Deleuze and Performance

289 Pages·2009·1.631 MB·English

by  Laura Cull (Editor)

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mattersisgivenexquisite,seamlessforminthisindispensablecollectionbyafirst e
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AlanRead,ProfessorofTheatre,King’sCollegeLondon
‘ThisisawelcomeadditiontothefieldsofbothperformancestudiesandDeleuze
studies,onethatissuretostimulateproductiveresearchandpracticeacrossmany
domainsforyearstocome.’
RonaldBogue,ProfessorofComparativeLiterature,UniversityofGeorgia
WasperformanceimportanttoDeleuze?IsDeleuzeimportanttoperformance;toits
practical,aswellastheoretical,research?WhataretheimplicationsofDeleuze’s
philosophyofdifference,processandbecoming,forPerformanceStudies,afieldin
whichmanycontinuetoprivilegethenotionofperformanceasrepresentation,as
anchoredbyitsimitationofanidentity:‘theworld’,‘theplay’,‘theself’?
DeleuzeandPerformanceisacollectionofnewessaysdedicatedtoDeleuze’swriting
ontheatreandtotheproductivityofhisphilosophyfor(re)thinkingperformance.This
bookprovidesrigorousanalysesofDeleuze’swritingsontheatrepractitionerssuchas
Artaud,BeckettandCarmeloBene,aswellasofferinginnovativereadingsof
historicalandcontemporaryperformanceincludingperformanceart,dance,new C
mediaperformance,theatreandopera,whichuseDeleuze’sconceptsinexcitingnew u
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ways.CanphilosophyfollowDeleuzeinovercomingtheantitheatricaltradition l
embeddedinitshistory,perhapsevenreconsideringwhatitmeanstothinkinthe
lightoftheembodiedinsightsofperformance’spractitioners?Expertsfromthefields
ofPerformanceStudiesandDeleuzeStudiescometogetherinthisvolumeandstrive
toexaminetheseandotherissuesinamannerthatwillbechallenging,yetaccessible
tostudentsandestablishedscholarsalike.
LauraCullisaLecturerintheVisualandPerformingArtsDivisionatNorthumbria
UniversityandChairofthePSiPerformanceandPhilosophyworkinggroup. Sheis
alsoanartist,exhibitinginternationallyasanindividualandasamemberofthe
collective,SpRoUt.
Coverdesign:RiverDesign,Edinburgh
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Chapter Title i
Deleuze and Performance
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Deleuze Connections
‘It is not the elements or the sets which defi ne the multiplicity. What
defi nes it is the AND, as something which has its place between the
elements or between the sets. AND, AND, AND – stammering.’
Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues
General Editor
Ian Buchanan
Editorial Advisory Board
Keith Ansell-Pearson
Rosi Braidotti
Claire Colebrook
Tom Conley
Gregg Lambert
Adrian Parr
Paul Patton
Patricia Pisters
Titles Available in the Series
Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and Feminist Theory
Ian Buchanan and John Marks (eds), Deleuze and Literature
Mark Bonta and John Protevi (eds), Deleuze and Geophilosophy
Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda (eds), Deleuze and Music
Ian Buchanan and Gregg Lambert (eds), Deleuze and Space
Martin Fuglsang and Bent Meier Sørensen (eds), Deleuze and the Social
Ian Buchanan and Adrian Parr (eds), Deleuze and the Contemporary
World
Constantin V. Boundas (ed.), Deleuze and Philosophy
Ian Buchanan and Nicholas Thoburn (eds), Deleuze and Politics
Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr (eds), Deleuze and Queer Theory
Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and History
Mark Poster and David Savat (eds), Deleuze and New Technology
Forthcoming Titles in the Series
Ian Buchanan and Laura Guillaume (eds), Deleuze and the Body
Stephen Zepke and Simon O’Sullivan (eds), Deleuze and Contemporary
Art
Paul Patton and Simone Bignall (eds), Deleuze and the Postcolonial
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iii
Deleuze and Performance
Edited by Laura Cull
Edinburgh University Press
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© in this edition Edinburgh University Press, 2009
© in the individual contributions is retained by the authors
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3503 0 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 3504 7 (paperback)
The right of the contributors
to be identifi ed as authors of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Introduction 1
Laura Cull
1 Performing in the Chaosmos: Farts, Follicles, Mathematics 22
