Performance and problematization in rhetorical culture: the example of Laurie Anderson

231 Pages·2017·5.98 MB·English

Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and
Retrospective Theses and Dissertations
Dissertations
1997
Performance and problematization in rhetorical
culture: the example of Laurie Anderson
Kirstin Jean Cronn-Mills
Iowa State University
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Part of theRhetoric and Composition Commons,Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons, and
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Recommended Citation
Cronn-Mills, Kirstin Jean, "Performance and problematization in rhetorical culture: the example of Laurie Anderson " (1997).
Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 11974.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/11974
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Peifonnance and problematization in rhetorical culture:
the example o£ Laurie Anderson
Kirstin Jean Croiin-Mills
A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty^
in partial fiolfiUment of the requirements for ttie degree of
DOCTOR OF PHZLOSOPHY
M^on Rhetoric and Professional Communication
Miq'or Professors: Susan Carlson and Scott Consigny
Iowa State Universify
Ames, Iowa
1997
UMX Number: 9814634
UMI Microform 9814634
Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. AH riglits reserved.
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This is to certify that the Doctoral dissertation of
Kirstin Jean Cronn-Mills
has met the dissertation requirements of Iowa State University.
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Co-Major Professor
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Co-Majotrr Professof
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For the Major Program
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For thlee Graduate College
lU
Kama, for sharing their considerable strengths.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: PERFORMANCE COMPLEXITY AND CULTURAL
INQUIRY 1
CHAPTER TWa THEOREnCAL POSTnONS OF PERFORMANCE 40
CHAPTER THREE: MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THE CONTEXTS OF
PROBLEMATEAHON 89
CHAPTER FOUR: PROBLEMAHZING CULTURE WHH LAURIE
ANDERSON 126
CHAPTER FIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR PERFORMANCE WITHIN
CULTURAL ANALYSIS 190
NOTES 206
WORKS CITED 209
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 222
V
Still, as a storyteller, I am struck how a person's sense of consciousness can be
transfonned by nottiing more magical than listenix^ to words... mere words.
Charles Nelson Reilty, "Jos^ Chung's 'From Outer Space'"
TheXFOes
These either/or ways of seeing exclude life and real revision by pushing us to
safe positions, to what is known. The are safe positions that exclude each other
and don't allow for any ambigui^, uncertainty^. Only when I suspend myself
between either and or can I move aw^ from oonventumal boundaries and
begin to see shapes and shadows and contours—ambiguity, uncertainty, and
disomtinuity, moments when the seams of life just don't want to hold; d^
when I wake up to find, once again, tiiat I don't have enough bread for the
children's sandwiches or that there are no shoelaces for their gym shoes. My Hfe
is full of uncertainty; n^otiating that uncertainty day to day gives me authority.
Nancy Sommets, "Between the Diaffs*
...m adness fascinates because it isk nowledge. It is knowledge, first, because all
these absurd figures are in reality elements of a difficult, hermetic, esoteric
learning.... VVltile the man of reason and wisdom perceives only fragmentary
and an the more unnerving images of it ttie Fool beus it intact as an unbrok^
sphere, diat crystal ball which all others is empty is in his eyes filled with the
density of an invisible knowledge.
\fichel Fbucault, Afinfixess and Civilization
1
CHAPTER ONE:
PERFORMANCE COMPLEXITY AND CULTURAL INQUIRY
A performance completes, or thoroughly carries out,
social processes. (Stem and Henderson 9)
If Stem and Henderson are correct, then performance is integral to every
social act we complete. Performance happens in the classroom and on the stage.
Performance takes place in the way we conduct business and live with family
members. Performance is everywhere. According to Brooks McNamara and
Richard Schechner, performance is "ethnic and intercultural, historical and
ahistorical, aesthetic and ritual, sociological and political," and represents "a
mode of behavior, an approach to experience" (5). Performance involves the
sweep of hximan behavior.
Embedded within these performances are cultural structures and beliefs.
These cultural entities in performance make their presence know by creating
roles for us to enact. These cultural patterns and roles can be labeled codes. We
understand, respect, and respond to coded behaviors because these behaviors are
familiar to us; the codes are written in the rules of society. A teacher is regulated
by the cultural codes related to the idea of "teacher," and students are regulated
by the codes that apply to "students". In this dissertation I consider how to study
the idea of cultur<il codes and their effects on our lives.