Performance Studies at the Intersections

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D. SOYINI MADISON AND JUDITH HAMERA

The ongoing challenge of performance studies is to refuse and supercede this deeply entrenched division of labor, apartheid of knowledges, that plays out inside the academy as the difference between thinking and doing, interpreting and making, conceptualizing and creating. The division of labor between theory and practice, abstraction and embodiment, is an arbitrary and rigged choice and, like all bina- risms, it is booby-trapped. —Dwight Conquergood, 2002, p. 153

erformance is often referred to as a Gallie explains, “Recognition of a given P “contested concept” because as a concept, concept as essentially contested implies method, event, and practice it is variously envi- recognition of rival uses of it (such as one- self repudiates) as not only logically possible sioned and employed. Three founding scholars and humanly ‘likely,’ but as of permanent of contemporary performance studies, Mary potential critical value to one’s own use of S. Strine, Beverly W. Long, and Mary Francis interpretation of the concept in question” Hopkins, formally set forth the idea of perfor- (pp. 187–188). Scholars in interpretation mance as a contested concept in their classic and performance in a valorized category, essay, “Research in Interpretation and Perfor- they recognize and expect disagreement not only about the qualities that make a performance Studies: Trends, Issues, Priorities.” They mance “good” or “bad” in certain contexts, state, but also about what activities and behaviors appropriately constitute performance and Performance, like art and democracy, is not something else. (1990, p. 183) what W.B. Gallie (1964) calls an essentially contested concept, meaning that its very existence is bound up in disagreement about On multiple levels performance “means” what it is, and that the disagreement over and “does” different things for and with its essence is itself part of that essence. As different people. On one level performance is

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understood as theatrical practice, that is, performance method provides concrete appli- drama, as acting, or “putting on a show.” For cation; and performance event provides an some, this limited view regards performance as aesthetic or noteworthy happening. Although extracurricular, insubstantial, or what you do theory, method, and event are components of in your leisure time. In certain areas of the the grand possibilities of performance, Dwight academy these narrow notions of performance Conquergood provides a more precise set have created an “anti-theatrical” prejudice of triads guiding us more comprehensively to (Conquergood) that diminishes performance the substance and nuances of performance to mimicry, catharsis, or mere entertainment through a series of alliterations: the i’s as in rather than as a generative force and a critical imagination, inquiry, and intervention; the a’s dynamic within human behavior and social as in artistry, analysis, and activism; and the processes. However, in recent history, perfor- c’s as in creativity, critique, and citizenship. mance has undergone a small revolution. For Conquergood states, many of us performance has evolved into ways of comprehending how human beings funda- Performance studies is uniquely suited for mentally make culture, affect power, and rein- the challenge of braiding together disparate and stratified ways of knowing. We can vent their ways of being in the world. The think through performance along three insistence on performance as a way of creation crisscrossing lines of activity and analysis. and being as opposed to the long held notion We can think of performance (1) as a work of performance as entertainment has brought of imagination, as an object of study; (2) as forth a movement to seek and articulate the a pragmatics of inquiry (both as model and phenomenon of performance in its multiple method), as an optic and operation of research; (3) as a tactics of intervention, an manifestations and imaginings. alterative space of struggle. Speaking from Understanding performance in this broader my home department at Northwestern, we and more complex way has opened up endless often refer to the three a’s of performance questions, some of which both interrogate and studies: artistry, analysis, activism. Or to enrich our basic understanding of history, change the alliteration, a commitment to the three c’s of performance studies: creativ- identity, community, nation, and politics. ity, critique, citizenship (civic struggles for Performance is a contested concept because social justice). (Conquergood, 2002, p. 152) when we understand performance beyond the- atrics and recognize it as fundamental and Conquergood challenges us to understand inherent to life and culture we are confronted the ubiquitous and generative force of perfor- with the ambiguities of different spaces and mance that is beyond the theatrical. The ques- places that are foreign, contentious, and often tion we shall now entertain is: How is this under siege. We enter the everyday and the challenge most effectively debated and dis- ordinary and interpret its symbolic universe to cussed in the academy? discover the complexity of its extraordinary meanings and practices. THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPEAL OF We can no longer define performance as PERFORMANCE: PERFORMANCE AS primarily mimetic or theatrical but through “EVERYWHERE” IN THE ACADEMY? the multiple elements that inhere within performance and within the dynamic of shifting Across various academic boundaries, perfor- domains of theory, method, and event. The mance is blurring disciplinary distinctions triad of theory, method, and event has gener- and invoking radically multidisciplinary ally been understood as the following: perfor- approaches. From the established disciplines mance theory provides analytical frameworks; of history, literature, education, sociology, Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xiii

