The politics, science, and art of receptivity

Abstract

With so much attention on the issue of voice in democratic theory, the inverse question of how people come to listen remains a marginal one. Recent scholarship in affect and neuroscience reveals that cognitive and verbal strategies, while privileged in democratic politics, are often insufficient to cultivate the receptivity that constitutes the most basic premise of democratic encounters. This article draws on this scholarship and a recent case of forum theatre to examine the conditions of receptivity and responsiveness, and identify specific strategies that foster such conditions. It argues that the forms of encounter most effective in cultivating receptivity are those that move us via affective intensity within pointedly mediated contexts. It is this constellation of strategies—this strange marriage of immersion and mediation—that enabled this performance to surface latent memory, affect and bias, unsettle entrenched patterns of thought and behaviour, and provide the conditions for revisability. This case makes clear that to lie beyond the domain of cognitive and verbal processes is not to lie beyond potential intervention, and offers insight to how such receptivity might be achieved in political processes more broadly.

• receptivity
• democracy
• neuroscience
• affect
• performance

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Barbara Arneil, Mark Warren, Renisa Mawani, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments on this article.

Notes

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2 Mark Warren, ‘What Should We Expect from More Democracy? Radically Democratic Responses to Politics’, Political Theory 24, no. 2 (May 1996): 241–70.

3 Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy: Listening, Conflict and Citizenship (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Gayatri Spivak, ‘Translator's Preface and Afterword to Mahasweta Devi, “Imaginary Maps”’, in The Spivak Reader, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean (New York: Routledge, 1996), 267–8; and Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (New York: Routledge, 2000).

4 Romand Coles, ‘Liberty, Equality, Receptive Generosity: Neo-Nietzschean Reflections on the Ethics and Politics of Coalition’, APSR 90, no. 2 (June 1996): 375–88; Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 308; and Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 131.

5 Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

6 Peter Sloterdijk, Neither Sun nor Death (New York: Semiotext(e), 2011).

7 See, for example, Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); William Connolly, Why I am Not a Securalist (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); William Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Romand Coles, ‘Moving Democracy: Industrial Areas Foundation Social Movements and the Political Arts of Listening, Traveling, and Tabling’, Political Theory 32, no. 5 (October 2004): 678–705; John Protevi, Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Romand Coles, ‘The Neuropolitical Habitus of Resonant Receptive Democracy’, Ethics and Global Politics 4, no. 4 (2011): 273–93; Aletta Norval, ‘Democracy, Pluralization and Voice’, Ethics and Global Politics 2, no. 4 (December 2009): 297–320; Nikolas Kompridis, ‘Receptivity, Possibility and Democratic Politics’, Ethics and Global Politics 4, no. 4 (December 2011): 255–72; Jennifer Nedelsky, ‘Receptivity and Judgment’, Ethics and Global Politics 4, no. 4 (December 2011): 231–54; Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (New York: Verso, 2009); Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); and Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift, Arts of the Political: New Openings for the Left (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).

8 Connolly, Neuropolitics, 94; Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 26–33; and Tor Nørrestranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, trans. Jonathan Sydenham (New York: Viking, 1998).

9 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004), 8.

10 Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 30; and Patricia Ticineto Clough, ‘Introduction’, in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. Patricia Ticineto Clough with Jean Halley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 2.

11 Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Putnam, 1994); Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens; Allan N. Schore, Affect Regulation and Disorders of the Self (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003); Schore, Affect Regulation and the Repair; and Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, 28.

12 Katherine Nelson, Language in Cognitive Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind (New York: Guilford Press, 1999); Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998); Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment (New York: Norton, 2000); Allan N. Schore, ‘Dysregulation of the Right Brain: Fundamental Mechanism of Traumatic Attachment and the Psychopathogenesis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 36, no. 1 (2002): 9; and Schore, Affect Regulation and the Repair.

