling in the construction of character an d pl'rsonae in Chil Chal is important and elaborate, as if to acknowledge that pwp1c's carerully constructed "looks" have much to do \Vith the \Vay they are ¡.',I.'ndcr coded. The gender-specific costumes, however, assume new meanings through lhe perrormcrs ' sexual and gender role-play . In Chil Chal. Carmelita appears in a long, red . flowered evening gown , wcaring a 1Calher boa and heavy makeup. Carmelita is a Carmen Miranda ·sl'nd- up." a persona wi th él thick Cu ban accent constructed by a performer whosc aelual ethnrcity is a lso Cu han . Thus. Troyan o parodies both her ethn ic .li1d her g\!ndcr role. 1 h... "kIllIllC " costume o n Carmelita Tropieana is a I \lllI nh!lI t 011 hot \¡ ilsdl alld the pc rlor11lcr. C armeli la appropriates the

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they claim is dangcro u:; beca use it en tails the sllbsutu lio n of an illu1iion fo r the " social-sexual rea lity" of another persono In reject­ ing as so mueh "male-identified mind -body dualism " the belief th a l fantasy is the repo:'titory 01' ou r am bi valent and confl ictual Ceelings, cultural femini sts have devel oped a highly mechanistic, behaviorist ana.1 ysis th at confla le~ fantasy with reality and pornography with violenceY T a ken to extremes. arguments like thi s co uld insist on the complete abolil ion of representation as fanta sies that substitute illusion for realily.

Liberative fantasies:

lesbian performance and sexuality

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exaggerateJ IClllin ine arpa rd lú r It:¡,biun tllealn:. rhl: :ludil'I1Ce sllrieks a pproval at her appca rall(;e and , with catcalls a nd applUllSC. purt icipates in the parod y o f sexual meanin gs. A t another point in the pieee, Camlelita appears dressed in a tuxedo as t he Spanish-speaking pop singer Julio Iglesi a to si ng love songs about women , This double Iesbian drag show foregrounds the notion of gender as drag.25 C armelita's impersonation of Iglesia al so appropriates the pop ular roman tic music tradi tion- another bastion of strict gender role education- to express lesbi a n sexuaJity. T hc structure of the piece parodies typical talk sh ow fo rmats. Ca rmeli ta sings several o ff-k ey melodies. ind uding a ftou rishing rendition 01' Debbie Boone's " YOl! Ligh t lJ p M y Life" ; offers a Cuban/Japanese eooking lesson in which she hacks up a chic ken wi th a meat dea ver; and interviews various guests. T am my W hynot, Lois W ea ver's character from the Split Bri tches Company' s production Upwardly M ohile H ome, appears as one o fthe guests. Whynot is a lso a "send-up" of the fe rnme ro le. W eaver wears her d yed. platinum-blonde hair bouffant-style, pain ts her face with heavy but tas teful makeup, and decora tes herself with rhinestone jewelry and s
1.1111 likl..' J)(IIl IlU Dicu:h '!\ j).',I"' ff 11,'111'/1' (l'>X(I), it is the lesbianism 01' the t\Vo Ill:lill c llara cters Iha l is ~h ()ckillg. g ivt: n the viewing expectations 01' a general dlldil'ncc. ~in ee leshia nislll i ~ (l:)SUl ned in WOW perrorm a nces, the genderiz ed l'o llvenli o ns 01' po p ula r form s beeome startling insteaJ . 1 he WQW Cafe performcrs
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Making all of the couples women not only parodies the Harlequin Romance formula , but heterosexual rela ti onsb ips as well , in so far as lhey are groumled in polarities ol' sex ual difference.. . . Al though , clcarly, the production is devised primarily for enterta inmen t, the illlent to undermine the social and sexual values 01' the rom ance I',enre is evident. 21, Scxuality is often directly represented in lesbian perfo rml ller. h ullh c scx llal lcnsi()fl bclween t]lem pcrmeates the stage H " tldkss 0 1' \) I IH: r cwntN . T lll'Y -;cJIII."l.: l.:ach o lh cr by t rading charged sexual 1)1'\\1\'1 in whk h d ~s i l\;,' i, 111(' lllll y Jl ill'l.'~IIl1l.::l n i nu. "

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A ltlwugh mUl-h ni hel \Vo l k .lS ;¡ d i n:~ l ol " lid p~ , ICl ' t lll'l p ll lld Iw o tlh.:ll sC ll1 i-au lll bi ogTuphical, Wuuvcr suys s il\: sccs pcrrOl lll;1I1l.'C as a dlalt ~ c fe) I people lo pul Iheir fantas ics o n st age. Spl il Bri tchcs' petl'nrmallccs lIslIally create eccentTic chara cle rs lha t grow from the pcrrorrnc rs ' ucsire lo perrOml lhe less visible parls of themselves. In Upw({,.d~v Mohile Home (198 5), ror example, Weaver plays the bleaehed-blonde T ammy W hyno t, a wo uld-be coun­ try western singer, refleeting her own geographic and cultural origins: Shaw pl a ys a lesbian mother, a role she plays at home, but which is dis la nceJ in performance by the add ition of an Eastcrn E uropean accent; and Deborah Margolin, the third traupe member, pla ys the aggressive, hard-sell mana ger orthei r perfofming aet , playing o tf her own Jewish eth nicity . The trio is living in poverty in a van parked below Lhe Brook lyn Bridge. a nd sin ce they are per­ formers, the narrative is set in a theatrical eon text. Spli l Britches' productions are known fo r their orten ec\ectic com binati ons of fastidious attention to realistic detail with bizarre f1ights 01' surrealistic fancy . In their signature piece, Split Britches (1983), the stultifying dai ly rou­ tine of three rural women is captured by repeti tive dialogue and lon g pauses, then suddenly interrupted by bursts of energy ami narrative col o r. T he same st ruct ure is used in Upward(v M obile H ome, in which the basic, simple pl o t is di srupted by surreal, im aginative m onologues that break the fourth-wall and linear narra tive conventions the play esta bli shes . Fo r instance, without drop­ ping her Eastern E uropean character, Shaw J irectly addresses the spectatoTs, asking them if their seats are comfo rtable, and if they are getting what th ey paid for. She makes the audience aware that it is separate from he r fa nta sy, di srupting the normal theatre convention that requires sLlspension of disbelief. This wil1ingness 011 the part of lesbia n playwrights and performers to locate their work in theatre conventions, rather than in the il1usionless doc u­ l11entation of most cultural feminist performan ce art, al10ws for the use of tantasy to imagine different realities. Gender roles. for example, are reimagi ned along an expanded continuum. Sexuality and dcsire, as opposed to being banished as problematic taboos. are continual1y present as subtext in these performances. The presence of lesbian dcsire, in fact, helps to refashion the manner in which gender and sexual roles are played in both performance and reality. Basing their work in the conventions of theatre also allows these performers to comment on and manipulate the traditional gender-eoded performance apparatus. Lesbian performances at WOW general1y ta kc themselves mucb less seri ­ ously than most cultural feminist performances. Self-parody in terms 01' gemler. race , and c1ass provides a starting point for redefin ing al1 demarcations 01' gender, race? amI c1ass. In one of U{Jwardly /vlobilc IIome's more absurd ist mome nlS. Margolin engineers the trio 's a ud ition for a Jewish agent. Wea ring a S upreme'b-style d ress tha t endoses t hem in an claslidzeu embrace, Shaw, Weaver, ;md Margol in sin g " 1 Like lO be in Amcrica" fmm 11'1'11 '<;idc Slorl' in Yilldi¡¡h . Only Marl!.tllin is a l a l1 ",om forlah lL: wil lt Ih!.: I111 Il sltlli(1I1 , butthc

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Ilt al S hil w and W I.::lVc.' 1 t; llI lIl l1k , IV~'I Illl· lyl il..s a ll d lite a c~c lII fllrcgrou nus Iltl' l)tlJody . The d rcSS a \1 li J e'> l \l Illl' cultsl r ue l iolt 01' Blaek r\,ll1l a lc pcrlormers ,1' ellltllrU I I.:~) lIl lllodilies, wlti k lit!.: IranslaLiol1 inl" Y iddish comrnents ironic­ ;tll y llll lite id cl.llis lIl 01' all illl n rigranl aspirants to the Ame rican drcam. By dra will g 1'1'0111 a grab-bag of persollac mixed across gender, race, and class, ;rlld perforrning Ihcm without attempting to layer imperson a tions on top of Ilteir already spccific charal:terizations, the Spl it Britc hes performers redirect spc.: cla lors ' attitudes. In leshian performance, pcrformers' bodies are not displayed nude, b ut in Ihe costul11es 01' their cultural conslructs, wh ich the perfo rma nces subvert Ihrough pointed comedy . The performances at the WOW C afe have been niLicized in so me circles for lhe prcvalence of butch/fem me role-playi ng in l he work, which is seen as politically incorrect. Nonetheless, as Iesbian perform­ ;lIIce makes clear, pl ayi ng with sexual rol es and fant a sy does not rein force .'c nder rol es. b ut points out the eontradíctions in a nd limits to the traditi onal vonstruction 01' polar ized gender ehoiees. 1;1\'1

Reassigniog gendered meanings: tbe case of lesbian I)Ornography I'ornography is the most direct, available representation of sex uality in th is l'ltlture, and in a sense, exemplifies the constructiol1 of shared meanings between ill1ages and viewers. Mass market heterosexual pornography, for example, can he scen as a basic paradigm of maJe desire dri ving representations of women. I'herefore, alternative pornography, such as women's erotica or lesbian porno­ )'raphy, can illustrate how dcsire can be differently represented. rrorn a cultural feminist point of view, pornographic imagcry is woman­ Itating regardless ofwhose d esire it represents. Lesbians, for instance , get " bad pn:ss" in the pornography debate, for reasons that revolve aTO und both sexu­ ¡Ilily and gender. Jn the late 1970s, a group oflesbians called Samois advertised lIs prercrcnce for sadomasochistic practice. The small, San F rancisco-based !roup's crusade to increase the visibility of s/m as a n option for lhe expres­ :.iolt 01' 1esbian sexuality promptcd heated debate in I'eminist circles, m05t Itolahly at a 1982 Ba rnard Conference on sexuality .19 Because s/m lesbians Ilafllc in power ro'les, which are assllmed to be gender marked, anti-porn klllinists assume their sexuality is male or male-identified. This assumption I'()nflates sexuality with gender. Power is inherent in sexual and gender role play, since lhe gcnder system is I'olarized along a continuull1 on which men are see n as the dominant extreme and women as Ihe passive, subrnissive other. As Al ice Echols cautions. " We '.llPuld ack nowlcdge lhe po::¡si bili ty that power in heres in sex uality rather lit an ass ull1e Ihal power 'iim ply withers away in cgali la ri a n relationships ."30 )\ 11 sc.\ualil y has a 4 11 ~ )1 ienl ,,1' nnwcr. Satl o masochism takes po wer to extremes, In ~ill1ply makl.!,.'i Icx l llill w lr a l I~ slI hl ex luil l in l11any ..sex ual relationships. ( ,'.)

BOl h <1', a p;lI udiglll 01 tI\I: \; \1 11 11 fe 's \;\,..S ll m;liulI ul ¡ '~ I h lll II lId a:; a SC:\ II;1I ch oil.'C, s/m ca n be :iCC II as a li lcra linllio n 01' lhe POW\! I :.Ia l liS 1I1I 1~n': 1I 1 in the dich o tomizcd malc/lema lc roles. Firsl aml:ndmCll1 iSSUl:S asiue, pcrhaps Icsbia n s/m offers an opportu nity lo explore Lh e nal ure of poWCI an u sexlIa lity apa r! froll1 strict genJer dichoto mies. The Barnard debacle a nd the resu lting lengthy, a ngry dialogues in t he fe minist press prom pted the publication 01' lesbian pornogra phic ma gazin es that spell out in images and words some lesbia ns ' altemati ves to poli tica lly­ wrrect feminist sexuality. In a visual space mean t al least theorelically to be free o fmale suborJination an J o bjectification of wo men, these magazines olTer representations of onc kind 01' sexu a lily based in lesbia n dcsire. By imaging a nJ performing fantasies in which power becomes a ne utral qua lily a va il able to women, their editors suggest that the nature of sexuality and gender can be explored and perhaps rundamentally cha nged . As in lesbia n performance, lesbia n pornography evinces a wiJlingness to ex periment wilh sexual and gender roles. The lesbian porn magazi ne 0 11 Our Backs, for instance. is billed as "Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbia n,"l l which places sexuality in lhe con text of fantasy , imaginatio n , and experimentation. On the cover 01' lhe Spring 1985 issue, two wom en a re photographed agajnst a white wall, wearin g outrageo us , punk -style outfi ts­ leopard-design, skin-tight fittin g pants, leather jackets, studded belts an d bracelets. and high heels. One of the women has a tiny dildo attached to her belt. The image introduces On Our Backs' iconog raphy , which is aggressi ve, but irreve rent. Lesbian pornography prese nts sexual fantasies constructed through co s­ turnes and locations , ma ny of which echo scenarios in traditional male pornography. There is sorne direct appropriati on of male forms in lesbian pornography , but they acquire new meanings when they are used to com­ municate desire for readers of a different gender and sexual orientation. A n 0 11 Our Backs photo spread ca1led "Rack ' n' R oll Ramona ," for examplc, resembles a similar spread in th e J une 1985 issue of H usller, which is called "Slas h: A Different D r ummer. "32 T he J/usller scenario sets Slash in a performance contex t. She is alone on stage with a drum seto which she never plays. She uses the drum sticks merely to point to her vagina, substituting for the missing (but implied) ph a llus. Slash 's costume borrows the iconography of prostitution , and contextualizes her within s/m imagery . She wea rs a studded collar arounJ her neck , studded lea ther bracelets on both wrists, a nd a leather corset with thin shoultler straps. the bodice ofwhich underli nes her ereet nipples . The corset is attached to two ga rters that hold up black , fishnet stockings, worn with high-heelcd sil ver sandals. T hrollghollt lhe scena rio, thick cigar srn oke a ppears lO be d rifti ng into lhe frame fro rn an o lT-sla ge so urce , im plyi ng th a l m ale spcl.!t al nrs 111 1: wUlc hing Ihe performa nce in a ca barel sctl ing . The pcrl"OTl J1U IIVe 11;1 1111 " n I III\! sprcad /f)

.t~sl , e l alé '" 1I will! slrip h::t..,~. 111 , ",, 1 Slilsh is cOllslmcted as the dusi vc object nI" IlIa le dcsile . In ulle ¡\ r the phul llgraplls, Slasll slllokes a cigarette witll one hand . \1 1)ldillg her drum stit.:k¡¡ ill tlK' o tllcr. The iconography is a lmost butch; hCI loo!.. i:s a ki nd 01" d a re. SIl irpe r Sd h Wcene, in a n article wri tten ror the Sex IS.i"u e of the fem injst ioumal Jleresies, analyzes strip-tease with descript io ns an alogo us to ]Jusl/er's CO lll cxtua lizalion of Slash:

I suddcnly realizcd that what was at issue between us perfOlw ers [strippers] anJ the audience was power. The men carne, sorne af them. to sllffer: their attitude was " She is ma king me ho rn y. but [' lIl1ever ha ve her." T o them , the show was exq uisite frustrati an, the sexy woma n an ~tage, a tormentor. Th e other group of men came to puU imagino ary strings; they saw themselves as mas ters .... In othcr words, some of the men fantasized themselves as passive, others as dominant. 33 I'mwr is cJearly at isslle in the strip-tease context of Slash's performan ce in 1/1/.lller. Although she is objectified , she is inaccessib1e and to sorne degree ';;ldistically in control of thc implied interaction. In 0/1 Our Backs' fea tllred photo spread "Rack 'n' Rol1 Ramona " (p. 22), IlIlICh 01' the icono!:,'r aph y used in Hustler is recontextlla lized for lesbia n leadcrs. The spread begins with photograph s of R amona in a perfo rma nc.:e n mtext. Her costume echoes Slash's- she wea rs a da rk corset that high­ htrhts her ereet nip ples, a ga rter belt , high hecls, stockings, black gIO\'es, and .1 sllldded leather Wrist band o rhc tcxl beside the photographs informs the reader that Ramona perfonn s ;11 Baybrick's [a lesbi an ba r in San Francisco] Burlesque for W omen da nce :.Ilow. Ramona is clearly a real person , playin g out th e performance scenario, IIl1like Slash, who is obviollsly a modellconstruct. Ramona makes her livin g by stripping for lesbians. In con trast to the wordless spread in Husller, RallHlna 's intervie\v with "Fa nny Fa tale" accompanies her photos. While Slash is inaecessib1e and sadistic, the On Our Backs interview text dl'snibes Ramona 's sexual ex ploits with women who come to see her show. The IIlt er\'icw is focusetl on her sexuality in the contcxt of her life as a performer, .llId highlights a n interest in butch/femme sexual role-play. Ramona reports,

1get (hese bealltifu\ reOlinine women after me, and they say, "R amona. I don't know about you. You' re not feminine and you're not mascu­ lillc. Ya ll'rc like a mountain- that' s why r want to cJimb you!" (p. 26) Ri ll n'~ lIa in vites a blu rring nI' genJcr d islincti o ns that influenees lesbia n ·,l·\ uali l) . " \ J () I1' t know ¡lbUI\ I yOll" i:; scxl,tally exciti ng in the lesbian pero 1IIII I\anl.:l: and ~neiil l l:\l n ICX I

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S/m sCX ~)I Lc n l/SI.'::; 1~l l c-r l ilyill~\ ¡¡ lid ~O Il S I III\.: I Cd ~~~ II . III\1 ' , llltlh 11' C\plílll: the impliea li<)lls l,r hlu l red scxual allo gClldcl t'1)lc$ ~ ucll .. :. R, lllIo lla '::; " 11 101111 ­ lai n," a mi l O ael out strid gcn J c r eX lremes. Ant i-rOIlI Icmi nish ahho r !he e1emen l 01' {'an tasy in s/m, and disarr rovc of ro lc-playing in lhc co ntcxl of sexuality. Robi n R uth Linden. in her int roúuctioll lo a collectio ll 01' essays called Agaill.l'l Sadoma.\·ochi.l'/11, w riles th al "Sadoma soch istic roles amI practices atternp t to replicate the phenomen ology 01' oppresslon thro ugh role-playing."34 She w rites that s/m attempts an eroticization ofpowcr and powerlessness ... achieved through enact­ ing fantasi es involvi ng variations on polarized roles.... Ri tualizcd "scenes" are arranged a round specific aetivities in which sex ual partners have a mutLtal interest . ..." Linden's cultural feminist critique fail s lO consjder the positivc ramilications of role appropriation and ex perirncntation . The lesb ian s/m pornographi c costllmes and scenes in On Our ButAs are actually gender\ess. They have bee n assigned connotations by the contexts in which the culture has inserted them. Inserting them in different contexts dis ru pts their traditional meanings.

Toward a new articulation of gender and sexuaJity lJnder the dictates of tbe anti-pornography debate, desire has come to be scen as a male trap that automatically objectifies and oppresses women . To in vesligate sexual and gende r roles in re presentation, howevcr, whcre desire is an intluencing factor , it is importa nt to acknowledge that desire is not neccs­ sarilya fixed , male-owned commooity, but can be exchangeo , with a much diffe ren t meaning, between women. When the locus of desire changes, the dClll onstration of sexuality and gender roles also changes. The political diffe rences that separate feminists arouno the porn ograph y debate translate into aesthetic differences between cultural feminist and lesbian performance art. i\nti-pornography activists and cultural feminists are caugh t in a restrictive, literal interpretation of desire as male that limits their a bility to sce the potentialities 01' representation. By avoiding the representat io n of scxuality ami desire for the safety of nature and spirituality, thereb y limit­ JÍng women to the capabilities biology outlines, cultural feminist perform a mx artists prescribe a \\iorlo chise\ed in unchangeable gender differences , in which passion is expressed as a gentle, affectionate embrace. Yet ironicalJy, these artists cannot escape lhe infections 01' representat ioll . They contradict their ai ms when they loca te so much 01' their work in t he nllde femaje bod y, yet insist that men (and women) bli ml themse lves lO desire étnd sex uality. W ith teehn iques th a! are essentially d ocumcntHl'y. sillce t hey fear ill usio ns, t.:u ltuml fcm inis! performance art fó;lils lo lak.c flI l!.h! ;r1 !O !he Iiberativc fanltlsics lh~lt ksbian pcrforrnanl:C ímal;l.illl.:s

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J)c(l' IIIII1I Cd 111 )1 11' he 111l,u 'lIIl1'd l1y 11 \1; IIll1Siolls Iha! ha w pe l p~ ! uat~ J W(IIIICII'S IIpprc,;s iplI 11I 1í.!CI It·I' I' ·~\.! III II II (lIl , and lkt crm in ctl !o tl isinlCct tltclll 'ic lvc:> n IHil !he harlll dO lll' hy Ihe represcn!a!ion 01' male fantasies in "oth pcrrur malllx "ntl porm'glCl phy , cullural l'eminists si tu ate most of their wnl'k in n:al seUings, real !ime, a nd real b odies. Detached from any concrete \ 1Illsidera!ion 01' maJe sexuality, sinee it is not at all important to their \Yo rk , il's hia n pcrl<mllers are willing to experiment wi tb male forro s, incJud ing la l1tasy. Lesbian artisls si fl th rough popular culture, conventiona l theatre /'0 1111 s, aní.! even pornography, to see wh at they hold that might he salvagetl rOl"

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Ás lesbian performance and lesbian pornography cJarify, albeit in different ways, it is unnece:;sa ry to abandon eve rything once considered male-like for a wnrld of nature and spirituality considered penullima tely female-like . Powor, :iex lIality, and desire have historical conno tations assigned by rhe do mi nant l'IiI!lIrc for reasons 01' ~ ocia l, economic, ami cult ural e.x pediency that have Icstrictcd wom en's abilities to express themselves ano their scxuality within Ihis culture. B ut power, scxuality, and desire can be recuperated from th e II ictly male domain, and can assume distinctly ú ifferent meanings placed in dilTerent scxLlal and gcnder contcxlS . Putting imagination and fantasy back into pl ay allows for a limitless I\.: visioning 01' a rcality that has been hampered by strict gender and sexual 111 les. Flying on lesbian desire in the free-falJ space oflesbian theatre alJows a lea rliculation of gender and sexuality in the meaningful exchange between ·.pct.:lator and performer.