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geography, anthropology, political science, and everyday symbolic acts, one modern tradition so forth—the rubric of performance has found that can be understood as part of the history its way into discussions and debate as a topic and origins of performance studies, primarily of interest and inquiry. Teachers and students in the United States and Europe, is the elocu- are seeking to better understand this notion tionary movement. Elocution or the “art of of performance as a means to gain a deeper public speaking” was of major importance understanding of their own fields of study, as in the nineteenth century United States and well as a pedagogical method. The buzz over Europe. In an age where telephones, television, performance is nearly everywhere in the acad- movies, CD players, and the Internet were emy and as a result multiple paradigms and nonexistent, it was the art of public speaking levels of analysis are formed. As these various that became the powerful communicative subject areas adapt performance as an analyti- and entertainment medium of public life cal framework and as a methodological tool, and thereby influencing central aspects of something greater has happened to the very community and nation (Conquergood, 2000). concept of performance itself: new and com- The elocutionary speaker was a performer plex questions arise relative to its definition, who could leave his audience on the edge of applicability, and effectiveness. These extended their seats with the turn of an imaginative queries into performance have a broad mem- phrase or a compelling anecdote. The speaker bership ranging from those of us who, before could build the story or the argument to a now, never thought much about performance peak that held the audience captive to the spo- as a scholarly or pedagogical enterprise to ken word that was filled with the varying reg- those of us who have embraced the dynamic isters of a performing presence wrapped in of performance for several decades. Both neo- dramatic gesture and utterance. The public phyte and veteran to performance are engaged speaker was a performer whose work was to in the infinite possibilities of performance make the audience listen and learn through a and therefore expanding, complexifying, and drama of communication. enriching its meanings and practices. Elocution was a social event. The audience In understanding performance as radically gathered to witness the speaker through a interdisciplinary, how then do we begin to collective that brought friends and strangers grasp what it is? How do we begin to describe together to meet and greet. This event was and order the varied manifestations of perfor- a moment of communal experience, listening mance? Are there fundamental principles of and watching together, but also responding performance? We will briefly turn now to spe- together to what they heard—from reserved cific movements and paradigms to lay forth claps of appreciation to uproarious laugher the broad contours of performance studies and to the insulting taunts of hecklers—they to provide a working definition of perfor- listened and responded together. The event mance ranging from the illocutionary move- was also a ritual with its customary begin- ment in the nineteenth century to postmodern nings and endings; it was a ritual of informa- art and transnational narratives within this tion gathering, persuasion, affirmation, and era of globalization and transnationalism. change. Just as the art of effective public speaking was a creative force, it was also a force of THE ELOCUTIONARY MOVEMENT hegemonic control. It both perpetrated and Although performance began in antiquity solidified power relations, as well as the constituting varied cultural phenomena that valorization of a bourgeois decorum based ranged from mimesis, ritual, and ceremony, to on vocal qualities, gestures of gentility, social Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xiv

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class, gender hierarchies, and the color of and celebrated these identities and affiliations. one’s skin. Conquergood states, But, it was also a site of liberating expression and a contested space—a site where trou- Elocution expressed in another key the bled identities could claim their power and body-discipline imposed on the bourgeoisie, strengthen their hope. The elocutionary move- a way for them to mark “distinction” from ment was less about public speaking and more the masses. . . . Elocution was designed to recuperate the vitality of the spoken word about a public performance where audience from rural and rough working-class contexts and speaker were changing and changed by by regulating and refining its “performative the urgent issues of the time and the com- excess” through principles, science, system- pelling need to speak and witness. Elocution atic study, standards of taste and criticism was empowered by a performance of persua- . . . elocution sought to tap the power of popular speech but curb its unruly embodi- sion and in many instances it moved and ments and refine its coarse and uncouth fea- changed the nation. tures. It was the verbal counterpart, on the domain of speech, of the enclosure acts that confiscated the open commons, so crucial to THE ART OF INTERPRETATION the hardscrabble livelihood and recreation of the poor, and privatized them for the privi- The art of public speaking finds a close relation leged classes. (2000, p. 327) in the “art of Interpretation” (Bacon, 1979). Just as public speech—from the bourgeois Conquergood goes on to describe how the classes, enslaved communities, and the lumpen elocution of the privileged classes could not proletariat—could move the hearts and minds withstand such hierarchical exclusivity due of its audience and persuade the nonbelievers, to the ubiquitous nature of the spoken word. the art of oral interpretation could bring a “The spoken word dimension of elocution pro- work of literature to life, putting flesh, bone, vided for the ‘spillage’ from the enclosed writ- and breath to words and bringing them to life ten word that the unlettered poor swept up and from the stagnant silence of the written page. made their own” (p. 329). “This spillage of elo- Wallace Bacon, considered by some to be cution, now appropriated and also owned and one of the forefathers of performance studies, enacted by the laboring classes and lumpen articulated the relationship and evolution of proletariat” was revisioned and reformed by elocution’s “just and graceful management of the less privileged classes for their own “subal- the voice, countenance, and gesture” with that tern needs” (p. 329), audiences, and purposes. of oral interpretation and the performance of The elocutionary labor of enslaved Americans literature (as quoted in Conquergood, 2000, is testament to this juncture in the elocutionary p. 326). Bacon celebrated and theorized in his movements, e.g., Frederick Douglass and work the performance of literary texts. He Sojourner Truth are among such individuals, augmented and extended the art of reading as well as scores of others: labor organizers, and reciting a speech in public to the art of women and children’s rights activists, aboli- interpreting and enacting a literary text before tionists, and so forth. an audience. Bacon states, Nineteenth-century public life was profoundly influenced and shaped by the public The literary text is a manmade form, or dynamics of elocution as both hegemonic “skin,” that separates it from its environment power and liberating power. The force of pub- and makes it definable but also serves as its point of contact with the environment. By lic speaking was a site of hierarchical knowl- first observing (reading) that outer form, the edge, value, and bodies marked by whiteness, reader seeks to get inside the skin of the work maleness, and homogeneity that consolidated to the inner form, and comes to know it in Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xv