13 Joseph E. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain; Stephen W. Porges, ‘Neuroception: A Subconscious System for Detecting Threat and Safety’, Zero to Three 24, no. 5 (2004): 9–24; and Stephen W. Porges, ‘Reciprocal Influences Between Body and Brain in the Perception and Expression of Affect: A Polyvagal Perspective’, in The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development, and Clinical Practice, ed. Diana Fosha, Daniel Siegel, and Marion Solomon (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 27–54.

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16 Davide Panagia, The Political Life of Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 44.

17 Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers; Allan N. Schore, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self; Cynthia F. Berroll, ‘Neuroscience Meets Dance/Movement Therapy: Mirror Neurons, The Therapeutic Process and Empathy’, The Arts in Psychotherapy 33, no. 4 (2006): 302–15; and Kalila B. Homann, ‘Embodied Concepts of Neurobiology in Dance/Movement Therapy Practice’, American Journal of Dance Therapy 32 (2010): 80–99.

18 Kalila B. Homann, ‘Embodied Concepts of Neurobiology in Dance/Movement Therapy Practice’, 87; Wendy Wyman-McGinty, ‘Growing a Mind: The Evolution of Thought Out of Bodily Experience’, Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture 72 (2005): 267–79; Katya Bloom, The Embodied Self: Movement and Psychoanalysis (London: Karnac, 2006); Philip Bromberg, Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys (Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 2006); Daniel Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (New York: Random House, 2010), 160; and Rothschild, The Body Remembers.

19 Siegel, Mindsight.

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21 Lawrence W. Barsalou et al., ‘Social Embodiment’, in The Psychology of Learning and Motivation Vol. 43, ed. Brian Ross (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2003), 43–92.

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23 Alvaro Pascual-Leone et al., ‘Modulation of Muscle Responses Evoked by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation During the Acquisition of New Fine Motor Skills’, Journal of Neurophysiology 74 (1995): 1037–45; and Jeanick Brisswater, Maya Collardeau, and René Arcelin, ‘Effects of Acute Exercise Characteristics on Cognitive Performance’, Sports Medicine 32 (2002): 555–66.

24 David Diamond, After Homelessness … Artistic Director's Final Report (Vancouver, BC: Headlines Theatre, 2010), 6–7.

25 Diamond, After Homelessness …, 14.

26 Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Angelia Means, ‘Narrative Argumentation: Arguing with Natives’, Constellations 9, no. 2 (June 2002): 221–45.

27 Gail Franklin, personal interview, Vancouver, BC, December 9, 2009; Sue Noga (BC Regional Steering Committee on Mental Health), personal interview, Vancouver, BC, April 21, 2010; Kerry Jang (City Council), personal interview, Vancouver, BC, March 24, 2010; and Mark Smith (RainCity Housing), personal interview, Vancouver, BC, April 13, 2010.

28 Diamond, After Homelessness …, 87; and Audience letters, quoted in Diamond, After Homelessness …, 99–106.

29 Dominic Flanagan (BC Housing), personal interview, Vancouver, BC, March 25, 2010; and Mark Smith, personal interview, Vancouver, BC, April 13, 2010.

30 David Craig, ‘Introduction’, in Marxists on Literature, ed. Daniel Craig (Baltimore: Penguin, 1975), 22.

31 Augusto Boal, The Rainbow of Desire, trans. Adrian Jackson (London: Routledge, 1995), 19.

32 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Gertrude E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), §115.

33 Justine Goulet, personal interview, Surrey, BC, December 14, 2009.

34 Julie Salverson, ‘Performing Emergency: ?Witnessing, Popular Theatre, and The Lie of the Literal’, Theatre Topics 6, no. 2 (1996): 184, 188; and Boal, The Rainbow of Desire, 39.

35 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1996), 2; Mary Beth Tierney-Tello, ‘Testimony, Ethics, and the Aesthetic in Diamela Eltit’, PMLA 114, no. 1 (January 1999): 84; and Linda Park-Fuller, ‘Performing Absence: The Staged Personal Narrative as Testimony’, Text and Performance Quarterly 20, no. 1 (January 2000): 32.

