Revised Directions

I'm taking a bit of a a break from my normal call and response from academic texts to discuss an article handed to me by my professor instead.  The article is D. Soyini Madison's "Performing Theory/ Embodied Writing" from Text and Performance Quarterly (April 1999) if anybody wants to find it.  In it, Madison writes about the interrelation of theory and performance, how theory enhances performance when the performer knows where theories begin.  She describes her "performance romanticism" and calls herself a "performance essentialist."  Though it has been a while since I have formally  performed--almost a year that seem a lifetime ago-- it occurs to me that I never really stopped.  In the aforementioned instance, I was Marie, the maid to a murderous and sadistic professor a la Ionesco, but now, I am Ph.D. student.  It is a new role and one that I am navigating roughly, though somehow managing a decently straight line.  Madison warns of those who claim performance is everyday life, but for this role, this instance, I am going to assert this fallacy.  I am not being me, but 'student me'.  It takes a while to remember that these two are different.  At this point, I am a professional student and necessarily very good at it, I really don't feel that anyone who is not good at school could survive this long in it, it's just too hard.  But my student self has taken over a bit.  Granted, most of my time is devoted to school work and student obligations, but am I missing the forest of personhood for the trees of studentdom?  That is a very prosaic statement that I'm not sure if I like, however I'll continue.  This post is really coming out of a stress-induced, sleep-deprived, poorly timed event that happened last week.  I was crying in front of my peers for the first time and, upon trying to put into words why it was I was crying, I could only respond "I don't need this right now."  But the event to which I was responding was par for the course in student me's life.  It was the real me, the non-performance me, that stood up and took over.  I had to stop performing because I just couldn't keep up the act anymore.  It's distressing and unsettling for anyone who isn't expecting it, but perhaps even more so for a person who is so keenly aware of performance but fails to recognize their own. 

My point is this:  who has the responsibility to control performance?  As a director, I feel unsettled when someone is not in control of the general shape of a performance.  As a person, I am unsettled when I realize that not even I am in control of my own performance.  First of all, should there be a person/being/entity in charge of performance?  I am inclined to think that at least society should.  We have so many regulations in place to protect us from the evils of Freud's Id, those crazed barbarians who drink and smoke and rob and pillage and plunder.  Human consensus tells us that these people are wrong, that they are out of control, that they are not performing 'human' correctly, and so we remove them from the playing field.  But I have spent this entire semester reading that social codes are not correct and should be amended if not annihilated.  So what then?  Madison suggests theory.  "Theory comes from everywhere and you decide go back...to recognize again and more" (110).  Judith Butler also alludes to this idea of theory as a guide post.  We cannot rely on social norms, for they are merely stylized repetitions turned into fact.  But if we examine where the behaviors started, we can recall the impulse and the belief in them that started the behavior to begin with.  I remember being in the 7th grade, the first year we were allowed to write in print again, and disliking how I made my 'a's--just an 'o' with a tail really.  I felt they were pedantic and beneath the dignity to which I held myself.  So I decided to change them to the more formal 'a's that are conveniently represented in this font.  I truly believed that my teachers would think I was more sophisticated if I made this change.  It took a while, but eventually I made it a habit and still make them in this manner.  As I write this I recall a moment in the second grade when I decided to revert to my legal name Julia instead of the nickname Julie as it represented the maturity I felt I had at the ripe age of eight and also my conversion of traditional '7's to ones with horizontal marks through them, again for the same reason.  These are all instances of performance, where I am willingly modifying my behavior in the hope of altering my perception, but they are all rooted in the belief that these adjustments would be successful.  There is a very fine difference there, but it is one I think Madison would recognize.  These instances of performed theory, albeit my own sophomoric theory, are rooted in moments of recognition, that I was first inadequate in my current state, and that there was a change I could implement to correct my inadequacy. 

I believe I had yet another one of those moments last week, crying in my office.  There is something wrong either in my performance of a Ph.D. student because I am not operating either successfully--thus not needing to cry--or in my performance of a person--thus not noticing that the Ph.D. performance had run amok with myself.  I need to reexamine.  I need to determine if an adjustment should be made and how it should be implemented.  But most helpfully, I need to go back to my theory to look for guidance and wisdom.