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much the same way as one comes to know a movement that extended textual Others another human being—by observing and lis- toward the politics of worldly Others. tening, by relating what is learned to one’s total experience, by talking about it with others, by “talking” with it. (1979, p. 157) PERFORMANCE AS SOCIAL BEHAVIOR Wallace Bacon further enlivened the art In performance as behavior, social life is of interpretation through his articulation of described through an organizing metaphor “Otherness of the Other” (p. 40). For Bacon, of dramatic action or what the social critic this meeting of the art of interpretation with a Kenneth Burke describes as “situated modes literary text is an engagement with another of action” (1945, pp. 3–93). Burke asks the way of being; it is to enter beyond the self and important question: “What is involved when reach respectfully into another’s world. “The we say what people are doing and why they are reader giving rapt attention to the literary work doing it?” Burke introduces the idea “dramas is engaged with the sense of otherness” (empha- of living” by providing a dramatistic paradigm sis mine). He goes on to further state, “For the composed of five key concepts in response to interpreter, belief in the otherness of the text, his question. His pentad illuminates perfor- full awareness of its state of being, is a major mance in the day-to-day motions of social life. stage in mastering the art of performance.” His five key terms of dramatism are Act (names Wallace Bacon was fond of the following quote what took place in thought or deed), Scene (the in explicating what is meant by the Other: background of the act, the situation in which it occurred), Agent (person or kind of person A person’s sense of presence is likely to be who performed the act), Agency (what means most strongly marked and most incon- testably evident in his relationship, at certain or instruments were used), and Purpose (the heightened moments, with another human aim or objective). In explicating the implica- person. This is as it should be, for an indi- tions of this pentad Burke states, vidual sinks into a deadening egoism (however much he may gild it with idealistic Men may violently disagree about the pur- verbiage or mitigate it by outward acts) pose behind a given act, or about the char- unless he occasionally exercises and stretches acter of the person who did it, or how he did his ability to realize another person as an it, or in what kind of situation he acted; or independent presence to whom homage is they may even insist upon totally different due, rather than as merely an interruption words to name the act itself. But be that of continuity in his environment. To know as it may, any complete statement about someone as presence instead of as a lump of motives will offer some kind of answers to matter or a set of processes, is to meet him these five questions: what was done (act), with an open, listening, responsive attitude; when and where it was done (scene), who it is to become a thou in the presence of his did it (agent), how (agency), and why he did I-hood. (Wheelwright, 1962, p. 154) it (purpose). (Burke, 1945, p. xvii)

Wallace Bacon’s interventions on elocution Just as “situated modes of action” are and the performance of literature led the field framed through Burke’s performance para- of performance to a more layered and extended digm, we may also understand performance conceptualization of the Other, and with it through modes of language and the action gen- came an interest in integrating performance erated from the words spoken. In 1955 J. L. with paradigms from the social sciences as well Austin presented his idea of speech act theory as ways of conceptualizing social processes as in his lecture entitled: “How to Do Things performance. Bacon’s Other had now inspired With Words” for the William James Lecture Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xvi

