University of South Florida Digital Commons @ University of South Florida Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 7-1-2010 An Ecology of Performance: Gregory Bateson's Cybernetic Performance Daniel Matthew Blaeuer University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Scholar Commons Citation Blaeuer, Daniel Matthew, "An Ecology of Performance: Gregory Bateson's Cybernetic Performance" (2010). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3510 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Digital Commons @ University of South Florida. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ University of South Florida. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An Ecology of Performance: Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Performance by Daniel Matthew Blaeuer A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Frederick Steier, Ph.D Stacy Holman Jones, Ph.D Jane Jorgenson, Ph.D Marilyn Myerson, Ph.D Date of Approval: July 1, 2010 Keywords: Performativity, Performance Theory, Cybernetics, Cyborg, Systems Theory, The Esalen Institute Copyright © July, 2010 Daniel Matthew Blaeuer Acknowledgements In the course of writing this manuscript, I have generated a significant debt. I asked people to look over half-baked ideas expressed in incomplete sentences. I wanted people to live with me and share a world. I needed people to believe in me when I did not believe in myself. Your acknowledgement and support means the world to me, and if ideas and bodies evolve together, then who I am and who we are is part of the process of life and writing. I am better with your support than I could have ever been without it. Miranda, you have been here through it all giving me support and love. I love you with all my heart. Amelia, you have taught me more in two years than you can imagine, and in learning, you taught me love. Fred and Jane, you are my role models of academic life, encouraging ideas for their beauty and thinking for its pleasure. Stacy and Marilyn, you filled your classes with pleasure, community, and love and taught me how to celebrate embodied learning in the process. For these lessons, I thank you all. I thank my mother and father for their commitment to rearing their children in an open environment of ideas and love. I thank David, Elizabeth, Meredith, and Will for inviting me into your family and supporting my ideas at your dinner table. Nora, your honest help and support of my project has been invaluable. I also thank Mark Watt’s generous contribution of Bateson’s Esalen lectures. I take on faith that you can trust these words as expressing as my humble gratitude, my thanks, and my love. Table of Contents Abstract ii Metalogue One: What are Introductions, Daddy? 1 Chapter One: The Introduction 9 Metalogue Two: What is a Daddy, Daddy? 22 Chapter Two: Queer Thinking in The Sepik River Valley 28 Bateson’s Ethnography as Sense Making 30 Bateson’s Sex and Gender 36 Judith Butler’s Theater of Deeds 48 Metalogue Three: Are Monsters Scary? 56 Chapter Three: A Cybernetic Trip: From The War Machine to Performance 62 The Displacement of Change 53 The Cybernetic Imagination: Fear, Glory, and the Post-Human 67 The Cybernetic Imagination in Performance 84 Chapter Four: The Fall from Grace: Cybernetic Romanaticism 91 Bateson’s Fall from Grace 92 Tempation to Know and Melodramatic Doubt 108 Chapter Five: The Esaalen Tapes and Striving for Grace 119 The Search for Stablity and the Search for a Text 120 Bateson’s Theory of Performance as Grace 135 Bateson’s Performances 152 Chapter Six: Conclusion 159 List of References 166 About the Author Last Page i An Ecology of Performance: Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Performance Daniel M. Blaeuer Abstract This dissertation is a case study of the public performances of Gregory Bateson at The Esalen Institute. The case study is a reconsideration of the work of Gregory Bateson from the perspective of performance studies. The author brings together performativity, cybernetics, and the sacred to argue that Gregory Bateson, in his public performances, was striving for grace in encounters with others. The author has conducted archival research into Bateson’s presentations and has spoken with several close to Bateson to get a sense of how his process of public presentation paralleled his ideas—a process of continually working through ideas in conversation with others. In his dissertation the author tries to present the work in a form fitting with Bateson's own process. ii Metalogue One: What are Introductions, Daddy? Daughter: What are you doing, Daddy? Father: I am writing an introduction to my dissertation. Daughter: What are introductions, Daddy? Father: Introductions are what you say, or in this case write, when you meet someone. Sometimes it is meeting a new friend or an old acquaintance. Daughter: Then they are short, kind of like saying, “Hello” on a busy train? Father: Well, yes, they need to be short, and they are the nice things we say to people when we meet them in passing. In some cases, it is what you say before you actually get on with saying something. Daughter: You are telling them twice? Once in the introduction and later saying it better or in more detail? Father: I only hope to do it better, but yes, it is kind of a telling it twice. A teacher once told me, “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them again.” Writing is not quite so redundant, but I hope you get the point. Daughter: So what are you going to tell them? Father: I am writing in part about the importance of introductions. Or, if I introduce it as something that is about introduction, then people might come to see it that way. Introductions, you see, are ways to share the 1 order of something so that other people can enjoy it and participate in the world with you, and, of course, know what to expect in our relationship. It is a way, I imagine, of inviting people into a world of meaning that they might not share. Not at least the way I do. Daughter: I always thought introductions were just formal places to summarize your conclusion and state your main points. My teachers want very particular things in the first paragraph of my papers; do your teachers want very clear things, too? Father: Yes, I think they have very clear ideas about what they want. We all have expectations for our introductions. Not just in introduction but also in all our communicating together, even in this conversation, we have expectations. Daughter: And introductions are about expectations and order and preparing people for what is to come? Father Yes. Daughter: And introductions are ways to understand what is going on in a paper, a way to know what to expect and to know if you should keep reading it. Father: Yes, introductions help us know where we stand with each other. When a policeman stops us in a car, he is surely not introducing himself the same way as he would introduce himself at the park. And I do not expect to share stories with him about our children when he stops me in my car the same way I might if I met him at the park. 2 Daughter: But you share stories with Polly’s dad, and he is a policeman. Father: Yes, he introduced himself quite differently to me when we met. If he ever stopped me, his introduction would be like mine is now—a little more difficult. I mean, he might have to both give me a traffic ticket as well as express his desire to see us at Polly’s birthday party next month. Daughter: That might not be very nice to give you a ticket. Father: Well, he is just doing his job. But, anyway that is another issue altogether. We are talking about the difficulty of introductions. You see, introductions state what kind of relationships we have. Sometimes a policeman wants to be sure you know he is not your friend or that your friendship is another matter altogether. Polly’s father and I would still be friends even if he gives me a ticket. But our friendship has limits and pulling me over and giving me a ticket lets me know this fact. Introductions are part of the ways we define those relationships. Daughter: Do you mean the way Nana always gives me hugs when I walk in the door is a way of telling me how important I am to her and what kind of relationship we have? Father: Yes, she is telling you, maybe not in words, how much you mean to her. It affirms your life with her and tells you what kind of relationship you have with her. You know that you can always go to her for anything you need? 3 Daughter: Yes, Nana has told me that a lot of times. It seems you are changing things and saying that introductions introduce relationships and maintain relationships. Father: Yes, I might be changing them a little, but they are also kind of practical, and in my case, telling people where to find something and what I have written about. Daughter: Do you mean something like how after greeting our friends at the door we tell them where the restrooms are and to make themselves at home? Father: Yes, I think so exactly.