Notes Sce Teresa de Lauretis, Atice DOeSl1'f (Bloolll ington: Indiana IJniversity Press , 1984) for ",ork on the relationship o f d esire to narrative str ucture. De Laurctis wriles, " Wolllan is then olhe very g round 01' represent¡¡tion , both object and sup­ porl 01' a desire which , inlima te ly bound up lI'ith power and creativity , is the Illoving force of cullure and h ist ory" (p. 13) . See E. Ann Kaplan . Women & Film: /lof/¡ Sides (~rf¡'e ClJl11el'lJ (N ew York : Methuen . 1993), particularly her chapter " 1$ I.he Gazc MaJe""" 23- 35. for an analysi s of th e geoderized aspects of the einematic "Inok" that has uscCul correlations lo performance. See La ura Mulvey, " Visual I'lc<Jsurc anel Narralivc Cinema Screen , 16:3 (1975), 6 ·- 18 for one of Ihe first psychoanalytical an alyses 01' women 's posi,ti o n in reprcsentation. 1 Se.~ Ihe Sex ls.l'ue. He/'esies #/2 3:4 (1981) for short anides cxpounding both vicws: Pel! C alifla , "Felllinism a no Sadomasochism:' Hcresies #/2, 30 - 35, for Ihe IlIaniCe st() (JI' the mosl vocal pr.o ponent of lesbian stlll sexuality; COl11ing fo Pmver, SalllOis C olleclive, cds. (revi sed cd., Boslo n: Alyson Publications, 1982), for arti­ l'ks amI personal tcstiJllol1y on lesbian sadomélsochistic p ractiec; Anorea Dworkin , 1'()/'II(),!!;rllp/'y: Mí'1/ Posse.l'.I'ing WOI/1CI1 (NeIV York: Perig ree Books, 1979) Cor th e lúrem osl ;1I1\i-pornography fClllinist Ir
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4 IbiJ . 5 Sec A li.:e Echols, "TIle Ne w ¡'cm inislll o f Vin a mi Yang" fOI a t:ritiq ut: oft:ultural feminism in POWefS (JI Dcsire, Ann Snitow. C hristinc Stllnsdl , ami Sha roll Thompson , eds. (Ne w York: Monthly Rev it: w Pres~, 1983), 439 59. 6 Moira R oth , ed. , 7he Amazing DeclJde: W O/llcn a//(J Perjórmo/lce Arl in A/11erim 1970 ¡980 (Los A ngeles: A stro Artz, 1983).34. 7 "Politieizing Art: Hannab Wi lkc ," The N el\' ('ommlll7 Good, May 1985, l. 8 Wilke intervie\\', quoted from the catalogue 01' the exhibition American Womell Arlisls at the Sao Paulo Museum , Jul y 1980, lO. 9 See Roth , 1111' Amazing Deeade. and Lucy Lippard , From ,he CenIa: Feminisl Essays on Women·.I' Ar¡ eNew York: E. P. D utt o n, 1976), particularly her chapter on E uropcan and American women 's body art. 121 - 38. 10 For a full dest:ription of this piece, see Jeanie Forte, "Rat:hel R o senthal: Femillislll and Performant:e Art ," Womel/ & P eljórll1l1l1ce Journa/2:2 (1 985), 30- 31. 11 For thcorelit:al \\'ork on this position , see Mo nique Wittig's writings in Feminisl IsslIes, particularly "The C ategory 01' Se"," F all 1981. 12 Sct: Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosex ual ity and Lesbian Ex istence," Signs 5:4 (Sulllmer 1980). l:l Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex : Notes for a R adical Tht:ory of tht: Politics of Sex u­ ality," in P/easlIre (I/1{/ f)al1g er, Carol S. Vance, ed . (Boston: R outledge & Kegan Pa ul , 1984), 276. 14 R ubin, 'Thinking Sex," 308. 15 Eidos 1:4 (Spri ng 1985). 16 W h ile Ka ren Finley had been performing her unique brand of performance art on the European performance st:ene for quite sorne time, Vi//age Voiee write r Cindy Ca rr began to ca ll special attenlion to Fin ley's pending Ne w York appt:arances in Spring 1986. Carr's beat is the off-beat , as it were. Since her tastes run towa rd feminist , lesbian, aml otht:r gcndcr-bending performers, she was dearly intrigued by Finley, and featured her upcoming downtown perfomlances in a kind of hot­ tips prcview section. Several wecks after rinley began to present (very) late-night pcrfonnant:es at venues such as The Kitchen , the Voice ran Carr' s cover story "Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural ACIS: The Taboo Art 01' Karen Finley" (24 J une 1986). Carr's style for the Finley story is somewhat inct:ndiary, alt hough no more so than other, even more sensational cover stories the Voiee has run on topics such as gay maJe back-room sex dubs Iike the defunct Mineshaft. Finley, ho wever. is a heterosexual woman , and the fact th a t the paper featured her perfo rmance perversions on its cover prompted an outpouring of angry respon se from readers and other Vo;ce writers that filkd lhe paper's letters pages and opinion colulllns for several wet:ks. 17 Carro "Unspeakable Praetices," 17. 18 Carr, " U nspeakable Practiees," 86. 19 Ibid. 20 In a performance in Cologne in ¡981, Finley and her husband Brian Routh (one (lf the Kipper K ids) performed as Adol!' lI itler and Eva Bra un. "Kipper gooses tepped and saluted, naked from the waist do wn. F inley wore a ..-:orset ami garte r belt, and because she h,ld diarrht:a, periodit:ally tOl, k a d ump on one s ide of lhe stagc. On one orthe nigh ls. K ipper sang a .Ioh n ny Mathis hit. then \Venl lo tht' bow l wh erl;' Fin1t:y had bt:t:n rclicvi ng herselfand lapped up lhe shit " (Carr, IQ), Asearr lIotes Ihis is clca rly no t l11 ai nslrcam sexualil y. 21 See de La urclis. A/ic(' /)/lt' I'I/ '/ "Dc:;irc illld Na rra li vc:" IO J~ ',7,

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¡\lin ' h :hllls, "' 1he 1U111 1II}' 111111.: Id ," ill 1'/"" .\'/11'('1/1/(/ J)'/lIf.!('/-. 511. .) \ TI ...: Sr'J'illg 1!)H5 itisll t: 111 I lit ' '-'nI/l/a !<" I'il'll' 'f'/05 (2(): 1) is devo ted to East Villagc pl'rrlllll ltIlH':C. I:;It: h tlr the.: cluhs prOlllincnl in the neighborhood in Fall 1984, jusI hc.:fo rc most of them \Vere closed, is profiled in cletai l. A n article t:alled ":lO Novclllbcr IIJR4" d\Jcuments diflerent performances happening 011 tlle sume evening al du bs within walking distance 0 1' each other. WOW performers are profilcd in s,'veral 01' the perfomlances described. See also Alisa Solomon's article on the hislory 01' the WO W C afe in the same issue. 24 Wt:aver ilnd Troyano ma dc these remar ks on él piUlel about Ea st Vi llage perform­ ance held during the Women's Program (of the fomler America n T h eatre Associa­ tion) pre-con vention 011 A ugust 16, 1986, a t New Yo rk Universit y. Writer/performer Holly If ughes, who is a lso a core WOW m ember, joked that East Village art happencd because the places people live in a re so sITIall they are forced to crea te social and artistic outlets simply to have somewhe re else to go . ' .~ See Sue-Ellen Case, "Gender as Pla y," W OIl1 e l1 & Peljilrmal/ce .Iourna/I:2 (Wi nler 1985), 21 - 24. C ase writes, "The drag role rnakes all gender roles appear fictitious ," 1«¡ Kate Da vy, " Heart 01' the Scorpion at the WOW Cate." The Drama Re viell' TlO5 29:1 (Spring 1985) , 56. .'7 Shaw , wh o is quite tall, tends to \Vear shin y, 1950s style suits, llarrow tieso and black shoes with white socks. Weaver, whose hair is dyed plat.inum blol1de a /a Tammy W hynot, wears makeup, jewe lry , a nd generall y more femin ine clothes. Sccing the couple, and other WOW performers, on the st reet , it is never quite clca r whether they are heading to the theatre for a performa nce o r simply goin g o ut lo eaL 2X Sha w a nd Weaver met ea ch ot her wo rking with Spiderwoman Theatre, and 800n left the group to form Split Br,j¡t:hes. D isgusling SOl/gs (/lid Puky Imoges at Theatre for the New City in 1985 was a revival piece, and marked th e first time Ihe two groups had worked together since the SpliL History has it that Shaw aod Wcaver 1cft Spiderwoman beca use of sexuality-based confticts. It is ¡ronie, then , that th e performance of lesbian desire was so p rominent in th e production the women chose to revive. ") See lhe Vi//oge Voice Lilerary SlIfJJI/el/1('11l. December ¡ 982, 16, for a discLlssion of the Barnard conferencc. 1() Echols, "The T allling of the Id ," 58. \ I Susie Bright, ed .• 0 /1 Ou/' RlIck,l' 1:4 (Spring 1985). ;\11 other references will appt:ar in the text. 0/1 a l//' Rack.\" na me satirizes Off' Our R(lcks, one of the oldest cultural ft:minist newspapcrs in the country. Based in Washington D.C. . the monthly paper cOvers na tional and international t:Onferenees, news, and events. Jt reported on the Barnard co n f'erence in deplh , and \Vas thc first fcminist newspaper to offer a forulll fllr discussing the po rnography debate. \ 1 l ,arry Fl ynt, ed., Husl/er , June 1985, 28. Scph Wee ne, "Venus. " fferesies #12 , 36. \ 1 Robin Ruth Lindcn. D arlene R. Pagano, D iana E. H, R ussell , Susan Leigh Star, t:ds .. Agail1.1'l Sl1dlJ/1111S()('/¡i,\'I1I (E. Palo Alto: Frog in the Well, 1982), 7. \', 1,illdcll, Agoil1sl Sodo/11i/.\'()chislll, 2.

25

T H EAT RICAL P E R FO RM ANCE lllustration, translation, fu lfillment, or supplement? Marvin COI'lson Sourcc: The.alre .Iournal :; 7( 1) (1985): 5 11 .

Thea tre theorists of the romantic period agreed almost wil hout exceplio n upon the arbitrariness 01' neoclassic rules in genera l an d tbe unities of time. place, and genre in particular. Rejection of these rules, however, by no means implico th at works o f art lacked organizing princi pIes, and one of the first concernS of romantic theory was the discovery and description of such fe a­ tures. Shakespeare was inval uable to these critics as his success was c1early achieved without recourse to neoclassic standards, yet by the same token , he presented a new problem in the definition ofthe organ izing principies by which his works could be defined . The German romantics proposed a solution which resol ved this difficulty by metaph or: Shakespeare created as nature LTcated; his works had what Schlegel called a " mysterious inner unity," Ii ke tbat which organized living bein gs, a unity which came to be caJled organic. The literal development of this metaphor mély be seen in Goethe's Wi/he/m Meisler , when young Wilhelm opposes the cutting of a Shakespearean play 011 organic grounds: "Wilhelm absolutely refused to listen to the talk of separating wheat from chalT. ' 1t is not a mixture 01' wheat and chaff,' he said. 'H is a trun k, boughs, twigs, lea ves , buds , blossoms, and fruit. Is not each one tbcre with the others and by means ofthem'?' "1 Later, as a producing theatre director, Goethe took a more pragmatie view, but others, lik c T ieck, con­ t inueo to champion lIneut Shakespeare on these samc grounds. The strugglc lo restore ano ultimately to prcsent the plays in a text as c10sc as possible to Shak cspeare 's original was a major issue for the ninetecnth-century stage. 2 ( 'orrup led texts wcrc hard ly the most serious problcm this new approach J1rc~en t (!d lO dramalil: lhcory. for implied wi thin the orga nic view was a ,·Ii;dlcl1 gc l o thlolat rica l pcr rllrmnncl' ilsdf. Ir lhe Shakespearean texts (or any tllh el pluy:;) wel"l: illd eetl orga ll il' wlw lcs , com plete within thcmselves ano /11

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hy l ';¡¡¡klvclJ'o, WIH ) insi l:i li.:d thul dl':rt ll a was l'n::alcu ro l' Ihe plcasure o f an ' ign \)rall l llllilliludc" lh a l cO ll ld il o l h~ reachcd as readers but only as " spec­ lalors a nd hearns. " 1 Laler crilics \Vho sough l a more ulilitarian drama tha n Castelvetro stiU ftlllnd his vicw üf lhe audience useful. si nce tlle accessibility 01' performance lo Ihe un lctlcred made it a potenti ally powerful instru ment ofinslruction. A n olllspoke n modern exam ple of this attitude may be foun d in lhe o pen ing 01' Slrindberg's preface to Miss .Julie, which caHs the theatre a ".Biblia Pauper um, a Bible in pictures for lhose \Vho cannot read what is written or prin ted." Among Ihis pres umed audience Strindberg lists theyoung, the semi-educaled , allll women "who still have a pril1lili ve capacity for decei ving themselves and allowing thcmse\ves to be deceived .'" Sim ilarly, Croce sees the value of stage performance In its making the written text available in some measure '·to I hose who cannot or J o not know how to read it. "C, The idea of performance a S iHustratoion has dearly contrihuted lo lhe passion \Vith which many experimental artists and theorists of thi s century !J¡IVC rejected the text, whose crushing dominance according lO lh is theory I degatcd those who enjoyed theatre to an aesthetically lower c\ass, and made :In élutonomous art of the theatre impossib1e. A pi oneer in such rejecti on \Vas Edward Gordon C raig, who in 0 11 lhe Arl o(lhe Theatre expressed a wi ll­ illgness to accept the proposilion that Shakespeare's plays had no necd 01' slaging. Ffomlel, he says, was complete when written , and "for us to add to it hy gesture, scene, costume or dance, is to hint that it is incomplete and needs I hcse additions." For that very reason, he argues, thea tre should reject the Iraditional texts , to which performance can add nothing significan\. a nd dcvelop its own independent art ofcolor, ¡ight, rhythm . and abstraet fo rm .7 A IIlajor part orthe subsequent avant-garde, both in theory and in practice, has Illlllld Craig's slicing of this Gordian knot an extremely attractive basis upon which to develop a modern al1 01' the theatre. Al Ihe same ti me, other modern theorists have attempted 1"0 maintain the ulJ.:a of organic unity in the text without either reducing performance to the hllll1ble role 01' illustration or following Craig's radical pa th 01' separa Lion. I )II,~ popular strategy has been to represent the text-performance relation \\Iil la Ihe metaphor of translation rather lhan ill ustration. An early twentieth­ \ clllllry champion 01' this approach was Stark Young, whose reviews and Ihl'orelical wrilings frequently speak ofthe necessary re-creation in theatrical 11'1'I11S 1101 only ofliterature, but of other arts - architecture, costume, and music wlH.:n Ihese become art in lhe theatre. Young writes: " a \Vord , a sentence, ',pll k,:11 in lhe lheatre has rrom that moment been recreated in new terms and IJlIlsl sland él new test. It b no lo nger a wo rd 00 a page but is translated now 11i10 a m'W mcd ium , the lhcatrc."x T his wa y 01' d ea ling with wri tten text and I'~' I rtl llllanCl~ ha ~ hecn n':l:cn11 )' wiuely employed in thca trc semiotics, sinee Illiln y 01' ilS L'ril icallllnls, dCI ivnl lmm Ii ngu istics, scem highly appropriate to

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a view (JI PCrl O llll :l Jll:C a lld M: lIpt as IWll dillcrcl\ l l'\IIItIl IIl IIl\'oII I\ 1I1 syskllls hdwecn whkb ccrta ill lllcssagcs tníg hl be " Irallsfa lcu ," Man..' p Jl' Marinis, flll cxam ple. a pprouc hcs the s p~ctad e as a <;ort of "IC\I:' wl th Ils l!W Il ~i gniry­ ing systems !:>e parate fro m those 01' Ihe wri tten text.'¡ T he lheorisls who fo llo w this approach are in part interesled in clcvaling performance to a position 01' aulhenticity eq ual to that of th e wri Uen text, b ut the parallel to tran slation does not cn tirely achieve this end. Tite mo re li te rally one takes the linguistic anal ogy, the more onc foregrounds tlJe script. the very thing these theorists are attempting to a vü id. T heir model is condi­ tioned by tbe no rmal pres uppositions 01' thcatrical production, in which t his so-ca llcd Iran slalion runs always fro ro scri pt to perfonnance and not vice versa : such a situa tion necessarily privileges the script as defin ing the origi na ry parameters of the translation amI makes performance subservicnt not on ly temporariJy, but artistically , since it is unusual indeed for a translation to be considered aesthetically superior to its origi na l. Both Croce and Pira ndello speak 01' performance as translation , but for both this term is a pejorativc one. Pirandello remarks, "So many actors, so many lranslations, more or !ess faithful, more or less fortunate, but like any 1rans!a !iOI1, ollVays and neces­ sarily inferior to the origina l. " 10 The tra nslalio n analogy raises technical problems as well, since in fae t the written text is " transJated" into theatrical terms only in a very special sense. True, words are spokell instead of read , an important phenomenological shift, but they remain the same words . The original is in one sense changed, but in another it is literally embedded in its own presumed translation. T his brings us back to the paradox 01' organic unity in theatrical \Yorks. U na ble to accept the idea 01' one harmoniously unified work 01' art embedded within another, the illustration theorists, as we have seen, essentially denied this uni ty to performance, making it a largely su perfluous addition. T he opposile position, however, has also been ta ken- that organic unity is achieved on/y in performance, and that the text as written is incomp!ete. This might be called the theory 01' performance as fultl11me nt, and it also has attracted many adherents in the present century . A n early American ch a m­ pion o f this position was Brander Matthews, who wi th his students carried on nn extended debate wilh such Crocean theorists as J oe! Spingarn. In Engla nd theorist-directors Ashl ey D ukes and Harley Granville- Barker similarly ca lJed for un end to the idea 01' a completed wrilten text whose "rigid conceptio n" could nn!y stifle the essential creativity 01' other theatre artists. What m ade Sha kespeare great, they argued in direct opposition to critics like Lam b, was not that his plays were complete as written, but that they were incomple le in a particularly imaginative way. H e wrote " not to dictate, but to con tri bute: not lo im pose but to colla bo ra le." creating charactcTS an u sit ua lio ns whid l wou ld stimu late cre
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01' lite dr;lm ;t lic lex ! as "tfO/l L' ," a:- ;r l11essage comici ously crcatcd with " !toles" whidl are to be fillcu by a ll l)t hcr I11cssage-tex t, that 01' the mise-en-scene." he lwo approaches to performance, as fulfl11menl an d as illustration, pose oppnsit c Iheoretical problems. Th e one privileges the uni ty of the written Icxt , thcrcby unJermining a ny parallel c1aims by performa nce, but lhe o tber, hy priv ileging performance, similarly undermines the written pla y. Many fulllll ment theorists frankly speak of the w ritten text as botb incom plete a nd inadequate. Some wo uld allow the " h oles" to be fi lled in by the theatrieally imaginalive rea de r, possessing something a.kin lo whal F ra ncis Fergusson ~~allcd " h istrionic sensi bility," but others would agre~ wi th M atthews that IIntil the play physically a ppea rs on the stage it remains lacki ng in somcthing ~:ssential, despite whatever satisfactions it may providc for the reader. More recently another, and perhaps more fr uitful \Vay 01' expressin g this problem atic relationship has been offered in the writings 01' Jacques Derrida . particularly in the discussion 01' Rousseau and of the supplemen t in 0./ (;rammal%gy. Throllghout Ro ussea u's writings Derrida finds a tensi on, high­ lighting the supplement. AIl the ma nifestations of culture-a rt, image, reprcs­ l'ntation, convention- we.re in Rousseau's e.yes supplemenls lO Nature, which in his neo- Platonic vision , were alien to, inferi or to, and unnecessary to Natu rc's ()Wll totality. R ousseau 's conJ emnation ofthe stage derives from this view 01' Icality. Like those theorists who have considereu performance as illustration , Irl' attempted to deaJ with the staged playas " a pure and simple add ition , a ¡·OIüingenee." 14 Rousseau, hO\vever, did nol merely find thi s add itioll super­ IlllllUS, but actively threatening to Nature's presence and plenitude (li ke lhe "dangerous supplement" 01' onanism) and hence to be stoutly resisled. "fhe main thrust 01' Derrida's critique is to demonstrate the impossibility. l'wn within Rowiseau's own terms, of sei zing the natural in its presumed miginal, unsupplemented formo Everywhere in Rousscau, as Derrida demon­ stralcs, lIncontaminated Nature is revealed as a myth, a construct 01' desire. rhe supplement does not appear \Vith performance's repetition , nor \Vith the w.. ilten text. Nature itself is always already involved with the supplement. Tite concept of the supplemellt, as theorized by Derrida, provides a new wuy 01' thinking about several 01' lhe key paradoxes which bedevil theories of pe rforma nce as illllstration , translation, or fulfillment. Derrida insists upon two separate, somewhat contradictory, yet equally essential significations "r this concept. First, the supplcment " adds itself, it is a surplus , a plenitude , ' 111 iclting another plenitude, the[ullesll1IeaSlIre of presence. It cumulates and ,wl"lllllulates presence." Second , it " adds only to replacc . lt intervenes or IlIsil1l1ates itself in-Ihe-place 0(; if il fills, it is as if one fills a void. "15 I'nllmmmce illustrates adl11irably this do uble dynamic. Illustrati o n lhcorists lla ve s trcsscJ lhe firs t sign ilk ation, pe rforma nce as so methin g "addcd on"­ .1 slI pplcmcllt jni llcJ tu [hc a lrcmly cx isting plenitude 01' the wri lten tex!. 1' lIllilll llCllt th cor i.q .~ ll ave ,, " ~'s'il'd tite v thcr sig ni(jcat ion. 0 1' performance as k"1