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Series at Harvard University. Briefly defined, unassailable foundation—an absolute or “speech-act” is action that is performed when immutable truth claim. For Derrida, the term a word is uttered. He stated that language does refers to the problematic or faulty belief in an more than describe, it also does something that essential truth that guarantees meaning. “For makes a material, physical, and situational dif- Derrida, all that we know and say is based upon ference: “I forgive you;” “You cannot enter;” what has gone before and what we have inher- “Guilty!” all do something in the world. They ited from past actions. If something is done with create a particular reality. Language can words, it is because it has happened before bestow forgiveness, a blessing, freedom, citi- and we know out of convention and custom to zenship, marriage, a promise, etc. Language continue to do it” (Madison, 2005, p. 162). performs a reality; therefore for Austin lan- Through a performance studies lens these guage was not merely constantive, but perfor- varying claims relative to language, meaning, mative. Austin’s student, John R. Searle, and human behavior are not in contradiction, expanded Austin’s performative utterance to but form a dialectic and creative tension. assert that language is not only performative Words are indeed performative, and they do at certain heightened moments or ceremonial have material effects. Obviously, words do events, thereby separating the performative something in the world, and they are reitera- from the constantive—but that all language is tive (in terms of Derrida) in that speech, mean- a form of doing. Searle believed that whenever ing, intent, and custom have been repeated there is intention in speaking there is also the through time and are therefore communicative performative. While Austin designated particu- and comprehensible because they are recogniz- lar moments when words produced a speech- able in their repetition. act, that is, when words performed, Searle From the elocutionary movement, the inter- (1969) argued that whenever words are spoken pretation of literature, and speech-act theory, with intention (and they almost always are) we may extend the operation of performance words are performative. as it functions in language, culture and social Jacques Derrida, however, disagreed with life by turning to the anthropology of experi- Austin and Searle’s suggestion that a performa- ence and Victor Turner’s three-part compila- tive utterance creates a “doing” or a particular tion of performance: cultural performance, reality. According to Derrida, Austin ignores a social performance, and social drama. We will reality and context that is beyond the present begin with experience. moment of speaking. Language is not the causal factor; the causal factors are repetition and PERFORMANCE AS EXPERIENCE OR familiarity. For Derrida, the idea that a speech- EXPERIENCE AS PERFORMANCE act makes something happen within a particular present moment is to deny the fact of a Turner wrote that expressions are “the crystal- particular kind of history. Speech is citational; lized secretions of once living human experi- that is, what is spoken has been spoken many, ence” (1982, p. 17). Once an experience many times before, and its effects are a result of presses forward from the field of the day-to- its repetition and citational force, not a result day it becomes the incentive for expression; it of a unique or present moment when words is then no longer a personal reality but a shared are “newly” uttered. Derrida’s critique of one. What we experience may blossom into speech-act theory is captured in the idea of expression whether in the form of story, gossip, a “metaphysics of presence.” Derrida employs or humor on the one end, or poetry, novels, metaphysics of presence as a critical term to theatre, or film on the other. “The experience describe a thought system that depends on an now made into expression is presented in the Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xvii

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world; it occupies time, space, and public understood as more conventional forms of reality. Experience made into expression brings performance because they are framed by forth reader, observer, listener, village, com- cultural conventions. Cultural performances munity, and audience” (Madison, 2005, include plays, operas, circus acts, carnivals, p. 151). In the evolution from experience to parades, religious services, poetry readings, expression, we have simultaneously crossed weddings, funerals, graduations, concerts, the threshold of performance. Experience now toasts, jokes, and storytelling. In all these becomes the very source of performance. Can examples, self-conscious and symbolic acts we now conclude that performance must first are “presented” and communicated within a find its origins in experience? circumscribed space. The movement from experience to expression is not so neat or complete. Some argue Social performance: In social performance, that performance does not always begin with action, reflection, and intent are not marked as experience; indeed, they argue that it is experi- they are in cultural performances. Social per- ence that begins with performance. Conquer- formances are the ordinary day-by-day inter- good states that it is actually the reverse; it is actions of individuals and the consequences of the “performance that realizes the experience” these interactions as they move through social (1986, pp. 36–37). Bakhtin states, “After all, life (Turner, 1982, pp. 32–33). Social perfor- there is no such thing as experience outside mances are not self-consciously aware that of embodiment in signs. It is not experience their enactments are culturally scripted. Social that organizes expression, but the other way performances become examples of a culture around—expression organizes experience. and subculture’s particular symbolic practices. Expression is what first gives experience its These performances are most striking when form and specificity of direction” (quoted in they are contrasted against different cultural Conquergood, 1986, p. 85). norms, e.g., greetings, dining, dressing, dating, In the discussions concerning what comes walking, looking, and so forth. first, experience or performance, we come to recognize through the insights of Victor Social Drama. In social harmony the working Turner that this is similar to the chicken or the arrangements within a particular social unit egg question. In Turner’s work we understand are synchronized. When a social drama occurs that both came first and second. Performance there is a schism or break in the synchroniza- evokes experience, just as experience evokes tion. The social unit is disturbed and the parties performance. The reciprocal relationship involved are in disagreement. Turner states, between experience and performance is represented in Turner’s three-part classification of Social life, then, even in its apparently qui- performance: cultural performance, social etest moments, is characteristically “preg- nant” with social dramas. It is as though performance, and social drama. each of us has a “peace” face and a “war” face, that we are programmed for coopera- Cultural performance: Anthropologist Milton tion, but prepared for conflict. (1982, p. 11) Singer first introduced the term “cultural performance” in 1959, stating that these kinds Turner defines social drama through a four- of performances all possess a “limited time phase structure: breach, crises, redressive action, span, a beginning and an end, an organized and resolution. In breach, “there is an overt non- program of activity, a set of performers, an conformity and breaking away by an individual audience, and a place and occasion” (1959, or group of individuals from a shared system of p. xiii). Cultural performances are therefore social relations” (Turner, 1974, p. 38). Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xviii

