2012.08.23 Class Notes (Jackson and Worthen)

Eng-L512

MacKay and Cook

Notes of class on 2012.08.23

Prepared by Derek DiMatteo

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Ellen

Jackson and Worthen were married to each other. Worthen -- 5 marriages to grad students. Grad placement service. Never talk to him about this when you meet him (And you will meet him in this field).

Amy

We acknowledge that these readings are middle of the conversation stuff re: names of people and their backstory. It’s part of argumentative strategy being deployed by authors.

Ellen

If necessary to look up names, we’ll do it collectively.

Who is Jackson’s audience? Who is she speaking to?

Whitney

Seems like performance is almost dangerously overdetermined… that performance might be stripped of its complexity… the audience is no one or everyone.

Jamie

Could follow easily her argument. But Whitney’s thoughts were how I felt about Worthen. Jackson was comparatively non-jargony.

Courtney

In part an academic audience. How destroy fields.

Dorothy

Academics who might use the term performance.

Andrea

Multiple depts.. and academics who come together.

Derek

Reminds me of the article Cody and I read for our Intro to Cultural Studies class with Purnima Bose.

Cody

[several ideas I didn’t catch, concluding with:] so one is left asking whether Performance Studies is the same as Cultural Studies.

Jenna

[I didn’t catch what she said; something about the opening dialogue of Jackson?]

Ellen

But at the same time that foundation gets eroded.

3:00pm

Amy 

So why start with dialogue?

Natalie

Audience is anyone confused by terms such as performativity, etc. There are a lot of power plays.

Amy

To say that there are power plays, what are they?

Natalie

[didn’t catch it]

Amy

She sets up dichotomy btw ppl who put on plays and others. Theory vs. practice.

Ellen

And later practice vs. production

Amy

The scene… it’s not a friendly conversation (in the opening dialogue)

Ellen

There’s so many… disciplinary confusions. Difficult when you find yourself at the interstices of different disciplines. […]  All is like me – a solipsism that is possible at a certain rank.

Amy

Do you do the thing or just go around talking about it? This is made explicit in Jackson’s piece.

Jess

What is epistemology and its relation to perf. Studies?

Whitney

Etymology?

Cody

Epistemology is knowledge and how we form knowledge.

Ellen

The epistemological performance. The… [?]

Check OED or the J.H. Encycl. of Theoretical Terms whenever you encounter these terms and want to know meaning.

Amy

How does Jess’s question relate to the history of the university?

Dorothy

My advisor [in ethnomusicology/folklore dept] said they [i.e. Amy/Ellen/Engl Dept folks] won’t look at performance studies the way we do [as an ethnomusicologist, etc], so I should supplement with readings from our discipline. We don’t even bring up Foucault.

Ellen

But saying that…It calls us out. “Speaking as a ___” either puts you into a relationship or it closes down the conversation (unless another can put similar credentials on table).

This essay is like a list of ingredients for a productive department meeting… Yes, institutional histories prevent us from hearing each other… it’s a problem/dichotomy that we have to overcome.

Amy

Let’s move to Worthen… It’s like reading about a party I was at, but saying “What? Where? I don’t remember it that way…”

Questions?

Courtney

He’s dancing around… archive vs. repertoire. Page 13 – the anti-textualism of perf. Studies…But what replace it with? What is it now?

Jennifer

Manipulate terms, e.g. dramatic. Second half (from page 19) offers methods [read quote:] “The text instead provides…past encounters.” Don’t know that his methods work together. He wants to operate somewhere btw the text and the performance.

Ellen

Look, why don’t you let me play in your sandbox?

He is trying to undo the binaries that Jackson outlined. If you do drama, you are referring to the written text and do lit. analysis, not performance studies. But this position neglects something essential in a text…

There are ways of including us all, including Engl studies folks and Perf. Studies folks.

Then he says “Here are four people who do this well…” But in reality there are more than four people who do this well, and they are not all men.

3:25pm

Andrea

He wants a recognition of theatre as a whole rather than the text. Film does it better. Playwright à text vs. director à whole

Ellen

Film allows linguistic side of it to be subordinated (in a way).

