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The Row Boat

"Had we but world enough, and time..." *

All the World as Stage

1/31/2007 00:51:05

In the last few days I've been seeing performance theory left and right. It has been mainly in the course of reading Susuan Harding's, The Book of Jerry Falwell, which gives a discursive performance reading to fundamentalist rhetoric, and hearing a talk by the sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander, which gave a performance reading of the War on Terror as a failure in script making. All this is bringing me back to about a year ago, when I first got interested in performance theory while trying to build a theoretical basis for my college thesis, The Cosmogonic Theater: Public Performance in the Evolution Controversies.

What drew me initially to this kind of thinking was a frustration with the ways the evolution debates were always being talked about. There seemed to be no escape from polemic in any of the literature. The whole thing was cast as a clash between competing truth claims, assuming that they shared a common view about the nature of truth and the goals of debate. I didn't get the sense that this was true. By putting both sides on a metaphorical stage, however, performing became the thing had in common and a way of transcending the stark and perplexing differences between them. Since then, performance thinking has struck me as a powerful tool for the analysis of the encounter between irreconcilables.

(Without directly invoking performance, Jeffrey Stout's excellent recent book Democracy and Tradition does similar work by placing the American "culture wars" within the common context of a deliberative literary and political tradition. In effect, he turned the "wars" into a performance, an argument whose performed passions mask the actual mass of shared assumptions and shared values.)

As I am familiar with it, performance theory emerged out of experimental theater movements in the 1960s, especially at places like NYU, which now has a center for Performance Studies. In this form, it was intrinsically transgressive and playful, working to destabilize the madness of repressed, bureaucratic society by revealing the whole thing to be a show on a stage. One of its main exponents, Richard Schechner is known for staging performances so orgiastic that before long nudity and on-stage sex started to feel normal. To these early theorists, there was an intensive self-awareness of theorist as performer like the rest of the world, and they very much viewed their work as tied to worldly praxis. As much as this theory was directed against the madness of the outside world, it sought to break the ivory tower.

Jeffrey Alexander, an important contemporary sociologist in the Durkheimian school, has been turning considerable attention lately to performance theory. I haven't read his books on the subject. So I am only working from the lecture he gave yesterday. But it seems to me that in the form he is molding it to, performance theory is mainstreaming and formalizing in such a way that it loses much of the transgression that was so important to to progenitors. Like psychoanalysis, theorists are bringing it out of the praxis that formed it, into a decapitated academy, a discourse of heads without bodies. And certainly there is good in that. Alexander's presentation convincingly showed that the war in Iraq can be read usefully as a failure in script-making and aligning a convincing symbolic performance. But something is also lost.

In a conversation with my advisor Ann Taves yesterday, she suggested an approach to performance theory grounded in science, for instance in cognitive psychological theories of human play. Here, performance emerges from being a metaphor - all the world's a stage - and into something "harder," into a demonstrable series of linkages between behavior and biomatter.

Ultimately, I think the neatest thing about performance theory is its absolutely built-in self awareness and, in consequence, its activist bent. You can't do performance theory without soon becoming incredibly aware of what you yourself are doing, performing, and enacting. Whether playful (like Schechner) or stolid (like Alexander), performance theory must be self-aware and, with luck, may be a vehicle by which good reflective thinkers can find their way into doing good in the outside world.

Performing - 1/31/2007 22:10:47
Posted by Eli

By responding to your excellent summary, I am (self-consciously) performing the part of avid listener.

re: Performing - 2/01/2007 11:13:30
Posted by nathan

Susan Harding in The Book of Jerry Falwell (p. 88):

Specifically, everything Jerry Falwell authors is true. But truth is not automatic, transparent, unmediated. It is the outcome of continuous exegetical exchanges between the Bible and its readers, a preacher and his people. A preacher's God-given authority, like the absolute truth of the Bible, is produced by a community of believers through its interpretive practices. It is as if Falwell, in his varied storied manifestations, were telling his followers, "Read me as you read the Bible. I appear in many versions. There are differences between the versions, and there are awkward silences and anomalies within them. My tales are troubled and they are troubling. Harmonize my diescrepancies. Close my gaps. Overcome my troubles. Make me whole. Make me true."

...performing a very long comment - 2/02/2007 17:08:44
Posted by introducing BT...

