PERFORMING
CITIZENSHIP
BODIES, AGENCIES,
LIMITATIONS
E D I T E D BY
Paula Hildebrandt, Kerstin Evert,
Sibylle Peters, Mirjam Schaub,
Kathrin Wildner A N D Gesa Ziemer
Performance Philosophy
Series Editors
Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca
University of Surrey
Guildford, UK
Alice Lagaay
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
Hamburg, Germany
Will Daddario
Independent Scholar
Asheville, NC, USA
Performance Philosophy is an interdisciplinary and international field of
thought, creative practice and scholarship. The Performance Philosophy
book series comprises monographs and essay collections addressing the
relationship between performance and philosophy within a broad range of
philosophical traditions and performance practices, including drama, theatre, performance arts, dance, art and music. It also includes studies of the
performative aspects of life and, indeed, philosophy itself. As such, the
series addresses the philosophy of performance as well as performance-asphilosophy and philosophy-as-performance.
Series Advisory Board:
Emmanuel Alloa, Assistant Professor in Philosophy, University of St.
Gallen, Switzerland
Lydia Goehr, Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, USA
James R. Hamilton, Professor of Philosophy, Kansas State University, USA
Bojana Kunst, Professor of Choreography and Performance, Institute for
Applied Theatre Studies, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany
Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, Professor of Theatre Studies, Goethe University,
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Martin Puchner, Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative
Literature, Harvard University, USA
Alan Read, Professor of Theatre, King’s College London, UK
Freddie Rokem, Professor (Emeritus) of Theatre Arts, Tel Aviv University,
Israel
http://www.performancephilosophy.org/books/
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14558
Paula Hildebrandt • Kerstin Evert
Sibylle Peters • Mirjam Schaub
Kathrin Wildner • Gesa Ziemer
Editors
Performing
Citizenship
Bodies, Agencies, Limitations
Editors
Paula Hildebrandt
Berlin, Germany
Sibylle Peters
FUNDUS Theater
Hamburg, Germany
Kathrin Wildner
HafenCity University Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany
Kerstin Evert
Tanzplan Hamburg
K3 - Zentrum für Choreographie
Hamburg, Germany
Mirjam Schaub
University of Art and Design
Burg Giebichenstein
Halle a.d. Saale, Germany
Gesa Ziemer
HafenCity University Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany
Performance Philosophy
ISBN 978-3-319-97501-6
ISBN 978-3-319-97502-3
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3
(eBook)
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© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This book is an open access
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PREFACE
New forms of citizenship are developing in the cities of the twenty-first
century: self-organized and often independent from the state, they
negotiate and shape how we live together.
The graduate programme Performing Citizenship explored new articulations of citizenship, starting from the gap between traditional institutions and a self-confident new citizenry. It combined cultural studies from
various disciplinary backgrounds with art-based methodologies and
hands-on experimentation in public space.
Performing Citizenship—Bodies, Agencies, Limitations provides
insights into our research projects complemented by contributions from
an international conference hosted by (the organizers of the programme
and) editors of this book in November 2016 in Hamburg. The contributing chapters cover a wide range of academic disciplines, from urban planning, postcolonial studies, philosophy, cultural anthropology, to pedagogy
and media studies. Based on a conceptual and methodological framework,
they discuss conflicts, tensions and potentialities of doing things with
rights. Addressing all kinds of cultural, social and political phenomena—
body optimization, corruption, gentrification, global logistics, migration
and ‘welcome culture’—we claim that a performative take on citizenship
offers a fresh and productive look at questions of identity and belonging,
rights and responsibilities.
The book as well as the three-year research programme would not
have been possible without the generous funding of the
Landesforschungsförderung Hamburg, the people working behind the
scene, namely the HafenCity University Hamburg, the K3—Centre for
v
vi
PREFACE
Dance and Choreography, the Hamburg School of Applied Science and
the Fundus Theatre Hamburg. Last but not least, we would like to thank
Alice Lagaay for her enthusiasm in considering this volume for the
Performance Philosophy Series and, most notably, Jules Bradbury for
her careful and diligent editorial work.
Berlin, Germany
Hamburg, Germany
Hamburg, Germany
Halle a.d. Saale, Germany
Hamburg, Germany
Hamburg, Germany
14.06.2018
Paula Hildebrandt
Kerstin Evert
Sibylle Peters
Mirjam Schaub
Kathrin Wildner
Gesa Ziemer
CONTENTS
Introduction
Paula Hildebrandt and Sibylle Peters
Part I
Bodies of Citizenship
1
15
Yet Another Effort, Citizens, If You Want to Learn How to
React!
Kai van Eikels
17
An Elephant in the Room / On the Balcony: Performing the
‘Welcome City’ Hamburg
Paula Hildebrandt
29
Doing Rights with Things: The Art of Becoming Citizens
Engin Isin
45
Performing Citizenship: Gathering (in the) Movement
Liz Rech
57
On Bodies and the Need to Appropriate Them
Antje Velsinger
77
vii
viii
CONTENTS
Part II
Citizenship and (Urban) Space
91
Silence, Motifs and Echoes: Acts of Listening in Postcolonial
Hamburg
Katharina Kellermann
93
Claims for the Future: Indigenous Rights, Housing Rights,
Land Rights, Women’s Rights
Elke Krasny
111
Spaces of Citizenship
Sergio Tamayo
127
Urban Citizenship: Spaces for Enacting Rights
Kathrin Wildner
147
A Space of Performing Citizenship: The Gängeviertel in
Hamburg
Michael Ziehl
Part III
Citizenship and (Non-)Performance: Premises/
Critique/Speculations
161
175
Performance as Delegation: Citizenship in ‘Lloyd’s
Assemblage’
Moritz Frischkorn
177
(Re)Labelling: Mimicry, Between Identification and
Subjectivation
Thari Jungen
191
Paralogistics: On People, Things and Oceans
geheimagentur and Sibylle Peters
209
CONTENTS
Phyto-Performance and the Lost Gardens of Riga
Alan Read
Of Mice and Masks: How Performing Citizenship Worked for
a Thousand Years in the Venetian Republic and Why the Age
of Enlightenment Brought it to an Abrupt End
Mirjam Schaub
Part IV
Emerging Agencies
Perform, Citizen! On the Resource of Visibility in
Performative Practice Between Invitation and Imperative
Maike Gunsilius
ix
229
243
261
263
Practices of Politicizing Listening (to Migration)
Nanna Heidenreich
279
Childish Citizenship
Darren O’Donnell
289
I Do. From Instruction to Agency: Designing of Vocational
Orientation Through Artistic Practice
Constanze Schmidt
295
Index
315
LIST OF FIGURES
An Elephant in the Room / On the Balcony: Performing the ‘Welcome
City’ Hamburg
Fig. 1
Elephant on the balcony © Paula Hildebrandt
Spaces of Citizenship
Fig. 1
Vision and hierarchy of citizen rights and strategy changes
during the 1968–1988 period in Mexico, according to social
actors. (Source: Tamayo 1999)
35
132
Urban Citizenship: Spaces for Enacting Rights
Fig. 1
This work by Eric Göngrich comments on the diverse claims of
a cosmo-political city and the right to public space, interpreting
the everyday practices of refugees as political protest.
(metroZones school for urban action, November 2015)
Figs. 2
Erik Göngrich visualizes public space as a fragmented space of
and 3
negotiation, art in public space is seen as a box composed of
practices, places, activities, situations, and stories. (metroZones
school for urban action, November 2015)
Fig. 4
Eric Göngrich depicts urban intervention as a rehearsal stage, a
possibility or a city marketing process. (metroZones school for
urban action, November 2015)
Fig. 5
The drawing by Eric Göngrich evokes a mutual body, naming
the collective dance as a political performative action.
(metroZones school for urban action, November 2015)
153
A Space of Performing Citizenship: The Gängeviertel in Hamburg
Fig. 1
Gängeviertel 2nd anniversary. (Photo: Franzi Holz, August
2011)
166
149
151
152
xi
xii
LIST OF FIGURES
(Re)Labelling: Mimicry, Between Identification and Subjectivation
Fig. 1
Carnival Al-Lajiìn_Al-Lajiàat in Berlin-Kreuzberg. (Photo:
Thari Jungen)
Fig. 2
Many participants of the Carnival Al-Lajiìn_Al-Lajiàat
manifested their solidarity and sympathy for so-called refugees
through display of puppets and costumes. (Photo: Thari
Jungen)
Phyto-Performance and the Lost Gardens of Riga
Fig. 1
Lost Gardens, Riga, 2013, Dir. Christine Umpfenbach. (Photo
Copyright Homo Novus Festival)
Fig. 2
Lost Gardens conversation station. (Photo Homo Novus
Festival)
Of Mice and Masks: How Performing Citizenship Worked for a
Thousand Years in the Venetian Republic and Why the Age of
Enlightenment Brought it to an Abrupt End
Fig. 1
Giovanni Bellini, Doge Leonardo Loredan (after 1501), oil on
tempera on poplar wood, 61.6 × 45.1 cm, National Gallery,
London
Fig. 2
Pietro Longhi, Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice (1751), oil
on canvas, 60.4 × 47 cm, National Gallery, London
197
198
235
237
249
251
Perform, Citizen! On the Resource of Visibility in Performative
Practice Between Invitation and Imperative
Fig. 1
Public Incantation, Turbo Pascal 2011, © Alexei Fittgen
Fig. 2
The Godfathers, Turbo Pascal 2015, © Milan Benak
Fig. 3
School of Girls I, Maike Gunsilius 2016, © Margaux Weiss
270
271
273
I Do. From Instruction to Agency: Designing of Vocational
Orientation Through Artistic Practice
Fig. 1
During the presentation, Henry watches footage of himself
playing the recorder in the China Shipping company
(Hamburg, 2016)
309
Introduction
Paula Hildebrandt and Sibylle Peters
Performing CitizenshiP: testing new forms
of togetherness
Realities and concepts of citizenship have changed radically throughout
history and will keep changing. Today, in the beginning of the twenty-first
century, new articulations of citizenship emerge in citizen’s and noncitizen’s practices and struggles, and they often do so in conjunction with
artistic practices. In these struggles and practices, citizenship is embodied
and changed; new forms of togetherness, new strategies to claim rights
and new civic roles are tested and rehearsed. Within this book, the editors
want to present insights from a wide range of perspectives into how citizenship is performed and thereby changed; a body of thought across disciplines, based on in-depth-research and artistic experimentation.
Performing citizenship is not only the title of this volume, it is also the
title of a research and graduate program, bringing together scholars, artists and citizen researchers in practice-based forms of research. The members of this program investigate the performance of citizenship through
P. Hildebrandt (*)
Berlin, Germany
e-mail: info@paulahildebrandt.de
S. Peters
FUNDUS Theater, Hamburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_1
1
2
P. HILDEBRANDT AND S. PETERS
artistic experiments which critically highlight long-hidden aspects of
citizenship, promote new emerging agencies, create new choreographies
and scores of movement in public space or invent and test nascent institutions. Funded by the city of Hamburg, the three-year program is a joint
venture of two academic institutions—the HafenCity University Hamburg
(HCU) and the Department of Design of the Hamburg University of
Applied Science (HAW)—and two cultural institutions—The Theatre of
Research/Fundus Theater Hamburg and the K3/Tanzplan Hamburg.
The title of this book and the individual contributions refer back to the
international conference, Performing Citizenship_02, that took place in
Hamburg in November 2016. At this conference, members of the program
presented their research, while internationally acclaimed experts from a
range of disciplines—such as media studies, urban sociology, philosophy,
theater and literary studies, political science, critical gender studies and
postcolonial theory—were invited to respond and give insight into the
respective artistic and academic research practices. Across the broad span of
contributions contained in this volume—from ‘Haircuts by Children’ in
Toronto to ‘Claims for the Future’ from the Downtown Eastside Women’s
Centre in Vancouver, ‘Citizen Spaces’ in Mexico City and back to the
‘Department of Paralogistics’ and the ‘Welcome City Group’ in Hamburg—
many of the texts offer analytical accounts of artistic and activist research
projects that address global transformations of citizenship and their local
manifestations. This is complemented by more theoretical contributions
and a few key historical examples: the masks that were instrumental in the
performance of citizenship in the Golden Age of Venice (Schaub), Friedrich
Schiller’s concept of aesthetical education (Gunsilius), and mimicry practices of the female jester at the court of King Louis XIII (Jungen).
CitizenshiP redefined and reinvented
Citizenship is back on the agenda of philosophy, together with urban
studies, the global governance discourse and international politics (see,
e.g., the Oxford Handbook of Citizenship 2017). Some scholars even
speculate about a ‘renaissance of citizenship’ (Faist 2013, p. 4). Multiple
publications try to grasp the current transformation of citizenship: citizenship seems to no longer be based primarily on places of origin, and is challenged by new forms of belonging, of representation and sovereignty. A
flurry of concepts are celebrating new configurations of citizenship that
are not determined by place, origin or nation—variously ascribed as activist
INTRODUCTION
3
(Isin 2009), flexible (Ong 2006), insurgent (Holston 2007), medieval
(Roy and AlSayyad 2006), multicultural (Kymlicka 1995), multilevel
(Maas 2013), urban (Lebuhn 2013), transnational (Leggewie 2013),
ubiquitous or diasporic (Balibar 2012). These concepts aim to grasp the
current dynamics and diversity of border-crossing transfers, intersections
and entanglements, with ever more people traversing the physical borders
of nation-states and creating new political subjectivities.
Whereas citizenship as a legal and political institution is based on the
nation-state as a framework of constitutional rights and obligations
enforced by law and related institutions, this foundation of modern citizenship is increasingly and fundamentally challenged by a number of
interrelated and indeed accelerated developments. Economic globalization disempowers nation-states and undercuts their sovereignty, while the
gap between rich and poor within and across nations is widening, which
puts existing social security systems and public health infrastructures under
pressure. Changing patterns of mobility and connectivity, migration and
transnational cultural interconnections all challenge the legal and political
boundaries of sovereign nation-states, their legitimacy and capacity to
organize and provide of citizenship (Benhabib 2006; Shachar 2009). At
the same time, new alliances, networks and collectives of citizens emerge
and assume roles and responsibilities formerly attributed to the state as
institutional body and representation of the people.
Given these developments, citizenship today is at the same time associated with old and ineffective protocols, which continue to produce exclusion, and yet is also ‘in the making’, moving into a position beyond the
given. Citizenship is simultaneously in withdrawal and in the process of
becoming. At its best, this ambivalent performance of citizenship has the
capacity to rearticulate or reinvent citizenship, to link old and new figurations of citizenship—often, if not necessarily, across given thresholds of
legal and political institutions, social conventions, disciplinary competencies and discourses, ascriptions and attributions of race, class, culture and
gender.
Given these dynamics, the editors of this volume conceive citizenship as
‘essentially contested’ (Gallie 1956)—a questionable and corrigible concept that has to be claimed, enacted, performed, and therefore is permanently subject to revision and considerable modification.
Accordingly, the editors of this volume suggest a performative take on
citizenship in order to think beyond conventional notions of normative or
legal definition of a citizen. Moreover, we are convinced that this
4
P. HILDEBRANDT AND S. PETERS
performative take should not be conceived from the overall viewpoint of
an academic master discourse, but has to be informed in multiple ways by
the dimension of contestation and struggle itself, in which citizenship is
actually performed.
Transforming citizenship in action is a very challenging task. Not only
does it require a certain momentum of self-empowerment to start acting
in the first place, but it also implies building new and uncertain alliances
across given social, cultural and institutional systems which allow for at
least a temporary cohesion of collective action. Insights, inventions and
new concepts have to be transformed into real and repeatable repertoires
of citizen actions, thereby establishing new protocols, rules and conducts
of communicating, sharing and ‘commoning’. All attempts and each initiative aiming toward a changed reality of citizenship face significant
obstacles by challenging powerful counterparties. They confront a set of
problems concerning their own ‘performance’ when claiming, contesting,
enacting … in short, when doing things with rights. A performative theory of citizenship should not only acknowledge these problems but should
help to determine and to solve them.
However, in the following, three theoretical concepts will briefly be
introduced and connected, which constitute a common ground for the
different contributions to this volume. As a result, a first provisional definition of the performativity of citizenship and its different layers will be
given.
doing things, with rights: CitizenshiP
as PerformanCe
Firstly, citizenship is understood here as a subject position that allows us
to act in the first place. To be a citizen comprises a complex conditional
framework that entitles us to certain actions, suggests certain ways of acting and links actors to one another in distinct ways, not only giving meaning to our actions but primarily allowing certain acts and actions to be acts
and actions, to be real—that is, to constitute reality. How closely such an
understanding of citizenship is linked to performativity becomes clear
when we look back at the very origins of performative theory and, in particular, at John L. Austin’s initial examples for performative speech acts—
that is, sentences which are neither true nor false but which constitute the
reality of which they speak. As the sentence (as speech act) ‘I do’ exclaimed
INTRODUCTION
5
in the course of the marriage ceremony (Austin 1962, p. 5) may bring
about the reality they speak of, the example also shows that a certain subject position has to be taken in order for them to be carried out successfully. As evident in acts like getting married or the making of a will, which
is also among the first examples for speech acts given by Austin, this is the
subject position of the citizen, presupposing networks of bodies with institutional power. One has to be a citizen to marry or to make a will. Austin
famously argued that, whereas speech acts like these cannot be false in
terms of their truth value, they still can fail. Austin termed such speech acts
as ‘unhappy’ (Austin 1962, p. 15). And they potentially do fail and become
‘unhappy’, if enacted outside of the presupposed network of actors that
makes them work in the first place; in many cases, this means outside of
citizenship. With this background, ‘performing citizenship’ first means to
act in accordance with the protocols and systems of citizenship, and
thereby successfully constitute and produce pieces of civic reality.
Secondly, performing citizenship today also means to claim and enact
citizenship in new ways beyond already given subject positions and institutional networks. Though ‘acts of citizenship’ which shift or reinvent the
concept of citizenship in action are by degree ‘unhappy’ in Austin’s sense,
and partially failing, individual citizens, citizen initiatives and movements
all around the world persist in their trying. To better understand these
dynamics, this volume profits from Engin Isin’s concept of ‘Acts of
Citizenship’, referring to acts which change and produce citizenship as
such. Isin defines these ‘Acts of Citizenship’ as follows:
To act, then, is neither arriving at a scene nor fleeing from it, but actually
engaging in its creation. With that creative act the actor also creates herself/
himself as the agent responsible for the scene created. (Isin 2009, p. 25)
The proximity of this concept to another layer of performativity is evident
in the reference to the creation of a scene. To perform citizenship in this
sense means to act as citizen in a way that potentially reinterprets the citizen as a role and as a subject position. In other words, to perform citizenship and to act as citizen includes a certain dimension of ‘fake it ’til you
make it’ when claiming, enacting or presupposing a right that has yet to
gain legal apparatus.
In this context, to focus on how citizenship is performed, also implies a
certain take on the crucial question of representation. Evidently, most, if
not all, systems of citizenship—in terms of legally enforced rights and
6
P. HILDEBRANDT AND S. PETERS
duties—rely heavily on structures of representation in which citizenship is
performed by speaking in the name of (all) citizens, or in the name of a
certain body of citizenship. Conflicts between established formations and
new figurations of citizenship are often oversimplified, using a binary
opposition of citizenship as a system of representation on the one hand,
and citizens claiming to speak and act for themselves and on their own
account. Focusing on how citizenship is performed undercuts this binary
by suggesting a middle ground, albeit a shaking one. To focus on the performance of citizenship within given systems means to look at the ways
these systems are embodied in action; while to focus on the performance
of citizenship outside of given systems means to be aware that nobody ever
just is a citizen. Even claiming something like ‘direct democracy’ necessarily involves processes and constructs of representation in the course of its
performance. Purely because performing citizenship outside of given systems also generates forms of representation, it does have a chance to create
the scene and the actor in the action itself in an ‘Act of Citizenship’, as Isin
defined it.
A third layer to the performativity of citizenship explicitly regards the
body, the embodiment of citizenship to actually take shape. Habeas corpus—historically and biographically, the right to control one’s own body
is what initiates citizenship. The performance of this right, the steady reiteration of corresponding practices, effectively creates the body as ‘my
body’, as something ‘I’ own, a process that makes ‘me’ a citizen. It makes
‘me’ a citizen as ‘my ownership’ of ‘my individual body’ is dependent on
being a member of other bodies, specific ones, which are dedicated to
keeping the space open for individuals to perform their right.
In this third sense, performing citizenship is not so much about individuals and groups who perform citizenship, but about how citizenship
performs individuals and groups, as it materializes in the making of our
bodies and the bodies with which those form together. Citizenship performs the individual body in a way no less crucial, yet connected to, the
process of gendering as it has been famously described by Judith Butler in
the 1990s. Of course, control over one’s body is necessarily limited and
compromised in many ways, through matter and also through discourse.
Therefore, citizenship from this perspective might be seen less as a subject
position and more as a performance, a constant negotiation between bodies (Butler 2015; Cvejic and Vujanovic 2012).
To summarize, the performativity of citizenship that the contributions
to this volume are focusing on comprises three different meanings:
INTRODUCTION
7
– There is the successful civic performative, allowing citizens to constitute and change civic reality through their actions.
– There is the performance of citizenship outside of given structures
that includes a dimension of ‘fake it ’til you make it’, that enacts
and thereby claims citizenship in new ways.
– There is the most basic performance of citizenship, that often
resides beneath the radar of our attention, in which citizenship as
such is a performance of bodies—institutional and individual—
which, through a daily reiteration of practices, contributes to the
very constitution of the individual body.
In the light of these three modes of performativity, their cross-references
and transitions, it becomes clear that citizenship and performativity are
not just two distinct concepts, two theoretical entities simply combined
for the sake of this volume. Instead, the three modes constitute an intrinsic
relationship between performativity and citizenship, who owe to each
other much of their corresponding world-making powers.
This mutual reference, however, might also result in certain circularities. If citizenship has always been performative, then the limitations of
citizenship might, to a certain extent, also be the limitations of performativity. Specifically, both citizenship and performativity are western, if not
European, concepts. Therefore, this volume also discusses citizenship and
‘non-performance’, especially with regard to the politics of representation
(Hildebrandt), post- and de-colonial questions (Peters), as well as the
logistics of citizenships (Frischkorn).
artistiC PraCtiCe and Knowledge ProduCtion
To focus on the performativity of citizenship means considering the constant negotiations of bodies, rights and spaces. It also means paying attention to the fact, that these negotiations have always been a major field of
artistic practice. Throughout the history of citizenship, there is an abundance of works and practices illustrating the hope that art significantly
contributes to the ongoing negotiation of citizenship and empowers citizens to consciously shape and reshape the performance of citizenship.
While highlighting a few exemplary historical lines, most contributions to
this volume focus on articulations of the relationship between art and citizenship that have developed since the 1990s. The preface to ‘The Citizen
8
P. HILDEBRANDT AND S. PETERS
Artist’, published in 1998, describes this new relationship between art and
citizenship poignantly:
As public space becomes increasingly saturated by corporate culture, a new
generation of artists is emerging. Frustrated by the insulated art world,
encouraged by the politicization of art in the 80s, and desirous of the rupture between high and low art, artists are looking into the space of everyday
life to find a new canvas. (Burnham and Durland 1998, p. 5)
Since then, research has concentrated largely on changes in art practices,
on artists and projects that questioned art as a closed discourse and put it
to experimental use in, with and for communities of all kinds. Beyond the
initial enthusiasm for these new articulations of ‘community art’, it soon
became clear that the question of participation is crucial to this line of
practice and thinking (Bishop 2012; Doherty 2009; Hildebrandt 2012).
While most corresponding art practices and projects can be called ‘participatory’ in general, participation can take many forms. In recent years,
critical analyses of participation in art have gained in complexity and standing. They have shown, quite simply, that art can hardly ever get participation right. Though participatory projects often seem to question given
power relations, they also produce and reproduce them. Citizen artists
might counteract missing participation in society, but nevertheless will
always mirror it and get caught in the overall structures of participation
and non-participation.
