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    39 views12 pages

    Jacques Rancière - The Emancipated Spectator

    Uploaded by

    akrobata1
    Politika, estetika, pozoriste

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Emancipated Spectator ‘This book originated in a request | received a few years ago to introduce the reflections of an academy of artists on the spectator, on the basis of ideas developed in my book The ‘Ignorant Schoolmaste.| The proposal initially caused me some bewilderment. The Jgnaram: Schoobmaster set out the eccen- tric theory and singular fate of Joseph Jacotot, who crested o ‘scandal in the early nineteenth century by claiming that one jgnoramus could teach another what te himself did not know, ascerting the equality of intelligence and opposing intellectual ‘emancipation to popular instruction. Mis ideas had fallen into __ oblivion in the middle of his century. I ad thought it worth: while reviving them in the 19805, to inject some lite into ‘debates on the purposes of public education by throwing in the issue of intellectual equality. But how was the thought of a man whose anistic universe can be emblematized by the names of Demosthenes, Racine and Poussin relevant fo con- | temporary thinking about ar? On reilection, it seemed to me that the absence of any ‘obvious relationship between the theory of intellectual eman- ‘ipation and the question of the spectator today was also an {The invitation to open the Sith rtemationale Sommerakademie of Frankgut-on-Main, on 20 Acgust 2004, ame Irom the Swed performer and choreographer Marten Seiogh=r. 2 THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR peri. might ford an occasion for aia ie ation fom the theories and polieal pesmaosocs which, even in posmodem form silunderpp ee ne debate on tet, perormance andthe sector Beane 10 bring oo the relsinship and make H meaingh keg ees to recone the network of prnupretioe ay blnesthe uestonoF he spectator athe aan of doco of he relations between anand pois ll was arco n outne the general mel of atonaliy span whee ose found we have Become wed to juing the alee implications of theawies! spose 1 ase ths ler hee inclu al hse fons of spectacle - dma aac es ‘mance art, mime and so on — that place bodies in Dn an assembled audience, ice bodes in acon before ‘The numerous ragus for which hear as provided he utr thouphou Ws history ean in eft be ble decog one atic oul. all eae pander aftheseeees poridx tt is possibly moe fncament ina he reas pselx oft ar. This perder it oy trl Ben Is no these without a specter i ony single conesed Spectator, si he Fitna performance of fe Fie none) that gives ne To Diderot Enrenen). Bot seording to he Acar bengaspecitoriabohing fortwo rato Rang Viewing is the oposite of knowing the apetaty shad before an ppearacein a te of eran shi png of production ofthis spearance nd abate alg hn seals Second ihe oposite of acing he pecs wrens immobile nha ct, pasave. To bea specaor te cae fom bth he apa oka nd te poet ian ‘Th gnosis leat to diffrent conleion. Tint isha bears an absolutely bd dng ascenco tuner passivy at mist be abolakedinfavourofwhat tahoe ‘THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR 3 knowledge and action; the action of knowing and action guided by knowledge, This is the conclusion formated by Plato: theatre is the place where ignoramuses are invited to see people suffering. What the theatrical scene offers them is the spectacle of a pathos, the manifestation ofan illness, that of desire and suffering ~ that isto say, the sef-division which derives from ignorance. The particular effect of theatre is to ‘transmit this ilnese by means of another one: the iliness of the ‘gaze in thrall to shades. It transmits the illness of ignorance ‘that makes the characters suffer through a machinery of goo rance, the optical machinery that prepares the gaze for illusion and passivity. A sre community is therefore one that does not tolerate theatrical mediation; one in which the rocasure that ‘governs the community i directly incorporated into the living sttitndes of ts members. That isthe most logical deduction, Buti isnot the one that tuas prevailed among critics of theabical mimesis. They have invariably retained the premises white changing the conclusion ‘According to them, whoever says ‘theatre’ says ‘spectator’ fand therein lies the evil. Such is the circle of theatre as we ‘know it as our society has shaped itm its image. We therefore need a differen theatre, a theatre witbout spectators: not a theatre played out infront of empty seats, buta theatre where the passive optical relationship implied by the very term is subjected to a different relationship ~ that implied by anather ‘word, one which refers 10 what