Encounters in Performance Philosophy

Kenneth A. Loparo, A. Lagaay, Kenneth A. Loparo, A. Lagaay, Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, A. Lagaay

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137462725
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Historia y crítica teatrales

Encounters in Performance Philosophy is a collection of 14 essays by international researchers which demonstrates the vitality of the field of Performance Philosophy. The essays address a wide range of concerns common to performance and philosophy including: the body, language, performativity, mimesis and tragedy.

Part I

Beginnings

Introduction

Laura Cull and Alice Lagaay

The idea to publish a collection of essays on the relationship between performance and philosophy was born in April 2010 when Alice Lagaay and Laura Cull first joined forces to conceive and organize a conference on Performance and Philosophy in Berlin. The conference took place at the philosophy department of Freie Universität Berlin, where it was the culminating event of the philosophy project within the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Performing Cultures’ that was undertaken between 1998 and 2010. It was also intended as an interim gathering of the ‘Performance and Philosophy Working Group’ which had emerged from the context of Performance Studies international under the leadership of Laura Cull. We might have had a sense at the time that great things were going to be possible when, despite massive disruption caused by the eruption of Volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Norway (air travel was interrupted for several days throughout the northern hemisphere), the conference went ahead anyway (albeit under a cloud of ash and not without some improvised magic) and many new friendships were forged. The Berlin conference in fact turned out to be the catalyst for a string of developments that, in due course, led to the launch in September 2012 of the professional association Performance Philosophy, and, thereafter, to the successful procurement of a contract for a book series on Performance Philosophy of which this volume constitutes one of the opening titles. We are grateful to all those who have contributed by their inspiration to making these things happen. It is extremely exciting to witness and to be a part of the emergence of new structures of thought.

This collection is not intended to be totalizing in its representation of the field of Performance Philosophy – either as it might be understood to exist now, or as it might develop in the future. For instance, the volume does not include essays strongly informed by the analytic or Anglo-American philosophical tradition (although the work of the British philosopher of language J.L. Austin is discussed by Krämer). To some extent, this Continental bias (if you will) is a reflection of how the area we are calling Performance Philosophy has emerged in recent years; for example, it is symptomatic of the fact that when the majority of Theatre and Performance Studies scholars engage with philosophy, they tend to do so largely via texts and figures conventionally understood to belong to the Continental tradition.¹ Likewise, the collection is by no means exhaustive in terms of the forms of performance it considers. When working to establish a name for this increasingly vibrant field of activity, the term ‘performance’ was chosen deliberately for its openness, its indeterminate definition. That is, in this context, performance is understood as a broader term than theatre, rather than the reverse, and hence the term Performance Philosophy incorporates music, dance and performance on screens, as well as the other kinds of social performance included in Richard Schechner’s broad-spectrum definition. Indeed, Cull amongst others has recently argued that this spectrum would benefit from being broadened further still to include nonhuman forms of performance and not just those that conform to anthropocentric definitions.²

But we need to tread carefully here of course. On the one hand, this use of the term ‘performance’ does indicate a certain reluctance to police the boundaries of artistic disciplines or, put more positively, it indicates a desire to frame the debate in terms open enough to include inter-, multi- or trans-disciplinary forms of performance rather than separating out ‘theatre’, ‘drama’, ‘music’, ‘dance’ and so forth, into separate sub-groups. On the other hand, this openness should not be mistaken for a disregard for the specificity of performance events and their modus operandi: the traditions to which they relate, the architectures they inhabit, the modes of address they adopt or forms of spectatorship and participation they constitute. It is not, in other words, to suggest that we should speak of performance in general terms, that all performances are ‘the same’ in some underlying sense, or that we can simply and smoothly float between one disciplinary context and another without attending to the differences in vocabularies, conventions, histories and so on that may be shaping their nature at any given time. In other words, to speak in terms of Performance Philosophy (or performance as philosophy and philosophy as performance) is not to disavow the differences between those fields that have been conventionally defined as ‘performance’ or ‘philosophy’. Krämer’s essay, for example, argues for a fundamental difference in the dominant notions of the concept of performativity in the contexts of the philosophy of language and performance art respectively. One might distinguish, for instance, the specific sense given to ‘performance’ by Performance Studies scholar Peggy Phelan, and the strong distinction between theatre and performance established by commentators such as Josette Féral, where the former is associated with representation and the latter with an immediacy of presence. But while Performance Philosophy is open to such definitions of performance, it does not use them to demarcate its own parameters.