The Performing Citizenship research program was partly designed in
response to this critical discourse around participation and suggests the
turning of tables: though the critique of participation in the arts may be
well-founded, the editors of this volume are convinced that the corresponding problems and paradoxes of participation should not be held
against participatory art practices in general, but should be interpreted as
symptoms for a much wider crisis: the crisis of citizenship as the foundation and form that participation in society takes. Therefore, instead of
looking exclusively at how art is changed through its new relation to citizenship, most contributors to this volume use participatory art practice,
including and embracing its failures, as an instrument and a vehicle to
examine the transformations of citizenship. Art practices—ranging from
curating exhibitions to playwriting, urban intervention and performance,
video making, and dance—are understood as tools and frameworks for
participatory research, within and beyond the academy, that serve to reach
INTRODUCTION
9
new audiences, but also, and more importantly, ‘to reformulate these
research-relations’ (Hawkins 2013, p. 31) toward something that could
truly be called citizen research. In this reconfiguration, the exemplary
artistic practices discussed in this volume are not solely the subject of critical inquiry; instead, they become experimental methods with which to
explore transformations of citizenship as we are experiencing them or
envisioning them today. ‘What unites them, however, is that they are
methods or means by which the social world is not only investigated, but
may also be engaged’, write Lury and Wakeford in their inventory of
inventive methods. ‘To describe them as inventive is to seek to realize the
potential of this engagement whether it is as intervention, interference or
refraction’ (2012, p. 6).
In this sense, hundreds of people—citizens and non-citizens—have
contributed to the different research projects presented in this volume,
not by writing about citizenship, but by performing and articulating it in
new and experimental ways. Research into citizenship has to be citizen
research. Therefore, while this volume is meant to make these collective
research processes accessible to a transdisciplinary—yet academic—discourse, it is by no means the only outcome of the research projects in
question, but is part of a multilayered production of knowledge and corresponding realities which take many forms in projects and practices and
evolving networks around the world.
about this volume
Writing about performing citizenship constitutes a form of performance in
its own right, operating between criticality and creativity and generating
new perspectives and practices of artists, researchers and citizens. For
which kind of audience do we write and what kind of language do we
choose? The challenge of translating artistic practice into text, theory (citizenship) into practice (performance), making connections between
abstract and the particular means to navigate the fine line between knowing and not-yet knowing how to perform citizenship, and how to reflect
upon our thoughts in the act. When we understand research as an open
process that involves, or more precisely builds on, the contribution, the
collaboration and co-production of knowledge with other citizen researchers, blurring—if not obliterating—the boundaries of the ‘white cube’ of
art galleries and museums, the ‘black box’ of the theater or the ‘ivory
tower’ of academic conferences, journals and publications, this relates also
10
P. HILDEBRANDT AND S. PETERS
to the act of publishing itself. In other words, this volume will be available
online and in print; it is peer-reviewed and open access with a creative
commons license.
As regards structure, the book is organized into four parts addressing
key aspects raised by the intersection of performance and citizenship:
– Part I positions the present and vulnerable body at the center of
struggles concerning citizenship. The body itself becomes both a
battlefield and a space where values, norms and ideologies are
constantly negotiated. With a focus on individual bodily practices
as well as social choreographies of citizenship, this section asks
how bodily art practices can challenge existing bodies of citizenship. Which individual and collective strategies enable us to intervene in political and social processes? How can these strategies be
used in order to discover new forms of agency?
– Part II focuses on the city and urban spaces of citizenship. Diverse
(urban) spaces let new figurations of citizenship emerge that bring
existing binaries of private and public, art and activism, selforganization and governance, citizen and non-citizen, into question. These spaces arise out of manifold acts, through which
diverse protagonists not only claim and challenge the urban as a
scene but furthermore implement new relations between the
notion of citizens and the city. But what happens on the edge of
new-governance practices which always risk co-producing an
urban development that counteracts emancipatory aims? Further,
inasmuch as the city is constructed by social processes, spatial formations and its historical implications, the city is also shaped by
the narratives and cultural representations of diverse communities
which enable forms of belonging, identification and participation.
What stories does the city tell, what is the ‘sound of the city’? And
what are the artistic strategies that reveal counter representations
or enable a critical reception of hidden narratives in our urban
daily life?
– Part III addresses the premises, critiques and speculations of citizenship and (non)performance. While citizenship is often idealized as a means of emancipation, in an exclusive Western discourse,
it also serves as a regulatory instrument of domination that relies
on things and artifacts to stabilize its rule. The practice of citizenship implicates multiple sutures in the fabric of the common
INTRODUCTION
11
world, thereby articulating differently empowered realms. A contested matrix of subjectivity and personhood—the position of the
fully human—regulates which bodies are allowed to move freely
and articulate their interests as citizens. Furthermore, any performance of citizenship seems to be predicated on its other; that is to
say, on other delegated performances and the exploitation of the
very part(s) it excludes. We ask: How to be aware of the historic
violence inherent in the notion of citizenship? Is it possible to shift
or weaken the continuing operation of Western hegemonic power
that the concept presupposes? And how could performance be the
act of renouncing or redistributing agency so that others become
present and discernible?
– Part IV, ‘Emerging Agencies’, essentially deals with new educational practices of knowledge and cultural production. To change
citizenship is to change subject positions and forms of representations. In micropractices, new subject positions and ways of
addressing a public can emerge. How do they become discernible?
How to foster, trace and support these invisible agencies beyond
already existing logics of citizenship and performance? How to
enable neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and cultural institutions to become hosts for the emergence of new civic agencies?
Who invites whom there? Who speaks for whom? Who invents
other spaces and where? What role do artists and artistic projects
play within these processes of emerging citizenship and its
negotiation?
referenCes
Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words, The William James Lectures
Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. London: Oxford University Press.
Balibar, Etienne. 2012. The “Impossible” Community of the Citizen: Past and
Present Problems. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30:
437–449.
Benhabib, Seyla. 2006. Another Cosmopolitanism. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Bishop, Claire. 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of
Spectatorship. London: Verso.
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P. HILDEBRANDT AND S. PETERS
Burnham, Linda Frye, and Steve Durland. 1998. The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of
Art in the Public Arena: An Anthology. In High Performance Magazine
1978–1998, Thinking Publicly. New York: Critical Press.
Butler, Judith. 2015. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Cvejic, Bojana, and Ana Vujanovic. 2012. Public Sphere by Performance. Berlin:
b_books.
Doherty, Claire. 2009. Situation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Faist, Thomas. 2013. Shapeshifting Citizenship in Germany: Expansion, Erosion
and Extension. Bielefeld: COMCAD Working Papers, No. 115.
Gallie, W.B. 1956. Essentially Contested Concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society 56: 167–198.
Hawkins, Harriet. 2013. For Creative Geographies. New York: Routledge.
Hildebrandt, Paula. 2012. Urbane Kunst. Handbuch Stadtsoziologie, 719–742.
Wiesbaden: Springer.
Holston, John. 2007. Insurgent Citizenship. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Isin, Engin. 2009. Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen.
Subjectivity 29: 367–388.
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority
Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lebuhn, Henrik. 2013. Local Border Practices and Urban Citizenship in Europe:
Exploring Urban Borderlands. CITY. Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture,
Theory, Policy, Action 17 (1): 37–51.
Leggewie, Claus. 2013. Transnational Citizenship. Ideals and European Realities.
Eurozine. http://www.eurozone.com. Accessed 2 Nov 2017.
Lury, Celia, and Nina Wakeford. 2012. Inventive Methods. The Happening of the
Social. New York: Routledge.
Maas, Willem. 2013. Multilevel Citizenship. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and
Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press.
Roy, Ananya, and Nezar AlSayyad. 2006. Medieval Modernity: On Citizenship
and Urbanism in a Global Era. Space and Polity 10 (1): 1–20.
Shachar, Ayelet. 2009. The Birthright Lottery. Citizenship and Global Inequality.
Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press.
Shachar, Ayelet, Rainer Bauboeck, Irene Bloemraad, and Maarten Vink. 2017. The
Oxford Handbook of Citizenship. Oxford: University of Oxford Press.
INTRODUCTION
13
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by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original
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permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
PART I
Bodies of Citizenship
Yet Another Effort, Citizens, If You Want
to Learn How to React!
Kai van Eikels
Citizens Who Do not Want to ReaCt
“Move your fucking head!” The choreographer Deborah Hay calls this
one of her core mottoes, in dance and in life. What does this instruction
imply if taken for a maxim of performing citizenship? What advice can
dance, the art of movement, offer to a body that, normally, is a citizen’s
body by virtue of reflexes, not reactions? A policeman shouts, ‘Hey, you!’
and you turn around. This movement suffices to define you as a subject, as
one subjected to the state’s authority, according to Louis Althusser.1 To the
extent that citizenship is a legal status, not an achievement or a competence,
the only performative utterance demanded from citizens by the state’s representatives consists of such small responsive movements of acknowledgment. The more automated, the more reliably locked into behavioral
routines these responses are—the fewer signs of a true performance they
show—the better, from a statist point of view. Disobedience, in this scenario,
is left with only two alternatives. You either ignore the policeman and walk
on; or you turn against him and engage in a confrontation, perhaps put up
a fight. The police have been trained to deal with either form of insurrection.
K. van Eikels (*)
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_2
17
18
K. VAN EIKELS
They will initiate pursuit or check the attack—calling in reinforcements if
necessary. But what if citizens learned how to continue the movement of
turning their heads around in a way that turns the reflex into a reaction—
that changes the situation, slightly but effectively, by using the turnaround
as a mode of communication with others, thus referring and relating the
policeman’s presence to the presence of other citizens—of citizens who
understand how to self-organize spontaneously, who are versed in forming
a collective, in establishing a civil constellation any time and in any place
through a sequence of distributed reactions? For this to happen, moving
your head in response would indeed have to become a performance, a bodily
activity that draws on skills, on practical and theoretical knowledge. It would
need to be practiced as a political movement.
In October 2016, I hosted one day of a week-long workshop initiated
by the artist Koki Tanaka. I asked the participants to keep moving all the
time and to avoid forming a circle during the entire day we were practicing
together. How would power have bearing on a host of people who were
incessantly turning around, moving their heads, necks, shoulders and torsos in order to circumvent a standstill and to elude the best-established
pattern of gathering? And what kind of power would—or could—it be, as
they all continued to be citizens of a nation-state throughout the exercises, remaining subjected to its authority that was operative in their bodies? Which qualities of togetherness would evolve from these bodies’
interactions when sustained turnarounds challenged the continuity of
unquestioned operation by the standard ‘citizen’ movement repertoire?
The workshop’s title, How to Live Together, echoed that of the lecture
given by Roland Barthes at the Collège de France in 1976–77.2 The
schedule mapped out a variety of activities for the eight volunteers, all of
whom lived in or near the city of Münster, Westphalia—some of them
were born in the area, some had grown up there but came from an immigrant family, some had only recently arrived for study or to find work. The
whole workshop was recorded by a professional film team because the
artist wanted a multimedia installation composed of edited videos, photos,
texts and objects used during the week to become his contribution for the
Skulptur Projekte exhibition in 2017. After we had focused on collectively
self-organizing through movement for the first half of our workshop day,
the exercises in the second half suggested employing language in a way
similar to body movement. For one exercise, nicknamed ‘G8,’ I told the
group members to think of themselves as eight sovereign rulers of the
world. Whatever they decided would become reality. All of them were
YET ANOTHER EFFORT, CITIZENS, IF YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO REACT!
19
equally powerful though. We wrote down a couple of important political
topics like ‘world peace,’ ‘solving the hunger problem’ and ‘tackling sexism,’ then selected issues by drawing paper scraps from a pot and addressed
them one at a time. Everyone was entitled to make decisions, but one had
to react to a decision with another decision. If someone was not satisfied
with a decision, they could alter or even annul it with a decision of their
own, yet ought to be prepared that the one who had just been overruled
might strike back or a third party might come to their aid. For all this
wealth of power, the structure called for cooperation among equals; or
else, the world management was doomed to fail.
Which it mostly did, for several rounds. While the general atmosphere
of mild annoyance never rose to open protest against the rule or against
me, the eight participants found it immensely difficult to break away from
their conversation habits. They would rather lecture each other: explaining why a decision was wrong or flawed, criticize its ineffectiveness, express
ethical indignation, signal sympathy and antipathy (thus creating informal
subdivisions of the group), and engage in discussions that promised to be
endless. Whereas the task of formulating a decision and deciding on a
formulation rendered the citizens-turned-rulers near speechless at times,
sophisticated arguments against a decision spouted from their mouths
without hesitation. Out of this group of people, some were active with
local initiatives helping refugees or had been involved in social activism,
and most seemed particularly socially minded. However, the ethos, or
even the concept, of help did not cross over to the ‘G8’ situation; it disappeared as they shared a reality defined by safety, freedom and the power to
decide. Emphatic affects to help will likely be triggered in a state of
urgency, where others evidently lack something. In A Paradise Built in
Hell, Rebecca Solnit tells stories about human beings abandoning their
distant attitude after a catastrophe has destroyed or temporarily suspended
civil life’s infrastructures.3 The extreme situation imposed on all draws
many closer together. In less dramatic intensity, such encounters under
pressure occur every day. But for the leisurely gathered workshop group,
whose members had even become acquainted to being filmed on this third
day, what motivation was there to help each other?
The pattern shifted a little when I introduced another rule—namely,
that every decision was to be made in the form of a ‘Yes, and….’ ‘Yes-Anding’ is an agreement in improvisation theater and dance: whatever your
response will be, you start with an acknowledgement and affirmation of
that which you are reacting to, before adding something. And if you are
20
K. VAN EIKELS
ill-content with what the other one has just said or done, your own reaction needs to redirect it. Negation cannot take on the form of rejection; it
will have to find a movement that recognizes the other’s move’s impulse,
following it in its original direction for an initial period, then changing the
direction and taking it somewhere else than presumably intended, which
may ultimately result in a full turnaround. You react like a Judo or Aikido
fighter, who never goes against the partner’s movement but uses its
momentum for accomplishing their own goal. When we played our game
with ‘Yes-And-ing,’ objections interrupted the collective process less
often, and the overall tendency was to be more cooperative and concentrate on modifying a measure rather than trying to disable it.
However, despite the occasional show of pleasure when the process of
decision-making was proceeding more smoothly, it remained evident until
the end that the participants did not want to react in this manner. They
visibly felt at odds with the position of mighty rulers, and the semi-ironic
‘G8’ likely added to make the effort unattractive. But a similar resistance
against communication with and through decisions would, I assume, have
manifested without the fiction of unlimited power, which just served the
purpose of barring ‘impotence’ as a pretext for not deciding on something. The influence might as well have been limited to that of an average
citizen and the tasks adjusted accordingly. The deeper problem seemed to
consist in a collective dynamic that required you to react without offering
anything in terms of a compelling situational force: people were safe and
free, yet still they had to react. Since they were free, they might as well not
react with a decision, instead withdrawing to the position of the critical
observer, the member of an audience. Their lives as citizens had trained
them for this mode of (non-) participation, therefore it was no surprise
that they preferred to remain in this state rather than doing something at
which they were inexperienced. In a nation-state with a government of
professional politicians, roles are clearly separated between those who
make decisions and those who criticize them. Leaving the population with
less power to decide puts more emphasis on a kind of criticality that is
disconnected from the practical reason of decision-making. The people of
a sovereign nation-state may never say ‘Yes, and…’ to a decision made by
the government. The people may not even articulate an Einverständnis—
an affirmative understanding—which the chorus in Bertolt Brecht’s learning play Der Jasager claims is ‘most important to learn’4 for living together.
They can merely choose between not reacting and critical comments, and
both options go hand in hand.
YET ANOTHER EFFORT, CITIZENS, IF YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO REACT!
21
Citizens Who haD to ReaCt attaCk Citizens Who
DiD not
New protest movements solved some old problems. In 2011 and 2012,
the need for quick decisions in the camps, which were beleaguered by the
police, prompted useful techniques for facilitating debates. And the agreement to bring only really controversial issues before the general assembly—and otherwise let people pursue their own agendas—in addition to
speeding up proceedings, helped build a relaxed, trustful atmosphere.5
Still, the state of exception defined the occupiers’ life in that it provided
the problems. Improvised living together consisted of urgent problemsolving, plus free time for sharing knowledge, social activities and discussions about how things would be different in a better world. Whereas
external and internal challenges to the protest event created a pressure that
called for reactions both effective and efficient, the pastime activities—
which expressed the freedom of living together in a gathering that was not
only protest but an experiment with ‘small-a anarchism’6—had need to be
neither. Organizational improvements, hence, were mostly economic.
This is a well-known phenomenon with improvisation. For the interplay of spontaneous reactions to embrace change—and particularly a
change that extends to the collective dynamic’s own procedural patterns—
an extraordinary urgency is required, ideally, a sustained urgency. The
much-lauded inventiveness of group improvisation, where ‘the new’
‘emerges’ as a collective surplus, in reality results from a pressure to reinvent that which may be taken for granted in ordinary life. Improvisation’s
originality reflects a death threat, whose more symbolic manifestations, in
everyday extempore and in the performing arts’ methods of instant creation, still carry the affective tremor of a literal catastrophe.7 And for political activists, this threat is to be taken at face value: They obtain practical
knowledge through improvised self-organization because their fights
against the authorities of the nation-state often lead to situations in which
their enemy denies them basic citizens’ rights. They must learn how to
react, as the state’s executive forces exercise a power to withdraw the privilege of not having to react—the essential privilege of the citizen.
Repeatedly, activism means survival training in a state of suspended citizenship. The acquired reacting skills are therefore often so congenially
attuned to situations of duress that they fit in badly with the loose, casual
encounters that compose much of citizens’ regular social and political
undertakings. Once the fighters return to their citizen identities, normality
22
K. VAN EIKELS
swallows the self-organizational know-how. Sometimes they sink back into
attitudes of resentment deeper than those who never cried from tear gas
attacks. Reserve—the personal stance corresponding to the citizen’s right
to not react—has lost its innocence for them. Having endured moments,
hours or days of unprotected bare life, their bodies are painfully aware that
the freedom to hesitate, to defer, to put off, to neglect, to disregard or to
remain indifferent to what others are doing is all but a natural given.
Something in these bodies continues to fight, taking revenge for the
inflicted wound in a kind of precisely misguided transference, when they
attack politically like-minded fellow citizens whose behavior betrays their
ignorance as to how the open-ended discussions they enjoy so much are
only possible because the nation-state spares them the necessity to react.
Can we, politically like-minded fellow citizens, take a cue from that
transferred revenge, learning a lesson from the very unfairness of those
attacks? As people born and educated into becoming functional entities
within a society that never gives its members much reason to ask a question like ‘How to live together?,’ can we learn how to deal with the nationstate’s effective presence in-between our bodies in a similar way to how
dance performers work with the material of movement? Althusser’s policeman need not be attendant, as long as the citizens hear the state’s voice
resonate in other citizen’s voices—which all but very few of us usually do.
We search in vain for an atmosphere that invites direct democracy in a
nation-state, if for the reason that there are no direct encounters between
its citizens. In peaceful, quiet times, the weight of sovereign authority feels
light to the point of sinking into oblivion. Still, every one of us has a primary relationship with the state; and only in second respect, mediated by
the state’s institutional structures that pervade the entire social sphere, do
we entertain relationships with one another. But what to make of this
lightness?
self-inDulgent Citizens Who ReaCt BeCause they
have PRaCtiCeD ReaCting
Interactions between citizens attest to their indirectness where a certain
distance is taken for granted, which the participants experience as their
freedom to react because it portends the possibility of not reacting. Citizen
behavior expects that the ‘together’ will be managed. Richard Sennett
accused modern individualism of diminishing people’s ability to actively
YET ANOTHER EFFORT, CITIZENS, IF YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO REACT!
23
create the public sphere through the use of formal, respectfully distant,
polite, social performing styles.8 If such a de-skilling and de-formalization
in fact occurred, it has made us even more dependent on a properly separated, buffered co-presence being provided for us by the sovereign authority. What disappeared as people got used to behaving as if in private even
when in public—leaving the parade of erect backs for slouched subwayseat ease—is the identification with that authority. Gone are the times
when you had to embody the sovereign in your own comportment for
others to recognize you as a dignified citizen.
In the progressively nationalist design of a republic, as it was pursued in
Europe from the eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the citizens
contributed the distance of public converse to the political life. They
employed a rhetorical and behavioral code of ‘self-abstraction,’9 which
effectively removed the distinction between strangers and kin by addressing everyone, even family members or close friends, as though talking to a
stranger. The civil public sphere thus socialized the sovereign: a ‘bottomup sovereignty’ met halfway with the governance from above, reassuring
rulers and ruled that the same form of control as it had been implemented
top-down in the complex of legislative, judicative and executive power
could also be established in citizens’ self-organization. From the political
party running in national elections down to the local pub’s savings association, variants of instituted power proliferated on every level. ‘We are the
people’ translated into ‘We are the citizens,’ which meant ‘We are the
state.’
As outmoded (and anachronistic in its sporadic reappearances) as that
citizens’ pride seems today, it still remains to be discovered what a civic
sphere abandoned by sovereignty’s poses, postures and paternalisms offers
to its residents. What does performing citizenship mean, if it no longer
means that citizens embody the sovereign? How can performance benefit
from a leisurely state of attendance, if the bodies in public are no longer
busy negotiating the discrepancy between the role of the obedient subject—whose every move includes a silent nod to the sovereign’s watchman
hiding behind—and the role of the substitute sovereign on call, who is
always ready to take control (‘responsibility’) and master a situation? What
political performativity is there in the slack, laggard, careless, overly confident but then also more versatile, flip-able, soft-necked inhabitation of a
public space maintained by a power that feels exterior to its citizens—by
sovereignty that remains un-internalized because the subjects relate to the
effects of sovereign power, yet not to its structures?
24
K. VAN EIKELS
This question might be deemed unworthy of asking. Bad conscience
hastens to assert that the liberties I take as a ‘spineless,’ effete nth generation citizen are not expressions of true freedom; that they betray consumer egotism, complacency and naiveté. If the users of a social network
habitually ignore the provider company (unless the service is down), they
deserve to be called sheepish, as their lack of vigilance renders them easy
targets for manipulation. Does the same not hold for citizens who let the
state be the state? We have been alerted to secret services intruding on our
privacies on a scale that exceeds darkest fantasy. Never had citizens less
reason to trust in the institutional cluster that makes up the state, we
might caution one another. But the object-less watchfulness of those many
of us who are not hackers, lawyers or other experts ready to fight the battle
for privacy with some promise of success is not politically helpful at all.
Rather than fortify statist logic by giving ourselves over to an angry, and
yet fascinated, distrust, anarchist reaction training would seek to weaken
the state as the potential enemy of its citizens by actually taking advantage
of some liberties it provides—by utilizing them for the sake of emancipating reacting.
In the pamphlet Français, encore un effort si vous voulez être républicains, embedded in the dialogue La philosophie dans le boudoir, the anarchist de Sade suggested principles for a society in which the revolution
achieves a continuous reality, not in the permanent and ever-more radical
renewal—as attempted by the Jacobin terreur—but rather in a series of
secondary steps that make comprehensive, unrestricted use of the freedoms gained in revolution’s initial victory.10 In a time when daily news
reminds us that democracy might as well not carry on—as one ruler after
the other abuses their authority by transforming constitutional democracies into autocratic regimes, and millions of refugees are desperate to reach
one of the few remaining states that still seem to respect citizens’ rights—
we may want to ask ourselves, in de Sade’s spirit, what good the protected
atmosphere of liberal citizenship affords the political. Especially if we think
that the political lies with the people and their power to organize living
together—and not with the state’s administration—we should expose our
political intelligence to the following questions: How can we—you, I, any
of us—do something that will feel like a free reaction, based on the sovereign’s externality? How can the collective self-organization of political
action benefit from a mostly carefree, negligent civil life? Where the state
assumes an infrastructural, provider-like reality for its people, what point is
YET ANOTHER EFFORT, CITIZENS, IF YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO REACT!
