Notes on:
Denzin, N. (2009) A Critical Performance Pedagogy
That Matters. Ethnography and Education.
4 (3) 255--270. DOI 10.1080/17457820903170085
Dave Harris
This is 'relevant to a post modern democracy in a
globalised post-9/11/01 world. A militant
utopianism'. He wants an 'autoethnography that
shows struggle, passion, an embodied life' while
critics want to tame and categorise it, 'place it
under the control of reason and logic' [citing
Ellis and Bochner] (255). This will be an unruly
text, like a mosaic, with layers, 'part theory,
part performance, multiple voices, a performance
with speaking parts'. It is a manifesto, to
promote the less well-established performance turn
in educational research. Educational ethnography
is to be treated 'as performance', that is, 'a way
of knowing, a way of creating and fostering
understanding, a method that persons used to
create and give meaning to everyday life' [citing
Pelias]. This will involve a challenge to
'conventional traditional post positive values of
objectivity, evidence, truth'. Ellis cites
criticisms of Autoethnography as insufficiently
realistic, or too realistic in resisting
poststructuralist decentring of the self, or
'insufficiently aesthetic or literary… Second
rate'
Hammersley (2008) extends this critique and finds
little value in the work of 'ethnographic
post-modernists and literary ethnographers'.
Instead, it 'legitimates speculative theorising
celebrates obscurity and abandons the primary task
of enquiry, which is to produce truthful knowledge
about the world'. Denzin wants to ask 'whose truth
though?' (256) [either naively absolute or
completely subjective and relativist for him?].
There is no room for the literary performance
turn, and it leaves ethnography 'in a strange
timeless apolitical space'. Despite Hammersley and
others, all forms of knowledge 'involve a politics
of representation that is nothing stands outside
representation' [including critical performance
pedagogy?] Additionally, 'performance and
globality are intertwined' — enacted stories
'literally bleed across national borders' so that
to be a US citizen is to be enmeshed in US foreign
policy including trade and war.
Since 9/11 the performance of racialised
identities 'within the minstrelsy [sic] framework'
is the major problem of the 21st century.
[This refers to the work of an early
theorist of race W
Du Bois .From what I can see , though, the
minstrel song is low culture, compared to
the truly valuable 'spiritually inspired black
folk song'. Maybe this is the point :
'In Du Bois’s view, double-consciousness obtains
when blacks see themselves through the pitying and
contemptuous eyes of the racially prejudiced
whites whose racial prejudice is one of the causes
of the Negro problem.'] People of different races
and religions have to be 'integrated into the
democratic whole' [citing Du Bois] [looks like
classic Durkheimian functionalism to me] we
therefore need a methodology that goes beyond
'politically and racially conservative post
positivism' that is embedded in state auditing
systems like No Child Left Behind. Instead we need
' a militant utopianism which will help us imagine
a world free of conflict, terror and death, a
world that is caring, loving, truly compassionate
and a world that honours healing' [just to imagine
one?]. To this end, performance ethnography can be
located 'within a racialised, spectacle pedagogy',
reacting to the most important events of the last
decade — wars, a new surveillance regime in the
USA. Surveillance in particular can now be found
'in virtually every educational setting' [then
there is a sad little poem of four lines about
collapsing towers].
[Typical of the grandiose claims is this:] 'The
global interpretive community seeks forms of
qualitative enquiry that make a difference in
everyday lives by promoting human dignity and
social justice'. Again there is a reference to
'critical minstrelsy theory... ethno and
performance drama' with references to Elam and
Sotiropolouos, both of who seem to have
written, separately, about race as a
performance. Apparently, the intention is also to
expose and criticise the 'pedagogies of terror and
discrimination in everyday life'.
