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Beyondthe Text:

Toward a PerformativeCultural Politics


DWTGHT CONQUERGOOD

Dwight Conqaeryood is Cbair of the Departncnt oJPerfonzaxceSUdiesat Northntesterr


Uniaerig ard Faulry Associateat theJoint Centerfor PouerryResearchcoordinatedQt
Northpestern Uniueriry ail Uniwrig of Chicago.His teachingard rcsearchintcrcstsaw in
perfomancexhnograpbl, caltaral fitdies, adfeld nseanb netbods.Conqrctgoodisparticahrll
ifiazshd in how nfigces, nentimmigrant, and othermarytnalgntps copevith forccsof
ditphccmcntand domittationtbnuglr idenlij+tnngtheningpetfomance pradicer His exhniue
feldn'ork in Thailand witb Hmong rcfugees and h Chicagoaith streetlorth has beerpopthi4ed
thnryb tpo apard-winningdommentaryflnsT\e Heart Broken in Half (1990) and
Between Two Worlds: The Hmong Shaman in America (1985). He rcceiaed tbcL)lla
He$on Awardfor DistinguisbedSchohrsbip in PerfomtanceSadiu in | 992 and has been
ehctedtpelaelimes to theNofthpukn Uniueriry Fanlry HonorRolL Conqrctgood't
undetyradrctescboal,Indiana State Uniuersiry,bertowedrpott bin its Distingisbed Alsmni
Autard in | 997.

This essalwas oiginal! pnsentedat thc opedngsesion of the Otis J. Age* Festiual (Febnary
'Tbe Futlrv
| 995), and a stbseqrcil aerion wasprcseiled at Nev York Uniueriry's confercnce
of PetfomanceStudies" in Marcb 1995.

The good news is that in recent decades there has been a remarkable consteliation of
thinking around performance. The "antitheatrical ptejudice" notqdthstanding, performance is
now a powerfirl locus for research in the human sciences,a rallying point for scholars who
want to privilege action, agency, and transformation (Barish). The bad news is that the almost
totd domination of textualism in the academy makes it difficult to rethink performance in
non-eurocentric ways. Edward Said coined the term "textual attitude" to describe the
widespread tendency "to prefer the schematic authority of a text to the disorientations of
direct encounters with the human" (93). Further, he declared "that it is a fallacy to assume that
the swarming, unpredictable, and problematic mess in which human beings live can be
understood on the basis of whal f66k5-1s115-s2y" (93). It is ironic that Progressive
intellectual movements, such as cultural studies, are still domrnated by a "largely'white on
white' textual orientation" (Giroux & Mclaren x).
Even a performance theorist as astute asJill Dolan does not question the hegemony of the
text in her recent metadisciplinary essay:"Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of
performance studies is to expand even further the scope of thc textilal object,opentngits
purview into folklore and festivals, rituals and rites," and so on (430 [emphasis mine]).
Because the conceptud deck is stacked in favor of text-based discipline s, methods, and
epistemologies, we need to ask whose interests are served by the textualization of performance
practices? What are the consequences of thinking about performance and textuality as fluid,
exchangeable,and assimilable terms? \Vhat is at stake in the desire to blur the edges, dissolve
the boundary, dismande the opposition, and close the space between text and performance?
\7hat are the costs of dematerializing texts as textuali!, and disembodying performance as
pefomatiuifl, and then making these abstractions interchangeable concepts? What gets lost m
the exchange, in the "reworking of performativity as citationality" @utler 14)? Because
26 The Future of PerformanceSrudies

knowledge in the West is scriptocentric, we need to recuperate from performance some


oppositional force, some resistance to the textual fundamentalism of the academy.
Performance studies scholars must continue to engage critically the visualist/textualist bias
of westem intellectual systems by deptoying performance as a lever to decenter, not
necessarily discard, the textualism that pervades dominant regimes of knowledge (Olson). It is
important to take up this challenge for at least two related reasons: (1) performance-sensitive
ways of knowing hold forth the promise of contributing to an epistemological plumlism that
will unsetde valorized paradigms and thereby extend understanding of multiple dimensions
and a vrider range of meaningful action; (2) performance is a more conceptually astute and
inclusionary way of thinking about many subdtern cultural practices and
intellectual-philosophical activities. \Thereas a textual paradigm privileges distance,
deachmeng and disclosure as ways of knowing e. g., "knowledge means rising above
immediacy," a performance paradigm insists upon immediacy, involvemeng and intimacy as
modes of understanding, e. g., "the primordial meaning of knowledge as a mode of
being-together-with" (Said 36; M. Jackson 8).
The textud paradigm is not a sensitive register for the nonverbal dimensions and embodied
dynamics that constitute meaningfirl human interaction, what Mikhail Bakhtin calls bodies of
meaning (6). Jackson notes a contradiction and cultural bias in the widespread influence of the
wodd-as-text model in ethnography and cultural studies:

The idea tltat "thcrcis notlting ostide tlte text" mq becorgenialto surrreorre
whoselfe is confred to
academe,bst it sosnfu abssrdin the dlhge noildt n hen anthmpologistscany out their vork, whenpeoph
negotiatemeaninginfaa-to-face interactions,not at indiddsal minds btt as embodiedsocialbeings.In
otherwords,textraalismtendsto ignon tbeflux of hrman intetnlatiouhips, the way meafltrrgsan mated
intersabjediuc! as vell ar "irteiextualll," embodiedir gestarcsas n ell as in words,and connected to
political, moral, and aestbeticintere$s.paite nnp!, pcoplecannotbe rcdncedto texts afiJ mon tbar tbry
car be rcdscedto oblects.(l84)

I am not reassured by the much celebrated expansion of meaning from text to texnnlity and
intertextuality because I believe that the wider, more expansive meanings too often slide
back and get comPacted into the narrow meaning of text as readable words on a page
flVorthen).
In his study of the oppositional politics of black musical performance, Paul Gilroy also
argues for the need to move beyond "the idea and ideology of the text and of textuality as a
mode of communicative practice which provides a model for all other forms of cognitive
exchange and social interacdon" Q7).Th, extreme surveillance and silencing of slaves demand
that we give attention to messagesthat are not spelled out, to indirecg nonverbal, and
exualinguistic modes of communication where utopian desires and subversive meanings could
be nurnrred and hidden from the sight of overseers.The textual model blocks undentanding
of black musical performances

in n'bicbideuil isJketinsb expeiencedin the mostintexiae wals axd sometimusocial! repmducedb1


meansof neglccted modesof dgniflirgpmctice kke mimeris,gatun, kineis, and costtme.Antiphory ftalt
and rcrponse)is tbepincipalforrnalfeatarc of thae nusical haditiots. It bar cometo beseeras a bridge
fmn nuic into othcr modesof mltural expnfio4 srpplyirg alorgwitb impmdsarton,m0nt6ge)afld
dramatutg, the hemtenestickgs to thefall nedlq of black artislc practices.(78)
The Future of Performance Studies

GiJroy's point is illustrated vividly by Frederick Douglass in a remarkable passagefrom his


life narrative in which he discussesthe improvisatory performance politics of slaves singing. It
is worth quoting at length:

But, ott allowanceday tbose[tk*j n ho visitedthcgreat hotsefamt werepeuliar! excited.. . . lVhile on


their wa1,thry woild nake the denseold woods,for milesamwrd, reuerberatevith their vild notcs.These
wen rot alwals merl becaase thq wen nild. On the contrary,thry wen no$! of a pkintiae cast,ard told
a tah ofgief and sormp. In the most boi$emrc oatburts of raptumassentimert,tbcrepas euera tingc of
dcepnelancho!. . . . I hauesomclimesthougbt,that tbc men bearingof thue songswould do mon to
imprcsst vb Qintual-mindcd menlfld pnmefl ntith the soul-cmthingand fuath-dealirgcharaaerof
slauetT,tban thc nadirg of vhole aolsmesof its nen pfutsicalmtelties.. . . Eacry tlne n)ara tutimonl
agairct slauety,and a praler to Godfor dcliuerancc fmn chains.The beaing of thon wild notu alway
deprcssed n1 rpint, andflled ne with incfabh sadness. The mererecsrreflce,euettflott),ffias ry spiit,
and phib I am writing tbeselines,m7 tearsarcfalling. To tboscsongsI traccml frst glimmeing
conceptionof the dehmatti{ng characterof slauery.I canneuerget id of that concepion.Thosesongsstill
folbu ne, to deepenm1 batnd of shuery,and quicker m1 ympathiesfor n1 brethrenin bonds.(97-99)