25
there in affirming that reality—even though it might be (and, in a certain
respect, cannot be anything else) but an illusion?
Performing citizenship—in a blunt interpretation of the expression—
is to say that we use knowledge acquired in techniques of artistic performance for instructing citizens on how to play games like ‘G8,’ how to
change them in the playing and how to customize them according to
different agendas. If learning to entertain collective processes through
nuanced and considered, willful reacting were part of everyone’s education, equality would quickly cease to be taken for an ideal upon which
reality must surely compromise. More technically, it would be recognized as a performative presupposition that informs communication
practices. Criticality, then, would mean adding negations instead of withholding approval. Continuation of movement across multiple bodies—
casually, even sluggishly, but perpetually ‘moving your fucking head,’ as
several lines of continuing are synchronizing in and through your body,
admitting to the presence of others who happen to be around—would
become a widely applied understanding of ‘public.’ So, inclined to keep
on moving, people would see the custom of sitting in circles for hours in
order to arrive at a single decision as the weird, quasi-religious ritual it
is.11
Importantly though, the freedom of not having to react should be
respected, more than that, celebrated, within these political skills of performing citizenship. The right to hesitate, to defer, to put off, to neglect,
to disregard or to remain indifferent to what others are doing, ought to be
the very foundation of an educational program for teaching reaction techniques that set the spine swinging from the feet up to the head down.
Rather than scold citizens for their alienation from values like empathy,
concern and a type of responsibility that creates bottom-up sovereignty,
such performing techniques would do well to scan the alienation for what
might be politically helpful in its impact on living together. The more
constellative artistry the citizens’ bodies achieve in navigating the distance,
the more thoroughly performing can establish a civil public sphere. No
catastrophic urgency needs be imaginatively imported for this. Unless
catastrophes happen, let us find out how to play a peaceful arena, playing
it loose. And as soon as we break loose from the compensatory fiction of
‘getting closer (again),’ foreigners may even touch each other, anytime, in
any place.
26
K. VAN EIKELS
notes
1. See, Louis Althusser (1971), ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’,
in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York:
Monthly Review Press), pp. 121–176.
2. Roland Barthes (2012) How to Live Together. Novelistic Simulations of Some
Everyday Spaces, trans. Kate Briggs (New York: Columbia University
Press).
3. See Rebecca Solnit (2010) A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary
Communities That Arise in Disaster (London: Penguin).
4. ‘Wichtig zu lernen vor allem ist Einverständnis’ Bertolt Brecht, Der
Jasager, in: Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, 3
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp) 1988, pp. 57–65, here p. 57.
5. See David Graeber’s account on principles and procedures of decisionmaking with Occupy, in: The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a
Movement (Spiegel & Grau), 2013.
6. See, David Graeber (2000), Direct Action: An Ethnography (Oakland: AK
Press), pp. 211–222.
7. See, Kai van Eikels (2016) ‘What Your Spontaneity is Worth to Us.
Improvisation Between Art and Economics’, in Sabeth Buchmann; Ilse
Lafer; Constanze Ruhm (eds) Putting Rehearsals to the Test. Practices of
Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics (Berlin & Vienna:
Sternberg Press), pp. 22–30.
8. See, Richard Sennett (1977) The Fall of Public Man (New York: Knopf).
9. See, Michael Warner (2002) Publics and Counterpublics (Cambridge: MIT
Press).
10. See Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom, trans. Richard Seaver and
Austryn Wainhouse, pp. 91–122, http://www.sin.org/tales/Marquis_de_
Sade%2D%2DPhilosophy_in_the_Bedroom.pdf, date accessed 1 March
2017.
11. On the religious (re-)determination of political gathering, see Kai van
Eikels (2016), ‘The Togetherness of Those Who Would Not Wait for One
Another’ in geheimagentur; Martin Jörg Schäfer; Vassilis S. Tsianos (eds)
The Art of Being Many. Towards a New Theory and Practice of Gathering
(Bielefeld: Transcript), pp. 61–68.
YET ANOTHER EFFORT, CITIZENS, IF YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO REACT!
27
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An Elephant in the Room / On the Balcony:
Performing the ‘Welcome City’ Hamburg
Paula Hildebrandt
The first rule on the stage of the big city is: Always create the impression
to be on the move to a particular place.
Massimo Carlotto, The Fugitive (Carlotto 2007, p. 46)
In January 2015, I moved to Hamburg to start a new job at the HafenCity
University Hamburg. I was 39 years old. After finishing my PhD, I was
working as a freelance cultural producer, lecturer and writer; I also organized a weekly German language class in a reception centre for refugees in
Berlin. Since this time, I became curious to discover the way in which my
own approach to arriving in a new city corresponds to the situation and
strategies of others who have recently arrived; equally, to those who have
lived in Hamburg for a longer time but without a feeling of having arrived.
My move to Hamburg was in no way comparable to the situation of
somebody who left their hometown due to civil war or extreme poverty. I
have no experience of war, abuse, torture or traumatizing events. I write
this article as a white, gender-conforming woman from a fairly uppermiddle-class background, with an international education and a work
P. Hildebrandt (*)
Berlin, Germany
e-mail: info@paulahildebrandt.de
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_3
29
30
P. HILDEBRANDT
contract—albeit part-time and temporary. I am privileged ‘as hell’! The
research I do is therefore bound to reflect those privileges.
Hamburg, like any other big city in Germany, is characterized by
increasing super-diversity and polarization. This often leads to cultural and
political conflicts, nevertheless brightened by excitement and expectations
for a better life. The recent influx of refugees adds momentum, relevance
and urgency to the question of how to live together and explore new
modes of exchange and learning, of conviviality, hospitality and solidarity.
In 2015 alone, more than 20,000 refugees arrived in Hamburg. These
people come in addition to the many people from ‘elsewhere’, already living here for decades, often doing badly paid and largely invisible work:
caring, cleaning, cooking, tailoring, waxing—a fact too often neglected in
the discourse about the so-called refugee crisis.
After the initial enthusiasm and subsequent disenchantment with the
German Willkommenskultur (‘welcome culture’), and in opposition to the
predominant and restrictive integration paradigm with its essentialist
notion of citizenship and naturalization (Einbürgerung), I wanted to find
out what constitutes a contemporary practice of hospitality. How to create
community, make kin and think-with other beings under circumstances
where many people, not just refugees, inhabit multiple worlds and questions of identity and belonging are less defined by territory, family or
birth? Can a city be welcoming? What does a ‘Welcome City’ look and feel
like? Can you feel at home among strangers? What are the potentials and
limits of hospitality as the central concept when thinking about how to live
together in a super-diverse society which continues to consider migrants
to be strange?
Inspired by a novel by Massimo Carlotto1—about his years in exile, in
prison and under persecution—I thought to explore the mostly unspoken
rules for living and settling in a new city; the rules that you are supposed
to know or which you did not even know existed. Which skills and what
kind of knowledge are necessary to act and be considered a citizen of
Hamburg: to ‘show-up’ on the city stage of Hamburg? Further, I wanted
to better understand how artists/researchers, working with performative
methods, can prefigure or suggest new forms of citizenship that have yet
to be invented. This means to also investigate my own performance (as
citizen).
A performative perspective on citizenship shifts the discussion over who
is entitled to rights. This involves a change in outlook from a national
framework towards emphasis on the actual (physical) centre of people’s
AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM / ON THE BALCONY: PERFORMING…
31
lives, a closer look at the insurgent practice of people traversing borders
and normative frames (Holston 2007; Isin 2009, 2012; Iannelli and
Musarò 2017). Engin Isin has advanced the idea of citizenship as ‘the
right to claim rights’ in order to emphasize the activist, process-oriented
and self-empowering dimension of citizenship:
The actors of citizenship are not necessarily those who hold the status of
citizenship. If we understand citizenship as an instituted subject-position, it
can be performed or enacted by various categories of subjects including
aliens, migrants, refugees, states, courts and so on. (Isin 2009, p. 370)
This shift—from the moving to the acting subject, from mobility to the
ability of crossing geographical borders and normative frames—draws
attention to the fact that prefabricated categories of citizen and noncitizen do not exist as neutral, pre-social, fixed identities, but only in relation to one another. Citizenship is in a permanent state of reconstruction
and reinvention—by the state as well as by non-state actors who challenge,
disavow, play with, supersede, if not entirely obliterate, supposedly clearcut roles and responsibilities, social conventions, standard protocols and
normal procedure. Citizenship, in the words of Etienne Balibar, is ‘ubiquitous’ (2012, p. 443) and therefore can be—might be—enacted potentially everywhere.
As for performing citizenship, I do not really know what it is, and I
know it less and less. And yet, although I am not sure about how to actually translate a performative theory of citizenship into artistic practice, I
would argue that performativity offers a conceptual gateway to escape the
trap of ‘othering’, of getting lost in essentialist notions of culture, considering the complications of class, race and gender. Performativity essentially
revolves around matters of citation and contestation, of role and representation. It is precisely this ambivalence and process of transformation that
validates a performative investigation of Hamburg as ‘Welcome City’. The
aim of my three-year research project was not to arrive at some comprehensive definition of a city that is welcoming, or to establish certain criteria, but rather investigate—through practice and process—when and how
new forms of hospitality, of rights and responsibilities towards the other—
a stranger, our neighbour—emerge, as embodied activity, lived experience,
enactment and performance. My general idea was that the methods
employed will facilitate the actual happening of the ‘Welcome City’
Hamburg and also investigate the circumstances and situations, its fragility
32
P. HILDEBRANDT
and relationality, contingency and sensuousness. Some impatience is
implied here with the limitations of a linguistic frame of reference towards
a more practical—if not pragmatic and materialist—route in dealing with
the complexities of citizenship as one of the most urgent matters of our
time. In this way, the constraints are apparent: art as research is often a
desk job. Despite this, it holds ample capacity to depart from one’s comfort zone, transcending the border of the white cube, museums and galleries, the black box of the theatre, not forgetting the ivory tower of the
university.
At the outset, I contacted several networks and initiatives which deal in
some way with welcoming newcomers. I actively approached others who
would be interested to explore Hamburg (as ‘Welcome City’). I did this
by circulating flyers—in collaboration with Hamburg’s organization for
refugee accommodation Fördern & Wohnen—in the official Hamburg
Welcome Center. I chose likely locations for contact, such as launderettes,
the New Hamburg Language Café2 and attending cocktail parties through
the expat network InterNations. I invented the so-called welcome city
group: a collection of seemingly disparate people who gather to discover
what might constitute a contemporary practice of hospitality. Enacting the
‘Welcome City’ Hamburg was process in action, in the making. The
description of the group—its aims and activities—was meant to be broad
and inclusive, inviting people with or without a residence permit, on the
move or on the run, residents and refugees.
The group quickly grew to more than 40 ‘members’, mostly communicating via a WhatsApp group. Meetings took place on Saturday evenings,
each prepared by one ‘member’, dealing with the overall theme of hospitality from a different perspective; for example, in traditional Iranian architecture, Arabic poetry and proverbs, Argentinian milongas or the
prostitution/tourism complex. We explored the nightlife in Hamburg’s
red-light district of St. Pauli (men and women disguised as a bunch of
Hen Night party-goers). During the Hamburg Nacht des Wissens 20153
(Long Night of Sciences) we attended a crash course on ‘International
Business Etiquette: whether lunch, small-talk or dress code – learn to
avoid awkward situations in an international business context’ and a game
workshop titled ‘The next time the Queen comes to visit… be prepared to
impress somebody important!’
Meeting by meeting, action by action, we created a kind of performative cartography of Hamburg as ‘Welcome City’. My initial ethnographic
and topographic approach—of mapping Hamburg through performative
AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM / ON THE BALCONY: PERFORMING…
33
actions in different locations across the city—increasingly turned to sociological questions and group dynamics that do not follow the familiar logic
of community, family or affinity. I became increasingly cautious regarding
matters of hierarchies and privileges, and of authorship and visual representation, especially when working with and not about so-called refugees,
people with migration background or presumably marginalized groups
(see Castro Varela and Dhawan 2007; Dogramaci 2013; Krause 2017).
What connects the different phases of analysis of this three-year research
project (2015–17) was the method I applied, which I refer to as performative action. Performative actions function on three interdependent levels.
They are as follows:
1. A sensation performed.
2. A formal structure allowing a turning of the sensation into concrete
experiences and making something happen.
3. A proposition of meaning—an allegory, that is, the art of meaning
something other than what is actually being said. It is the art of
decoding meaning, of reading between the lines, the playing and
contesting of diverse language games.
The purpose of performative action is to capture what is already given—
the city, its citizens—as well as to inspire what may follow, what is not yet
there. They presume that performance, embodied and repeated action, in
the words of the American sociologist Norman Denzin, ‘is a way of knowing, a way of understanding, a way of creating critical consciousness’
(2016, p. 12). Based on my own curiosity, questions and sensations, and
through the sending out of invitations and producing minor irritations, I
drafted a series of experimental set-ups. These set-ups each had a conceptual or theatrical frame for dialogue, mutual exchange, encounter and performative action, navigating the fine line between knowing and not
knowing, or rather, the very process of knowledge production. Here,
German philosopher of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s theory of epistemic objects helps achieve terms that embrace both: continuity and transformation, citation and contestation, original and cover-version.
Rheinberger’s theory examines how new ideas come into existence. He
argues that new ideas in science emerge not simply through a single experiment, but by the repetition of experiments that demonstrate a process of
continual adjusting and contextualizing in order to attain a comprehensive
body of knowledge. In seeing my project in relation to this theory—as a
34
P. HILDEBRANDT
series of experiments with formal structure—it is clear some parameters
changed (location, guests, hosts, subject, time, communication medium).
He refers to this not-yet-formulated body of knowledge as its epistemic
object: ‘A basic unit of experimental activity combining local, technical,
instrumental, institutional, social and epistemic aspects’ (1997, p. 238).
Accordingly, the ‘Welcome City Hamburg’—as epistemic object—is to be
investigated and, at the same time, produced through an experimental
system of performative actions. Rheinberger’s theory also shows that
experimental systems are, by definition, initially imprecise. Even within the
more or less strictly regulated experimental systems that he describes, ‘one
never knows precisely how the set-up differentiates’ (pp. 79–80). An epistemic object has to be precise enough to generate knowledge and carefully
imprecise enough to incorporate unexpected results of experiments.
Repeated action, resulting in sensitive readjustment and iteration, is key,
more than the single—disruptive, heroic, provocative, spectacular or supposedly subversive—action. Indeed, there was a song, Gym and Tonic by
the band Spacedust (1998), continuously in my mind when working out
the experimental set-ups, actually a cover-version of Jane Fonda aerobics
instructions—‘2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 and back. 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8
and back. Work it out! Come on, now!’4
‘What good is sitting alone in your room?’, asks Liza Minelli in the film
Cabaret (1972), ‘Come hear the music play. Life is a cabaret, oh chum,
come to the cabaret!’5 In the photo (Fig. 1), it is me that you see sitting
alone in a room, and an inflatable elephant on the balcony. This situation
appears neither to address the city nor the issue of hospitality. Yet, in spite
of—or perhaps because of—its absurdity and idiosyncrasy, these circumstances are well suited to discuss and summarize empirical findings and
insights gathered through hitherto performative actions. Critically, this
situation provoked a combination of moral dilemma and puzzlement;
effectively, a constructed drama of focal significance to an urban society
based on notions of hospitality, its inherent tensions, recursiveness and
temporality.
When Hamburg’s first mayor, Olaf Scholz, presented his new book
Hoffungsland (‘Country of Hope’, 2017), he explained that ‘we’—meaning the city and the citizens of Hamburg—were simply not prepared for
the huge influx of refugees in 2015. The question of how ‘we’ might
accommodate such dramatic changes and better be prepared for the next,
always unprecedented influx of future refugees, however, was left unanswered. Futurologists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and
AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM / ON THE BALCONY: PERFORMING…
35
Fig. 1 Elephant on the balcony © Paula Hildebrandt
Innovation Research refer to Japanese foresight methods on science and
technology, such as always testing new items and supposed innovations in
practice—like, for example, a vacuum cleaner. No sooner said than done.
Accordingly, during the ‘presentation weeks’ of the graduate programme
‘Performing Citizenship’ in May 2017, I opened a mobile ‘BürgerInenbüro’.
36
P. HILDEBRANDT
I then invited an inflatable elephant to stay at my place, delivered by AIR
promotion, c. 2.5 metres high, powered by a 200watt electric fan that was
permanently on. I created a highly artificial and yet real-life experimental
situation in order to gain some first-hand experience and insights about
how to prepare for those who are yet to come. In other words, this research
set-up was conducted in anticipation of future migration due to global
warming and possible species extinction. What happens when the proverbial elephant enters the room? How might we accommodate and communicate with radically different beings when language cannot reach?
Who counts as human? Whose lives count as lives, and what makes for a
life worth grievance and protection?
The following gives an account of events and subsequent empirical
findings. I include a verbatim transcript of the WhatsApp chat with S., a
member of the ‘welcome city group’ from Afghanistan. At that time, he
was living with his wife in a temporary container accommodation for
asylum-seekers in Hamburg-Billstedt.
03.05.17, 09:37:50: Paula Hildebrandt:
03.05.17, 09:37:50: S.:
I have a guest now. Do you want to meet?
Can I bring him/her?
Yeah sure my pleasure
Meeting and greeting the elephant caused great excitement and curiosity, at least in the beginning. Everybody was amused, friendly and helpful
when I asked for advice, assistance or a plug to inflate the ‘guest’. This
initial positive reaction, however, did not last long. It lasted for the exact
duration of a selfie.
Finding alternative accommodation, or just getting around the city
with this somehow disproportionate guest turned out to be extremely difficult. Due to Road Traffic regulation § 22 StVO, the maximum height for
vehicles is 4 m. Therefore, it was not possible to fix the elephant on top of
the minivan that I had transformed into a mobile citizen office. To bring
my ‘guest’ to some watering point, the elephant had to be deflated and
folded back into the box. Again, upon reaching a sightseeing spot—for
example, Elbe beach—the citizens of Hamburg were unanimously very
friendly with regard to the inflatable elephant, but only until restaurant
owners raised concerned that someone might stumble over the cable for
the fan. A joint theatre visit was not possible due to safety precautions, but
the elephant was allowed to wait in a rehearsal studio. Hospitality, in other
words, is based on the ‘priority of affirmation’ (Seshadri 2011, p. 127). It
AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM / ON THE BALCONY: PERFORMING…
37
requires a first ‘yes’ or, even better, a first: ‘yeah, sure, my pleasure’.
Encountering the absolute other—who has no name or a family name—is
based on an ethical imperative.
03.05.17, 09:39:58: S.:
03.05.17, 09:40:23: P.:
03.05.17, 09:40:34: S.:
I see a white elephant behind the window
Yes sir
Is that your domestic pet?
Hosting an inflatable elephant is hard work, but also good company. When
inflated, the elephant provided a kind of shelter, and conveyed a feeling of
calm and security. Furthermore, an inflatable, as a pet, is unconditional in
its affection and loyalty. However, the inflatable as temporary guest also
severely disrupted well-established routines, familiar comforts, my way of
doing things. Simply moving around my tiny flat became cumbersome,
and required me having to crawl under or squeeze past the elephant.
Which also produced uncomfortable questions: Are you ready to share
your bed with a stranger? Is it cruel to accommodate my ‘guest’, if only for
the night, in the bath tub or outside on the balcony? Who has the power
to pull the plug and respectively terminate the visit?
I felt trapped in a situation of continuous moral dilemma. Deflating the
elephant each time increasingly produced feelings of discomfort and grievance, akin to an act of killing—the sight of the collapsing body, its tail, ears
and trunk resuming the form of plastic junk. In other words, yes, it is possible to feel empathy for inflatable material—empathy less in the sense of
compassion towards or feeling for, but rather feeling with another body
(whether human or non-human). And no, a ‘guest’ is not a pet.
03.05.17, 09:52:07: P.:
03.05.17, 09:56:12: S.:
03.05.17, 09:57:14: S.:
Would you host the elephant? For how long?
Mmmm as long as I find another place for it
Or as long as I can take this burden on my shoulders
The photo (Fig. 1) shows the inflatable elephant on the balcony, and
therefore provides evidence that there are limits to taking this burden on
my shoulders—what Jacques Derrida described as the impossibility of
absolute and unconditional hospitality (Derrida and Dufourmantelle
2000). Not even on the very first day of its stay, was I able to offer unconditional hospitality. Ultimately, it was the sensual experience—the smell of
heating plastic, the touch of the rough surface and the noise of the electric
fan—that triggered my subsequent action: the eviction of the elephant to
the balcony.
38
P. HILDEBRANDT
03.05.17, 09:57:41: P.:
03.05.17, 09:57:46: S.:
Nice
Or send it back to India or Africa
To be honest, I also googled ‘African or Indian elephant’, and what
difference did that action make? I realized how little I actually know about
elephants, their family structures, living conditions, dietary needs and,
besides, was it a he or a she? Would a real elephant on my balcony snack
away at my Japanese maple tree? Or should I rather feed the elephant with
sugar cubes, remembering Benjamin Blümchen? There was no custom of
hospitality here; no rule, no tradition, no expert advice or online forum to
consult about how to turn an invitation into a conversation, a gesture of
hospitality into an act of engaging with a stranger. Put differently, hospitality includes a dimension of not knowing. However, thinking beyond
knowing, facing the limits of your own knowledge, might also constitute
a positive beginning. According to Mustafa Dikeç, ‘[t]his is where hospitality poses itself, at the very beginning, at the point where one starts to
think about it, placing one at the threshold of knowing, pointing beyond
boundaries’ (2002, p. 230).
Again, it was the physical presence and concreteness of the elephant in
the room that triggered my curiosity about the ecology and psychology of
elephants, how to accommodate real elephants in zoos and how to
configure citizenship as a conceptual tool to advance animal rights, from
an issue in applied ethics to a question of political theory and practice.6
03.05.17, 09:58:39: P.:
03.05.17, 09:58:48: P.:
Oh no
Nobody is perfect…
The act of providing hospitality is full of contradictions: the guest as
gift or as troublemaker, the tension between expectation and disappointment, the physical demands of another yet unknown, the existence of conventions, rules and regulations as a condition for the possibility to
transform these rules. There is always a border—a threshold between
guest and host—and a decision to be made about where to draw this line.
Each crossing or displacing of this line involves the risk of stumbling or
even rejection. There may well be contradictions and misunderstanding,
perplexity and stupidity. Hospitality, as a critical responsiveness, is essentially based on the question of who is conceived as part of the family—for
whom you care and share certain rights and responsibility. To whom do
we owe membership and based on what criteria? What I have in mind here
AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM / ON THE BALCONY: PERFORMING…
39
is to understand hospitality not ‘simply as a right, but as a sensibility that
would encourage the formation of a critical consciousness as to the
politico-juridical, as well as ethical and political implications’ (Dikeç 2002,
p. 235). Hospitality in the sense of sensibility (as distinct from idea) is not
a task to accomplish or a certain set of norms and rules to consider; rather
it is an ambivalent action (in fact, a series of recursive actions). For that
reason, and in order to Enacting the ‘Welcome City’ requires to be prepared for radical acts of voiding distance, of undoing our privileges and
trespassing the border between guest and host, you and me, us and them.
This city is built on performative acts of hospitality—action bricks. And
life in the ‘Welcome City’ implies the ability, or at least the willingness, to
becoming different, and of continuous transformation. It requires a
renewed effort to leave traditional anthropocentric world views and
rethink the human, with and in relation to non-human others—such as
animals, plants, objects, environments, and so on (Braidotti 2013).