We need 'morally informed disciplines and
interventions that were help people recover
meaning' in this post 9/11 world with George Bush
as president. 'There is a deep desire' to overcome
psychological despair and end the 'eight long
years of cynicism, fraud and deceit' [no clue that
Trump will take over. Lots of optimism about Obama
instead -- see notes at the end]
Our paradigms should move through action research
in case study to queer studies, modern and
post-modern, global to local, 'from the real to
the hyperreal' [a category denied in the earlier
piece on Goffman], to the liminal spaces in
culture politics and pedagogy. Performance should
be seen as 'intervention interruption and
resistance' and as 'a form of enquiry… Activism…
Performative praxis that inspires and empowers
persons to act on their utopian impulses. These
moments are etched in history and popular memory'
(257) [precious little interest of any evidence in
them, at least those based on class struggle — the
Wobblies, the Autonomists or syndicalists]. The
example is provided by a play about events in
Laramie [the murder of a gay man, Matthew
Shephard], or the trials of Oscar Wilde. 9/11 as
well. These moments are to be addressed as
examples 'when power and politics come crashing
down on ordinary people and their lives'. Staged
performances can 'interrogate the cultural logics
of the spectacle itself' asking how did this
happen what does it mean or what are the
consequences 'for the lives of ordinary people'.
Apparently there has been 'critical indigenous
performance theatre, featuring 'doubly inverted
minstrel performances' where performers force
spectators to confront themselves as mirrored in
the minstrel mask. There are also native Canadian
white-face performers which end with someone who
'taunts the audience' [by saying they are the
savages]. These are examples of resistance and
utopian performance spaces. These can operate
'throughout the Academy in classrooms, hallways
and athletic fields' at multiple levels, although
sometimes they fail. In another example a scholar
from India presents a paper which records an
exchange with a security guard who wants to check
her laptop [oppressive or what? (258)]
There is also performance autoethnography.
Autoethnography is 'that state where the personal
intersects with the political, the historical and
the cultural' (258) it can take a radical
performance form where it's 'explicitly critiques
the structures of everyday life. There is also
'mystory' with which autoethnography intersects —
'simultaneously a personal mythology, a public
story, a personal narrative and the performance
that critiques. It can often take the form of
different quotations documents and texts together
providing 'a decentred multi voice text with
voices and speakers speaking back-and-forth.
Quoting the present back to itself exposes the
contradictions in official history' [a reference
to one of his earlier pieces]
There follows a 'dramaturgical insert' referring
to the flying of US flags after 9/11, noted by
Denzin himself. He saw flags everywhere. When
asked why they were still flying flags years after
the event, 'storeowners reacted in anger', and
said the questioner was 'being unpatriotic'. In
2008 the flags were still there and are taking
over Christmas. Denzin wonders whether this is 'an
aftermath of the 2008 election? Is it one of
Bush's last gifts to us? And this so-called 'just
war' against evil and terror continues. I wonder
what Obama will do' (259). Elsewhere, flags still
fly, perhaps because they have 'taken on new
meanings. But just what are the meanings any
more?' Would it still be possible to have public
spectacles without flags; what would be forgotten
if they did not have them?
A visit to the Thomas Jefferson National Expansion
Memorial Museum beneath the St Louis Gateway Arch.
A park service officer asks what the observer has
in their bag, bringing a comment: 'so now the Park
Service operates as an arm of Bush's Security
Administration!' The observer's wife says 'be
quiet'. The observer's grandson has to hand over
his transformer toy for inspection, attracting
another comment 'Another Bush legacy. Seven years
and counting. Every visitor to this park is
searched!'.
Another dramaturgical insert refers to a news item
where an Islamic woman was pushed over a railing,
falling to her death in Boston. The 'narrator'
describes this as 'hell to pay' — 'when will
everyone come to their senses and realise that not
every Arab is to blame for what's going on' [so
the narrator has lent this event political
significance and assumed that it was some revenge
attack]. Another comment is added, referenced to
an article by Hakim [which turns out to be an
assignment handed in at the University of
Illinois]. 'You fucking camel jockey, piece of
shit sand nigger...' [Is this verbatim, is it a
reconstruction, is it entirely fictional? It is
put alongside reconstructed actual dialogue
inviting us to assume that it has the same
status?]
Within education we have to develop critical
performance studies moving from classic
ethnography to performative autoethnography. It
will involve us in 'the study of personal
troubles, epiphanies and turning point moments in
the lives of interacting individuals; the
connection of these moments to the liminal, ritual
structures of daily life; the intersection and
articulation of racial, class and sexual
oppressions with turning point experiences; the
production of critical pedagogical performance
texts which critique the structures of oppression
while presenting a politics of possibility that
imagines how things could be different' (260).