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slI pplcmen l in Ihe sense ol lilli ng a vO ld , pcrlt,l[h ~vtl, :1 \llI d 111'1 appa rell t unlil lhc performancc Was crea k d. Jj l..c Ihé Mlpplcnll!II I, pc d llll lla m:c i~ ncc¡,;s­ sarily engaged in this SlI bversio n 0 1' lhe ill usiol1 l)t' pleni lud \.! in lile w ríllc lI text , and lhis is doubtless wh y ROllsseau , anJ nol a r¡,;w ~ubscqucnl litcrary theorists, have opposed it so determined ly . Roge r Laporte. in disc ussing the concept 01' lhe supplemen t, uses a wc ll­ known F rench dictionary as an exarnple. When a suppl ement is publi sheJ, il fo rces an adjustment of perception in bot h directions. Looking backward lO the ori gi nal publication , it reveaJs an incorn pleteness hi lllerto nol apparen! and look ing for ward , its very existence suggests tha t further supplernel1 lS are now possible and probably inevitable.I(, This particular d ynamic has m ueh in common with theatrical perfo rmance: a play on stage will inevitably dis pla materiallacking in the written tex t , quite likely not a pparent as lacki ng until the performance takes place, but then revealed as significant and necessa ry. At the same time, the performance, by reveal ing this lack, reveals al so a p Ol­ entially infinite series of future performances providing further supplemen ta­ tion. Thus is established the infinite chain of supp lements which, accordi ng to Derrida , " ineluctably multiply the supplemen la ry mediations that pro­ duce the sense of th e vcry thin g lhey Jefer: the rnirage of the thing itself," 11 the thing here being the original drama in its plenitude. This is why, as Tyrone G uthrie once observed , characters such as Haml et could be interpreted in thousands of ways and yet there never has been nor ever will be staged "the ideal perfo rmance which completely realizes the intentions 01' Shakespeare or Moliere or Eugene O 'Neill or whoever e lsc." INThe life of interpretation, a s Fo ucault observes, is the realization that there is no primal coherent set of signs, bul only interpretations.I'J This way of approaching the long-vexed qllcstion of the relationship between text and perform ance may scem at first disturbing, since it challengcs the strategy shared by each of the other approaches, a strategy that tends to C0 11­ Ilate organic unity and plenitude and to insist upon this quality for the suc­ cessful aesthetic expcricnce. IlIustration theorists as a rule ass ume plelli tuúe in lhe written text, fulfillment theorists in the pe rfo rmance, each thereby necessarily subverting the grounds orthe other. Translation theorists attempl to sllggest equivalent plenitude on both sides 01' the relationship, while lhe concept of the supplement makes the counter-assumption, denying plen i­ tude to eithcr written text or performance. This strategy, howevcr threateni ng it may initially appear, can in fact provide a fresh pragmatic foundation for understanding the text-performa nce dynamic for both theatrc practitioncrs and literary seholars. Many of lhe fo rrner h ave long developed their wor k witb all intuitive understa nding 01' Derrida's insight, but fcw have becn wi IHng. li ke G uth rie, to challen ge openly Lhe widely-helú assul11 p tion origina ry tex.tua l pleni luuc. Lilerary scholaTs, o n lhe olher han u . have oflell been lIncomfo rtable wit h pcrfNmance, learrul o r il¡; arparelll IClld l'IICY lo unúer­ mine I he objcct nI" thei r primary in teres!. The ClIl1C~: p l ul Ihe ~ ll p ph;rnc ll t

"voiJs Ih\.! prohlcms a ll c llIl:I lIl IIpOIl privil cgi ng ci thcr pe rfo rmance or wril h.!n te>.t, pro bklll s ilH.:v ilably a rising I"ro!11 each of the previ ous type" of llleorics. M o rcovcr it prov íJcs sOl11e underslanding 01' why plays in facl can (Jlrer rieh ex perienccs in both stud y a nd o n stage. A t Ihe sa me time, it Ie-aves alldienccs and readers with the realizatio n, potenl ia Jly saddening b ut in fact fillcd with excitement and promise, that not all that this pla y has to sa y has bcen said , that other diffe re n t b ut equally rich experiences with il a re alwa ys possihle. A nd ¡sn 't this after all what keeps the audienee éUld lhe reader as well returning to favorite plays with ever-fresh anticipation, not 01' sim ple rcpetition of pas t pleasure, but of a lways evolving fresh Constel la tions of l'xpcricnce?

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Notes 1 Johann Goethe , S¿imlliche W erk e (M unich, 1909- 1(20), 5:247. 2 See George C. D. Odel!. Sha!cespeare ji·o/JI Bell ertol/ 10 II"1'il1g , vol. 2 (New Yo rk : Dover, 1966) . ) Charles Lamb, "On lhe Tragedies of Shakes peare co nsidercd wi th refercnce to their fitness for stage representa tion ," in Crilical Es.w)'s !ir/he Ear~F N ineleel1lh Cel/lUry , ed. R. M. Aldcn (Ncw York: Scribner's, 1921), pp. 172- 73 , 175. 4 Lodovico Castel vetro, Poelica d'Arislole/e I'ulgariz::ala e .\POS/(I (Base!. 1576), p. 29. 5 Augw;t Slrindberg, Six Play s , transo Elizabeth Sprigge (Garden City: Doubleday. 1(56), p. 6 1. (, Benedetro Croce, COI1l'er.w/ziol1i crilü:he (Ba ri , 1929- 1(31). 3:72. 7 Edward Gordon Cra ig, 011 lhe An o( lil e Theofre (Ch icago: Browne's, 1(11), pp. 143- 44. X Stark Young, T he Thealre (New York: Hill and Wang. 1(54), p. 29. <) Marco de Marinis, " Le spettacol0 come testo. " versus 21 (September- Decem ber, 1(78),67. lO Luigi Pirandell o, "The
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There is a conceptual crisis in drama studies, a crisis reflected in the ways Ji f­ fercnt disciplinary sty1es approach q uestions about drama tic text~ , t hea tricaJ productions, a nd performance i.n general. In tbe introduction to Perjórman<:e and Cul/ural Politics, Elin Diamond provides an exemplary account of con­ temporary interest in perfo rmance and, in a gesture th Jcvclupl'd a viv id :ll:cO Ulll ,,1'

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26

D RAMA , PER FORMAT IVITY,

AND PER FOR M ANCE

W. B. WOJ'then

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art (<;chndJ e r) , alllJ pt:lror lllalll.:~ in cve lyuay Iili: (K.IJ,,¡ dl ' ) .1111.1 tl,,;orclÍl.'al invesli gal ions 01' iJcnl ily per form élll ~c ( Bulle r, (l('//rI/ '/ J/ (JI/llle). Yet Ihe b urgeo ning ofperformancc slutlies has nN rea 11 Ydar ilicd Ihe rcJa lio n bctwCCI1 clramatic texts and pcrfo rmam:e. As an object 01' and vehid e for sus la inctl theo re tical inquiry, dra matic perform a nce a rten emerges in per ronnancc Sludies marked with the vague contemptibi lity of 1he famili ar. As Richard Schechner p uts it in a now notorio us comment in TDR: H[TIheatre as we have known and practiced it- lhe staging of written dra mas-will be lbe ~lring. qua rtet of the 21 st cen lury: a bcloved bu t ex tremely lim ited genre, a subdivi­ sion 01' pe rfo rmance" (" New Pa radigm" 8). 2 I low practitioners of performance st udies a od of dramatic st udies under­ sta nd dramatic perform a nce is im porta nt. not bec.ause Schechner is wro ng, but beca use he is mainl y right. U nderstanding dramatic performance éU> a uthorized in a relatively straighlforwan.l way by a scripteo text does indeetl consign theater (ano criticism th a t lI nderstanos performance to be de1er­ mineo by the text) to some faded conceptual Levi ttown: dramatic perform­ ance is a series ol' aut horized reproductions, each plotteo on th e bluepri nt 0 1' th e authorial texL It may be that a t this moment in the history ol' cult ural proouctio n in th e West, the perfo rmance 01' pl ays i.\' residual , a mode 01' proouction fully inscribed wit hin a discourse 01' textual ano cultural au t hor­ ity (e.g. , Shakespeare or Beckett) that other kinds of performance are ablt: to engage in more resistant, o ppositi onal, emergent ways. The apparent t rop­ in g 01' performance by the text seems so evident, so dee ply rooted- despite A rta ud and his inheritors- in convcntional ways of describing, p roducing. ano evaluating Western dramatic performa nce that it is rarel y unpacked . Yet aJ though the sense of orama tic performance as a performance of a pl ay is widespread , as John Rouse remarks, just " what the word (JI' means " in thili c~) n lexl is " far from dear" (146). How can performance studies help move the literary conception of drama beyond the incapacitating notion 01' perform­ unce as a version of the tex!, a version emptied of Inultiplicit-y a nd am bigu it y Ihrough the process of (authorized) embodiment: altcrnatively, how m ight a rcl hinking 01' drama reinvigorate it as a mode 01' performance theory, a way 01' cxploring- not prescribing- the possibilities of performance? 'Iere I consioer two places where dcfinitions o f performance depem.1 on a n artificially narrow sense 01' the relation between texts and performa nces: lirst, literary oiscussions of performativity ano performance that develop J. L. I\ ustin ':-; account of speech acts and, second, the tribulation s oftext ualily a no tex tualized Ill odeb o f performance in performance studies, particu larly in performance ethnography. To ask how perform ance ofa text- a d iffi cult ph rusc in itsel f might be conce ived to investigate or retheo rize the prob­ k ma tics nI" pe rforma ncc, I condu ele with él gla nce at Saz Luhrrnann's recenl lilm lI'il/iall/ Sllllkt'.I'!I('arc ·s Romeo a nd Ju liet. Th o ugh IAlh n n;lItn 's work is a lillll perhaps givcn license beca usc it is nol licd 111 Ih~ In.l llal un lolQgy 111111 :1I'11U.:Is I.:Prtl llllH1 1I 1 1I1 t:rs l;¡lI di ll r. ~ 0 1' slaged dl':III1,1 11 ~'II.ll' I .' : :1 pllwer rul

I111'( 111.:1il.:il l \! lIl'otlll h:1 ", ill! 1111' ljll l... . :IIPII S I explote Ite r~. wilh ways o r relhi nk­ 111 1.'. tltl' rda lioJl s ul' alll ho ril'y Ilt il l iJll'ulI1I tcxts ano pcrformances.

( )m: way literary scho lars have aua pted their unuersta nding of texts to tbe "JlVirOlllllent 01' performance is by using A lIstin 's approac h to speech acls, workill g to see the performati ve meoiating between la ngu age ano modes o f dllill g. M lIch as literary scholars tend to see oramatic perfo¡wance as lapsed I\!ading derivin g from the pro per meanin gs prescribed by the text, Aust¡n is 11I1lorio llsly ske ptical 01' thea trical performatives. Ausli n. of eOllJse. finu s Ihculrical discourse peculiar1y " hollow"---" pcrformativc utter3nce wi ll , for I'"\ lI lIlplc, be in a peculiar lI'ar hollow or voio if said by an actor on the stage" I ':!) insofa r as it exem plifies a special c1ass of infelicito us utteranee in which Ihe lIlotives 01' lhe agent (" persons having certa in th o ughts or feelings " [15]) ,lIl' insincere or are not directly embodied in subsequent conduct (an utter­ ;lItl.:e can also be hollow in this sense if "introoUl;ed in a poem, or spoken in ,\l liloqlly" [22]). A ustin excludes sllch hollow utterancc from considera tio n Iill'ciscly beca use it uses language in ways he finds " parasiLic upon [lan­ ¡'lIagc 's] nOl1nal use- ways which ¡-all under the doctrine of the elio!alions of Iang llagc" (22). Oddly eno llgh, while A ll.stin 's cavalier dismissal 01' theat rica l pl'rformatives--holl ow to whom? in what sense?- now seems to d rive liter­ .11 y 'll lidies toward perfo rmativity and performance, it does so by asserting 1I!¡; peculiar holl owness of oramatic theater. Several recent efforts to use A ustin to reclaim perfo rmance from oramatic Itrl'aler work in this way, segregating unscripted perfonnance from the tawdri­ ne,,:; nI' the stage to libera te performance (ano performance studies) from its 1Ir1\.'licilous connection to the theatrical (and to theater stlldies). Andrew Parker .111111 ':ve Kosofsky Seogwick , for instancc, use A ustin to chart a "convergence" 11l'IWCCll literary studies and performance studies that has pushed perform­ IIIVily "onto center stage" (l): " rf one consequence of thi s appreciation has 111'1.'11 a hcightened willingness to credit a performative dimen sion in all 1IIIIal. cercmo nial. scripted behaviors, another would be the acknowledgment 11 ... 1 philosophical essays them selves surel)' count as one sllch performative III/> Iance" (2). Whil e it ma y be a relief to sorne that philosophers are now IWl lmlllers, it is striking to think that literary scholars have only recently recog­ 1I1 /,l!d I hl~ pcrrorllla l i \'e aspects of ri tuals and ceremon.ies, a oevelopmen I they I.SlglI lo lhl: new antidiscipline 01' performance stlld ies. Accoroing lo Parker IlI d S..:dgwick, then ter studies. "[r]eimagining itself over the course of the past dn: ad..: ;IS Ihe wider licld 1)1" pe rformance stlldies," has " moved well beyond 111,· d assicalolltology 0 1' the hla l:k box mooel to embrace a myriad of perfo rm­ IIl h'l pr;wliccs. ranging I"r\)m 'lla gc lO Ih ti va l anu every thing in between ~ (2).3 Pal hel all d Scdgw ick's rtlWl.!1 flll n:ad ing l)r Austill qlleers felicitous per­ 1\1 I1I I:t li\' iIV. lk ll10 1l ~ll'lIlillp ils ~'IIIl ~li lll ,ivc p l'..:dicH ti on on l he "cliol a ted " ­

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meC'rwrlcd , Ih\! :lI líli ~' ¡; d IIII 1II II III II III d IhL~ .. hll Ul ma l, lhe uccaJc l11 . lhe ellele. the Jiscascu " ( S) Illl', ltll l ,1I perfll /mal/ cl: il exd uoes. ro r lhis rcason . thOl/gh, il is su rprising tha t in J csl..' lihing the dis­ cipli na ry evolution 01' theater studies into perfo rmance ~tudies Parker alld Sedgwick use a eontemporary thea trical con vention as a ::;ynecdochc rol' IhIJ ontology 01' theatrical per formance: in their view the theater ano thca lc l' studies are epitomized by the black box 01' modern stage realism. G ivcn Ih\! subseque llt discussi on of m a rriage as a form 01' conventiona l thcate r. it scel1ls evident th at what Pa rker and Sedgwick mean by " black box mod el " is llJ(! spatial and performance dynamics 01' modern prosceniu m perfo rma m.:e, ¡¡ performance mode lhat em erged barely a centu ry ago, at the juncture 01' l h!.! famili ar social, acsthetic, and techno'logical (e\ectricity) pressures 01' Weslenl industrial modernism: a darkened auditorium, a bourgeois drama, perfo rm­ ance conventions that confine the play behind the fourth wall 01' a box sel onstage. (1 n contemporary theater, of eourse, a black box is a small lhcatc r space susceptible to multiple configurations and so to various ways of shap. ing the stage-audience relation; in this sense black-box theater d oes nol have a proseenium . W hether th e blaek box- Iet alone the modern prosceniull1 house- defines the "c1assical ontology" 01' lhea ter seems open to question . ) 19noring theater studies' long-standing interest in dramatic, festival, a nu popular performam.:e-as well as in the stage production of eras suth as th!.! nineteenth eentury, often overlooked in accounts 01' dramatic litera ture­ Parker and Sedgwiek enact a typical1y literary disciplinary investmen t in textually motivated forms of modern theater as definüive of theatrical pro­ ducti on . Con fining theater to the black b ox of modern stage realism, Parkcr and Sedgwick take p erformance studies to confirm theater as an essentia lly reproductive mode; they view theater as a parasite on the dramatic text, m ueh a s A ustin saw it as a parasite on language. O espite this disciplinary prejudice , Parker and Sedgwick nonethclcss read Austin in a way that imagines a more subtle and adequate rela tion among drama, theater. and performance. Oeveloping the rcading of Austi n in Oerrida's "Signatu re Event Context ," Parker and Sedgwick note tila 1 Austin 's exc1usion of theatrieal diseourse from ordin a ry performance fi nally predicates perfo rma tive lÚterance on the "holl ow" citationality characteri stic of the stage. Parker and Sedgwick open the terrain of the performative by deconstructing Austin's opposition between "normal" and etiolated perform ­ ance, between the fc1icitously performative and the theatrical: performati w speech cannot be distinguished from the " hollow" utterances of the stage 00 the basis of originality, as though nontheatrical speaking were aUl hcntk and nonrepetiti ve. Performatives can work felici lously only to the extcnt l hu! they, like thea trical performa nce. are reiterable, thal they sign ify Ulfough a process 01' Ci u llion; utteranccs perfoml action:; o ul y wh en they ilerate fam­ ili a r verba l or beha vorial regimcs. But w hilc l hi~ dcc~lnsl r llcli¡1n rcvcals IlIl' I.!Í taliona l "ho ll C'w ncs!\ " of on.linary langu agc pcrrum 1i·1I iw'l il dl lc~ nol scCI11