Amy

Establishment of the author.

The title is evocative. Is it clear how he’s using Antigone? Page 12… [I lost a bunch of what she said]

Ellen

Attempt…

Fallacy -- Performance is repertoire, writing is archive (unstable and contingent)

Way too positivistic understanding of archeology (?)

Amy

What gets lost in Jackson’s explanation? We can see what falls out…

Departments where academics are trained are where they want to teach / end up teaching

Speech is now taught in Biz School here at IU, which is a change from the past.

Worthen is trying to get us to be aware of dichotomies that are set up as a way to perpetuate a fight (e.g. “oh, I don’t do drama”).

Ellen

[I missed what she said]

Jennifer

Look at page 15 – why is he dividing them here?

Natalie

Because people need to get jobs. These questions really matter for these practical reasons.

Sarah

My undergrad advisor called and said thank goodness I chose a discipline.

Discipline                    versus              methodology

(can adapt and change)                       (unchanging)

In forcing Perf. Studies to be disciplinarity

Ellen

Terms… need to have some stability.

Drama epitomized overlap.

Different objects and methodologies? Probably so. Can’t just import other disciplines or theories because they will lose something.

… retrogressive move…

We have ceased to be attentive to potentially productive nexuses.

Amy

Make visible the categories we can use or throw out

…

We (you, next generation of scholars) can generate next disciplines.

8.23.12 Worthen/Jackson Minutes

Text 1: Shannon Jackson, “Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity”

Text 2: W. B. Worthen, “Antigone’s Bones”

Ellen begins by explaining that the two authors we’re discussing today were, at one point, married. She and Amy agree that such information, while intriguing, is not necessary pre-knowledge for the course. Students are not expected to know such information, or to be familiar with the authors we will read, in order to participate in the class.

Ellen begins the conversation by asking about the audience for the articles.

Whitney muses that Jackson seems to be addressing everyone. She strips performance of all complexities and nuances – defines and then undercuts the definition. She wonders if there is an audience at all.

Jamie praises Jackson’s language. It’s not complex/jargony. She also appreciates the history Jackson offered, as compared to Worthen’s style, where she felt like an outsider to the conversation.

Courtney says that Jackson is clearly addressing an academic audience – that she is finger-wagging at the way we construct/destroy fields.

Dorothy agrees and says that the audience seems to be for academics who may use the word “performativity” in their writing. However, she wonders about the absence of a discussion of music.

Andrea says that this is for academics in multiple departments – that Jackson creates a composite view.

Derek and Cody discuss how the article is similar to readings in Derek’s cultural studies course in its fluidity. Cody says that the article is interesting and wonders if performances studies is synonymous with cultural/rhetoric studies. They are using the same text/theorists.

Jenna wonders if that’s why there are so many origin stories? To keep us centered and provide a foundation.

*

Amy asks why the class thinks Jackson started her article with a conversational/dramatic scene?

Natalie wonders if anyone has ever invested in any meaning of performance – especially those alienated/confused by it. Are there some power plays going on in Jackson’s opening conversation?

Amy is curious about what various teams Natalie sees emerging? Natalie says that Jackson seems bashful in her performance in this opening scene – she’s holding back, while the theatre person is trying to take on performative studies as theatre.

Amy mentions that this highlights the dichotomy of practitioner vs. theorist. She mentions how familiar the scene is to her personally – that it sets up contested disciplines/terms and articulates the stakes. She says this is often not a friendly conversation (between a theatre director and a scholar). That you can hear the showdown music in the background.

Ellen considers the multiple dynamics at play, but she feels the dog whistle in the article, especially because of her position as a theatre scholar in a literary studies department. She knows how difficult it is to bridge two disciplines. However, she reflects that Jackson’s level of solipsism implies that she must be of a senior academic rank.

Amy knows this performance from her own experience with a colleague who called herself a “worker bee.” She says that the narrative of doing or talking can be very damaging, but one can’t run from it. This conflict is made explicit in Jackson’s article, especially the way she talks about the establishing of identities.