is produced on the stage: drama. Drama means action. Theatre is the place where an action is taken to its conehusion by bodies in motion in front of living bodies that are to be mobilized. The later might have relinquished their power. But this power is revived, reacti- vated in the performance of the former, in the intelligence ‘which constructs that performance, inthe energy it generates 4 TYME EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR ison hebas of saat powerhat anew ete tbe bait reer teat reored ots engin imc enee esse, of which the specaces ta the te sae ee nothing bua degraded venion, Wha itequited ns tenes sitoat secatom whee tase inatendance eng posed fo tins sedvecd by images, hrs they Nene active parcipans opposed to pane voyeurs Thee have been te man Foemuaons af he sich, sich in prin coin, ven if the practices re theory ofa reformed tease have often combiced a According tthe it th spectator must be rout he Stopefction of petor ental by apperances od von overby theempaty tat nakesthem len whine iss onthe Sage Ho will be shown a svanne vel spectacle mystery hse menning he masatee Heal ths be compel exchange he positon ops ces, tr for that af scene iveagatr or eapeoneney oho ehseres phnomers nd soho tht ane, Aone, tly, be wl be offered an excmplary emma, soi those Ting hums beings engaged in dectons aset hae tac Int ay, he willbe ed toon his ow some ite evalustiooF reasons, f hedicustn anoint ‘Acco othe second formulation, i thi soning wisn tat rat ab boned Te spot ee reoed fron the poi a observer ealy examining te fpecilofered wher ‘She mus be dhpoeted fl syns dm ne te apis cof ate wer she wil enchange the pivloge orto sone fr tha fhe Being in postesinof ath viene Such athe base titer enepulted it Bes pi ‘este ad Anau heave fer Front pocey THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR 4 must be alfowed some distance; forthe other, he must forego ay distance. For one, he mnust refine his gave, while for the other, he must abdicate the very position of viewer. Modern temps to reformn theatre have constantly oscillated between these two poles of distanced investigation and vital panicipa tion, when not combining their principles and their effects They have claimed to transform theatre on the basis of a diag- nosis that led to its abolition, Consequently, its not surprising that they have revived not simply the provisions of Plato's critique but also the positive formula which it opposed to the evil of theatre. Plato wanted to replace the democratic, ignorant commonity of theatre with a different community, encapsulated in a different perfoemance of bodies, To it he ‘counter-posed the choreographic community, where 9 ane remains a stutic spectator, where everyone must move in accordance with the community rhythm fixed by mathe- ‘matical proportion, even if that requires getting old people ‘eluctant to take part ip the community dance drunk. Reformers of theatre have reformulated Piato’s opposition between choras and theatre as one between the truth of the theatre and the sinmolucrum ofthe spectacle. They have made theatre the place where the passive audience of spectators ust be transformed into its opposite: the active body of a community enacting its living principle. The presentational text of the Sommerakademie that welcomed me putit ike this: "theatre remains the only place where the audience confronts ‘agelfasa collective.” In the narrow sense, the sentence merely seeks to distinguish the collective audience ofthe theatre from individual vistors to an exhibition or the mere sum of admis sions tw a cinema. But itis clear that it means more, I signifies, that ‘theatre’ is an exemplary community form, It invoives an idea of community as self-presence, in contrast to the distance 6 THE EMANCIPATED § ECTAIOR, ‘of epresentation. Since German Romanticism. thinking about theatre has been associated with this idea ofthe living comma pity. Theatre emerged as a form of aesthetic constitution sensible constitution ~ of the community. By that ! mean the community as a way of occupying a place and a time, as the bbody in action as opposed to a mere apparatus of laws; a sel of perceptions, gestures and atiaides that precede and pre-form laws and political institutions. More than any other art, theatre has been associated with tke Romantic ides of an aesthetic tev- ‘lution, changing not the mechanics ofthe state and laws, but the sensibie forms of human experience. Hence zeform of theatre meant the restoration of its chatacter as assembly of ceremony of the comnvamity. Theatre is an assembly in which ordinary people become aware of thei situation and discuss their interests. says Brecin following Pisvator. itis, claims Artaud, the purifying ritual in which