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It is in the second stage, of crises, where citation—“always a reiteration of a norm or conflict becomes most apparent. The opposing set of norms” which means that the “act that forces are openly at odds, the masks are one does, the act that one performs is, in a stripped away or magnified, and the conflict sense, an act that has been going on before escalates. In crises the breach has enlarged; one arrived on the scene” (Diamond, 1996, it is made public. In the third stage, redressive pp. 4–6). Performativity becomes all at once a action, a mechanism is brought forth to cultural convention, value, and signifier that is squelch the crises from further disruption of inscribed on the body—performed through the the social system. This may be in the form of a body—to mark identities. In this view of per- mediator, of a judicial system, or of the oppos- formativity, gestures, posture, clothes, habits, ing forces coming together themselves in an and specific embodied acts are performed dif- effort to resolve the crises. ferently depending on the gender, as well as The final phase is resolution. It is here, race, class, sexuality, and so forth, of the indi- according to Turner, where the “disturbed vidual. How the body moves about in the parties are reconciled and re-integrated back world and its various mannerisms, styles, and into their shared social system” (1974, 1982). gestures are inherited from one generation The parties may reunite but with changes, or through space and time to another and demar- the other result is the recognition of a “legiti- cated within specific identity categories. These mate and irreparable schism between the par- performativities become the manifestations ties” that will separate them from the social and enactments of identity and belonging. system, or they may establish another social This emphasis on performativity as repetition system (1982, pp. 8–19). In reintegration there or citationality is useful in understanding how is usually some kind of ritual act to mark the identity categories are not inherent or biologi- separation or a celebration of the union. cally determined, but how they are socially For Turner, performance, whether it is cul- determined by cultural norms of demarcation. tural performance, social performance, or social This is an important insight because it opens drama, all takes place under the rubric the possibility for alternative performativities of structure or antistructure. Structure is all that and alternative ways of being. It causes us to which constitutes order, system, preservation, reckon with the fact that these categories and law, hierarchy, and authority. Antistructure is therefore the responses and practices based on all that which constitutes human action beyond these categories are not a fact of life, but are systems, hierarchies, and constraints. based upon repetitions and fabrications of These three realms outlined by Turner human behavior. The description of performa- intend to encompass and order the full range tivity as citationality is a critical move, but, of performance and its functions in culture for many performance scholars, it is only one and identity. However, Turner’s explication of dimension of articulating performativity. But, performance in social and cultural life is fur- then the question becomes: “What gets lost in ther complicated and deepened by the recent the reworking of performativity as citational- discussions and debates pertaining to the ity?” (Conquergood, 1998). We may under- concept of “performativity.” stand performativity as citationality, but we may also understand performativity as an intervention upon citationality and of resisting PERFORMATIVITY citationality. Just as performativity is an inter- For feminist critic Judith Butler (1988), nalized repetition of hegemonic “stylized acts” performativity is understood as a “stylized inherited by the status quo, it can also be an repetition of acts” that are—like Derridean internalized repetition of subversive “stylized Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xix

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acts” inherited by contested identities. re-located and re-materialized for the possibility “Subversive performativity can disrupt the of a substantial re-consideration and re-exami- very citations that hegemonic performativity nation. Elin Diamond reminds us: “When enacts” (Madison, 2005). Performance studies performativity materializes as performance in scholar Jill Dolan describes performativity that risky and dangerous negotiation between as “the non-essentialized constructions of a ‘doing’ (a reiteration of norms) and a thing marginalized identities” (1993, p. 419). For done (discursive conventions that frame our Dolan, performativity in this light is not interpretations), between someone’s body simply citation, but a symbiosis of identifying and the conventions of embodiment, we have experience that is determined by compilations access to cultural meanings and critique” of differences: sex, class, race, ethnicity, sexu- (1996, p. 5). These performances that “materi- ality, geography, religion, etc. The postcolo- alize” performativity and that open meanings nial critic, Homi Bhaba, adds to the idea of and critique, encompass film, music, theatre— subversive performativity by invoking the the conventions of embodiment—but they “performative” as action that disturbs, dis- also profoundly constitute and are constituted rupts, and disavows hegemonic formations by the stories we tell one another and the (1994, pp. 146–149). narratives we live by. Langellier explains the From Homi Bhabha’s and Jill Dolan’s necessary interpenetration of performance, descriptions of performativity, we may further performativity, and narration: clarify the meanings and functions of performativity through the contributions of Mary Why add performativity to performance? Strine (1998) and Kristen Langellier (1999) By performativity, I highlight the way speech where performativity is a dynamic that com- acts have been extended and broadened to understand the constitutiveness of perfor- prises the interpenetrations of identity, experi- mance. That is, personal narrative perfor- ence, and social relations that constitute mance constitutes identities and experience, subjects and order context. In other words, producing and reproducing that to which it performativity is the interconnected triad of refers. Here, personal narrative is a site where identity, experience, and social relations— the social is articulated, structured, and strug- gled over (Butler, Twigg). To study perfor- encompassing the admixture of class, race, mance as performativity is, according to Elin sex, geography, religion, and so forth that is Diamond, ‘to become aware of performance necessarily “contradictory, multiple, and com- itself as a contested space, where meanings plexly interconnected” (Langellier, 1999). In and desires are generated, occluded, and of sum, performativities are the many markings course multiply interpreted’ (4). In performa- substantiating that all of us are subjects in a tivity, narrator and listener(s) are themselves constituted (‘I will tell you a story’), as is world of power relations. experience (‘a story about what happened to The question then becomes, when we me’). Identity and experience are symbiosis rework performativity beyond a “stylized rep- of performed story and the social relations etition of acts” into the more deeply relevant in which they are materially embedded: sex, evocation of performativity as “nonessential- class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, geography, religion, and so on. This is why personal nar- ized constructions of identity,” what does is it rative performance is especially crucial to then actually look like? Performativities are sig- those communities left out of the privileges of nificantly and powerfully layered in the day-to- dominant culture, those bodies without voice day, yet they are heightened and embossed in in the political sense. (1999, p. 129) cultural performances. It is in cultural performances where performativities are doubled In these more consciously subversive ren- with a difference: they are re-presented, derings of performativity we may now extend Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xx

