Ellen: Depart between 8 – 8:30 and stay until 1 p.m. (Will
be going to Advanced Visualization Lab)
Crowd-sourced
review: The dance performance is on Sunday, so we all have to be there – I want
each of you to offer 300 word reviews (short – a capsule review) – I want you
to try to be cognizant of what is true, meaningful, and subjective in what
you’re talking about. (These are all overlapping categories). The reviews
should go up by midnight on Monday. Before we meet (on Thursday) I want you to
sweep through the flight of reviews by your cohort and pull out what you find
most true and meaningful, and from that I’m hoping we will pull together a
crowd-sourced review. I will also write something to this effect up on the
blog. We will talk with these reviews in light of Kirschenblatt-Gimblett.
We
don’t convene until the 8th – we have two assignments: the previously
mentioned dance performance. And then on Tuesday – document the lived performance
of Election Day. Do a sort of ethnographic approach with an emphasis on whatever
you run into in your day. You’ll probably need a camera (this could be phone) since
it will be important to document -- pictorially and in other registers --what
you experienced. We haven’t
indicated how that’s going to look blog-wise, but Amy and I will have an
account on the blog by Thursday. This isn’t due till November 13. The
assignment doesn’t assume that we will go to the polls – it’s just asking you
to approach the day as a heightened moment. There are many ways to filter such
evidence.
Today’s
talkers were asked to come in with some methodological approaches based on our
reading and the blog posts. What do you have?
Handouts: 1. Methodological questions from the beginning of
semester.
Best practices discussion:
Justin: We need to account for our own bodily experience and
go in prepared to do that. If you’re not conscious going in, you won’t be
capable of the kind of necessary observation.
Jennifer: I agree, based on the readings, we need to be aware
of our self (our baggage) and other the cultural weight of the performance. If
we don’t know going in, we should find out after this.
Justin- Andrea mentioned this. Also, we should be willing to
open up out from the performance. We need to be cognizant of the total
performance (you and your surroundings) and the difference between your
locations. Also, alongside Andrea
– avoid textocentrism. An example
of this is the RSA Animate music video (Zizek) – as a hand draws out the
theoretical discourse and describes the theory (“From Tragedy to Farce”).
Sara: I always I wish had empathy gnomes to keep track of my
feelings while I’m doing this critical work. I’m constantly paying attention to
thinking as opposed to feeling. Can you do both simultaneously? Thinking and
feeling may/may not be separate, but they often seem to be.
Dorothy: These are challenges to ethnomusicologists, too.
Writing field notes can be particularly challenging because trying to track
both – there are some methods like using capitalization/bracketing to highlight
these modes.
Whitney: This aligns with something Courtney mentioned –
realizing new ways to acquire knowledge of that total experience, whether it
comes from a field that does it better or a different way – reminds me of
Ngai’s argument about stuplime being a new term for a new type of reaction.
Jennifer: I have difficulty finding the right terms to
express the ideas. For example, Kealiinohomoku.
Ellen: Let’s look at the terms being used by Kealiinohomoku.
From a political standpoint – if you take the ethnic off the table – or any
category that references a stance that is not dominant – are you doing a favor
to that performance by placing it in a whole? To do away with these terms
because of their sloppiness/hegemonic history means also to forget the
consequences of that linguistic history, and that there are people with varying
degrees of vocality. To allow difference to exist is also to bring terms into
the visible foreground. I don’t mean “ethnic dance” specifically, but I’m thinking
of critical race studies in the 90s. Should we be holding on to terms to keep
the idea in the forefront, or abandon it because of the weight of it? Need to
powerfully reflect on the categories and then be critical of their use.
Dorothy: Isn’t the concern that “ethnic dance” doesn’t exist?
Period. There isn’t an “ethnic” people. This is the problem with terms like
“ethnic” in general – we have a right word, but we just don’t want to use it.
Jess: Saying “ethnic” means “not us.” It groups everything
into a muddled us vs. them system.
Sara: There is certainly folk dance, one that represents a
people’s nationality. The problem isn’t in thinking it doesn’t exist, but in
thinking it’s fixed. We may need an asterisked word in some way.
Dorothy: This may be why people have shifted to more complex
terms.
Whitney: Kealiinohomoku addresses it explicitly in her
article at the end. We need to be careful with terms.
Dorothy: Even with her well-written article, people are
still not going to think of ballet as ethic dance. So this doesn’t deal with
the problem in general. I don’t know how that changes the discourse.