The chapters included in this volume have been brought together under a series of thematic headings that are intended to help orientate the reader, but which also imply that other headings would have been possible. For instance, we might have grouped texts according to the philosophical traditions or figures they are principally informed by, or by the performative disciplines they address. As it is, we open with the question of what actually constitutes Performance Philosophy. Acknowledging the long history of interest in the relationship between performance and philosophy, Laura Cull’s introductory chapter argues that Performance Philosophy is in fact a new interdisciplinary field in its own right, not just a ‘turn’ within Theatre and Performance Studies. The chapter argues against the idea that ‘performance’ and ‘philosophy’ are fundamentally distinct enterprises, and in favour of the concept of ‘performance as philosophy’. Cull provides a critique of the tendency merely to apply extant philosophy to performance, but also acknowledges the real difficulty of escaping the illustrative mode, suggesting that to do so requires a radical expansion or mutation of the concept of philosophy – as called for by the French theorist François Laruelle in his evocation of ‘non-standard philosophy’.

Seeking to affirm the non-thetic, the exploratory, open and dynamic nature of Performance Philosophy, Alice Lagaay and Alice Koubová have chosen the form of a dialogue to address their respectively different yet resonating perspectives, opening a space in which to experience the ‘impossible’ in philosophy. The internally transcending aspect of the impossible is shown to be crucial for outplaying rigid paradigms. Yet it also presents a unique challenge to thinking. Their conversation evokes various paradoxical strategies by which to touch the ungraspable: from longing for the neutral (Barthes), to the magnification of reality through secrecy (Simmel), from roaming wondering around the figure of the closed fist (Derrida), to the emphasis of expressive difference (Blumenberg), or the revelation that emerges via concealment (Heidegger). Such strategies are gradually revealed to be performative in themselves and through them, Performance Philosophy suggests itself as a way of caring for the impossible without rendering it mysterious. Lagaay and Koubová document this statement by reference to their own philosophy and performance practices. The performative effect of the dialogue brings the impossible to glimmer between non-unified strands of thought, ranging from the idea of ludic peace and playful indifference on the one hand, to the necessary experience of thinking and living with paradoxes, on the other.

We move from here to the idea – and immanent ground – of the stage. Martin Puchner begins his lucid and historically wide-ranging essay with the observation that the ‘entangled enterprises’ of theatre and philosophy ‘share the problem of the ground’ – a term which he will go on to explore in terms of both the sites in which theatre takes place and those it represents, and of the problem of ontological and epistemological foundations in philosophy. Indeed, Puchner suggests that while ‘Site-specific performance might be aligned with the foundational impulse in philosophy (…) overt theatricality (…) might remind us of philosophical skepticism with respect to the possibility of ever reaching a firm ground that we can trust’. In the chapter, Puchner provides a succinct account of the philosophical implications of theatre’s having raised itself up off the ground – with the emergence of the scenic conventions of stages, trapdoors and so forth – before going on to address those of site-specificity as a tendency that Puchner locates in philosophy (specifically in Heidegger) as well as in performance (in relation to the work of performance companies such as the canonical Welsh group, BrithGof and a contemporary work by the American director David Levine). Throughout, he insists that it is not a question of a simple binary between ‘real’ and represented spaces, or well-founded and unfounded knowledge, but of theatre and philosophy as investigative but also playful practices that draw our attention to the paradoxical notion of the ‘groundless ground’.