I'arkcr and Sedgwick argue that the perform ative force of ma rciage is enacted /lot by the Austinian utterance, the text " 1do," but by the ways this utterance kxl , performed within the ceremony, cites and so reenaets the institutions 111 nlll1pulsory hetcrosex uality. Marriage is "like a play" to the cxtent that il (1 1 likc modern realistie theater, a theater whose eonventional " relations 01' V/'.; ihility and spectatorship," as Brecht long ago rccognized , mas k the ideo11I!'ical labor behind its claims to versimilar representation: "Like the most l llllvcntional d efi nition 01' a p lay" - o r , more precisely , like the working of IlIuJc rn realistic plays in a mode of production associated with proseenium 1I,,'atrica.lit y that Parker and Sedgwick take to be the "conventional defini­ 11011 0'- a play"- "marriage is constituted as a spectac1c that denies its audi­ \ lI l'l'. the ability either to look away from it 01' equalIy to intervene in it" (11). I'arkcr and Sedgwick brilliantly rethink the working of Austin's ilIocutionary 1 do "; it gains its force not because it is an utte rance of a text, not because 1111' words themsc\vcs accomplish a n aetion , but beeause the "1 do" cites amI ',.. r~p rod uces an cnlire genre 01' performance. That this performance- lhe "'l' rI.:ivc ci ta tion 0'- h Cleron or m ali yi l y-i~ epitomized as p roscenium theater Il'vcals ltow Pu rk~r nnu ~cugwic k cO ncei ve of Lheater an J h ow they positi on Ihl'a hn rcla li vl! tn pcrfnrlllanc\.;
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l\' lkratiun ofvariuus idco logkal a nu behavorial regimes, theatrieal pe rform­ .llIn: in I he enn ventional literary sen se assumed by A ustin and by Parke r ."Id Sl:d gwick is understood principalIy in literary terms, as a mode 01' "pl.·ok in g scri pled words. The thea ter. in this sen se, is unde rstood to si gil i.fy 111 illcipall y by rciterating the dra matic text (a m ode 01' citation tha t renders I hca lcr peculiarl y " holJ ow" ), n ol by deplo ying scripted language in lhe COIl­ 1IIIIli vc eitational behaviors proper to the circumstanees 01' utterance, here lo, the slage. But is it langllage. Lhe text, that motivates the force of dra matic (le rformance? Is it, in other words, the dramatic text that the eitational pClfo n n a nces of the theater cite? l'arker and Sedgwick's sen se of theatcr and theatrical performance is dlall1atized in their cann y examination 0 1' A ustin's reliance 011 t hc m ari tal vow ("1 do") as an ins tance of performative speech (ilIocution), 01' marriage itself as theater- m arriage as a kind offourth waH or in vis­ ible prosccnium areh that mo ves throllgh the wor1d (a heterosexual couple secure in their right to hold hands in the street), continuall y rcorienting around itself the surrounding rc\ations of visibi1ity an d spectatorship, ofthe tacit and the explicit, ofthe p ossibility 0 1' imposs­ ibility 01' a gi ven person's articulating a given enunciatory positi on . ( 11 )

I IJS I 1I \ I I I ,

lheulcr lltl~ sik ll l iluu kllCI.: h n llh l hi l ¡'~l.:d bdún: tll \: pIIN'l' ll illlllll :lI lll: WIt CI l! C1l1lhe ad ion is (f~, h;d); un ' ludi<.:ncl! n:mlwl:d rrlJ llI pallll'lpal ioll , I'WI1l visib­ ilityo co nsum ing the spcctade I'rom thcir indiv id ual scals: a darkl: llcd lhro ng ofindividualjz ed sllbjects d isciplined b y a nd into Ihe ill u~ ion ol'com mu nily to epitomize dramatic theater itself. Red ucing theater lo the charaClc ristic ideo ­ logical apparatus of modern real ism, Parker ami Seugwick's stage is fi nally the emblem of powerful yet cocrcive con ven tionality (as, of co urse. l11 uch modcrn theater is)o " Wh en is sayin g something doing somethi ng? And how is saying somc­ thíng doing somethi ng?"- as P ar ker and Sedgwick im ply, one of the prob­ lems of modeling dram a tic per formance 0 11 A us tinia n perfo rm al ivity is tha t pCTformance is reduced to the Performa nce of language, words, as though dramatic performance were merely, or most essentiall yo a mode of utterance, the (infelicitous) production of speech acts (1) . The conundrum that Parker a nd Sedgwick enact here has to do with their view of dramatic performa nce­ or the mode of utterance known as acting- a s a straightforward citation of the dramatic text and nontheatrical performance (the marriage eeremony, for example) as a mode of citation that extends welJ beyond the text ("1 do "), that reconstitutes the meanings 01' the text instead 01' being determined by those meanings. Indeed, it is in this distillction that Parker and Sedgwick's rethinking of speech acts holds the most promise for a relhinking of dramal ic perform a nce. For while theater remainS fo r them a peculiarly hollow sign 01' how socia l hegemonies are re produced thro ugh a con ven tional apparatus of visibility (the proscenium and the realislic modes of dramatic narrative and alldience interaction it shapes), the marriage ceremony provides a search ing model ofthe relation between texts ("1 do") and performances , a model mo re adequate to the task offiguring dramatic perform a nce. It is not Ihe text tha t prescribes the meanings of the performance: it is the construction of the text within the specific apparatus of the ceremony that creates performative force . The performance is not a citation of the tex!. The ceremony deploys the lext- al1d mlleh else- as part of an elaborate rciteration of a specific vision of social order: the meaning of the performance depends on the citation no t 01' the text but of the regimes of heterosexual socialization, on the interplay among a specific tex\' individual perforl1lers, the "material,jty and historical density ofperforma nce " (Diamond , Introdllction 5), and the web ofperform­ ance practices that constitute the performance as a meaningful citati on . Although the thcater is , for Parker and Sedgwick , still hollow, their d isc lls­ sion of nontheatrical performance suggests that drama tic performance shou lJ be released from the charge of " obeisance" to the playwright's or the text's allth o rity (Dia l1lond, 'ntroductiol1 3). Perfo rming recollstitutes the text; it does not ccho, give voicc to, o r tra n slat~ the tex t. Pe rformance docs not ci te the lext
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il docs so " tu tlli.' C'l ll' l1l 111.1111 t!m ll',I' 0/1 IlfUl (' Ol'{"'S olla Ihc COIl­ con vc nliol\s by whid l it is ITw hili¡.cd " (B utler, Ex ciwhle ¿;,iJccch 51). 1I as IlIu ll l1 Il ut Jc r a l'gucs ill l1 ef critiquc a l' lhe perloclltionary c1.a ims of ;llItipo n wgraphy censorship, "Ihe perfo n nativ ily of the text is not under .~ p vc rc i g ll conlrnl" (6l)), then Iht~ meanings oftheatrical performance cannot h(,' atlrihuted to the sovereign conlrol of the dramatie text. Does stage per­ forlllance opcrate citationaJlyo less as an uttering or iterating of a tex t Lll an aS ;\11 itcrating or the conventions ofperformance, wlúeh aceumulate " lhefórce ~ Illll t ivc

,,(u/./lhority Ihrough Ihe repel iliol1 01' cilaliol1 ola prior and aUlhoritativc se l (~f I'/'I/clices" (51)? As a citati onal praetice, dramatic performance - like all o ther

pL'rrormance- is engaged not so much in citing tex ts as in reiterating its own rl!gimes: t hese regimes can be understood to cite - or, perhaps su bve rsi vely, hl rcsignify- social and behavorial practices that operate outside the theater ;111(\ Ihat constitute contemporary social lire. The citational practices o f the ',I age- acting styles, directorial conventions, scenography- operatc o n and 1I 1I I1sform texts into something with perrormative force : performances, beha­ viII!'. The invocation of Austin tends to associate theatrical performance wilh speech and so Ieads incluctably to the portrayaI 01' a perfonnance's rela­ 1iOIl to the dramatic texl as a kin lO Austin's account of an utterance's re\a tion ID language: dramatic tlleater is understood as a perlocutionary medi um , 111 which the performance onstage is a direct consequence of performatives Ills~...ibed in the tex!. This application 01' performativity to dramatic perform­ ,IIItT reinforces the sense that performances are scripted by their texts and '11 , r~~prodllees both traditional and recent disciplinary contro versies among dI ama studies, Iheater stlldies, and performance studies. A more consistent IlTcading 01' Austin , an application ofthe deconstruction 01' '' 1 do" not o nly lo social actions bul to dramatic performance as well , would relocate the IlI llction of the text in the performance, conceive the text as material for ¡a hm, ror the work of production . Although drama tic performance uses Il' xls, il is hardly authorized by them: to preserve this c1ail1l i8 to preserve the o,; llSC 01' dramatic performance as a hoJlow , even etiolated, species of the lilnary ,

11 the ways both literary studies and performance studies have miscon­ drama tic performance is by taking it merely as a reiteration oftexts, a \ Ilatill n lhat imports literary or textual authority into performance. In part hn': illI se perfo rmance studies shares this lilerary sense of dramatic theater, 11 Ila s successfu ll y in voked ethnographic models of ritual and everyday-Iife 1lI' I1 11vin r as a way lo redeflllc pcrlo nmUlce in explicitly nonliterary and non­ f\ 11'<1 II J\: .. I tcnm. Nul sur prisingly. pcrltaps, C lifTord Gecrtz's readings o f cullure 1 , k xt whích lla ve hccn inll ucnlla t in lhe r rac tiec nI' ncw hi:¡lor i<;ism and in '1 1. Illorpll inl:' II 11 l1 l.!Ul l llral IHIL'I I\.S pn¡v idl: a d din ing rHlin l \) 1' conlcnlion. ( )Il e 01'

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rO l whi lc Lile 1 ~~ llI a Ii /U l lIlll u l l' lIlt \lf~ \,' tl.lh tl'd I l tl"lol l~ ,,," lt l'~ !tI ¡,(1: 11I.'I,tI izc il1 lc rpn:livc pIUdH:~S I'n " 11 h.:x l:-. lo () II1\:f I1I1CIIIII III. lIil , 111,' l'th n\II:!J lIphll' a p proaches in vokcu in pCrl únnalll;c s tudi ~!) have Cllllh: t,1 ' l!sisl rcadi ng p\:r­ form anccs as lexts, In pa r!, Ihis hc!)italinn SICIll!) I'rom a la uda ble dcsl rl' no l In pri vilege the dramatic Iheatcr oflhe Wesl as a paradigm ofperforrnance: nl)1 only , ofcourse, are ma ny non-Western performance ro rrns no ntex t ual , b ut ill many of those that use texts- No, for cxampl e- lhe text d oes nol ru nction;rs it does in con ventional Western tbeater. But this resis ta nce is sometimes a\s" driven by suspicion regardi ng writing's implica ri o n in the re produclion of authority and conseq uen tly in lhe reprod uction of social hegemonies . Resisl­ ance to a textualizi ng elhn ol ogy is modcled , in olher words. on the d iulectic betwecn a uthorized texts and resistant performances tha t inforrns Parkc r aml Sed gwick 's understanding 01' performalivity. In this view- elegan tly argucd by D wight Conquergood ("Ethnograph y, R he toric" a nd " Rethinking Ethnogra phy"}- G eertz's textua'l model o f c ul­ ture embodies a profo und desire to represent other cultures within Westem epistemologies. Geertz typically takcs the '\:ulturc of a people" as "an en­ semble 01' texts, themselves enscmbles, which the anthropologist strains tn rcad over the shoulders 01' those to whom thcy properly belong" (452). T hc Ba linese cockfight, lo ta ke Geertz's cclebrated example, does

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G ce rlz dearly articulates the practices of other cultures with the role 01' \iteralure in the West, but what uisturbs Conq ucrgood abollt the tex tualizalion of culture is a more fundamental problem. Ethnography, to the ex tent thal il reads th e c ulture of nonliterate societies as texts, prolongs él colonizin g pro­ jeel, modeling the epistemologies of the other in Western terms. Conquergood argucs that to regard culture as a text and to represent it in writing is lo represenl the processcs of other cultures not only in terms of Western ways 01' knowing and represcntation but also in forms -writing, texts- tha t have often been uscd to dominate and exploit them. 6 C onquergood calls for ethnography instead to use performance as h()\h a mode 01' investiga tion ami a mode 01' representation . H e rema rks Lh a l "pc rrormance-scnsit ive elhn ograph y" alters rhe " po we r dynami c of lhe re­ sea reh sil LlUl ion ," wh ich " eha nges whc n lhe elhnog raphc r IlHlve:¡ rrom lhl! ga/,c o f Ihe di stanccu a no dctad lcd o bserver lo Ihe in l¡mOlle illvo lvemcnl and cngilgctllclll (1 1' 'ctlólcl ivily' ~) r t:o-pCr rn rIlIUIlCe wit h Ili"lo\ iI,,'ally silllatcd ,

1'" , I'vl al'l.:us lIo les. Ihe chUllgilll' HIN CIl- IiCÓ le" 1I1' ~ lhlH)g raphic n:prescnt4Jlion ,Is'il)cia lcd "wilh the writilll! \It JU lllCS (' Iiflord ami loosely d eri vcd from I\ l ik ha i! BlI khtill 's lloliollS 01' po lyphnny anu dialogism as an alte rnat ive lo the IlHlIIlIlogic
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what, for other peoples with other temperaments and other con­ ventions, L eal' anu Crime Clnd Punishmenl do; it catches up these themes--death, masculinity, rage, pride, 10ss, beneficence, chance­ and , ordering them into an encompassing struclu re, prescnts them in such a way as to throw into relief a particular view of their cssential nature . (443)

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cu ltu ra l. ucatk mic 1I ,,¡'len rl u y~ ¡¡ SlIh VCl Si\lc IO k 11 1 Idll ll ll ll lo Iht.: lra ns­ mb :sio n pracliccs of lmJil io nal or el ile cult ures. 1 ~lil
IU W hat are dramati <.: pe r rormances perrorm ances (~f? O ne of the most d isabling aspects 01' performa nce t;n lil.: islTl of' dra ma is the wa y il- te nds or until rc<.:cn rl y has lended lo rcga rd lhe pcrlo ml a ncc as a rCildillg.. illl l'rp re tati o ll , rcaJ izaliol l o(lhe text (or, I11l1ch lhe SUl lllO tlling. f!/ lhe rluv 0 1 its pll lelll iuli lics l ll . l'u r cxa mp le. Sha kcspca rc) . To say Ih a l a rll' I I'lIl lli lll\'~' 1 ~ ,.{ , 1 I('XI is

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1I11lllCdi il lcly In 1'l':l..'ng nil.l.! Iha l it·, , da liPII lo Ihal lcxt is L'xlrcllldy lcnllOllS: a pl' rlu n ll Llll cc is 1101 tlslI ll lly (JI' ulle k X( in an y direcl SCllse, sincc a number 111 dilfe rCll1 vcrsi n ll s 01' a cla;;sie pla y Illight be cOllsulted as part 01' the pro­ dlll'lioll pmcess a nd ma ny scripls are produced and used in lhe process of :-. hapin).!. a play. In contemporary tex.t ual scholarsh ip , the widcspread inter­ IIlgul ioll orhow lexls constitllle authority wO llld make slIch a c1a im simjl a rl y plObkl11atic (see McGann: Born stein and Williams; Shill ingsburg; Grigely; Maslrn). The lext is absorbed into the multifarious verbal and nonverbal discnurses oC theatricfll production, transformed into an cnliTel y incommen­ Nurable th ing, an event. Texls in the theater are alwa ys more Iike the phone hl)ok lh an like Ham/el: they are transfo nued by the performative env iron­ 1l1l~ 1l1 of the theater into something else, a perform an ce. O ne fun ction of I'I lIlventional theater is to assert the rhetoóc oC0(: an assertio n that is bound IIp in con ye ntions of performance rather tha n in an essen lial relation betweeo h'xls and enactments. The prob1cm ofdramatic theater's citationality is a complex one, and many dlal11atic pcrformances (hose-and-doublet Shakespcare) are illscribed with ,llllhorizing gestures: they use acting, costume, direction, tbe eotire mise­ L'1l-scene 10 c1aim an authority located in a certain understandi ng of a text. ;1 gcnre, a perform a nce tradition, a mystified author. Performa nces do not :;iL'llily by citing texts. A performance creates a sensc 01' "proximity" (to th e. I¡,:.xl , to something else) as part 01' its rhetorical deployment of contempora r l'I lIlwnlions ofperformance, as a \Vay ofc1aiming "something we value."RAs 1hl'loric, such gestures are hardly confined to drama tic performance. Theatr­ Ical production--which recasts and so re-creates thc script in another idiom , ,IS speech , gesture, Of action that is entirely incommcnsurable \Vith notions of I he (exl itself- shollld not be seen as distinctively preoccupied with que.stions 111 alllbority. Such a vicw ignores the discourse ofauthentication surroundi og ;1 variely of performance and perfonnance-a rt forms , not only lhe work of IIlllllOloguists like Spalding Gray and Karen F inley, but also tha t of Anna 1)cavere Smith- whosc elaborately dcpcrsonalized miming of her intcr­ " i¡,:w subjects m ay recall James Clifford's critique of "Geertz's a brupt dis­ .Ippcarance into his rapport" (40 - 4I )---or pcrformances that appear to cite .1 pcrsl)llal relation to the subject matter (Annie Sprinkle comes to mind) . 111 a ll Ihese cases, performance is performatiye in Butler's sense, working , l ', a " ri lualizcd practice" that "drall's on ami COVeI'S over the constitutive , ullvelltions by which it is mobilized" (E .x(;i1ahle Speech SI) ; sometimes those ,llllvclltions SlIll11l10n an illusory textlial authority, sometimes they do not. So what optiúns are there ror repositioning the text within an understand­ 111" nI' Ihe work 01' d ra ma tic pe rlo rmance? Is it possible, as Joseph R oach IIr~es ts , lo scc pe rfoml1tncc dra l11 atic. pe rforrnance- " as an alternative or .t t. ll ppkmcnl to tex tual I11cd iati o n" (" Kinshi p" 22 1)'1 Roach is tal king here l h o u t l'el l'oulla tivc lescl ll c h all d d isseminu lil1n, bul I wan t lo take him in a dll k rC lI1 scnse, (lne
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a sit \.' u f' pa s~¡¡A1.c Ill" a WI" ~ 1,1 II IClil l lI ll'. a ~I t e in wlJlch i nsta bl li lic~ ar\.' Iwth lIIaJe éJ nd madI,! II1Hn ilC..,t" ( 11Ioi). (i rígcly's ~C IlSC 01" the cultural itcral lOIl uf art wmks hrings d m m atic pc r!ün llanl:c doser 10 a n acl 01" su rrogation in Roach 's scn sc . Mueh as llam/l'l exists as a wo rk variously ilcra led in a lextual hi story as a range of prin ted , unp rin led, and hy pOtlH:ticaJ (Sha ke­ speare 's IlliInuscript) texts so it is also sllrrogaled in vario LIS forms , in innumerable audiola pe. videotape, film , ami stage pe rforma nccs. A pe rform­ ance 01' H om/el is no t a pe rformance ola text. Instead , il uses a tex t (usua ll y a palim psest of texts) of Hamlet within a specific selection of available regimes of production (acting style; set and costume des ign ; lhe representa­ lional rheloric of s tage, film , or video ) to perform a new ilerati o n 01' Ham /el,
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surrogél ling Ihe bchavoria l n;gilllcs 0 1" 11 /¡O ',\ ,!Ilt/I/II!! , 11 ,&: /1/1,1 1J'00((" 111 place of Albee's dialoguc, lhe adors spl!a k fra gllll... lIls UI ;¡ WII IIIIIII a l
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. , 111 111\1 bla sl IIIl1slly q f I tlck ,d ll'l ¡l lIolll\'," 14(1). lu; rcgarus lhe perform­ ;IIICC'S :-. ucccss or fu ilu rc as a fUIICll\l 1l uf 11l1w wdl il reproduces thc tex t. I'hll ugh finall y pn;ll;rring 1.llhl'lll 11 nn 's a pproach to T revor Nu nn's "fiddling" wilh dccor in FlI'c//il, N~~lrl, Kaurrmann sees Luhrma nn as "in effed doing a 11 ans!atilln, allllost as if he had rendcred the text into F in nish or Bulgari an , wilh a rewl~n glish wisps rcma ining as souvenirs 01' the origin " (42). 1hnv docs W i//iall1 S /wke.l'peare·s Romeo anJ J uliet represent the rela tion Iwtwcen texls
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Notes I'adicr vc rsions of this essay were discussed in él seminar at tbe 1997 Sbakespcarc !\ssociatioll annual conference and by tbe Performance A.na lys is wo rkin g group of 11 ..: Internationa l Federa t ion for Thca trc Resea rch; J am grateful to botb groups for 11¡('ir comments. 1 am especial1y grateful to Sbannon Steen for ber detailed response :lIId lo Barbara Hodgdon fo r ber comments on an earlier draft and for providing me wilh a copy of ber essa y befo re its publication.