Slaveswere forbidden by law to acquire literacy, a historical fact that underscores the
exclusionary politics of textuality where even today in many parts of the wodd a writing elite is
separated ftom peasans and proletarians who have restricted accessto literacy (Gates 6). No
wonder, then, that Douglass, a former slave, still acknowledged the deeply felt insights and
revelatory power that come through the embodied experience of listening to song
performance, the tones, cadence, and vocal nuances of meaning as much as the verbal
content: "theywere tones loud, long, and deep" (99).
In order to know the deep meaning of slavery he recommends an experiential,
participatory epistemology. Superior to the armchdr "reading of whole volumes," Douglass
advises meeting slaves on the ground of their experience by exposrng oneself to their
expressive performances. In this way, Douglass anticipates Johannes Fabian's call for a tum
"from informative to performative ethnography'' (3):

If an1 oneryishesto beinpnucd vith tbe nul-killing ffias of shuery,ht hin go to Coknel
Uold\ pkntatiofl, afld, ot albwarce-dE6place hinsef in the deeppirc woods,ald thereht hin,
in silence,thoaghfal, analq,e tbe nands that thall pass thrcaghthe chambersof hh soal,
and f he is not thtasimprused,it will on! be becailse'thercis noJhsh in his obdurateheart'. (99)

Dotrglass displaces textual authority, rcadingabo* the subject of slavery, with a hermeneutics of
experience, copresence, humility, and vuleerabrhty. lisanirg to and beingtotachcdfr the protest
performances of slaves.He understands that knowledge is located,not transcendent ('let him
go" and "place himself in the deep pine woods, and there . . .'), that it must be engaged, not
abstracted ("let him . . . analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul'),
and that it is derived ftom solidairy with, not separation from the people ('quicken my
syrnpathies for my brethren in bonds'). In this way, Douglass'epistemology prefigures
Antonio Gramsci's approach to knowledge:

The innlhctrcl't etmr consistth belieuingthat onecanknop withoil stderstandirg and euenmore
withoutfeelingand beinginpassioned(not on!for the knowlcdgein itself btt alsofor the objectof
knowhdge):h otherwordsthat the intelhctual car bear intellectaal(and not a pre pedant) f
distinct ad separatefmmtbepeoph-nation,that is, witboutfeelingthe elemcntary pasdons of the
peopb.(18)
28 The Furure of PerformanceSrudies

Proximity, instead of purity, becomes the epistemological pornt of departure and retum.
Douglass recommended placing oneself quietly, respectfully, humbly, in the space of the
other so that one could be surrounded and "impressed" by the expressive meanings of theL
music. It is subde but very significant that he instructed the outsider to listen "in silence." I
interpret this admonition as an acknowledgment and subversion of the acoustical environment
of power within which the ruling classestypically are listened to whjle the subordinate classes
listen in silence (see Baker; Slim and Thompson). Anyone who had the liberty to travel at will
would be, of course, on the privileged side of the strulctwe of domination and silencing that
these songs resisted. In effecg Douolass encourages a participatory undersanding of these
performances, but one that muffles white privilege. Further, because the performances of
slaves often were cofiunanded or appropriated as festive enterainments for the plantation
rulers, Douglass is keenly sensitive to how one approaches and enters subjugated spacesof
performance (seeAbrahams).
The mise-cn-scerc of feeling-understanding-knowing for Douglass is radically different from
the interpretive scene set forth by Clifford Geertz in what is now a foundational and
frequendy cited quotation for the wodd-as-text model in ethnography and cultural studies:
"The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the
anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they propedy belong"
(452). The ethnocentrism of this textualist metaphor is thrown into stark relief when applied
to slave culture and other disenfranchised people. Forcibly excluded from acquiring literacy,
slaves nonet-helesscreated a cultue of resistance. However, instead of an "ensemble of texts,"
a repertoire of petformance practices became the backbone of this counterculture where
politics was "played, danced, and acted, as well as sung and sung about, becausewords, even
words stretched by melisma and supplemented or mutated by the screarnswhich still index the
conspicuous power of the slave sublime, will never be enough to communicate its unsayable
claims to truth" (Gilroy 37).
Instead of holding texts that propedy belonged to them, slaveswere themselves objects of
"intextuation," held in subordinate place by an array of legal statutes, commercial auction
posters, bills of sale, broadside advertisements for fl.rnaways,and so forth: "Every power,
including the power of law, is written ltst of all on the backs of its subjects" (de Certeau
Practice140). Moreover, the slaves'performances described by Douglass were not authorized
by an originary text, nor were they sites for the reproduction of authority. They were collective
upsurgings of pain and ptotest, "they breathed the pr yer and complaint of souls boiling over
with the bitterest anguish" pouglass 37). These performances contested and subverted the
soul-numbing opprcssion that was authorized by an entire apparatus of legal-juridicd and
commercial texts, as well as the dominant performative spectaclesof slave auctions, that
transformed human beings into property (seeRoach). They created "a countercultute that
defiantly reconstructs its own critical, intellectual, and moral genealogy in a partially hidden
public sphere" that was direcdy opposed to the representations of them in public discourse
(Gilroy 37-38).
Bernice Johnson Reagon provides another compelling example of counterhegemonic
performance that can empower displaced people to reclaim a space of identity and resistance,
and, in effect, reterritorialize dominant space.In a documentary interview with Bill Moyers,
she describes the spatial-sonic politics of singing in place that was a key strategy in the stmggle
to end segregation in public places and secure civil rights for African-Americans:

