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tNQUtRY
Embadiment
and
lts
Challenges
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Foundational
in
this perspective
is
the
belief
in the
explanatory
power
of
the life/drama
analogy.
Third,
scholars
have operated
from
the
assumption
that
performance
itself
is a
way
of
knowing.
This
claim,
axiomatic
for
per-
formers,
rests
upon
a
faith
in
embodiment,
in
the power
of giving
voice
and
physicality
to
words,
in
the
body
as
a sire
of
knowl-
edge.
It
is
this
lasr
srance
that
I
hope
to
address
in
this
chapter, for
it insists
upon
a
working
artist
who
engages
in
aesthetic
performances
as
a methodological starting
place.
It finds
its
epistemological
and
onto-
logical
heart
in
performers
enacting
their
own
or
others
words
on
stage.
In
short,
performative
inquiry,
from
this
perspective,
is
an
embodied
practice.
I
proceed
by
discussing
the narure
ofper-
formance
as
an
embodied
practice.
In
doing
so,
I
trace
how embodiment
entails
a
know-
ing,
participarory,
empathic,
and political
body.
Next,
I
turn
to
three
representative
forms
(literature
in performance,
perfor-
mance
ethnography,
and
autobiographical
performance)
to
show
a ange
of
embodied
inquiry
and
to point
toward
their
respective
methodological
demands.
Finally,
I
identify
several
challenges
that
performers
confront
when calling upon embodiment
as
a
method-
ological
tool.
In parricular,
I
will
look
at the
presenting,
lying,
assuming,
and
interven-
ing
body.
t Performance
a.s
Embodied
Practice
To
embody
a
self
on
stage,
the performer
must
develop
a
flexible
and
responsive
body,
a
body
ready
to
function
as
a
methodological
tool.
Just
as mathematicians
increase
their
methodological
competence
as
they
move
from
simple
arithmetic
to
the
highest
forms
of
mathematical
calculation,
performers
expand
their procedural
repertoire
as
they
develop
as artists.
As
the performers
skills
increase,
they
gain
greater
capacity
in
using
the
body
as
an
exploratory
instrument that
probes
and ponders
what
it
encounters.
tJlith
training,
the
performer s
instru-
ment
becomes
increasingly
attuned
and
generates
more
productive
insights.
Over
time,
the
performer
learns
to
trust
what
the
body
teaches.
It
is
useful
to
remember,
however,
that
not
all
bodies
move
through
the
world
in
a
similar
manner.
Some
bodies
possess
limited
agility,
some
not;
some
live
in
constant
pain,
some
not;
some
feel
disas-
sociated
from
a
sense
of self,
some
not;
some
bodies
are labeled
disabled,
some
not.
Regardless
of
the performer s
body,
embod-
ied practice
calls
upon
the performer
to
employ
a
knowing,
participatory,
empathic,
and
political
body.
Each
of
these
bodies
is
necessarily
implicated
in
any
performative
act
and,
hence,
is
fundamental
to performa-
tive
inquiry.
The
performer s
knowing
body
relies
upon
the physical
and
vocal
behaviors
brought
forth
in rehearsal
and
public
pre-
sentation.
The
performer
listens
to
what
the
body
is
saying
and,
based
upon
what
the
body
has
come
to
know,
makes
judgments
about
performance
choices.
More
specifi-
cally,
it
involves
a
process
of
selecting
what
text
to
stage,
playing
with
possible
vocal
and physical
behaviors,
testing
the
various
possibilities
against
the
givens
in
the
text,
choosing
among
the
viable
options
for
the
best
artistic
choice,
repeating
each
choice
so
that
it
becomes
fine
tuned
for
performance,
and presenting the performance before
an
audience (Pelias,
1999).
At
each
step
in
the
process,
the
performer
relies
upon
the
body
as
a location
of
knowledge.
Performers
are
always
trying
to
separate
the good
from
the
bad,
the
magical
from
the
mundane.
The
knowing
body
serves
to
negotiate
the
multiplicity
of
options
a per-
former
faces.
It
helps
the performer
decide
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what
seems
right.
It tells the
performer
what
it knows
about
what
is
being
said and
how
it
is
being
said.
Its
telling
comes
for-
ward
cognitively,
providing the
performer
with
a clear
understanding
of why
a
partic-
ular
decision
might
be
right.
In
such
cases,
the
performer
can
articulate
the
reasons
for
a
given
choice.