Conquergood is right to see performance as a way
of knowing, showing, interpreting and building
shared understanding. It is 'immediate, partial,
always incomplete and always processual' [sounds
like Gale and Wyatt]. In a post colonial world,
'performance, hybridity, globality and
transnational racialised identities are
intertwined'.
Another dramaturgical insert, a scene from a live
performance of The Visitor, based on a
book on Spectacle Pedagogy ( Garoian and
Gaudelius). One of the characters learns to play
African hand drums but is 'uncomfortable,
embarrassed'. Narrator asks the audience whether
this is not 'a local performance of the global,
identities bleeding across national boundaries'
[or context free cultural appropriation?]. The
character steps out of the film to address the
audience directly and says that he now thinks that
playing the djembe is more important than writing
scientific articles because he now feels connected
as a public performer. Additional commentators add
that this 'cuts to the heart of the post-modern'
and reminds us that the djembe teacher is to be
deported for violating immigration laws. A
commentator asks whether this might be an example
of an 'embodied pedagogy of war'. Another one asks
how long the Iraq war will last and who is
actually likely to be winning. The section ends
with the two know-all academics listing a set of
similar issues — 'Iraq, round-the-clock media
coverage, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, disaster tourism,
pathologising pedagogies, Drill Baby Drill, Wall
Street Bailout, Bye Bye Mr Bush' [it's all grist
to the mill to your post-modern utopians!].
Apparently it 'narrates and performs the complex
ways in which persons experience themselves within
the shifting spaces of today's global world
economy and its pedagogies of deceit and
destruction'.
Some more terms are defined (261). Conventional
pedagogy is ideological, but performance centred
pedagogy 'uses performance as a method of
investigation' A spectacle is 'an interactive
relation between people and events mediated by
images', like the images of the two aircraft
hitting the twin towers. Spectacle pedagogy refers
to 'the performative visual cultural codes of the
media, fuelled by corporate, global capitalism,
which manufacture our desires and determine our
political choices… An insidious ever present form
of propaganda in the service of cultural
imperialism' [citing the two who wrote the book on
critical spectacle pedagogy again]. Critical
spectacle pedagogy is its opposite — 'the form of
radical democratic practice that enables a
reflexive media literacy [sic -- that old
bourgeois hangup] which aspires to critical
citizenship and cultural democracy… A critique of
theatricality, as in the staged photographs of
torture at Abu Ghraib'. We can combine critical
spectacle pedagogy with performance autoethnography
— the former politicises the latter.
We can't just interpret the world as with
traditional ethnography. 'Today we are called to
change the world… Resist injustice while
celebrating freedom, and [develop] full inclusive
participatory democracy'. We move from global to
local, political to personal, pedagogical to
performative and this makes the political visible
'through the performance of scenes of liberation
and oppression'. Back to The Visitor again
where the hero visits a detention centre trying to
free his djembe instructor. This segues into a
reconstruction of the notorious torture
photographs in Abu Ghraib, with swaggering guards
humiliating naked detainees. 'An obscene
theatrical display, beyond Baudrillard's
pornography of the visible' (262). Rush Limbaugh's
attempt to dismiss it all as rather like student
frat house hazing is denied: these 'spectacles of
torture sent an approved US military message…
Methods for generating intelligence about the
insurgency'.
This sort of thing focuses on the body which
'brings a reflective embodied presence to
autoethnography, illustrating how everyday
language and ideologies 'instill compliance with
the needs of global capital' we need to generate
spectacles of resistance instead to create a
critical consciousness that 'leads empowered
citizens to take action in their neighbourhoods
and communities'. We have to reflexively critique
cultural practices that reproduce oppression,
perform within these repressive practices, create
discourses that make struggle for democracy more
visible. In performances like this 'artists,
teachers, students and other cultural workers'
tell stories invoking their personal memories and
histories. They testify, showing how performances
are linked with history. Cope performances enable
them to critique and evaluate culture, rethink
history, create new possibilities for 'historical
ideas, images, new subjectivities and new cultural
practices'. Performances are pedagogical in that
they 'make sites of oppression visible' and in so
doing 'affirm an oppositional politics'that
stresses 'self-determination and mutual
solidarity' [no oppositions between those last
two?] This is a pedagogy of hope and it will
rescue democracy from Conservative neoliberalism
[citing Giroux] (263). It is 'militant
utopianism', with a 'new language of resistance in
the public and private spheres' and this will
energise 'a radical participatory democratic
vision for this new century'. [Entirely
voluntaristic with some dubious claim about the
march of history].
