Where is the performance in Joseph Roach's "Culture and Performance"?
I’d like to ask for some help, both in sorting out an essay, and in answering the question, “What is performance theory for?” I’ve been struggling with Joseph Roach’s essay in Performativity and Performance . At first reading, it seemed to be a clear tracing of three funeral performances as examples of social memory. Stepping back from it, though, I feel like it wanders over lots of territory, and I’m having difficulty finding the main point he is arguing. I believe one of his main theses is that literature and orature are interrelated, “that these modes of communication have produced one another interactively over time” (45). Another thesis is that performance allows culture to change. I don’t see how these arguments are supported with the analysis of different funeral performances, though. The literature he refers to is the libretto of an opera (an obvious aesthetic performance form) or a newspaper. How is performance related to what has traditionally been considered literatu...
Performance as unintended, unknown:
ReplyDeleteThe punctum is and cannot be intentional. "If they do not [prick me], it is doubtless because the photographer has put them there intentionally" (Barthes 1980: 47). Those "clever" turns that seem like an evocative or surprising detail are the artist trying to say something. Trying to be clever, and losing the freshness of the punctum.
Similarly, writing is not a matter of the author's intentions. "His only power is to combine the different kinds of writing" (Barthes 1967: 4). The creativity of writing comes from the endless revelation and positing of meaning.
All this reminds me of a moment in Kleist's essay "On the Marionette". A young man happens to resemble the natural grace of a Greek statue. However, once aware of this, by looking in the mirror, he loses that grace and can no longer imitate the gesture. The self-awareness developed in most humans is an impediment to true beauty, which is demonstrated by the mindless marionettes.
This week's reading material centered around the idea of interpreting texts, whether a photograph or writing, and addressed questions regarding what it means to interpret them, how this is done, and by whom. Below is an outline of my map:
ReplyDeleteInterpretation of texts:
Is there an assigned meaning?
Roland Barthes' argument in "The Death of the Author" is that writing is a collection of “indiscernible voices” (2) and as such, can have no singular meaning. Barthes posits that texts cannot have one meaning because it is a “tissue of citations” (4) where meaning does not come from the author, but from the reader (6).
How are interpretations formed?
By the author
In defining the function of the author, Michel Foucault states that some authors “cleared a space for the introduction of elements other than their own,” (310) and in this way allow for interpretation by initiating discursive practices.
By the reader
Roland Barthes argues that meaning is applied by the spectator through free association.
Punctum - vehicle for associations that give meaning, disturbs the studium, or general interest of the photo, and allows for the photo to be ‘read’ through the association.
Stanley Fish argues, “it is impossible even to think of a sentence independently of a context, and when we are asked to consider a sentence for which no context has been specified, we will automatically hear it in the context in which it has most often encountered,” (527).
By institutions
Stanley Fish, “the shape of that activity [of interpretation] is determined by the literary institution which at any one time will authorize only a finite number of interpretive strategies,” (342).
What makes an interpretation acceptable?
Stanley Fish claims, “the new interpretation [of a text] must not only claim to tell the truth about the work...but it must claim to make the work better,” (351).
Camera Lucida
ReplyDeleteI really like this book. Barthes’ love for photography [and his mother] is basically slingshotting off the pages and onto my face. While I do not agree with everything he says, his style of writing + pensiveness seems earnest and kind.
“Utlimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.’ (BARTHES, Camera Lucida, p. 38)
I like this quote in relation to art, writing, performance in general. I do like the idea that subversiveness can be more effective when it is subtle, or perhaps less jarring? I think this is because if art, writing, performance is pensive and generous, (less aggressive) — it is more honest. But also I have seen performance that is abrupt, aggressive, and frightening, and it has been affective in a different way.
“Ultimately — or at the limit— in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes.”(p. 54)
When you look away from the photo or “close your eyes,” that’s when a Punctum is revealed. The specific details and our subjective connection to particular photographs can be seen as a Punctum, which Barthes says is the specific and random thing about a photo that you remember. Its usually something you do not expect—like a kid’s crooked teeth in a photo where a man is holding a gun to the kid’s head.
In relation to live performance, I think this is crucial. It is so important for me let a performance sit with me before I go about theorizing, analyzing, commenting, etc. Sometimes my snap judgements about performances are absurd and I realize as time goes on that I was missing something or just needed to let it settle into my bones.
