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Performance Studies As a Discipline? a Foucauldian Approach to Theory and Practice

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Performance Studies As a Discipline? a Foucauldian Approach to Theory and Practice Performance Studies As A Discipline? A Foucauldian Approach to Theory And Practice Glenn D'cruz Thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts, in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, the University of Melbourne. 1993 The thesis comprises my original work except where due acknowledgement is made in the text to all other material used. i ABSTRACT This thesis has three major purposes: firstly, to describe and analyse the institutional power/knowledge relations operating in the constitution of the academic 'discipline' of performance/theatre studies. I deploy Michel Foucault's conceptions of 'discursive formation,' 'discursive practice,' and 'power/knowledge' in an attempt to demonstrate the ways in which the academy distinctively articulates the discipline. The second purpose of the thesis is to map and critique specific conceptions of the ‘discipline’s’ epistemological profile, through an examination of the discursive practice of theatre at the University of Melbourne from the mid-fifties to the present. Third, I go on to prioritize a specific performance oriented articulation of the field's epistemological profile, based on an interdisciplinary pedagogy. I describe the techniques, methods and theoretical justifications for such an articulation of the discipline by offering a critical account of The Killing Eye project - a multi-media performance which deals with the topic of serial murder - which was initiated in the context of a third year performance studies course. I conclude with an analysis of the academy's institutional enablements and constraints in the areas of theatre practice and pedagogy. ii Table of Contents Abstract . i Table of Contents . ii Introduction . 1 Chapter One . 9 Constituting The 'Discipline' Of Theatre Studies Chapter Two . 31 The Interdepartmental Course in Performance Drama: A 'History' Chapter Three . 55 'Travelling Theory': From Cultural Studies to Theatre Studies Chapter Four . 76 Travelling Pedagogy Chapter Five . 94 Conclusion: 'Reforming the Humanities: The Politics of Performance Pedagogy' Bibliography . 104 Appendices James McCaughey . 116 Dinny O'Hearn . 135 Hector Maclean . 148 Terry Collits . 170 ii Norman Price . 185 Introduction Power is less a confrontation between two adversaries or the linking of one to the other than a question of government. This word must be allowed the very broad meaning which it had in the sixteenth century. "Government" did not refer only to political structures or to the management of states; rather it designated the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed: the government of children, . of communities, of families, of the sick. It did not only cover the legitimately constituted forms of political or economic subjection, but also modes of action, more or less considered and calculated, which were destined to act upon the possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others.1 Michel Foucault, 'Afterword: The Subject and Power' In broad terms, this thesis is concerned with the ‘government’ of what is alternately referred to as theatre studies or performance studies in modern Australian universities. In other words, I am interested in examining the institutional rules and procedures that determine what can legitimately be taught, said and practiced under the disciplinary banner of theatre studies. More specifically, this thesis attempts to answer the following questions: What is the discipline of theatre studies? What are its legitimate objects of study? How is it organized as an academic discipline? How is it taught? What are its present intellectual preoccupations and where does its future lie in Australian universities? Whilst my starting point was my own institutional position, in that I have a vested interest in the survival of the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne, it is hoped that this thesis will be of value in ongoing debates about the status of performance studies in the national and international university context.2 I want to demonstrate, for both strategic and heuristic purposes, the value of performance studies as an academic discipline. It may be argued, particularly in a political and institutional environment that prioritizes industry-oriented research, which an academic work that takes its own institutional base as its major object of analysis is indulging in the worst kind of dissipated intellectual activity. Conversely, I would argue that not enough attention is paid to the university’s technologies 1 of ‘government’, and their attendant political effects. Therefore, I sympathize with Meaghan Morris when she observes that: . there is always the pressure to feel that "practice" always lies elsewhere ( on the streets, on the beaches. ) and never there where one works, which is rarely an ivory tower of dreams called Theory, but the school, the University, the college, the hospital, the clinic, the media. .3 This thesis scrutinizes my 'practice' as a teacher and student of theatre/performance studies in the context of the University of Melbourne, and is informed by Foucault's claim that: A new mode of the 'connection between theory and practice' has been established. Intellectuals have got used to working, not in the modality of the 'universal', the 'exemplary', the 'just-and-true-for-all', but within specific sectors, at the precise points where their own conditions of life or work situate them (housing, the hospital, the asylum, the laboratory, the university, family and sexual relations).4 The dissertation seeks to examine the ways in which the academy enables and constrains specific articulations of the discipline. I will argue that performance activities have been transformed, as both discourse and practice, by entering the university as 'legitimate' objects of academic inquiry. The academy's 'transformative' capabilities will provide one major focus of this work. The thesis also examines the contradictions that arise when the pragmatic need to forge a clear disciplinary identity for theatre studies (for purposes of institutional survival) conflicts with the desire to open up new areas of interdisciplinary research and practice. The importance of a coherent disciplinary identity cannot be overly stressed. Ingrid Moss, in her paper 'Academic Work Reconsidered', argues that: The traditional Universities [like Melbourne] were organized around disciplines; and disciplinary knowledge and their contribution to disciplinary knowledge determined individual academics' standing within their department and institution, as well as in the national and international community of scholars. The 2 socialization into disciplinary cultures and preparation for the academic role mainly occurred through postgraduate research study -- at least in the sciences and the arts.5 In arguing that disciplines constitute the basic organizational unit in the academy's bureaucratic infrastructure, Moss demonstrates that it is vital for disciplines like theatre studies to participate in the academy's conception of disciplinary normalcy. However, it is equally important for the discipline to generate innovative forms of knowledge, and develop the appropriate pedagogy for this knowledge. An interdisciplinary approach to theatre studies fosters such innovation through the importation of knowledges and practices from adjacent fields that question accepted verities and produce significant developments. The conflict between the utilitarian impetus for disciplinary identity and the desire for interdisciplinary innovation is a dominant concern of this dissertation. Questions concerning the epistemological coherence of the discipline are not new. Bruce Williams in his paper, 'Subtexts of the Workshop: Teaching Plays through Practice', records that: In 1976, the Australian Theatre Studies Centre arranged a conference at the University of New South Wales on the theme 'Drama or Theatre Studies: the nature of the discipline'. That conference gave birth to the Australasian Drama Studies Association, now a well- established professional organisation of academics working in tertiary drama . Philip Parsons describes the gathering as a kind of stocktaking, an attempt to get answers to the question: 'What shape is the discipline assuming in Australia?6 The discipline of theatre studies, like most of its relations in the humanities, is still taking stock nearly twenty years later, which may not be a bad thing if it encourages a greater degree of critical self-reflexivity in the field's research and teaching activities. However, the question 'what shape is the discipline assuming in Australia?' is now formulated in a very different political and academic context. The post Dawkins University no longer accepts the 3 a priori value of the humanities in general and of theatre studies in particular. Williams wryly observes that: [The former] Prime Minister of Britain [Margaret Thatcher] has told us, with her usual charm and candour, that the purpose of a university is, very simply, to create wealth, and that, without the charm and candour, is also the line taken by Mr Dawkins.7 One of the effects of this 'line' is that academic work is now subject to unprecedented scrutiny from outside the academy. A wide range of techniques and procedures, such as staff appraisal interviews and performance indicators, has been introduced to govern the production of academic work. Disciplinary 'house-keeping' is no longer a relatively private affair, something to be discussed
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