What I hope to illustrate with these explanations is that something performative actions could achieve is the creation of frames for enacting allegories and ambivalent action, temporary spaces and situations where
recognition—as well as contestation and conflict—can take place. This
means creating situations that are ‘performative’, insofar as they reject
existing frames of reference, they decontextualize, ‘break with a prior context’, or rather, ‘assume new contexts’ (Butler 1997, p. 147). Ideally, performative action sets itself apart from other contexts in that it implies no
direct function—serving to produce minor irritations, slight shifts in perspective, and small breaks or interruptions that do not hold a specific
meaning, but rather expose the very process of making meaning. The aim
is less to formulate a certain position, but to put together a proposition
and invitation to experiment with new ways of relating and new systems of
perception. These actions can be highly allusive and difficult or, by contrast, easily comprehensible and entertaining; perhaps striking to occasional spectators, readers or listeners. At best, they attain a balance between
invitation and irritation, pleasure and discomfort, seduction and confrontation, thereby leading others to venture into unexplored territory by
jumping into the ‘live’ picture.
This methodology draws on a growing body of literature that focuses
on inventive methods (Lury and Wakeford 2012), live sociology (Back
2012), performance research (Sabatini 2012), creative practice as a form
of thinking (Manning and Massumi 2014), sensory ethnography (Pink
2009) and autoethnography (Ellis et al. 2010). Situated in the centre of
40
P. HILDEBRANDT
critical inquiry, of performance research and writing, is the researcher herself: her body, curiosity, sensibility and subjectivity. I am my own case
study, the most immediate raw material. In other words, this way of doing
research is as radically interpretative as the separation between the research
object and the researcher vanishes. The performative body functions as
archive, compass, recording device, filter, space of resonance or flow
heater; in order to condensate, evaporate, melt, sublimate or translate
abstract ideas into concrete action.
In line with Lury and Wakeford, I want to emphasize here,
[...] the sensory plenitude afforded for knowledge and action by inventive
methods. Such methods enable us to acknowledge that we are in medias res,
in the middle of things, in “mid-stream”, always already embedded in a situation, one both settled and unsettled. (2012, p. 19)
Affirming the presence of the researcher implies critical reflection upon
their own privileges and positionality:
The researcher’s presence does not preclude an analysis and interpretation
of how social processes are constituted, or what consequences they produce.
The researcher stands in the center of the events under consideration. In
critical inquiry […], the researcher is an advocate for change, an activist, a
transformative actor, a passionate participant, an agent of self-reflective
action, a model of active engagement in the world. […] the researcher is not
a disinterested observer. (Denzin 2016, p. 45)
Contesting the mind/body dualism, I would argue that embodied
action constitutes an epistemological category in its own right and is a
valid tool for conducting empirical research. It is precisely the force of
performative action which allows the reconstructing and reinventing of
new forms or new articulations of citizenship by intensifying the present,
encouraging a coming to one’s senses in ephemeral events that become
permanent. Ephemerality and permanence do not exclude but rather presuppose each other. The Farsi word for guest is mehmān, meaning ‘to
stay’, and the word for hospitality is mehmān nawazi—because a guest
stays only for a limited time, but the memory of that stay lingers on.
Every form of representation—in academia, politics, art and cultural
production—is deeply afflicted with asymmetries and hierarchies, privileges and complications, in terms of authorship and ownership. Therefore,
AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM / ON THE BALCONY: PERFORMING…
41
I would argue that actions—that is to say, practice- and process-based
working methods—run counter to the wish for visible representation. A
constant effort is required here to try to escape the trap of what I call
‘refugee porn’, which I define as socially engaged artists, journalists or
researchers using the images and stories of ‘the speaking refugee’ to
increase their own symbolic capital and gain points of distinction. The
specific role and responsibility of artists doing—ethnographic, performative, sensual, sociological—research can be described as follows: to communicate and experiment with different languages and keep trying to
translate this action into art. Interestingly, Etienne Balibar looks at the
power of translation in attempts to overcome the untranslatability of idioms, evident primarily in two extremes of society: ‘These are on the one
end intellectuals with higher education, uprooted or exiled writers and on
the other end anonymous migrants who mostly have a lower position in
the current division of labour and employment hierarchy’ (2012, p. 289)
(author’s translation). Whoever possesses the means of academic and artistic representation is not only privileged in representing themselves—due
to their ability and knowledge about the prevailing cultural codes and
social norms—but also because of their access to certain institutions,
speaking and publication opportunities. Performing citizenship as artist/
researcher means using these privileges to transform the rules of the game;
in the case of research, the procedures and protocols of citing, conferencing, exhibiting, showing, teaching, presenting and publishing, together
with those who are not officially authorized or do not feel entitled to
speak these languages. And part of the privilege demands the capacity to
be open, kind and confused.
EPILOGUE
The ‘Welcome City’ exists occasionally and is partly fiction, if not fantasy.
It is an ‘other’ city, immanent in the world of human agency, endeavour,
perseverance and hypothetical possibility. It can be activated whenever and
wherever the seemingly clear roles of the self and the ‘other’—us and they,
you and me, citizen and non-citizen, resident and refugee, guest and
host—start to blur, become unclear and need to be negotiated if not
obliterated.
This city is made of actions, just as it is made of houses, cables, concrete
and SUVs. It is a moving territory that consists of acts of permanent creation and recreation. Its activity is not reliant on movement, nor pretend-
42
P. HILDEBRANDT
ing to be on the move to a particular place,7 but rather on personal
encounter and unfolding relationships that resist fixed meanings. Building
a city on bricks of hospitality—concrete actions that are always contingent
and ambivalent—begins with respect for each other and ultimately leads to
radically rethinking ourselves, our own approach and relations towards
others. It demands being present, that is, being addressable, visible and
vulnerable, as our very being as citizens exposes us to the address of others, including injury, insecurity and eventually rejection.
In the ‘Welcome City’, citizens are able to decide for themselves if they
want to stay or move on. It is a paradoxical community of strangers who
accept each other as much as they accept their own strangeness. It is performed by individuals who know about their difficulties and paradoxes of
showing up as citizens of the stage of the big city. Citizenship—that is,
questions of identity and belonging—turns out to be contingent, to be
negotiated, and yet founded upon what all human and non-human beings
have in common—a body that exists, set apart from the prefabricated,
reductive binary categories.
That is the ‘Welcome City’. No ‘refugee porn’, no charity event or zoo
visit, not always entertaining, but rather challenging, contradictory, yet
something infinitely more interesting.
NOTES
1. Massimo Carlotto (2007) The Fugitive.
2. A café located in the Immanuelkirche—a Protestant church located in the
city’s Veddel quarter.
3. https://www.nachtdeswissens.hamburg.de/index.php?article_id=170
4. Spacedust (1998) Gym & Tonic, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
ANLySahi3fs, date accessed 5 March 2018.
5. Liza Minnelli (1972) Cabaret, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
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und Geschichte einer Bautypologie, also Donaldson and Kymlicka (2013).
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holder.
Doing Rights with Things: The Art
of Becoming Citizens
Engin Isin
Performativity, Performance, enactment
An origin of performativity is often traced back to J. L. Austin (1962)
and the controversy that followed with Jacques Derrida’s (1988) intervention on its uses by John Searle (1970), and the subsequent uptake
of the perspective by Shoshana Felman (2003), Judith Butler (1990,
1997), Eve Sedgwick (2003), and others. This particular trajectory has
been well illustrated by James Loxley (2007) (see also Moati 2014).
Yet, as I mentioned, performativity has multiple origins and crisscrossing trajectories in philosophy (Mulligan 1987; Reinach 1983), sociology (Goffman 1967, 1961, 1959; Tilly 2008), anthropology (Turner
1966, 1987), and humanities, which led to the emergence of performance studies (Schechner 2002; Davis 2008). As one would expect
from a performative perspective, the meaning and uses of performativity and performance were multiple, conflicting, and dynamic (Lloyd
2016). And its uses also involved invoking traditions of thought that
may not have used performativity, but its affiliate principles (Youdell
2006).
E. Isin (*)
Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
e-mail: engin.isin@qmul.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_4
45
46
E. ISIN
Another origin of performativity is traced to theories of enactment in
philosophy (Edie 1971; Ware 1973; Deutscher 1988) and cognitive
sciences (Zarrilli 2007; Stewart et al. 2010). The concept of acts has been
especially prominent in this trajectory for understanding social and political conduct (Pluth 2007; Perinbanayagam 1985). So ‘enactment’ has
come to acquire a special meaning, to determine the conditions under
which social acts occur and the kinds of people or things that such enactments produce (Mol 2003; Law and Urry 2011).
Given these multiple and complex origins and trajectories of the development of a performative perspective in social sciences and humanities, I
do not intend to discuss its meanings and uses here. Without giving in to
the temptation to singularize, I would still say that in all these origins,
trajectories, and developments, performativity is an attempt to understand
the ways in which people inhabit and transform specific subjectivities and
how these subjectivities follow from acts that are made possible only under
certain material and symbolic conditions. Or, as Michel Foucault put it, a
concern in social sciences and humanities is to understand ‘how should
one “govern oneself” by performing actions in which one is oneself the
objective of those actions, the domain in which they are brought to bear,
the instrument they employ, and the subject that acts?’ (Foucault 1997,
p. 87). If social sciences and humanities in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries struggled over tensions between agency and structure, or objectivity and subjectivity, it is perhaps not a coincidence that, in the twentyfirst century, some scholars are drawn to a performative perspective where
understanding people as acting beings in their objective and subjective
circumstances involves a dramaturgical language where words such as
stages, scenes, acts, performances, actors, and sites that provide a rich repertoire (Rayner 1994) and a performative language where words such
citations, iterations, and significations provide a means by which to understand how we inhabit identities, practices, and selves (Nakassis 2013;
Holywood 2002).
There are various tensions in using these dramaturgical and performative languages and between performance and performativity. Austin
famously excluded speech acts performed on stage from his analysis and
thought that these were not ordinary uses of language. He thought that ‘a
performative utterance will, for example, be in a peculiar way hollow or
void if said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken
in soliloquy’ (Austin 1962, p. 22). This was precisely what Derrida took
issue with, questioning a difference between words spoken in literature
DOING RIGHTS WITH THINGS: THE ART OF BECOMING CITIZENS
47
and ordinary life as though they belonged to separate serious and ‘playful’
uses of words. He was emphatic:
for, ultimately, isn’t it true that what Austin excludes as anomaly, exception,
‘non-serious,’ citation (on stage, in a poem, or a soliloquy) is the determined modification of a general citationality—or rather, a general iterability—without which there would not even be a ‘successful’ performative? So
that—a paradoxical but unavoidable conclusion—a successful performative
is necessarily an ‘impure’ performative, to adopt the word advanced later on
by Austin when he acknowledges that there is no ‘pure’ performative.
(Derrida 1988, p. 17)
Derrida certainly made it difficult to maintain a pure difference between
ordinary and literary language, and also between languages of arts, sciences, and politics.
We are now witnessing the increasing use of these dramaturgical and
performative languages in understanding how people inhabit citizenship
as political subjectivity, and how citizenship is enacted in everyday acts
with or without authorization to act under its (legal) prescription (Isin
2017). Both in social sciences and humanities, there are now many contemporary (Ofer and Groves 2016; McThomas 2016) and historical
(Farenga 2006; Prauscello 2014) studies that use a performative perspective on citizenship. I want to broadly reflect on how ‘performing citizenship’ is proving a useful perspective for scholars and how they are making
a productive use of it. What I want to discuss below is not various uses of
performativity and performance in studying citizenship but to outline a
logic of their use: how the need for such a perspective has arisen and how
it is challenging our views of citizenship.
What is called citizenshiP?
Citizenship mediates the relations between the citizen, non-citizens, and
polities to which they belong, claim, or inhabit. That simple statement
always belies the fact that the citizen of a polity almost never belongs only
to that polity but to several nested, if not overlapping and conflicting,
series of polities, like the city, region, the state, and the international.
Clearly, in the contemporary world, the sovereign polity is the state, but
even its sovereignty is now implicated in various international and regional
polities evinced by international covenants (such as the European
48
E. ISIN
Convention of Human Rights), multilateral agreements (like the North
American Free Trade Agreement), supranational bodies (as in the
European Union), and shared sovereignty arrangements (for example,
Scotland or Quebec). This is further complicated by the fact that many
citizens and non-citizens in the contemporary world do not reside in their
birthplace but in—often multiple—adopted countries. All this places citizens and non-citizens as relational subjects within a web of rights and
responsibilities, through which they are called upon to performatively
negotiate a particular combination that is always a complex relationship.
A Chinese government cannot have a unified and singular relationship
with its citizens since their lives are mediated not only through their rights
from and responsibilities to the Chinese state but also through human
rights, environmental or cultural discourse, and international politics
beyond its borders. Similarly, a British government cannot have exclusive
relations with British citizens, as their lives are implicated in and interdependent with the European Union as a supranational polity, the European
Convention of Human Rights, and myriad other mutual rights and
responsibilities toward other polities. Even if the British government
decides to end its membership of the European Union, there would still
be a web of obligations and commitments that would implicate its citizens
and non-citizens. While still dominant, the state therefore cannot be said
to have an exclusive sovereignty over a given population within a given
territory.
It is then problematic to think about citizenship as a universal, static,
and enclosed relationship, as Iris Young (1989) argued in a brilliant and
now classic article. We can observe today that the combination between
rights and responsibilities is always an outcome of social struggles that find
expression in political and legal institutions in different polities. Three
conventional rights (civil, political, and social) and three responsibilities
(conscription, taxation and participation) define the relationship between
the citizen and the state. Civil rights include the right to free speech, to
conscience, and to dignity; political rights include franchise and standing
for office; social rights include unemployment insurance, universal health
care, and welfare. Although conscription is rapidly disappearing as a
responsibility of citizenship, taxation remains resolutely in place; jury duty
is increasingly challenged under certain circumstances, but still serves a
fundamental role. Moreover, new rights have appeared—such as sexual
rights, cultural rights, and environmental rights—with varying degrees of
success in institutionalization (for example, witness the struggles over
DOING RIGHTS WITH THINGS: THE ART OF BECOMING CITIZENS
49
same-sex marriage in the United States and Europe). Again, as mentioned,
whether conventional (that is, civil, political, social) or expanded (sexual,
environmental, cultural), these rights and responsibilities are mediated
through other polities that influence the actual combination granted in a
given polity at a given time.
Conventional perspectives on citizenship (such as liberalism, republicanism, and communitarianism) make much less sense now, given the contemporary complications just mentioned. Since the combination of rights
and responsibilities, and their performance, greatly varies across polities it
is probably more accurate to speak about various citizenship regimes that
characterize a similar, if not co-dependent, development of certain combinations. We can, for example, talk about an Anglo-American regime (for
example, Britain, USA), a North European regime (such as Denmark,
Norway), a continental regime (such as France, Germany), a South
American regime (such as Brazil, Chile), a South Asian regime (such as
India, Malaysia), and so forth. We can also talk about postcolonial citizenship regimes (for example, India, Brazil, Ghana), post-communist citizenship regimes (such as Poland, Hungary, and even China), neoliberal
citizenship regimes (such as Britain, USA), and post-settler citizenship
regimes (such as Canada, Australia). Arguably, each of these regimes sets
out a different combination of rights and responsibilities of citizenship,
but each displays a recognizable culture with regard to how citizenship is
performed.
Yet, in each of these polities, citizenship does not exist in a singular and
unified form either. There are struggles over its meaning in courts, education, services, taxation, and many other spheres of life. How we approach
citizenship in our contemporary world is then a complex question because,
as James Tully (2014) argued, we inherit not single but multiple, overlapping, and conflicting uses of institutions, laws, and traditions that use the
word ‘citizenship’. He warns against defining a meaning that is ostensibly
universal while attempting to apply it to different circumstances. He identifies an attitude within this desire, for example, in the attribution of a
universal meaning such as ‘modern’ and an attitude that desires to see it as
‘diverse’ as ‘critical’. A modern attitude is marked by its will to develop
citizenship as a civil code and a critical attitude is marked by seeing citizenship as a negotiated and dynamic relationship (Tully 2014, pp. 5–8). For
Tully, the challenge to be found in citizenship is in identifying its diverse
forms in different places, yet maintaining a productive language about the
ways in which we speak and write about it. Tully draws on Wittgenstein,
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who was also a source of inspiration for Austin. Although Tully does not
use the language of performativity, his use of words—such as games,
enactment, and play—to understand citizenship as negotiated practices,
strongly resonates with performativity; or at least it shows a logic as to why
scholars are increasingly drawn into a dramaturgical language in the face
of its practical complexities.
doing rights With things
This increasing use of dramaturgical and performative languages—such as
‘performing citizenship’, ‘enacting citizenship’, or ‘acts of citizenship’—
by scholars recognizes two key aspects of citizenship. First, that there is a
recognition that citizenship that exists on paper is an expression of inert or
passive rights, yet citizenship rights (and responsibilities) are brought into
being only when performed. It is not only that rights that have been won
through long and hard social struggles (such as freedom of speech or
social insurance) would disappear if not performed, but also that such
struggles require performing rights that may not exist (for example, sexual
rights, animal rights, or ecological rights). Second, since citizenship is
brought into being by performing it, non-citizens can also perform citizenship. The political subjects—individual or collective—of citizenship are
not given in advance, they too are brought into being performatively.
Those who do not have the status of citizenship, but obtain it by making
claims to it, often negotiate many rights and responsibilities. These two
performative aspects of citizenship have often been recognized by studies
that examine tensions or gaps between different articulations of citizenship in public discourse.
These two aspects of performing citizenship permeate social and political life more than meets the eye. When people mobilize for legalizing
same-sex marriage, rally for social housing, protest against welfare cuts,
debate employment insurance, sign petitions, occupy squares, advocate
the decriminalization of marijuana, apply for citizenship, renounce their
citizenship, wear attire such as turbans or headscarves in public spaces,
seek affirmative action programs, demand better health care access and
services, or practice their graffiti art across borders, they may not express
themselves as struggling for the maintenance or expansion of social, cultural, or sexual citizenship rights. Governments may not recognize them
as such either. Instead, people invest in whatever issues seem most related
and closest to their social and political lives—and dedicate their time and
DOING RIGHTS WITH THINGS: THE ART OF BECOMING CITIZENS
51
energy accordingly—and governments respond, or fail to respond, to
these demands. There are two points to make about such struggles. First,
they are irreducibly political struggles that arise from social, economic or
cultural conditions in which people are situated. To classify such struggles
either as redistribution (economism) or recognition (culturalism) misses
their complexity. Second, in the absence of clear articulation, it is important to acknowledge that when people enact themselves through such performances or acts—whatever differences may separate them in values,
principles, and priorities—they are performing citizenship, even those
who are not passport-carrying members of the state (non-citizens). This
means that they are being playful, creative, and innovative in drawing
upon various repertories of becoming or unbecoming citizens.
I would like to propose formalizing these points by naming different
senses in which citizenship exists. I think citizenship is performed or
played in the gaps or tensions between and among these different senses
of citizenship. There is, for example, citizenship (in) theory. This is where
contestations over the meanings, functions, and uses of citizenship take
place. There may be statements about ideas of universal, egalitarian, fairness concerns around citizenship. There may be normative or positive
claims to represent citizenship. These senses of citizenship (in) theory
often struggle and contest with each other over these meanings and functions of citizenship. There is then citizenship (in) practice, where people
uptake or inhabit citizenship through rituals, habits, manners, and gestures. People vote, protest, petition, and pay (or avoid or evade) their
taxes. We can then also speak about citizenship (in) law where it is codified, enforced, and revised. There is then citizenship (in) acts where it is
resisted, revoked, deprived, claimed, demanded, and so forth. These different senses in which citizenship exists are not mutually exclusive, but
interrelated senses that come into conflict with each other. A citizenship
that is advocated (in) theory may well fall short of what transpires in law
and how citizenship (in) practice comes to function may confront citizenship (in) law. Citizenship (in) acts may disrupt what we do with citizenship
(in) practice.
I think citizenship (in) theory, citizenship (in) practice, and citizenship
(in) law signify different senses of citizenship in the following ways: the
dramas played out in courts and legislatures for citizenship (in) law find
their counterparts on streets, squares, assemblies, and cyberspaces of citizenship (in) practice. These dramas are played out no less intensely in
articles, books, and conferences; developing citizenship (in) theory rather
52
E. ISIN
than in elections, referendums, and plebiscites of citizenship (in) acts.
Although these plays mediate between citizens and polities, performing
citizenship does not always take the form of demands on government. To
put it differently, performing citizenship always involves a citizenship-asyet-to-come. If Austin characterized performativity as doing things with
words, it is tempting to describe performativity of citizenship as ‘doing
rights with things’ to emphasize not only the actual social and political
struggles that mobilize it, but also practical, material, artistic, expressive,
and articulate ways in which people enact citizenship on a stage that may
or may not be of their choosing.
These may provide us with some reasons why scholars are drawn to a
performative perspective on citizenship. As Mary McThomas argues, for
example, to make sense of the struggles of undocumented migrants
requires an understanding of the tensions between citizenship (in) law and
citizenship (in) practice. This is because, she asserts, ‘a performance-based
conception of citizenship, which focuses on the carrying out of civic duties
instead of nation-state authorization, more accurately reflects our current
situation and recognizes obligations we have to those living among us’
(2016, p. 2). She illustrates that, in the USA, there is a disconnection
between ‘paper citizenship and performing citizenship, [which] expose[s]
the gap between the reality of our neighborhoods and conventional theories of citizenship and political obligation’ (2016, p. 37). She argues that
instead of understanding obligation to be what citizens owe to the state,
we should flip it and ask ‘what the state owes to those who perform the
role of citizen, regardless of their documented status’ (2016, p. 38). This
resonates with many scholars with regard to undocumented migrants who
have studied it as performing citizenship (Jeffers 2011; Aradau et al. 2010;
McNevin 2011; Nyers 2008, 2011; Erel 2009; Squire 2016).
As Inbal Ofer and Tamar Groves (2016) and their colleagues illustrated, citizenship is being performed in social movements across the
world, traversing many state borders. They argue that we are witnessing
‘multiscalar dynamics: global logics and institutions reinforce local structures and channels of interventions, which generate new understandings
of citizenship as a form of being and of interacting with other social
groups’ (Ofer and Groves 2016, p. 8). As I mentioned earlier, there are
differences in the ways in which acts, enactment, performance, and performativity are used by these scholars, and yet their perspective—on how
active (and activist) ways in which citizens and non-citizens become citizens on a stage of not necessarily their choosing—is common.
DOING RIGHTS WITH THINGS: THE ART OF BECOMING CITIZENS
53
the art of Becoming citizens
If indeed citizenship mediates the relations between citizens, non-citizens,
and polities to which we belong, claim, or inhabit, then it also involves the
art of being with others, negotiating different situations and identities,
and articulating ourselves as distinct yet similar to others in our everyday
lives. Through these social struggles, we develop a sense of our rights as
others’ obligations and others’ rights as our obligations. As Christopher
Kutz (2002) reasoned, this a collective work of citizenship. This is especially true for democratic citizenship, as it approaches the combination of
rights and responsibilities as a dynamic (and thus contested, but changing
and flexible) outcome and its creative performance as a key aspect within
a democratic polity (Zivi 2012).
Citizenship, especially democratic citizenship, depends on the creative
and organizing capacities of citizens whose performance of citizenship is
not only the driving force for change but also the guarantee of the vitality and resilience of the polity. Governments may see domains of citizen
performativity and enactment as separate from each other in the everyday governing of the polity and in the social lives of its citizens, but
occasionally, an event reminds everyone that people (citizens and noncitizens) are performing or enacting themselves as citizens. The gaps—
traversed between citizenship (in) theory, citizenship (in) practice,
citizenship (in) law, and citizenship (in) acts—are increasingly where
articulate, effective languages of everyday politics emerge and are where
literary and artistic performances are playing out serious roles. For all
these reasons, a dramaturgical language, combined with a language of
performativity, is proving both productive and suggestive in order to
give accounts of ourselves both individually and collectively struggling as
citizens and non-citizens.