a community is put in Possession of its own energies. If theatre tus embodies the living community, as opposed cathe Allusion of wisnesis, ins not suprising that the desire to restare theatre 10 its essence ‘can draw on the eritigue ofthe spectacle, Wihat in facts the essence of the spectacle for Ciuy Debord? It sexteriority. The spectacle isthe reign of vision. and vision is exleriority ~ that is, selt-dispossession, The malady of spectating man can be susammed up in a brief Formnla: “the more he Contenyplats, the tess he lives’* The formula vewms to be anti-Platonic, J fact, the theoretical foundations of the cti- ‘ique ofthe spectacle ae borrowed, via Marx. from Feuerbach s critique of religion. The basis of both critiques consists in the Romantic vision of truth as won-separation. But that idea is Guy Debord The Societe athe Spectacle rans, Donald Nicholton- Sonih, New York: Zane Books, 1994, 23, THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR 7 itself dependent on Plato's conception of mimesis. The ‘con- templation” denounced by Debord is contemplation of the appearance separated fom its truth: itis he spectacle af the suffering produced by that separation: ‘Separation is the stpha and omega ofthe spectacle.” What human beings contemplate in the spectacle isthe activity they have been robbed of is their own essence become alien, turned against them, organiz~ ing a collective world whose reality is that dispossession. ‘Thus, here is no contradiction between the eritique of the spectacle aud the quest for a theatte restored to its origival essence, “Good” theate is one that uses its separated reality in ‘order to abolish i. The paradox ofthe spectatar pertains to the curious device tat adopts Plato's prohibition of theatre for theatre, Accordiigiy, its these principles that should be re ‘examined today. Or rather, itis the network of presupposi= tions, the set of equivalences and oppositions, that snderpin their possibilty: equvvalences between theatrical audience and community, gaze and passivity, exteriority and separation, ‘mediation and sireulacrorn; oppasitions between the collective and the individual, the image and living realty, acuvity and passivity, self-ownership and alicnation. ‘This set of equivalences and oppositions in fact composes a rather intricate dramaturgy of sin and redemption. Theatre accuses iself of rendering spectators passive and thereby betraying ils essence as community action. It consequently assigns itself the mission of reversing its effects and expiating ins sin by restoring to spectators ownership oftheir eonsciows- ness and their activity, The theatrical stage and performance thus become a vanishing mediation between the evil ol spectae cle and the virtve of true theatre. They intend to teach their 3 thidp. 20 8 THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR ssa ways of cesing 10 be spettocs end becoming ‘ents of collective rete. Aconingto lie rehire Asien, thesia) medianon takes them conse af ae Soc station that giver to and dss of song a order otantorm According to Aruwd's ges tek stem sbandon ths posien pete. tates than ase placed in rom ofa spectacle, they re suroondad by tne formance, drawn ino the cite of actin that eto ee coletivenery. In both case, tae ispretencd scored dion tv fr is om soliton This ise tbe descriptions and stements of nec ersancpation and propos fo might come to sag a help wrefomulae ts gic Far this self venihing nebas is otsonething unknown tous Wise very login ere agogial lationship: thle assigned tothe seolnee that caonsip st bshh the diane betwee Ne neo ge andthe orate of the ignorant lessons end he exercises he sets aim gradaly to ruc the lf pay them. Unfounaciy he ean oly ede he eistncson eae son that he consti erento it To replace poses oy oles he must lays be one step send it's ae form of grrance beeen te pup and hms The oe i simple: pedagosical lg the ignoramus evel any ane who dos not as yet know wht the schools Lee She isthe one who dees ot iow wht she dae mk aa ow toknow i or pan the achotaes soa ene ‘one who possesses the knowledge unknown by the ‘ignoramus, Hei alo the ne who knows howto make Sar objen of outed tar pit and in acconnce ith wher a col Fr, mth, hr so goramas uo doe na shay kno a sas of higs, who fas no art ten by bene. by listening and Tooking stn her, by absent THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR 9 repetition, by being mistaken and correcting her errors, But for the schoolmaster such knowledge is merely an ignoramus's Inowcedge, knowledge that cannot be ordered in accordance with the ascent from the simplest to the most complex. The ignoramus advances by comparing what she discovers with ‘hat she already knows, in line with randora encounters