Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 1997 Performance and problematization in rhetorical culture: the example of Laurie Anderson Kirstin Jean Cronn-Mills Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the Rhetoric and Composition Commons, Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Cronn-Mills, Kirstin Jean, "Performance and problematization in rhetorical culture: the example of Laurie Anderson " (1997). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 11974. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/11974 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. 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UMI A Bell & Howell Information CompaiQr 300 North ZMb Road, Ann Aifaor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 i I.t-- Peifonnance and problematization in rhetorical culture: the example o£ Laurie Anderson Kirstin Jean Croiin-Mills A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty^ in partial fiolfiUment of the requirements for ttie degree of DOCTOR OF PHZLOSOPHY M^on Rhetoric and Professional Communication Miq'or Professors: Susan Carlson and Scott Consigny Iowa State Universify Ames, Iowa 1997 UMX Number: 9814634 UMI Microform 9814634 Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. AH riglits reserved. This microfonn edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arixir, MI 48103 [I Graduate College Iowa State University This is to certify that the Doctoral dissertation of Kirstin Jean Cronn-Mills has met the dissertation requirements of Iowa State University. Signature was redacted for privacy. Co-Major Professor Signature was redacted for privacy. Co-Majortr Professof Signature was redacted for privacy. For the Major Program Signature was redacted for privacy. For thele Graduate College lU Kama, for sharing their considerable strengths. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: PERFORMANCE COMPLEXITY AND CULTURAL INQUIRY 1 CHAPTER TWa THEOREnCAL POSTnONS OF PERFORMANCE 40 CHAPTER THREE: MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THE CONTEXTS OF PROBLEMATEAHON 89 CHAPTER FOUR: PROBLEMAHZING CULTURE WHH LAURIE ANDERSON 126 CHAPTER FIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR PERFORMANCE WITHIN CULTURAL ANALYSIS 190 NOTES 206 WORKS CITED 209 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 222 V Still, as a storyteller, I am struck how a person's sense of consciousness can be transfonned by nottiing more magical than listenix^ to words... mere words. Charles Nelson Reilty, "Jos^ Chung's 'From Outer Space'" TheXFOes These either/or ways of seeing exclude life and real revision by pushing us to safe positions, to what is known. The are safe positions that exclude each other and don't allow for any ambigui^, uncertainty^. Only when I suspend myself between either and or can I move aw^ from oonventumal boundaries and begin to see shapes and shadows and contours—ambiguity, uncertainty, and disomtinuity, moments when the seams of life just don't want to hold; d^ when I wake up to find, once again, tiiat I don't have enough bread for the children's sandwiches or that there are no shoelaces for their gym shoes. My Hfe is full of uncertainty; n^otiating that uncertainty day to day gives me authority. Nancy Sommets, "Between the Diaffs* ...madness fascinates because it isknowledge. It is knowledge, first, because all these absurd figures are in reality elements of a difficult, hermetic, esoteric learning.... VVltile the man of reason and wisdom perceives only fragmentary and an the more unnerving images of it ttie Fool beus it intact as an unbrok^ sphere, diat crystal ball which all others is empty is in his eyes filled with the density of an invisible knowledge. \fichel Fbucault, Afinfixess and Civilization 1 CHAPTER ONE: PERFORMANCE COMPLEXITY AND CULTURAL INQUIRY A performance completes, or thoroughly carries out, social processes. (Stem and Henderson 9) If Stem and Henderson are correct, then performance is integral to every social act we complete. Performance happens in the classroom and on the stage. Performance takes place in the way we conduct business and live with family members. Performance is everywhere. According to Brooks McNamara and Richard Schechner, performance is "ethnic and intercultural, historical and ahistorical, aesthetic and ritual, sociological and political," and represents "a mode of behavior, an approach to experience" (5). Performance involves the sweep of hximan behavior. Embedded within these performances are cultural structures and beliefs. These cultural entities in performance make their presence know by creating roles for us to enact. These cultural patterns and roles can be labeled codes. We understand, respect, and respond to coded behaviors because these behaviors are familiar to us; the codes are written in the rules of society. A teacher is regulated by the cultural codes related to the idea of "teacher," and students are regulated by the codes that apply to "students". In this dissertation I consider how to study the idea of cultur<il codes and their effects on our lives. 2 SpedficaEy, I explore how studying cultural performances allows us to identify and challenge cultural structures at work within the performance. Disassembling performances will provide us with a way to examine these cultural structures. Performance scholars Carole Simpson Stem and Bruce Henderson expand further on their definition of performance, claiming performance as "an enactment of self and society, providing a mirror for culture and presenting collective knowledge" (107). These performances can be as intricate as a stage play or as casual as an office conversation. Thinking of performance as everyday events allows us to take Stem and Henderson's "enactment of self and society" very literally. I argue throughout this dissertation that a performance provides an opportunity to enact particular cultural roles and structures. After this introductory chapter, I examine some of the roles performance plays in constructing culture. I also consider two performance elements, narratives and visuals, that carry cultural patterns that help us make sense of the larger cultural stmctures at work. Next, I examine the work of Michel Foucault to provide a backgrotmd for our examination of these performances. Foucault did much work with language structures and cultural codes. Foucaulfs writings help us imderstand how cxilture follows particuleir patterns—or codes—^that emerge over and over again. His work was intent on breaking—or at least disrupting—the codes at hand in order to remain cognizant of the power exercised within and around our enactment of codes. I combine the study of performance and Foucault's examination of cultural and power stmctures in my 3 analysis of performance artifacts from Laurie Anderson, a prominent twentieth- century performance artist Finally, I draw conclusions for English studies to consider, in relation to Foucauldian analysis and to performance as a structure to identify communication instances. My goal for my text is the use of performance as a tool for illustrating cultural structures and conducting cultixral inquiry. Performance provides occasions to shape cxilture in perpetuating cultural codes or tearing down cultxiral structures. What kind of performances do we enact as English scholars? What kind of power structures do we support, challenge, or disrupt? I would claim we are not fully aware of the cultural structures we support with our discipline. My dissertation will help make clear some small elements of the performances we enact and the cultural structxires we biiild, as English scholars, as rhetoricians, and as professional communicators. In the rest of Chapter One, I first provide a brief overview of my conceptualization of performance. Then I briefly describe Foucaulf s study of language and how cultural inquiry stems from his theories. The chapter concludes