An organization of Emptiness- Jenna's response to Whitney

One of the most intriguing threads in Whitney’s blog,  spinning with the braine, is one of absence, or perhaps the creation of presence through absence.

The first post through which this thread is laced is The Problem of Closet Dramas, her reaction to Worthen and Jackson. As she prefaces her analysis of closet drama, she writes,

“During the reading for the first week of my course on performance studies (Shannon Jackson’s Discipline and Performance and W.B. Worthen’s “Antigone’s Bones”) I couldn’t help but return again and again to the idea of early modern closet dramas. This is not because Jackson and Worthen discuss closet dramas at any length but, rather, because they were notably absent from the discussions of both scholars.”

I hope she will forgive me for glossing over her substantive analysis of closet drama in order to discuss this slighter element of her post, but Whitney’s inspiration for writing on closet drama is significant in establishing one of the patterns of scholarship present in her blog. Very often, Whitney uses absence as a means to create presence. Here, in her analysis of closet drama, she has located an academic gap in the conversation between Worthen and Jackson and inserted her presence into the absence through the creation of a response.

Whitney continues to probe this concept through questions she poses throughout her blog. For instance, in Joseph Roach and Richard II (?), Whitney probes Roach’s observation that “culture cannot perform itself without also performing who and what it is not” by examining the concept of negation as a form of identity creation in Richard II.

Similarly, in Literary Memorials, Whitney questions literature’s potential to serve as memorial while arguing that memorials often memorialize ways of “not knowing” rather than ways of “knowing.” As such she wonders if literature is unable to memorialize because it fails to provide a method of physically embodying what is not known about the subject of the memorial.

Additionally, in (Un)Categorizing Documentary Theatre, Whitney uses documentary theatre as evidence to illuminate absence in the theatrical archive. Near the end of her post, she asks,

“How detailed does an archive have to be in order for it to be a complete archive? And, if the limitations of any documentary genre, including theater, only allow for the tiniest fractions of the archive to be documented and exposed, can’t we consider plays that take into account popular attitudes, opinions, questions of their time also to be using fractions of materials from a very large archive?”

Through locating topics that are not discussed in the documentary theatre archive, Whitney strives to create a larger archive of documentary theatre that may marry interdisciplinary methodological approaches to the concept of documentation.

In addition to using absence as a means through which to create presence as an organizing principle of her blog, Whitney’s blog also functions as a scriptive object that invites her audience to perform the same action. In two of her blog entries, "Desymbolization of the World" and  Writing as a "Garment of Memory", Whitney posts an absence. In both of these blog posts, Whitney has presented her reader with the absence of written analysis. Instead, the readers are invited to create their own analyses of how Whitney has connected the quotation offered in the post to the post’s title. How might a chair’s inclusion in a museum gallery desymbolize the world? How can text become a garment of memory? Each reader is asked to dance with the quotations that Whitney has provided and create a presence to occupy the absence she has scripted into her blog.

I very much enjoyed reading Whitney's blog, especially as it allowed me to consider academic writing as being spatially organized around the concept of absence and the scholar's role of occupying individual pockets of emptiness.

Course Blog #10: Sara on Cody; or Let there Be Lips

I found Cody’s collection of blog posts to be particularly fascinating in their cohesion as an archive--in spite of a sense of wild eclecticism in terms of genre (theatre, documentary, performance art, sit com, satire, play texts,  and the mothers, fathers, sisters, and cousins of continental philosophy), he seems to return again and again to the insufficiency of language to describe reality or, at the very least, subjectivity.

Beginning with Cody’s multi-film study of Beckett’s Not I, and continuing through the same author’s evocatively titled Texts for Nothing, I was instantly drawn to the performance of proximity engaging the large pull quote in which Beckett describes the “not silence” of an utterance, noting that:

“Somewhere, someone is uttering. Inanities, agreed, but is that enough, is that enough to make sense? … the head and its anus the mouth slobbering its shit and lapping back off the lips like in the days when it fancied itself.” (Beckett, Texts for Nothing)

There is the immediate and visceral interaction between these two posts, the attractive, if somewhat overly-animated mouth of a woman is suddenly recast as an oozing asshole, spewing forth the logorrhea that is now diarrhea, illustrating Cody’s unqualified assertions about his interest in the Kristevan abject that this mouth embodies.

(Can a mouth embody? Can it do anything but(t)?)