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Performing Citizenship: Gathering (in the)
Movement
The Choreographic Format of Circle Dancing and
the Round Dance as a Matrix of Collective Action
in the Context of Political Assemblies, Protests and
Occupations
Liz Rech
IntroductIon
If one speaks in the activist context of ‘the movement’, the concept of
movement with regard to the ‘moving body’ is always threefold: the political movement; the actual physical, choreographic movement; and the
associated inner movement and its personal affections.
The experience of collective and coordinated movement in public space
plays an important role on the political field. This applies not only to the
Translated by Daniel Caleb Thompson
L. Rech (*)
Graduate Program Performing Citizenship, HafenCity University Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_5
57
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kinaesthetic and somatic potency of body experience—which has a direct
effect on the social movement itself—but also to the efficacy of its reach to
potential viewers because, through its movement in public space, the
body’s ‘indexical force’1 (Butler 2015, p. 9) becomes visible in a very special way and demands recognition. Butler points out that assemblies, irrespective of specific demands, have meaning: ‘The gathering signifies in
excess of what is said, and that mode of signification is a concerted bodily
enactment, a plural form of performativity’ (Butler 2015, p. 8). The
resulting questions are:
What forms do these corporeal productions assume?
Which choreographic formats are applied in contexts of political
assembly?
Why are such applications extant?
This article deals specifically with the choreographic format of Circle
Dancing, which regularly arises in the context of political meetings and
occupations. What defines this practice of collective movement? What is its
political dimension? And lastly, which roles are played by the body and its
‘response/ability’ in the context of the ethics of political responsibility and
mindful practice of movement?
GatherInG In the MoveMent
The German word Versammlung (a gathering) is related etymologically to
the verb sammeln (to gather) and the noun Sammlung (a collection). In
the context of this article, Versammlung can be translated to English as
either ‘gathering’ or ‘assembly’. Whereas a ‘gathering’ describes the ‘collection’ of clearly defined members, an ‘assembly’ refers to a meeting that
takes place for a specific purpose and is open to the addition and departure
of (temporary) participants to the meeting. This presumably explains why
the term of ‘assembly’ has become widespread in the context of contemporary activism; it not only describes the temporary, the fleeting and the
incomplete, but also addresses a greater heterogeneity within contemporary
political collectivity as witnessed in political protests, such as the Gezi Park
protests in Istanbul, 2013: ‘93.6 per cent stated that they had come to
Gezi Park as a “simple citizen”, whereas only 6.4 per cent of the participants said they were part of an organization or political party’2 (Uluğ and
Acar 2015, p. 122).
PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: GATHERING (IN THE) MOVEMENT
59
The term ‘assembly’ also refers to a new understanding of the collective: the collective is no longer considered a homogeneous, closed collective but as an open collective with fraying edges.3 This leaves more room
for heterogeneity and is reflected in formulations for the description of
political performance, such as ‘acting plurality’, ‘body alliances’ and
‘assemblage’ (all three from Butler), ‘group subject’ (Guattari), ‘multitude’ (Virno) or ‘arrangement’ (from the French: agencement, Deleuze).
Accordingly, contemporary political formats of assembly must facilitate
space for the integration of diverse positions and heterogeneous bodies. It
is not surprising that, in this context, the concept of choreography appears
because choreographic formats can assemble heterogeneous bodies in a
very specific way through dance-like movement. Kunst highlights the ability of choreographic formats to create temporary communities:
Instead of staging the communities, choreography creates communities
through the process of becoming a multifaceted and conflicting mobilization of the body and aesthetic experiences, thus challenging our democratic
and political practice. (Kunst 2014, p. 18, translation by author)
In addition to the assembly of heterogeneous bodies, there is another
aspect which is significant in the relationship between politics and choreography: (public) space.
In a fundamental way, the relationship between politics and choreography is often determined by the distribution of bodies in space: ‘Thinking
politics (…) is therefore by definition linked to the idea of choreography
in the truest sense of the word: The art of choreography consists of distributing bodies and their relations in space’ (Hölscher and Siegmund
2013, p. 12). Kunst and Hölscher/Siegmund present a line of reasoning
used herein—one that presumes a political dimension is to be found in the
choreographic arrangement of bodies. The body is seen as an actor that
participates in the production of social reality.
The concept of social choreography describes this expanded concept of
choreography and transfers it to social and societal spaces. The term social
choreography describes a practice that constructively creates a performative
order of the social field (as an order of spatial conditions, architecture,
body, movement, subjects, collective bodies, objects, materials etc.). Social
choreography, as a performative concept, aims at establishing a link between
the social and the aesthetic; the aesthetic is assigned a central role in the
description of the political, as well as the social (Hewitt 2005, p. 3). It is
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therefore a question of the constitution of social orders which are always
determined (through situational) social practices.
The utopian moment of newly materializing ‘social figurations’ (Elias
1978) in public space is relevant to the way in which citizenship is ‘performed’ because, in this case, it is about the presence and movement of
resisting bodies within the context of social movements. This expanded
understanding of choreography has been conceptually extended by many
authors writing about resistive choreographic practices, such as Milohnic
(2013),4 and also Klein (2013).5
This concept will be useful for the analysis of Circle Dancing, since it
enables its choreographic structure to be interpreted as a social order and
uncovers the degrees to which sociability is inherently present.
The question now is how to evaluate (temporarily generated) communities when they are not merely constituted by origin, group membership
and association with a political party or other organization. It is a community that is primarily instantiated by the presence of the individual bodies. In Nancy’s book Being Singular Plural, he writes of co-existence as a
simultaneity of the differences and ‘co-presences’ of those present and that
the quantity is not characterized by cohesion but by dispersion (Nancy
2000, p. 40). If one reads Nancy’s concept from the perspective of social
choreography (as with Hewitt), there arises the challenge of perceiving the
choreographic movement as an open system rather than a closed one. The
assembly is no longer a closed system, as it necessarily has porous boundaries that allow for ‘just turning up’ as well as ‘departure’ from the fabric of
the collective. Choreographic formats that emerge in the context of protest should accordingly enable precisely this staging of collectivity; my thesis posits that the choreographic format of Circle Dancing does exactly
this.
cIrcle dancInG In the PolItIcal context
Circle Dancing as happenings within political movements in the context of
assemblies were most evident during the occupation of public spaces—
such as Occupy Wall Street (2011), the protests in Syntagma Square,
Athens (2011), the aforementioned Gezi Park protests at Taksim Square
in Istanbul (2013), and during the Arab Spring (2011). Jamshidi describes
how in ‘the face of brutality and repression from security forces, the festive
atmosphere created by outbursts of dance and music has helped keep people on the streets’ (Jamshidi 2014, p. 90f). The ‘festive atmosphere’
PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: GATHERING (IN THE) MOVEMENT
61
joyfully supports the efforts to maintain a presence in the square, a purposeful act used as a strategy to counter violent and extremely physically
challenging situations, such as when tear gas is being used. Tsomou
describes—with regard to the protests in Syntagma Square 2011, Athens—
how dancing ‘has become a sustainable strategy on the square’ (Tsomou
2014, p. 133) (translation by author). Tsomou, as with Uluğ Acar, understands that:
The community of the ‘we’, the ‘99%’ or the ‘indignant’ is not constituted
by origin, group association or membership – its operative idiosyncrasy is to
be found in the presence of the individual as well as in the practices in the
squares. (Tsomou 2014, p. 116f, translation by author)
Walton confirms this finding in his investigation of the carnivalesque
nature of the Gezi Park protests6 at Taksim Square, Istanbul 2013:
Gezi was defined by the conglomeration of multiple political identities.
What linked the protestors was not an identity, but a novel, emphatic practice of citizenship, a public performativity. (Walton 2015, p. 51)
Among other aspects, Walton goes into detail about the YouTube video
Everyday I’m Çapulling.7 In this video, which consists of a series of short
moments and situations in Taksim Square, one can see groups of protesters Circle Dancing (halay çekmek). The festive character of the protest can
clearly be witnessed. Walton quotes Bakhtin in his study, who describes
the carnival as an exceptional social situation along with its potential for
change (Bakhtin 1984, cited in Walton 2015, p. 51).
Accordingly, it is possible to speak—in the context of protest—of an
atmospheric territory that is permanently defended by aesthetic strategies
such as dancing, singing, choric speaking, music making and so on. Böhme
describes the way in which atmosphere is generated as a type of power
(Böhme 1993, p.125). Tsomou points out—on the occasion of the Circle
Dancing at Syntagma Square in Athens, 2011—that dancing works as a
strategy for preventing a place from being evacuated quickly:
The circle dancing at Syntagma Square had a double quality: On the one
hand they emerged as a tactical response to conflicts with the police; and on
the other hand they were not a planned strategy of confrontation, but rather
were an end in and of themselves in the sense of experiencing shared happiness [...] [and] self-care, a self-oriented ritual of perseverance in order not to
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let the place be so easily cleared […]. (Tsomou 2014, p. 134f, translation by
author)
The citation suggests that by ‘experiencing shared happiness’, the creation of a certain atmosphere is inseparable from the question of power (or
who is allowed to stay where?). Circle Dancing serves, above all, to define an
atmospheric territory. The carnivalesque functions as an integrative element, which is able to gather different social and political identities. It
incorporates a wide range of social and cultural practices.
‘If I can’t dance, I don’t Want to Be Part of Your
revolutIon’: chanGe and neW teMPoralItIes
The practices that can be observed in different places are usually amassed
from the experience of different types of protest. These can be seen in
measures such as the installation of camps or tent sites; strong selforganization to meet existential needs, based on the development of a
corresponding infrastructure; direct democratic meeting structures; the
renunciation of hierarchical structures and the rejection of political representation; work with media and social networks; creative interaction with
oppression; physical practices (such as yoga courses); and, among other
things, performative formats such as collective dancing. Teune speaks
about ‘prefigurational politics [...]that anticipate the needs of the desired
society by taking concrete action’ (Teune 2012, p. 34, translation by
author).
This ‘experimental conduct’ within the framework of prefigurational
politics is a form of open and future-oriented action that enables the testing of new cultures and configurations of movement. The mobilization of
bodies and ‘communities in the making’ (Kunst 2014, p. 18, translation
by author) imbues a processual and transformative character that makes
the movement open for change, conveying ‘utopian moments’. This is
also reflected in German formulations such as etwas bewegen (‘to make
change’) or die Verhältnisse zum Tanzen bringen (‘to make the circumstances dance’). According to Gormly, dancing seems particularly predestined to actually make change possible: ‘Dance is a state of excitement in
a system where change becomes possible, desirable, fluid and pleasurable’
(Gormly 2012, p. 1).
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The theme of transition and change (‘Time for change’)8 is closely tied
to a shifting temporality; it is not only about the experiences that the participants gain by investing time in the various protest practices mentioned
above, but also about the construction of new temporalities via collective
practices, and ‘pertains to the dynamics that are ultimately decisive in
determining the timbre of the present moment in time’ (van Eikels 2013,
p. 176, translation by author). Della Porta, who has dealt with events that
characterize protests within social movements, speaks of ‘eventful protests’ in this context that enable processes through which collective experiences can be made. ‘Eventful temporality’ is characteristic of these ‘protest
events’ (della Porta 2008, p. 3). ‘Eventful temporality recognizes the
power of events in history […]’ (Sewell 1992, p. 262, quoted in: della
Porta 2008, p. 3).
Hardt and Negri, together with Aristotle, emphasize the importance of
the movement between a before and after for phases of social transition
and upheaval, by describing the transformation of the time horizon as an
active process: ‘In particular, the multitude takes hold of time and constructs new temporalities […]’ (Hardt and Negri 2000, p. 401). They
further develop this idea into the following definition of time: ‘Time
might thus be defined as the immeasurability of the movement between a
before and an after, an immanent process of constitution’ (Hardt and
Negri 2000, p. 402, author’s emphasis).
Thus, the physical movement is that which is constitutive for the
moment of the transition and, in the case of collective movement, becomes
a ‘performance of a reciprocal measurement and admeasurement of time’
(van Eikels 2012, p. 170, translation by author). This admeasurement of
time is executed in dance via synchronization through the duration of
movement, which is organized chronologically by rhythm. Dance can
thereby enable a new provisional ‘timeline’ to be practised and lived.
‘Dance in its most potent form manages to momentarily “live” new orders’
(O’Ros, quoted in: Gormly 2012, p. 1). Thus, the choreographic movement becomes an aspect of the aesthetic of change (Klien 2008, p. 2).
In the next chapter, I will show why the choreographic format of Circle
Dancing is particularly suitable for staging a new social order.
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cIrcle dancInG and the round dance
as choreoGraPhIc forMats
Circle Dancing is generally understood as a dance with a circular line-up
of dancers, in which the dancers stand next to each other, hold hands or
shoulders and face the middle of the circle.
As the penultimate geometric symbol, the circle stands for the universe,
the globe, unity, harmony and the perfection of the world. Circle Dancing
is one of the oldest anthropologically symbolic expressions of humanity,
making possible a dialogue between interior and exterior worlds.
Traditionally, dances have accompanied important rituals of transition,
rituals in which the theme of change is present. Such transitional rituals are
celebrated by the whole community as transformational ceremonies. The
location for the ritual is the ceremonial ‘village square’, where a fire burns
in the centre; there is singing, drumming and dancing. In dance rituals,
psychic energies materialize. With their bodies, dancers express communicative concerns that go beyond themselves.
In the present day, Circle Dancing is often practised in the context of
folk dance. The folk dance, as a concept in Germany, is saddled with negative connotations due to its ‘cultural-political instrumentalization in
National Socialism and the GDR’ (Evert 2014, p. 45, translation by
author), as it served as a space for compositional, ideological and functional attribution. For, of course, in the context of ‘folk dance’ the question always arises, ‘Who are “the folk”?’9 The pleasure of dancing, in
particular, served as a ‘gateway for assimilation by political ideologies from
left and right’ (Evert 2014, p. 40) (translation by author). Hanna Walsdorf
proposes the following ahistorical definition for the concept of folk
dancing:
Folk dancing is arranged and socially produced, experienced and mediated.
It is a sociable dance that can be learned by everyone, which constitutes,
confirms and represents a community; however, the moment it is placed on
a stage it is transformed from a social event to the demonstration of expository spectacle. (Walsdorf 2010, p. 2, translation by author)
Dance as ‘exposition’ joins the political fray when it is performed on the
stage of public space. In the activist context, it is important that this formation of community does not take place via an idea, but rather through
physical practice. This makes it an interesting method within the scope of
PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: GATHERING (IN THE) MOVEMENT
65
the recent occupations of public space, as these gatherings are composed
of extremely heterogeneous groups. The dances contribute,
[...] to the formation of community. [...] When people from different walks
of life dance together, they put the differences between them into the background. Their dance movements only succeed when they relate to each
other and cooperate. [...] In the scope of this deferment of differences they
create a feeling of togetherness in rhythmic movement. (Wulf 2010, p. 38f,
translation by author)
Circle Dancing and the Round Dance are easily accessible to ordinary
people as a choreographic format. One does not need previous knowledge, special dance skills or a professional dance education; the dance steps
are easy to learn through clear instruction—often musically supported—
and are repeated in cycles, which encourages people to join in. It succeeds
through participation. One does not need a dance partner; partners are
interchangeable, allowing a fluid stream of dancers to join in. The movements are an open system, an assembly with porous membranes allowing
for both a ‘showing up to’ and a ‘departing from’ the movement (see section “Gathering in the Movement”). In the case of a closed circle, the
newcomer simply picks a spot to break the circle, takes the hands of the
dancers on either side and fills the space between with their body. When a
dancer leaves the circle, the circle is simply closed once more with the joining of hands.
Unclosed circles can often be observed, in which case there are openings and a round formation is extant. These openings make it even easier
to get started. ‘The round open structure seems particularly suitable as an
entrance and a foundation for dancing together [...]’ (Evert 2014, p. 47,
translation by author) In the case of Kurdish Round Dances, usually an
experienced dancer initially ‘leads’ the dance and is visually marked by a
swath of fabric held in the free hand. The cloth is exchanged when a new
leader takes over. Despite these small differences, Circle Dancing is, by its
nature, non-hierarchical—there is no ‘starting-point’—every dancer is
equally important.
The differences within the movements that result from the varying levels of experience of the dancers, and contrasting body shapes and personal
movement characteristics are decisive aspects of the choreographic format
of Circle Dancing.
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Another important aspect is that the circle formation offers the greatest
possible visibility of the dancers, both as members of the circle dynamic
and from the perspective of the audience. Whereas each of the dancers can
see all of the other dancers of the group at any time, those outside of the
circle can see the dance as a whole and watch the individuals pass by as the
circle rotates.
There is no central perspective from which one could best see the
dance. There are only multiple, ever-changing views to the situation. This
corresponds to a multiperspectivity of content which, in the context of
protest, generally (and by definition) stands in opposition to the prevailing
state ideology.
Another aspect of the non-hierarchical character of Circle Dancing is
that each dancer leads and is led by their neighbours at the same time.
Lepecki calls this ‘a-personal leadingfollowing’ (Lepecki 2013, p. 37).
This leading/following in Circle Dancing corresponds to self-organizing
structures of social movements. In the context of larger assembly, the individual assumes personal responsibility, while also transferring a great deal
of responsibility to the collective. This requires that the individual trusts
the group and shows flexibility regarding their dynamic position within it.
‘Feeling valued’ and ‘being seen’ are important factors of emotional wellbeing in large groups, which is why the maintenance of visibility for each
Circle Dancing member is of positive psychosocial merit and not merely a
side effect.
Another very important effect of Circle Dancing is that it facilitates the
synchronization of a large group. Synchronization is essential for a functioning collective, and the choreographic format of Circle Dancing can
serve to establish a very specific form of collectivity, namely that of the
collective movement that is needed by the body’s response/ability. This is
a description of the practice of ‘attuning’, which Prades describes as a way
‘to harmonise’.10 It points to the importance of finding a common rhythm
for a movement or action. Decisive here is that the process of synchronization11 never leads to perfect uniformity—it is always in the making; it is
transient, volatile and reversible, even if it appears to be stable for a certain
time. That means that one has to ‘attune’ again and again.
A precondition for synchronization is a great attention (‘body awareness’) for both one’s own body and those of the other(s). The dance creates a state of alertness and can thus also be seen as a form of body
meditation. The physical disposition is described by Prades as a state of
fluid attention, in which all the senses are adjusted to the reception of the
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67
environment: ‘Our senses must be receptive and our body absolutely
present’ (Prades 2013, p. 214). This state of physical attention emerged as
early as 1965, in one of the classics of activist practice. In the handbook,
Manual for Direct Action: Strategy and Tactics for Civil Rights and All
Other Nonviolent Protest Movements, Oppenheimer and Lakey recommend
‘ideal body awareness when engaging in protest’ (Oppenheimer and Lakey
1965, quoted in Harrington 2016, p. 7). These physically challenging
situations require mindfulness, which is about the active discovery of possibilities of movement.
Another important effect of the circle is the phenomenon of rhythm,
which helps overcome exhaustion. Within the group, the common body
experience and the ‘vibe’ are experienced as self-empowerment. McNeill
describes the mechanism of rhythm structures and how the visceral phenomenon of ‘muscular bonding’ leads to ‘emotional bonding’ between
the jointly moving people (McNeill 1997, p. 2f). This type of community
formation by ‘the euphoric fellow feeling’ (joyful proximity to a neighbour) is of great importance for social movements, as it builds trust. The
physical aptitude of the dancers thereby leads to an intuitive, affective,
empathic pre-linguistic understanding of moving jointly in rhythm.
cIrcle dancInG as staGed socIal order
And so, in the most ideal instances, an alliance begins to enact the social
order it seeks to bring about by establishing its own modes of sociability.
(Butler 2015, p. 84)
Based on the considerations from the previous chapters, the following
can be said:
Circle Dancing orchestrates equality, visibility, multivarious positions in
space and continuous changes of perspective. The person is understood as a
relational and social being, moving in a collective context to which one can
‘show up’ and from which one can ‘depart’. Thus, the community is staged
as an open structure. Furthermore, dancing in public space is a very fundamental way of staging of freedom. ‘I will dance despite everything’12 was the
title of a flashmob performance in Tunis, initiated in December 2012 by Art
Solution working with a Tunisian group, Service de l’Underground, who
promoted dancing by ‘citizen dancers’ in public spaces as resistance against
extremists trying to limit the freedom of the body in public. Butler describes
how the human body at assemblies ‘is on the line, exhibiting its value and its
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freedom’ (Butler 2015, p. 17). This is especially true for the dancing body.
It stands for freedom; a body in motion is difficult to control. In the case of
the aforementioned flashmob, the body is liberated, at least temporarily free.
The strength of a group in Circle Dancing or Round Dance is performed offensively and concentrated inwards. This demonstration of
strength is also underlined by the fact that, even in violent demonstration
situations, the dancers can ‘afford’ to turn their back on the oppressive
forces. Thus, the body is exhibited in its vulnerability from which it gains
its immanent strength, as Butler convincingly shows. Circle Dancing
marks a specific place in the public realm as its own space (‘our place’) and
thereby temporarily claims atmospheric territory. Circle Dancing instantiates an alliance that is based on equality in a situation that is usually characterized by extreme imbalance of power: ‘They are asserting equality in
the midst of inequality’ (Butler 2013). This equality is founded upon
closeness and connectedness, which is made clear by the touch of the
dancers on each other’s arms and/or shoulders. The German formulation
Schulterschluss demonstrieren (demonstrate shoulder to shoulder) displays
implicit knowledge about the real and symbolic power of this bodily gesture. People sit ‘shoulder to shoulder’ for a common cause at a difficult
time; the term Schulterschluss (closing of the ranks) describes the merger
of several people into an alliance. The image of people gripping each other’s shoulders stands for solidarity and fraternity. In addition to strong
symbolic content, this kind of touch holds great importance in the field of
affection.
affectIon and turMoIl: contact In cIrcle dancInG
Touching others physically and being touched is essential for people to
maintain connection with the world. As Böhler notes, there is a direct connection between touch and reality: ‘(...) this is the very meaning of touching: it gives us a sense of reality (...) it actually gives a feeling of something
that in fact exists outside oneself’ (Böhler 2011, pp. 39–40). He emphasizes that this is an act of extroversion in relation to the activity of touching (Böhler 2011, p. 41).
The moment of leaving one’s personal universe—a factor in the active
contact—also has an unmistakable influence on the degree of the individual body’s ability to experience affection. Thus, Mittmannsgruber and
Schäfer define the contact as follows: ‘The touch is the body’s “moving
PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: GATHERING (IN THE) MOVEMENT
69
beyond”. Its stretching, the spreading and widening of its aptitude’
(Mittmannsgruber and Schäfer 2013, p. 197, translation by author).
If, in this sense, the dancing body is imagined in a protest situation, the
importance of physical contact for this temporary community becomes
clear; the bodies recall their power of affecting others through the touch
inherent in the dance. The success or failure of social movements depends
on the way these powers of the protesters are realized and used in order to
affect their environment. Mittmannsgruber and Schäfer describe the
intrinsic power in the body as resulting from a mobile field of forces in this
situation: ‘Bodies are fields of force [...] they are relationship braids [...].
And every single body is to be regarded as power, namely, to affect and be
affected by power. To touch and be touched’ (Mittmannsgruber and
Schäfer 2013, p. 196, translation by author).
The experience of being a member within the dancing group, part of
the force field and realizing its energy, is felt in the group as a moment of
self-empowerment. It is both a sense of self-efficacy and a very concrete
assessment of possibilities for action. Slaby, who is concerned with the
connection between affective states and the awareness of possibilities for
action and agency, emphasizes the importance of affective states as an
‘interface’ for the capacity of acting of a group (Slaby 2012, p. 152). The
mutual awareness of possibilities for action—‘we can’ or ‘we cannot’—is
important as an ongoing process of self-assurance and positioning for
groups that want to remain active in the political space. Flam describes the
form of emotional work undertaken by social movements and how they
re-socialize their members by working on emotions: ‘[...] social movements re-define dominant feeling rules’ (Flam 2005, p. 19). She continues
by describing ways in which cultural elements, such as various forms of
rhythm and loud sounds, serve as fear-management devices (Flam 2005,
p. 29). The choreographic formats of Circle Dancing and the Round
Dance can be regarded as affective work in this context—on the one hand,
to collectively manage negative emotions such as anxiety and, on the other
hand, to maintain agency and a capacity to act. The mindsets of the dancers are changed by experiencing themselves as human beings in contact
and connection with other people (Slaby 2012, p. 154).