Somd fu a wal to extendtbe tedtorylot can efcct

Peophcan walk intolott wa1 beforcthel canget cbsetolon bod1.. . .

And nrtain! the commsnalinging thatpeoph do together


The Fuure of Performance Studies

is a wa1 of annomcirg

that ve aro beft.


that this is real

And, so arybodl pbo comesinto that rpace,

as longasloa'n singtng
thg cannotchangethe air in that span.

The songuill naintain the air

aslou tenitotl.

And I'ae seenmeetingt


phcrc a ileif hat valked into a mar meeting

and cstablisbedthc air. . . .

The on! wal pcoph coaldtake tbe rpaceback

was b1 stafting a sorg.

Ard ineuitabll

whenpolicevosld aalk into a massmeeling


sonebodlwoild start a sottg

and ther peoph would, like,join in,

any' kke, aspeophjoined in


The air wotaldchange.l

The power of these performances, like those Douglass recounted, is not certified by an
antecedent, authorizing text. They are connected to texts, to be sure-sherifPs arrest warants,
police reports, zoning laws, Jim Crow statute5-[s1 these performances derive their meaning
in opposition to the textuality of apartheid. At ground-level, the textualism of racial
oppression does authorize performances, e.g., the sherifPs swagger, the police officer's
command-the-space wdk into a room, but these dominance displays get sabotaged by the
counterperfonnances Reagon describes.
In addition to the ethnocentrism of the culture-is-text metaphor, Geertz's theory needs to
be interrogated for its particular fieldwork-as-reading model: "Doing ethnogaphy is like trying
to read . . . a manuscripC' (10). Instead of listening, absorbing, and standing in solidarity with
the protest performances of the people, as Douglass recommends, the ethnographer, in
Geertz's scene, stands above and behind the people and, uninvited, peers over their shoulders
to read their texts, Iike an overseer or a spy. There is more than a hint of the improper in tlus
scene: the asl.rnmetrical power relations secure both the anthropologist's privilege to intrude
and the people's acquiescence (although one can imagine what they would say about the
anthropologist's manners and motjves when they are outside his reading gaze).Tlrte strain and
tension of this scene are not mediated by t^lk or interaction; both the researcher and the
researched face the page as silent readers instead ofturning to face one anothet and, perhaps,
oPen a conversadon.
Geertz's now classic depiction of the turn towards texts in ethnography and cultural studies
needs to be juxtaposed with Zora Neal Hurston's much eadier and more complex rendering
of a re searcher reading the texts of subordinate Others: "The theory behind our tactics: The
30 The Future of PerformanceStudies

