Table Of ContentPERFORMING HOME: AFFECTIVE INTERVALS IN 20TH- AND 21ST- CENTURY
FRENCH THEATRE AND SLAM POETRY
by
Andrea Jonsson
BMus, McGill University, 2004
MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2010
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh
2014
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UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
This dissertation was presented
by
Andrea Jonsson
It was defended on
May 29, 2014
and approved by
Dr. Neil Doshi, Assistant Professor of French, Department of French and Italian
Dr. Chloé Hogg, Assistant Professor of French, Department of French and Italian
Dr. Giuseppina Mecchia, Associate Professor of French and Italian, Director of Graduate Studies
in French, Department of French and Italian
Dr. David Pettersen, Assistant Professor of French, Associate Director, Film Studies Program,
Department of French and Italian
Dr. Jennifer Waldron, Associate Professor, Director of the Program in Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, Department of English
Dissertation Director: Dr. Todd W. Reeser, Professor of French, Director, Gender, Sexuality, and
Women’s Studies Program, Department of French and Italian
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Copyright by Andrea Jonsson
2014
iv
PERFORMING HOME: AFFECTIVE INTERVALS IN 20TH- AND 21ST- CENTURY
FRENCH THEATRE AND SLAM POETRY
Andrea Jonsson, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2014
In my dissertation, I argue for an understanding of text as performance in contemporary
French theatre and slam poetry by drawing attention to sound, writing, and the parallels between
stage and page. While much of scholarly discourse in performance studies is allergic to textual
study, I analyze text as a performance, and performance as text, by underscoring how textual
sound creates affective memory. Organized into a section on theatre and a section on poetry, my
dissertation includes a series of case studies that function as individual models of what I call
textual performance. My analysis bridges the intervals between Performance studies and Affect
studies, specifically using the concepts of ritournelle and chez soi from Deleuze and Guattari’s
“De la ritournelle.” The concept of home is what connects the theatre texts to the slam poetry.
Through home’s spatial counterpart—the domestic in the theatre chapters and the city in the slam
chapters—both genres repurpose citations to create familiar repeated refrains that anchor
audience and performer in space.
The first and second chapters establish a model for reading a performative text through an
analysis of the emphasis on sound and cruelty in the play Roberto Zucco (1990) by Bernard-
Marie Koltès. The third chapter analyzes the writing process highlighted within the spoken
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dialogue of the four characters of Le Dieu du carnage (2007) by Yasmina Reza. In the fourth
chapter, using the lens of Apollinaire’s “Zone” I analyze Grand Corps Malade’s first album Midi
20 (2007), arguing that much of the orality of slam poetry has origins in urban textual poetry and
drafted musical structures. The fifth chapter investigates the interval between the particular and
the universal idea of community in work by women slam artists such as RiM (Amélie Picq
Grumbach) and Cat Mat, one of the founders of Slam ô féminin, an association that takes writing
workshops and slam sessions to groups of marginalized women in Paris and around France.
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PREFACE
As I come to an end of the dissertation writing process, and look back at my six years as a
graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, I would first like to acknowledge the original
intervals between my life and my work. I would like to thank my mother for teaching me that
affect is at the core of everyday life and for upholding the value of staying committed to a goal.
Thank you to my father who taught me the significance and the connections between language,
music, and hard work. Thank you to my sister, Sara, who has jumped on night buses at a
moment’s notice to lend a hand and make me laugh as I manage family life and scholarly
pursuits. My thesis of home developed at a time in my life when I was putting down roots in a
new city and reconstructing the physical and affective foundations that were to be my support
system as I started my research. I owe an enormous amount of gratitude to my life partner,
Guillaume, who, knowing I wanted to go back to school, moved us from Paris to Pittsburgh to
start a new life. He has been the foundation, pillar, and keystone that has allowed me to pursue
my passion in literature and teaching while restoring our old house and building a family.
I would like to thank the Department of French and Italian for the welcoming and open
atmosphere that has allowed me to thrive as both a student and a teacher. I am incredibly grateful
for my committee and for their continuing support as professors and mentors over the years as I
tackled a number of scholarly, pedagogical, and personal challenges. There are a few moments
that stand out as being foundational to my growth in this field. Thank you, Giuseppina, for my
first poetry class in which you assigned “De la ritournelle”—a text I found mind-bogglingly
opaque but sat and read several times in a row knowing that it contained the keys to the
connection between my passions of literature and music. Thank you also for your support
through my pregnancy and birth of my daughter and for helping me to juggle my studies and
duties as a mother. Thank you, David, for your professional guidance in regards to publishing
and for your advice to always start with the broad strokes before tackling the detail. Thank you,
Chloé, for your keen eye at the moment I tackle that detail and for teaching me the significance
of rigorous analysis, development, and editing. Thank you, Neil, for guiding me through the
development of my approach to Performance studies, space, and place and helping me to
position my thoughts within the existing scholarly frameworks. Thank you, Jen, for acting as my
external committee member and for the particularly interesting introduction to media studies.