With this new view, Julianne Moore’s lips are certainly “Not I,” but also suddenly “of me” in a way that is deeply disturbing. Although Beckett assures his reader that these “utterances” are inane, Cody’s curation of a conversation between these object suggests a Bakhtinian notion of utterance, “an expression in a living context of exchange” that is “formed through a speaker’s relation to Otherness.”Although, in many ways, Beckett’s interventions try again and again to divorce meaning from word/utterance, the scriptive relationships between these “thingly objects”--the videos which invite an interaction with themselves and the sort of “floating” citations--seemed to choreograph my continued reading.

Cody’s staged “obsession” with glossolalia transformed all other posts chain of ongoing cultural and political moments placed in conference to destroy all notions of linguistic discourse.This framework gives a new understanding of the impossibiliy of the “talking head” to communicate the subjectivity of race in Cornered, gender in Salt Mines, or hate/defiance in the “Anti-Muslim Subway Posters” clip.With this over-arching movement, my only moment of confusion is in Cody’s discomfort with Artaud’s No More Masterpieces, for I feel that much of Artaud’s project centered on disrupting the logocentricism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, proffering his Theatre of Cruelty not as a way to take the meaning of words out of context in a way that might compromise the ethic of an author’s intent, but rather to deliver theater to a moment of pre-linguistic subjectivity that doesn’t seem terribly far off from what I sense to be Cody’s whispered yearnings. The theatre historian in me would urge him to read Theatre and its Double, focusing on Artaud’s notion of the plague and considering a new metaphor for the transmission or rather “communicabilty” of meaning that is prior to words and prior to masterpieces.

WORKS CITED

Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double. Translated by Victor Corti. Richmond: Oneworld Classics, 2010.

Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Edited and translated by Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

Beckett, Samuel. "Not I" in The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 2010.

Beckett, Samuel. Stories & Texts for Nothing. New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. European Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Blog 10: Comments on Jenna's blog (Andrea)

One of the most important framing questions of Jenna's blog is the "role that naming plays in personal identity and character creation." She considers the consequences of naming first from a personal perspective, examining why she was given her own name and the ways in which that name has shaped (or been shaped by) her interest in Arthurian myth and Shakespeare. But this discussion of personal naming introduces a larger issue of fictional names and how they affect the identity of the character: "Why is Hamlet named Hamlet? Does he feel any more or less indebted to the ghost because he was named after it? Is there a difference in being named Ophelia rather than Gertrude?" (Hello, my name is...) In another post, she ponders one of the great Shakespearean boating dilemmas of our time: Why would anyone get in a rowboat named Ophelia? This odd photo leads to a discussion of the ways these characters' names are used, and sometimes ignored.

In her post, Election Day, Jenna recalls a visit to the Tower of London and describes the ways in which that space was used to evoke a specific response in the visitor. This involved the use of several different scriptive things, such as a voting booth that was lit so as to favor one of the choices, and an eerie soundtrack of ghostly children's voices that encourages the visitor to think of that specific room in the Tower as the site of a murder. Her response to these stimuli was also reminiscent of Bernstein's transgressive performer--feeling manipulated, she deliberately voted against the highlighted choice. The blog itself is also scripted partly by the plays of Shakespeare. Quotations appear in multiple posts, and many of Jenna's reflections are inspired by or supported by her knowledge of Shakespeare. The plays seem to function for her as scriptive things, both in their physical form as books and as remembered performances, inviting interaction and engagement and shaping her discussions.

As a viewer of the blog, the images in particular invite performance. They seem to be Jenna's own pictures rather than photos taken from elsewhere online, which significantly changes my reaction to the posts. Because the pictures are her own and they are accompanied by fairly detailed and personal descriptions of where and when they were taken, they invite me to see beyond their frame and place myself in the room where the voting booth stands, or the harbor in Stratford where the Ophelia boat floats. The layout and appearance of the blog were simple and appealing, and the blue color and simple design of the background encouraged me to see it as personal and accessible, which it was. I've enjoyed reading a little about Jenna's love of Shakespeare, and I hope to read the continued chronicle of her trip to Stratford, Ontario, which she promises. I especially hope to see and hear more about her interest in Arthurian legend, as it is one that we share.

[Lusk's view of] The Blog Of Andrea or, A Dictator’s Manifesto

[Dictator as in ‘Someone who dictates’, not the Castro persuasion.]

I’m giving this the optional title of the Dictator’s Manifesto because a) it’s funny and b) Andrea mentions The Dictator’s Book club in her very first post so I wanted to pay homage to that.