white man is always trying to know into somebody else's business. All right, I'll set something
outside the door of my mind for him to play with and handle. He canreadm1 witirg bil hetho'
can't nad m1 nind.I'lI put this play toy in his hand, and he will seize it and go away. Then I'll
say my say and sing my song" (3 [emphasis mtne]). Hurston foregrounds the terrain of
struggle, the field of power relations on which texts are written, exchanged, and read. Whereas
Geetz does not problematize the ethnographer's will-to-know of access to the texts of the
Other, Hurston is sensitive to the reluctance of the subordinate classes"to reveal that which
the soul lives by" (2) because they undersand from experience the ocular politics that links the
powers to see, to search, and to seize. Oppressed people ever''whete must watch their backs,
cover their tracks, hide their feelings, and veil their meanings. "The frenzy of knowing and the
pleasure of looking," de Certeau argues, "reach into the darkest regions and unfold the
interiority of bodies as surfaces laid out before our eyes," surfaces "which are transformed
into legible spaces" (lVnfingz32; 234). Aware of the white man's ddve to objectivize, control,
and grasp as a way of knowing, subordinate people cunningly set a text, a decoy, outside the
door to lure him away from "homeplace" where subjugated but empowering truths and
survival secrets are sheltered (seehooks, "Homeplace'). In this instance, the writing of texts
actually is deployed by vulnerable people as a tactic of evasion and camouflage (see Scott).
Hurston explains how vulnerable people tum the fetishizing of texts against the white person's
will-to-know. He is blinded by the texts he compulsively seizes:". . . knowing so litde about
us, he doesn't know what he is missing" (2). Once provided something he can "handle,"
"seize," in a word, appnbend,he will go away and then spacewill be cleared for performed
truths that remain beyond his reach: 'Then I'll say my say and sing my song." By mimicking
the rei$'ing textualism of dominant knowledge regimes, subordinate people can deflect its
invasive power. This mimicry of textualism is a complex example of "mimedc excess" in
which the susceptibility of dominant ime s, forms, and technologies of power to subversive
doublings holds forth the potential of undermining the power of that which is mimed (faussig
2s4-ss).
Hurston incisively features the manual dimension of text-interpretation: "play with and
handh .. . in his band . .. he will seiTgit.. . . " (3 [emphasis mine]). Text-reading depends on a
special kind of eye-hand coordination. Beholding something in a text means holding it down,
fixing it in place. It is ihteresting to note that the word EPrcbendhas the dual meanings of
grasping with the mind, "to understand," and grasping with the hand, "to arrest," "to take into
custody" (see Oxford English Dictiottary1989). Geertz makes clear that the "inscription" of
meaning is tantamount to "the fixation of meaning'-and this drive to pin down meaning, to
pdvilege "the said, not the saflng, "is the defining agenda of the textual paradigm (31). Indeed,
meaningfulne ss is constmcted as stasis,the antithesis of motion, the flux and flow of events.
This anti-motion ideology is spelled out forcefi.rlly in the preeminent articulation of the
textual paradigm, Paul Ricoeur's enormously influential '"The Model of the Text: Meaningfin
Action Considered as a Text"z: "Meaningfi.rl action is an object for science only under the
condition of a kind of objectification which is equivalent to the fixation of a discourse by
writing. . . . In the same way that intedocution is overcome in writing, interaction is overcome
in numerous situations in which we treat action as a fixed text" (537-538). In order for
discourse to be meaningfrrl, according to Ricoeur, it nast ltoil still, or, more to the point, it
must be held still: "In Living speech, the instance of discourse has the character of a fleeting
event. It appears and disappears. This is why there is a problem of fixation, of inscription"
(s31).
Ricoeur values "sedimentation" over "something which flees," and sets up distance and
detachment as superior to the "limits of being face-to-face" (543; 442; 537). He writes in
masculinist metaphors of heroic conquest and rescue that insidiously engender writing as
The Future of Performance Studies 11

