by Gus Cook
Brooks’s figuration of the “Afro-Alienation acts” observable in 19th and 20th century black performance interacts with both a historical, classical understanding of stage performance and the more contemporary development of critical race theory. In order to more fully understand and appreciate the complexity of this interaction between race and performance, it is necessary to further unpack Brooks’s references to Brecht and the connection this argument holds to critical race theory.
Brooks invokes W.E.B. Du Bois’s question of
“double-consciousness,” the enforced development of a form of a model of
subjectification that sees black Americans as both “Americans” and “Negroes,”
as a defining characteristic of the “discursive [and] embodied insurgency” (3)
that lies at the heart of Afro-alienation acts. Brooks’s understanding of race
arises not only from its lived experience, but from how race is seen and
figured, how bodies are transformed into subjects via a kind of structured
spectatorship. By thinking of race via the ways in which it is envisioned,
Brooks connects her work to larger questions circling around critical race
theory. Critical race theory is concerned with blackness as something
“produced,” a method of structuring and control that “comes into being” via an
apparatus that transforms visual difference into “race.” This is made
particularly apparent in the passages quoted from Hortense Spillers work, in
which she describes how the “dehumanizing, ungendering, and defacing” qualities
of slavery were used to establish a black subject that could have “no movement
in the field of signification.” As a foundation of discourse, critical race
theory is deliberately placing tension on questions of identity, selfhood, and
subjectification in order to reveal how the establishment of such ideas hinges
on a practice that uses structures race in order to separate and very literally
dehumanize its subjects. While one might assume that this separation occurs in
the act of seeing, critical race theory offers an avenue through which there
can instead develop an understanding of how the act of “seeing” race is
structured. By thinking of blackness as something that has been
“circumscribed,” Afro-alienation acts can thus “signify on the social,
cultural, and ideological machinery,” the apparatus if you will, that seeks to
define blackness as a subject position.
The power that comes from the intervention
that Afro-alienation acts provide for a figuration of race is generated not
from their capacity to interface with reality, but instead to explicitly appeal
to non-realist modes of presentation and performance. As Brooks carefully
argues, to “represent” in performance is to “(un)do” oneself, as an appeal to
representational realism is ultimately an appeal to a “crisis of representational
timelessness projected onto blackness.”(6) Under critical race theory, the
realities of the body become prefigured and dictateable, and the reality that
we might desire performance to appeal to is a reality that already carries its
own ways of seeing and thus ways of subjectification.
To define what a non-realist mode of
performance might look like, and in defining what it might mean to be
“alienated” within the context of performance acts, Brooks turns to Bertolt
Brecht. Brechtian alienation is a very particular mode of presentation and
ultimately of discourse, one in which an appeal to empathy, to character, and
to a kind of realist verisimilitude is displaced by a much more quotational,
gestural style of performance. The actor is encouraged to exist beyond and
outside of the character they play, delivering their lines as if they are
quoting rather than as if they are their own words. The theater, Brecht hoped,
could become a space for argument, one in which audiences were actively
encouraged to critique their perspective on the world by seeing it challenged
in its representation. In understanding why Brecht’s ideas might help us
consider how Afro-alienation transforms the situation of “looking at oneself
through the eyes of others” into the “enlivened position of ‘looking at being
looked at ness,”(5) it is helpful to see how Brecht detailed the difference
between the traditional “dramatic” theater and his alienating “epic” theater:
Epic theater necessarily turns us outward, pushing us away from the confinement of individual identity towards a consideration of how identity itself is formed, asking us to put direct and deliberate tensions on such processes the ways in which it incites our desire to critique our pre-established ways of seeing.
In moving forward, consider how your own expectations for “realism” or “representation” in performance might push you towards the spectatorial position of the dramatic theater. The power of the Afro-alienation act lies precisely in its capacity to challenge our own limited and deterministic conception of reality, and the key to accepting that challenge lies in our capacity to abandon the preconceptions of bodies and of subjectification we naturally carry within us. To drive home the essential importance of the alienated spectatorial position, I leave you with this excerpt from Brecht’s “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction:”
“The dramatic
theatre’s spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too— Just like me— It’s
only natural— It’ll never change— The sufferings of this man appal me, because
they are inescapable— that’s great art, it all seems the most obvious thing in
the world— I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh.