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our discussion of performativity and take are who we are in our nations because of up connections between performance and our placement—for better and worse—among transnational narratives. other nations of the world and that literarily spills into the microstructures of our neighbor- hood, families, and lives. Third, as we travel to PERFORMANCE AND GLOBALITY lands far and foreign, performance directs us to The world has grown smaller. Air travel, the the symbolic universe of indigenous life. Signs Internet, digital technologies, and telecommu- and symbols hold meanings and histories, but nication have brought far away places into our more, they are the expressive formations of homes and lives, just as representations of who local knowledge and desire. Performance leads we are and what we do are brought into the us to the social dramas, cultural performances, lives and cultures of those sometimes so for- and embodied stories that make culture live. eign to us that we can not locate or name their Performance travels transnationally between homelands on the map. The irony is that dis- the local and global so we may be witnesses tance is no longer solely measured by kilome- and co-performers of a politics of culture ters or miles, but by time and access for those beyond our own borders. The idea of “terri- of us who reap the benefits of “first world” tech- tory” in this time of globalization has greater nologies and economies: how many hours fly- implications than ever before. The way the ing time to Mozambique or how many cable “local” is affected by transnational communi- stations on your TV, or the speed of your com- cation and affiliations has extended our under- puter. Zygmunt Bauman reflects the fact that standing of “community,” “nation,” and distance is compressed by time by a global elite “identity.” Conquergood states, class: According to Michel de Certeau, “what Indeed, little in the elite’s life experience the map cuts up, the story cuts across” now implies a difference between ‘here’ and (1984:12). This pithy phrase evokes a post- ‘there,’ ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, ‘close by’ and colonial world crisscrossed by transnational ‘far away’. With time of communication narratives, Diaspora affiliations, and espe- imploding and shrinking to the no-size of cially, the movement and multiple migra- the instant, space and spatial markers cease tions of people, sometimes voluntary, but to matter, at least to those whose actions often economically propelled and politically can move with the speed of the electronic coerced. In order to keep pace with such message. (1983, p. 13) a world, we think of “place” as a heavily trafficked intersection, a port of call and exchange, instead of circumscribed terri- What are the implications for transnational tory. A boundary is more like a membrane narratives in this era of globalization or of “the than a wall . . . our understanding of local no-size of the instant” for those of us who are context expands to encompass the histori- particularly concerned about the transnational cal, dynamic, often traumatic, movements implications of performance? First, perfor- of people, ideas, images, commodities, and mance becomes the enactment and evidence capital. It is not easy to sort out the local from the global: transnational circulations of stories that literally and figuratively bleed of images get reworked on the ground and across the borders that national boundaries redeployed for local tactical struggles. “cut up” (de Certeau, 1974/1984, p. 12). For (2002, p. 145) example, performing the local is enmeshed in what it means to be a U.S. citizen and that is The crossings between the local and the enmeshed in the facts of U.S. foreign policy, global form complex terrains of progress, world trade, civil society, and war. Second, we struggle, and contestation. In this collection, Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xxi