36 Françoise Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 4; and Salverson, ‘Performing Emergency’, 186.

37 Boal, The Rainbow of Desire, 45; and Jan Cohen-Cruz, ‘Redefining the Private: From Personal Storytelling to Political Act’, in A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics, ed. Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mary Schutzman (New York: Routledge, 2006), 110.

38 Salverson, ‘Performing Emergency’.

39 Boal, The Rainbow of Desire, 43.

40 Ibid., 25.

41 Sue Jennings et al., The Handbook of Dramatherapy (New York: Routledge, 1994), 22.

42 Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. Charles A. McBride and Maria Odilia Leal (New York: Urizen Books, 1979), 132; and Marie-Claire Picher, ‘Democratic Process and the Theater of the Oppressed’, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 116 (Winter 2007): 82.

43 Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist’, Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1988): 527.

44 D. Soyini Madison, ‘Performance, Personal Narratives, and the Politics of Possibility’, in The Future of Performance Studies: Visions and Revisions, ed. Sheron J. Dailey (Annandale, VA: National Communication Association, 1999), 280; and Geraldine Pratt and Caleb Johnston, ‘Turning Theatre into Law, and Other Spaces of Politics’, Cultural Geographies 14 (2007): 108.

45 Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Ethno-Techno: Writings of Performance, Activism and Pedagogy (New York: Routledge, 2005), 24.

46 Salverson, ‘Performing Emergency’, 186.

47 Ibid., 186; and Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993), 51.

48 Park-Fuller, ‘Performing Absence’, 31; and Robert Landy, Drama Therapy: Concepts and Practices (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1986), 100.

49 Elin Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre (London: Routledge, 1997), ix; Julie Salverson, ‘Transgressive Storytelling or an Aesthetic of Injury: Performance, Pedagogy and Ethics’, Theatre Research in Canada 20, no. 1 (Spring 1999), http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/TRIC/article/view/7096/8155 (accessed November 30, 2011); and Park-Fuller, ‘Performing Absence’, 28.

50 Diana Taylor, ‘Border Watching’, in The Ends of Performance, ed. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 183.

51 Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, 141; Augusto Boal, Games for Actors and Non-Actors, 2nd ed., trans. Adrian Jackson (London: Routledge, 2002), 241; Eugenio Barba, The Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1995), 95; Deborah Mutnick, ‘Critical Interventions: The Meaning of Praxis’, in A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics, ed. Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mary Schutzman (New York: Routledge, 2006), 43; Roxana Waterson, ‘Testimony, Trauma, and Performance: Some Examples from Southeast Asian Theatre’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 41 (2010): 514; and Diamond, After Homelessness …, 38.

52 Bennett, Empathic Vision, 11.

53 Rey Chow, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 137.

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56 Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982); Richard Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); and Jon McKenzie, ‘Genre Trouble: (The) Butler Did It’, in The Ends of Performance, ed. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 218.

57 Iris Marion Young, ‘Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy’, in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 126.

58 Baz Kershaw, ‘Performance, Community, Culture’, in The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance, ed. Lizbeth Goodman with Jane de Gay (London: Routledge, 2000), 139, original emphasis.

59 Connolly, Neuropolitics, 22–48.

60 Connolly, Neuropolitics, 35.

61 Coles, ‘The Neuropolitical Habitus of Resonant’, 276.

62 Coles, ‘The Neuropolitical Habitus of Resonant’, 281.

63 Jimmy Carter, Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a President (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1995).

64 Coles, ‘Moving Democracy’.

65 Connolly, Neuropolitics, 112.

* Single Resident Occupancy buildings (SROs) are a form of low-income housing where suites may hold no more than one, at most two, tenants often in one-room dwellings. They are a common first—and transitional—home for those coming off the streets, and often a site of substandard conditions.