To be active in the political arena, it is important to feel agency and the
world as a space of specific (action) opportunities. This is the reason why
a classical form of protest, such as the demonstration, still makes sense in
today’s media-democracy; shared movement in public space is being ‘in
motion’ in a double sense. The state of being ‘in motion’ is experienced in
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a very special way when dancing in public space: The affective state—arising through touch and dancing together—can lead to a euphoric, prerevolutionary state. In his essay Rühren, Berühren, Aufruhr (‘Stirring,
Stirring Up, Uprising’), Nancy describes the connection between touch
and political uproar from an analysis of the word ruhr—a common wordstem in the German language:
Rühren, Berühren, Aufruhr. German makes it possible to gather three
notions in the semantic family of ruhr, which we can match in French with
le bouger, l’agiter, le toucher and le soulèvement [and in English: ‘moving’,
‘agitating’, ‘touching’ and ‘uproar’]; and each of these terms can be understood with its own array of possible values. ‘Moving’ and ‘agitating’ convey
some physical as well as moral senses, as do ‘touching’ and ‘uprising’. The
latter term, for its part, gives its moral value a socio-political orientation.
(Nancy 2011, p. 8)
The word ‘family’ refers to the field of movement, a movement which
is directly connected with the range of affections, the e-motions. Nancy
points out that one must move in order to touch: ‘Now, one can only
understand the identity of touching and touched as the identity of a movement, a motion and an emotion’ (Nancy 2011, p. 12).
Touch—and being touched—are the point of convergence of the political movement; the real physical, choreographic movement, and the associated inner movement and affectation.
Circle Dancing and the Round Dance are aspects of a physical practice
within which the gathering bodies, in their performance and vulnerability,
open up a field of meaning in the public where the political takes place in
the relational ‘in-between-ness’ of the moving bodies. Nancy described
the socio-political turmoil in which the dancing body is located, essentially
dealing with overcoming body boundaries: ‘The body rises up, as the
German word Aufruhr suggests, designating, as I pointed out, a sociopolitical uprising. [...] A body rises up against its own enclosure’ (Nancy
2011, p. 15). Thus the isolation of the individual is also broken in Circle
Dancing and the Round Dance.
In summary, it can be said that the interpersonal contact and affection
extant in the choreographic formats of Circle Dancing and the Round
Dance (within the framework of the social convention of dancing) demarcate an atmospheric territory. Through this, the world can be concretely
experienced as a space of specific (action) possibilities. This realm is a space
PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: GATHERING (IN THE) MOVEMENT
71
of multiple movements: the political, the choreographic and the emotional. These overlapping experiences of movement and ‘emotional bonding’ that it triggers lead to the formation of a resilient community, which
is the prerequisite for any kind of political action. Moreover, in the choreographic format of Circle Dancing and the Round Dance, a form of
future-oriented sociability is temporarily established, staged and practised
as a matrix of collective action. When these choreographic formats appear
in the context of political meetings, protests and occupations, they become
part of a prefigurative policy. The body’s abilities to touch and be touched,
along with its ‘response/ability’, are at the centre of this practice of collective movement that simultaneously exercises and celebrates sharing itself
in a gathering in (the) movement.
notes
1. ‘After all, there is an indexical force of the body (...): it is this body, and
these bodies, that require employment, shelter, health care, and food, as
well as a sense of a future (...)’ (Butler 2015, p. 9).
2. See the socio-psychological investigation about the protests in 2013 in
Istanbul by Özden M. Uluğ and Yasemin G. Acar (2015) ‘We are more
than Alliances between Groups’ in Everywhere Taksim. Sowing the Seeds for
a New Turkey.
3. See the collective concept of Kai van Eikel’s in Kai van Eikels (2013) Die
Kunst des Kollktiven: Performance zwischen Theater, Politik und
Sozio-Ökonomie.
4. Milohnic (2013) Choreographies of Resistance/Partisan Choreography,
Walking Theory, 21 Social Choreography, 15–20.
5. Klein, G. (2013) ‘Collective Bodies of Protest: Social Choreographies in
Urban Performance Art and Social Movements’, Walking Theory, 21
Social Choreography, 29–33, http://www.tkh-generator.net/portfolio/
tkh-21-social-choreography/, date accessed 23 February 2018.
6. See Walton, Jeremy F. (2015) “‘Everyday I’m Çapulling!” Global Flows
and Local Frictions of Gezi’ in Everywhere Taksim. Sowing the Seeds for a
New Turkey.
7. The video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV0NT
UY0Zls, date accessed 19 September 2017.
8. Halliday identifies the following four meanings that are important to the
theory of revolution: (1) Commitment of the population, (2) Progress,
(3) Beginning of a new age, (4) Total change. See, Fred Halliday (1999)
Revolution and World Politics.
72
L. RECH
9. For in-depth discussion of this problem, please refer to Hanna Walsdorf
(2010) Bewegte Propaganda. Politische Instrumentalisierung von Volkstanz
in den deutschen Diktaturen.
10. Prades, Pepón (2013) ‘Ideas that are born from the body. Brainstorming
and improvisation’ in A. Böhler; Ch. Herzog; A. Pechriggl, (eds) Korporale
Performanz. Zur bedeutungsgenerierenden Dimension des Leibes.
11. On the topic of synchronization, see Kai van Eikels (2012) ‘From
“Archein” to “Prattein” – Suggestions for an Un-creative Collectivity’ in
E. Besteri; E. Guidi; E. Ricci (eds) Rehearsing Collectivity. Choreography
Beyond Dance.
12. Video documentation of ‘I will dance despite everything’, http://www.
freearabs.com/index.php/art/79-video-gallery/304-jb-span-tunisia-jbspan-dancing-in-the-street, date accessed 19 September 2017.
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in Bewegung. Choreografien des Sozialen. Körper in Sport, Tanz, Arbeit und
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Halliday, F. 1999. Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth
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Klein, G. 2013. Collective Bodies of Protest: Social Choreographies in Urban
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CHOREOGRAPHY_AS_AN_AESTHETICS_OF_CHANGE. Accessed 9
Oct 2017.
Kunst, B. 2014. Die partizipative Politik des Tanzes. In Kampnagel; Internationales
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Lepecki, A. 2013. ‘From Partaking to Initiating: Leadfollowing as Dance’s
(a-Personal) Political Singularity. In Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity, ed.
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Verfahrensweise – eine Begriffsbestimmung. In Versammlung und Teilhabe, ed.
R.V. Burri, K. Evert, S. Peters, E. Pilkington, and G. Ziemer. Bielefeld:
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Milohnic, A. 2013. Choreographies of Resistance. Walking Theory 21 Social
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Mittmansgruber, M., and E. Schäfer. 2013. Immer wieder – die Körper! In
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A. Böhler, C. Herzog, and A. Pechriggl. Bielefeld: transcript.
Nancy, J.-L. 2000. Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert D. Richardson, and Anne
E. O’Byrne. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 2011. Rühren, Berühren, Aufruhr (Stirring, Stirring up, Uprising). Trans.
Christine Irizarry. In Tanzquartier Wien, Scores N°1 touché. http://www.tqw.
at/sites/default/files/Scores_1_Kern_Web_FINAL.pdf. Accessed 9 Oct 2017.
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Prades, P. 2013. Ideas that Are Born from the Body. Brainstorming and
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Groups”. A Social Psychological Perspective on the Gezi Park Protesters and
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New Turkey, ed. I. David and K.F. Toktamis. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press.
van Eikels, K. 2012. From “Archein” to “Prattein” – Suggestions for an Un-creative
Collectivity. In Rehearsing Collectivity. Choreography Beyond Dance, ed.
E. Besteri, E. Guidi, and E. Ricci. Berlin: Argobooks.
———. 2013. Die Kunst des Kollektiven: Performance zwischen Theater, Politik
und Sozio-Ökonomie. Munich/Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Walsdorf, H. 2010. Bewegte Propaganda. Politische Instrumentalisierung von
Volkstanz in den deutschen Diktaturen. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Walton, J.F. 2015. “Everyday I’m Çapulling!” Global Flows and Local Frictions of
Gezi. In Everywhere Taksim. Sewing the Seeds for a New Turkey, ed. I. David and
K.F. Toktamis. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
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On Bodies and the Need to Appropriate
Them
Antje Velsinger
In this essay, I would like to deal with the following questions:
Are citizens in western societies, early in the twenty-first century, actually
the owners of their bodies?
If so, how do these citizens use this ownership?
Could ownership of one’s body lead to a subversive, or even utopian, potential for escaping today’s cultural requirement of body-optimization?
Throughout the ages, people have retained a fascination with designing
and actively shaping bodies. Cultures have always provided a huge variety
of tools to implement such modification. In Ancient Egypt, for example,
people already used various techniques such as masquerading, tattooing
and mummifying as ways to fashion bodies and to preserve them from
inevitable decay.1 But although bodies have always been possible to modify, the question of who designs them—or which social group has the right
to manipulate and rule over them—has always been answered differently,
depending on the society of any given time or place.
A. Velsinger (*)
Graduate Program Performing Citizenship, HafenCity University Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
e-mail: mail@antjevelsinger.com
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_6
77
78
A. VELSINGER
When the Parliament of England passed the Habeas Corpus Act in
1679, for the first time in European history, a citizen suddenly owned the
right to his or her body, at least to a minimal degree. Due to this law,
which can be translated from Latin as ‘you may have the body’, a first form
of ownership of one’s body—an ownership in the subjunctive—was
granted to citizens, in order to prevent their unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment. This redefined similar ideas from the Magna Carta of 1215.
Before the actual imposition of the Habeas Corpus Act, the king was the
one who owned, and therefore ruled over, the bodies of all the subjects
living in his kingdom.
Ever since that Act, bodily self-determination has been a key issue of
citizen rights. According to the sociologist Jürgen Mackert, citizenship is
considered to be a contract between governmental agents and the citizens
of a state. This automatically implies a set of mutual rights and obligations.
These rights and obligations are sufficiently defined that either party is
likely to express indignation and take corrective action if the other fails to
meet expectations.2 Through the enactment of the Habeas Corpus Act,
ownership of the body became an integral part of this contract between
the representatives of the state and the individual citizens: owning one’s
own body became a right of the individual citizen and thus formed the
basis of all later additions to the concept of citizenship.
As a consequence of the Habeas Corpus Act, the king’s former right to
arbitrarily own his subjects’ bodies suddenly disappeared in European
constitutional monarchies and democracies. Since then, in most western
societies, ruling over another person’s body—which is the case during
punishment or rehabilitation in detention—has been regarded as a violation. This new concept has led to the citizens’ insistence on rightful and
justifiable binding laws and an executive that adheres to legal procedures.
Consequently, in all cases where bodily self-determination is ignored, such
as in torture, wrongful imprisonment or other forms of physical violation,
citizen rights are automatically ignored at the same time. Being a citizen
in western societies implies being entitled to particular rights, and these
rights include ownership of one’s own body. Although, of course, being a
citizen implies much more than the right to own one’s body,3 one can say
that the least being a citizen means is that it is only the individuals themselves who can own their own body.
When I speak about the body, I refer to a phenomenological concept of
the body. According to the phenomenological philosopher MerleauPonty, the human body simultaneously lives out its existence in two ways;
ON BODIES AND THE NEED TO APPROPRIATE THEM
79
as an object and as a subject.4 As an object, the body is what we have, it is
physical and expanding material. As a subject, the body is what we are, as
our body, because we can only perceive the world through our physical
senses. Consequently, we can state that it also becomes characterized as an
agent that perceives and transmits the outside world. This perception of
the world in turn depends on how we physically use our bodies. According
to phenomenology, the body is our medium to have a world5 and—as our
perception of the world depends on the actions we perform with our bodies—it is also our medium to actively create a world with the help of, and
as a consequence of, bodily actions and practices. I will come back to this
potential of the body to create the world through particular bodily use
later on.
What consequences have the citizens of today’s western society developed from their ownership? In the seventeenth century, ownership of
one’s body was still an endangered concept and rather referred to a passive
form of property, without any need for particular activities. Yet today, in
our contemporary western culture, we not only own, but rather possess,
our bodies, which implies a very active use that is based on physical
practices.
Since the Act of Habeas Corpus, a cultural shift has taken place from
passively owning a body to actively possessing it. Today the body is something that is treated and thought about as something that can be designed
and possessed by every individual. According to Michela Marzano, at the
beginning of the twenty-first century, the body seems only acceptable if it
is mastered and controlled by the individual.6 Exhibiting a controlled
body has become an individual form of proof that one is in control of
one’s self. This is why the well-shaped and controlled body is the quintessence of social success, happiness and the degree of perfection the individual has reached.
What physical practices do the citizens of the beginning of the twentyfirst century utilize to actively possess and control their bodies? In the
following, I will outline some examples of practices applied with the aim
of controlling and possessing a body.
The FiTness indusTry
In contrast to normal sports that aim at conditioning the body through
physical activity, the fitness industry in the last ten years has developed new
methods, such as EMS7 or HYPOXI,8 that require only modest physical
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A. VELSINGER
activity to shape the body. By using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) or
low-pressure machines (HYPOXI) on very particular body parts, the body
can be ‘designed’ in a very planned and specific way.
PlasTic surgery
While in past decades plastic surgery was an exclusive and expensive service that only very few people were able to use, today, it has become part
of pop culture and can be considered a common method used to modify
body shapes and manipulate ageing processes.9
The PharmaceuTical indusTry
In today’s society, bodily malfunction can be controlled extensively with
the help of the pharmaceutical industry. The use of drugs is a widespread
method that aims at alleviating physical suffering, such as pain, and also
controlling psychosomatic disorders—for example, through heightening
powers of concentration to decrease depression.
The use oF aPPs
Digitalization has brought about an increasing number of apps that allow
full body monitoring.10 These apps allow the user to control and work on
individual bodily functions—such as heart rate, muscular movement, sleep
patterns, and so on. What is different from the other methods described
so far is that this method for full bodily monitoring affects issues of ownership of personal body information. As apps produce data that is stored
online, the information provided by an individual becomes part of big data
and can then also be used by external institutions and users.
The methods described above show that the ‘design-ability’ of a body
in the beginning of the twenty-first century meets with both economic
interests and a culture of self-optimization. The cultural urge to transform, develop and optimize the body in western culture changes also the
notion of habeas corpus. The subjunctive of habeas corpus has shifted to
an imperative; it is no longer ‘you may have the body’, but rather, ‘possess
your body and get the best out of it!’ One might conclude that the citizens
of today use the ownership of their bodies mainly for enhancement and
self-optimization, which are the cornerstones of the current neoliberal
ideology.
ON BODIES AND THE NEED TO APPROPRIATE THEM
81
At the same time, the concept of ownership of one’s body becomes
blurred. Today’s citizens readily share the rights to their bodies with other
players—such as app providers or the pharmaceutical industry, all of whom
have an enormous economic interest in the control and possession of the
body of every citizen. It is salient that these economic enterprises not only
possess but even appropriate the body of every citizen, and at a speed that
compromises the ability of individuals to realize or to be able to cope with
this new outcome. So, are we experiencing a new cultural shift today,
towards possessing, appropriating and controlling bodies? Are today’s citizens therefore voluntarily running the risk of losing their rights to their
own bodies again and, consequently, falling into a newly developed passivity and alienation from their own bodies?
When debating these issues around these questions, MerleauPonty’s notion of the body as an agent11 contributes a helpful view. He
considers the body to be an agent that creates a reality as it receives it.
If the body is our medium to perceive the world, and this perception
depends on actions we perform, then the body is a potential medium
to actively create a world by applying or rejecting particular bodily
actions and practices. Instead of just accepting—or perhaps not seeing—the unpleasant economic reality of being appropriated, or instead
of confirming a neoliberal ideology of self-optimization, today’s citizens would have the choice to critically rethink their particular form of
ownership of their bodies.
The sociologist Robert Gugutzer regards the body as a societal phenomenon in two ways: as a product of society on the one hand, and as a
producer of society on the other.12 The human body is a product of society
in the sense that our handling, our knowledge, our feeling and our notions
of the body are defined by societal structures, values, norms, technologies
and systems of ideas. On the other hand, the human body is a producer of
society because our living together, our social organization, is essentially
affected by the physicality of socially acting individuals. Social reality
results from social actions and outcomes, and social action always involves
bodily action. Therefore, bodily (inter-)actions play a crucial part in the
construction of social reality.
This interdependence of social reality, social action and bodily action
allocates a very powerful role to everyone who is designing, possessing or
appropriating bodies—in other words, a political role.
As an artist, I consider the appropriation of bodies as a potentially critical tool with which to create other forms of reality—realities that escape
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A. VELSINGER
the ideology of self-optimization and control. Consequently, in the
research I do within the frame of the graduate school ‘Performing
Citizenship’, I investigate a contemporary approach to utopian bodies. In
this context, I understand utopian bodies as bodies that experiment with
a different approach to the neoliberal logic of self-optimization and
control.
In the following, I will discuss three examples of body appropriation in
the artistic field to show how the appropriation of a different body can be
used as a tool to produce a different social reality.
Paul Beatrix Preciado: Testo Junkie
The first example is the pharmaceutical and physical experiment of Paul
Beatriz Preciado, as documented in his book Testo Junkie.13 Paul Beatriz
Preciado is a contemporary writer, philosopher and curator who focusses
on topics relating to identity, gender, pornography and sexuality. Preciado
was originally known as a female writer and identified as a lesbian. In
2014, he announced that he was ‘transitioning’ and, in 2015, he changed
his name from Beatriz to Paul.
Ten years before that, in 2005, Preciado started an eight-month experiment with self-administered testosterone. Interestingly, Preciado did not
consider himself a ‘transgender’, so the reason why he took testosterone
was not that he felt the desire to become male. However, Preciado identifies with a group who declare themselves ‘gender pirates’ or ‘gender hackers’. Gender hackers call themselves copyleft users, who consider sex
hormones to be free and to open bio-codes whose use they believe
shouldn’t be regulated by the state or dictated by pharmaceutical
companies.14
Consequently, without seeking medical monitoring, Preciado bought
testogel from illegal sources and started his body experiment. While he
was taking the drug, it was not only his physical bodily appearance that
changed, but also his whole way of thinking, writing, feeling, moving,
imagining and acting. His body became the place where all these changes
were negotiated. By using testogel as a tool, Preciado appropriated a different body. With his experimental practice, documented in the book Testo
Junkie, Preciado ‘hacks into gender’, simultaneously rejecting any regulation either by the state or by pharmaceutical companies who normally
control gender changes.
ON BODIES AND THE NEED TO APPROPRIATE THEM
83
In an interview Preciado said, ‘I also thought about the project as a kind
of collective adventure, in a sense, because I’m thinking about the body,
not even just my own, as this kind of a living political fiction.[…] We must
manage to actually create some political alliance of minority bodies, to create a revolution together’.15 With the aid of testogel as a technique to
appropriate a different body, the body of the artist becomes a container for
physiological and political micro-mutations. The body qualifies as a container in which alternative drafts of a transitioning gender model come into
being and into action. Coming back to habeas corpus, in Preciado’s case,
‘you may have the body’ implies the right to decide on your gender by selfdetermined use of a drug. In Preciado’s bodily self-determination, gender
becomes something that can be freely appropriated by every citizen.
Leonardo Selvaggio URME
The second example of an artistic strategy to appropriate bodies is the
project URME, created by the Chicago-based artist Leonardo Selvaggio,16
based on the appropriation of only one body part—namely, the face.
Selvaggio is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines the influence
of technology on identity. In his recent work, he is engaged in the idea of
considering identity as data that can be manipulated or even corrupted.
In his project, URME, Selvaggio develops alternative ways to use the
human face in order to subvert new technological developments in the
field of facial recognition. With the help of the new facial recognition app
‘FindFace’, any stranger needs only a photo of our face in order to get
access to any information we have ever communicated via our social media
profiles.17
In order to protect people from this new form of surveillance, Selvaggio
is developing his own defence technologies. In his art project, URME
SURVEILLANCE, he allows anyone to appropriate his face by wearing a
photo-realistic, 3D-printed mask. When a person takes on the face of the
artist—in the form of a mask—camera systems equipped with facial recognition software identify that person as Selvaggio, thus attributing all of
their actions to the identity of the artist. With this strategy of appropriating someone else’s face, people can hide and protect their own identity in
surveyed areas. Further, they also actively contribute to designing a new
persona, as their physical actions are linked to another person, in this case
the artist.
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A. VELSINGER
In the project URME, the appropriation of someone else’s face produces an interesting malleability of identities. The shared face is subverting facial recognition systems because information cannot be read
correctly; as a consequence, the data is connected to the wrong social
media account.
Coming back to habeas corpus, the project URME Surveillance produces an interesting new form of malleable utopian body. In this case, ‘you
may have the body’ implies the right to hide, confuse and rebuild the
identity of a body. A group of people can share multiples of one reproduced individual body part, in order to create a new identity mapped out
by their physical actions, so that economic and governmental surveillance
loses overall power and is thus ridiculed.
anTje Velsinger The Bodies We Are
The third example is my own research project The Bodies We Are, which is
located in the choreographic field.18 In the project The Bodies We Are, I
work with the appropriation of movement and perception patterns of foreign bodies; in other words, bodies outside the realm of the performer’s
experience. Based on the assumption that the body is our medium through
which we have a world, the appropriation of a foreign body offers a tool
for the perception of the world from a different perspective.
In the first part of the research project,19 I asked three performers/
choreographers20 to select and bring images of bodies with which they do
not identify. Interestingly, the majority of these images were images of
marginalized or non-mainstream bodies: obese bodies, extremely muscular bodies, bodies involved in BDSM practice,21 anorexic bodies, extremely
flexible yoga bodies, bodies using different kinds of prothesis, and so on.
Starting from the thesis that a body is not a stable entity but consists of
movement patterns, bodily perception and imagination, I was interested
in the following questions:
What happens if the performers try to appropriate these bodies by speculating on and taking over their movement logics?
What happens to the performers themselves if they try to step out of
their own bodily reality and jump into an unknown territory of a body
totally different from their own? What happens in the process of
appropriation?
ON BODIES AND THE NEED TO APPROPRIATE THEM
85
Let’s assume the body is not a stable entity, but rather, a complex system in which particular movement and perception patterns, particular
desires and imaginations interact with each other.
Let’s assume everyone has a choice of plenty of potential bodies. Can
anyone enter, or ‘hack into’, any bodily system, if he or she appropriates
its movement patterns?
Let’s do one experiment. Please go online and open the following
homepage:
http://www.yossiloloi.com/portfolio/fullbeauty-project.
Now, please go to image 6/16. Let’s assume this is one of our potential
bodies that we want to appropriate. What kind of choreographic or performative strategies can be used to appropriate it?
If one considers this body to be a system, the performer first has to
speculate and decide, what the characteristics are and which of them are
significant. These decisions depend on the individual person who is doing
the appropriating. Accordingly, the appropriation of a foreign body always
implies a transfer process which then provokes a deviation from our particular individual experience.
A possible performative strategy to appropriate this body:
Movement: Concentrate on weight and volume while you move. Use
every movement to perceive as much gravity, heaviness and volume of
your body, as possible. Try to intensify this by using your imagination.
Flesh: Focus on the masses of flesh and how these masses are rubbing
against each other while you move. Frequent actions are draping your
flesh around you and therefore having to grab and pull at your flesh to
rearrange it.
Pace: Move slowly.
Breath: Breath goes slowly and against the resistance of the flesh—you
have to produce this physically.