I've probably said, or tried to say, this angle a bunch before, yet why not again (speaking of performance)??? . . . I can see how "performance studies" makes certain things comprehensible in a pragmatic sense, but ultimately it doesn't seem to me that redefining truth in light of performance gets one very far. (Since all the truth-issues demanding, whether implicitly or explicitly, a reconciliation of pragmatism with metaphysics would still apply, just at the further remove of the "performative" meta-analysis.) So I'm not claiming the performance-analysis is worthless, just that ultimately it only defers all the same not-easily-reconcilable tensions between pragmatism and metaphysics onto yet *another* frame of analysis, but without resolving them.

Re: a Falwell -- I agree that a performative analysis allows one to try to understand, or empathize with, the experience of a devoted listener/spectator/believer, but at the end of the day it doesn't seem to me that type of analysis is really so different from whatever psychology or sociology or communications-theory anyone would try to apply to whatever faith experience. I guess what I keep wondering is: since the "performative" dimension is always there anyway (whether explicitly theorized in the terms of "performance studies" or not), what could be said to be any *inherent* value, truth-wise, of singling out that dimension as such?

To me, the evolution case is a prime example -- one can in good faith extrapolate scientific data into varying metaphysical frameworks, yet what makes science science is that its "performance" has to be at least partially, however theory-laden, genuinely open to the confirmation or refutation of results. If science was *just* a performance, truth-wise, it could have no coherent development. It takes a non-reductionist-materialism or a panpsychism like Whitehead's (or something of similar scope) in order to even *start* relating metaphysics to scientific evolution (and also to counter complete scientific reductionists), whereas the creationist-I.D. crowd really has a block about taking method seriously. In other words, even if I understand I.D.-ers performatively, it doesn't make their claims any truer (in terms of the coherence of their premises, method, use of evidence) -- also, I doubt an I.D.-er would only want to be understood performatively from his perspective either, right? What I mean is, even though any expression of faith or any discourse whatsoever, including science, can only but be "performed," the rules of *certain* games (as a Wittgenstein might define science, and however ultimately circumscribed even the best science is, truth-wise) really do by definition demand more than *simply* performance.

Unless one starts from a (*metaphysical*) foundation/presupposition of God Himself as the Absolute performing Its own "leela" (game/play/performance), it seems to me that performance-talk could never be robust enough to talk about truth adequately. Truth-talk always requires acknowledging one's metaphysical presuppositions, whatever they may be, yet performances -- this comment included of course -- always just go on & on, accompanying and partially constituting any & every expression whatsoever, regardless of acknowledging presuppositions. I guess all I mean is: it seems to me that self-referentiality isn't *inherently* particularly insightful, even if it has the potential to be in some cases.

re:All the World as Stage - 2/04/2007 01:57:14
Posted by nathan

Thank you for your long reply, I'm sorry to answer so briefly (it is getting late):

Basically, I don't think performance interpretation speaks to truth claims on the level that you are expecting it to. For instance, no where in my work on evolution did I argue that performance could solve the question of whether evolution occurred. Instead, to me the performance analysis showed precisely that the kind of truth that the scientists and the creationists are looking for is essentially of a different quality. Their audiences differ, and so do the goals most important to them. That is why, I argue, there is so little progress in the debates.

What I do think it can do is, as you say, more comparable to sociological etc. analysis. One of the benefits is that it is intuitive, draws on a shared metaphor, and makes a strong place for the theorist as participant. Truth, as in the kind of truth you are trying to describe with metaphysical systems, probably encapsulates performance theory. It is bigger, and from that perspective, you're right, performance theory doesn't much matter. But for people on the ground, trying to understand each other and each other's motivations, performance, sociology, communication - I would still contend that these are useful and vitally necessary exercises.

does "progress" require or use a different sense of truth than solutions? - 2/04/2007 12:36:44
Posted by BT

...That is why, I argue, there is so little progress in the debates.

I don't mean to keep harping on this (!), but I'm genuinely curious how you ground the usefulness/vitality/necessity of performance theory. ...Instead of my long comment, I should really have just asked something like: if progress in that example is not defined in terms of truth, then what is the criteria of progress?

...Which I suppose is just to say that the step I seem to never get is the move from stating that the truth-claims of scientists and creationists might be of different qualities to then implying that there *could* still be progress in the debates, via performance theory. Whereas to me it seems like the "progress" implied could only really come if either (1) the creationist-I.D.-ers started being more nuanced/honest about science (and its limits in relation to metaphysics), or (2) if biologists just abruptly decided to accept "science" as redefined by the creationist-I.D.-ers. So I ask only because it seems to me that without making new truth-claims then all that's left are the already-existing debate positions, just re-described as performance. Which I think must be why I seem to get stuck on the utility of performance studies, at least when applied to *certain* cases that seem to *require* truth-claims in order for the debate to progress at all.

