Performance and Performers

It takes a Cliffort Geertz to introduce the topic of a Balinese cockfight by first inviting the reader to run along with him and his wife, in "The Raid", to the fight arena, before stating that two birds "hacking each other to pieces" serves a similar function to the community as has a production of Macbeth in the Anglo-American society. Although Geertz approach has been subject to criticism - some of which was included in this week's readings - anthropologists seem to agree that rituals, from theatre to cockfights, as social enactments of the sentiments of members of a community; whether viewed as an "ensemble of texts" (Geertz), the practiced unity of material conditions and ideology (Rosberry), a "busy intersection" of several social processes (Rosaldo), or as a "social drama" (Turner).

Here, I would like to discuss the views espoused by Turner. His notion is, fundamentally speaking, that "a social drama first manifests itself as a breach of a norm, the infraction of a rule of morality, law, custom or etiquette in some public arena (...) Once visible, it can hardly be revoked" (pp. 69-70). Although Turner offers several examples, it is easy to evoke other instances where the public display of norms and morals have been germane to a public occurrence: think of the Eichmann trials, or - to give some recognition to Geertz's textual approach - the erection of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, or the Vietnam War memorial in Washington D.C.

An important point for Turner is to distinguish between social dramas and theatre. Or, rather, he seeks to compare and contrast the two, accepting that they share fundamental characteristics, though differ in important ways. A staged drama is organized, planned, and clearly separates between the performers and the onlookers. A "social drama", on the other hand, according to Turner, is impossible to plan and coordinate, and one cannot plan the duration of the spectacle. As he states, a social drama "represents a perpetual challenge to all aspirations to perfection in social and political organization" (p. 70). Also, the termination of one drama often heralds the beginning of another. No director, no playbill, and no fixed list of characters.

With such substantial differences, what is there really left that is similar? Turner resorts to Aristotle's general classification of Drama, or rather, tragedy, which is a display of an action structure that is complete, whole, and of a certain magnitude, having a beginning, middle and an end (with the tragic loss of Aristotle's work on comedy, the few notes on the comic form scattered in the "Poetics" does not violate this particularly abstract description of drama). Aristotle, of course, added several other qualifications to Tragedy, but - probably because they are more specific - Turner does not draw upon those. We are therefore left with the following unity between social and staged dramas: they are coherent action structures that serve as some form of normative meta-analysis of the society from which it springs, and for which the spectacle is intended.

Personally, there is one theorist I miss in Turner's account: M. M. Bakhtin. In his great work, "Rebelais and His World", the latter explicitly engages with the Aristotelian characterization of Drama, and problematizes the theatrical orthodoxy that audience and thespians execute different roles in the performance. As according to Bakhtin, official culture involves hierarchies, and specialized roles. For instance, the religious spectacle of Christian mass has a particular organization, so that priests exclusively deliver messages according to established belief, whereas the congregation only incidentally take direct part in the ceremony in the form of song and prayer. In other words, there is performance, and there is role division in terms of performance and attendance.

It all sounds similar to Turners "social dramas". However, Bakhtin tries to show that official culture has always been challenged from below, as it were, by popular culture. Since Bakhtin focuses on the Middle Ages, pop culture is not so much a system of mass produced symbolic merchandise, but festivals, carnivals, and other expressions of communal emotional effort. Still sounds like Turners "social dramas"? Well, Bakhtin goes on to describe the carnivalesque as a public spectacle characterized by the rejection of formalized organization, specialized roles, and - most importantly - the inseparable nature of performers and audience. In the carnival, the the audience is the one to perform. Incidentally, this ritual form is inherently comic, according to Bakhtin

I think an important nuance between different segments of rituals by neglecting this difference. To be sure, popular culture, as described by Bakhtin, is fundamentally emotional, and unpredictable. If Turner wants to bring attention to the unity between different forms of public performances and social events of political and ideological nature, why not start from popular culture instead of the carefully orchestrated events we find in the theatrical cannon?

-- Alexander