Movement orientation: Movement is rather initiated from the centre,
not the periphery. Movement motivation: You expose as much volume
to the space around you as possible. Use of object: Use an object to
drape your volume on it. The object will help you to expand even better
in space.
If a person wants to enter into the system of this body—these 7 points
might be helpful as one possible strategy of appropriation. Plenty of others, of course, are also tenable. The combination and interaction of these
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A. VELSINGER
different characteristics will produce a system that will change how he or
she perceives and constructs the body. Interestingly, entering into this foreign physicality will also change the imagination and desires of the person
who is appropriating. Consequently, appropriating a foreign body means
not only appropriating its physicality and movement patterns but, through
its physicality, also appropriating its imagination, its visions and desires.
The person, who is appropriating this body will experience that there
exists a direct interrelation between bodies and what is imagined and
desired.
Relating all this to the habeas corpus theme, it can be said that the
project The Bodies We Are expands its scope from a singular law to its utopian plural. It does not merely say ‘you may have the body’, it goes far
beyond that; it claims that it is possible to appropriate a variety of—even
plenty of—bodies depending on your own interests and needs. Therefore,
my thesis is this: If a concrete interrelation exists between the physical
actions of a body, its individual desires and its particular environment,
then the appropriation of foreign bodies also implies a utopian potential.
Appropriating a body can be used as a tool to encounter and experience
the not yet known. It can be used as a tool to allow change in the way we
perceive our bodily and social reality. Consequently, the appropriation of
a foreign body can be used as a vehicle to jump into different systems—to
hijack, seize or capture foreign spaces and realms of actions, thoughts and
visions.
My final look at the implications of habeas corpus—‘you may have the
body’—can be summarized as follows: As I have discussed above ‘having
a body’ in the beginning of the twenty-first century meets with a culture
of self-optimization, and the right to own one’s body has shifted into an
imperative of enhancement and control. However, when accepting the
body as an agent that has the capacity to produce concrete realities, ownership of one’s body could also lead to a subversive, or even utopian,
potential for escaping today’s cultural requirement of body-optimization.
If we use the artistic field to shift from passively being appropriated to
actively appropriating a body, we gain space for redefining bodily selfdetermination. If we consider the body a space for action that produces
concrete realities, not only artists, but every citizen can use his or her body
to produce concrete bodily realities—realities that not only aim at enhancement and control, but that are also open to include the foreign, the
unknown, the scary, or the challenging to imagine.
ON BODIES AND THE NEED TO APPROPRIATE THEM
87
noTes
1. Cf. Pommerening (2007) ‘Mumien, Mumifizierungstechnik und Totenkult
im Alten Ägypten: eine chronologische Übersicht’ In: Wieczorek, Alfried
(Hrsg). Mumien. Der Traum vom ewigen Leben, pp. 71–88.
2. Mackert, Jürgen (2006) Staatsbürgerschaft. Eine Einführung, p. 18.
3. As Engin Isin puts it: ‘critical studies of citizenship over the last two
decades have taught us that what is important is not only that citizenship
is a legal status but that it also involves practices of making citizens – social,
political, cultural and symbolic’. But following this thesis, it has to be
stated that the medium for taking part in all these social, political, cultural
and practices is the body. Cf. Isin, Engin F. & Nielsen, Greg M. (eds)
(2008) Acts of Citizenship, p. 17f.
4. Cf. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2012) Phenomenology of Perception, trans.
Donald Landes, p. 94.
5. Cf. Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 147f).
6. Marzano, Michela (2013) Philosophie des Körpers, p. 24.
7. http://www.stern.de/gesundheit/fitness/sportarten/ems%2D%2D-elektrische-muskelstimulation-schwitzen-unter-strom-3524208.html,
date
accessed 28 August 2017.
8. http://www.designyourbody.com, date accessed 28 August 2017.
9. See, MTV series ‘I Want a Famous Face’, which documents how normal
citizens are getting a ‘famous face and body’ through the use of plastic
surgery,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3TeYTTNdSs,
date
accessed 17 March 2018.
10. One example is Apple’s ‘Health’ app that gathers information in four distinct categories: Activity, Sleep, Mindfulness and Nutrition. The app consolidates health data from an iPhone, Apple Watch and third-party apps
that the individual uses, allowing the user—and the provider—to view all
the information in one place. http://www.apple.com/uk/ios/health/,
date accessed 28 August 2017.
11. Cf. Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 74).
12. Gugutzer, Robert (2015) Soziologie des Körpers, p. 8f.
13. Preciado Beatriz (2013) Testo Junkie.
14. Preciado (2013, p. 55f).
15. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/12/04/pharmacopornography-an-interview-with-beatriz-preciado/, date accessed 28 August
2017.
16. For a full documentation of the project see, http://www.urmesurveillance.com, date accessed 28 August 2017.
17. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findfaceface-recognition-app-end-public-anonymity-vkontaktedate accessed 28
August 2017.
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A. VELSINGER
18. For full documentation of the project, see: http://antjevelsinger.com/
arbeiten/thebodiesweare/, date accessed 28 August 2017.
19. The first part of the research project took place between 9 and 29 February
2017 at the choreographic centre of PACT Zollverein, in Essen, Germany.
20. The performers/choreographers involved in the collaboration were Juli
Reinartz, Johanna Roggan & Vania Rovisco. The fine artist Sophie Aigner
was also part of the research team.
21. BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or role-involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related
interpersonal dynamics.
reFerences
Gugutzer, Robert. 2015. Soziologie des Körpers. Bielefeld: transcript.
http://antjevelsinger.com/arbeiten/thebodiesweare/. Accessed 28 Aug 2017.
http://www.designyourbody.com. Accessed 28 Aug 2017.
http://www.stern.de/gesundheit/fitness/sportarten/ems%2D%2D-elektrischemuskelstimulation-schwitzen-unter-strom-3524208.html. Accessed 28 Aug
2017.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/12/04/pharmacopornography-aninterview-with-beatriz-preciado/. Accessed 28 Aug 2017.
http://www.urmesurveillance.com. Accessed 28 Aug 2017.
Isin, Engin F., and Greg M. Nielsen, eds. 2008. Acts of Citizenship. London: Zed
Books.
Mackert, Jürgen. 2006. Staatsbürgerschaft. Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: Verlag
für Sozialwissenschaft.
Marzano, Michela. 2013. Philosophie des Körpers. Munich: Diederichs Verlag.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Donald
Landes. London: Routledge.
Pommerening, Tanja. 2007. Mumien, Mumifizierungstechnik und Totenkult im
Alten Ägypten: eine chronologische Übersicht. In Mumien – der Traum vom
ewigen Leben: Begleitband zur Sonderausstellun, ed. Alfried Wieczorek. Mainz
am Rhein: Zabern.
Preciado, Beatriz. 2013. Testo Junkie. Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the
Pharmacopornographic Era. New York: Feminist Press.
ON BODIES AND THE NEED TO APPROPRIATE THEM
89
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
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holder.
PART II
Citizenship and (Urban) Space
Silence, Motifs and Echoes: Acts of Listening
in Postcolonial Hamburg
Katharina Kellermann
There is a strong movement in Hamburg ‘Recht auf Stadt’ [‘Right to the City’]
which, of course, also implies the understanding that the city is for the many. Who
defines the city? Who defines the culture of remembrance in the city? Is this culture of remembrance always top-down-politics or are there other forms, too?1
Political communities, such as cities, emerge in part through their
approach to their own history. The question of citizenship is therefore
always connected to a culture of remembrance. This question is particularly pertinent in the case of Hamburg, a city which, ‘as a gateway to the
world for the German Empire played a key role in the colonization of
Africa’ (Möhle et al. 2006, p. 7). Which perspectives on this colonial legacy are represented in the public discourse is always a matter of political
contestation.
Presently, the urban space of Hamburg shows traces of colonialism,
most of which are hard to clearly identify as such. They can be found
within city planning in the form of architecture, street names and monuments, within cultural institutions, where knowledge is made apparent, as
well as in the political discourses that shape the public discussions.
K. Kellermann (*)
Graduate Program Performing Citizenship, HafenCity University Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_7
93
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K. KELLERMANN
Following Pierre Nora, such historic traces can serve as sites of memory
(Nora 2010, p. x), since they contribute to the formation of identities and
are therefore constitutive of the urban community. In this sense, the
debate on colonial history—as it is being held in Hamburg and many
other major European cities—can serve as an example for the constitutive
nexus of citizenship and culture of remembrance. The political and cultural manner by which these sites of remembrance are being handled,
especially in a postcolonial and post-fascist Germany, is crucial for debates
and modes on participation and exclusion. For example, in 2014 in
Hamburg the Senate, in its paper ‘Coming to Terms with the Colonial
Legacy – a New Start for the Culture of Remembrance’ (https://hhpostkolonial.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/senatsbericht-kolonialeserbe2014.pdf), proposed a variety of ideas for dealing with the city’s
colonial vestiges. Grassroots organizations and communities from former
colonized countries subsequently criticized the paper in an open letter
because it completely failed to take their own knowledge production, their
experiences, expertise and points of view into consideration (http://www.
hamburg-postkolonial.de/PDF/PM_NOTWITHOUTUS.pdf).
This question of which perspectives on historic events are being represented and whose narrative is being heard in this debate2 is not solely of
symbolic meaning. The matter of the social positioning of the relevant
agents—in terms of who is able to speak for themselves and who is privileged to speak for and about others—is rather just as much part of the
city’s memoryscape as the material traces remaining in the urban space and
the colonial continuities in the public discourse. Urban space with its historic dimensions is constituted by a specific ‘distribution of the sensible’ (Ranciere 2004), in which acoustic materializations—such as ‘acts of
speech’ and voices, but also sounds, music and atmospheres—mark social
actions and influence individual and collective imaginations of the city.
Accordingly, a critical social and artistic analysis of postcolonial cultures of
remembrance should also take into account that urban memoryscapes are
not solely materialized, for example, in the form of architecture, street
names or monuments; they also have specific acoustic materiality.
In the following, the classic concept of the term soundscape is explored.
Using examples from the artistic research project How to Hear the Invisible
(How to Hear the Invisible—an acoustic map of the postcolonial memoryscape of Hamburg—is the artistic part of my research project ‘Citizenship
and Politics of Remembrance. Sound as a commemorative cultural
medium in postcolonial Hamburg’ in the framework of the graduate
SILENCE, MOTIFS AND ECHOES: ACTS OF LISTENING IN POSTCOLONIAL…
95
school Performing Citizenship. http://performingcitizenship.de/data/
katharina-kellermann-forschungsprojekt/), the project deals with the city
as an acoustic space that displays itself as a sonic realm of urban, social and
political experience and maps its soundscape as a space of remembrance.
Referring to three soundtracks of the project—individually named:
‘Silence’, ‘Motif’ and ‘Echo’—I show, through artistic work with sound,
how the realm of the acoustic can function, beyond its perceptive intent,
as an epistemological tool within the context of postcolonial culture of
remembrance. Finally, I will outline the concept of ‘acts of listening’ and
the implications for acoustic forms of remembrance, as well as the potential for sound as a medium of performative historiography.
The ArTisTic reseArch ProjecT www.how-To-heArThe-invisible.org
According to Henri Lefebvre, the city is constituted by a variety of representations, imaginations and practices (Lefebvre 1991). These representations frequently have an acoustic dimension that I will take into account
by analysing the city as a soundscape. My artistic research is based specifically on the classic notion of the soundscape—as developed by the
Canadian composer and author R. Murray Schafer—following the work of
Brandon LaBelle and paying attention to ‘auditory figures’ (La Belle
2010, p. 25). Schafer’s concept of the soundscape analyses the variety of
sounds that arise from an environment as well as the listeners’ perception
of them. In his work, he focusses on the so-called Lofi Soundscapes (Schafer
1977, p. 97)—that consist of the congestion of industrial and electronical
noise. In focusing on these soundscapes, there is an emphasis on the experience of ‘sound pollution’ (Schafer 1977, p. 97). However, the project of
How to Hear the Invisible artistically encounters the soundscape with an
acoustic approach, based on the ways in which sound and voices operate
in everyday life, and also in terms of narrative. In addition, there is focus
on the cultural, political and social significance of auditory figures:
Which motifs repeat?
Where is silence?
What echoes?
By answering these questions, the project endeavours to enable an
acoustic experience that locates and dislocates remembering through
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sound. In various sound tracks,3 Hamburg’s daily urban soundscape is
augmented through new sounds and voices. ‘Motif ’, ‘Silence’ and ‘Echo’
serve as formal structures for the production of sound material (interviews, samples, compositions, field recordings), as well as featuring in the
editing and montage. They mark places, like the Rothesoodstrasse and
Hafencity and draw—in form and content—a connection from colonialism to post- and neo-colonialism within Hamburg’s urban space.
Likewise, these tracks are used as metaphors to describe postcolonial
debates around the general lack of representation of anti-colonial resistance in the urban space and public discourse. For example, the famous
pan-Africanist George Padmore organized the first conference of the
International Trade Union Committee for Black Workers in Hamburg in
1930, and was head of the organization’s office in Rothesood Strasse in
Hamburg, till it was closed by the Nazis in 1933 (Möhle et al. 2006).
The missing reference to his legislating at the place of his former office
can be described as silence. Similarly, the tendencies of romanticizing
colonialism by using its context (through references on colonial emperors and so-called colonial goods) in contemporary issues like urban planning in the Hafencity can be described as a neo-colonial echo. In this
way, ‘Motif’, ‘Silence’ and ‘Echo’—the titles of the tracks—also function
as auditory figures, depicting how colonial history affects the contemporary daily life of the city and its people today.
The project thus explores which acoustic dimensions the (unmarked,
and therefore seemingly mute) colonial traces of Hamburg’s urban spaces
may have. The montage searches for a possibility to make them audible—
historical connections, continuities and contemporary references being
rearranged through sound. By layering and mixing a variety of sounds,
voices, vibes and atmospheres, the project tries to map the postcolonial
city as an acoustic space, focusing on political functions and perceptive
modes of operation of sounds and voices within that space. The function
of the auditory figures—the respectively acoustic materials and montage
that are developed in order to enhance a possibly, different imagination of
the postcolonial city through a shifting, editing and alienating of the material—is now discussed for the tracks ‘Motif’, ‘Silence’ and ‘Echo’.
Motifs
Acoustic motifs structure our sonic memory. Their repetition and variation are the basis for processes of remembrance, as well as for spatial
SILENCE, MOTIFS AND ECHOES: ACTS OF LISTENING IN POSTCOLONIAL…
97
imagination. In Hamburg, such motifs also serve as signature sounds for
the city’s self-promotion as a cosmopolitan metropolis and ‘gateway to
the world’. Horns, ship engines and screeching seagulls are typically representative of the city’s soundscape, and thereby trigger strong associations. However, they do not only sound on-site, but are also being used
to aestheticize and brand other spaces, for example, the subway station at
Hafencity University. These selected and edited sounds serve to fabricate
the image of the new district of Hafencity, but also draw on sonic continuities. The city’s acoustic representation, as well the specific spatial
imagination of the city through these motifs, range from colonial activities—such as mission and trade in the late 1900s—all the way to the daily
life of the modern city. By connecting these sounds to keywords from a
respective discourse, the soundtrack ‘Motif’—from How to Hear the
Invisible—attempts to depict these sonic continuities and highlight the
harbour’s significance for German colonialism. The montage of those
sounds and site-specific field recordings with spoken information serves
to re-signify the denotation of the signature sounds.4 ‘Motif’ attempts to
trigger ‘acts of listening’ that realize this process of resignification in
one’s own cognition. By adding a postcolonial sense to the everyday
sonic motives, the daily perception of urban soundscape is being shifted
through listening.
Silence
The harbour itself is not the only example of a location of the intertwining
of German colonialism and Hamburg’s traders. Other sites of significance,
such as the landmark building Afrikahaus, built by the company
C. Woermann, or the naming of two streets after the slave-trader
Schimmelmann, can be found throughout the city. In this way, perpetrators and beneficiaries of German colonialism have ingrained themselves
into the urban image, as well as into the collective memory of the city as
local protagonists, while knowledge of anti-colonial resistance or decolonial practices are less visible. An example of such a lack of visibility can be
found at the Rothesoodstrasse, near Hamburg’s city centre, where the
office of George Padmore—an internationally renowned pan-African
thinker and activist—had been located up until its destruction by the Nazis
in 1933. From his Hamburg office, Padmore organized the international
conference of black Workers of the League against Imperialism and published the magazine The Negro Worker.
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Today, this (historical) place is not marked with any information provided to indicate significance. The soundtrack ‘Silence’ attempts to make
Padmore’s story audible, as well as to raise awareness for the acoustic
phenomenon of silence, by using signal-generated sound materials and
working with strong variation of volume. The lack of representation in
public spaces and within the collective urban consciousness is a form of
silence and can be perceived by listening carefully—and can thus be
opened up to discursive interpretation. ‘Acts of listening’ perceive silence
within this context as a certain inaudibility of narrative, and thus recognize
the non-sounding of Padmore’s story—within the symbolic canon of the
city—as a form of not knowing, an omission and exclusion from Hamburg’s
soundscape and culture of remembrance.
Echo
The manner in which historic events and the hegemonic perspectives
towards them are present in the urban space can be seen clearly in
Hafencity.5 The acoustics of the district are not only shaped by the materiality of newly constructed building complexes but also by echoes of colonial history. Historic references are present all over the district. While
imperialist sailors and conquerors—like Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand
Magellan—had already been honoured during German colonialism with
their own monument in Hamburg’s Speicherstadt, once more we see
streets in Hafencity named after them (Informationszentrum 3. Welt,
https://www.iz3w.org/zeitschrift/ausgaben/318_grenzen_und_migration/fab). Buildings that have been named after former plantations and
colonial commodities—such as Java, Arabica and Silk—might well have
been conceptualized with the goal of generating a cosmopolitan ‘feel’ for
the white majority population; however, the city planners failed to recognize and integrate diverse perspectives on global processes, such as migration or a postmigrant urban change, into the shaping of the new district.
Due to particular echoes such as these, the Hafencity becomes a space of
culture of remembrance in which certain perspectives are being amplified
and reinforced while others barely linger. The following quote, taken from
an interview with Tania Mancheno,6 which forms part of the track Echo,
describes this dynamic:
[…] if you look at all these buildings, really, they are all named after plantations. And with these plantations, especially in the awful Überseequartier
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(literally ‘overseas district’– a part of the new Hafencity area), you once
again encounter an echo. To me, by definition, Übersee divides the world
into north and south, rich and poor, black and white, woman and man; all
these blatant segregations that once gave justification to allow a large number of people on this planet to be treated as not human. So, the core of
racism lie ‘overseas’ concepts… and we’re placing this right in the centre of
this city; however because it is also a new centre, a new centre or heart of
Hamburg […] it’s, like, again, this longing for exoticism, again another
echo and, as already mentioned, all these buildings that have been named
after plantations, that were of worldwide significance to Hamburg.
Therefore, here is an echo that is based on colonial power, and that does not
remotely consider the racism that was justified by its adoption. So ultimately,
it is an echo of the civilizatory wound of colonialism.7
The soundtrack ‘Echo’ tries to create an audible playing-out based on
the acoustic research about the architectural materiality of the Hafencity,
as well as of echo as a sound phenomenon (by using analogous sound
effects). Thus, colonial echoes can be experienced in an acoustic, as well as
discursive, manner. Through ‘acts of listening’, it becomes perceivable
which perspectives actually resonate in the urban daily life of a postcolonial
city.
ciTy And commemorATion As AcousTic TerriTories
These examples from How to Hear the Invisible are given in order to show
the approach of the project to the memoryscape of Hamburg as an acoustic territory,
[…] specific while being multiple, cut with flows and rhythms, vibrations
and echoes, all of which form a sonic discourse that is equally feverish, energetic, and participatory. Sound is shared property onto which many claims
are made over time, and which demand associative and relational understanding. (La Belle 2010, p. 24)
With this in mind, listening to the sound tracks reveals the fact that
social processes, like the field of remembrance culture, constantly interact
with an auditory world, which thus contributes to the experience of the
city and its inhabitants. As Stefan Militzer puts it, the act of listening
involves the act of ‘investigating the origins of a sound and thus becomes
an attempt at finding and positioning oneself’ (Militzer 2015, p. 68).
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In this sense, the use of the auditory figures in the artistic research aims
to understand the city as a realm of contemporary (Motif) and historic
(Silence) narratives, and draw attention to the discourse on their representation (Echo). Motif, Silence and Echo function as auditory figures by
assigning specific characteristics to spaces and their perception and by
giving shape to their specific significance and effects. Thereby, they not
only serve to identify a specific acoustic quality, but their effectiveness also
allows for identity formation, permits participation and produces exclusions. In this sense, sound phenomena are used to perceive and understand the urban space as a memoryscape, auditory figures add a performative
dimension to such sound phenomena beyond their mere semantic meaning. Through their use, How to Hear the Invisible examines the city as a
space in which its postcolonial legacy—its consequences and the manner
in which it is being dealt with—are manifested acoustically.
The soundtracks transform the significance of spaces and enable possibilities of remembering within the city. In this way, they propose to perceive and discuss the city as a space of remembrance through different
ways of listening. The project tries to make the urban space legible as an
acoustic one, in which ‘sonic materiality operates as “micro-epistemologies”,
[….] opening up to specific ways of knowing the world’ (La Belle 2010,
p. 25).
Since they produce and represent cultural modes of signification, the
auditory figures of Motif, Silence and Echo serve to analyse Hamburg’s
memoryscape through sound and by listening. This focus on listening and
exploration through acoustic concepts undergoes, in the sense of an
acoustic turn, a ‘shift away from the privilege of the visible towards an
overlooked acoustic dimension’ (Meyer 2007, p. 18). According to Petra
Meyer, this acoustic turn challenges the paradigm of the visual which,
since Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Lee 2003, p. 365) and the subsequent
formation of a philosophy that mainly operates with metaphors of light
and sight, has dominated European culture. Instead of deeming ‘visual
coordinates to be the main points of orientation for experience’ (Militzer
2015, p. 70), the realm of the acoustic and the act of listening as categories of analysis and experience can be fruitfully applied in artistic research;
with this awareness, I adopted the use of sound to reveal obscured dimensions. As I will outline in the following, an acoustic turn can also open up
a new perspective with regard to the issue of remembrance culture that,
especially in the German context, is usually still conceptualized in mostly
visual terms.
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lisTening To The urbAn sPAce As A PoliTicAl PrAcTice
As I have pointed out through examples from How to Hear the Invisible,
listening can alert us to the condition of Hamburg’s memoryscape and
also enable a political practice of positioning within the city’s social structure. By perceiving the tracks, listening becomes a way of decoding and
also a way to ‘achieve an awareness for the underlying sense (something
that is experienced, postulated or aimed at as hidden)’ (Barthes 1985,
p. 253). By applying this experience to urban space and the local politics
of remembrance, listening gains a performative dimension, which I will
explain in greater detail by referring to the ‘acts of listening’ model later
on, but first, I want to shed some light on the acoustic sphere of the urban
space. It is crucial to acknowledge particular modes of operation, which I
want to call the ‘surround effect’ of the city. While Lefebvre, in his ‘rhythmanalysis’ (Lefebvre 2004) of the city, presupposes that the listener has to
remain outside of the acoustic happening in order to recognize its rhythms,
my artistic research identifies the listeners themselves as an essential part of
the soundscape of the city. Listeners cannot place themselves outside of—
or opposite—the city’s soundscape, such as happens when watching a film
or looking at a painting. While the act of seeing produces an outside horizon, the act of listening knows no such horizon at all, rendering it impossible for listeners to distance themselves from what is happening;
acoustically, we cannot separate ourselves. The city’s ‘surround effect’
therefore always already situates the inhabitants of the city as listeners. The
acoustic experience creates positioning in the sense of proximity and distance, as well as political positionality within the city’s social context, by
paying attention to these questions:
Which sounds are familiar to whom and who can identify with them?
How can we articulate and express ourselves?
How are we being perceived in the soundscape of the city?
To whom do we listen and whom do we try to understand?
