A 2nd presentation of neoliberalism and dance

Perhaps it may be helpful to think of neoliberalism as a form of conduct rather than as an ideology. I came across this description in a footnote for an article for another project:

“As such, it imagines liberalism not as a political ideology but as a governing rationality capable of harnessing specific techniques for the shaping of conduct, the purpose of which is to create the conditions promoting individual freedom” (Greene 32 fn 6).

This explanation seems to fit with Lepecki’s approach to neoliberalism, “overall conditioning…governing conduct as if it were granting liberty” (2-3). The use of the word “harnessing” above recalls Lepecki’s discussion of “dressage” in his exploration of the limit between humans and animals. Noticing that the staging of a dance makes the audience constantly turn their head to one side, he describes the feeling of “invisible reins that pull our skulls to that one side of the stage” (91). He connects this manner of controlling animals to Henri Lefebvre’s examination of “how societies choreograph agency and subjection” (92). Lefebvre uses the term “dressage”, which literally means “taming” and is usually associated with choreography of horses. Dressage, when applied to humans, sees socialization and conditioning as a form of taming. Lefebvre claims that “humans break themselves in like animals. They learn to hold themselves” (92). Thus, there is a thread from external forces (reins) controlling physical movement to the idea of taming animals to taming, breaking in, or socializing humans. All of this taming focuses, not on power or oppression, but on behavior. Furthermore, the conditioning of behavior occurs through repetition. Like Pavlov’s dog, we come to act in certain ways, and to see these as natural, through having to repeat certain actions. Obviously, this belief in the power of repetition recalls Butler’s conception of identity as “instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (519). By repeating acts, we come to believe in the given or natural nature of these acts. Here, it seems, is one connection between behavior and power.

Lepecki gives another example of dressage in the second half of the piece Este corpo que me ocupa (46-49). In the first half of this piece, João Fiadeiro places objects usually associated with a living room on stage in non-utilitarian ways (see the photo on page 47). In the second half, he “restores” the objects to their “proper” position and “creates the image of a well-furnished, generic urban living room” (47). Fiadeiro then slouches on the couch. Lepecki reads this bodily position as “an unbearable portrait of contemporary passivity” (48). At the same time, Fiadeiro is using the objects in the way they are meant to be used, according to neoliberal conditioning, and Fiadeiro is constrained or tamed by the objects. As contemporary subjects, we must sit this way, we must use these objects in that way, we must move in this relationship.

And, so what? I’m not sure. No grand “aha!” moments yet. Just some small things to take away. One is that, if neoliberalism works by shaping our conduct, our behavior, even our movement (and, according to Lepecki (4-5), colonialist capitalism is founded on the movement of objects, bodies, and bodies-as-objects), one way to resist it is through moving differently. I think this is one reason Lepecki looks at dance. As an art built on movement and mobility, dance is well-positioned to critique neoliberalism (5). The figure of the dancer who moves herself as an agent but is choreographed by a director, and whose movement is thereby exploited, can offer great insight into the condition of being a neoliberal subject/individual/citizen.

Another is the lack of distinction between human and animal. Humans are trained in much the same way as animals. A friend of mine who has been a schoolteacher for most of her career said she learned a lot about teaching from training her dog. For example, she was told that, after teaching her dog a command, she should let the dog sit for a while to give it time to process what it just learned. She started using that with her students, giving them quiet time to unconsciously digest or process after they had studied something. And this works, not because the same trick works on animals and on humans, but because there is not a distinction between them.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40, no. 4, 1988, pp. 519-531.

Greene, Ronald Walter. “Y Movies: Film and the Modernization of Pastoral Power.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2005, pp. 20-36.

Lepecki, André. Singularities: Dance in the age of performance