I¡rom E . K. C ham bers throu gh G. E. Bentley (Drul11u/i.l'1 and Pluyer) to Andrew I..iurr (Playgoing and Shake.l'pearel/n SllIge), Louis M on trose, Je--an Howard , Stephen OrgcL and others, Shakes peare stud ies has long been occupied with interpreting the lllatcriaL economic, professional. and ideological workings ofShakespeare's th elltc r. This tradition has coexisted- sometimes uneasi ly- a lon gside efforts to understand Shakespeare through the medium of perforn1ance. For an overview of performance niticism of Shakespeare, see Thompson and Thompson; for a critique , see Bulm an, SI/(/k espear e. T heory, 1//1(/ Performance and " On Being Unfaithful. " T he Applausc Shakcspearc Library ha s recently enshrined the notio n that the tcxt contains all pOlcntial (Iegitimate) performances. E ach vo lume in the serics oITers "a continuolls ('lll1ll1lentary on the text " by an actor o r di,'ector that " sho\Vs what is demanded from actors- Iine by line where nece~sary-and points o ul what decisions about illlcrpreta tion have to be made" (Brown vi) . For a brilliant reading of the politics of "l1lbodime nt in Shakespearean film and stage performance, see H odgdon. , l'l'I'formancc studies owes much ofits institutional fo rmati on to Richard Schechner. wllo in 1980 founded the department of performance studies at New York U ni ­ versity , havillg l1l oved there from Tulane U n ive rsity in 1967, and who rechristened Ihe f)ratna !. i ... ¡l y" :ltHl P('ljim l ll/l/('(, T/¡('ory; see also 111 \

\1'111 1'1 RI !JltMANI I

IIltAMA I{lla .:h, " Ki nship" .~ IX lO ), I~ cl;\; nt Iy, :-;dl l:dlll~'1 h , l~ 1>1 11..1111\'11 t I II ~N IIIII,'. 1I" :IIIl " posi tioll (se\! 'Tllctlln: itl lhe hVClll y- Fi rsl ('c nlllly"). 3 In an carlier ¡¡rlicle, "Quccr P.:rfúrmal tv il Y," Scdgwick st lllllarly undcrtak cs 111 Icveragc Ihe perfornwlivc away from "Ihe nolion 01' ti ~rrO rl1l11n l'C in lh.: defini nl' instam:e Iheatrical" (2) and 10 devclop this sensc of pe rrormativily lhrouglr arca d ing of Henry James ':; Tlle ArIo/lIle Nove!. 4 Like the theater, " the perfor mative has thus been rrolll its inc.:ption alr.:adv infected with queemcss" (Parker and Sedgwick 5). inspiring a convenliolléll slrain of antitheatrical prejudice as well (see Barish). 5 Indeed , as Judith Butler suggests, Ihe citation of legal precedents appears (evclI more than dra matic theater) to ground lhe meaning 01' a particular act in a priOl' tex!. while it in fact determines Ihe force 01' that texl in the momenl of the judgc's performance, thc étct of citation: "it is lhrough the citation of the law lhal the figUl'¡; ofthejudge's ' \Viii' is produced and that the 'priorit)" oftext ual a uthori ty is estab Iished" (" Critically Q ueer" 17). 6 For useful recent overvi ew;; 01' Geertz, sec G. E. Ma rcus; Sewell. 7 Despite Conquergood's delicacy, jt has become commonplace to associate an opposi­ tion to wri ting both with the uses of performance by margina lized or domin ated groups (lnd with the practice of performance studies as an academic discipline. A ~ Conquergood rernarked in his opening address to the 1995 Performance Sludic:, COllference, "Performance studies is a bo rder discipline, an interdiscipline, lhal cultivates the capacity to rnuvc between structures. to forgc connections , to $e\.' together, to speak with instead ofsimply speaking a bout or for others. Performa nlA! privileges threshold-crossing, shapc-shifting, and boundary-violating figures , such a ~ shamans, tricksters, and jokers, who value the carnivalesque over the canonical , Ihe transformative over Ihe normative, t'he mobile over the monumental " ("Caravans" 137- 38). This scnse of the oppositionality of performance studies is certainly o ~n to question (see Auslander) - how useful is it to have trieksters as colleagues. (lnd what is it that their tactics are resisting?- as is the sensc that perform ance is always about a liberating, carnivalesq ue. or even socially progressive transgressiOIl Conquergood 's sense that performance's affiliations \Vith rhetoric locate perfonn­ ance studies as "the new frontier for stakingjoint c1aims to poelics and persuasi on . pleas ure and power, in the interests of community and critique, solidarilY and resistance" (" Ethnography , Rhetoric" 80) might be set alongside George E. Marcus's reading of Douglas Holmes's fieldwork among the European far right and 01' his sense of that group's exploitation 01' " illicit discou rse" (102- 03). On perform ance studies' "foundational" opposition to texts, see Worthen, " Disciplines" ; D()lart, Response; Roach , Res ponse; Schechner, Response; ZarriUi , Response; see rlisí> Roac h, "Economies," and Dolan. "G eogra phies." 8 I am adapting Gary Taylor's sense of editorial practice as a science of proximi lY here, the sense that an edited text asserts its authority by claiming to be "[p]roximall' to something we value," a value that is articulatcd by the form and content 0 1' t J¡~, edition itself ("Rena issance" 129), On editorial and performance theory, see Wort hl,; ll , Slwke,lpe{/re 1- 43 . 9 "Texts may obscure what performance tends to reveal: memory challe nges hi~t o ry in the construction ofcircum-Atlantic cultures, and it revises the yet ull\vritten cpic of their fabulous cocrcation" (Cifie,,· 286).

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III1I1IÍmliol1 : Ess(/)'.I' lo COl11l11er/'/(J/'{/le lite S el'enly-Fijilr Annivers((rv (JI' lite Speech. ( 'O{III11/II{iC(fliO/l AS.l'ocialiol1. EJ. Gerald M.l'hillips and Juli
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J'a ylll l', (.jary. R('il1 l'("lIill~ SIIrIÁ¡·,Y/JI ' III'(· . ,.j ('ulll,r,II 111.\1 fI 1 l ' Ir,,,,,I//(' N,'sl"r",i,,1/ lo rli,' Prc,w!lIr. N.:w York : O>.forú IIP, 1')')1. - - o"'!'he Rcnaissancc a nd the Enú 01' Ed iting." Bornslcin amI Wllli,um 121 -4<). Thompson, M,l rvin, and Ruth Thompson , cds. Slwkcs{J('(/re (¡IU/ tlle Scnsc o/Pa/ónl/­ anee: EI·s(Jy.\' inlhe Tradilion ofPerformance Crilicism in llollor o/B em ard Beckerl//(/I/. Newark: U 01' Delaware P; London: Asso.:iated U P, 1989. Turall , Ke nneth. Rev. of William Shake,l{Jeare's Romeo and J uriet. Los Angeles Tim cs 1 Nov . 1996: F I+. Tu rner, Victor. From Ritual/{) Thearre: Tlle Human Seriousnes.l' of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal. 1982. WalJ, Wendy. T/¡e ImpriTII ofGender: AI.ahorship and Pllhlieatiol1 in rhe Englislt Renaiss. once. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. Warrcn, R oger. Staging S hake,lpeare 's Lale Plays, Oxford: C larcndon, 1990. When We Dead AlVaken. By Henrik Ibsen. Dir. Robert Wilson. AlIey llleatcr. J-tousto n, 22- 26 M ay 199 L Whigham, F rank . Amhiliol1 and Privi/ege: The Social Tropes ElizaherlU/11 Courtesy Thcory. Berkeley: U 01' California P, 1984. Whiuon. D avid. Moliere: Don Juan. Berkeley: U 01' California P. 1995. William Shake,lpeare's Ro meo and Juliet. Dir. Baz Luhnnann. Perf. LeonardQ DiCaprio aod C1a ire D anes. Twentieth Century Fox, 1996. Wo rthen , W . B. "Disciplines of the Text I Sites of Performance." TDR: The Drama Rel'iew: T/¡e Journal ofPeljimnance SIl/dies 39, I (1995) : 13-28. - -, Shakespeare a/1(1 Ihe AUlhorily I¿/ Peljimnallce. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 1997.

or

Zarrilli, Philip B, Response to W . B. Worthcn's '"Disciplines 01' the Text I Sites 0'­ Performance." TDR: 7he Dmma Rel'iew: Tlle JOl/,.,.,al o/Peljárnwl1ce Sll/dies 39.1 (1995): 38- 41.

27

PR ESE N CE A N D THE REV EN G E

O F WR ITIN G

Re-thinking theatre after Derrida

Elinor Fuchs Sourcc: Pelj ól'ming Arl.l· Joul'na/9(2 1) (1985): 161 173.

Since the Renaissance, Drama has traditionally been the form of writ ing Ihat strives to ereate the illusion that it is composed ofspontaneous speech, a form of writing th at paradox.ically seems to assert the claim of speech to be a direct conduit to Being. That the dramatic Lext is realized only as spontane­ ous speech (and all that accompanies speech : cadence, emphasis, gcsture) is institutiollal ized in its teaching, English and Theatre going separatc aca­ dClllic roads, Thealre a nd Speech traditionally joining forces. This scarcely rCl] uires comlllent, but makes all the more striking the emergence of writing as subject, activity, and artifact- at the center 01' theatrical performance in numerous recent pl ays and perfo rmance píeces. Writing, which has tradi­ I iomLlly retired behind the apparent prcsence 01' performance, is openly dcclaring itself the environment in which dramatic structure is sitllated. The price of this emergem;e, or perhaps its aim , is the undermining 01' theatrical !'rcsence. The not ion 01' theatrical Presence has two fundamental components: lhe uniqlle self-completion 01' thc world of the spectacle, ami the circle af Itl~ightened awa reness flowing from actor to spectator and back that sustains Ihe worlel. (The lllagnetism that a particular perlarmer may exude, what we lIlean whcn we say a perfol1TIer has "presence," is included in this definitian.) rh e physico-spiritu loss \Vas IlrcaJy ::;ighlcd. ! n I hi ~ peri lld b()1h practilioners ami theorists became pas­ '"oliNh: advllcaks ('Ir I'rL:sel1¡';~ . dnd IH1wlu:n : mort! clll h llsia sticaJ1 y than in the I 111 i ICÚ

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sdl Ihal (, ultl ma ll Crrida , there is no primordial or self-same present that is not already illllltrated by the traee- an opening of the "i nside" of the moment to the "outside" of the interval. "That the presen t in general is not prim al, bu l 1
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Th e central action of Richard Nelson's 777e Vienl7C/ Notes, first produced io 1979 at Playwrights' Horizons in New York, is writing. ' \ Nclson 's Seoator Stubbs is dictating his memoirs, told as a moment to moment account of his sensations. At first Stubbs dwelI s on past events, but soon he is "writing hi m­ self" in the present: what sounds best in writing beeomes the only criteri on for what he does amI feels. A serio-comic terrorist attack unfolds on U1(.' Vielllla homc where he has becn in viLed to d inner; mistakeo I'o r the Sena l·OI'. the host has becn assassina ted o ffsUlge. T hrough lhc crnc rgt!n¡;y , Sl lIhhs kcers wrilülg- prcsent evenLS providc a mere neca siol1 ( Jllli kl: NP\." l,,'h I!l is wri lin c/

li t) vallll' liS" IlIillli lc ..lul io n u l' r n!Sl~n l'l: ; ils value emerges Iale r, wh en il a ppcan¡ aliena l.cd . a s il wcrl" pi ill led OH papel' in él hook . Prcscnlly Ihe o lhe r lwo churaclel's o nt;tage, S lubbs's secrctary R ivers and lhc ir AllIl:rie,1I1 hOstcs5 Gcorgia, catch the fe ver, and in an ecstasy 01' se lf­ alicllalioll, the three ta ke turns "writing" them ~c1ves to the others' supportive audicnee. Pencil and notebook are abandon ed , b ut il is writing all the same, a co mi c search ror Ihe righ t " scripI" with which lo cou n ter the irnmediacy of cvents. T h is continues un til gunshot bl asts rip the door off the hinge. In the linal sceoe, two year.s later, the eom pleted book o f m emoirs itself appea rs, completing l11e para bola travelled by lhe d ramatic character. Senator St ubbs. He emerged fro m writing in to speech, bu t spoke on ly to ret urn ro writing. And now, in mi lTored regress, he springs to specch again , or bis writing does. Sitting raptly to his secretary's reading aloLld of a passage from the book, he exu1ts "Ir plays! It plays !," satisf1ed that hi s wri tten words have crealed Ihe illusion of a spontaneous "character." Leo Jenk in's Dark Riele produced at the Soho Re p in 1981 , begins with a narration by a Translator who has been str llggling with th e meanjng 01' ao occult Chinese parehment, "The Boo k o f t be Y ellow Ancestor, " a tex l about él text com posed offragments 01' other texts which appear to embody yet other texts.'4 lis original language may not be C hinese, confesses lhe T ran slator and it has even crossed his mind " thal lhis wo rk .. . is itsel f a translation ... 01' a translation ... of a translation. " Though .Ienkin 's play is at one level a send-up of self-reférential modernist artifice, it is also él seriously inten decl tleconstruction 01' lhe art of theatre , which traditiona lly banishes text and textllality to the margins ofthe living performance represented by speech and gesture. Thc Translator introduces us to a passagc from the Book . N o t slIrprisingly in this play about textuality, it is about a young woman reading a book . Th e young woman appears reading the hook, whose chatacters in turn appear. Just as the young woman stands inside th e very text she reads , the Trans'l ator and his publisher are al so among the sll pposed Chjnese manuscript's ten peripatet ic characters. The very scene discussing Ule rnanuscript is parl of the "translation." Like a moebius strip, the play's frame and framed nanatives cannot be logically distinguished , and the co nventional distinction between performa nce and text is unsettled as the performance draws its textuality to our attention . The play may be a deliciollsly artificial " spoof," but the joke in part is on lhe theatre's customary creation 01' an in.\'ide of spontaneous speech Ihat relega tes tcxtuality to an outside, beyond the performance. Jenkin seerns lo say thal text is inside, and text is all there is. " Young man," says Zendavesta, Ihe oculist/occllltist who is represented as having com111issioned the "trans­ lalion ," "the new cosmogony has been rcvealed to me .... We live inside the e
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T he hlnck una ..... h ile o f I\dl Ít.: IlIl C KCl1l1cdy \ ., MIII'II' ,"'lflf //11.1' lo .<-¡{(Ir 11/ lllld Wh i/f' rclcrs nOl lll1 ly 10 racm l d iln:rcm:c hUI lo Iwo Ji ffe ren l moJes o f wri ting, print on paper and im ages on fi hn . u, T hc play is <111 a ulobio­ graphica l collage loosely focused on the hospilal ization of Kennedy 's brol her a ft er a car accident. Clara, Kennedy's central eharacter, is a l1 o bsessi ve write r who writes continuously duri ng the cou rse of the actioo and reads to us rrom her diaries and plays. She is writing the plays of Ad rienne Ken nedy, q uo ting fram The Owl AI1.Ylvers and Kennedy's di a ry enfries. Bettc Da vis, Jea n Pcters and S helley Wi nters appear as characters in ta bleaux from other rnovies, b ul immedia tely becomc white "star " vcrsions 0 1' C lara. C lara says she Iries lO wor k cvery day on A Lesson in Dead L aJ1guage (an o ther K enn edy pla y), as ir aski ng us to note lhat A M O)lie Sta,. _ . _ , is a th ird-hand reali ty slitched together from "dead language." Like the pa rchme nt in Jenkin 's p lay, M O)lie S l a¡- is a lext composed of writ ings derived from other writings, sorne of which a re derived fro m still other writings. This writing is always reminding us that it comes from a finished past - old diaries. old movies. [ts present lire is not the interaetion 01' "living" charaeters uttering seemingly sponta neous speech , but alife 01' lex ls refracted through each other to produce an eerie interaction of genres. We enter these texls with au interest in eharaeter, of course. This p la y, first prod uced as a work in progress at the Public Theatre in 1976, was wTitten earlier than the othe rs f discuss. as its interest in eharacter may evidence. Yet we enter eharacter only to see it dissolve into writi ng. Clara herself questions whether she exists outside lhe " black and white" ofwriting. AlI three plays have in common thi s slI-ange reversibility (are we follo wing eharacter, or wTiting'! are we following plOI , or writing? etc.), opening a slow leak, as we mi gh t conceive it, in the self­ compl ete authenticity 01' the stage that is part 01' theatrical Prese nce_ Oa ryl C hin 's texts are some 01' l he 1110st radically anti-theatrieal among Ihe reeent forays 01' textuality against the traditional boundaries of theatrical Prcsc nee . Many 01' his plays incorpo rate long passages 01" art or literary L·lil icisll1. The recent ACl and /he AClar, for instanee, produced in 1984 at the Tl walrc for the New City, ta kes its title from the book o/" the same name b ur! erilic Harold Rosen berg. Th e play begins \Vith a readin g 01' a long para ­ ~ra ph fm m a 1966 essay in Film Culture by Annette Michelson , delivered by a cha racter called sim ply T he Readcr. This prologue continues \Vith a reading nI" an author"s note a bo ut the origins 01' the play. It was derived from a more ;J lllb ili o llS. un produeed play (another text hovering behind the text being pcrl"ormcd ). Lhat posed the question s. " What \Vould happen il" there wn s a 111 ergl!1 nclwecn Ja cques Derrida alld Preston Sturges? W hat if Deleuzc and (1 lI a lani an¡llyzcd Ernsl Lubi lsch .. .. " T he c urrent pla y, Ihe Prologuc con­ dudes. is un "u ttcmpl lo anal Y7c Ihe problellla tie" whelh cr Ame rica n popula r cu lt ure and nru¡.ós IllcJ ium conven liolls "ca n be ca lled urc li clyp~s "1 rile play pmpcr e~1I 1 si~ts of al1 inlcrwcaving nI" dll/~'n" 01 ',,""!le I"l agmcllh qllllll:d 1'1"1)111 111' illspircd by "dlls:-ic" I\m1..'riC011(¡ 11 liS, ¡II IL'I"I"'1 ,,'ti wl lh I:l" ilicnl

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flllssag,cs. This wcavin g (JI' I'ra¡JIJICll ls ne ver eoah:sccs inlo an illu sionistie rca lil y wilh plol anJ c haradels. yd ClIhercs necause the texts behind the text are parl v I' o ur cult ura l narra livc, We finJ oursel ves surrenJerin g to the pl cas urc 01' these sourees, a surrendcr tha t slyly reasserts lhc critical question 01" 111eir cultural powe r raised at the o utset or t he play. C h in thrusts lexts at his a udiencc, books, articles, fi lms , fiction . criticismo II is earlicr ApopleclÍc Fil "fits " together various pieces 01' dance criticism with cnéJctmcnts 01' plots taken from Djuna Barnes's Nighlwood and BeaUly and Sadn ess by Yasunari Kawaba ta _ C hin c rcates a lIún. almost transpa ren t dramatic surrace 01' "cha racter" and " plo t" Ihrough wh ich shine a d iscourse woven 01' and about a variety 0 1' texts. It is lhe wo rld o f textuality rather than a dra matic world that C hin is concemed with in most of hi s pla ys. Chin always co-directs h is own plays with his collaborator Lany Q ua ll s_ Thc group of [aithful and talented actors who work wilh them ha ve dc­ vcloped a mode of stage speeeh quite different from the expressive speech Ihat passes for present and originary utteran cc. Rather the Chin actors speak quictly, hurriedl y and in flat tones, in some lim inal zoue between sponta ne­ OllS spcech and reading. Thus even in playing styl e C hin undennines the illusion 01' presence to remind us that his kind ol' perform a nce is alwa ys in Ihe shadow 01', even in awe 01', texts , and usual ly texts that origina te outside Ihe theatre . This invasion of the pl ace of speech by the " other" 01' textuality is taking l11any form s_ While the origins 01' sllch practices may be traeed in pa rt to the postmodern dance and experimental film worlds 01' the I 970s (certainly in ('hin 's case there is a direet inftucnce) the phenomenon i_n theatre has become 'i\l pervasive as to evade associatioll wilh any particul a r li nea ge or style_ It is Illlt limited to avanl-garde or experimental theatre. as C hristopher Durang's lite Ala,.,-iage oj"Belle and Boo sbows. ln that play, produeed in the spring 01' Il)R5 at the Public Theatre, the son Matt is a student 01' the novels ofThomas I lardy, and frequently steps forward to utter an apparent digression to the :tudience on The M ayor ofCaster!Jridge or Ha rdy's " unrclieved pessimism ," lx a piece 0 1' dramatic critieism, in effect, bot h within and outside the play that allows us lo read it as satire and traged y simultaneousl y. Ma tes fin t speeeh lo Ihe éludienee announces that only writing can order and rationalize- th e l1Ie~s 01' domesticity, a mI that we are about to scc an attempt at sueh writing . " ( )nee thesc detail s have been eo nsidered . . . generaliz a tions should be writtl~n down legibly, and studied ," he says, indicating the next scene as the .,hjcct 01' study. That in the play's prcmiere Ihe role 01' Matt was played by 1hc playwri ght himself only reinforces the intended pereeption that \Ve are 1<1 rega rJ the spontan eous spcceh 01' the eharacters as if bracketed in the 1','1 ~p!.:c l iv,' cnJowetl by wríllcn r~) rm . Fi na ll y, imagcs 01 wrili ng all d ils !.:umpanioll , reading, have been eropping IIp in Ihe pe rfoITlI anre winl' I)f tIW:lIIC wil h incrcasing frcq ucncy. Rich a rd hIlC II Hl II 'S sc lli ll~" \Villl Ih ,'\1 ' ,I IJIlI'~ .,llc ltcrs a mi worJs nrnni ng.across lhe I 1' 1