Drawing on his experience of theatrical practice, writer, director and dramatist Denis Guénoun analyses the significance of the stage as a privileged place of appearance by examining two dimensions of the actor’s play: the frontal and the figural – the face and the profile. The frontal character is exhibited in several ways, ranging from directly addressing the audience, to a form of being on stage that forbids any reference to an auditorium. It is precisely this orientation of utterances proclaimed in an empty space that reveals a fundamental dimension of being on stage: presence. By contrast, the figural dimension of play, or profile, constitutes action. As Guénoun argues, every stage involves the double function of presence (belonging to the regime of appearance and manifestation) and of action (belonging to the order of doing and practice). Reaching beyond the realm of theatre, Guénoun points to the metaphysical roots of the dramatization of our lives and destinies, thereby delving into the essence of theatrical play with an analysis of the experience of being on stage and of the pleasure brought about by theatrical events, thus pointing to the intrinsic value thereof. If in contemporary societies, notions of play, of scene, and of the figure of the actor enjoy such popularity, this, Guénoun suggests, can be read as a sign that we are entering a new era, involving a mutation of our very experience of the world.

Opening the section ‘On the Actor’, Freddie Rokem’s essay takes us to the heart of the metaphysics of the theatre with an extended meditation on the relation between the One and the Many in terms of the interaction between text and performance, subject and role, appearance and reality. Rokem presents close readings of Plato’s dialogue Ion and Hamlet’s speech to the actors in order to explore the nature of the knowledge surrounding the art of acting. What, he asks, is the relation between the body of the actor and the truth of the times s/he represents? Throughout, Rokem undoes any strict distinction between performance and philosophy: describing Socrates as ‘the model actor-philosopher’ on account of the performativity of his inspired arguments. The connections and divergences between the two texts are also carefully exposed, particularly in terms of their shared concern with the concept of ‘form’ and their differing understandings of the relation between writing and acting. Artfully interwoven with his readings of the Plato and Shakespeare texts, Rokem reflects on the riddle of the sphinx in Oedipus, proposing that the coexistence of unity and multiplicity announced in the riddle is a means for conceiving the nature of the dramatic text.

Following on from Rokem’s chapter, the Finnish philosopher, director, playwright and performer Esa Kirkkopelto addresses the question of how acting can ‘engage and potentially change our everyday experience’. For Kirkkopelto, this transformative capacity means that ‘the question of “how to act” cannot be reduced to mere stylistic or technical choice’ but must be seen as an urgent ethico-political challenge, to which contemporary actor training must now respond. Returning to Diderot’s influential text ‘The Paradox of the Actor’, accompanied by a lucid unpacking of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s reading of Diderot, Kirkkopelto explores the key concept of mimesis in order to address the fundamental questions of how new modes of existence are produced within theatrical performance and, in turn, the relationship between actor and citizen. Ultimately, Kirkkopelto argues that acting both can and needs to liberate itself from its residual anthropocentrism and the myth of the ‘integrity and authority’ of the subject, in order to seek a more relational philosophical basis. And yet, as the title of his chapter suggests, Kirkkopelto preserves a certain exceptionalism for the human actor who, he suggests, shares the capacity to imitate with other animals but remains ‘the most mimetic’ being because ‘it is capable of imitating everything and choosing what it imitates.’ This is not to assign to the actor’s body an unlimited capacity for transformation, for losing itself altogether according to its power to really change how it appears. Rather, Kirkkopelto’s discussion outlines a concept of the actor/spectator-citizen ‘capable of being affected without being possessed’: the human re-defined as the animal that retains a relative ‘integrity amidst the mess of all kinds of mimetic affinities, attractions and repulsions.’

Clearly central to the issues relating to the actor is the question of the body, which leads to the following section of the volume dedicated to notions of the body both in and of Performance Philosophy. Emmanuel Alloa opens this section with an exploration of the body in the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although the performing arts have often drawn on Merleau-Ponty’s description of the living body, little attention has been paid so far to his analyses of theatre. Yet these, as Alloa demonstrates, shed an interesting light on the phenomenologist’s notion of the ‘virtual body’. Alloa shows how for Merleau-Ponty the actor’s body is taken to illustrate why an actual body is in fact always doubled by a virtual body, one that indicates a horizon of positions yet to come: the actor’s body is related to a virtuality which, while real and efficient, does not necessarily lead to an acting out. According to Alloa, Merleau-Ponty’s formulations attempt to ‘circumscribe not so much an immanent being than an imminent being, always ready but never fully deployed (…).’ The theatre stage thus becomes a space where roles, positions and identities can be exchanged without having to lead to new identifications. For Alloa, Merleau-Ponty’s fertile reflections open up perspectives for an ultimately politically orientated dialogue with the philosophies of ‘dramatization’ (Deleuze) or of ‘the fictional situation’ (Rancière).