*

Ellen turns the conversation to positive reactions to Jackson’s article.

Jess appreciated the accessibility and definition of performativity, but she wonders how all this talk informs what we do? This is followed by a discussion on the definition of epistemology, which Ellen then defines as the science or means of study of a field of study. She refers the class to the Johns Hopkins Encyclopedia of Terms and the OED when running into academic jargon.

Amy follows up on Jess’ question, and Dorothy says that she had similar experiences to Jackson’s when working with an ethnomusicologist – there was a strict division of disciplines. In music, “we use the word ‘performance’ like it was free,” she said. So she particularly appreciated Jackson’s interesting theoretical/interdisciplinary look at it.

Ellen agrees. The article calls us out – shows us our origins. It can be an opportunity or a closing conversation. It makes us notice our maneuvers. She appreciates Jackson’s overview and thinks the article would be a good ingredient for a department meeting.

*

At the same time, Ellen moves the conversation on to Worthen’s article, and Amy asks if there are any questions about “Antigone’s Bones.”

Courtney considers the archive vs. repertoires dichotomy that Worthen outlines, especially on p. 13 – his discussion of the antitextualism of performance studies. If we’re antitextual, what are we now?

Jennifer says that he seems to be offering methods to address that problem on p. 19, but she’s not sure if they are sufficient.

To Ellen, Worthen is asking to play in the performative studies field, to undo the binaries Jackson set up (that there is a line in the sand between theatre/performative studies that neglects something essential in reading of dramatic texts). He is saying that there are ways of including us all: everyone who studies in theatre and those in lit. Of course, Ellen points out, he could have included a few more women who do this interdisciplinary work in his article, but he chose four men.

Andrea points out that he doesn’t address film in his article, which Ellen mentions is another great divide in academia: film vs. theatre.

*

Amy turns the conversation into a discussion of whether Worthen’s evocative title is made clear in the piece. Derek is unclear on some of its uses. While it’s straightforward on, for example, page 12, it then becomes muddled.

Ellen says that Worthen is discussing extrapolation – that “Antigone’s bones” are standing in for many meanings, and he’s trying to describe an unrealistic dichotomy of performance vs. text, which is a fallacy. As Foucault would say, archives are very shaky. She asks if anyone wants to argue about what the bones are standing in for?

Derek interprets the bones as the dry, dead pages of text.

Ellen says that yes, there is a dryness to text alone – a sense of it forever enduring unchanged – but that idea of endurance is a misperception. It’s significant that Worthen’s most recent book addressed this fallacy – it was about text and performance.

Amy comments on what tends to be lost – as Jackson would say – a sense of what’s left out in history. If you think only in “sledgehammer dichotomies” (Worthen term) – you lose much of this – you see it as stable, but it’s not. And this can promote a fight.

Jennifer is confused about Worthen’s quote on page 15. While he seems to want to bring the fields into conversation everywhere else, here he is implying that they should have separate methods and vocabularies.

Natalie reasons that this may be for practicality – each field needs its own language to continue to exist.

Sarah reflects on her own experience with a professor who offered her little advice and then praised her choice of theatre. She was told that methodologies change, but disciplines adapt and evolve. By forcing performative studies into interdisciplinarity, this forces theatre into the conversation. 

Ellen says that one must always be doing two things at once. The terms are contentious, but the fields must have something in common in order to talk. Drama may serve as an overlap between theatre and literature, but it must be dealt with uniquely and openly. Worthen seems most tied to Goldman, a literary theorist. He seems somewhat retrogressive (it was possible for Goldman, who practiced in an earlier era, to make performative claims). Today, lit studies is very attentive to bodily considerations. New fields really change the way we work, and as these categories are changing, they may also be lessening.

Amy true – one problem is, the categories still exist, but you often don’t know where they are until you’ve overstepped them. Jackson undoes this – she recognizes the differences, but she also acknowledges the shared ground.

Amy and Ellen want the students to pull out 2-3 quotes and use them in their blogs-in-process, one they are up and running.