A God Who Dances: Performance and Play
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances…
– Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.7.139-41 -
With his characteristic brilliance, in Jaque’s famous monologue from As You Like It, Shakespeare offers us a glimpse into how we are in this world, how we live between life and death, between those two singular events, which we are unable to ever experience, but which circumscribe our being in the world.
Is not life itself the greatest of all rituals, a stage, a performance set between the play of gravity and grace, of love and hate? I imagine God and the angels dancing, Satan and the demons too, side by side, between heaven and hell. Nietzsche once said that he could only believe in a God who could dance. I wish he were still alive to read the Gospel of Judas; there Jesus plays, laughs uncontrollably, devilishly, perhaps ritualistically; and where there is laughter, so too does one find lightness of heart and of step. Yet Jesus’ own disciples are unable to understand his movements, to play with him, to enter into his laughter, his lightness. Judas understands him, Judas is light, his star shines the brightest, as Jesus tells him.
Since early times, ritual, both religious and secular, assuming we can even draw such pure distinctions, has been a seminal part of human existence, of how we experience and relate to our world. Thus, the emergence of ‘performance’ discourse in the latter half of the 20th century as a method for understanding human ritual practices, like so much else in our epistemological repertoire, simply signalled a scholarly awareness of what had always been an integral aspect of human life. What has always been has now become what is studied and what is studied always becomes problematic and a source of contention.
Whereas in Ronald Grimes’ article, ‘Performance Theory and the Study of Ritual’, one finds an almost obsessive and troubled attempt to clarify terms, methods and theoretical stances, in Catherine Bell’s article, ‘Performance’, there is a playful, but no less troubled, attempt to dance in and around the margins of the space delimited by the performance discourse. Bell believes that as long as she moves, as long as she dances, Grimes will be unable to identify the ritual she is enacting. Yet, whatever their theoretical postures and allegiances, in the end both scholars are concerned with the same subject matter: human ritual practices. Grimes chooses to take a stand, Bell to dance.
Both scholars play the game, take up roles and wear masks. Grimes takes on the persona of a ‘serious scholar’ who voices his annoyance with the ‘irresponsible playfulness’ and ‘elusiveness’ of Bell, who herself prefers to reside on the plane of ambiguity, on the bridge above the abyss, rather than on its ends, where there is sure ground. Bell uses her prop, a long, thick sword, to cut those who stand on either end, on the terra firma circumscribing the abyss; piercing their theories, their methodologies, she dances back across and over the abyss, where she believes she is beyond their reach. She frustrates and infuriates. She is irresponsible because she refuses to take a stand, to take up ground and fight. Surely it is infuriating when you are weighed down by gravity, but your enemy can float beyond you, when she can harm you, but she herself lies beyond your reach. Yet I am reminded of book V of the Iliad where Aphrodite comes to the rescue of Aeneus, her son, and is wounded by the mortal, Greek warrior, Diomedes. Goddesses too can be wounded, they too can be pierced by mortals. Despite her light feet, despite not being bound to the actualities of the earth, to any sure ground, when Aphrodite decides to get involved in mortal matters, she too must take a stand, take up ground and fight. To fight is to risk being wounded. As Grimes shows, Bell can be pierced too, she too suffers wounds, because she too takes up ground, even if for a moment.
To some extent we have no choice, to exist is to take up ground. We are not gods. Finitude is to some extent always actualizing itself, even if banally. What Bell does is perform a playful, ritualistic dance, which she refuses to bring to an end. The spectator, Grimes, sits through hundreds of pages of this performance, as he makes a point of mentioning, but eventually tires and becomes angry. He yearns for a telos, for a culmination of sorts, for permanence, for some meaning; he demands that the movement cease so that he can circumscribe it and define its boundaries. There must be an end to all things. Bell is cautious in her irresponsibility, a term which she appropriates from Grimes, by arguing, through the movement of her dance, that being responsible requires being open to pure difference, to the waste produced by systems by the irresponsible act of systematization. Though she acknowledges her finitude, she embraces its infinite potentiality, rather than the finite and limited actualities she sees before her. Grimes does not ignore or fail to see certain circumscribed and limited potentialities before him, but his project, his ritual is concerned with a critical actualization of the infinite potentiality. Both lay claim to a responsibleness beneath the horizon of finitude.
We can learn from these complimentary ritual practices, with which both scholars mark their body of work. They embody both difference and universality. They are both rituals, acts, practices, paths established and religiously pursued. However, whereas one is fluid and playful, a dance, the other takes a stand, embraces permanence and is more meditative. One is a Sufi, a whirling Dervish, dancing his way into union with the Divine, the other a Buddhist monk meditating in pure stillness. Though it is not simply their methodologies which differ, Grimes’ being avowedly ‘critical’ and Bell’s ‘playful’, but their objectives too. One’s method indicates one’s path. Grimes systematizes with the aim of developing models and analogues, whereas Bell is suspicious of “attempts to formulate a system” (218) and seems to aim to mark the difference left within the margins of the universalizing systems formulated by others. One gets the feeling that Grimes wants to attain nirvana, whereas Bell is at least troubled by the possibility of dancing into union with the Divine and thereby ending her dance, her play. Both scholars are complimentary performers, but they must play agonistically, they must perform polemically. Their relationship must be marked by hate, by distance, if love is to take shape in the space between them: without distance there is no yearning, no desire, no attraction and hence no love. Yet, though, do systematization and free play belong together, do they in fact yearn for one another?