“In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photgrapther thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art.” (BARTHES, Camera Lucida, p. 13)
Now that we are Cyborgs and have cameras connected to out hands twenty four sev, this quote is more real than ever. If you think of someone who is really into instagram, these four ideas are intersecting like crazy.
Operator=Photographer, Spectator=ourselves
For this week's readings, I looked at the idea of subjectivity and how reach reading relates to it, challenges it, or accepts it.
ReplyDeleteIn Camera Lucida, Barthes outlines tools for understanding photographs' very nature and essence in the form of the punctum and the studium. He gives these elements and, as Ethan mentioned above, asserts that the spectator is free to give meaning to photographs by free association. In Death of the Author, Barthes also argues that authors' intent does not matter as they have no authority over their words; they belong to the reader, whose job it is to interpret them.
Foucault, much like Barthes, situates himself in the idea that the interpretation is up to the reader/spectator. Subjectivity, according to both, is a position that lies within the text that is both saved for the reader/spectator and that every reader/spectator does take up. In addition, Foucault brings up the idea of cultural subjectivity: "Discourse that possesses an author's name is not to be immediately confused and forgotten...Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it circulates" (pg. 123).
Fish treats subjectivity a little differently than the other two authors. In both selections from Is There a Text in This Class, Fish asserts that texts are "not open to an infinite number of interpretations" (pg. 341 of the book). There are "justified limits" to textual interpretation, according to Fish, and in that subjectivity is not allowed to go unchecked.
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ReplyDeleteAdding+++++
ReplyDeleteCh. 13 -Stanley Fish- Is there a text in this class? (postmodern/poststructuralist/derridean)
Stanley Fish is essentially deconstructing the question one of his colleague received on the first day of class “ Is there a text in this class?” The question can be interpreted as a straight forward question asking if there is literally a text book or it can be a deeper question meaning do we exist or does the text exist. This speaks to the multiplicities of truth and meaning present in texts.
“What i have been arguing is that meanings come already calculated, not because pf norms embedded in language but because language is always percieved, from the very first, within a structure. (a social structure, not abstract) (Fish 318)”
Destabilizing meaning through postmodern/ poststructuralist ideas is important to disrupt the illusion of “truth.” But it can be hard to operate under postmodern assumptions, because by it’s very nature it is unknowable. But also, as Fish states, No one can be truly be a relativist, because it could never be realized. No one can achieve that distance from their own beliefs and assumptions. (319, 321)
In criticism this means that no interpretation can be said to be better or worse than any other. It is only if there is a shared basis of agreement at once guiding interpretation and providing a mechanism for deciding between interpretations.
“Disagreements are not settled by the facts, but are the means by which the facts are settled “ (Fish, 340) YAAAAaaaaS
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ReplyDeleteIt was not my first time reading Camera Lucida for a class. It is interesting to read this book which is significantly important for any photographer. I enjoyed reading it after several years, again. There are some important points in this book about Photography, however, because of the fact that it is written in 1980, some of the ideas in the book have been debunked after the invention of digital cameras. Some like Photography is pure contingency or Every photograph is a certificate of presence. I don't think that it is true since anybody can edit their images on their computers and also there are images that are created by 3-d softwares like Maya in which the object don't represent the real object but rather a shadow of that thing. Having said that, I loved some of the ideas presented in this book such as Photography and Death, Art as mythology, Studium, Punctum and Noeme, and how Photography is more related to Theatre than Painting.
ReplyDeleteFoucault
ReplyDelete-How has the author individualized in a culture such as ours; the status we have given the author
-Some reading restrict us to just author and text- the manner which a text points to this figure is outside a the one that precedes it
-Always testing limits of regularity creates opening where writing endlessly dissapears
Barthes
-the author still rules in manuals of literary history
-language which speaks, not the author
-the author is never anything more than the man who writes
Fish
-some readers choose not to see it and substitute their own meanings for meanings that the text may bear
-One cannot appeal to the text because the text has become an extension of the interpretative disagreement that divides them.
Barthes
-The photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially
-Designated reality
-a specific photograph is never distinguished from what it represents
laura