masculine, aligned with strength, peflnanence, closure, objectivity, and engender performance
as feminine, associatedwith weakness, mobility, open-endedness, and the protean: 'rJTriting
was given to men to 'come to the re scue' of the lreakness of discourse,' a weakness which was
that of the event. . . . [T]h. saget--the saying-wants to become Ars-sage-the enunciation,
the enunciated. . . . It is the meamng of the speech event, not the event as event" (532). He
writes as if performance process ("the saying') had fixation envy, that it yeams to be setded.
Textual inscription aims to rescue meaning from perishable events, make it a perusable,
inspectable, (and therefore respectable) form of knowledge, distilled from situational
contingencies: "knowing that" as opposed to "knowing hovr," which is "knowledge without
observation" (538).
Instead of endeavoring to rescue the said kom the sajng a performance paradigm struggles
to recuperate the sojngfrom the said,to put mobility, action, and agency back into play. Michel
de Certeau set forth a performative theory of everyday life that celebrates the resdess energies
and subversive powers of kineis, "this challenging mobitity that does not respect places"
(Practice130). He argued that "the foundation of a textual space carries with it a series of
distortions" (IVntiflg 86). Chief among these distortions is fixation, the freeze-frame of action,
the pinning down of practice, the rigormortisof writing. Inscription, "intextuation," enables the
knower to grasp without feeling, to gnp without touching. He privileged timing, tuning
touching, and rupture over Ricoeur's containment, inscription, abstraction, and closure:
"\Mhereas the object beheld can be vrd6sn-nlade homogenous with the linearities of stated
meaning and constructed space-the aoicecan create an @arte, opentng a breach in the text and
restoring a contact of body to body . . . the locus where the rupture of an excesswill expand in
the urgency of a 'saying,' of an act of speech which will be neither docile to a spoken truth nor
subject to a statement" (lViting235). Unlike Ricoeur, de Certeau thought of meaning in terms
of active verbs instead of nouns, unfinalizable processesinstead of enduring propositions.
De Certeau encouraged a kinetic turn toward process and event in ethnography and
cultural studies that Renato Rosaldo apdy termed: "putting culture into motion" (91). From
stmcture, stasis,continuiry, and pattem, ethnographers and culturd critics have tumed their
attention toward process, change, improvisation, and struggle. Particulady struggle. By
focusing on power, ethnographers avoid apolitical theories of motion as free play, floating
ironic deachments, and the endless deferral of political commitrnent-the hollow luxury of
never having to take a stand.
The contours of this new analytic emphasis on process over product can be seen in the
shifting meanings of the key wordpet'orrnanccas it has emerged with increasing prominence in
cultural studies. This semantic genealogy can be summarized as the movement from
performance as mimesisto poiesisto kireis, performance as imitation, construction, dynamism.3
Erving Goffman was an eady and influential exponent of the mimetic view of performance in
the social sciences.He studied the parts of social life that are staged, cleady demarcated
frontstage and backstage boundaries, and gave currency to notions of frames, role-playing,
impression management, and benign fabrications. Although his work is valuable and still
usefrrl-particulady his emphasis on detailed ethnographic analysis of taken-for-granted social
interactions-the ultimate effect of his dramaturgical theory was to reproduce the Platonic
dichotomy between reality and appearance,and thus reinforce an antiperforrnance prejudice.
Victor Tumer was the pivotal figure in moving performance fiom mimesis to poiesis with
his constructional theory of performance, epigrammatically stated as "making, not faking"
(93). After his sustained work on social drama, cultural performance, limindity, and, of course,
definition of humankind as bonoperfotmant,it would be difficult for anyone to hold a "mere
sham and show" view of perforrnance. Further, the philosophy of language gave an enoflnous
assist to the constructional theory of performance, notably the speech act theory of J. L.
The Future of PerformanceStudies