Sara: I don’t know enough about her to know if this project
is sincere – if she’s just using ballet as an example.
Jennifer: I wonder if that’s why the article is so front-loaded,
and we don’t get to ballet until the last fifth.
Ellen: This is a polemic – a kind of first shot over the bow
in an effort to reassess the Western relationality to other cultures regarding
these terms. So this is a bit of a gambit, but is there any context added to
it?
Justin: I was more surprised about her description about
what was put in/left out – swans and alligators – that defined who we are.
Ellen: The list of Western symbols is significant – a
refresher.
Jess: She kept using the term “primitive” - is that a current term? It seems
insulting.
Ellen: Is this a critique of how Western society sees
itself?Whole societies get sequestered into the past. This is a teleological
move in order to get the conception of Western history to work.
Dorothy: Modern dance has done a lot of work on the term
“primitive” – it can be used in a positive way to mean closer to primal nature –
free, non-stiff-backed movements. The word has history.
Ellen: Modernity makes flattering use of the primitive, but
nevertheless, it’s a use that always maintains within it these connotations
that are very loaded.
This
essay seemed very tricky on the question of expertise: who can watch
performance and understand it correctly? What is the best mode of apperception?
One inconsistency is that the article begins (2nd paragraph)
anthropologists’ hesitation to deal with what is outside their competency, but
at the end, she says she’s critical where western dance scholars have stepped
outside their authority. The sequestering of dance into unbroacheable
categories is problematic. How do we deal with this? [Provides a handout about
a seminar at ASTR] One of the reasons we’re sending you to opera and dance is
that there will be some of you who don’t feel you have the authority to
understand these performances. There is a very strong sense in these two fields
that one cannot have anything to say without great authority/background – an
idea I reject.
Conquergood
– discussion of how to solve this problem. How can we make claims about this?
Conquergood is an anthropolgist doing ethnographic research at one of the
leading institutions (Northwestern). Does he offer any solutions?
Jennifer: How can we have text+ systems? (Systems that
involve text and non-text, as he recommends.)
Dorothy: Using videos alongside is one way. Using formatting
choices within the text is another. Another way that I’ve seen is to run the
Western-focused information alongside the transcription of the story. I really
feel that video and audio are not saviors, they are mono-directional, but they
are helpful.
Justin: Conquergood is using Frederick Douglass’ first-hand
experience as an example – but we can’t necessarily do this when talking about
performance.
Jennifer: Doesn’t this take us back to the problem of not
being able to talk about the repertoire because once it’s been performed, it’s
gone?
Ellen: One option I can think of is EVIA – an annotated
video system developed by IU anthropologists uploading fieldwork. Text and performance can run
simultaneously. This is on the continuum. It is a way to get more information
and extra-linguistic performance. How does this relate to Phelan, perhaps?
Dorothy: Phelan’s method is challenging. It relates to how
to do a report on a given performance. A performance is a discrete event – we must
be answerable to that particular one. We can’t meld all the various
performances together and make a statement.
Whitney: This reflects on the problem with the event. Not
being present, using video and photography – this changes how we talk about the
performance.
Jennifer: Won’t using these technologies make our work even
less accessible?
Ellen: That’s a constant issue, but this is an interesting
question because we do have the potential of answering Conquergood’s challenge because of the technology
we now have. What about his ways of knowing – serious/non-serious ways of
knowing? Any thoughts?
Dorothy: I find Geertz ridiculous – especially his way of
phrasing ideas such as “thick description.”
Sara: But he has a beautiful, transcendental way of
describing. His is an interesting intervention into Conquergood.
Ellen: But can’t we read that in reverse as well?
Dorothy: Isn’t making it so beautiful (referencing his
article on Balninese cockfighting) – a problem? To those people this may just
be a normal event.
Justin: What’s beautiful about the cockfighting article is
actually the communication between Geertz and the people. That’s what
Conquergood is looking for in the Douglass example as well. I don’t see the
animosity between the two.
Whitney: I wonder where appreciation for another culture
comes in here, though. Does realizing how normal an event is in another culture
…Can the Western gaze have at least one benefit – of appreciation of a
different understanding?
Ellen: I think you raise the question of “whose body” gets
to be the body that gets to do this alternative kind of knowing. What kind of
experiences authorize that body?
