unpredictabile / unfamiliar On page 17 Balibar brings about a very important concept for me, that political strategies are finding schema for the anticipation and control of individual reactions. Therefore, they become predictable and controllable. I wonder, how can we find ways of inserting unpredictability, of becoming and being unpredictable? Brecht is talking about alienating the familiar. Resistance is a way of becoming contingent, of being a subject to chance. Jaar having the built paper Konsthall be burnt down the next day, a good example, I find.
empathy / identification A political performance intends to have as many people as possible identify with it. When Boal talks about the danger of empathy, he might have been talking about the danger of identification that is being misused. Nevertheless, we need empathy as a shared emotion. When Mouffe talks about Jaar she says how new forms of subjectivity and new modes of identification can be constructed through the aesthetic means of art.
interdisciplinary / hegemony Brecht implies the importance of the independence of different art forms when uniting them (e.g. music not only as background, ornament,…). I had to think of relating this to artivism, explained by Mouffe, that as she writes “can be seen as counter-hegemonic moves against the capitalist appropiation of aestethetics”, by establishing a new hegemony. I think that the giving the same power to each art form in an interdisciplinary approach (does not have to be a collective one) leads to a different hegemony.
becoming Boal says that theatre is change, it is becoming and not being. (Also considering the efficacy of transformation taking place before spectators eyes.) Balibar writes that “in a becoming one is detorrialized”, talking about the minoritarian as a becoming or process- “all becoming is a becoming- minoritarian.” Do we, in order to be anti- facist, have to become minoritarian?
emotions Brecht emphasizes strongly the importance of emotions of pure knowledge and not emotions out of ignorance. Because it is also the emotions evoked through knowledge that are making transformations possible. Mouffe also mentions that it is through the affect the intellect can be reached-“the effect of our aesthetic experience should be to move us “through our senses and through our reason”.
passive / active Mouffe writes that also cultural producers, not only consumers, we all have been transformed into passive functions of the capitalist system. Boal and Brecht focus attention on the importance of the character’s free spirit and his mobility within the form, as well as the action driven spectator, spec-actor. Belonging by doing not through falling. I like that Diana Taylor opens the notion of “scenario”, which see says can function as the framework within which thinking takes place. I like that Diana Taylor opens the notion of “scenario”, which see says can function as the framework within which thinking takes place.
rhythm Brecht differentiates between climatic rhythm or linear narrative rhythm. Again, in relation to Balibar’s predictable individual, we could maybe think of rhythmic structures, such as polyrhythmical or polymetrical that could break expectations (such as a regular pulse is creating) and have contingency arise from other forms of rhythm. Scenarios could be considered as meters that create spaces for polyrhythms.