Another episode, based on Laurel Richardson's
views about 9/11. She worried what the children
would be told, and what the images seen on TV
would be telling them. She worries about her own
children and 'my heart breaks for the children
whose lives are broken'. She cannot
intellectualise or 'academize'. Denzin sees this
as performative autoethnography, with a narrative
anchored in a moral dialogue with members of the
local community and family. 'Troubling the usual
distinctions between self and other, she folds her
reflections into the stories of others' [a massive
talk up].
Spectacle pedagogy by definition means a politics
of resistance. Apparently performative
autoethnography 'connects critical pedagogy to
Marxist participatory action theories [says
McLaren and Kincheloe], and there are connections
with liberation theology, neo-Marxist approaches
to community development, human rights activism
and nonviolent civil disobedience. Performance
autoethnography can be civic participatory and
collaborative, and extend moral dialogue about who
owns the performance project. Performance texts
and events can be empowering. [But are they? Who
actually attends them?]
Back to the Laramie Project and the play.
Apparently, the playwright interviewed the people
of Laramie [old-fashioned ethnography then?]. A
member of the community was asked for reactions
and complained that nothing had been done about
hate crime. One of the actors remembered the
lights of Laramie sparkling in the evening,
supposed that that might have been one of the last
things seen by the dead man, permitting this:
'Matthew's legacy, the pure sparkling lights of
Laramie, what a town could be' (264). When the
team returned 10 years after, they reinterviewed
people but were particularly 'disappointed to
learn that nothing had been done to commemorate
the anniversary of Matthew's death' and that there
were no new hate crimes laws. However, they
detected a change in Laramie — 'bias crimes' were
now tracked, there was an AIDS walk, some
residents came out as gay, the University hosted a
four-day symposium for social justice, 'and there
is talk of creating a degree minor in gay and
lesbian studies'. But there is no memorial.
Denzin sees all this as 'performance ethnography
disguised as spectacle theatre in the service of
memory, social change and social justice'.
He says these examples represent 'at some deep
level' [I thought he didn't approve of these] a
commitment to community action, a potential
release from repressive constraints, especially
that embedded in the OK Corral and Western
mythology — 'repressive racist and homophobic'
(265). We see the personal intersecting with the
historical. We see identity construction made
problematic as Walter performs with the djembe.
Participants use their imagination to develop 'a
positive utopian space where a politics of hope is
imagined' and this produces a foundation for
social criticism and concrete analysis of programs
and policies. Performance shows us the impact on
everyday life. Members of the community are
invited to become 'co-performers in a drama of
social resistance and social critique'.
Co-performers are informed by ethics. They offer
emotional support to one another. They show
'involved social citizenship' and enact a politics
of possibility to mobilise memories, guilt, desire
and so. 'They do something in the world. They move
people to action' [while I would like to see some
evidence, just to be positivist for a moment].
They have clear consequences. For example the
Laramie Project brought homophobic fears and
prejudices out into the open and thus opened up
new possibilities.
This is political theatre, like Brecht. It 'shapes
subject; audiences; and performers'. It is a form
of praxis that can 'shape a cultural politics of
change'. The performance 'gives the audience, and
the performers, "equipment for [this] journey:
empathy and intellect, passion and critique"'
[citing Madison]. We can now call it an enactment
of 'Performance -centred evaluation pedagogy'
[then more repetition of the claims to deliver
enquiry, developed understanding engage in
collaborative meaning, mobilise people to take
action]. It 'privileges experience, the concept of
voice, and the importance of turning spectacle
sites into democratic public spheres' And inform
practice and support emancipatory politics (266).