The body's
telling
also
comes
forward
affectively,
giving the
per-
former
emotional
knowledge,
offering
a
sense
of
the
attitudes,
sentiments,
and
pas-
sions
of what
is being
performed.
And its
telling
comes
forward intuitively, initiating
a
felt
but
ineffable
sense
of what
appears
true.
The
knowing
body, then,
finds
its
power
in
the cognitive,
affective,
and
intu-
itive
coming
together
to
form a
sense
of
what
it
has
to say.
The
knowing
body
gains
support
from
the
empathic
body.
On the
most
fundamen-
tal
level,
the
empathic
body
recognizes
points of
view
other than
its own.
It under-
stands
that
multiple
perspectives
always
exist.
More
importantly,
the
empathic
body
has
the capacity
to
understand
and
share
in
the
feelings
of
others,
to take
on
another
sen-
sibil
.
This
methodological
skill
helps situ-
ate
performers
to create
characters'
including
their
own
character
in
an
autobiographical
text.
The empathic task,
to
use
Stanislavski's
(1,952)
familiar
terms,
demands
that
the
per-
former take
into
account
the
given circum-
stances
of
a
character
and
employ
the
magic
if : If
I
were
in that
situation,
what
would
I do
and
feel?
In this
construction,
performers
project themselves
into
the
life
circumstances
of
others
and
use
themselves
to
determine
the
nature
of
the
experience.
Alternatively,
as
Parrella
(1'971)
first
pointed
out,
performers
may attempt
to
become
others, adopting
the
characteristics
of
others
as
their
own.
The
question here
is not
how
the
performer
might
feel in a
certain
situa-
tion
but
how
the
other
might
feel.
This
process
of taking
on
others,
of
letting
one's
own
body
be
open
to
others,
provides
performers an
entry,
albeit
always
incom-
plete, into others'
life
worlds.
The empathic
body,
because of
its ability
and
willingness
to
coalesce
with
others,
is
essential
to
embodi-
ment and to
performance
as a
method.
The
participatory body
learns by
doing.
The
performer's task
is
located
in
action.
By
doing
the actions
called
forth
by
a
given
role,
the
performer
comes
to a sense of what
those
actions
entail.
As
suggested
above,
the
performer
tries on
various
actions before
settling
into the
actions
that
seem
right.
It
is,
in part,
the
repetition
of
those
selected
actions
that
is
the
most telling
for the
per-
former.
Living
with
specific
actions
over
an extended
period
of
time
allows
the
per-
former's
body
to
make those
actions
the
performer's own.
This may
require
perform-
ers
to
reach well
beyond
their
typical
ways
of
being
in the world,
and
as they
reach
out,
they
come
to understand
what
it may be
like
to be
another
body.
Performative
inquiry
cannot
be
accomplished
from
an observa-
tional
stance;
it
demands
participation.
It
asks
performers
to
become
others,
to com-
mit to
others'
ways
of
being.
Performers,
of
course,
seldom
forget that
they
are
perform-
ers.
Keeping
in touch
with
their
performing
selves
allows
them
to
do the
work
they
must do on
stage.
Yet
part
of
the
performers'
power
is
the
ability,
to use'Wilshire's
(1982)
helpful
phrasing,
to
stand
in for
others.
Standing
in, as Conquergood
(1'995)
suggests,
may
be
viewed
as
an act
of
mime-
sis
(faking),
poiesis
(making),
or
kinesis
(breaking
and
remaking).
lhether
per-
formers
see
themselves
as
participating
in
order
to
replicate,
construct,
or
provide
alternatives
to
current
constructions,
their
task
remains constant:
They are
to
perform
actions
that
are available
for
others
and
for
themselves
to
read.
And,
in the doing'
they
come
to
know
how
embodiment
reifies,
insinuates,
destabilizes,
interrogates,
and
alters
their
own
and others'
ways
of
seeing
the
world.
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Conquergood's
scheme
is a
reminder
that
in
^ny
act
of
embodiment
there
is
always
a
political
body.
All
performance
is
ideologically
laden.
Performers'
bodies
are
not neutral.
They
carry,
among other
mark-
ers,
their
gender,
sexuality,
ableness,
class,
race,
and
ethnicity
with
them.
They
signal
cultural
biases-beauty
and
blond
hair,
handsome
and
tan,
jolly
and
round,
and
so
on.
Such
claims
imply
that
the
performer's
body
is
always
a
contested
site'
Efforts
at
color-blind
casting,
for
example'
only
demonstrate
that
directors
can
attempt
to
erase issues
of
race
but
cannot
eliminate
how
audiences
might
interpret
what
they
see.