The epic theatre’s
spectator says: I’d never have thought it— That’s not the way— That’s
extraordinary, hardly believable— It’s got to stop— the sufferings of this man
appal me, because they are unnecessary— that’s great art: nothing obvious in
it— I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh.”
I certainly found Brook’s concept of Afro-alienation acts to be an extremely intriguing topic, especially as it concerns these “anti-realist” forms of expression, a very important element of this phenomenon highlighted in the blog. It got me thinking that it is important not just to conceive the acts of art mentioned as a means to resist certain societal/political/racial notions in the context of performance alone. Rather, I think that a concept like Afro-alienation urges us to think of these as very real acts of survival and as a possible way of forging new conceptions of what it means to be human in the first place, on and off the stages, and exposed to and hidden from public view. Very important to this conversation is the concept of timelessness related to ethnicity that Spillers discusses in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe.” What this observed relationship/discourse between ethnicity/blackness/ timelessness ultimately urges me to ask myself (and the class) is: can performances, such as those conceived under the tools and resistance tactics of Afro-alienation actually transfer into real life to initiate changes in the way that we see certain groups or societies? In other words, is it actually possible to break the barriers of this timelessness? I think asking ourselves this question is extremely important given that, as Spillers questions, ever since the time of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the markings and legacies of what has caused us to even need to make distinctions between body and flesh in the first place, the powerful and the absolutely powerless, carry on into future generations in many real and symbolic forms. Spillers also points out: “I might as well add that the familiarity of this narrative does nothing to appease the hunger of recorded memory, nor does the persistence of the repeated rob these well-known, oft-told events of their power, even now, to startle. In a very real sense, every writing as revision makes the ‘discovery’ all over again” (69). How then,could we turn this repeated discovery of the oppression and wrongdoing behind these acts of performative resistance into a realistic way out of such narrow and stigmatized thinking? I think that it is precisely Afro-alienation and other related notions that can give us a possible answer to overcome what Sylvia Wynter would call the biggest struggle of our times, the overrepresentation of Man, which in very simple terms, represents a very constructed (usually white, middle class) imagining of the ideal human being, the mainstream economically and socially productive citizen, a view that completely excludes (and creates and perpetuates) those on the margins (racialized subjects, the poor, the disabled, etc.). In short, it is imperative for us to think about how the performances and concepts that Brook’s and even McMillan speak of are essential to creating new modes of being, whether real or imagined, that can push the boundaries of stigmatizing discourses in very real and tangible ways.
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ReplyDeleteMy understanding of Brecht and the employment of Brechtian philosophies in some of our readings for this week was pretty limited, so having this elaboration definitely helped. To begin with a small point, I was reminded of Spiller's "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book" while reading this quote from Brecht's "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction" that you ended with. Brecht's reference to the unbelievability that occurs in the case of an epic theatre's spectator reminds me of Spiller's perhaps subtle but repeated emphasis on the "startling" nature of slavery in the U.S. and, more specifically, the process of literal objectification that went along with it. It is, personally, my impression that CRT scholars sometimes perform a kind of air of nonchalance around these events/processes if only to, understandably, also perform an authority concerning them; however, Spillers does not shy away from highlighting the affective encounter (and maybe the uncanny encounter I would argue?) of continuing to study, read, write, teach, etc. on slavery in the U.S. and its continuations. For instance, she writes, "I might as well add that the familiarity of this narrative does nothing to appease the hunger of recorded memory, nor does the persistence of the repeated rob these well-known, oft-told events of their power, even now, to startle" (209--I may have different page numbers) and later "The enslaved as property identities the most familiar element of a startling proposition" (217). In relation to the Brecht quote, I think that Spiller's reference to being startled is a bit different since she also plays with coming across the familiar; however, both of these moments alongside our other readings on performance for this week got me thinking more about how performance art, very generally, can activate epistemologies that begin from these moments of being startled, of being almost unbelieving. To connect to some of our other readings as well as your question about "how [our] own expectations for 'realism' or 'representation' in performance might push [us] towards the spectatorial position of the dramatic theater," one of the things that I found particularly interesting while reading this week was Piper's careful and complex slipperiness in categorizing her performance art under rubrics, such as "black performance art," "feminist performance art," etc. I think that your question concerning our expectations for representation can even be thought about in terms of what we expect when we do walk into a gallery, a theater, etc. with the knowledge that we are about to see a particular kind of art. For instance, maybe we walk into an exhibit that we are told is dedicated to black feminist artists or we just witness a performance art piece but are told prior to that that the performance artist is a black feminist. How do these larger representational categories both aid us and potentially limit our ability to be startled? (None of this is to say that I don't think it's important to fund, represent, spread, etc. art that explicitly identifies itself with black feminism. I'm just interested in thinking about this point of startle in relation to the previously constructed readings we carry with us when we encounter or interact with art.)
