Life is a cabaret
My question in relation the Dixon article is about power and authority. Firstly, I wonder how the real gets marked as valuable and is the reader to assume that the real is sacred or just a supreme paradox and then I would have to ask from what cultural and social locations is it deemed an paradox—basically to whom is reality a problem? This isn’t a question about bodies and identity but rather about power. Barthes writes that “the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation” in arguing for the ability for photographs’ to be a certain kind of reality. What power? From where does it emanate? Does the power come from authenticity? And if so is authenticity a disciplining discourse that categorizes reality so that different facets of reality can be acted on unevenly by power? Auslander is also noted to give authority to live and mediatized forms so that he can argue for their reciprocal relation list in the live performance of Pps Danse’s Poles (124). There is also a reliance upon the language of domination to characterize the role of the virtual in live performance. Again, is the authority, power, dominance, and authenticity of the forms of representation and performance in this article given by the theorist summarized, assumed by the reader, or assumed to be a universal cultural phenomena?
Dixon notes the Phlean in particular fetishizes ephemeral experience by privileging it to a point where its divorced from its material conditions and becomes as stand alone, temporary expression. Sobchak explains how the metaphor of prosthetic has become fetishized because it is used as a floating signifier that has no grounding in its literal material functioning. I’m trying to think about the work of fetishization in how we express lived reality. Is fetshiziation necessary for the articulation of experience where experience is always about privileging being present in something in relation to not privileging being present in something else? And does the fetishization of certain formations whether it be the prosthetic as metaphor, or the ephemeral experience as the essence of performance, help us point to how sensing or making sense of experience is an ability? Sobchak writes “the current metaphorical displacement of the prosthetic into other contexts because of its analogical usefulness in pointing out certain…structural and functional resemblances between idea also—and mistakenly—displaces agency from human to artifact… (212).” Do we need the fetish to reveal these structural and functional resemblances?
I think Sobchak’s piece speaks not only to the problematic use of the prosthetic as metaphor but also to a certain preoccupation with explaining the chasm between ideal and material existence. She writes, “That is, the prosthetic’s many inconsistencies in use and its combination of elements that are theoretically paradoxical yet creatively functional not only account for the fascination it holds for others but also open up imagination and analysis to an expanded range of both action and description (216).” How is liveness implicated in these same paradoxes’? Is it implicated in them?
Space: A infinite processes whereby interconnecting systems of global, social, cultural and embodied knowledges inform the value of place. Space is a right.
Place: Fixed in the material and moving freely. Facilitated by place marking objects like maps.
Identity: The processes of having the ability to sense your presence in space—to know you are alive. How you make sense of places’ relationships to the idea of individualism.