The
identities
that
are
put
on stage
come
with
and
without
cultural
endorse-
ment.
Performers
who
are
interested
in
interventionist
work
find
their
political
bodies
a
rich
methodological
source
for
exploration
and
advocacY.
It would
be
misleading,
however,
to
imply
that
any
body
could
come
on
stage
without
being
a body
of
advocacy.
Bodily
presence
reifies
or argues
against
a
way
of being.
Questions
of
what
bodies
have
access
to
the stage,
what
bodies
are
privi-
leged,
and
what
bodies
are
used
for what
ends
swirl
around
every
performance'
Such
questions
may
remain
implicit,
but
increas-
ingly,
such
issues
have
become
explicit,
sometimes
in textual
form
and
sometimes
in
staging.
Dolan's
(1996)
desire
to
use
per-
formance
for
activist
work
comes'
in
part'
from
its
potential
to display
the
connect-
edness
of
bodies
to
themselves
and
each
other,
the
demonstration
of
bodies
in
rela-
tions
that
are
clearly
political,
deeply
marked
with
power
and
with
danger
(p.12). The
political
body
recognizes
how
power
functions,
dares
to
explore
and
expose
it,
and welcomes the
opportunity to
subvert
it
in the
name
of
social
justice.
Embodiment,
then'
is
an
intensely
sensu-
ous
way of
knowing
(Conquergood,
t99t,
p. 1S0).
The
experiencing
body,
situated
in
culture,
is
its
methodological
center.
Unlike
traditional
scholarship
where
the
body
seems
to
slip
away,
performers
generate
and
pre-
sent
their
insights
through
the
body,
a
know-
ing
body,
dependent
upon
its
participatory
and
empathic
capacities
and
located
in
contested
yet
potentially
liberating
space.
As
Conquergoo
d
(1'9911
puts
it,
performative
inquiry
privileges
particular,
participatory'
dynamic,
intimate,
precarious,
embodied
experience
grounded
in historical
process,
contingency,
and
ideology
(p'
187).
t
Representatiue
Forms
of
P erformatiu
e
In
quirY
Performers
may
focus
their
inquiry
in a
number
of
different
directions,
but
the
three
most
common
sites
for
exploration
are
the
literary,
cultural,
and
personal,
known
generically
as
literature
in
performance'
per-
formance ethnography, and autobiographi-
cal
performance.
These
labels,
of
course,
blur'
crisscross,
leak,
but they
do
point
toward
dis-
tinct
orientations
and
place certain
method-
ological
issues
in
the
foreground.
Staging
literature
(i.e.,
drama,
poems'
prose fiction,
nonfiction)
has
consumed
the
bulk
of
performers'
energies.
Literary
texts,
some
specifically
written
for
presentation
on
stage
and
some
not'
carry their
own
aes-
thetic
dimensions,
situating
the
performer
in
a
position
of either
trying
to
feature
or
to
resist
what
a
given text
asks.
The delicate
negotiation
between
literature's
art
and
the
performer's
art
is an
ongoing
process'
informed
by
the
performer's
motives
for
presenting
a
given work.
For
some
perform-
ers,
their
task
is
to
offer
a credible
render-
ing
of
a
literary text;
for
others'
their
aim
is
to
discover
in literature
places
for
innova-
tion
and
critique.
Not
surprisingly,
these
goals are
in
keeping
with
the
objectives
of
various
literary
and critical
theories-some
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positions,
to use
Booth's
(1'979)
helpful
terms,
encourage
readers to
strive
for
understanding
and
some
for
overstand-
ing
(pp.
23
5:257).4
central
consideration
performers
face
when
working
with
literary
texts
is
their
stance, whether
it
will
be one
of
consent
or
one
of dissent.
Depending
upon
the
stance
the
performer elects,
per-
formative
inquiry
may be
textually
driven
or textually
detached.
For the
performers who
are driven
to
give
consent
to
a
literary work,
their
method-
ological
task
is
to
seek
entry
into
the textual
wodd
and,
in so doing,
come
to
know the
characters
that
live
there. Much
of actor
training
is
involved with
giving performers
the skills
to
gain
access, to
allow others
to
speak
through
them,
and to
inhabit
worlds
other
than their
own.
For
the
performers
who
wish
to
detach
themselves
from textual
dictates,
their
procedural
charge
is
to
dis-
cover
how
to
keep present
a
given
literary
work
while
they
spin away
from or com-
ment
upon
it.
