The performance that is beyond words
This study’s focus centers on
performances that satisfy or operate within the double meaning of this paper’s
title: (1) performances that are “beyond” words, that is, performances that are
“wordless” or “without words” and (2) performances that render a spectator
“speechless.” I intentionally leave
these two categories vague so as to allow for a diverse congregation of performances/performative
materials from various artistic sources: literature and poetry, theatre, music,
video and film, etc. Nor do I demand
that a single work satisfy both of these prerequisites. Broadly, my interest is not so much in
wordless works arousing wordless reactions as it is in the power of
wordlessness to incite articulation and, the contrary, the power of words to
incite inarticulacy or speechlessness.
What are the necessary prerequisites within a performance for speechful
and speechless reactions? Are the
wordless reactions of tears, sighs, grunts, eye rolls, chuckles, screams, etc.
just as valid and useful responses as the more articulate response of, say, the
formal review or critique? And, more importantly, how do gender, race, class,
and various social norms and expectations dictate speechless and speechful
reactions? In defining which works “fit”
into this study, I look for works that, taking cues from Ngai’s stupimility,
are likely to engender disparate feelings of either pleasure or offense,
boredom and fascination within different spectators/readers or within the individual. As such, I will consider:
(1) John Barth’s short story “Glossolalia” along side the glossolalic vocals of
Lisa Gerrard; (2) the variant and excessive uses of ellipses
in Samuel Beckett’s Not I (both as
text and performance) and Breath and
Richard Bruce Nugent’s “Shadji,” “Smoke, Lilies and Jade,” and “Geisha Man”; (3)
Derek Jarman’s soundless, home-movie-esque films The Art of Mirrors, Garden of
Luxor, A Journey to Avebury, and War Requiem as well as other works that I
discover along the course of research. Along
side a semiotic analysis of these works, I would equally like to include
audience and reader reactions as a manner of incorporating practice within the
theories that this study will exhibit.
1 comment:
Cody:
This is a dazzling project—a lot of moving parts, to be sure, but very exciting as a long-range goal. It seems to me that the root of this inquiry is a Berlant-esque polemic (though left unpolemicized in her article) on the importance of attending to the non-mimetic response. In the same manner that traumatic representation need not be traumatizing, speechful art need not be speech-inducing (and vice versa). It seems to me that to make this case in the most vivid way possible, you will need to identify what counts as speechfulness (the unspoken seems less tricky). Are you thinking of the sort of verbal surplus that Ngai identifies in Stein, Goldman, Beckett et al? Or could Dickensian prose be eligible for your discussion? In other words, what roles do semiosis, narrative and interpretability play in your categorization of the speechful versus the speechless? A larger question, and one that I think you are tacitly pursuing, is whether inarticulacy might represent a particularly rich domain of understanding/interpretation. To make take account of non-verbal responses is, after all, to claim that they must matter. But here I want to push you harder on what counts as a non-verbal response. Having read Foster, and her account of Condillac’s theory of a kinesthetic language prior to words (you engaged this very compellingly on the blog) I think you might be more specific about which gestures communicate linguistically (the eye-roll, the shrug), and which forms of speechlessness are genuinely void of speech.
Finally, you get right to the heart of a disciplinary crux when you talk about tracking responses according to identity categories. I have lots of methodological questions about this, not least of which is who determines the identity category of a respondent? Are we able to track when we’re watching queerly, Canadianly, caucasianly, etc.? Doesn’t it shift a response to put these allegiances on the front burner (e.g., now I am reading in conformity with my gender, sexuality, class, race etc.)? Still, that these questions are difficult seems to me good reason to pose them, and with that in mind, you might want to read the questions posed in advance of last year’s MLA panel on affect. I think you may find some inspiration for a project I am very eager to read.
http://supervalentthought.com/2011/12/09/affect-theory-roundtable-questions-mla-2012-authors-lauren-berlant-ann-cvetkovich-jonathan-flatley-neville-hoad-heather-love-jose-e-munoz-tavia-nyongo/
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