Derek DiMatteo 2012.12.02
ENG-L512
Profs. Cook and MacKay
Course Blog 22:
Abstract for the Work to Come
Please include a clear articulation of your object of study,
your method of studying it, and how you are intervening in your field or
discipline.
Theatricality,
Representation, and Protest: The 2012 Chicago Teachers Union Strike
This study examines performances of education protest in
America, focusing primarily on the genre of the teachers’ strike, particularly
the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union Strike. Strikes often result in very visible performances
of protest—e.g. newspaper op/eds, marches, rallies, and other demonstrations
(and counter-demonstrations)—thus allowing for a rich examination of the
intersection between theatricality, representation, and protest. Rallies and
marches are forms of performance that, due to their polylogical staging
(Levin), encompass an expressive volatility that resists domestication—and thus
resists meaning. There is a struggle to frame the crisis in the media, to
control the representation and thus fix the meaning for the spectators (Hall). The
images repeated in the media can become a kind of “social blinding” that
foreclose critical thought and debate (Taylor). If that happens, the protest
will fail to move the spectator to think critically and “cast his vote,” as the
spectator becomes transfixed by the illusion presented in the media, and “free
discussion” of the root causes and core issues of the protest is sacrificed
(Brecht). Teachers’ strikes and demonstrations are also at risk of a cultural backlash
stemming from the effects of surrogation, as any teachers’ strike will activate
the cultural memory of not only past teachers’ strikes but also the larger
tradition of protest movements and demonstrations within US history (Roach). Therefore,
this study will examine not only media representations of the strike, but also “audience”
reception of these representations, union efforts to counteract government and
media framing of the strike, and the problematics of surrogation. This study
makes a valuable contribution to the field of education protest by making clear
the relation between the theatricality of the performances surrounding the
strike and the impact on civil society (Davis), with particular attention paid
to the efficacy of certain performance strategies.
1 comment:
Derek,
This project smartly integrates your own particular interests (educational policy, teachers’ rights, radical pedagogy) with some strong strands of performance theory. “Social blinding” in particular seems a vital concept, though I am interested to see how you manage the tricky analogy that you implicitly draw between 9/11 and a teachers’ strike. Is there a claim that you wish to make about media representation in a post 9/11 US? I ask because I am surprised by your account of mediatization as a kind of stultification, which seems to me true in relation to 9/11 as an event, but not so much when it comes to 9/11 as a (subsequent) story. In the latter case, the framing of the event led to egregious kinds of vote-casting (e.g. either you’re with us or you’re against us). Thoughtless voting, to be sure, but voting nonetheless. It seems to me that you are claiming that the media (a term that always needs some specification) foreclose the Brechtian aesthetics of the strike, but again, I wonder whether the performance of protest isn’t better understood as a kind of melodramatic display, one that is intended to make its audience feel strongly, and in concert with the feelings of the strike organizers (think The Exonerated, for instance). The usefulness of Roach is much clearer since it describes the formal features of the strike as show. I think you’re absolutely right to say the striking figure is iconic and haunted by the performance of the strike across the long 19th century. Given that this form of protest/demonstration is so historically overdetermined, you might give some thought, then, to the ways in which participants capitalize on surrogation. In other words, I am keen to see more about the agency and rhetorical goals of the strikers and demonstrators, since they are unlikely to be blind to the performed and performative effects of their actions. Perhaps the open question is whether the strike can ever become sufficiently free from the suasion of its theatrical mechanics to become a site or a spur to theatricality, in the sense that Davis has given us.
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