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we illuminate performance in its various In Unmarked (1993) and The Ends of constellations in ways that consider these Performance (1998), Peggy Phelan offers crossings and evoke deeper questions about a politicized reconception of relationships them. The possibilities and political implica- between these three terms. She writes, tions from such a constellation of discussions represented in this volume is far reaching, The pleasure of resemblance and repetition because the authors implicate operations of produces both psychic assurance and political fetishization. Representation reproduces power at multiple locations and within varied the Other as the Same. Performance, insofar subjectivities. What does this mean? It means as it can be defined as representation with- the writers in this volume have chosen to out reproduction, can be seen as a model for examine ethnographically, historically, theo- another representational economy, one in retically, pedagogically, and imaginatively a which the reproduction of the Other as the range of spaces both hidden and apparent that Same is not assured. (1993, p. 3) are represented by the silences of the subaltern at one end and by the exegesis of the empow- For Phelan, this translates into a particular ered on the other. This polyvocal range of ethical stance toward performance and/as locations raises questions relative to imbal- representation. ances of power, forms of resistance, and the symbolic universe of expressive forms of dis- What lies before the field of performance studies is precisely a discipline: a refusal to content, desire, and alternative possibilities. indulge the killing possessiveness too often The politics and praxis of performance open bred in admiration and love. The lessons we up the multivocality of expressions that are most need to learn are lessons in mourning formed under necessity and duress, as well as without killing, loving without taking. This pleasure and inspiration toward envisioning is the end toward which performance aims. new and other realities in the everyday acts of (1998, p. 11) both foreign and familiar locations. In performance as praxis, the form of knowledge itself Philip Auslander is also concerned with is questioned. Performance asks us to identify presence and absence in discussions of perfor- and affirm knowledges that are contested, mance in/as representation. His focus is the obscure, and often demeaned in the embodied issue of “liveness,” and particularly the notion acts and oral traditions of such locations. that the live performance seems to have a self-evident realness and value that the pur- portedly secondary “mediatized” ones do not: “However one may assess the relative symbolic PERFORMANCE AND/AS values of live events, it is important to observe REPRESENTATION that even within our hyper-mediatized culture, Richard Schechner, another founder of perfor- far more symbolic capital is attached to live mance studies, famously defined performance events than to mediatized ones, at least for the as “restored behavior” (1985, p. 33). Schech- moment” (1999, p. 59). Auslander argues that ner brought his considerable experience and performance studies scholars must critically reputation as an experimental theatre director examine this hierarchy of values, and he to performance studies, and his perspective has actively interrogates the presumptions under- inspired scholars to examine the intricate con- girding both the notion of “liveness” itself, and ceptual and pragmatic connections between the symbolic capital that accrues to it. performance, repetition, and representation Conceptual reworking of, and interventions (see also Schechner, 2002). in, performance and/as representation appear Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xxii

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in works by a wide range of artists. Indeed the Americans enter representation—as “vanished,” interdisciplinary nature of performance studies as archeological “specimens,” “noble savages,” itself is also reflected in this work, and in the or the loci of nostalgia, Spiderwoman exposes backgrounds of the artists who produce it. and critiques these constructions through This interdisciplinarity, along with irony, pas- burlesquing and parodying them. As Rebecca tiche, and a suspicion of master narratives, Schneider (1997) observes, has led some performance scholars to describe aesthetics in these pieces as “postmodern” Laughing, Spiderwoman is sending up (Carlson, 1996, pp. 123–143). Many of these something extremely serious. Who are same practices can also be found in the work the “primitives” that have been created by of early twentieth century avant-garde theatre white nostalgia? Much of Spiderwoman’s work is related to the issue of “Indianness,” and performance practitioners (see Goldberg, adroitly played in the painful space between 1979). the need to claim an “authentic” native Two examples of performances that identity and their awareness of the appro- actively engage and trouble conventional priation and the historical commodifica- norms of representation are illustrative. The tion of the signs of that authenticity. Their first is “Food for the Spirit,” completed in material falls in the interstices where their autobiographies meet popular and 1971 by artist and philosopher Adrian Piper aesthetic constructions of the “primitive,” (Jones, 1998, pp. 162–164). Piper is a light- specifically the primitivized American skinned African American woman. In one Indian. (p. 161) photo-document from this “private loft performance,” she stands nude before a mirror, Performance studies scholars also create a camera held beneath her breasts (p. 162). performances that rework and interrogate rela- Piper’s performance exists betwixt and tionships between, and conventions of, perfor- between the moment of “live” performance mance and/as representation. This work is and the moment in which an audience another example of performance at the inter- removed from the event itself confronts the sections of method, of research, object of photo. In that liminal space, Piper simultane- research, and method of representing research ously “exposes the assumption of whiteness (Alexander, 2002; Jackson, 1998; Johnson, implicit in the ‘rhetoric of the pose’” and chal- 2003; Jones, 1997). lenges the stability and self-evidence of racial Performance studies scholars tease out and identity. She writes, refashion relationships between performance and representation on the page as well as on I am the racist’s nightmare, the obscenity of the stage. In her influential essay “Performing miscegenation. I am a reminder that segre- Writing” (1998), Della Pollock discusses “Six gation is impotent; a living embodiment of Excursions into Performative Writing.” Such sexual desire that penetrates racial barriers writing, she explains, is evocative, metonymic, and reproduces itself. . . . I represent the loathsome possibility that everyone is subjective, citational, and consequential. It is “tainted” by black ancestry: If someone can particularly well suited to the complexities look and sound like me and still be black, of setting bodies—and theories—in motion who is unimpeachably white? (quoted in into language. A number of contributors to Jones, 1998, p. 162) this handbook use performative writing in their essays, demonstrating that critique Consider, too, the work of Spiderwoman, in performance studies, like performance itself, a performance company of three Native is inventive, generative, and “on the move” American sisters. Mindful of the ways Native (Conquergood, 1995). Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xxiii

