Group Blog Post (Kelly, Jess, Jennifer)

“How true it is, that it is too late to catch the living form and face of our dear friends, and well illustrates the necessity of procuring those more than life-like resemblances of our friends, ere it is too late— ere the hand of death has snatched away those we prize so dearly on earth.”

Taking Portraits After Death. N. G. Burgess

From The Photographic and Fine-Art Journal Vol. 8, No. 3

March 1855 Page 80

The description of this item is brief. It is an ambrotype from the Woodward manuscript collection. The item is listed as an “interesting example of post-mortem portrait of baby along with a woven piece of hair.” Other images are listed as part of the collection, but these two objects, as they are listed in one sentence, are presented as a unit. Therefore, our group treated them as one item in two parts. In this way, the description scripted out treatment of the items (Bernstein’s idea of scriptivity; Phelan’s point that writing changes the performance) – we wouldn’t have considered them together otherwise.

Course Blog #9: Archiving the Repertoire, Berstein's Scriptive Things

In her essay “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race,” Robin Bernstein argues that there are certain scriptive things which have the potential to “archive the repertoire,” in essence, preserving within themselves a record of their use and/or function by virtue of the fact that “a scholar understands a thing’s script both by locating the gestures it cites in its historical location and by physically interacting with the evidence in the present moment” (90).

Her argument leans heavily on the writings of Martin Heidegger and several more recent scholars of “thing theory“ such as Bill Brown who define a thing (as opposed to an object) as something which “asserts itself within a field of matter,” (69) that is to say a material article which invites or choreographs a particular interaction by virtue of its design which accommodates the “latent presence” of the human body (73). According to Bernstein, a “scriptive thing” not only “invites a person to dance,” but also dictates the array of possible steps that its partner might take (or refuse to take) and, in that act, “initiates or interpellates“ the reader into a specific version of the world that (74) Louis Althusser might call the “ideological state apparatus.” According to Berstein:

“The ontological distinction between things and objects is that things hail. And they do so persistently, constantly, when we are alone and in groups, when we think about them and when we do not, when we respond obediently and when we resist, when we individually or collectively accept the invitation to dance, refuse it, accept but improvise new steps, or renegotiate, deconstruct, or explode roles of leader and follower. A hail demands a bodily response: turning to face the police or turning the page of the book. By answering a hail, by entering the scripted scenario, the individual is interpellated into ideology and thus into subjecthood.” (73)

In her article, Berstein analyzes of a photograph of a light skinned woman named Helen Hernandez posing with the caricature of a black watermelon-eating caricature c. 1930 and “reads” into it a performance of race in America, noting:

“Helen Hernandez was a self-possessed woman who performed blackness and thus constructed whiteness, and who played at being a thing, a potential possession, and thus affirmed that she was not one.” (88-89)

The critical intervention of Berstein’s argument, however, is not the accuracy of her reading of this particular case study, but her assertion that these scriptive things can and should take precedence as evidence of/for performance over written personal narrative in the archive. When “read” by researchers with both performance literacy, that is to say knowledge of performance conventions, as well as performance competence, or a nuanced understanding of genre and historical context of performance, scriptive things can produce a more reliable pool of evidence than unintentially faulty or potentially deceptive memories or accounts.

In essence, by activating these thingly scripts in accepting the things’ invitation to dance, we can get at the ephemerality of performance more accurately than by seeing a representation of that performance, and in the process discover the “why” of a performance that is divorced from mere interiority, but is rather informed by the “how” of the dance itself. “By reading things’ scripts within historically located traditions of performance,” Bernstein writes, “we can make well-supported claims about normative aggregate behavior (74). … Ultimately, historians
must place our living bodies in the stream of performance tradition” (90).

WORKS CITED

 Althusser, Louis. “ Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation).” In Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays. 121-73. London: New Left Books, 1971.

Bernstein, Robin. “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race.” Social Text 27, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 67-94.

Brown, Bill. A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Heidegger, Martin. “The Thing.” In Poetry, Language, Thought. 174-82. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Second Response to Bernstein (Cody)

The primary argument of Bernstein's essay is that "things," various cultural elements with which we interact everyday, in fact, "script" human action--that is, we take certain "cues" from insentient objects that lead us to act a certain way (68).  As such, these "things" are performatives, "they do something: they invite us to move. . . . Things script the meaningful bodily movements and these citational movements think the otherwise unthinkable" (70).  More importantly, our interactions--our "dancing"--with scriptive things interpellates us as subjects within larger ideological apparatuses.