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Notes Walter Benjamin , "The \York 01' Art in the Age of Mechanical R eproduct ion," in If{Ul1Iillllliol1s, ed. Hanna.h Arendt (New York: Schoeken Books, 1969), p . 22 1. :1. Timothy J. Wiles, T{¡e Thealer Even( (Chicago, Universily of Chicago Prcss , 1980), p. 112. Michael Goldman , The //elO,.'s F,.eedom (New Yo rk: The Viking Press, 1975), pp. 160 - 1. ,1 JlIllan Hec k, T/¡e Lite of' ¡he Thealre (San francisco: Ci!y Ligh ts Books, 1972), No. 84. " Beck, No. 10. e, As Philip A u~ landcr writes in a helpful overvicw, " Much rece nt theory has in ract suggcsted that in arder to remain viable as a radical arl form , theater must de feat , or al least wnceplurali7C the defeat oL presence." T he unpublished pa per, "Theatre. Pe rformance and lhe Pro b lematics of Presence," WilS delivered at th e symposium "Tow¡tnls a Ncw Poetics ofThealre," William and Ma ry C ollege, April, 1985 . I \3cck , N o. :\5. :-¡ I' h,11 1l1 0fl W ikkr. "R()m¡; TI It 1I11.! l11s 011 Playwriling." qlloted in Bernard Dukore. !>I'{I/ I/I//I ,' 11t"ol'l' 1/ 11/ / ( ·,.i¡i, ·/.,.", ( N¡; \\ Yor k: H olt, R inehart
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28

lO G ayalri Spivak , in lro . lo Oc rrid a, O( Grilllllltlll(/I(/,~I ' ( lJu llillllnc: ./ohm Iluj1k 'II N lJnivcrsil y P ress. 1976), r . Ixix . 11 e h ristopher N orris. DCClIflsfruct ion: 1'lleory (/l1d Procl ice (LonJon: Mel blIcn . I'J!U)

P ER FO RMANC E WRIT ING

p.2R. 12 Ibid .. p. 291. 13 R ic hard Nelson , Tite Viel1na NOles, in Wordplays 1 (New York: PerfOnlling Arls Journal Publicati ons, 1980). 14 Len Jenkin , Dark Ride. in W ordpla)'s 2 (New York : Perfonning i\rts Journal Publicatiol.1s, 1982). 15 Cf. Derrida's well-known pun, "J! n'y a ras de hors-textc," meaning bolh Ihal Iherc is nothing ous.ide th e text, bUI also that the text has no outside. 16 A d ric nne Kennedy, A Movie Slar H as lo Sla/" in Block ({lid While, in J.j/ordpfll)'.I" (Ne w Yo rk : Pe rronning A rts Journal Publications, 1984). 17 Daryl C hin, Acr alld lile Aclo/" (New York: unpub1. , 1984). 18 Ch ristopher Durang, The M a/"riage o/Belle al1d Bo o (Ne w Yo rk : unpubl.. 1985 ) 19 F lIC hs, "PerfonlJance as Reading," Per/orming Arf,v Jouma! No. 23. vo!. VII 1. no. 2, 1984. 20 Chantal Pontbriand, 'The eye finds no fixed point on which to rest ... ," trarL'; e. R. Parsons, 1l1odern D rama, 25: 1, I9R2. Pon tbriand rnakes a distinction betwl'c lI the " presence" ofthea tre and the "p resentncss" ofperformancc. However, 1 be lievu the plays 1 discuss a nd many that 1 have no room to discLlss also evi nce the "disarticlllation " (which I call Absenee) that she finds in rerforrnanc'e.

Ric A llsop Stl11 rcc: /'er!ó/"min;;

A n\" .fouma/21(1) (1999): 76- 80.

The relationship bctwcen writing aud perfonnance- the uses and applica­ lions o f various writing p ractices for performance within the hislorical cJa ss i­ fi\.:ations of theatre, music, poetry , litera tu re- has tra d itionaJly resolved itsclf in a variety of con ventionalized (bu lllot unproblem atic) forms: lhe play tex t, I he Iibretto. the Iyric, and so on. The study of these forms has until rel a tively recently been divorced from the study of their performance: even contem ­ porary work on the materiaJity of writing deriving from deconstructive philo­ sophy and Jiterary theo ry has largely con fined itsel f to the space of the page. Writerly wo rk thal extends beyond the page has found itsclf cither margi nal­ il.cd or ignored in terms of its exploration of relations betwecn writing ancl performance. Yet at the latter end ofthe twentieth century we are surrounded by cxamples and models of such wri terly perfo rmance work. Tn short the con­ ventionalizcd (and therefore often unquestioned) rclations between writing and pcrformance are proving inere.asingly inadequate as interd isciplinary and cross-disciplinary arts practices emerge in response to rapidly shifti ng cultures. W ha tever the ambivalent indieations of digital media , writing will eertainly continue to dcvelop as a technol ogical medium , and as such, as perform a nce- performance (in whatever form) will con tinue to be an increas­ illgly co mpl ex in teraetion 01' signifyi ng systems. Since the mid-1990s the term "performance writing" has begun to have sOlOe currency in the arca 01' experimental and contemporary performing arls, whether referring to an emergent field of practice 01' an emergent aca­ dCl11ic discipline. As the writcr Caroline Bergvall has noted: Performa nce W riting ex.plores relationsb ips between text ual and text­

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Jl n th Ihc(' n.: til:a l il ltl:n::s t ill " wrili ll!!· itsell ,IS 11 ·"1"'1\ l ' 11:0 rla cin!! ;¡s ;¡ Jis tim.:livc Icalurc wi lhi n Il1 ()Jl! m i ~ 1 a vall l-ganh.: pradll"l', \ Ih e 1I1l': leasingly cross-Jisdplinary ami rragll1cl1 la ry co nJ irio n 01" I he ~lI l s: uno lh e pc rvus ivc ncss of the lerms o f "perfo m wnée" a s u means 01" rcad ing J i verse cult ural practices, ha ve proviJed a rich gro und for the cmergcnce 01' pcrformal1l:l' wrili ng as a pract ice ancl as a way o f fra ming pntctil.'C. The term perfO nn Ul1ét.: writing itsel f, w hile inevitab ly evol vi ng into ye t an other category Ih al relcrs to a11 increasingl y fixed body of work. is-al JeaSl no w-stiU un unSlablc (llld explo ratory te rm thal attempts 10 hold in tension both wri ting a nd ilS per­ forrn a nce, performance a nd its writing. lt is a trame throug h which a ra nge of wti ti ng a nJ performa nce praclices are bro ugh t inlo view- the texualities oJ sonic, visual , graphic an d movement pl:lrfo rmances; t he performance or SOllic, vi sual , graph ic and m ovement texls. As a frame performance writing al so provides a means fo r rethin king a no lInderstanding a range of arts and perfo rmance practices that have remaincú silent or mute in the face of more trad itional ways of looking ano read ing, Performance writing effectively both problematizes and widens the discou l"sc that surrounds the textuality of contemporary arts practice and a1Jows othe r­ wise marginal and peri pheral practices into the field ofperformance researc h . While the danger of any new disciplin e o r new means of framing wo rk is Ih:.1l the frame itseJftends to impose restrictive limits and conventions 00 practiccs that were otherwise unimpeded; the benefi t is its ability to map and link practices which are often unaware of each otner and the new directions am] initiatives which can emerge fro m such integration and framing. Performance writing is the contin uing and transforming rela tionship between the t wn telms 01' ils discourse, proposed both as boundary markers and as two terminal points in an open circuit across which the luminolls arc ofperformance wri!­ ings take formo T he origins 01' performance writing must be placed within the broad his­ torical context of writerly performance work within and across ma ny dis­ ciplines and media. But it also has a more localized history ano academ i¡; setting in reJation to Dartington, a specialist arts col1ege in Devon , England , where writing in rela lio n to music, to theatre, and to the visual a rts and performance, has in one way or another been a consistent am.l integral feéltu rc of its academic program since the mid- I 970s with links back to lhe fo unding 01' the present Dartington Estate in 1925.4 For example, '\vriting for perform­ ance" was an essential speci alism in the newly-established theatre degrce course (1976 onwards). It was not predicated primarily on ideas ofpla yw riting. o r the literary stlloy o f playscripts 01' dramatic texts, but on the con li n uing qllest ion (and questioning) o f the rela tionship of wriling 10 per foml,mcl.: wo rk. particu larl y (at lha l lime) on lhe uses 01' writ ing rOl" perfo nna ncc thul emphasized l he making 01' " p h ysical, non-narrali vc ano vi:m a l" l'xper imental theat re a no " Ilew dance" work, an ú its relalio ns ll) wilkr :-l1l.:lal a m! plllilil: cont\!xts.

PO

The 1!.Il1 dll ,t! lIL p;jI t un: pi \\ III" W (.I l h:a st in t~ n ns 01" ex.]1l' rilllcntal thca tre Wtl lk in lhe U.K. ) from lile Il IlJl ll:; pf playwl it ing ano Ihe fo rms orora m a ,I~s\ll,; ia lcd wilh wnw ntilmul thca ln: and lhcatrc spaccs d llrin g the I970s ami 1I)XOS, wa s n.:lkdcd in Ihe w nlinuing and unrcsolvab lc d ebate aroum.l which 1'1 l'I)()sit ioll or connective wo uld besl characte ri/:e the rela tio n between writ ing ;llId pe rforma ncc: writing for performance, which bega n lO s llggesl a sense 01' wriling in lhe service of performance, writing and performance, or wril ing as pcrl"omlancc. During the 1970s lhe theatre co urse at D artinglo n had looked baek ror II1spiraliun lO lhc writerl y models and examples of work a t Blac k M oun tai n ( 'tlllcgc in No rth Ca roli na. In 1952, the poet and then dean of Black M o un­ LIIIl Collcgc. C harles O lso n . wrote a course deseription en titled " The Act o f Wriling in lhe C ontexl 01' Post-M odcrn M an ," which incidenta Jly might nO l I1l1ly have conlained one 01' lhe earliest sustained usages of the lerm " p ost­ IlIodcrn:' but also provided a marker from which an idea o f perf0l111anCe \VI iling could emerge. Olson \\frote: The cngage ment of caeh c1ass ... is the search for a methodology by which each person in the dass, b y acts of writi ng and critique on others' acts of writing, may more and more fin u the k inetics of cxperience disclosed- the kinetics ofthemselves as perso ns a s well as 01' lhe stuff they have to work on , and by .5 Illere are (at least) two key ideas here: (i) "acts of writing" which cJearly places \VI iling as performative. as engaged in physica l process, which Ieads to (ii ) 1 " kinetics of expe riencc"-the literal " movement 01' material " or " perform­ .111\':<': 01' writing" that is fou nd and material ized . A s Ol son saw il elsew here: t..lllctics as a direcl transfer of energy fmm "where th e poet got it .. . b y wa y 111 Ihe poem itself, all the way over to the reader. ,,6 The sense of the materiality ,,1 writing and the essentially performati ve quality ofthe materials ofwriting, ( )lsolI also describes as being " handled as a series of objects in field in such a 1V1I V thal a series of tensions are made to hold , and to hold exactly inside the I "1I1 t: nl ano contcxl of the poem which has formed itself, through the poet, .lIld lhcn, into beillg."7 h)J·ty- ll ve years laler O lsou 's co W"se out1.i.ue still has a contemporary 1'·... tlIlUnCC lo its vision and its " placin g" 01' the act 01" writing. lts conceptual IlIltl'rit o r. performance writing is now only able to locate itself as part 01' the IIIllll il'ul ion pfl iterature, music, theatre, and so on. In that , ofcourse it aligns 11'.l' l!" "w ith thc acsthetics of suspicion, disruption and reappraisal which i.:" c.: t II slIch a large exten t d elermim:d the fra me of mind 01' this century's , II II :-'Io n of ex perime nta lity ."H T hc first Performance W riting Symposium, an IlI le¡n a tional gathcri ng hckl a t Da rtinglon in 1996, em phasiz cd the ma tenal­ 111,1 111" wri ting ami inlroúllcctl pt,: rl llrll1a IlCC wriling as it pn.:senled itselr at IIt,lt lil1ll!: 12 1

1'1 ItI (11. 1\1 ,\ N,' I

"' he (kili ,,(' pcll úrmancc wr iCillg ddilll:s wl 'liul' 111 II ~ wllks l scn sc as the in vestigatio n 01' lile rc ll'on ll
') The SY lllfH ISiu l1I was (\I· \l q J,ól lI lI.l· d ¡" J{1l: i\lIsopp, writl:r. amI C .lrolillc Ilergvall. 1)1'\::;':111 SlIhj.:¡;! " ir,'clor llllh" l~crl"lIl1aIlCC W ritillg dcgrec coursc al Dartington l'ollcftc (jI' A rt>. !O SI:;<' Pt' /:lil/'/l/l/I/(,c Texl\', cds. Michacl Issacharofl' and R obin .Ioncs (U niv . of Pe llllsy lvania I'rcss, 19(8), p. 86.

Notes 1 C aroline Bergvall, Key Note Paper for Performance Writing Symposium . Dartington, U .K. , 1996 . 2 Heraldcd by Marshall McLuhan in the early 1960s and approached from philo· sophical (Jacques Derrida), structural (Roland Barthes). cultural (Walter O ng), feminist (Héléne Cixous), and teehnologieal (McLuhan) perspectivcs. 3 For example, in the work of M areel Duchamp, Antonin Artaud. Gertrude Stein. 4 Dartington was fou nded as a utopian community for rural regeneration and th e promotion ofthe arts by the American heiress Dorothy Elmhirst and her husband Leonard Elmhirst in 1925. 5 Charles Olson, 'The Act of W riting in the Context of Post-Modern Man " (1952) in O/son: The }o/lma/ o/ Ihe Charfe,~ O/son Archives, ed. George B utterick (Univ. o f C onnecticut Press), No. 2 A utumn 1974, p. 28. 6 C harles Ql son. "Projecti vc Verse" (1950) in Se /ecled Wrilil/gl', ell. R . Crceley (Ne w D ircctions, 1966). 7 Ib id. 8 Bcrllvall. op. cil .

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29 MAK ING MOTIO N S

1",!~lrrl"d l' ¡ 11 e l :I , 11 1I 1dV " l.' " I' I'III" l llI le 11I 1'l.¡'''rtIl law by lilc r­ :llIv n':-llIC lllhcl'iIl V 11.

1. Tite body in law's tex t

The Introduction lo this collection 01' essays likens the trajee­ tory 01' human experienee to driving on the highway. Driving, as an activi ty , is constrictco (or, perhaps more accurate'ly, eonstructeo) by a variety 01' " texts" whieh nol only help us gel where we want lo go, bUl protect us a lon g lhe way. For law­ yers, the mos t obvious 01' lhese texls is the Motor Ve hicle Code, lhe written set of dri ving regulations fonnally approved and enforeeo by lhe S tate. D ri ve rs , however, are very much ,lwa re that the text ofthe Motor Vehicle C ode is nol lhe only " text" of the road. As the Introouction points out. " text " is also to be found in hig hwa y markers, dividing lines, road signs ano (most impo rtant for present purposes) t!le didactic bodily m o vements and gestures of persons \Ve eneountcr along the way. be they state tToope rs or othe r orivers . Wh at is true of dri vin g is in m éllly ways lrue ofla\\' .in general. It is easy to recognize lhe written text 01' la w, but a fully­ aceurale and nuanced undcrstanding of ho\V the law actuall y works requires an ap preciation of ot her texts in law 's scmiolic field. In this arlicle l he author foeuses on one sueh "alternative" text, legal gesture, by which he mca ns any purposivc bodily motion (espeeial1y, bu t not exclusively, 01' lhe arrns or hands) lhal by eon ve ntion signifies a speciflc lega l change. condition or rclation. T he body of the articlc groups lhe function s 01' lega l gc~ture inlo eight distinguishable. but necessarily overla pp­ ing categories labe led "in dicative," " ordinative," "ev ioent.iary ," "demonslrative," "communal," " mnemonic," " regul a lory." and "psyehologieal." With each calegory, lhc aulhor reviews vari­ Ous specific functions which legal gesture has historically served an%r continues to se rve in o ur own lega l system. The author eoncludes by suggesting that far froln being él primitivc or naj ve modality inherently inferior lO writing, legal gest ure is a sophis­ tica ted an d pt')we rful Illcdium possessing a uniqut: c:rp:rcil y lo 'o ster eo rn m uni ly , cll nc rcten es~
In cOlltempo rary America, the locus of legal meaning - l((w's " text," if you will - is habitually deemed to be the written word. T o guarantec " a govern ­ ment 01' laws and 110t 01' men," Americans have vested ultimate lega l author­ ily in a written Constitution bol slered by innumerable volumes of pri nted pre¡;edents and statutes. To prevent fra ud and promote certa inty, American lawyers routinely recommend (an d our legislatures often insi st) that basic legal transactions such as wills, contracts, and col1veyances be put in wTiting. Tmd itionallegal doctrine demands that our courts conslrue legal instruments sol ely according to their written tcrm s, disregarding a ny ora l statements m ade by the parti es bel'o re those written terms were set down (the " parol evidence" rule). O ur law schools teach law students how to interpret legal literatu re and how to eraft legal documents . ' The very language of AmeJ'ican la w is replete with refere nces to the wri tten word that underline t he latter's denotive fundamentality. Stand ard law is " black-Ietter. " Careful or circumspect judges folJow " the letter ofthe law." Law-enforcement officers may "throw the book " at a repeat offender. Evcry layman knows tha t the essence 01' any legal agree­ Illent is to be found in the "fine print. " We must aekn owled ge the central and eonstructi vc role of writing in law's contemporary text, but we m ust not give in to lhe Iiterallimitations o f tha t metaphor. 1n particula r. we must not overlook unwritten forms of expressi on and experience that shape our understanding and appreciation of law in practice, if rareJy in principie. Even in a society saturated by the written word, law lives in the speech oflawyers and c1ients. in the gestures ofattorneys and witnesses, ancl in the multi-sensory " performances" of persons party to wil1s, marriages, and tria ls. rt resides in the setting and structure 01' courthouses, lhe design and deco ration of courtrooms, and th e costume and accoutre­ lIlents ofjudges. Notwithstanding our traditional inc1ination to igno re them , Ih<.:se and other "alternative" legal texts have always had presence and power. I'oday a number 01' legal scholars are taking them more seriously,2 thanks in part to new audio and video technologies which have al10wed alternative forms to be preservcd and studied with llnprccedented ease. ) Herc, then, is an ineipient "crisis 01' text" within American law -- a grow­ in g apprcciation that the traditional eqllation of legal text with writing is in adeq llate. W hat is at stake in this crisis, however, is more thanjust an equa­ lio n. T he disjllncture between narrow and broad conceptions of legal text I'Olllpl clll<.:nts und potentia ll y incorporates many other basic discontinuities. Wrili ng, ror instnnce, h U$ frcq ucn lly been associated with (among other things) Icasoll ," lhe " masculi nc," a nd t.:I il c power. 0 11 the other hand, non-wri Uen IllrIll S havc J"ri¡!q llcn Ll y ( a IHJ 111 11 11.'1 rnore pcjo rati vely) been éls::;ocialed with

12-1

I J I\

The em bodimen t of law in gesture Bernard 1. H ibbillS Sourcc: ./uUr!1a/ o(CO/l/f!II1{lorar)' J_ega/lssues (, (19')5): 51 RI.