but also according to the arithmetical Tule, the detaacratic rule, that makes ignorance a lesser form of knowledge. She is con- cerned solely with knowing more, with knowing what she die not yet know. What she licks, what the pupil will always lack, | unless she becomes a schoolraisress herself, is knowledge of Jgnorance - 9 knowledge of the exact distance separating ‘nowladge from ignorance ‘This measurement precisely eludes the arithmetic of nora ‘muses, What the schoolmaster knows, what the protocol of knowledge transmission teaches the pupil i the first instance, js that ignorance is not a lesser form of ksowledge, but the ‘opposite of knowledge; that knowledge is nota collection of fragments of knowledge, but a position, The exact distance is the distance that no yasdstick measures, the distance that is demonstrated solely by the interplay of positions occupied, which is enforced by the interminable practice of the ‘step ‘ahead’ separating the schoolmaster from the one whom he is ‘supposed ta train to join him. Ics the metaphor of the radical ‘gulf separating the schoolmaster’s manger ftom the ignora- mus's, because it separates two intelligences: one that knows ‘what ignorance consists in and one that dbes-n04. iis, in. the first instance, the radical difference that ordered, progressive ‘aching teaches the pupil. The frst ching it teaches her is ter ‘own inability. In ts activity, it thereby constantly confirms its ‘own presupposition: the inequality of intelligence. This ‘endless confirmation is what Jacotot calle stltfication, lo THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR ‘To this practice ofsulificaron he counter-posed intellec- tual emancipation. ntltctual emancipation isthe verification ofthe equality of ineligence. This does not signify the equal value of all manifestations of intelligence, but the sel-equalty, of intelligence nalts manifestations, There are not two sorts of intelligence separated by a gulf, The human animal learns everything in the same way as i initially leamt its mother tongue, as itlearnt 1 venture into the forest of things and signs Surrounding it, 3038 take its place among human beings by observing and comparing one thing with another, «sign witha fact, a sign with another sign. If an ilterate knows only one prayer by hear, she can compare that knowledge with what She docs not yet know: the words of this prayer as written down on paper. She can fear, one sign afer the other, the rela, tionship between what she does not know and what she does now, She can do this if, at each step, she observes what is Vefore her, says what she bas seen, and verifies what she hos said. From this ignoraimas, spelling out signs, tothe scietst ‘who constructs hypotheses, the same intelligence is always at work ~an intelligence that translates signs into other signs and proceeds by compacisons and illustrations in order to comme nicate is intelectual adventures and understand what another intelligence is endeavouring to communicate to it __ This Poetic labour of translation s atthe heave of al learne ing. 858 at the hea of the emancipatory practice of the ‘ignorant schoolmaster. What he des not know is stupetying distance, distance transformed ito a radical gulf that can only be “bridged” by an expert. Distance isnot an evil to be abol. ished, but the normal condition of any communication. Haman animals are distant animals who communieate through the forest of signs. The distance the ignoramus has to cover is not the gulf between her ignorance and the sehoolmaster's ‘THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR uN knowledge. I is simply the path from what she already knows ‘o'what she does not yet know, but which she can leam just as she has learnt the rest; which she can Yeata not in oeder co ‘occupy the position ofthe scholar, but so as better to practise ‘the art of translating, of putting her experience inte words and, ther words tothe tt; of translating her intellectual adventures for others and counter-translating the translatiogs of their own ‘adventures which they present ther. The ignorant schoolmas- ter who can help her along this path is named thus not because fhe knows nothing, but because he has renounced the “knowl- edge of ignorance’ and thereby uncoupled his mastery from his knowledge. He does not teach his pupils his knowledge, Dut orders them to venture into the forest of things and signs, 10 say what chey have seen and what they think of what they have seen, to verify it and have it verified. What is unknown to hitn is the inequality of intelligence. Every distance isa factual dis- lance and each intellectual act is & path traced between a form. of ignorance and a form of knowledge, a path that constandy abolishes any fixity