Another radical theatre advocate, Boal, talks of
'the Theatre of the Oppressed', to foster a
dialogue between stage and audience, to create 'a
shared field of emotional experience' which will
awaken critical cultural awareness [same old
claims, much rebuked by Ranciere]. Apparently Boal
directs us to see 'every oppressed person as a
subjugated subversive', but argues that we submit
to oppression because of 'the cop in our head'. We
all have the ability to be subversive and critical
pedagogical theatre will empower us as well as
'making their submission to oppression disappear'
[!].
We also add that there is a need for 'a feminist
communitarian moral ethic' [1st appearance for
feminism]. This 'presumes a dialogical view of the
self and its performances', seeks ennobling
narratives and tries to facilitate civic
transformations, both public and private. It
dignifies the self and honours personal struggle.
Cultural criticism is seen as empowerment, led by
an ethical moment when we realise that there are
'troubling spaces occupied by others' leading to
co-performance. We can distil a number of ethical
injunctions. Does the performance 'nurture
critical race and gender consciousness? Use
historical restagings and traditional texts to
subvert and critique official ideology? Heal?
Empower? Enact a feminist communitarian socially
contingent ethic? Enact a pedagogy of hope' [all
of them? Most of them? Are they all the same
anyway?].
[Now let's bring in Freire]. 'The critical
imagination is radically democratic, pedagogical
and interventionist', and it provokes conflict,
curiosity, criticism and reflection, leading to
Freire's pedagogies of freedom and hope. It is
about acting on the world in order to change it,
enhancing 'moral agency [citing Christians], moral
discernment, critical consciousness and a radical
politics of empowerment and change'.
Critical imagination is pedagogical. It is 'a form
of instruction' [!] that encourages critical
historical and sociological thought; it exposes
pedagogies of oppression; it produces ethical
self-consciousness; it provides practice that
turns oppression into freedom, despair into hope;
it 'shapes our critical racial self-awareness'
leading to 'utopian dreams of racial equality and
racial justice. Building on Freire and Boal, we
can see that performance ethnography is about
freedom showing that persons produce history and
culture, '"even as history and culture produce
them"'. It shows how concrete situations can be
transformed through acts of resistance and in this
way it advances liberation and critical awareness
[the two are seen as the same?].
Hope is both peaceful and non-violent [always?]
It's grounded in concrete practices struggles and
interventions 'that espouse the sacred values
[sic] of love, care, community, trust and
well-being', based on Freire again. It confronts
cynicism and believes that change is possible it
'works from rage to love' it rejects
'"Conservative neoliberal post-modernity"' [Freire
again] and rejects terrorism. [Then, curiously]
'hope rejects the claim that peace comes at any
cost'.
[Happily] it also can 'strengthen the capacity of
research groups to implement qualitative research
as a solution' to social problems. That will also
strengthen 'interdisciplinary formations and
interpretive communities within the Academy' and
between research groups in different countries. It
will encourage policy research groups to generate
critical knowledge to tackle social problems,
while staying with 'social justice and empowerment
ethics'. This will itself enable exchanges with
other researchers and foster networks and joint
research projects.
So, we are now at a crossroads. We need an
emancipatory discourse that addresses racial
inequality, taking into account 9/11 'forms of
democracy and neoliberalism' (268). This requires
performance-based approach to politics and
spectacle pedagogy, and how 'performance autoethnography
and critical pedagogy' can help us enact a
politics of hope.
We end with the sad poet asking about how to pick
up the pieces after the twin towers collapse. She
is looking for a word to follow. 'And I, Norman K
Denzin, replied, give me one more wild word to
follow: [dramatic spacing] and the word was hope,
the end.'
[What a bunch of repetitive exhortations and
circular self defining terms, based on the
clapped-out notion of the pedagogic role of
critical theatre. It is worth noting his own
marvellous hopes for Obama, as he writes this
stuff four months after the election — 'it is
clear that Obama is systematically dismantling the
spectacles of fear and terror that propped up the
Bush administration. Obama's odyssey is amazing…
Who are his ancestors? Who our our ancestors? (See
Bob Dylan on Obams...' [sic]]
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