While reading Andrea’s blog I found myself nodding my head a lot. How wonderful! Someone who thinks like me. And then there were blogs that I sort of turned my head like a confused dog because she was talking about Medieval subject matter. But she did so in such an engaging way that I was able to easily follow along. I thoroughly enjoyed this different perspective on the subjects we’ve been discussing in class. Andrea has a wonderfully eloquent way of expressing herself with carefully selected grammar and well-crafted sentences. I do not have this gift. I often run out of patience when I spell check, let alone check for good vocab usage. But, she proved me wrong in the sense that… I find it damn near impossible to write scholarly and keep things fresh and engaging. And she has. I suggest she start offering lessons. I’ll be the first in line.

So, the blog. There are two elements that I want to focus on in Andrea’s blog and that is her Initial Emotional Responses and her Investigation of said responses.

When I first started reading the blog I found that our thinking seemed very similar, in that she responded with how she feels. Her most recent post that discuses Awkward Family Photos was fantastic. And what I love about that topic, and something I’m interested in, is that the franchise of the Awkward Family Photos is successful because of the Initial Emotional Response that it creates with it’s audience.  I think it’s wonderful that as soon as an image loads on our computer, no matter how long we wait for the Internet to load faster, we know that we are going to laugh when we connect all the pieces of that picture. I’m interested in this as a writer and how can we translate image to test and (as a playwright) back to image. Andrea takes this one step further. She doesn’t just stop and the reaction she has (which I assume was nothing short of hysterical laughter) like I do. But instead investigates it further. She asks questions. She ends her blog with the observation that it seems in Cosplay, men get more opportunities while women seem purely sexualized. She brings up the issue of race and why isn’t there a black family in medieval garb? (It’s not like they’re going for accuracy.) So I appreciate immensely this further investigation on reaction. It’s wonderful.

The moment that I fell in love with the blog though was September 27’s post. The first sentence declares: “I hated Don Giovanni.” This is the kind of writing that I love. I struggled throughout this semester with the readings because I felt like I had to sift through so much to get to what the writer was trying to tell me, what their opinion on the subject was. And here, Andrea nailed it down. She hated Don Giovani. Period. End of discussion. Yes, she goes into wonderful detail of all the factors that made her feel this emotion… but at the end of the day, guys. She hated it! But again, this was another moment that I could truly learn from Andrea’s style of blogging. She didn’t just go on a two-page rant on how Opera is justifying this elitism in art (like I did in my blog). She used her personal experience and justified why she felt this way in a very sensible manner. She took everything to task. The script. The characters. The actors. Even her seating may have had something to do with why she disliked this production so much.  It was a tremendous articulation on her initial response.

As the blog continues I felt like I was sitting down with Andrea. Her voice shined through that Blogspot with crystal clarity. Her attention on her reaction to events (the man who needed a stretcher at the lecture, 9/11, child actors, etc) was well versed and well focused.

This blog, I’ve come to the conclusion, is a great example of how I wanted my blog to be. This is a class on performance studies. What Andrea successfully has done in her blog is look at her reaction as an audience member to certain performances and analyzed it. She studied the performance by studying herself as an audience member. I did not do that. I acted purely as an audience member and if I didn’t like something. I said it. And if I liked something. I gushed over it. Andrea was able to extrapolate on this duality that is within us all. She let herself have the reaction as an audience member, and then, as a performance studies ‘investigator’, dissected her reaction so she could further understand why she felt that way.

So Kudos, Andrea! For a fascinating and fun time. I was learning and didn’t even know it. It was like Zoom! on PBS. (Do you remember that show? Ah. That show was so cool. I wanted to be on it so bad.)

PS. There is so much that I didn't focus on that Andrea worked hard on in her blog. This connection between science fiction and Medieval garb fascinates me and I think the conversation they are in together is very exciting. 

Blog 10, Comments for Ming (from Derek)

Ming, I enjoyed reading through your blog entries. I found many of them to be really rich with generative possibilities. For some reason, I really liked the quote clarifying the meaning of illusion: “the word illusion does not mean that it does not exist; rather, an illusion is not what is seems”. While that quote does not necessarily set the tone for the blog, it does potentially link into some of the themes you explore therein.