and hierarchy of positions with their boundaries. ‘What isthe relationship besween this story and the question of the spectator today? We no longer live in the days when playwrights wanted to explain to their audience the truth of social relations and ways of struggling against capitalist ‘domination. But one does not necessarily lose one’s Presuppo- ‘sitions with one’s illusions, or the apparatus of means with the horizon of ends. On the contrary, it might be thatthe loss of their illusions leads artists to increase the pressure on specta- tors: perhaps the later will know what is tobe done, as long as the performance draws them out of their passive attitude and transforms them into active participants in a shared world, Such isthe first conviction that theatrical reformers share with 2 THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR stulfying pedagogues: that ofthe gulf separating evo posi- tions, Even if the playwright or dreetor does not know what she wants the spectator todo, she atleast knows one thing: she knows that she must do one thing overcame he gulf separa ing activity fom passivity But could we not invert the terms ofthe problem by asking iF it is not precisely the desire to abolish the distance that ates it? What makes it possible to pronounce the spectzor Seated in her place inactive, if not the previously posted radical opposition between the active and the passive? Why identify gaze and passivity, unless on the presupposition that to view means to take pleasure io images and appearances while ignoring the truth behind the image and the reality outside the theatre? Why assimilate listening 10 passivity, unless through the prejudice that speech is the opposite of action? These oppositions — viewing/knowing, appearance! really, ativity/passiviey ~ are quite differen from logical ‘nvositions between clearly defined terms. They specifically efine a distribution ofthe sensible, ana prior distribution of the positions and capacities and incepacities attached to these Positions. They are embodied allegories of inequality Thet 1s why we ean change the value of the terms, transform a “ood” tem into a “bad’ one and vice verse, without altering {he functioning ofthe opposition itself. Ths, the spectator discredited because she does nothing, whereas actors on the Sipe or woes ouside pu heir Bodies in action. But the ‘opposition of seeing and doing returns as soon as we oppose the blinds of mani workers an enputeal pacts, mized in inunediacy and routine, the broad perspective of those who contemplate es, predic the future or ake a com Prehensive view of our world, In the past, property owners ho lived off ther privat income were eked Toss nee ‘THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR 3 citizens, capable of electing and being elected, while those who worked for 2 living were passive citizens, unworthy of these duties. The terms can change their meaning, and the _ positions can be reversed, but the main thing is thatthe struc ture counter-posing two categories ~ those who possess a ‘capacity and those who do not persists. Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition ‘between viewing and acting; when we understand thatthe self- ‘evident facts that structure the relations between saying, seeing and doing themselves belong to the structure of domi- ‘uation and subjection, It begins when we understand that, viewing is also an action that confirms or transforms this dis- tribution of positions. The spectator also acts; like the pupil or scholar. She observes, selects, compares, interprets. She links ‘what she sees to host of other things that she has seen on. other stages, in other kinds of place. She compases her own poem with the elements of the poem before her. She partici = pates in the performance by refashioning it in her oun way — by drawing back, for example, from the vital energy that i is __ supposed to transmit in order t0 make it pure image and asso- ciate this image with a story which she has read or dreamt, ‘experienced or invented. They are thas both distant spectators ‘and active interpreters ofthe spectacle affered to thet. This isa crucial point: spectators see, feel and understand something in as much as they compase their own poem, a if their way, do actors or playwrights, directors, dancers or per- formers. Let us simply observe the mobility of the gaze and expressions of spectators ofa traditional Shiite religious drama commemorating the death of Hussein, captured by Abbas Kiarostami's camera (Looking at Tazich). The playwright or | director would like the spectators to sec this and feel that, lundersland some particular thing and draw some particular 4 ‘THE EMANCIPATED spECTATOR Conclusion. This is the logic ofthe