Dorothy: That’s a big controversy – can you do this kind of
ethnographic research on a culture from which you are a part? Can you only
(America Perettez reference *notetaker note: I can’t find the right spelling
for her name) go to somewhere else to do such work? Sometimes if you go to a
different culture, you may not know what is serious/a joke.
Ellen: It does seem that in the case of performance there
might be an opportunity for misunderstandings to be productive. For
non-immersed spectators to take a gander and offer a description of what they
see. Reference to last quotation in ’91 Conquergood article. (Foucault “power
produces knowledge…”) According to Foucault, at any point in which
understanding is being offered, there are power relations in play, and there’s
no happy power relation between equals. This brings us back to Foster’s point
and textuality. Let’s look at the number of performance writers who talk about
performance in terms of a different language (Foster/dance notation). There’s
something that happens with the postures of the body in space that’s full of
content/contextualization, but it’s not fully translatable. As soon as we try
to make use of Linnean categories of posture, it becomes problematic, but could
we think about Artaud’s prompt on language on the stage (handout) or about hand
language from the medieval stage (Bulwer handout) as trying to clarify what
each movement means – coming partially from Roman oratory?
Courtney – read out p. 246 in Artaud reading – section on
the language of the stage.
Ellen – Bodies in movement, bodies on the stage, connote
more than what their official movements signify, and there is an impression
made on the audience by this extralinguistic expression, and there is a desire
to capture and categorize it in a Linnean fashion. There’s some glimmer of
opportunity if we talk about – not a trade in knowledges – but if we pay
attention to the response of individuals to these movements. They may be
shared, they may not, in terms of the particulars, but I think that that’s an arena in which
performance is always traded. That’s why we see plays instead of reading them and
go to dance instead of reading descriptions of it. The contemporary desire to
pay attention to that which lies outside the analytical (Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick
refererence) – allows for a non-expert audience to have some say, to open up
the possibility of a broader spectrum of an audience finding meaningfulness.
Reason & Reynolds emphasized this: audience members said they didn’t
understand or couldn’t empathize. I think this wasn’t necessarily true – I
think it’s the result of our being told that we shouldn’t read what we don’t
know. One of the things I kept feeling in response to the ethnographic approach
is that you can never know enough to be a good spectator, which forces the
narrowing down of the object of study to such specificity that you can feel
full responsible. Having as much info as possible is great, but making that
information contingent on any pleasurable/experience of that cultural
experience sequesters that experience. There are all kinds of ways of posing
the questions that allow us to value paralelleded experiences.
Dorothy: Who is saying we can’t pose questions about
different cultural productions having relationships?
Ellen: As an instructor, I have had to pull back students
from doing such projects if they don’t have context or won’t be able to gain
the context in time. Cognitive science, the stuplime, feeling historical –
these aren’t solutions, but they are steps in the way. What do you think?
Dorothy: I don’t see why we need such levels of analysis in
a spectator-to-spectator, seminar setting.
Ellen: I think you’re describing exactly what we’re going
for - this spectator-to-spectator
relationship. Conquergood sees performance as a panacea for the questions we’re
raising and the dissemination of scholarship as performance is one way to
undercut the specialization of the academy. We need to find ways of accounting
for performance that still accounts for text but offers up our bodies in a
subtler way. I’m thinking back to Kelly’s description of his toes crunching up
as a way to discuss his experience. I’m also referencing to Sara’s opening
concern and Dorothy’s discussion of the performer who seems slightly off
because of a specific gesture. We shouldn’t ignore our bodily responses when
watching ballet/opera. It is meaningful. Does anyone have the same hesitation
around scientific methods? Conquergood’s divide between map (official,
objective, abstract) and story (popular). Mapping becomes a way of registering
the body in its least knowable to us.
Jennifer: I had issues with his limitations on a map – it
can evoke a bodily response as well (reference to the short story “A Map of the
World” by Elspeth Davie).
Sara: It’s valuable to have a map of a country isn’t the
same as visiting the country, but it can be useful.
Dorothy: I feel averse to science, but I understand as an
academic why it’s useful to go back to it. But on a visceral level I’m more
attracted to the record of your experience.
Sara: What we feel and what we think – these seem different
things – and I think science may help us overcome these things. I think
cognitive science may help us get outside these systems. Belief in scientism
can also become another trap out from which we cannot escape.
Ellen: The more sites of receptivity we open up the more
receptive we will be. Now we will venture forth into the realm of modern dance.
My only prompt is to try to put into your response as much of that extra-analytical
as possible.
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