Following on from Alloa’s essay is an aphoristic manifesto for what the philosopher Arno Böhler calls ‘arts-based philosophy’ or ‘philosophy on stage’: an approach that aims to do philosophy from an artistic perspective. Arts-based philosophy is a ‘post-dramatic way of performing philosophy’ that refuses to admit of any separation between the idea and the context of its expression according to an ontology of immanence. Above all, for Böhler, staging philosophy involves affirming philosophy as a bodily and not just a discursive practice. Of course, arts-based philosophy is not new, Böhler acknowledges, so much as ‘a re-animation of old traditions of doing philosophy’ – particularly in Nietzsche’s self-reflexive bodily investigations of the effect of ‘conditions such as climate, rooms, walking practices or exhaustion on the matter of thinking.’ That is, Nietzsche’s willingness to approach the body as ‘a source that inspires and sometimes even commands the regimes of a cogito’ becomes an exemplary instance of how the re-arrangement of bodily habits (though not all habits or ‘natural’ behaviours per se), might open the way for new events of thought. Beyond Nietzsche, Böhler also draws from Spinoza, Heidegger, Deleuze and Asian philosophies such as the Yoga-Sutra of Patañjali to provide the stage directions for arts-based philosophy as an affective confrontation with our difference from ourselves.

Of particular interest in this context is the question of how a body of knowledge (and especially a certain knowledge of the body) is communicated in ways that often defy established norms of scientific knowledge, and relate, in turn, to the body in so far as they rely on a certain practice – i.e. performance – in order to be communicated and further developed. Cultural theorist Katja Rothe recounts the history of a group of female rhythmic gymnasts as part of an historical account of how a form of collective practical knowledge emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, a body-knowledge that stems from a love of wisdom and develops into performance. The female branch of the German body-and-life reform movement began, under the name of rhythmic gymnastics, to explore a new way of thinking through body experiences. These women attempted to bring together mental perception, body image, dance and music elements into a comprehensive, creative and free lifestyle. The body is now not only to be trained and educated with regard to the movements of natural hygiene; correct posture also gradually becomes recognized as a source of behavioural change. Exercise and training thus become forms of cognition and knowledge, shaping the very way we live our lives.

Language, of course, has an essential part to play in the way in which this knowledge is articulated and brought into the world, which brings us to the next section on Performativity and Language. Two chapters address these themes in different ways. Sybille Krämer takes the two sources of performative theory, linguistic theory and the study of ‘performances’ in art theory and theatre studies, to draw out the common denominator of both. She identifies five characteristics which, for her, constitute the essence of performative thinking: (i) a focus on surfaces or ‘flat ontology’; (ii) a preference for showing over telling, understood as making-perceptible; (iii) an exceeding of the dimension of signs, semiosis, and representation; (iv) a preference for having things happen and letting things happen; (v) a subversive function in the thinking of performance, which, once it has been fulfilled, tends to become obsolete. Krämer’s chapter examines the productivity of this aisthetic concept of performance by reinterpreting the beginnings of J.L. Austin’s speech act theory and proposing an approach to media theory grounded in the figure of the messenger.

Whereas Krämer identifies performativity with the surface structure of mediality, Nimrod Reitman’s contribution delves into the dark depths of emotion, where words no longer suffice, and language, pushed to its expressive limit, breaks into wailing lamentation. Reitman probes this place of excess, delineating the boundaries (or near absence thereof) between the various tonalities and atonalities of prosopopeia. Drawing on the enigmatic writings of, amongst others, Blanchot, Levinas and Derrida, and on the cantata, Das Klagende Lied, by Gustav Mahler, Reitman conjures the spirits of Echo and Narcissus to lead us on a downward spiralling (yet never far from sublime) path to the tragic potentials of music.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Series Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I Beginnings
• Part II What Is Performance Philosophy?
• Part III On the Stage
• Part IV On the Actor
• Part V On the Body in/of Performance Philosophy
• Part VI On Performativity and Language
• Part VII On Tragedy
• Part VIII Endings
• Index