There seems to be some room for agreement here, but rhetoric impells us to
stand on the vast unchartable grounds of our (nevertheless certain)
disagreement. This reminds me of a discussion I had with Lois Holzman at the
AERA, and although Lois & I disagree, there are powerful truths in
performance theory, not unlike those of dialectical materialism, at least in
my mind, since performance is the 'other' side of text (language embodied)--
we are obliged to think through a fundamental contradiction. Following are
some 'afterthoughts' from the conference that ended my brief write-up for
her newsletter -- If you are not interested, delete now!
* Representation is a tool, a means of interaction and construal.
Improvisation is life.
* The performative "now" interacts with history/ social and political
reality; discourses; structures that endure beyond the moment.
* Privileging the performative moment in our relations to others is a dance
that purges time; it makes pleasure; it privileges the aesthetic in social
life. It can disguise our investment in the representations we think
through, live through, do perform.
* Privileging the performative moment as if it did not occur in discourse,
purges truths, as if judgments were not made; as if history and its elisions
did not matter. But they do.
* The truths that matter are not dead representations. Truths are
instantaneous. Once realized, they're irrelevant. They are relational
accomplishments in-the-moment. Truths are made when dead texts collide with
lived experience, when bodies are differently en-minded.
* There would be no performance; performance would simply be "behavior" if
there were no representations, no images, to work through, to play with. At
the same time, texts have to be refreshed; always renewed, to be made live.
* I like texts. It's the text that wakes us up at nights with sudden
insights. The waking up is our performance.
---------
The point, though made in a somewhat different discourse ;), is simply to
say that strict adherence to a text is truth-avoidance -- the truth includes
our relations to others, whose texts (pre-; inter-; other) can not possibly
be ours, since texts are lived, performed understandings-- the deep and
elaborated texts that inform our thinking (ideologies/ paradigms/ whatever)
must be made live in performance; must be performed...
Oh I know I'm gliding right over the problems at stake here. So let's
consider politics in the global arena. If the matter is an either-or battle
between globalization and non-globalization -- forget it! If resistance were
simply refusal, forget it! But if we can work our understandings through our
engagements (not refusals) with others, if we can realize mutual truths,
then the whole phenomenon (which includes us & our representations) is new.
Okay okay, this is simplistic bullshit, its just another unrealizable ideal,
but more realistic in that it does not pretend to _resolution_ (new is not
resolved); it makes the future depend on our relations of the moment to
others as well as the unreachable, always changing object of our
interactions.... clumsily said, but compatible I think with AT.
Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183
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