The text,
functioning
as
a
launch
point for what
the
performer wants
to say,
might be
approached
metaphorically
to
establish
a
conceptual
overlay
that
guides
an audience's
reading.
Shakespeare's
plays,
for
instance,
are
often
placed
in
surprising
contexts
(e.g.,Tbe
Merry'Wiues
of Windsor
in
the
United
States
suburbia
in
the
1950s
The Mercltant
of
Venice
in
Nazi
Germany).
Or
a text
might
be
inserted
with the
per-
former's
political conunentary,
encouraging
an
audience
to
reflect
upon
what
is being
said.
Such
postmodern
stagings,
perhaps
most
frequently
associated
with
the'Wooster
Group,
often
interweave
their
own
inter-
textual
observations
and
connections.
Per-
formers
who
elect such
strategies
put
into
play
the
power
of
their
own
readings.
Methodologically,
their embodied
enact-
ments tilt
toward
their
own stamp
upon
a
literary
work.
Performance
ethnography
places cul-
tural
understandings
on stage.
Performers,
following
ethnographic
procedures,
gather
data
from the
field,
but
instead
of
turning
that data
into
a
traditional
written
report,
they script
and stage their
findings.
Informed
by the
early
work of
Turner
(1,9861
and
Schechner
(1993),
performance
ethnogra-
phers
believe
that
the
rich
array
of
cultural
practices can
best be
represented,
not
on the
page,
but
through
embodied
presentation.
By
presenting
cultural
others on
stage,
performers display
living bodies
who
par-
ticipate
in the ongoing
process
of
making
culture.
In
their
representations,
perfor-
mance ethnographers
strive
to avoid
shal-
Iowness
and exploitation,
a
desire
that
is
not
easily accomplished
when
reaching
across
cultures.
Equally tricky
is
how
performance
ethnographers
decide
to script themselves.
In
some shows,
the ethnographer
is implied
but
not embodied
on stage.
In
others,
the
ethnographer
functions
as
a narrator who
provides
an
interpretive
frame
for the
audience.
In
still
others,
the ethnographer
becomes a
central
character,
a
participant
in ongoing cultural
practices.
Another
issue
facing
performance ethnographers
is how
they see
their task.
For some,
the
perfor-
mance
functions
as a
report, an
account of
what
they
found in the
field that
reaches
toward objectivity. For
others, performance
serves
as a
site
of advocacy,
an
opportunity
to
intervene
on
behalf
of cultural
others.
Such
considerations
call
forward different
methodological
procedures
and,
hence,
alter the
nature of
the
performative
inquiry.
Autobiographical
performance
traffics
in
the
details
of
a
particular
life, featuring
either
one's
own
personal life experiences
or another's
autobiographical
tale.
More
often
than
not,
it
features
texts of
excep-
tional
wit,
extraordinary
events,
and/or
oppressed
or
historical
individuals.
As
for
the
performance ethnographer,
the autobi-
ographical
performer
engages
in
a
process
of
selection
and shaping,
of deciding
what
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to share.
Both
are always
making a
rhetor-
ical case, and
in
doing
so,
they
face issues
of
truthfulness:
\lhat
information
can be
buried,
minimized,
or altered?
What
partic-
ulars can
be
dropped
or
added
to
create
aes-
thetic
interest?
llhat
details about
others
can
be
included without their
consent?
The
autobiographer
performer, unlike
the
per-
formance ethnographer,
however,
takes
as the
primary
aim to
create
a
particular
speaker
that tells
of
life lived.
The autobio-
graphical
performer shares
intimacies
and
at
times,
indignities.
The
performer estab-
lishes
a
persona
that
audience
members may
admire
or abhor,
embrace
or
resist,
identify
with or
dismiss.
Such
an
interest leads
performers
to be
keenly aware
that
there are
personal con-
sequences
to
every telling.
Making
public
occurrences
that are
often
kept
private
car-
ries risks.
The man who
in
performance self-
identifies
as
gay,
for example,
may soon
find
himself
in
danger
of
physical
harm
beyond
the site
of
the
performance.
The
woman
who
discloses
her anorexia,
for instance,
may
dis-
cover
that
in
her
social
life she has become
reduced to
that
identity
marker.
The
autobi-
ographical
performer,
then,
is
always
in an
ongoing
negotiation
between
authenticity
and
rhetorical
efficacy,
between
the
desire
for
honesry
and
the
need to
protect.
