Post-class discussion: Phelan & Taylor
Simi asked, and I also struggled for, a concrete example of invisibility
as a choice of power. I really like the way Misty put it, instead of fighting
for or being denied a seat at the table, not wanting to be a part of the table
at all. I think this metaphor captures how someone or some performance would
not want to be part of the system of representation while others are pushing
for greater visibility. It also illustrates the bind. If you don’t sit at the
table, where do you sit? What if everybody who controls certain resources is at
that table? Who decided we would sit at the table in the first place?
One example that has come to mind of someone who chooses not to be
visible, in the mode of not being represented, is Kate Bornstein. She is a
writer, performance artist, and activist who identifies as neither man nor
woman. In one section of her book, HelloCruel World, she frames the binaries as a form of bullying. She sees the
either/or choices of man or woman, black or white, etc., as a form of the
question, “Are you with us or against us?” I like this explanation for several
reasons. First, it points out how somebody else, somebody exerting power, has
determined the terms of the discussion. Second, she uses this understanding of
categories as bullying to highlight what is lacking in the gradual expansion of
gender performances, using the phrase, “Our imaginations are in thrall to the
institutions of oppression” (35). She looks at several groups who have
challenged their contemporary norms of gender performance and points out how
they hesitated going beyond the categories of men and women. It’s hard enough
to claim a space as a different type of man or woman, and terrifying to
relinquish the space entirely, to say, “I’m not a man or a woman.” The third
reason I appreciate her explanation is that it seems to push beyond categories
entirely. I think she isn’t just arguing for more classifications. Once you are
visible or represented, you are categorized, and usually in a category that is
part of the dominant system. She argues for a personal expression based on
imagination, possibly stepping out of the system entirely.
I love these! Thank you for sharing. I love the question of "who decided we would sit at the table in the first place?" I find as I'm bridging the gap between my undergrad education and my grad school education I'm noticing how inaccessible a lot of graduate readings are to some who are interested in this field, but don't have the resources to hash it out just yet. I know plenty of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of being in academia as a whole because a lot of the readings are packed with jargon not understandable to the average reader.
ReplyDeleteI guess it's because we had a discussion in our 7900 seminar about the idea of the communication studies filed being respected and taken seriously, but I find myself thinking about how the field would present itself differently if trying to be accessible to the masses and not just those already insulated by knowledge of the theory and method presented. I'm a big believer in making higher education accessible to the masses, as made pretty obvious by the things I brought up in class on Tuesday.
I think power within/in invisibility is also talked about by black scholars such as Che Gossett, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, and Fred Motten. Motten's Undercommons talks about the undercommons or place of (in)visiblity not necessarily as agency, because invisibility is determined by society, and its not 100% chosen, but rather, invisibility as a place of resistance, intellectual thought, and creative production. Jazz, for example, is a form of musical knowledge full of brilliant life and exuberant power not in spite of the lack of visibility or respect for jazz, but because of that invisibility. unsurveiled cracks in the system create a space of maximum creative production and highest intellectual thought.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, scholarly discussion on invisibility power/undercommons resistance remind us that pwoer systems are important to analyze and discuss, but not to tip over into fetishizing those systems over people power, resistance, and the spaces that cultivate those formations.
I was thinking about Phelan and Taylor and the idea that performances cannot be saved, recorded, documented, etc — through a Marxist lens. Performance becomes itself through disappearance. If the performance is recorded, it becomes something else, another performance. This makes sense to me, and I can get with that. Kalli brought up in class- the idea that Phelan’s “you had to be there” constitution to performance can be seen as elitist and doesn’t take into consideration class and access when it comes to art.
ReplyDeleteBut I also think that this constitution to performance as ephemeral and unable to be replicated, is in some sense— anticapitalist. If it cannot be easily bought, sold, produced in mass— performance can be resistant to consumer culture. However, of course that is rare. Capitalism always seems to prevail. If it’s not the performance itself creating mass consumer culture, it’s merchandise, gift shops, etc. For example, Look at LSU Football. The performance of the game, (fleeting, always changing) generates a culture, brand, corporation here in Baton Rouge. Not to mention, the athletes who are workers/performers essentially being exploited. Another example is social media and the fact that it has provided a way to commodify “performance of everyday life”(Influencers/performers documenting everyday activities getting paid to advertise products).
Installation art is a better example of how performance can be resistant to neoliberal ideologies. Since it is difficult to buy, sell, and transport installations---it is in some sense resisting consumer culture. But it seems neoliberalism always finds a way to discipline us into becoming the capitalist foot soldiers they want us to be.
I did wonder, as I read Phelan, what this definition of performance can do or mean when performances are situated within so much reproduction. She writes "Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance" (146). While that may be ontologically accurate, it doesn't stop people from reifying performance into something that can be circulated, and blurring the line between the performance and its reproduction. Marina Abramović's recent performance, "127 Hours" (https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/marina-abramovic-512-hours), seems a great example of performance which disappears. Not only because it was performance art, but because it wasn't clear who the performers were. When I went, Abramović was present in the room, but she was there as a bystander or curator. What struck me was the openness of the artwork. She and her collaborators put some items in the space and offered some impulses, but the piece could become whatever the people in the room did. Therefore, if I had gone back another day, it would have been a "different" piece.
DeleteHowever, is it difficult to sell this art? I'll show you the book and the poster we got. True, this gallery did not charge admission, but they could have. Of course, the poster, the website, even her video diary documenting each day are not the performance. But so what? What good does it do to recognize that this ephemeral experience is performance? How does it resist reproduction?
How have you been marked (invisible/visible)? What is useful to us in terms of performance and passing and how that helps us understand racial marking? Indigenous performances are often overlooked in America and is stagnant in our understanding of visibility. We are marked by our identities and actions which make visible markers a part of identity--- or as Serap said "actions make identities visible". But who gets to see who as marked? I always mark the actions of other bodies in terms of internalized comparison and power and how I understand the constant marking of my black body. Body inhabits the markers, but the actions extend the markers (what is done). Phelan argued that visible markers are for our understanding of identity and is interrupted by the verbal or physical action--- utterances are then able to be created and extended.
ReplyDeletelaura