Reflecting on the readings from the past two weeks, a couple of connections are beginning to emerge which can be related to the concept of political spectacle. I’m including and discussing five potential points for further discussion here:
1. Visibility and Public Space
“The distribution of the sensible reveals who can have a share in what is common to the community based on what they do and on the time and space in which this activity is performed. Having a particular ‘occupation’ thereby determines the ability or inability to take charge of what is common to the community; it defines what is visible or not in a common space, endowed with a common language, etc.” (12)
In Politics of Aesthetics, Rancière discusses the distribution of the sensible through the metaphor (or perhaps the literal state) of visibility. The visible then refers to those activities which can intervene politically in virtue of participating or being enacted in a common or public space. Through his account of the aesthetic regime of art, he situates a particular kind of artistic intervention that can transcend the barriers of an occupations (it’s possible restriction of access to the common space) and act politically. This seems to resonate with many elements of performance and theatre which are highlighted in the readings of the second week. For Boal and especially for Brecht, theatre should work to intervene in the particular distributions of the sensible that can prevent many from acting in public space. The concepts of visibility, public space and occupations can then be important ones to consider moving forward in our collective project.
2. Affect
Much of our discussion last week centered on the potential as well as the limitations of empathy as articulated by Boal, Brecht and Taylor. The question of empathy opens up the affective dimension implied in the experience of spectatorship as well as the experience of political action.
Catharsis serves an important role in Aristotelian theatre as a form of purification. Despite Boal’s critique of Aristotelian theater, the critique is based on the form’s effectiveness in producing emotional responses not its failure. For Balibar, hatred is a significant element for fascist identification and for the process of exclusion. For each of these thinkers, the affective is indeed effective (though perhaps negatively so). The question is, then, how can affect be mobilized or reimagined within a framework of resistance such that it produces a material or structural defiance to systems of power.
3. Identification
Balibar’s account of a politics of civility has been helpful in allowing me to think through a differentiation between empathy and identification. For him, “identity is the product of an invariably uneven, unfinished process, of hazardous constructions requiring greater or lesser symbolic guarantees. Identification is received from others and continues to always depend on them” (28). Although identity can be perceived to be something personal or internal, Balibar points us to its inherently social and (hence?) political nature. The movement between identification and disidentification becomes central to his conceptualization of civility. He emphasizes the violence implied in this process, calling it a “disincorporation” or a “dismemberment” (32). The constant potential for change in this processes of disidentification-identification are reminiscent of Butler’s account of performativity (as presented in Diana Taylor’s book) – which emphasizes the recurrent enactment of particular normative behaviours as the basis for gender difference. How can these two texts help us think about the rhythms of identification and the external sources which influence them? How does political spectacle intervene in this process?
4. Agency and Spectatorship
“Performance asks the spectator to do something, even if that something is doing nothing.” (Taylor, 86)
The passivity of spectators in traditional theatre (the adherence to particular conventions implied) and Boal’s theorization of the “spect-actor” point us towards different kinds of spectatorship, which differently theorize the agency of spectators in interpreting and intervening on a particular action. What are the dynamics of majority/minority implied in spectatorship and how do those construct power (as well as affect)?
5. Potential
If performance need not be true or false, real or pretend, how do we contend with it within the contemporary “distribution of the sensible”? How is “potential” a political force? How can it enact resistance?