and Delirium in Deleuze
Herbert Blau
Act I Deleuze on Theatre: Artaud, Beckett and Carmelo Bene
2 I Artaud BwO: The Uses of Artaud’s To have done with 37
the judgement of god
Edward Scheer
3 Expression and Affect in Kleist, Beckett and Deleuze 54
Anthony Uhlmann
4 A Theatre of Subtractive Extinction: Bene Without Deleuze 71
Lorenzo Chiesa
Interval
5 Performing, Strolling, Thinking: From Minor Literature to 91
Theatre of the Future
Daniel Watt
and
Off the Beaten Path or, Notes Towards a Heideggerian 102
Deterritorialisation: A Response to Daniel Watt
Julian Wolfreys
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vi Contents
Act II Confronting Deleuze and Live Performance

6 Becoming a Citizen of the World: Deleuze Between 109
Allan Kaprow and Adrian Piper
Stephen Zepke
7 sub specie durationis 126
Matthew Goulish and Laura Cull
8 Thinking Through Theatre 147
Maaike Bleeker
9 Becoming–Dinosaur: Collective Process and Movement 161
Aesthetics
Anna Hickey-Moody
Interval
10 . . . of butterfl ies, bodies and biograms . . . Affective Spaces 183
in Performativities in the Performance of Madama Butterfl y
Barbara Kennedy
Act III A Digital Deleuze: Performance and New Media
11 Like a Prosthesis: Critical Performance à Digital Deleuze 203
Timothy Murray
12 Performance as the Distribution of Life: From Aeschylus to 221
Chekhov to VJing via Deleuze and Guattari
Andrew Murphie
13 The ‘Minor’ Arithmetic of Rhythm: Imagining Digital 240
Technologies for Dance
Stamatia Portanova
Notes on Contributors 261
Index 266
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Introduction
Laura Cull
Was performance important to Deleuze? Is Deleuze important to per-
formance – to its practical, as well as theoretical, research? What value
might research in Performance Studies have for Deleuze Studies and vice
versa? Such are the kind of questions this introduction, and indeed this
volume as a whole, aims to address. Further, we might ask, what are the
implications of Deleuze’s ontological prioritisation of difference, process
or becoming for a fi eld in which many continue to privilege the notion
of performance as representation, as anchored by its imitation of an
identity: ‘the world’, ‘the play’, ‘the self’? Correlatively, can philosophy
follow Deleuze in overcoming the anti-theatrical tradition embedded in
its history, perhaps even reconsidering what it means to think in the light
of the embodied insights of performance’s practitioners?
Given his unorthodox readings of Kafka, animated accounts of
Bacon, encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema and diligent attention to
music – from Boulez to Cage – one can only imagine Deleuze to have
been an extraordinary audience member at a performance, a view the
Italian actor and director Carmelo Bene affi rmed when he described
Deleuze as ‘a lucid connoisseur of theatre’ (Bene 2002: 1166; see Chiesa,
Chapter 4, below). And yet, beyond his engagement with Bene, which
will be a focus of this introduction, we have relatively little to go on – at
least on fi rst inspection. If theatre and performance were genuinely of
interest to Deleuze, why did he (and Guattari) not write more about it,
particularly given their direct contact with contemporary practitioners
during the fl ourishing of performance in the 1960s and ’70s? Although
the arts are frequently privileged in Deleuze’s philosophy as sites of
fundamental encounter, he seems to have had a complex, even troubled,
relation to performance.
For instance, we cannot ignore Deleuze’s occasional denigration
of theatre in relation to his apparently favoured art of the cinema. In
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2 Deleuze and Performance
L’Abécédaire for instance, as Charles Stivale has reported, Deleuze
remarks that theatre tends not to provide opportunities for ‘encounters’,
though ‘with certain exceptions (like Bob Wilson, Carmelo Bene)’.1
Likewise in Cinema 2, Deleuze argues that fi lm can capture ‘“conversa-
tion for itself”, the ebb and fl ow of a loosely associative, open-ended dis-
course of rudimentary sociability’ (Bogue 2003b: 194), in a manner that
eludes theatre. The stage has no equivalent of the camera-eye, Deleuze
suggests, with its capacity to reveal inhuman viewpoints, to deterritori-
alise the eye and the ear of the spectator.