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emotion, Ihe " rcmini nc," anu tlle 1ll
I)f" tite hmly in rav()r l)1 I h ~' 1IIIl Id ), I; a lld the spn.:au 01" lil\! racy th ro ugh the llIass o!" Euro peu 11 a nd A n lCltea /l ru pula I il1nsl(, (tha n ks largcly lO the dcvelop­ IIlenl 01" Ihlo! printin g press) .1 7 Not witltstanding this relat ively recen t setback, Ih\! inJispuli!J ly lengthy anJ c1aborate caree .. o f lega l e.estu re in use m akes it a pri me candiJa te ror extendcd exa mina tion . My third a nd final reason for f"ocusin g on legal geslurc has to d o with the likclihood tha t in an agc of video and computers. gestllre in general wi ll hecollle a mo re prom inent a nd mo re respected communica tive form o T he visuallllcJ ia offilm and television have al read y la id Ihe cultural gro undwork ror gestllre's revi val .' x C ha llengi ng our C a ..lesian prejudices, Ha rvard psy­ chologist Il oward G ardner (1983: 2(5) h a s recenlly posited the existence uf a " bo dil y-kinesthetic intell igence" of which gesture is but one Illan ifesta­ lion.' 9 Other psychologists have lately suggested tha t a gro win g n um ber of" American childrcn use a so-called " McLa n g uage" which relies m uch more o n gcsture than does tradition a l English . 20 At the same time, many computer software and hardware designers are working on "geslural interfaces" (ex­ I\!nding all the way to "virtu al reality") that will even tuall y revo lutionize the 21 wa)' we interact with both electro n ic machines and each ot her. As a new generation more com fo rtable with gesture grows up and en ters prof"essional lif"e, and as visual a nd computer technologies continue to progress and shape cultural experience and expectations, we may plallsibly ex pect renewed inter­ est in gesture as a legal instrumentality. Studyin g legal gesture now may help liS to both understand a nd deal with the possibl e consequences of such a deve1opment. The few studies of legal gesture that have been un dcr taken to thi s point llave explored its prominenee in vario us legal systems and cultural envi ron­ lIIents, 22 the significanee of specific legal gestures in specific historic con­ lexts,21 and the depiction of legal gestures in particular manuscripts or othe r specific physical settings. 24 T o Ihis poi nt, however, no o ne has consi Je red the ¡.!\!neral functions of legal gesture as a modality. 25 Granted , legal gesture has hcen and to som e extent still is used to swear oaths, transfer land , make con­ Iracts, and accompli sh o ther specific lega l ends, but what general funetio ns dlles it serve within legal systems? What d oes it do? O ur erstwhile failure to ask these rather basic questions has. I suggest, led us to underesti mate lega l ~c sture ' s inherent powe r and potential (an underestimation revealed by our tenJenc)' to pre-emptivcly dismiss legal gesture as " primitive, " "archaic," or "' naive " ). In an effort to remcdy this situation, Scction 1I 01' this Articlc lllltlines eight broad categories of function which legal gesture has historic­ ;¡lIy scrvcd and , on occasion. still serves: it then describes specific functi o ns that '¡pccilic legal gestures serve o r ha ve scrved within each of thosc categorics. "i~·t.: 1 iu n 111 01' thi s A rticle ~ u ggests h o w an app recia tion 01' legal gesture's 1I 11111i ple l:a pa bi litics can rroviJc important ncw in~ight s into gesture' s sur· .,.h·,tI on Ihc I1ltt l"gilh III" CIIII I1: 11 I(lllra ry legal cu lture, in lo its chcckcrcJ history , .lIld CVC II illl l) ils ru tlln' ,1'; ;1 h','.1I ill slrt ll llcll la lily .

1'11

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11. Tbc runce iOm; lJf leg¡lJ J..:l·...tUrL·

workcd i11 Ihe same II1di~lI I IVl' Ll shill n when 1I111ltiple parlies surremle red righ ls lo one party, ur wlHm Ol le pcrso ll IransICrred righls lo lllul tiple parlies. T hus, in c1evcnlh ccntu ry No rnranoy , él hu:sband. wife, amI the ir two sons ll1adc a gil"l lo a local chllrch: a surviving charler rcco rds Ih at "a ll eq llall y in I:Qnfi rm alion 01' the aforesaid gift, together holdjng one book [sta nd ing for Ihe girt}. placed [it] on the altar 01' St. Ma rtin. "3> Legal gesture can also indicate th e wit nesses guaranleeing a legal trans­ action or evenl. T his ind ieation of witnesses is often aecom plished directly by gcstures perfo rmed by the witnesses themselves. F or example. accorJing to Ihe Book or Lel'ilicus, Ihe wi tnesses t o a death sentence in ancient Hebrew culture were required to come up and place their hands on the head 01' the condemned indi vi dual. This act d irectly ma rked Ihe m a s wi tnesses si111 ulta ne­ ously seeing. hearing, and endorsing the condemnatíon. H Símilarly, several early Anglo-Saxon land charters contéú n a formula L1sually mistransla tcd as "Ihe witnesses and their signatures a re recorded ," but which actually means "the witnesses were sworn and Iheir hands touched. "35 Tbis formula sug­ gests that after watching the gestures performed by the partiópan ts to a conveyance. the witnesses endorsed the co nveyance by tO llchiug lhe charter recording it. In both t hese contexts, the witnesses argu ably earne in to being l/ua witnesses as much (if not m ore) by the gestures they perfo rmed as by a ny declaration or writing down of names. Less directly, legal gesture can imlicate the witnesses to an actÍon by unilateral motions which designate wi tnesses melaph orically. ]n ancien t Israel , rol' instance, swearing with one's hand on the thigh or genitals a ppears lo have been an invocation ofancestors to witness and, ifnecessary , lo dcfend I he oath 3 1> 1n ancient Greece and R ome. the aforementioned gestuTe o f pl ac­ ing one's hand on an aHar indicated not only the party taking the oath , but also that one or more gods was being calJed OIl to witness i1. 17 Even tod ay, the raising 01' the right hand is a sort of caJli ng on our own God as witness, Inwards whom one's hand is extended in iml ication and supplication. l~ Finally, legal gesture can literally 01' metaphorically indicate Ihe object 01' a kgal transaclion. Frequentl y, this object is another person oThus, the afore­ Illcntioned Hebrew witnesses' gesture of touching the head of aman markcd hill1 as Ihe object of the condemnation. More positively, ancient Hebrew law ~ave lestators an opportunity to gesturally designa te their beneficiaries: tbe HIJO/.; o( Genesis records that Isracl. the father of .Ioseph . designated Joseph ' s M ilI Ephraim as his principal beneficiary by putting his right hand on Ephraim's lu:ad . w In Roman law, a party c1aiming a slave analogously indicated him as the object of his c1aim by touching Ihe slave with a ceremonial rod, saying: " 1 daim Ihis ma n is mine by Q uiritary right according to his proper title. As I hav\! t.lcclared , so , look you, 1 ha ve laiu my staff on him."lO Alternativel y. ¡¡ lega l gcsturc ean ind ica t\! whllt. irn ol who , is the focus oflcgal activity .41 In II ICdil!v ~t1l:U ll vcy alH;\!N, 101 ill sla nce, lhe gcslure 01' Iransferring a sl raw or a dud 0 1' Cil rl h gCI1l:rall v illl lil :lll'd Iha l 1,llId was Ibe o bjec l 01' transJ'e r. J2 In

The many fUl1ct iom; 01' legal gesture as él 1TI00lalily enn be gro ll peJ into al Icast cight distinguish ab1c b ut necessari ly overlapping calegories. Somc­ what arbit rarily, r have labelled these categories " illd icati vc," "ordi na tivl.!." "evidentiary." "demollstrative," "comm unal ," "mllemonic," " regllla to ry," anJ "psychologica J. "26 In this Sectio ll , I will cOllsider these categorics in turno illustrating the l11ul ti plc specific fUllcti ons lega l gesture ca n se rve wil hin each category by reference to individual legal gestures drawn from historicaJ'7 28 or contemporary experience. Given the ma ny ga ps in the existing lega l élnd psychologicalli teraturcs on gesture, much of what I llave to sa y here is necc~­ sarily impressi onistic; r offer it as a starling-point for more research rather than as a defi nitive prod uct. A. ¡',dicative fimctions

Legal gesture can perfonn a variety of "i ndicative" functions. i.e., fu nctions by which (implicitly or explicitly) it indicales or identifies oertain importanl aspects or elements of legal IransactÍons. Most basicall y, legal gesture is a physical and corporeal sign which can indicate that a legal change or relation is being effected. 29 Although admi ltedly ambiguous in isolation, its use in appropriate settings can resolve potential doubts abo lit the legal meanÍng 01' enforceability 01' words or other actions. In con tcmporary courtrooms, for instance, raising one 's right hand c10se to the bod)' uSllally indicates that a bindi ng oathis being Sworn. In the Middlc Ages, pointing one's index and middle fingers (as depicted on the e1even th century Bayeux Tapestry and the fourteenth century manuscripts of the German Sachsempiegel) could similarly indicate an oath-swearing. Such legal gestures have historically served as a sort ofsemiotic shorthand, alerting people not only to the fact thal something of legal conseq uence is happenin g, bul also to the precise legal nature of that "something" (e.g .. the swearing 01' an oath). 10 More concretely. legal gesture can indicate the party or parties lo a legal

Iransaction. Considero oa lh-taking again. In aneÍent Greece and R ome, an

ill J ividual could ph ysÍcally identify himsclf as an oath-swearer by placing

11 his hand on the altar of a god. In our own society, oath-swea rers idenli f'y I hCl11sel ves lo others by. inler alia, placing one hand on a Bible and rai sing l he ol he r. Aua logo usl y. gestu re::; can indicate the parties to bilateral 01' mul ti­ la te ral undcrtaki ngs, conlracts. or conveyances. For instanee, in Ih e ancien t Ro man marriagc cerelllony, the parlies joining their right hands (dextrarull/ J JUI/uio) wcrc bride a nd groom. :? In ea rl y medieval E uro pe, Ihe gCSIllres 01 Ili¡nJi ng Ove!" ¡¡lid rcu:ivi ng ti cl od 01' earlh marked purties <11' lhe gra nto r anu gr:l l lll!c IlInJ rcspectivdy. visibly dislingu ish ing Ihl.!l1l rmm n lbe r pc rson~ prcsClI1 i l S Wi lllCSSCS 01 simple bystandcrs. Mcd icvü l Iqml !'l!NIIIIl" IíO lllc li mes

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thirt ccnlh Cl;lll ury hl¡,dalld , a Irans l\.:1 " hy Ih e d¡1I11 ,llld 11" h,J ~Jl alld h 'Y' si mi la rl y signilied lívcry o f scisill or a ho usc: " MOl\.' a l)Sllac lly. Ihe IllCUit:VII I practice o f handing o ver a s talf 0 1" a glove o rlen inJ icall.:U a Iranslcr 01' powel (e.g., to do violence) or a righl (e.g. , lo hold la nd or so rne ol her lhing) as src cified by accompanying wo rds . 4~

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ill!J)(Jrlallt ph ysicnl elles fu r t hL' 1'L'lL'll lo ll y s I'urlhcr gcs lu ral a nd verbal cla bor­ atÍt)I1. 411 In Ihis respecl, lega l gcs llJ l es are s lil11uJants lo thnught which help to l'nSUIC thal k~al c ha nge is dlecll:u according to conventional norms. C. E¡ritfelltiary !unClú)1Is

Third , legal gesture can punctllate a legal performance by dividing it in to individual "bits" or "chunks" 01' legal ¡nformation. Such pllnctllation ma kes legal info rmation easicr to understand by providing multiple moments wilhin which wo rds or other transaetional developments may be simultaneo us ly assimilated and anticipated . The relatively long and complicated medieval homagc ceremony was thus punctuated by several gestures: the vassal knelt and folded his hands, the lord embraced the hands ofthe vassal, amI t he lord kiiised the vassal. 4~ Metaphorically and even literally in this context, lega l gcs­ lmes allowed participants a nd witnesses to catch their breath. Such gest urcs werc enective as pUllctuation becallse they \vere deployed neit her too frequcl1 Uy IlO!' ( 00 infrcquenlly , Performed too rrequently, t hey themselves wo uld ha ve ovcrloaJ cu Ihc aU\!ntion ano mCl110ry o fwi tnesses: per ronl1co no l frequcntly c nlHlgh, Ihcy wOIII~1 huve losl rnosf 01' their p rosocJic vól lllc 1\1 th l! cnn lcxl n I' a la rgc CCI CnlUlly. pund llll li ng lega l gcs lu n.:s nl .. ,1 L' tH' pall lcip; llll s

I,cgal gesture can serve two functions which may con veni ently be described as "evidentiary" insofar as they evince key aspects of a gesturor's m ental sta te. To begin, legal gesture can evince " intent" : the intellec t uaJ willingness lo init iatc o r undertake a legal change or relation. Legal gestu re ¡nterposes hetween legal statement amI legal co nseq uence a physícal action that req uires lime, effort, and vol untarincss. T he prospective 01' actual ex pe nd it ure of time and errort focuses attention 0 0 the legal commitment bein g undertaken and ¡'.ives indivíduals furthcr opportunity 01' occasion to rel1ec t o n its probable rcsults;50 the performance of a calculated legal gesture arter t he passagc of time when words are spoken (or throulgh a period oftime during wbieh words are spoken) sugges~ that a gesturor genuinely wishcs to accomplish a convey­ ance, a sa le, ctC. 51By the same token, 01' course, the prospect or the obligation nI' having to l1lake a time- and clTort-consuming legal gesture may restraí n individuals rrom making commitmcnts whích are in fact unintended. 51 The status 01' legal gesture as él voluntary physieal movement also l1lakes legal gesture evidentiary of intent because ít reduces (although it admittedly does Ilot eliminate) the possibility that the gesturor is acting under some kind 01' external duress. In the context ofthese observations it ís quite clear why in the M iddle Ages - consistent with then-prcvailing theories 01' gesture in general " gestures of homage were deemed to evince intent to be bound to one's I'cudal lord. They were time-eonsul1ling, effort-consuming, and demanded vnluntary action on the part of the prospective vassal. 54 Second, legal gesture can evin ce feeling, i.e., the emotions which accom­ pany or are occasioned by a legal change or relation .55 Legal transactions are " liminal" events ._. events that involve transitions from Orle social state or cunditíon to another. 5(, A person is independent, and then is dependent (vas­ salage); a person is separate, and then one is connected (contraet; marriage); (lne is a possessor, and then one is not (conveyance). Liminal events are I'requently occasions for the experience of strong emotions. If an individual is not ablc to physícally show those emotions through, say, the making 01' a 1',l.'slure, he may feel disconnected or vaguely disassociated from legal change. II rna y not be fully real to him or to others and therefore, perhaps, not fully ~'urn relling. On the other hand, perforrning a gesture may provide a legal ;Ielur with a critical catharsis. an opportunity to release and display emotions II llendant UpOIl ch ange 01' rel al íon in a way that consolida tes that change and rcl uLi lln uno supro rts íl~ wor kin g, Relurning to the example of the medieva l humag¡,; Ce rel11(lll y. the ges\tl l C'i pI' k nccl ing ilnd foJdi ng o ne's band s provided th¡; ges luror /1\)1 \) Il ly wII\¡ ,In IlPPOl' IlIIlily lo cvi nce conscio lls intent to

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B. Ordinative jimctinns Legal gesture bas what might be termed "ordinati vc" functio ns insora r as il c(\n order and organize both the deplo ymen t and th e perce ption oflega l mea ning. f irst of all, legal gesture can " highlight" important information, evcnts, or relationships within a legal tr~lnsaction or performance.45 Highlighti ng rreq uently follo ws from indication . Highlighting nonetheless goes bcyon J indication by setting lega l gcsture in the context of legal performance as a whole ; it focuses o n how legal gesture 's deployment emphasi.zcs sorne aspcct!. of a tra nsaction and not others. In a conveyance, for instance, a legal gest un,' may not only indicate who is giving and receiving land, but may draw spccial attention to those facts. As a result 01' gestures, the identity of the partics is foregrounded vis-a-vis other (theoretically less important) aspects of thl! agreement (such as the duration of the esta te created) which may be solcly expressed in speech. Second, legal gesture can frame or define a legal transaction by marking its beginning and end . It thereby divides legal/y-important words and beha viors from other wo rds and behaviors" giving a p hysieal focus to witnesses ' aUen­ 46 lion and later recollection. Homer descri bed a framing use of legal gest un.' in the I!iad: at one point during the siege of Troy, the Greek warrior Ach illes initiated an oath by grasping the staff that gave him power to speak before the élssembled G reeks: at the end of his oath, he flung the staff on the ground ,41 Somewhat Icss dramatically, \Ve frame our o\Vn oaths by raising and (hen lo\vering our right hands.

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l' Il'x '1 11/\ ' . 1"" becolllc lhe lon.l's 1l\¡II I, b lll .. Iso óllI nppor lul1ify h l ,.how hd "l c !lis lord \llId olhl!rs Ihe h um ili ly wilh whieh hc lOUK up his I1 CW slal ll ~. T his d is pl llY n I' humilily in turn bccamc a persona l and socia l n:snuru: which hclpcd sustaHl the fe uoal rc1ation ship in to the future.

D. Demollstrtltille function .s Legal gesture can perform at least [WO " oemonstrative" fundio ns. These dil~ fer from indica tive fu nctions in sofa r as they involve a nalogic 01' symbolic showings 01' depictions o flegal change or relation , a mI not m erely signiflcati ons of specific elcments or a spects:57 they differ fro m cvidentiary fu nctions i n s of~lr as they display " objective" ra ther than " S LLbjecti ve " dimensions of legal tran s­ actions . In execution, each demonstra t ive function of legal gesture can c1a rify the meaning and significance oflegal informalion pro vided by other m od a lilies (speech and even , theoretically, writing) .5X C ol1ectively, the dem onstrali vc capacities of legal gesture ma ke it easier for gest urors and witnesses alike tI' understand the effect or implications 01' legal transactions. Such unde rstand­ ing may pro pel legal ch ange by confirming individuals in their consent or th eir choices, or m ay alternativel y prevent it b y prospeetively presenting indiviouals with an image depicting the otherwise undesired legal or physical effects of an inclination or declaration . First , legal gesture can physiea l1y demonstrale lhe nature or effect of a legal agreement or relation. In aneient M esopotamian law, fo r instance , a deb tor's gesture ol' handing his garmcnt (or the hem ol' his garment) to a creditor as part of a loan agreement demonstrateo that the debtor - representeo by the garlllent which had literal1y assumed his shape when wom - \Vas eom ing under thc creditor 's legal and cven physieal po\Ver. 59 This dcmonstratio n m ay have been accompan ied by a verbal explanation of what was going on , but lhe gestures (perhaps intentional1y - see infi·a, " Mnemonic Funetions") maoe lhe speech somewhat redundant. In the same legal culture, washing one 's hands in an appropriatc physical and verbal context demonstrated a giving up (a " cleansing" 01' literal " oissolving" ) of one's contractual obliga­ tions. 60 In ancient Greece , throwin g iron bars into the sea after taking an oath (e. g., o f al1iance) demonstrated that the oath could not be revokeo (insofar as the bars eould not be retrieved) .61 In Imperial Rome , Ihe joining of rigb t hands oemonstrated the achievement 01' peace and harmony between b ride and groOIll .6~ In the Middle Ages, the prospective vassaI's placement 01' his hanos together before his loro ("eommendation") in the ebnventiona l medieval homage cerelllony demonstrated that he was legally bouno , 01' wal> at least rcaoy to be bound Y T he lord's pl acemcnt ofhis hands over Ihe hands o fthe vassal in turn demonstrated the lord 's a ssu mptio n of dominance within the fe udal relali onship being e realeo betwecn them . The sUIne rcality was gest ura lly d emonstraled in Germa n reudallaw by havin¡.t Lhe lord SICp nn Ihe vassa l's fool. (,1 11 1

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Sl!conu , legal ges tu rc ca /l lh:m o llsl n llc lhe sanclion supporting a legal Iransucli o n DI' relalion Ih(.' p ricc lo be paid ir a contract is not uphcld or a conveyallce is not acc'epleu . This ill /rrrorem functi on of lega l gesLure seems lO ha ve heen partie ula rly pop ular in aneient la w. Homer's lIiad suggests that in aneient G reece, a mutual oal h could be concJuued by l wO parties tak ing \\iine frolll bowls amI pouring it out on the ground . In the epic itself, lhe acts were accom panieo b y the explicato ry words. "W hichever of the two [sides] should first do hann a gainst the oaths, m a y t hei r brains be po nTeo o n to the groundjusl as this wi ne."65 T he R om an h isto rian Livy li kew ise reports tJla t a Roman o fficial concluded an early treaty between lhe Roma ns and !he A lbans wilh these \Vo rds : " 1f [th e Ro man people] should by P ll blic consent anu fraudulen tly depart from [the terms of the treaty]. then , d o yo u, J up iter, so stri ke thc R oman people as 1 strike this pig thjs day ; strike so mllch the m ()re as yo ur poweT and streng lh are grealer." At this poinl , aecording to Livy. lhe offieial "struck the pig with a flint knife. "fo6 Graphieall y concretizing pena lties in this fashion drovc home their meani ng, and iJl the process provided a powerful incentive for parties to adhere to legaJ obligatioos.67

