In “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance
of Race,” Robin Bernstein argues that objects of material culture can (and
often do) script human action and that very particular performances emerge out
of interactions with racially meaningful scriptive things. This argument is
articulated fairly comprehensibly within the first three pages of her article.
Bernstein uses her primary example, the “watermelon” photograph, to initially
engage the key elements of her argument. After a short discussion of both the
“why” (related to questions about the woman and her interiority – person) and
“how” (related to ways the photo produces historically located meanings – text)
questions that come to mind on viewing this photo, she suggests that the distinction
between the “why’s” and “how’s” of this photograph is disturbed by “a complex
interaction between the two figures” (68). Because the active (“sentient”)
agent is evidently taking her bodily cues from the passive (“inanimate”) thing,
Bernstein claims that the caricature itself, as a thing, prompts and structures
human action. Consequently, “in the dense interaction between thing and human,
the caricature scripted the woman’s performance” (68).
There are several important terms to hash out that occur
throughout Bernstein’s article, but the most important one (and the one I’ve
already used in my brief summary of her argument) seems to be “script.” She defines her use of the
term for the reader on page 69 – “I use the term script as a theatrical practitioner might: to denote an evocative
primary substance from which actors, directors, and designers build complex,
variable performances that occupy real time and space.” The script, for
Bernstein, is that which inhabits the space between archive and repertoire. It
is both the dramatic narrative, the stubborn text that structures a
performance, and the enabler of action within real time and space. As she adds
later in the article, the “script captures the moment when dramatic narrative
and movement through space are in the act of becoming each other” (89).
Another important term follows directly from this first one
– “scriptive thing.” Like a script,
a scriptive thing both structures a performance in relation to itself and
allows for variations within the resulting performance. The important added
element here, though, is “thing,” a term that Bernstein spends a good deal of
time pinning down. Bernstein takes her definition of thing directly from thing
theory, which places the term “thing” in direct opposition to the term
“object.” The words being in direct opposition, though, do not mean that the
elements categorized by each word are necessarily in direct opposition. In
other words, a thing can, at times, be an object and an object can, at times,
be a thing – “the difference between objects and things, then, is not essential
but situational and subjective” (69). Bernstein ultimately suggests that
“performance” is the important distinguishing factor between object and thing.
“Things are performative in that they do
something: they invite humans to move” (70). Things, by this definition then,
are also always “scriptive things” because they script “meaningful bodily
movements” (dances or performances) by human beings.
“Enscription” is another
important term Bernstein introduces (73). This term comes into play as she’s
discussing the difference between determined and implied actions scripted by
things. Her direct definition is “interpellation through a scriptive thing that
combines narrative with materiality to structure behavior” (73). Like the act
of turning the pages of Kemble’s alphabet book, enscription combines narrative
(violence toward African Americans), materiality (the physical properties of
the book that demand its reader to turn the pages), and repetition (performing
this action twenty-four times, one for each letter of the alphabet). In
Bernstein’s argument, enscription becomes an activity on the part of things
that allows them to become “scriptive.” In other words, scriptive things enscript humans into certain patterns
and indexes that become natural behaviors.
One final term I want to quickly define is “performative competence” (75). While
the other terms Bernstein lays out seem to provide useful new concepts, this
phrase seems particularly relevant in addressing some of our previous concepts
in a new way (particularly regarding our recent discussions of spectatorship). Performative
competence is an understanding of how a thing scripts broad behaviors within a
particular historical moment. A competent performer will not only be able to
“decode a thing’s invitation to dance” but will also understand the range of
implications the scriptive thing is offering and will perform a response that
lies within that range of implications.
Finally, after laying out her main argument and defining
these crucial terms, Bernstein articulates the consequences of her argument
toward the middle of the article. Her expectation is that proper readings of
particular historically located performances that result from humans “dancing
with things” can ultimately help us form substantial conclusions about larger
patterns of behavior within that particular historical moment. In her words,
“by reading things’ scripts within historically located traditions of
performance, we can make well-supported claims about normative aggregate
behavior” (76). She certainly seems to demonstrate this process in her article,
and with some enlightening conclusions. While her very last paragraph seems, at
first glance, to be a much too short explanation of how to do what she’s
calling for (namely, “a revision of what qualifies as ‘reading’ material
evidence”), she ultimately demonstrates a revision of “reading material evidence”
throughout her article. Therefore, she walks us very carefully through the
process she is hoping we will emulate in order to expand our knowledge of
normal aggregate behavior within particular historical moments.
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