There is an entire world at stake here and it concerns our epistemological path; more specifically, it concerns the path of the humanities, which is itself ultimately based an avowed or inconspicuous ontology. Systematization is always a yearning for structures and for structuring and so for an ontology of presence. As Derrida understood in ‘La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines’ (L’écriture et la différence), such a yearning is a dreaming of origins and of truth, a nostalgia which takes a negative stance toward a playfulness or freeplay that refuses to take veracity as its fundamental determining and interpretative criterion. This is evident in Grimes’ stance towards Bell’s playfulness, which is not even that playful. From his comments, I imagine that someone like Grimes would be lost and infuriated by the playfulness of a Derrida or Deleuze. There is another path, one that we all embodied and embraced as children, a path offered us by Nietzsche: playfulness or freeplay. Nietzsche affirmed playfulness and did not look towards constructing truth or a system within which an end could be sought and had, through which the play could locate a finale. For Nietzsche, the performance, the ritual play was ongoing and so could never be circumscribed and delimited. In a note dated some time between 1883 and 1885, he wrote: “to impose upon becoming the character of being – that is the supreme will to power” (Will to Power, 617). As Derrida writes in ‘La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines’:
There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of sign,
of freeplay. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering, a truth or
an origin which is free from freeplay and from the order of the sign, and
lives like an exile the necessity of interpretation. The other, which is no
longer turned toward the origin, affirms freeplay and tries to pass beyond
man and humanism, the name man being the name of that being who,
throughout the history of metaphysics or of ontotheology – in other words,
through the history of all of his history – has dreamed of full presence, the
reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of the game. The second
interpretation of interpretation, to which Nietzsche showed us the way, does
not seek in ethnography, as Levi-Strauss wished, the “inspiration of a new
humanism” (again from the “Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss”) (427).
Systematization is more comfortable, more secure, it promises to fill a lack within us, to answer the call of a primordial yearning for presence, for permanence and certainty; but it violates our being, our being simultaneously infinite potentiality and finite actuality. To embrace freeplay and affirm its joyous discomfort is a profoundly difficult task, but one that offers infinite riches and pleasures, unimaginable infinitudes of open pathways on which to think and feel. We can either embrace this opening or close ourselves to the world and so too to ourselves, to our being. As Derrida puts it:
As a turning toward the presence, lost or impossible, of the absent origin,
this structuralist thematic of broken immediateness is thus the sad, negative,
nostalgic, guilty, Rousseauist facet of the thinking of freeplay of which the
Nietzschean affirmation-the joyous affirmation of the freeplay of the world
and without truth, without origin, offered to an active interpretation-would be
the other side. This affirmation then determines the non-center otherwise than
as loss of the center. And it plays the game without security. For there is a sure
freeplay: that which is limited to the substitution of given and existing, present,
pieces. In absolute chance, affirmation also surrenders itself to genetic
indetermination, to the seminal adventure of the trace (l’aventure ‘séminale’ de
la trace) (427).
We can either languish in a ‘negative nostalgia’ or set out on “the seminal adventure of the trace.” We can either choose to dance or to stand still.
Assuming that rapture is nature’s play with man,
the Dionysian artist’s creative activity is the play with rapture.
– Nietzsche -
Hi Babak,
Your post this week was extremely literary and I found myself more immersed in reading it as a narrative rather than looking for any particular points of argument! I definitely agree that Bell and Grimes’ respective points of view seem like a ritual themselves, with Bell dancing and leaping around the stations of theory and method, while Grimes looks on from his tower of structure and system. Unfortunately as Grimes describes, Bell’s efforts to evade static definition become her own ambiguous and even circular theory.
I definitely agree with your statement that: “Systematization is more comfortable, more secure, it promises to fill a lack within us, to answer the call of a primordial yearning for presence, for permanence and certainty; but it violates our being, our being simultaneously infinite potentiality and finite actuality.” Although Bell is supposedly distrustful of “attempts to formulate a system” (218) why is it that formal definition and structuring is something that seems to come so naturally to us? Is it instinctive for us to attempt to order all phenomena before our eyes? It would seem more intuitive that our instincts incline towards the playful, the “freeplay” that Nietzsche speaks of. Yet, as Grimes and Bell both mention, the majority of analysis of ritual turns out to be theorizing, the creation of more and more systems that only seem to delimit and establish boundaries around the phenomena they seek to explain.