E. COllllllllnalfullt:tions Legal gesture can perform th ree functions which may broadly be termed " communal, " i.e ., productive of a heighte oed sense 01' inoividual connection to a comrn unity. Most o bvio usly, lega l gesture can p romote comrn uni ty by physicaJl y crea t­ ing community in space. T o be at all meaningful , lega! gestures req uire wi t­ nesses to observe them . In soeieties with little or no experieoee with writing, it is important that many people witness legal gcstures so that transactions will be properly and effectively rcmcmbered. The more important the trans­ action , the greater the numbcr 01' witnesses that tend to be requireo , both by law and practiee.6~ In the early Mido1c Ages, legal gestures were purposeful1y performeo in the erowdcd market or in lhe public court. When people eame together to witness gestures in these settings (as rcflccteo in the oft-repeated uocumentary formulas " in the eyes o f many" a nd " in lhe presence 01' many " ),('9 Ihe community was (re-)creatcd. 70 The physical re-ereation of eommunity is faeilitatcd by the faet that legal gesture is intercstin g ano even fun to wateh (in other \Voros, community rc­ ereation i.s stimulaled by community recreation). Legal gestures gcnera lly involve persons performing unusual and even potentially threatening aets. They therefore ten o oto bring people together even in societies which , beca use or wriling. are Iess d ependent on communal memory . J\ variety of legal ~c sturcs sce m lo ha ve been at least ineidenta ll y designed to a tt raet communal a llc nli o n to lhcll1sc1 ves. In a ncicn l lsrael. for in stanee. ama n could co nfi rm a Icgal ' lgrccmcn! by giving hi s -;an da ll Q a nolher ma noA modern com mentator I\,h ca l1cd lhis " a C ll ri~lIl S 1. 11 ,111111 hu i al \casi its unus ua lness would mean 1\ \

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th at il all rUl: lcd a llcnli lm. ami lh is pluhahly WfI '" I /-. ¡llI ft 'l' ! I 1 111 1lll.:d i":Vi ll Gcn nun law, lhe legal gcs tlln~ 01' ¡WO ]la rties nll:ting tllc il IlH nds ovc r ¡IId l hcads and pressing their pal ms togclhcr lO indi c¡uc agrc.!cmclll wo uld likcly have m ade peQp lc stop and look . 7" In our own society, so does nri sillg onc's hand to swear an oath , all the m ore so beca use of the thi nly -veiJed threa l 0 1 assault it a ppears to pose to lhe in terlocutor. ln the process of creating co mm unity in space, legal gesture also crC<JLes com m unity in ti me. As conventiona li7..ed forms , lega l geslures a re necessa l ily re-enactm ents a nd re-endorsements of the past.?' In the sh orl term, Lhey remind gesturors and witnesses of previous gestural perform ances. In Ih\! lo ng term, they may rell1 ind those persoos of some past gestll re or experien cc tha t was critical in the history of the coml11 unity. T he bond with the past is physically reaffirmed , wru le d irection is ph ysically set for the future. Saying all this docs not necessarily mean tha t legal gestu re rea rfi rrns the communal past exactly as it was. Especi ally in societies with little or l1() experience with wri ting (ami /or other graph ic teehniques), legal gestures can change subtlely over time. In the absence of physically-recorded standar
F. M"e11lflnicfunctions Legal gcsture can serve several functions which might he dcs\,.Ti hed as "mne­ mon ie: ' i.c .• rum:Üons wh id l help Lo enSllre lhc sun'ival \11' Iq'al inl',lrmalión in the mcmory 01' 11u.: c\)l1l nJ un ily, Thesl! rllndinm; an: C~ r 1('~·l:t llv critica l I ,.,

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withill (i1ltho llg h Ihuy a n! Ilil rd l) IlIlI itl'd to) slicit:lics which hu,,!! had liUk or no expericllcc will! wri li ng ./(' LegaJ gCli lurc's most illl portanll1lllel1lonic fundion is its prov l ~i on 0 1' non­ verbal sensory inputs wh ieh are not only mnemonical1y powerful in themsel ves, bul which rcinrorce lhe I1lnemollic impact of verbal infofllJ(lti(ll1 accom pany­ ing a legal transaction or relationship. Fo r insta nce, legal gestu re generall y provides participants and witnesses with a dynam ic visual im age. N Ul1le rous psychological studies have shown that a visual image is more mem ora ble than a verbal dedaration, and that a dyna mic visual il1lage is even more memor­ able than a sta tic one. 77 In fact, t he more vi sua ll y-interesting or o yn am ic th e action perforll1ed, the more mnemonically successful it tends to be. Thi s was certainl y the intuitive unde rstanding of one R oger de Mon tgomery who, according to a thirteenth century French docull1ent, wa nted to im p ress on witnesses the ex tent of land he had just transferred to an abbey: " [H ]e threw his son Ro bert de BaIleme, dressed in a min iver doak , into the water, in witness and memory that the domain 01' the abbott and monks extended up to there. "n It is diffic ult to believe that anyone ever forgot that act. Studies have also shown that recall tends to improve dramatically when vis ual medi a are added to verbal media .7Y In tllis context., it m a kes a great deal of sen se to have someone perform a legal gesture over and aboye pronouneing a legally­ significant formula . E ven today, "the sight of a couple standing han d-in­ hand at the alta r, being joined and blessed by the priest, ... lasts longer in imagination and memory than the [mere] wording of any ceremony , hea rd now and then by lhe congregants... ." NO Of course, for the person making it, legal gesture is also a kinetic, li terally moving experience. x1 The feeling of movement may be memorable in itself. partly beca use 11l0vement demands personal involvement and attention, and partly because it is physically satisfying and enjoyable. In this context, per­ rorming a legal gesture (such as raising a hand to swear an oath) enables the memory of the legal change or relation to be i.nscribed in the bodl 2 where it is not onIy retained. but reanimated and reinforced with every subsequent inscription. " In the process of movement, many legal gestures invo'lve or culminate in physical contact with an object or another persono Harnessing tactility to visual and kinetic action reinforces a legal gesture's mnemonic value by not only providing an additional hook 1"rom which memory can hang, but by pro viding a stimulus that is particularly intimate, personal, and powerful. In Ihe cleventh century, William the Conqueror demonstrated an appreciation 01' these things when he somewhat facetiously suggested that driving él knife illl O the hand 01" a grantee (presul1lably causing outright pain) would be the II1os1 ctTecti ve way lo rnClll oria.li7c the giving of land. ~4 In addili o n lo provid lng non -verbal sensory in puts for particip ants and wit nl.:ssl!s lo legal c]¡u n¿.ll.: :Ind rd a lilln. legal gesture can support mem ory ill ui hn Icss ()hvin ll s. I"',h : ' ]l~" 1110 m prosail: ways. r or instance, we have ·' - 1

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previ ously :icen t hu t gc:¡[ u r~ í.:all a II ral;t COllll l1U lI it y " lll'lIl h) 11 t() a n im POli a IJ 1 legal event. A ttract ing attenlion im plidlly suppOrl¡; rncnw ry by cnsuri ng. lhlll the reco rd of an event wi llllot be jeopa rdiLcd by lh e doalh or fnrgctrllllll:!llS ni a few witneS8es (wh ich helps lo expl ain l he aforemcntio ned phenomen o n (Jf having or mandalin g more witnesses fo r cspcl;ially critical legal cvents). Lega l gesture can also facil itate remembrance by what I previously descri beJ al' its sim plicity and comprehensibility. Wha t is simple and comprehensiblc what fi lS jnto an easily~recognizable pattern of beha vior o. intcraction - is mo re li kely to be remembered th an wha l is com plica ted and Llnintell i gi bl e . ~" T he relati ve sim plicily and comprehensibi lity o f hand ing over a cl od of ea rth to represent a transfer ol' land ownership or wash ing one's hands to d issolvc a contract there fore helps to pl an t the mem ory of lega l events and transac­ tionsfirmly in the m inds of witnesses. Simplici ly and com prehen sibililY aTe espccially critical for memory when witnesses are child ren. In the Middlc J\ges, chi ld ren were consi dcrcd L1seful witnesses lO legal transactions beca use of their expected long life-spans rela tive to other mem bers of tbe communi ly. Most children, however, had but a limited comm and of complex verbal language: they were much more likely to understand , and hence remember. relatively straightforward geslures. xr, G. Regulatol'jI filll ctiol1.y

Legal gesture can regulate the behav ior 01' individuals. In oth er words, it can encourage or discourage certain courses of personal conduct. In the first place, legal gesture can discourage people from entering int certain types 01' transactions or relations which are deemed socially undesir­ able.~7 Because legal gestl1res are necessarily public, they expose peopte an u their behaviors to the view and judgment of a potentially large number 01' others. The very prospect 01' this public exposure, and Ihe fact that a legal ges­ l ure physieal1y. intimately, and inevitably associates one with a legal changc or relation (contras t this with the physical and psychological distance which writing sets belween contract and con tractor, grant and granlor, etc.) may discourage individuals from entering into transactions which \Vould lcad to social stigma or criticismo l n this context, legal gesture can be a sllbtle force for social conformity. Legal geslure can also conlribute to conformity insofar as it is explicitly dialogic· i.e., insorar as it not only requircs the presence, but lhe active participation of others. The more social1y-undesirable él lcga l change or relalion is, the more difficult it becomes to obtain this acti ve participation , and hence the more difflcult it becomes to either effect the change or relati on and /or preserve it in the m ind ofthecommllni ly as a whole. Legal gestLu'e can perform a second regulalo ry function by chan ncling lhe physical reactions 01' parties or witnesscs to legal cha nge é1wa y fnJll1 danger­ ous ..Iel:; (su¡;h as lile commissiOIl of violcncc) which migh l 01 hcrw is\! be

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promptcd by tire loss (u r ullothl!TS !,'ól in) occasioneJ by so me legal change. ~x Ili slorically. a nUlllbcr 01" legu l gcslLm:s sccm lo have been specially fitted to I his rol e. U nder lhe la w 01' lhe Sali an F ra n k s, fo r instance, a person break ing off farni ly LÍes \vould b reak t'o ur staffs aboye his head and then cast them into the fo ur corners ol' a room. ~9 In early medieval rrance, a vassal COLlld ana­ logously disavow his fe udal bond by throwing a stick 01' straw at his erstwhile 10rd.'JÜ These conventional legal geslures inevitabl y constrai ned personal beha ­ vior while still gívín g vent to vo latile persOTlal feel ings at critical moments of truth a nd confrontation. T h ird and finally, legal gesture can increase
bU'lier in this artic1e J described legal gesture as being potentially evidentiary 01' a gesturor's mental stale (see supra "Evidentiary functions"). But legal gesture need not be psychologically passivc. Indeed, there is cvidence lo supporl the proposition lhat legal geslure can act ua lly induce critical psycho­ logical changes in bOlh gesturors and witnesses. To bcgin, legal gesture helps crea te or support the perception lhat a given legal event is important. As noted previollsly, gesturing demands a personal invcslmenl of time and cnergy. Gesturors must sbow up and perform; wit­ Ilesses must sho\\' up, walch , and perhaps perform as wel \. By sanctioning and I'equiring such socially inconvenient and sometimes even physically tax­ illg activilics. law implicitly encourages people to lhink that al1 event (such as a marriagc, or lhe ma king of a will) has unusual significance for individuals ami rOl' the comm unity al large? Lc¡w l gesluré can alt;o ()wn:ome whal some anthropologists call " sales resislancc""" ti) a k!gHI 1ro nsaL'1 illll the inst indivc unwillingness o f persons

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(lIs ua ll y wit n~ssl!s ()I" b ys l un d~rs ) tu rCl.:ogntzc ti l.:o nll .lll I H I d¡¡l l O I1 whidl i.' dbudvan lagco us lo lh l.!nl . u r wh iciJ givcs somcnnc cisc 11 11 IIdv: llll agu . I.uga l gesture can accol1lplish lhis nol- inco llsid era ble fea l by prov id illg an oppo j"­ tun ity for th e oerno nslralitm 01' act ual or lale nt physical a nd ma lerial powc J'. In rnedieval E uro pe. for in stance, fe udal relal io ns hi ps wcre doubtless s uc­ cessful in parl becausc or the grea l p by:;icul and social powcr presenl or la lenl in the various gestures (e.g., kneeling. folding and cnclosing hands) in volvcd in in vestiture and homage. Those gestures necessarily atTected the psyche the witnessing co mrnunity; they subtl ely enco uraged its member~ to respec:t what had been done. thereby ensuri ng the success of feu da ll a w. In th is c on ­ text, legal gesture in hUn1éUl socicty m ay be sa id lo sharc charactcristics gener­ a lly associa ted with gest llre in the animal kingdom .93 T here geslures are a n efficicnt means oL in/er afia. establ ishing rcla lion and showing d orninancc.'J4 Elaborate rnovernents and displ uys a re deployed by rnarnmals and birds lo sec ure a rnate, a nesting arca, or other si m ilar a dvan lage. The more resistance there is or rnight be to an undertaking beeause 01' what is at stake , the grander, more deliberate, or m ore elaborate gesturing tends to be.0 5 Such a use 01' gesture frequently enables resistance to be overeome without harmf ul or costly physical st r uggle.% In the process of shaping the reaction 01' witnesses, legal gesture can a lso prompt gesturors to feel ernotions that directly dispose thern towards a legal exercise' s ultirnate end. Gesture's general powcr to induce ernotion in its practitioners has long been recognized by the C atholic Church, and even by sorne prorninent Protestants. The Calho!ic Encyclopedia c1airns that "cerernony" (which it notably defines as "an external aet, gesture or rnovement which accornpanies ... prayers ... and public ... worship") is ernployed " to excite in the faith ful sentiments of respect, devotion ,m d religion."~7 In the sixteenth century, M artín. Luther said of religio us rites, "the in ward experi­ ence fo11ows ami is effected by the outward."9~ Law appears to have taken advantage 01' this so-ca11ed "disciplinary" capacity ol' gesture 99 earl y on. Ln the medieval homage cerernony, for instance, the vassal's gestures 01' k neeling before the lord and then offering his lips for the lord to kiss would likely have induoed feelings 01' subordination appropriate to the success 01' the new feudal relationship. Less obviously , but perhaps even more fun d arnenta11y, legal gesture can create a feeling 01' empowerrnent in the person who executes it -- él feeling that rather than being contro11ed by law and legal obligation, an individua l controls those things. This feeling 01' control is directly induced by gesture's mode 01' obligational or relational creation one pcrforrns a rnajor physieaJ maneu ver which directly contributes to making one lega11y-bound. The fac r t hal legal gesture is both inlensively and exte nsively eorporeal (i.e., it needs mo re energy and it usually invo lves more o r the body tha n writi ng) m 'l.~,'I1 ífies the scn se con lro1. II W1 Through geslure. law litera11y bccnmcs ti r arl 01' the peniOn.

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Bu t lh\.:sc w\.:akncsscs nI" wril ing :Irc lhe vcry strc lI ~'t1 l :- n I gcstun.:. ,,~ WI." ha ve seen, legal gcsturc Jemo nstral\.:s legal mca lli ng and Ilu.:n.:by prol1loks infonned choice ano consen!. Il c rea tcs incl usive communiti\.:s in spacc und in time. II is an intimate, inevi tably eorporeal medi um th a t givcs oniinul y indi viduals a sense tha t they literaJ ly make the law. tha t it is truly thei rs. Perhaps ont reason (apart from overplayed "tradi tion") why gesture su rv ivcs o n the margins ofmodern law is because, cven in the faee of writing, these anJ other ca pacities of gesture are still im portan t lO uso Perhaps we :;hake hamJs on a cont ract because we need to create and to pu blicly manifest a solidaril y with another pcrson that transcends words. Perhaps, in ma rriage, we exchangc wedding rings a nd c1asp hands in order to ex prcss amI release cmo tions necessaril y incidental to (and indeed su pportive of) the occasion. Perhaps we manually hand over deeds to com plete a eonveyancc so that \ve mayo in an intimate. bodily sense, share in a nd endorse the transfer of a primary fonn of wealth - or pe rhaps, when the st akes are so high. we feel the need tt demonstrate our in tent to transfcr in the most o vert and unambiguous wa y. Recognizing that gesture is not inherently inferior to writing, but rather that it has different funetional strengths, may give us a new perspectivc o n it:; role in [he legal pasl as well as in the legal present. In the late c1assical world and again in the early modern period, gestu re arguably gave way to wri ting as a legal instrumentality not because it was "primitive, " but beca use il per­ form eu funetions that socicty no longer valued as mueh as it once had. 102 For ins tanee, as a modality, legal gesture supports eomm unity, but this was surely less signifieant in Hellenistic aod post-medieval European ci vi lizations which put a greater emphasis on individ ualism and privacy. Legal gesture make~ legal tran sactions memorable, but memorability was less critical in late ancient anu early modern cultures that eould readily preserve even the mosl unmemQrab1e transactions on parchment or papeL Legal gesture perfomls several regulatory functions, but these were seemingly superfluous in soeieties which by the first century RC allLl the sixteenth century A.D. IO ) had gener­ ated centralized sta te struclures commanding powcrful physical sancli ons and detcrrents. Legal gesture deliberately harnesses the mind to the b ody. bu l sU0h harnessing was problema lic in a Europe whieh Ilrst learned to d istr usl the bod y under the tutelage of early Christian asceticism , allLl then in lhe seventeenth centu ry segregateu and further denigrated it under the infl uence of form al Cartesian philosophy. In these environments, legal gesture cOllld be, and was, rcadil y marginali~ed . T his analysis o f legal gesture's p lace in the past has definite implica lioll s t"(¡ r its place in the fulure. There are many indications tha t "modernism " i:; collapsing - lhat we are tu rning a wa y from the indiviJ llalist, abstracl, ano cth¡;: f"cal (some would say genera J1y "alien uling" ) va lllcs nI' the post­ I':n lightcnmcnt era . Thcrc is a ncw lo nging ror communil Y, C\)III.:reh:ncss, i.1l1t1 cmhod i m~ n l. 111 t his con lext, wri l i ng'~ w~lknesscs as " Iq'; d ill"lllIl1lcnlali l lile hccOI lling mO l !.! IlIa nilc!\1. cvcn (o.- pcrhup~ ~·l>pc~· i . il l yl u" i lll III 1'IC;¡ ~ill ~ 140

I1llln lll~r nI" legal scli o la ls IIse wllIIlI g lo direcl ly U1 ld indirccUy ph!ad for Ihe new normal ive agenda . By UIC salllc lOken, gesturc's strenglhs are bccom ing increasil\ g.Iy important ami releva n!, al1 tJ1e more so bcca lL~e vidco a nd com­ puler Icchn o logy has lately intervened in fa vo r o f gesturc by making it rcadily recordable, tra nsmissible, and (in virtual reaJ ity) simulable. As a result , gcsture, 1ike writing, has become potent ial1y permanent and indepcndent of physical I04

co-presence. Ideological1y and technological1y, the refore, legal gesture stands reaoy for a reviva!. lI ere 1 am not suggesting that it wil1 (or that it sho uld) re place writing as a legal instru mentality. 1 am simply sa ying tha! given our changing c ultu ral p liori lies and our new technical abi lities il may prove useful and conven ient f OI" us to slIpplement our everyd a y legal tra nsactions (lhe making of contracts, the ma ki ng of will s, the transl"er 01" land, etc.) with more legal gestures, and to make more legal1y binding the gestures that now inrormaUy supplement and evidence written law - just as, in later antiquity an d in t he late M iddle Ages, it pro ved cultural1y useful and technically convenient to supplement legal gestllre with more lega l writing and to make more legally bind ing the writing that then supplemen ted an u evideneed legal perform­ ances."J5 In light of what 1 have said in this Arl ic1 e, I do not think that the former deve10pment should necessarily be feared . 1ll6 Indeed , I thin k we should eonsider using legal gesture pro-actively to create a more communal , more concrete, more corporeal , and ultimately more compelling legal fll ture for our:;elvcs. I07 In the end, \Ve may find that u ne of the best ways to reform law is to re-member it.

Notes A C anad in n legal scholar. working within a pcdagogically-similar enYironmenL has gone so far as to describe contelllporary legal education as a form of " literacy trainin g." DcCoste, 1990: 61. See also Lepow, 1992: 78 (" Law ycrs sce the WOJld as wha t can be written down in doeumcnts.") . 2 On spoken languagc in various legal settings, see, e.g. , Conley et aL , 1990; Ain sworth , 1993; Saral et al. , 1989; Gill , 1988. On contem po rary legal perform­ ances, see. e .g. , Ball, 1975: 81; Beyer, 1988. On the sigrl