Much of Bernstein's evidentiary support comes from archival photographs of diverse arcade, carnival cutouts that invite human participation via bodily insertion into designated negative spaces--i.e. cutout heads of Tarzan and Jane invite the participation of a white, heterosexual couple.  As Bernstein writes, "the Tarzan/Jane cutout exaggerates polarized, sexualized gender," it "projects" or "implies" a heterosexual couple, regardless of whether the gender bodies of the sentient participants align themselves with the "appropriately" correspondent genders of the insentient cutouts, in other words what Bernstein refers to as "gender-transgressive performance," embodied by the couple in Figure 8 (80-82).  Accordingly, even though this couple in Figure 8 is seemingly able to enjoy farcically the momentary and phantasmatic inversion of gender postionality, the very fact that a man and a woman are the participants signifies this cutout as a mechanism for subjectivating individuals within the heterosexual/heterosexist matrix, rendering hardly transgressive their imaginary gender inversion.  While Bernstein, indeed, mentions the (unlikely) possibility of a same-gender couple's participation in the same event, the cutout still actively writes a heterosexist script--which consequently, I would argue, in spite of any potential and ludic inversions of gender performance, equally invites normative gender configurations.

Perhaps one of my greatest quarrels with Bernstein's exegesis is that she seems too keen to localize or delimit interpellation or subjectivation (in her words, "enscription") to the temporary event of interacting with these scriptive objects.  Surely, as she mentions, these interactions and the manner of interaction are citational and reiterative, which would equally indicate that interpellation is itself citational and reiterative--the origins of which perpetually recede into an etiological abyss of prior signification and subjectivation.  In other words, there is always already an intertextual narrative behind every action and interaction with an object as is there comparably an intertextual narrative behind every scriptive object, and the scriptive object can only import its performative, interpellative powers by virtue of this citationality and contextuality.  In other words, would these cutouts possess the same performative, interpellative powers outside of their arcade, carnival contexts?  Furthermore, instead of speaking of the interpellative moment, should we, instead, speak of interpellative layers?  I would argue that, even before the heterosexual couple places their heads within those cutouts or before the parent or child reads A Coon Alphabet, these individuals have always already been hailed as white, heteronormative subjects.  The couple's entrance into and presence at the arcade or carnival, the purchasing of the children's alphabet book--these actions have already interpellated the respective individuals as the white, heteronormative subjects that Bernstein argues is performed by their subsequent interactions with the scriptive objects.  In a way, we can then consider the entrance and presence within the arcade or carnival as the immediate interpellation and as the larger performance that brackets all the other performances and interpellations transpiring within the designated spatiotemporality of event.  Can we qualify Bernstein's argument so that it considers any performative nuances between these different moments or layers of subject-hailing? Or, are these layers of interpellation merely a specular mise-en-abyme and, therefore, reiterative of the previous interpellations?  (I don't really have an answer(s) to these questions yet.)

I would also like to broach the issues of the phenomenological point of interpellation with regards to the cutouts and the subsequent possibility of transgression or subversion (that is, disobedience or resistance against the "original" hailing).  Bernstein's essay is mostly interested in the scriptive object's performative subjectivation as an issue of tactility or tangibility--that is, once the individual has placed his or her head in the Tarzan/Jane cutout, he or she has effectively fulfilled a phantasmatically signed, contractual agreement, exhibiting consent to the interpellative call and finalizing her/his subjectivation within the white, heteronormative matrix.  But, of course, the latter would mean that, since the cutout cannot actually yell "Hey, you!" like a police officer--unless there is, indeed, a proprietor conducting this hailing--the attendee's recognition of the cutout as a site of personal engagement and entertainment would be the moment of hailing.  And the subsequent action, if the participants are competent performers, requires the placement of specific body parts in the outlined areas (the imaginary rules of the contract).  For me, the placement of a man's head over Jane's and a woman's head over Tarzan's still fulfills the contract, the recognition of certain given rules and boundaries: one man, one woman and the negative space is to be occupied by faces.  Even if there exists the "trangression" of inverted gender positionalities, there is still the contractual obedience of placing faces within the negative space.  In Althusserian terms, they are still "good subjects," and, more importantly, they are subjects with a sense of humor.  The only disobedience I can imagine at this point would be to place a different body part within that negative space--and the body parts I'm thinking of would immediately suffer the abjection of "pervert."  Hence, this is a rather improbable, though not impossible, subversive feat. Additionally, since Bernstein relies so heavily on Althusserian interpellation (and only cursorily mentions in an endnote Judith Butler's critique of Althusser and her discussion of subversion and disobedience ), I wonder how much room Bernstein's essay allows for agential transgression or resistance against the normativizing cues of these scriptive objects?  Even though Bernstein attempts to explain, for example, how Helen Hernandez's performance with the introductory caricature destabilizes the original, interpellative call "to dance the dance of racial impersonation" that marks distance between sentient subject and insentient thing, Bernstein's argument still collapses into Althusserian determinism wherein Hernandez's invention/performance of an "ostensibly transgressive joke" is merely what the constructed caricature "told her to invent" (83, 87; emphasis added).

Bernstein Prompt: Primary Post (Whitney)

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.

Prompt: Course Blog #9 (Groups); Robin Bernstein

First responders: Tell us what Bernstein is saying. What is her main argument and what are her key terms?

Second responders: What does she call on for evidence? Choose one of her examples and explain how she uses it to support her main argument.

Third responders/Discussion leaders: In class on Thursday, please start us off by addressing the implications of Bernstein's argument and showing how it speaks with or against our previous discussions.