Austin in which the term "performative" designated the kind of utterance that actudly does
something in the wodd, e.g., promising, forgiving, apologizing, as opposed to "constative"
utterances that mrely rePort a state of affairs in the world independent of the act of
enunciation (Austin; Searle).
Tutner's influential work on the ptoductive capacities of performance set the stage for a
more post-structuralist and politicd emphasis on performance as kinesis, as a decentering
agency of movemenq struggle, disruption, and centrifugal force. Thus postcolonial critic
Bhabha uses the term "performative" to refer to action that incessandy insinuates, intemrpts,
interrogates, and antagonizes powerfirl master discourses, which he dubs "pedagogical"
(146-149). Drawing on kinetic i-^g.ry, he associatesthe performative with fluctuation, that
which is in perpetual motion, and the pedagogical with sedimenation, that which is setded in
a proper place. From Tutner's emphatic view of perfonnance as making, not faking we move
to Bhabha's politically urgent view of perfoflnance as bnaking and rcmaking.This is a move
ftom cultural iwention to intenention Performance flourishes in the liminal, contested, and
re-creative space between deconstruction and reconstruction, crisis and re&ess, the breaking
down and the building up of the workshop-rehearsal process, the Not Me and the Not Not
Me (seeTurner; Schechner).
Michael Taussig's recent work on mimesitmakes a full circle connection with kinais. He
helps us understand that the subversive movement and liberating mobility can be in the
miming, and that imitation can be an intervention. His view of the "make-believe"
foundations of redity resonates with Donna Haraway's performative rethinking of the wodd
as Coyote, "witrlr actor and agent" of transformation, the "coding trickster with whom we
must leam to converse" (faussig Zll;Haraway 201).
Performance as kineis, breaking and remaking, glves an altogether new and radical meaning
to Dell Hymes' discussion of "performance breakthrough" in his landmark essay,
"Breakthrough into Performance." Performance, according to Hymes, is a heightened, stylized
mode of communication through which a speaker assrunesresponsibility for presentation of
tradition: "performance is firll, authentic or authoritative performance, when the standards
intrinsic to the tradition are accepted 2nd lsalizgd" (84). Hymes emphasizes performance as an
achievement, not a Process, that an inspired communicator "breaks into," and that is keyed
and set off as a distinctive moment. Richard Bauman builds on H)'mes' theory and defines the
"essence" of performance as "the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of
communicative skill, highiighting the way in which communication is carried out, above and
beyond its referential content" (3). Both Hymes and Bauman constme the performer as a
conservative exemplar of audience expectations and tradition: "to responsibility for knowledge
of tradition the speaker foins willingness to assume the identity of tradition's authentic
performer" Gly-es 85-8). Although both performance theorists gesture towards the
socio-politicd, their view ultimately enlists petformance in the service of stabilizing status quo
nofins and expectations. There is little room in their theory for "a contentious, performative
space" that aims to subvert, not sustain, tradition @habha 157). Tradition needs to be
problematized, particulady in a postcolonial wodd characterized by dislocation, discontinuity,
and diaspora communities: "the difference of space retums as the Samenessof time, tuming
Territory into Tradition, twning the People into One" @habha 149). Instead of construing
performance as traucerdexce,ahighet plane that one breaks into, I prefer to think of it as
transgression,that force which crashes and breaks tht""gh sedimented meanings and normative
traditions and plunges us back into the vortices of pol-itical struggle-in the language of bell
hooks as "movement beyond boundaries" @habha 20-f .
I have atgued against the elision and absorption of performance by disciplines of the text.
Although I very much appreciate contributions made by the world-as-text paradigm,
The Future of performanceStudies
33
particularly the way it has ftrnctioned
as a corrntelproject to positivism, its limits
acknowledged and presuppositions critiqued. need to be
I hasten ,;.;;;;rre, however, that there is
nothing innately liberatory about performanc_e,
as several ethnographers and cultural
have noted' Based on car1ful andiong-term critics
fieldTt *o.rg il. Meratus of Indonesia, Anna
Tsing documented how shamanic p.r-fo*"rr."
trad.itions coitributed to the marginariz2fr6p
of women, and how women shamans used
writing *d t.;.;awrng to enhance their
power' In this essay,I have emphasized
perform"ir.. counterbalance to the weight and
Presuge given texts in the academy-both.text as a metaphor ^.^^
for conceptu iltzngsocial reality,
and actual texts (books, monographs,
articles, .rr"yr, ;;il;;ril, ,.pr.r..rooons
knowledge' I have provided thil emphasis of
because I b.li.rr. th"t the hegemony
texts is insufficiendy challenged .'tt.n i' of inscribed
petformance-based .trrnogr"pnies
said and done, the final word is on p"p.i. because, after all is
Furthermote, it i, lnt r.rurrg to nore
most radical deconstructions still take-place that even the
on the page, thus consolidating the
structure textbound
of the academy.The move from scholarshif,Jorr,
p.rior--..?o-r.t o1",ifi
schokrcbtp
fotmeans of petformancestrikes at the heart of ac"d.mic
poiitics and issuesof ".,
scholadyauthority.Talal Asad pointed in this
d.irection:

If Belanir wasight in pmposingtbat lrunsktion


mE requinnota mecbatical rtpmductionof tbc
originalbut a banroniTationatitbit ntenao, itfotiw
tbot tbercir no nasonu,@tlit ilosld be
on! in thesamemode.Irdud, it coild beorg*djlrot ,,t dore
oorhfirg;;)r')lirrlor_ of ltfe,anothercahm,
notalwa1tdonebut tbmugbtbenpnvntatiinat is
,f ,;;Cb,, tbat sndercertainconditions
a
dmnaticpetfom,flce'tltecxecutiotto1[adance,or tbepla1ig oyo'piolr'o1 ,*i, nigbt benon apt. (l 59)
If post-struc*d.t: th.oughtand the postmodern
moment continue to open up received
categoriesand establishedcanons,more of
this expefimentation*itr, scholarlyform
reslstanceto the domination of textualism and
might takeplace.Severallines of inquiry
mtnd: what arethe epistemologicalundeqpin"rltst come to
trt"i *"Jl r.gr*ate performanceas
supplementary,complemen:ory,ot alternative a
fJrm of rese"..i i"uri*tion? what are
insntutionalpracticesthat would opn space the
for performan.. what
rhetoricalchallengesand strategies-forfiaming are the
performanceas"r'r.hol"rship?
schorarship)
For philosophicalaswell asptagmaticreasons,
I believethat we wrll makethe most
headwayon this front by juxtaptsiig performed
scholarshipw.ithwritten scholarship,instead
of jettisoningthe text. If.a perform"I.. groroa.d
to scholarshipsimplyis pitted
againstthe Textual Paradigm,then its raJical
for.. "ppro".h
o.ill u. .oopi.J by yet anothereither/or
bit"ty constructionthat ultimatelyreproduces
modemist thinking. performanceasboth
object and method of research*iir u. most',seful an
if it interrogatesand decenters,without
discarding,the text. I do not imaginethe world,
particurarlytrr?,rJrr.rrity worrd, without
texts' nor do I have any wish to stop writing
myself.But I do want to keep thinking
what getslost and muted in texts.I want toi"k. about
m: cha'engeposedby peggyphelan:
"The challengeraisedby the ontologicalclaims ip
of performar..-fo', wnting is to re-mark
the performativepossibilitiesof wriLg itselp, aga.in
(148).4And I *"r,-ro think about performance
asa complement,supplement,altemative,and
critiqu. orirr..iU.J,.*rr. ElizabethEnslin
argued:"a concem for ac-ademic writing and the poi,i., of th. t xt should
other actualor potential forms of practi-ce, not marginali.s
suchasteaching,activistresearch,solidarity
writing in othet languages,journali^sm, work,
or communicatingwith audiencestlrrough
and song" (559)'There.isa.gowing body drama,
3::t: of resei'rchin which the publishedtext
m metonymic tensionwith embodiedperformance; exists
Conquergood(.performing asMoral
Act"; "Healrh rheatre'), crow, Ford-smith,
S. na.c'^[ & beck.r, paget,polock,
SistrenTheatreCollective,Turner & Tumer., Jackson,
34 The Future of PerformanceSrudies

Gloria Anzaldiraremindsus that "the future dependson the breakingdown of paradigms,


it dependson the straddlingof t'wo or more cultures" (80).This insight is asrelevantfor
politically engagedacademicsasit is for "the new mestiza."Insteadof a performanceparadign,
I prefer to think in terms sf a s rTvan-a heterogeneous ensembleof ideasand methodson
the move.

Endnotes
1 In order to evoke the cadenceand rhlthms of performed speechI have used the poetic transcription
methods discussedand practicedby Fine (1984),Glassie(1982),Smith 0993, 1994),and Tedlock (1983);see
also Conquergood& Thao (1989).
2 Geertz'sculture-as-textmodel is derived explicidy ftom Ricoeur.
3 I fust discussedthe mimesis-poiesis-kinesis
trajectoryin "Ethnography, Rhetoric and Performance".
a Feminist ethnographers recendy have experimented with performance-sensitive writing stylesand
suategies.Seeparticularly Abu-Lughod Brown, Tsing, and Visweswaran. Seealso legal scholar Williams.
5 For a discussionof performance-textrelationsas metonymic,insteadof meaphoric, seeStrine,Iong &
HopKins (1990).

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