In the beginning entries, Ming, you seem to be wondering about the performance of gender, especially the differences between performing gender in safe versus unsafe spaces, which I found really intriguing. You write about the definition of safe space as one that can encompass “ruptura” (Freire), which I thought was interesting and wanted to read more about. You then mentioned the performance of the First Lady and wives (in general) as occasional athletes, although I wondered what your thoughts were on this. In the two amusing posts on Tina Fey’s observations about acting (one on observing Alec Baldwin and one on Amy Poehler) you display a continued interest in the difference between performing the Self rather than performing what others want you to. These two Fey posts seem to connect to the Theory of Mind post, but you didn’t really comment much on these three posts, and as I read them I was curious to know why these quotes grabbed you; I wanted to read your thoughts and reactions to the quotes. The post about avatars seemed to continue your earlier theme of performing the Self on stage, but I didn’t understand the references to avatars, which ultimately went unexplained (for me). The post on Kaling seems to have connections with both your interest in performance of gender as well as control over self-performance, but you were focusing on criticizing the Vulture article for its lack of depth and for what you seemed to feel was its attempt to frame the female reader in a gendered role. I thought maybe the Vulture article and the Onion piece were communicating in a more complicated way that I wish you had explored further, and maybe could connect to Kaling’s desire to portray herself as someone in the vein of Tina Fey, and therefore go on to explore what Tina Fey might represent, since she seems to be one of the New Girls that everyone is talking about these days (like you, I’ve been out of the country and out of the loop for many years, so I don’t really know what to make of all these folks). You post On Memorials connected back to Performing Citizenship through the theme of performing patriotism and citizenship, but complicating it through protest; again, I wanted to read more about how these intersect for you. I am personally very interested in this area, so perhaps that’s why I wished to read your thoughts and felt disappointed when you didn’t share them. In your post on Mockingbird, I wondered whether you saw any connection between Tina Fey’s comments about “Real Acting” and your impression of Rodden and Macy’s soulfulness.

As a reader, I was also invited to interact with the blog by the elements you chose to include within it. Elements of the blog that stood out to me as scriptive are the photos of women laughing with salad, or just laughing in groups, mouths open; the image of the pipe “this is not a pipe”; and the hyperlinks to the articles. In terms of performances that these objects entail, I felt like the photos asked me to imagine what the women were laughing at. The image of the pipe and its caption demanded that I pause and try to make sense of the statement. The links to the articles invited me to click and follow. I had to engage with the images in order to fully appreciate the text of the post; likewise with some of the links, some of which I had to follow in order to understand what was being written in the post. I also chose to scroll through the blog in chronological order, which is the reverse of how the blog presents itself to the viewer. In this way perhaps I was resisting the scriptive nature of the blog itself…just a little bit.

Ultimately, this tumblr/blog has a lot of really interesting material in it, and it seems like a good way to keep track of what catches your eye—you seem to be using it to maintain a kind of annotated bibliography of things that matter or interest you, things that could be generative, or things that prompt reflection. I enjoyed scrolling through it, and I will return to view more as the course continues.

Blog Ten: Dorothy on Sara

Sara's blog, Writerly Text, uses a Roland Barthes quote as a framing device and focus. It reads, from the header of her site

The writerly text is a perpetual present, upon which no consequent language (which would inevitably make it past) can be superimposed; the writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world (the world as function) is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology, Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages. … The systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language. --Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay 5

It seems this blog has been designed to trace Sara's ideas about the performativity of language, often times in the literary sense, through poetry and prose but also in theater and oratory using Barthes concept as a guide. The definition of writerly she provides, " text, [that], self-consciously acknowledges its artifice by calling attention to the various rhetorical techniques which produce the illusion of realism," is a clear and concise concept through which to define and shape performative language.

 The idea of writerly text, as I understand it and as is directly translated from Barthes scriptible, is analogous to that which is thought of as scriptive, in this case producing a sort of interesting paradox. Sara is approaching her blog from a scriptive perspective and I am looking at her scriptive interpretations in an attempt to "acknowledge [the] artiface" a duty has been already attempted by the author!

That last paragraph was possibly nonsensical. What I can sense through perusing this blog is Sara's journey to better understand and explore the artiface/"reality" of performed language. In reading the blog I myself began to perform a similar academic journey, putting myself in the shoes of someone on that same expedition.  Outside of the context of this course, if I was to just stumble upon this blog, it feels like I would attempt to relate to it by trying to image who this person is, which is not true of all blogs. Although there are no directly personal posts and few uses of the "I" pronoun, the sometimes seemingly disparate themes of the posts can only be connected through one person's individual understanding.

In a sense this blog seems to function in the classic tumblr sense- as a moodboard. If Sara continues to expand upon this blog using the aforementioned framework, it seems like it might be a winning scenario for expanding critical readership outside of the performed language that comes first to the conventional mind (plays, monologues, etc).