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WHY A HANDBOOK OF performance as, itself, a form of textual PERFORMANCE STUDIES? representation and artistic production. Many of the contributors in this volume cross subject areas; that is, they write from several Performance and Pedagogy categories at once. For example scholars and This section explores the productive inter- teachers of performance may integrate and sections between critical pedagogy and per- overlap several areas, such as ethnography, formance. Each essay demonstrates that the theory, history, literature, and politics in vari- production, consumption, and dissemination ous other combinations. However, for this of knowledge are critical performances inti- collection, we have organized each of these mately linked to activism as well as to the for- domains as separate topical areas. The editors mation of institutional practices and identities. and contributors for each section all use mul- This section examines performance as consti- tidisciplinary approaches; yet, they are experts tutive of pedagogical theory and praxis from within their specific domains with an accom- varying sites that both trouble and honor plished record of research and teaching. They the meanings and consequences of knowledge employ theories and paradigms from various in action. Pedagogy is explored as embodied other subject areas of performance to enhance processes and as a politics of hope. and extend the core concepts within their specific domain of interest. As a result of the multidisciplinary nature of performance, and Performance and Politics because, as editors, it is our intent to honor the Performance implicates power in the situ- rich tapestry that constitutes performance, in ated nature of human interaction as well as in crossing a range of subjects this collection also the symbols that simultaneously motivate, sus- crosses a range of readers. This book is meant tain, and contest its legitimacy. Performance for students, teachers, practitioners and all requires locating the complexly layered micro those interested in how to understand and and macro enactments of politics to identify employ performance, pedagogically, theoreti- human conditions and yearnings relative to cally, and artistically. The thematic organiza- power, authority, strength, and force. The tion is as follows: essays included in this section explore the principles of politics as it encompasses freedom and human desire, particularly within the Performance and Literature realms of race, sexuality, gender, globality, Performance and literature are intimately caste, and class. linked. Performance is a path by which we enter literary worlds. Performance is polyrhythmic as Performance and Ethnography it conjoins the words, experiences, behaviors, imaginings, and bodies of the reader with Performance is variously and simultane- those of the literary text. Chapters in this sec- ously employed as a theory, method, and event tion discuss the use of performance as a criti- in research and travel to ethically enter the cal, analytical tool for examining literature; domains of Others. Performance and ethnogra- the institutional formation of performance phy combine in this section to explore the value studies through its links with literature in and ubiquity of performance within the ethno- the oral tradition, in oratory, and in the graphic enterprise: in illuminating relations theatre; the relationship between performance, and theories of space, place, and Other; in the testimony and the personal narrative; and embodied, dialogical dynamics of fieldwork Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xxiv

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methods; and, in the scholarly representation through the strategies of performance theory, and advocacy praxis of public performance. the methods of performance ethnography, the Therefore, the essays in this section examine politics of performance pedagogy, the illumina- the uses of performance in the analysis, engage- tions of literature and performance, the revi- ment, and presentation of ethnography and its sionings of performance history, the claims in processes. the politics of performance, or the overarching ways performance is performed as a staged event. All these dimensions of performance are Performance and History deeply invoked while elements of each richly The relationship between performance and overlap with elements of the others. The poli- history goes far beyond studies of specific per- tics, theory, pedagogy, literature, and ethnog- formers and specific periods, though these, raphy of performance are distinct sites of of course, are vitally important. Included in inquiry; however the ways they naturally and this section are discussion of the theatrical inherently intersect with each other becomes construction of the nation, of the relationships a rich montage of meanings, questions, and between performance and forms of civic and claims. This volume opens a range of para- social life, and performance as a heuristic digms and meditations on performance to the guiding both archival methodology and histo- reader in order to illuminate and clarify the riography. Chapters in this section will various ways performance can be employed explore varying aspects of the multifaceted across subjects of interest and disciplinary divi- relationship between performance and history. sions. Moreover, we have placed various argu- ments about and ideas of performance together in this collection to create a dialectic of com- Performance and Theory parisons and contrasts between and within Performance and theory conjoin to expli- performance studies conversations. cate the meanings and implications that inhere in human experience and social processes. Performance theory is employed across disci- REFERENCES plines to decipher the multiple operations of Alexander, B. K. (2002). Skin flint (or, the garbage performance (performativity and the perfor- man’s kid): A generative autobiographical mative) within a written text, a life world, and performance based on Tami Spry’s “Tattoo in domains of cognitive and imaginary expres- Stories.” Text and Performance Quarterly, 20(1), 97–114. sions. The essays included in this section will Auslander, P. (1999). Liveness: Performance in a examine the dynamics of performance theory, mediatized culture. New York: Routledge. e.g., its taxonomies, interrogations, and Bacon, A. W. (1979). The art of interpretation. queries. Moreover, the essays will reflect the New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. performance turn in western academic theory Bauman, Z. (1983). Globalization: The human consequences. New York: Columbia University as it invokes more embodied, subjunctive, and Press. transgressive claims regarding the ontology of Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New difference. York: Routledge. Burke, K. (1945). A grammar of motives. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. CONCLUSION Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and This handbook serves as both a forum and as a feminist theory. Theory Journal, 40, 519–531. response to a call for those who are interested Carlson, M. (1996). Performance: A critical intro- in employing performance whether it is duction. New York: Routledge. Madison-FM.qxd 10/14/2005 6:41 PM Page xxv

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