stutifying pedagogue, the iogicofstaighuniorm racsmion tere neon form of knowledge, a capacity, an energy ina body or a mind. ‘om one side, and it must pass tothe other side, What the pupil ‘ust fearn is what the schoolmaster must each her. What the spectator ust seeis what the diector makes her see. What she must feel isthe energy he communicates to her. To this iden. tity of cause and effect, which is at the heart of stulfying logic, emancipation counter-poses their dissociation, This ie the meaning of the ignorant schoolmaster: from the school. ‘master the pupil leams something that the schoatmasier doce not know himself She learns as an effect ofthe mastery that Forees hero search and verifies this research. But she does not leary the schoolmaster's knowledge. It will be said that for their part, artists do not wish to instruct the spectator. Today, they deny using the stage to dictate teson or convey a message. They simply wish to produce a form of cousciousuess, a intensity of fling, an energy for action. But they always assume that whet will be perceived, felt, understood is what they have put ino thet dr matic an or performance. They always presuppose an identity between cause and effect. This supposed equality becncen cause and effects itelf based upon an inegalitarian principle: itis based on the privilege thatthe schoolmaster grants himsel? ~ knowledge ofthe ‘righ’ distance and ways o abolish it. But this isto confuse two quite different distances. There is the distance between artist and spectator, bt there is algo the dis, {ance inherent inthe performance itself, in so far as it subsist, as a spectacle, an autonomous thing, between the idea of the autist and the sensation or comprehension ofthe spectator: ‘the logie of emancipation, between the ignorant schoolmaster and the emancipated novice there is always a thitd thing - a THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR 15 | book or some other piece of writing ~ alien co both and to which they can refer to verify in common what the pupil has __ seen, what she says about it and what se thinks of it. The same © applies to performance. Itis not the transmission of the artist's knowledge or inspiration tothe spectator. I is the third thing that is owned by no one, whose meaning is owned by no one, bbut which subsists between them, excluding any uniform | transmission, any identity of eause and effect. ‘This idea of emancipation is thus clearly opposed to the one ‘on which the politics of theatre and its reform have often relied: emancipation as roapprapriation of a relationship to self lost in a process of separation. I is this idea of separation ‘and its abolition that connects Debord’s critique of the specta- | cle to Feverbach’s critique of religion via the Marxist ertique of alienation In this logic, the mediation of a third term can be nothing but a fatal ilusion of autonomy, tapped inthe logic of dispossession and its concealment. The separation of stage and ‘auditorium is something to be transcended, The precise aim of ‘the performance is to abolish this exteriority in various ways: bby placing the spectators on the stage and the performers in the ‘auditorium; by abolishing the difference hetween the two; by ttansferring the performance to ather sites; by identifying it with taking possession of the street, the town or life. And this attempt dramatically to change the distribution of places has ‘unquestionably produced many enrichments of theatrical per~ Formance. But the redistribution of places is one thing; the requirement that theatre assign itself the goal of assembling 2 commutty which ends the separation of the spectacle is quite another. The first involves the invention of new intellec- ‘ual adventures, the second a new form of allocating bodies to their rightful place, which, in the event, is their place of communion, 16 THE EANCIPATED SPECTATOR For the refusal of mediation, the refusal of the third, is the affiemation of a communitarian essence of theatre as such. The less the playwright knows what be wants the collective of spectators ¢o do, the mare he knows that they shovld, at any sate, act as a collective, transform their aggregation into com. ‘munity, However, itis high time we examine this idea thatthe theatre is, in and oF itself, a community site. Because living bodies onstage address bodies assembled i the same piace, i seems that that is enough to make theatre the vehicte for a sense of community, radically different from tte situation of | individuals scated in front ofa television, or Film spectators in front of projected shadows, Curiously, generalization of the use of images and every variety of projection in theatrical pro-

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