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your characterization of epic theatre as an intervention in highlighting some of the problematics that arise from identity. As you highlight through Spillers, an enclosure of signification that rooted blackness in vis-a-vis opposition to whiteness certainly has been use towards the justification of slavery and its various aftermaths. One quote that stands out from the Spiller’s text is when she states that “In order for me to speak a truer word concerning myself, I must strip down through layers of attenuated meanings, made an excess in time, over time, assigned by a particular historical order, and there await whatever marvels of my own inventiveness” (65). Viewing identity in terms of historical formation rather being rooted in a sort of authenticity does not necessarily equate to a loss of oneself, but rather, exciting possibilities that allow us to invent ourselves in a world that bestows limited agency on certain bodies.
ReplyDeleteThis notion of identity highlighted by Spillers is seen throughout other texts that we’ve read today. The Crafts, for example, actively engaged in dismantling pre-conceived notions of the self through Afro-alienation. When you say that “the key to accepting that challenge lies in our capacity to abandon the preconceptions of bodies and of subjectification we naturally carry within us”, I think about the fact that the Crafts stripped down layers of slavery and blackness as being constructions grounded in a system of domination, as opposed to inherent characteristics of oneself. They express a knowledge of the historical processes that led to slavery, and were therefore able to create new possibilities that flipped the very essentialist characteristics of identity that allowed for white supremacy to emerge.
In thinking about the Crafts, I am however also thinking about the labor that stripping down these layers entails. For some bodies, such as bodies that are read as “light-skinned”, a certain freedom to perform in ways that don’t align with normative modes of identification may be granted with more ease. To continue Spiller’s metaphor, less layers need to be stripped down. For others, a strippig down of these layers may come with material consequences that punish for daring to invent oneself in a world that relies on existing categories to maintain systemic injustices.
I found Brooks' connection between Critical Race Theory and Brechtian alienation to be incredibly rich and productive. The "discursive and embodied insurgency" that lies at the heart of Afro-Alienation for Brooks reminds me of something in my own field that has been troubling modern black actors for the last 50 years -- that is, do they want to play Othello?
ReplyDeleteMany black actors refuse to play the part because of the historical context surrounding it. Not only was the part written by a white man, but the part was written to be acted by a white man in black makeup, or "prosthetics" as Ian Smith helpfully points out.
Smith says in an interview:
"In early modern court masques, actors would use cloth or the skin of animals to literally cover their necks, their hands, even their faces, to simulate blackness. And so, that's why I use the term prosthetic, because it is a kind of prosthesis. Race becomes a kind of prosthesis that one can use to impersonate somebody else. Blackness is a kind of object or thing that is presented for the speculation of the audience. And so, to think of blackness or the black body as a thing we see, that that only proved to be a sort of early instance of a kind of disturbing practice in the years, centuries to follow."
There are several things going on here. This means that simulating "blackness" on an early modern stage transforms the body into an object, a commodity that can be bought, sold, and preserved. With all this historical context in mind, for modern black actors, then, Othello "the character" will always be a racial representation as opposed to a racial identity.
This, however, is where I find Brooks to be incredibly intriguing. What if black actors performed this part as non-realist, gestural, and wholly alienating? How can this make Othello an "arguable" text? What can this unlock for us about the injustices that would be highlighted through this type of performance that aren't solely about Desdemona?
There seems to be some potential in that approach that that really is discursive and insurgent, challenging history's role in formulating and preserving "identity." Thank you, also, for bringing in "The America Play," which also challenges a lot of these issues and is asking similar questions to modern black actors who may or may not want to play Othello.
Hi Gus,
ReplyDeleteI had wanted to ask you this question in the last class, in response to both the blog post and your presentation. I understand that Brooks engages with Brecht but my point is, in terms of locating a specific mode of theater which has an ethnic basic within performance studies, conceptually how viable is it to employ a largely Euro-centric Brechtian framework? I am not suggesting any kind of a ethnic "purity" or "authenticity" but merely questioning the conceptual tool through which we analyse such performance.