I think that the problem of systemizing can be seen as stemming from the need to arrive at a “goal” of some sort. Using the analogy you brought up employing various mystical figures, I would say that the view Grimes adopts is illustrative of a goal-oriented mystic whereas the view of someone like Bell (at least in the light that you describe her) portrays that of the medium/path-centered mystic. An example I would use would be a comparison between Rumi and Rabia al-Adawiyya. Rabia on one hand, is frequently quoted as beseeching God to bestow His presence, to the point that she often demands Him to do so in a particular moment. She famously dismisses Paradise and Hell as meaningless to her, stating that she only desires “His face.” In contrast to this view centered solely on “arriving” at God/theReal/theTruth, Rumi often speaks of the “sweetness” of the journey towards God, regardless of how torturous and painful the path of yearning may be. A particular quote of his that illustrates this is: “Even to drink your poison is so sweet”, which highlights a powerful dedication and devotion to the path of longing, rather than solely focusing on the final destination. Just some thoughts!
- Adam
Babak,
I really enjoyed your analysis of the dialogue taking place between Bell and Grimes. It was an interesting analogy to speak of Bell as ‘dancing’ and Grimes as taking a ‘fighting stance’. However, I only agree with your assessment of them in part. I definitely agree in your analysis of Grimes as attempting to take a firm stand and looking to make rigid definitions and attempting to group several phenomena together, and that he is in a sense making a ‘clear attack’.
You write a comparison between Bell and Athena, stating that Bell reminds you of the elusive goddess who does not seem to be able to be wounded. Similar to Grimes, I, also, found Bell’s arguments very elusive and strategic. Where I disagree with you though is in your notion that she does not seek an end. I am not convinced of this. From my perspective, I see a different set of divergences separating these scholars. In Grimes’ paper, “one finds an almost obsessive and troubled attempt to clarify terms, methods and theoretical stances”. Bell, on the other hand, though purposely elusive, is simply critical, and I did not find her particularly willing to give alternatives. Perhaps, one might term this ‘playful’, but I would not have read her paper as such. Moreover, I didn’t see anything in her paper which leads me to believe that in another context of writing that she would reject any theory at all. Rather, I believe that she, similar to Grimes, does have her own telos (or ‘end’) in sight; however, where Grimes seeks to uphold the relevance of Performance Theory, she seeks to destroy it. Indeed, this critical approach of hers is her end.
Cheers,
Andrew
Andrew, thanks for your comment. Actually, I spoke of Aphrodite, this is important, because Athena is never playful and she would never get wounded in battle, the cosmic order would not allow this, at least in Greek cosmology.
Now, about your comment on my reading of Bell. Nowhere do I see her as ‘seeking to destroy performance theory’. She has much praise for it and makes full use of it actually, even late into her article. Up until the 3rd last page of her article, she praises and reveals the insights offered us in using performance theory to read ritualistic practices. However, it is on page 218 that she writes: “In the end, a performance approach does not USUALLY offer a DIFINITIVE interpretation of a set of ritual actions.” She then goes on to problematize, to ‘dance around’ and point at the excesses of any systematized reading or such phenomena. She says, for example, that “attempts to formulate a system run into counterexamples and regional differences very quickly” (218). Even if you read her last paragraph she is problematizing the notion of performance theory as offering a universalistic and complete answer.
How is this an ‘end’ or ‘telos’? Teleology always finds its culmination, it doesn’t always move, dance, problematize and criticize. I don’t see how problematizing something is an ‘end’, it is always a process, a movement, that’s the whole point. Until the end, she claims that there is no one single end, a single unifying telos which explains everything, which leaves no residue of meaning, in this case with respect to ritual practices. It is actually this very thing that frustrates Grimes. See page 131 of his article, where he actually refers to page 218 of Bell’s article, and thinks that his statement that “essentialism and universalism are temptations of every theorist and they plague every theory” is an objection to Bell. He’s very sloppy here, I think. Bell doesn’t deny this, but argues and shows in her method that it is this very tendency or temptation that should move us to be playful or to remain open to difference, to the residue of meaning left over by systematization.
Best,
Babak
Adam,
I like your reading of the different mystical paths, very beautiful! Rumi’s path, his heart, his voice, his dance, is beautiful, isn’t it? I wonder though, since both would, in the end, arrive at some end, some telos or culmination, wouldn’t they? Can you imagine a being in constant flux, a being that always dances, until it can dance no longer, until its finitude forcibly ‘ends’? Such an end would be very different, an end forced upon one – what would such an end signify for a project that demands no end? I struggle with these questions.
Babak
Calvin once said something to the effect that God looks upon human actions the way an audience member looks upon actors in a play. It’s sort of an aesthetic view on human morality rather than a purely punitive one that is fascinating. One’s life, therefore is assessed on the quality of the “performance” rather than on the quantity of good works done.
Anyway, your article reminded me of that. Thanks for a very beautiful piece.
Saad
Hi Saad,
Well, I’m somewhat more attracted to the performance reading of the divine gaze, but I would reject any ‘moral’ reading of anything in itself and for the judgment or ‘assessment’ by a pure one of an impure one to which it leads. Although I do see this logic of judgment, of the pure judging the impure as the only one that makes much sense in its stance.
Interestingly, in many languages, including Greek, the words for ‘good’ and ‘evil’ originally meant ‘handsome’ or ‘fine’ and ‘ugly’, denoting purely aesthetic appraisals. Hence the association still of an ugly outside with an ugly inside, the same logic applying to the conception of goodness.
Babak