The Face and the Possibility of an Ethics of Performance

Abstract

The following is the first stage of an investigation into the phenomenology of theatre and its relation to the question of what an ethics of performance might constitute. 1 This is not done to impose some kind of theoretical prescription on what performance should be and do, but is rather an examination of what it already does, and has done, and no doubt will continue to do, as a questioning reflection of interpersonal accountability within human society, between both individuals and groups.I wish to examine two theoretical perspectives that have some important consequences for this issue.In the process I will test these theories against two works of theater, Samuel Beckett's Catastrophe and Ntozake Shange's Spell #7.What compels me to use these two works beyond the easily discernible relevance of the philosophical concepts addressed here, is that each in their own way are themselves theories of the ethical relation in performance.That is, in each the presumed "content" of the plays determines-or is determined by-the formal selfconsciousness of the context, the site itself, of performance.This investigation emerges from two seemingly different impulses.One comes from my experience of teaching art students who work in intermedia forms-such as performance, installation, conceptual, and computer art-who are in general allergic to most critical theory, but who have found the work of Deleuze and Guattari, especially their book A Thousand Plateaus, to be highly suggestive, if not inspirational, for the creation of art works. 2 Whether or not they understand the overall context and sense of their theory, Deleuze and Guattari's imagery-rhizomes, nomads, war machines, bodies without organs, stratifications, smooth space, and the like-seem to connect intuitively with students's impulses in a time when humanity is radically reconceiving itself and its environment.But beyond its purely libidinal investments as an "aesthetics of existence" (Foucault), this process of continual fluid redefinition has a crucial bearing on what it means to have agency and also be held accountable for one's actions toward others, which is the fundamental ethical issue at the heart of all political relations to justice, if politics is not simply to be conceived of as a continual state of war of all against all.

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