Previously, of course, the notion of theatricality had also appeared
less than favourably in Anti-Oedipus, as a fi gure for the psychoanalytic
determination of desire. Schizoanalysis, in contrast, sees the uncon-
scious as a factory. But in this latter case, it is only really a specifi cally
representational theatre – in which becomings are interpreted as mere
stand-ins for the Oedipal characters of mommy, daddy, me – that comes
under fi re. As the chapters to follow will demonstrate, Deleuze was no
anti-theatricalist. On the contrary, and on closer inspection, Deleuze’s
thought not only adopts the language of performance, but intervenes
critically in the fi eld with the production of a new vision of performance
as a vital philosophical and political force. As Martin Puchner concludes:
‘Clearly, the theatre, here, is not simply a metaphor or a communicative
device, but lies at the heart of Deleuze’s project, determining its terms,
constructions, and arguments’ (Puchner 2002a: 524).
What is Performance (Studies)?
‘Performance’ was chosen as the conjunctive term for this collection in
order to indicate a broad engagement with the performing arts, beyond
any single genre such as theatre or dance. That is, although historically
‘theatre’ and ‘performance’ have been used by some as opposing terms,
here ‘performance’ becomes the umbrella term that incorporates theatre
as a sub-category.2 But while the collection is inclusive from this perspec-
tive, it is exclusive from another, given that many Performance Studies
scholars, following Richard Schechner, approach performance as
a ‘broad spectrum’ or ‘continuum’ of human actions ranging from ritual,
play . . . the enactment of social, professional, gender, race, and class roles,
and onto healing (from shamanism to surgery), the media, and the internet.
(Schechner 2006: 2)
This approach includes the performing arts, but is by no means limited
to them.
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Introduction 3
As Marvin Carlson has written, ‘performance’ is ‘an essentially con-
tested concept’, being perpetually redefi ned not only by Performance
Studies but within a host of other fi elds – particularly as part of what has
been described as the performative turn in the social sciences (Carlson
1996: 5). For some, performance is always a self-conscious activity: per-
forming is ‘“showing doing” . . . pointing to, underlining, and displaying
doing’ (Schechner 2006: 28). Others emphasise the idea of performances
as ‘restored behaviours’ – products of preparation and rehearsal, that
may be conscious or otherwise. For Schechner – one of the key fi gures
involved in engendering Performance Studies as a discipline3 – it is the
specifi c historical and cultural context of an event or action, rather than
anything intrinsic to it, that determines it as performance, or as not. As
such, there is a case for classifying ancient Greek tragedies, for instance,
as ‘ritual’ rather than ‘performance’. But if, for Schechner, there are
contextual limits to what ‘is’ performance, he also goes on to argue that
there is ‘no fi nality to performance studies’ and that ‘anything and eve-
rything can be studied “as” performance’ (28–9, 38–9). Thus, although
Andrew Murphie’s essay on VJing in this volume points towards this
broad-spectrum defi nition of performance, and Stephen Zepke’s essay
on Allan Kaprow problematises the distinction between (performance in)
‘art’ and (in) ‘life’, it remains outwith the scope of this collection to dem-
onstrate the full breadth of examples that Performance Studies examines
through the lens of performance. Indeed, since there can be no totalising
representation of what is, by defi nition, an open fi eld, the focus of this
collection will be on performance as it takes place in the arts.
To say that Performance Studies is essentially open is not to say that
the discipline lacks focal subjects, key questions, or a specifi c analytical
approach. Regarding the latter, what is of particular relevance to the
intersection with Deleuze is Schechner’s claim that whatever Performance
Studies analyses ‘is regarded as practices, events, and behaviours, not as
“objects” or “things”’ (2). Arguably, as I have already implied, this is
more an aspirational than a descriptive remark, but it nevertheless sug-
gests an initial sympathy between Deleuzians and Performance Studies
scholars: a shared concern to shift the focus from thinking in terms of
discrete objects and subjects, towards a concern with processes, rela-
tions and happenings (Schechner 2006: 1–2). Or rather, both affi rm the
movement and ‘liveness’ immanent to even the most apparently stable
phenomena. All the more surprising then, perhaps, that the fi eld has been
slow to appreciate the potential value of Deleuze’s thought for perform-
ance analysis. From its inception, Performance Studies imported theory
from a host of other disciplines, including philosophy, to address its key
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