Sith
autobiographical
performances,
inquiry
maneuvers between
the told and
untold.
Its
strength,
however,
derives
from
telling
the
untold.
As Lockford
(2001)
argues,
it is
often
dirty work,
this digging
into
the
rich soil of
humanity. Digging
into
our
humanity,
we cannot
keep
the soil
out
from
under
our nails, the clay
off
our
faces,
and
the
sand
away from the
folds of
our
skin.
We
write with
humility
about that
which
makes us
remember
our
humanity,
that
which
makes us
humble, that
which
makes
us
human.
(p.
118)
t
Some
Chllenges
for
Performatiue
Inquiry
I
have
been
arguing
that
the
performative
method
is
powerful
and carries
some
partic-
ular
methodological
demands
as
it moves
across
genres.
Like other
methods,
it also
confronts
certain
challenges.
In this
next
section,
I outline
some
risks
that
performers
face
when
embodiment
functions
as
their
method of inquiry.
These risks
might best
be addressed
as
the
presenting,
Iying,
assuming, and
intervening
bodies.
The
per-
former s body
is engaged
in an act
of
live
presentatlon.
Through
physical and vocal
behaviors,
performers attempt
to
put on display
what
they
wish
to communicate.
There
may be,
however, slippage
between
what
the body
knows and
what
it can say
and between
what
the body
says and
what an
audience
can
interpret.
Performers may
have intense
bodily
feelings
but
lack the
competence
to
translate
those
feelings into
meaningful
communicative
acts for either
themselves
or
an audience.
Moreover,
performers and
an
audience
may recognize a
given
act
as
highly
meaningful
but
remain unable
to
articulate
what
it might be
saying.
In
this case,
the
presenting body
is communicative,
speak-
ing through
the
intuitive
and the
felt, but
performers cannot
always
formulate
into
words
the body s
meaning.
In
addition,
per-
formers
may have
difficulty
determining
whether
or
not
what
they
know has come
from bodily
enactment
or from some
other
source
of
insight. Park-Fuller
(1983)
offers
a
rich
explanation
of
these dilemmas:
Because
the
language of
performance
is
a sensual
language,
it
does
not consti-
tute
knowledge
by
naming;
it
consti-
tutes
knowledge by sensing.
Thus, when
called
upon
to describe an
insight
gained
in
the
process
of
production,
the
reporter
190 a
Genre
8/9/2019 Pelias Performative Inquiry
7/9
Performatiue
Inquiry
a
'191
must
translate
sensed
knowledge
to
con-
ceptual
knowledge
and,
since
any
trans-
lation
involves
change,
the
translation
from sensed
knowledge
to
conceptual
knowledge
changes
the
nature
of
the
insight.
(p.72)
The
presenting
body
sees
the
stage
as
its
site
of
publication.
It
offers
what
it
knows
not
on the
page but
in
live
performance.
But
because
performance
is ephemeral
(once
given, then
lost),
performance
scholars
have
tried
to
document
in print
form what
the
body
knows.
Such
attempts'
more
often
than
not, have
been
frustrating.
Seldom
does a
printed
account
capture
the
feel for
a
performance.
In
recent
years, scholars
(e.g.,
Miller &
Pelias,
2001;
Pollock,
1998)
have
turned
to
performative
writing
as a strategy
for
providing
a
richer
sense
of the
presenting
body.
Recognizing
language's
representa-
tional
limitations,
performative writing
often
deploys
the
poetic
as
the best
strategy
for
entering
into
and
reporting
what
the
body
might
know.
Even
when
doing
so,
print accounts
remain
limited,
a diminished
rendering
of what
occurred
on
stage.
The
lying body
is a
reminder
that
the
body
is
a
habituated
site
that
carries
its
his-
torical
and
cultural markings.
The
fact
that
I
gag
at the
sight
of
mayonnaise
tells
more
about
my unfortunate
encounter
with
some
rancid
mayonnaise
in my childhood
than
it
does
about
the
nature of
mayonnaise.
This
trivial
example
calls
to
mind
examples
of
much
larger
consequence:
the
disgust
the
Nazi
body
may
have
felt
toward
Jews,
the
repulsion
the
straight
body
may
feel when
seeing
fwo
men
kissing,
the
loathing
one
political
party
may feel
for
another
political
party.
As Gingrich-Philbrook
(2001)
notes,
the body
offers
an
opportunity
for
error
as
much
as wisdom
(p.
7l,.
