Beyond Cynicism: The Sceptical Imperative and (Future) Contemporary Performance

Abstract

‘Beyond Cynicism’ sets out to question the radical, or political, potential of the postmodernist philosophies which have underscored a significant strand of experimental performance over the last four decades. Rather than critiquing the postmodern from a Marxist or materialist perspective, the article returns to the self-deconstructive movement of Derrida to assess whether the capacity for political action and radical change is inherent within postmodernism itself.

The article argues that the sceptical imperative, which is ‘fundamental’ to Derridean thought, contains the key to a constant self-reflexivity which prevents any ‘totality’ of conclusion being established. The logical consequence of this is that the ‘conclusions’ of the early postmodernists cannot be merely accepted by contemporary performance makers but must be rigorously and continually challenged in order to maintain the potential for political action and radical change.

On the basis of this argument the article is able to make key distinctions between sceptical and cynical postmodern performance. It proposes that where Forced Entertainment's Showtime (1996) consistently questions its own scepticism by foregrounding the ghosts of the mimesis it simultaneously deconstructs, work which may have comparable ‘motifs’, such as Reckless Sleeper's Spanish Train (2006), presents only the foregone conclusions of the postmodern exercise, thus rejecting self-reflexivity to establish a new ‘totality’ which mirrors the ‘incommensurable narrative play’ defined by Lyotard.

The article concludes by examining the process and politics of ‘making’ self-reflexive performance, through an analysis of the author's own production of Roses & Morphine (2005). This analysis highlights the importance of sustaining paradox in the making process, whereby the contradictions, which lie at the heart of the maker's own rhetorical operations, are exposed to ensure that conclusions are deconstructed even as they are reached.

Notes

Terry Eagleton, After Theory (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 2.

Ibid., pp. 7–8.

Christopher Norris, Deconstruction and the ‘Unfinished Project of Modernity’ (London: Athlone Press, 2000), p. 19.

Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. by Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p. xi.

Alan Bass, ‘Translator's Introduction’, in Writing and Difference, by Jacques Derrida, trans. by Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 1978), p. xvi.

Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), pp. 97–98.

See in particular Not Even a Game Anymore: The Theatre of Forced Entertainment, ed. by Judith Helmer and Florian Malzacher (Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2004), and Peggy Phelan's foreword ‘Performing Questions, Producing Witnesses’, in Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment, by Tim Etchells (London: Routledge, 1999).

Production seen at the Library Theatre, Sheffield, UK on 26 November 1996; observations and extracts in this article also taken from the company's video documentation and unpublished performance text.

Forced Entertainment, Showtime (unpublished text), p. 4.

Showtime, p. 11. Robin Arthur's answers are improvised; those above are taken from the video documentation produced by the company.

Ibid., p. 10.

Ibid., p. 12.

Baz Kershaw, ‘Performance Studies and Po-chang's Ox: Steps to a Paradoxology of Performance’, New Theatre Quarterly, 22.1 (February 2006), 30–53 (p. 32).

Companies which might be said to work within a similar aesthetic framework include Desperate Optimists, Blast Theory, Reckless Sleepers, Third Angel, Uninvited Guests and Imitating the Dog.

Quotations taken from the company's publicity document for The Last Supper.

Attended at the Green Room, Manchester, UK, 17 November 2006.

In promotional material for The Last Supper (2004) the company writes that two of the key starting points were the pack of cards of the 52 most wanted criminals distributed to the US troops in Iraq, and the concept of the death sentence and continuing existence of capital punishment. In Nord Ost After Dubrovka (2007) the performance installation draws on the Moscow theatre siege carried out by Chechen rebels in 2002.

All textual quotations are taken from the unpublished script of Spanish Train by Reckless Sleepers.

The Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, UK on 14 October 2006.

Culler, On Deconstruction, p. 86.

Roses & Morphine was Point Blank Theatre's fourth production and was written and directed by Liz Tomlin. It was first performed at New Greenham Arts Centre on 20 July 2005 and toured across the UK from July to November of that year. The performance text of the piece is published in Point Blank, ed. by Liz Tomlin (Bristol: Intellect, 2007), pp. 73–98. Point Blank have been making work in Sheffield, UK since 1999 under the co-artistic directorship of Liz Tomlin and Steve Jackson. Previous productions include Dead Causes (2000), Nothing to Declare (2002) and Operation Wonderland (2004).

Philip Auslander, Presence and Resistance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 102.

Lynndie England was the American GI who featured in the 2005 Abu Ghraib scandal, posing for photographs with an Iraqi prisoner attached to the end of a dog lead.

Point Blank Performance Texts and Critical Essays, ed. by Liz Tomlin (Bristol: Intellect, 2007), pp. 89–90.

Nicola King, Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), p. 29.

See King, Memory, Narrative, Identity, pp. 16–24.

See Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and the Jews, trans. by Andreas Michel and Mark S. Roberts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), p. 16.