Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis

344 Pages·2013·20.084 MB·English

by  Dwight Conquergood

Cultural Struggles

Cultural Struggles
Performance, Ethnography, Praxis
Dwight Conquergood
Edited and with a critical introduction by E. Patrick Johnson
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
Ann Arbor
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2013
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright
Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid- free paper
2016 2015 2014 2013 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
All royalties from this publication are being donated to the
Dwight Conquergood Award for Teaching Excellence Fund at
Northwestern University.
ISBN 978-0-472-07195-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-05195-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-02929-7 (e-book)
Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time in the making. Dwight had actually been
working on two manuscripts and charged me with making sure that
at least one of them saw the light of day after his passing. I could not
have made that happen, however, without the commitment from LeAnn
Fields at the University of Michigan Press. LeAnn’s gentle persistence
over the years to get me to cull Dwight’s essays into a manuscript made
all of the difference in the world and kept enough pressure on me to
make sure it happened.
I want to thank my two wonderful research assistants, Jasmine Mah-
moud, who worked tirelessly to convert the essays from one format to
another and helped me in so many other ways to prepare the manu-
script, and Margaret Lebron, who helped to prepare the index. To my
colleagues Micaela di Leonardo, Judith Hamera, Shannon Jackson, D.
Soyini Madison, Lisa Merrill, Della Pollock, and Joseph Roach— thank
you for not hesitating to write essays for the volume. Your love and re-
spect for Dwight shines through every word of your contributions.
Thanks to the Northwestern University Library archives for organiz-
ing all of Dwight’s papers. It is an invaluable resource to scholars around
the world and made this book possible.
Finally, thank you, Dwight, for leaving us the wonderful gift of your
work.
Some of the essays in this book have appeared in other publications: “Per-
forming Cultures: Ethnography, Epistemology, and Ethics” originally
appeared in Miteinander Sprechen und Handeln: Festschrift fur Hellmut
Geissner, ed. Edith Slembek (Scriptor, 1986); “Of Caravans and Car-
nivals: Performance Studies in Motion” originally appeared in TDR,
Winter 39.4 (1995); “Beyond the Text: Toward a Performative Cultural
Politics” originally appeared in The Future of Performance Studies: Vi-
sions and Revisions, ed. Sheron J. Dailey (National Communication As-
sociation, 1998); “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Re-
search” originally appeared in TDR, Summer 46.2 (2002); “Performing
as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography of Performance”
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
originally appeared in Literature in Performance 5 (April 1985); “Re-
thinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics” originally
appeared in Communication Monographs 58 (June 1985); “Rethinking
Elocution: The Trope of the Talking Book and Other Figures of Speech”
originally appeared in Text and Performance Quarterly 20.4 (October
2000); “Health Theatre in a Hmong Refugee Camp: Performance, Com-
munication and Culture” originally appeared in TDR 32.3 (Fall 1988);
“Life in Big Red: Struggles and Accommodations in a Chicago Polyeth-
nic Tenement” originally appeared in Structuring Diversity: Ethnographic
Perspectives on the New Immigration, ed. Louise Lamphere (University
of Chicago Press, 1992); “Homeboys and Hoods: Gang Communication
and Cultural Space” originally appeared in Group Communication in
Context: Studies of Natural Group, ed. Lawrence R. Frey (Erlbaum, 1994);
“Lethal Theatre: Performance, Punishment and the Death Penalty” orig-
inally appeared in Theatre Journal 54.3.17 (Fall 2002); “Caravans Con-
tinued” by Shannon Jackson originally appeared in TDR 50:1 (Spring
2006), and is reprinted here with permission of TDR and MIT Press; a
portion of “Dwight Conquergood and Performative Political Economy,”
by Micaela di Leonardo originally appeared in Cultural Studies 21:6 (No-
vember 2007), and is reprinted here with permission of Cultural Studies
and Taylor and Francis.
Contents
Introduction: “Opening and Interpreting Lives” 1
E. Patrick Johnson
I Performance
Performing Cultures: Ethnography, Epistemology, and Ethics 15
Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies in Motion 26
Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research 32
Beyond the Text: Toward a Performative Cultural Politics 47
II Ethnography
Performing as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the
Ethnography of Performance 65
Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical
Cultural Politics 81
Rethinking Elocution: The Trope of the Talking Book and
Other Figures of Speech 104
III Praxis
Health Theatre in a Hmong Refugee Camp: Performance,
Communication, and Culture 127
Life in Big Red: Struggles and Accommodations in a
Chicago Polyethnic Tenement 170
Homeboys and Hoods: Gang Communication and
Cultural Space 224
Lethal Theatre: Performance, Punishment, and the
Death Penalty 264
viii CONTENTS
IV Critical Responses
Micaela di Leonardo
Dwight Conquergood and Performative Political Economy 303
Judith Hamera
Response- ability, Vulnerability, and Other(s’) Bodies 306
Shannon Jackson
Caravans Continued: In Memory of Dwight Conquergood 310
D. Soyini Madison
“Is Dwight, White?!” or Black Transgressions and the
Preeminent Performance of Whiteness 314
Lisa Merrill
“Soundscapes of Power”: Attending to Orality,
Communicating Class, and Hearing the Humor in
Dwight Conquergood’s “Voice” 320
Della Pollock
Performance into Policy 324
Joseph Roach
Eloquence and Vocation: Dwight’s Calling 328
Contributors 333
Index 335
Introduction
“Opening and Interpreting Lives”
E. Patrick Johnson
Most institutions of higher learning prioritize three areas in which its
faculty must excel: research, teaching, and service. These three areas are
often the sites where administrations make faculty accountable at the
time of tenure and promotion. Rarely, however, do any of us excel in all
three without making some kind of personal sacrifice or succumbing to
burnout. Before tenure, teaching might suffer so that we can work on a
book manuscript or produce a string of “paradigm shifting” articles. Af-
ter tenure, the research may wane due to being overextended on commit-
tees. The road to full professor may take yet another toll on our teaching
as we work on the second or third book manuscript. Whatever the case,
ours is a constant negotiation of priorities and balancing acts in which
we aspire to be good citizens of the academy. I know of no other person
who excelled at all three as adeptly and gracefully as Dwight Conquer-
good. His life and his legacy stand as academic benchmarks.
Lorne Dwight Conquergood was born in 1949, one of five children,
to the late Daniel Conquergood and Dorothea Conquergood in Thun-
der Bay, Ontario. At a very early age his family moved to rural Indiana
and lived on a farm. It was during his formative years as a farmhand
alongside his father, with whom he was very close, that Dwight’s sense of
social responsibility and the valuation of life began to emerge. “I hated
when it was time to kill the animals,” he once told me. “I became very at-
tached to them and I would be depressed for days after they were slaugh-
tered. I was inconsolable.” Thus, from an early age he was committed to
the conditions of the disenfranchised and dedicated himself to a life of
advocacy. Undoubtedly, his working- class background and modest up-
bringing impacted his intellectual interests as well.
Not wanting to travel too far from his family for college, Dwight
attended Indiana State University in Terre Haute. There he double-
majored in Speech Communication and English, which not only would