In other words, what makes "progress" within a given debate, for "people on the ground," different from solutions, when it comes to criteria of judgement?

re:All the World as Stage - 2/04/2007 23:19:59
Posted by nathan

Well to me it begins with a selfish progress: my own progress of understanding, of trying to find a common language to describe the human situation, why people are doing what, irrespective of the scientific claims. The truth of why people act in a certain way is a different way is different from whether evolution occured. They are two separate questions. I find that many people conflate them and make less "progress" on both as a result.

For the creationists, there is a reason that they are unwilling to entertain the metaphysics you suggest. They don't want the problem to be solved, they do not want to welcome evolution. The performance expects that evolution be defeated, or that the evolutionists be defeated. It is a cultural battle to which the science takes a back seat.

Now ID is an interesting development because it shows a willingness for creationists to entertain a quasi-evolutionary model. But notice that even ID is posed in a decidedly antagonistic way. It is posed against the naturalistic evolutionists and the culture they supposedly represent. Its antagonism is (performatively) more important than its resemblance to evolution in many respects. It is, above all, an attempt to create a Christian evolution rather than (like someone like de Chardin or Ken Miller) an evolutionary Christianity.

"Progress," therefore, cannot begin with a new metaphysics. It has to begin with the root performative, cultural issues, and then perhaps finally try to express itself in metaphysics or whatever.

I guess it is based on an assumption that people are at least as passionate as they are logical, and probably more so. I know I am about twice as passionate as I am logical, or worse. Which is maybe why my arguments aren't as convincing as they could be!

re:All the World as Stage - 2/05/2007 21:27:36
Posted by BT

..."Progress," therefore, cannot begin with a new metaphysics. It has to begin with the root performative, cultural issues, and then perhaps finally try to express itself in metaphysics or whatever.

OK, I guess I just think of this completely in reverse, which is why I must always get hung-up on the posts that get into this (it must also parallel my suspicion of the past "aesthetic theology" claims?). For me performance is important, yes, but in-itself it's ultimately vacuous unless truth-claims are self-consciously the primary motor of any given discussion. It's not so much that I think everyone has to have the same metaphysics for understanding to take place, but that for "progressive" debate to occur all sides at least have to be willing to openly accept the metaphysical implications of what they're claiming, and be able to at least acknowledge their own position's presuppositions. If each side can't do that, then the debate truly is irreconcilable (as many are, probably eternally, at least in this world), no matter how performance-aware (or "understanding" in that sense) each side is.

So I agree with your description (re: the conflicting motivations and truth-claims, passion mixed with logic, etc.), but to me that only demonstrates why progress within most discussions is actually, by default, usually *not* possible. That is, I can respect performance theory as a vehicle for understanding why progress is *not* usually possible within the terms of currently existing debates, but it doesn't at all follow to me that performance studies would somehow automatically substantively progress the debate itself -- so far that claim seems (to me) to be just be a rhetorical move, or an unfounded assumption. In other words, I admire the performance-savvy concerns for understanding the complexities that inform each side's positions and their expressions, but moving beyond given existing positions seems to me to be precisely what requires new truth-claims (hopefully expressed in performance-savvy ways), not *only* an understanding of all the complex performative aspects of the existing claims. What I mean is, yes, mutual understanding and respect can help people stay polite, and can avoid the most extreme cases of discursive conflict, and symbolic or real violence, but actually moving forward within any given debate by definition requires more than *just* a better "spin" (performance) of the existing claims, right? Otherwise everyone just ends up feeling a little better about themselves, or accumulates a little more self-esteem, but each position is ultimately just left strutting out the same stuff over & over again (the Discovery Institute writing its next wacky press release; people like Dawkins making more non-sequitur cases for atheism), only with better layouts or voice-overs each time. In that sense, it seems to me that performance studies as such, isolated on its own terms without truth-claims as the real motor, can actually only help make the "spin" *more* effective, and the substantive claims *less* accessible or honestly expressed. (That's why the Discovery Institute hires P.R. firms -- they're *already* all-too-aware of the "performative" requirements of their campaign. Of course it's also why most scientists, except for exceptions like Miller, don't do a good enough job explaining or admitting that science is not inherently in conflict with religious belief...)

So the only thing I disagree with is the (to me, not-worked-through) claim that the performative dimension is the *primary* level "progress" *could* occur within; I agree it's an important factor though (since it can't *not* be, given the nature of all discourse and expression whatsoever, etc.)....

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