And finally, I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Todd, who has spent many hours
reading my work and encouraging me to find my own voice through which to pair theory and
close reading. Since my first Introduction to Literary Theory class, you have showed me how to
unpack, develop, and articulate the seeds of an idea into a thought that would elicit enthusiastic
head nods in the most intellectual of crowds. Thank you to all of you. You are my stacked deck. I
could not have written this dissertation without you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1
II. CHAPTER 1: THE HERO’S VIOLENT POETIC INTERVAL: LA TÂCHE DE SANG IN
BERNARD-MARIE KOLTÈS’S ROBERTO ZUCCO ....................................................... 27
II. A. THE PROCESS OF CRUELTY AND THE CREATION OF THE CRIMINAL
HERO… ......................................................................................................................... 28
II. B. RIMBAUD ..................................................................................................................... 40
II. C. POETIC DUTY: LA TÂCHE DE SANG AND TRANSPARENCY ............................. 43
II. D. THE PRISON: THEATRICAL SPACE ........................................................................ 51
II. E. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 57
III. CHAPTER 2: POTENTIAL SOUND AS INSTRUMENT OF CRUELTY IN BERNARD-
MARIE KOLTÈS’S ROBERTO ZUCCO ............................................................................ 60
III. A. POTENTIAL SOUND AND THE AFFECTIVE INTERVAL ..................................... 67
III. B. READING THE SCORE ............................................................................................... 79
III. C. HARMONIZING THE REFRAIN AND CREATING HOME..................................... 84
III. D. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 96
IV. CHAPTER 3: THE DRAFT: REWRITING CONFLICT IN YASMINA REZA’S LE DIEU
DU CARNAGE ..................................................................................................................... 98
IV. A. THE DRAFT ................................................................................................................ 101
IV. B. MUSIC, SOUND, CITATION, AND NAMES .......................................................... 119
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IV. C. THE STAGE ................................................................................................................ 127
IV. D. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 132
V. CHAPTER 4: PERFORMING AUTHENTICITY: GRAND CORPS MALADE’S CITY
STAGE AS AFFECTIVE DWELLING ............................................................................ 134
V. A. LA CITÉ....................................................................................................................... 143
V. B. AFFECTIVE TEMPORALITY ................................................................................... 152
V. C. SPATIAL DWELLING AND THE STAGE ............................................................... 164
V. D. THE PEDAGOGICAL REBELLION ......................................................................... 169
VI. CHAPTER 5: SLAM AU FÉMININ: NEGOTIATING THE MARGINAL AND THE
LUDIQUE .......................................................................................................................... 175
VI. A. MARGINALIA AND THE FAIT DIVERS ................................................................. 178
VI. B. THE LIMINAL COLLECTIVE AND THE WAY HOME ......................................... 189
VI. C. RiM: HUMOR AND THE LUDIQUE: REVERSING THE PERFORMER AND
AUDIENCE ................................................................................................................. 197
VI. D. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 218
VII. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 221
VIII. BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................. 231
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I. INTRODUCTION
Performance, home, interval, affect, and refrain. These buzz words seem trendy,
subjective, and reliant on live moments and interactions. However, when combined to speak
about textual poetics, these buzz words provide a solid framework through which to read text
that is written to be performed. In this dissertation, I engage with the interdisciplinary aspects of
Performance studies, Affect theory, and musical analysis in order to define what I call textual
performativity. I base my foundation of the refrain on the harmonic creation of the interior circle
of the territoire—the chez soi as defined by Deleuze and Guattari in “De la ritournelle” from
Mille Plateaux (1980). As a demonstration of how the connection between the terms that make
up my thesis can lead to a methodology that serves as a paradigm for reading textual
performativity, I begin here with a short analysis of the dueling banjo scene from John
Boorman’s 1972 thriller Deliverance. The scene begins as four Atlanta businessmen friends are
getting ready to embark on their canoe camping adventure down the Cahulawassee River. They
are fueling their cars at a roadside gas station in a cluster of houses in the middle of the Georgia
wilderness. One of the men (Drew) begins playing his guitar while waiting. A young in-bred
looking boy on a raised open porch stands holding a banjo and watching him from the shadows.
Curious to establish a musical connection and engage with the boy’s very separate home, Drew
begins playing the simplistic melodies of the composition known as “Dueling Banjos.”1 What
Dueling Banjos” is a 1955 instrumental composition by Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith. In it
a r e r i f f s f r o m w e l l - k n o w n m e l odies such as “Yankee Doodle.” It originally aired on the Andy
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G “riffith Show in 1963 and was a recognizable cultural composition in the 1960s and 70s. As it
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begins as a wordless conversation of melodies played and repeated, takes on a pedagogical
nature as the boy learns, or pretends to learn, the song’s structure from Drew.
Here, one sees the first invitation into an intertextual world that contains both diegetic
and extratextual openings. The boy and Drew build up a musically pedagogical pattern based on
citation and refrain that connects them in a duet, while bringing in outside spectators (the other
actors in the scene and the film’s spectators). On two separate levels, the melody becomes
enhanced because of the recognizable “Yankee Doodle” refrain, eliciting smiles from the
uneducated rural locals and arrogant city dwellers in the scene as well as producing a point of
reference for the all-American film spectator familiar with the tune. Initially, the guitar and banjo
dialogue begins as a peripheral melody passed and mimicked between two instruments.
However, as the scene progresses and more of the melody is revealed, the possibility to create a
harmonic counterpoint is created. Once Drew has presented the whole song, he begins to play it
in sequence, moving towards the porch above him, engaging with the boy by eliminating the
physical distance between them. Here, the movement of the actor mirrors the melodic movement
and the increasing possibility for harmonic counterpoint between the two musicians creates the
artistic expression that frames the scene.
was used without the composer’s permission in Deliverance the composer filed a successful
l a w s u i t , e n h a n c i n g t h e s c e n e ’ s and the composition’s notoriety. (Wikipedia/duelingbanjos)
Description:tackled a number of scholarly, pedagogical, and personal challenges. There are a few moments that stand out as being foundational to my growth in