This suggests
that what
the
body
knows
requires
critical
reflection,
a constant
ethical
testing,
a
reflexive turn.
Such
a
move
keeps
bodily
claims
where
they
belong,
connected
to
a
particular
body.
The habit
of
speaking
of the
body
can
obscure
the
fact that
performative
inquiry
always
takes
place
in
an
individual
body,
a
body
enriched
and
scarred
by
its
lifelong
facts.
Rich's
(2001)
call
for
using my
body
over the
body
in her discussion
of
iden-
tity
politics
is
applicable
here:
Perhaps
we
need
a
moratorium
on
say-
ing
the body.
For
it's also
possible to
abstract
the
body.
'\hen
I
write
the
body
I
see
nothing
in
particular.
To
write my
body
plunges
me
into
lived
experience,
particularity....To
say
the
body
lifts
me away
from what
has
given
me a
primary
perspective.
To say
my body
reduces
the
temptation
to
grandiose assertions.
(p.
67)
And
it
reduces
the
potential
confusion
between
what
performing bodies
might
know
and
what
a
particular' situated
body
might assert.
Whatever
lies or truths
our
bodies
might
tell,
they
are
our
own.
The
assuming
body
falls
Prey
to
the
intimacy
of
embodiment.
Coming
to
know
others
by
taking
on
their
physical and
vocal
qualities,
their
attitudes and
circumstances,
and
their
historical
and
cultural
situations
may
lead
performers to
believe
that
they
fully
understand
others.
But
understanding
is
always
partial. Moreover,
in the
belief
of
full
understanding,
they
may
feel an
obligation
to speak
for
others,
particulady
given
their
communicative
skills.
But
a
difference
can
be
drawn
between
speaking
for
and speak-
ing
with.
\hen
speaking
for,
performers
offer
amonologue
on
behalf
of
another'
The
monologue
comes
forward
as a what
is'
\lhen
speaking
with,
performers
engage
in
a
dialogue,
an
ongoing
conversation
between
a
performer
and
another,
even
though
the
performer
may be
the
only
speaker.
Instead
of suggesting
what
isr dialogic
performance
8/9/2019 Pelias Performative Inquiry
8/9
stages
"what
might be."
The
difference
beNveen
a
performance
that
asserts
"what
is"
and
one
that
poses "what might
be"
becomes
particularly
loaded
when
a
per-
former
wishes
to
"overstand,"
to
offer
a
critique
of
another's
way of
being.
The chal-
lenge
for
performers is
to
recognize
the
nature of what they know,
its
partiality,
its
presumptive
and
political dangers.
The
intervening
body
sees
performance
as
an
opportunity
to
work
for social
justice.
It is politically engaged,
committed
to
pro-
ductive change.
In
its
desire
to
affect social
life,
it
strives
to
reach
constituencies
that
have
a stake
in what
it has to say.
As
Dolan
(2001)
explains,
performance
can be
a
"participatory
forum
in
which
ideas
and
possibilities
for social
equiry
and
justice
are
shared"
(p.456).
Performance can
"offer us
glimpses
of utopia"
(p.
456), "imaginative
territories
that
map themselves
over
the
real"
(p.
457).
This "utopian
performative"
plays
against performance
practices
that
reify cultural
logics and
obstruct
alternative
expressions,
often
by means of
commodifi-
cation
and
control of
resources.
The
intervening
body,
regardless of the
obstacles
it
might
confront,
runs a number of
methodological
risks. In
addition
to
reifying
what
it may hope to
question, the
interven-
ing body
may offer
possibilities
but
no
course
of
action,
or
conversely,
may call
for
action
without
posing
sufficient
possibilities.
In the first case, embodiment
may
propose
so
many speculative
possibilities that
it is
dif-
ficult to
imagine what action to
take.
In
the
second
case,
embodiment
posits
an
action
that appears
to solve
a
problem without
rec-
ognizing
the complexity
of a
situation.
Despite the challenges of the
presenting,
lying,
assuming,
and
intervening
bodies,
performative
inquiry
stands
as a
highly
pro-
ductive
method.
Across
various
forms,
per-
formance
is an
embodied
practice,
dependent
upon
participatory and empathic
skills
and
situated
politically, that trusts the body as
a
site of
knowing.
It
insists that
performers
who
surrender
themselves
to
the
bodily
stance
of others
will come
to
understand
in a
most profound way:
sensuously,
human
to
human, fully
present, open,
ready to
take
in what
others have
to
offer.
t
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