Who has a voice and what makes a sound?
Which sounds and voices can be perceived and what spaces do they
create?
Returning to the opening question regarding forms and possibilities of
commemoration as an articulation of citizenship, ‘acts of listening’ reveal
the possibility to politically position one’s own sounding in the city and to
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take responsibility for a diverse approach to the city’s history through listening. In their essay on postcolonial feminism, Nikita Dhawan and Maria
Do Mar Castro Varela introduce the concept of ‘subversive listening’.
According to the authors, subversive listening is a specific mode of listening in which the listener gains an awareness of her privileges, as well as of
the possibility of losing them. Subversive listening thus enables the selfaware subject to refrain from speaking and let others do the talking (Castro
Varela and Dhawan 2003, p. 279). In this sense, the soundscape of the
postcolonial city, as the basis of the artistic research project How to Hear
the Invisible, calls for us to listen in a bi-directional way, which is to say to
pay attention to the surrounding space with its atmospheres, noises and
linguistic significations, along with its continuities, breaks and silences.
Accordingly, this soundscape cannot be deciphered through conventional
forms of listening that are still modelled on the linearity of writing, thereby
eliminating everything that seems to be insignificant. ‘Acts of listening’—
as a concept explicated in the next section—create a relationship between
the subject and the city that is neither selective nor distanced. The listener
is always already part of that urban and social space in which commemoration takes place. It is listening that enables the subject to position itself in
the debate about adequate forms of postcolonial commemoration.
AcTs of lisTening And PoliTics of sound
Based on the soundtracks I have discussed, the auditory figures of Motif,
Silence and Echo carry political significance because their specific resonance creates a memoryscape of Hamburg. The project How to Hear the
Invisible tries to offer an acoustic experience in which this political significance reveals itself only through ‘acts of listening’. In this respect, listening
is to interpret the sounding out of particular voices and the silencing of
certain narratives as a sign of exclusion (silence). Further, listening is to
recognize sonic continuities and their significance for the self-conception
of the city (motifs). And finally, by acknowledging the political impacts of
city planning, listening is to realize neo-colonial echoes within our daily
life in Hamburg.
Thus, the examples help to distinguish the difference between hearing
and listening. While hearing is predominantly a (passive) perception of
sound, listening also implies a form of participating and interpreting.
The importance of George Padmore, for example, is not present in the
city’s narrative, therefore, his story is not audible, but through listening
SILENCE, MOTIFS AND ECHOES: ACTS OF LISTENING IN POSTCOLONIAL…
103
it is possible to become aware of its absence, and thus, to comprehend it
as silence. In the context of debates about a postcolonial culture of
remembrance, listening is one possible approach to the mute urban landscape sketched at the outset, which enables us to experience the gap
between the historic past and its aftermath in our daily urban life.
Critically, by asking which voices and stories enter common narratives of
the city’s history and which ones remain mute, the focus on the unheard
and the non-sounding can be extended beyond the phenomena of sound
to the nonetheless acoustic realm of discourses, standpoints and
positionalities.
This dialogue between speaking and listening is based on structures of
participation and exclusion that are expressed through vocal phenomena,
as I tried to demonstrate with the help of the example of neo-colonial
imaginaries echoing in the area of Hafencity. The technique of the montage of both verbal and non-verbal elements used in the project How to
Hear the Invisible takes into account that the matter of the research—the
dealing with traces of colonial politics in the urban space—is initially inaudible. The ‘acoustic dimension of the experience of a certain place cannot
be reduced to a simple materiality or a nonbiased hearing’ (Fiebig 2015,
p. 75). The perception of the sounds and field recordings is itself influenced by the voices of postcolonial protagonists, framing all tracks. Their
voices offer the contextualization of the sounds and were also chosen for
reasons of representation politics.8 Voices and sounds as different acoustic
signs are being related to each other when listening. By listening, both the
vocal body of the speaker and the listening subject enter into an affective
relationship with each other that goes beyond the discursive impact of the
interview.
Voice as acoustic material, as well as philosophic phenomena, forms an
important part of the research project. As it maintains a productive connection to my original question of the nexus of citizenship and commemoration because, in addition to its appellative attributes, ethical aspects
characterize voice. Voice interaction is necessarily marked by a reference to
the other; it always establishes a relationship and is fundamentally directed
towards somebody else. The conversation is dependent on the other’s
response, besides different modes of addressing the other. Voices address
us in the form of sound—even if we don’t understand them. According
to Roland Barthes, voice gives us ‘instruction’ to listen (Barthes 1985,
p. 255). This form of address leads to a situation of perception in which
silence is just as active and meaningful as speaking: ‘listening speaks’.
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I want to apply and broaden this mode of address—in which, according
to Barthes, voice is being responded to with ‘words or deeds’ (Barthes
1985, p. 255)—to a critical discussion of a postcolonial culture of remembrance in Hamburg and outline some theoretical thoughts that evolved
through the course of artistic research. I propose a way of listening in
which one feels genuinely addressed by non-linguistic acoustic expressions—like continuous motifs, neo-colonial echoes and discursive silence—
as much as by voice-based signals. The idea of ‘acts of listening’ is an
attempt to acknowledge these different acoustic forms of address. In this
way, listening constitutes an acoustic space in which different sounds, with
their respective levels of meaning, work in a performative way. Through
‘acts of listening’, those levels of meaning are channelled, and an acoustic
space is created in which Motif, Silence and Echo—as auditory figures—
call for us to listen as a way of reworking history and a form of commemoration. If listening ‘speaks’ to us, as Barthes put it, then the experience of
this acoustic space requires translation: translation of sound and voices
into a social experience of the postcolonial Hamburg, as well as translation
of an acoustic relationship into knowledge about the city. This translation
relates to a process of interpretive participation. ‘Acts of listening’ increase
the sensitivity to the postcolonial in the city. Thus, to listen also means to
feel addressed and to transfer this address into conceptual and aesthetic
categories. In this sense, it is not only the speech act that constitutes a
performative, but also the act of listening.
AcousTic remembrAnce And PerformATive hisTory
wriTing
As illustrated, listening is not a given phenomenon that works in nonpolitical or trans-historical ways. Sound is associative and ephemeral in
nature, but it is also an essential component of the world it participates in
and constructs. For Brandon LaBelle, sound ‘comes to reconfigure the
spatial distinctions of inside and outside, to foster confrontations between
one and another, and to infuse language with degrees of immediacy’ (LaBelle 2010, p. xxi). Therefore, listening produces spaces and
social materialities, and it thus intervenes in the field of the visible. Precisely
the associative character of sound makes it inherently political—which
sounds we hear, and how we hear them is open for interpretation, and
therefore, a political issue. The knowledge and the experience that we
SILENCE, MOTIFS AND ECHOES: ACTS OF LISTENING IN POSTCOLONIAL…
105
associatively generate through sound lead to modes of awareness other
than seeing.
Thus, one aim of the artistic research, How to Hear the Invisible, is to
facilitate a knowledge production beyond the familiar ways of perception.
Dealing with sound is in this way a matter of dealing with the processes of
decoding and identifying. While listening is connected with normative
notions and criteria, at the same time, it is able to inspire our imagination
in different ways. ‘Acts of listening’ enable a critical engagement with the
‘subconscious ideological structures (of the language, thinking and experience) which guide our knowledge and our actions (Hall 2004, p. 145).’
Stuart Hall describes representation as the power ‘to label, give meaning to
or classify someone or something’. It is precisely this form of power that
can potentially be undermined by non-visual practices such as listening.
‘Acts of listening’ thus encompass a critical mode towards normative discourse that impacts our visual perception. If we understand such politics of
representation as a set of notions, realizations and political stand-ins, then
‘acts of listening’ can fragment their structure and quality, and unfold it
through different forms of perception and imagination in a productive way.
Returning to the project, the idea of How to Hear the Invisible is to
make various fragments of space and its history audible; the soundtracks
reinforce different forms of listening and enable a change of perspective in
the current perception of the city and its history. In this case,
[…] the temporality of the location is no longer a mere continuity – it
becomes an experience of constellations, disruptions, asynchronicities and
consequentially demands the listener to question their own role as contemporary and as witness. Listening may have always been an associative act, an
associative happening, but only specific media-based or artistic approaches
activate the different aesthetic, political and social potentials of association. (Albrecht and Wehren 2015, p. 13)
Thus, the access to history remains fragmentary and develops only in
the listener’s specific and subjective imagination. Imagination in this context means the ability to conjure up something which is absent. This imagination is always specifically situated and applicable to one’s own reality.
Imagination in the context of a postcolonial culture of remembrance
means approaching events from the colonial history with a certain kind of
awareness. From today’s perspective, one can only begin to fathom the
violent nature, rather than fully comprehending it. The attempt to under-
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stand this history also always depends one’s own social positioning. In this
sense, How to Hear the Invisible tries to enable ‘acts of listening’ that can
play a part in decolonial politics within the urban space: by critically examining representation, by promoting awareness for motif, silence and echoes
and by encouraging one to deal with the consequences and aftermath of
colonial politics. The project proposes a practice of remembering where
‘acts of listening’ use our sonic memory, and today’s city, as the starting
point of a performative historiography through sound. In the context of a
postcolonial culture of remembrance, it is a productive challenge for a
critical historiography to examine its own concept of culture. The
soundtracks produced and the concept of ‘acts of listening’, developed
within the frame of the artistic research, form an attempt to broaden the
range of the culture of remembrance—traditionally dominated by written
and monumental concepts. How to Hear the Invisible demands a practice
of remembering and a historiography that repeatedly questions, contests
and challenges their ways of transferring knowledge.
The project comprehends listening as a practice of cultural remembrance (erinnerungskulturell) and a performance of citizenship. Using
sound as a medium, and triggering ‘acts of listening’, makes possible specific orders of relationship between the city’s inhabitants as senders and
receivers. Here, an intersubjective space emerges that allows for a specific
form of commemoration. Performing citizenship means experimenting
with the political potential of sound in the sense of experimenting with
modes of listening, which create a new sociality in, and new perspectives
on, the city. Speaking with Gerald Fiebig, new sociality here means to
overcome ‘the formation of identity in the metropolis according to predefined actions, functions and occupations’. ‘Acts of listening’ do not only
lead to the sounds and voices themselves but, as Fiebig puts it, they enable
an encounter with ‘categories of experience and identity; with questions of
the naturalness of normality of a class of activities; and with other selves
engaged in their own categories, experiences, questions and activities’ (Fiebig 2015, p. 80).
Therefore, listening—as one mode of working through and commemorating historical events, and thus, a critical way of performing citizenship—has the potential to mark the city as postcolonial, following the
traces of the unheard within the heard, of the unknown within the known;
becoming aware of one’s own position within it. ‘Acts of listening’ triggered by artistic work with sound are ‘a form of listening that allows for
switching between different frames of reference: a mode of listening of
SILENCE, MOTIFS AND ECHOES: ACTS OF LISTENING IN POSTCOLONIAL…
107
many modes of reading’ (Ungeheuer 2002, p. 205). They can help us to
understand the urban community in a different way and to reconfigure
it—as location and de-location of sounds and voices that offer alternative
historical and political perspectives with formerly unacknowledged dimensions, and also act as an undermining of orders of representation. Acoustic
forms of commemoration thus allow for different forms of listening, of
speaking and of sounding, as social practices within the postcolonial city.
It might even be used to create a new imagination of the city, as an urban
and social practice of perception, and so, reformulating commemoration
as a performance of citizenship.
noTes
1. Artist and curator Hannimari Jokinen, interviewed by Katharina Kellermann,
April 2016 (translated by author).
2. In this context, the author of this article acknowledges that she is white, and
thus benefits from a host of social privileges. Her privileged position affects
both the artistic and scientific, as well as the activist perspective on the
subject.
3. These audio tracks are available on the website: www.how-to-hear-the-invisible.org
4. Artistic Research Project How to Hear the Invisible (2017). The following is
an excerpt transcribed from the track ‘Motif’:
Hamburg – the city. It’s harbour – Bismarck memoria – ‘Colonial capital
of the German Empire’. Berlin Conference. Africa Conference 1884 –
Colonialization of Africa – Cameroon, Toga, today’s Namibia – as the
German South West Africa – as well as today’s Tanzania, Rwanda and
Burundi – as German East Africa. – Also German New Guinea, Samoa,
Kiautschou – Resistance – Rudolf Duala Manga Bell – Mpondo Akwa –
Resistance. – In Duala 1884 – At the ‘Waterberg’ 1904 – the Maji Maji
from 1905 on. – Violent counter-insurgency by German soldiers.
5. Hafencity is Hamburg’s newest district, in development since 2008.
6. Tania Mancheno is a historian and a cultural worker living in Hamburg. She
developed critical city tours through Hafencity and Speicherstadt, dealing
with the colonial history of Hamburg. The term ‘echo’ I borrowed from the
tour: ‘Hafencity Inbetween Cosmopolitan Flairs and Colonial Echoes’ (conducted by Tania Mancheno and the city planer Andreas Schneider). Their
valuable contribution to this research is acknowledged with thanks.
7. Tania Mancheno, interviewed by Katharina Kellermann, February 2016
(translated by author).
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K. KELLERMANN
8. All interviewees—Millicent Adjei, HMJokinen, Israel Kaunatjike, Tania
Mancheno and Andreas Schneider—are members of the groups that signed
the open letter: ‘Not about us without us’. Under this slogan, various civil
societal groups and communities have commented on their exclusion from
the proposals of the Hamburg Senate for the reworking of the colonial heritage of the city, and called for participation. See also their open letter:
http://www.hamburg-postkolonial.de/PDF/PM_NOTWITHOUTUS.
pdf, date accessed 4 January 2017.
references
Albrecht, M., and M. Wehren. 2015. Verortungen/Entortungen. Urbane
Klangräume und die Frage nach einer Politik des Sounds. In Verortungen –
Entortungen: urbane Klangräume, ed. M. Albrecht and M. Wehren. Berlin:
Neofelis.
Barthes, R. 1985. The Responsibility of Forms. New York: Hill and Wang.
Castro Varela, M., and N. Dhawan. 2003. Postkolonialer Feminismus und die
Kunst der Selbstkritik. In Spricht die Subalterne deutsch? Migration und postkoloniale Kritik, ed. E. Rodriguez and H. Steyerl. Münster: Unrast.
Fiebig, G. 2015. Soundscape und Aura. Zur Verortung und Entortung von
Soundscapes in der zeitgenössischen Audiokunst. In Verortungen – Entortungen:
urbane Klangräume, ed. M. Albrecht and M. Wehren. Berlin: Neofelis.
Hall, S. 2004. Das Spektakel des ›Anderen‹. In Ideologie, Identität, Repräsentation
Ausgewählte Schriften 4, ed. S. Hall. Hamburg: Argument.
LaBelle, B. 2010. Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life. New York:
Continuum Books.
Lee, Desmond, ed. 2003. Plato. The Republic. London: Penguin.
Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 2004. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. London:
Continuum.
Meyer, P. 2007. Acoustic Turn. Paderborn: Fink.
Militzer, S. 2015. Der Klang der Stadt. Ansätze zu einer Phänomenologie des
urbanen Hörens. In Verortungen – Entortungen: urbane Klangräume, ed.
M. Albrecht and M. Wehren. Berlin: Neofelis.
Möhle, H., S. Heyn, and S. Lewerenz, eds. 2006. Zwischen Völkerschau und
Kolonialinstitut. AfrikanerInnen im kolonialen Hamburg. Hamburg: Eine
Welt Netzwerk Hamburg e.v. und St.Pauli Archiv.
Nora, P. 2010. Les Lieux De Mémoire, Volume 4: Histories and Memories. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
Ranciere, J. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London
and New York: Continuum.
Schafer, R. 1977. The Tuning of the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Ungeheuer, E., ed. 2002. Elektroakustische Musik. Laaber: Laaber.
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weblinks
Arbeitskreis Hamburg Postkolonial. 2017a. http://www.hamburg-postkolonial.
de/PDF/PM_NOTWITHOUTUS.pdf. Accessed 18 Jan 2017.
———. 2017b. https://hhpostkolonial.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/senatsbericht-koloniales-erbe2014.pdf. Accessed 12 Feb. 2017.
———. 2017c. http://www.hamburg-postkolonial.de/PDF/Stadtrundgaenge
HafenrundfahrtenHamburg2016.pdf. Accessed 12 Feb 2017.
Artistic Research Project How to hear the invisible. 2017. http://how-to-hear-theinvisible.org. Accessed 18 Jan 2017.
Graudiertenkolleg Performing Citizenship. 2017. http://performingcitizenship.
de/data/katharina-kellermann-forschungsprojekt/. 18 Jan 2017.
Informationszentrum 3. Welt. 2017. https://www.iz3w.org/zeitschrift/ausgaben/318_grenzen_und_migration/fab. Accessed 18 Jan 2017.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
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permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
Claims for the Future: Indigenous Rights,
Housing Rights, Land Rights, Women’s
Rights
Elke Krasny
In 2011, a year-long programme of cultural events and exhibitions celebrated Vancouver’s 125th anniversary. On the occasion of this anniversary, the Audain Gallery, the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre
(DEWC), and myself, as the gallery’s visiting artist, entered into a collaboration that resulted in the research and exhibition project Mapping
the Everyday. Neighbourhood Claims for the Future, with its articulations of situated indigenous and immigrant perspectives as they are
contingent to the specific local histories and globalized neoliberal conditions. The purpose of this essay is to provide critical contextualization to the project and its making public of the claims put forward by
women from the DEWC. Claims-making is understood here as a political act that constitutes subjects of rights. The politics of collectively
formulating demands and making a public claim to them is at the heart
of this project, as it tests what it means to perform citizenship under
Vancouver’s specific conditions as they are defined by coloniality and
neoliberalism. My triple commitment to feminist political thought,
E. Krasny (*)
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Wien, Austria
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_8
111
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E. KRASNY
involved curatorial practice, and critical urban research provides the
basis for the following feminist materialist and locationally specific
close description and analysis of the Mapping the Everyday.
Neighbourhood Claims for the Future project.
VancouVer’s 125th anniVersary
Founded in 1886, Vancouver’s beginnings were, in fact, owed to the
expansion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. This huge infrastructural
investment effort was central to Canada’s nation building, with the
Canadian Pacific Railway’s express purpose to ‘physically unite Canada
and Canadians from coast to coast.’1 Even though most of the province
of British Columbia (BC) remained unceded land, colonial legislation
sought to ensure control of and power over the territory. ‘In BC, aside
from a small number of treaties on Vancouver Island (the 1850s
Douglas Treaties), and Treaty No. 8 in the northeast portion of the
province, all of BC remains unceded Indigenous territories.’2 Today’s
Vancouver is located on the traditional unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱
wú7mesh (Squamish), xwm θkw y̓ m (Musqueam) and s l̓ ílw ta (TsleilWaututh) First Nations. Therefore, any historical anniversary celebration of the City of Vancouver would have had to first and foremost
acknowledge the city’s existence on ‘stolen native land.’3 It was only in
2014, three years after the celebration of Vancouver’s 125th anniversary that
Vancouver city council formally acknowledged (…) that the city was founded
on land that still belongs to three First Nations communities (…).
Vancouver’s planning, transportation and environment committee unanimously passed a motion […] that these territories were never ceded through
treaty, war or surrender.4 (Coutts 2014)
Despite these complexly fraught conditions, the collaborators in the
Mapping the Everyday. Neighbourhood Claims for the Future project
decided to partake in the year of anniversary celebrations pointedly to
make public and raise awareness for the claims for the future made by
women throughout the history of the DEWC. Critically, this was done in
order to counteract prevailing ‘epistemic violence’ and its resultant structural silencing (Spivak 1988, p. 280).
CLAIMS FOR THE FUTURE: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, HOUSING RIGHTS…
113
the Downtown eastsiDe women’s centre
anD the auDain Gallery
In what follows, I will provide contextualization for both of the involved
institutions: the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre (DEWC) and the
Audain Gallery. ‘The DEWC is a self-initiated and self-organized space.
(…) In many ways, it is an example of bottom-up feminist urbanism. In its
day-to-day operation, the centre primarily represents Indigenous and
older Chinese women, as well as other women of the Downtown Eastside
community.’5 On the occasion of Mapping the Everyday. Neighbourhood
Claims for the Future, project partner Cecily Nicholson—a coordinator at
the DEWC—described the founding moment via documents revealed
through the research at the Centre as follows:
A friendly drop-in centre with social services and recreational programs
available. Women, young and old, with or without children, are welcome.
The centre has a homey atmosphere for women to meet one another, talk
things over, or get information for specific needs. We encourage women to
become aware of their own strength, and provide the resources to help
themselves. We are five community workers, including a Native, and Chinese
worker. (Nicholson 2011, email to the author)
Founded and incorporated in 1978, the Centre was established in the
Downtown Eastside neighbourhood which, since the late 1950s, had
witnessed
gradual marginalization of this community: the streetcars stopped running
in the area; the main library moved to a location outside the Downtown
Eastside; (…) The lack of affordable housing in other parts of Vancouver
drove low-income people to the Downtown Eastside, as did the deinstitutionalization of thousands of psychiatric patients in the 1970s who found no
other community willing to accept them (…) It is a culturally diverse community with 48 percent of its population representing visible minority
groups, including residents of Chinatown, a large number of First Nations
people from across the Americas, and many new immigrants to Canada.6
The neighbourhood is renowned for high rates of poverty, drug addiction, high levels of mental illness, prevalence of HIV-AIDS and the disappearance and murder of indigenous women. This district of Vancouver is
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E. KRASNY
invariably proclaimed as the ‘poorest postal code in Canada’ (Bitter 2011,
p. 1). The Downtown Eastside area is marked by uneven development and
massive gentrification pressures. There are high numbers of Aboriginal
and homeless residents, many of them struggling with their vulnerabilisation and their everyday exposure to violence. At the same time, the neighbourhood boasts a long history of community activism—including groups
such as the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society, the Survival Sex
Workers and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users—and also community centres, such as the Carnegie Community Centre or the Gathering
Place. The Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre is one such group, committed to support and activism.
The 1970s and the following decades witnessed a number of locally
specific and complexly interrelated crisis transformations and emancipatory oppositional struggles. During this period, the Downtown Eastside
saw deep structural urban transformations. These are Vancouver’s local
response to global currents of neoliberal urbanization—their capital-centric, developer-driven, and accumulation-oriented version. At the same
time, the decades since the 1970s have given rise to a myriad of strong,
vocal movements: indigenous political campaigns and claims, women’s
and feminist organizing, anti-poverty and housing struggles and a large
number of different cultural, social and political mobilizations dedicated
to producing ‘oppositional consciousness’ and instigating transformative
change (Sandoval 1991). The DEWC is a safe space of everyday support
to women in crisis under neoliberal urbanization conditions, and the
Centre critically contributes to oppositional consciousness raising. Such
support includes warm and nutritious meals just as much as legal or medical counselling, and healing practices like singing or poetry readings. The
space allows for women to seek shelter from the violence on the streets just
as much as it enables political subjectivization through the sharing of personal experiences, which leads to critical analysis and public
claims-making.
Neoliberal urbanization and restructuring always take root locally. The
everyday experiences of many of the women who are part of the DEWC
are marked by the neoliberal globalized restructuring that reshapes the
Downtown Eastside neighbourhood with rising property values and rising
house prices driving out low-income and socially vulnerable long-time
residents. ‘Paradoxically, much of the contemporary political appeal to the
“local” actually rests upon arguments regarding allegedly supra-local
transformations, such as globalization, the financialization of capital, the
CLAIMS FOR THE FUTURE: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, HOUSING RIGHTS…
115
erosion of the national state, and the intensification of interspatial
competition’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002, p. 341). The consequences of
globalized neoliberal urban restructuring play out locally. The effects of
this bear impact on questions of urban life and survival. It comes at the
expense of lives and bodies made increasingly more vulnerable and exposed
to structural dispossession and violence rooted in fierce competition over
housing rights and access to the neighbourhood’s resources.
In 2006, the Power of Women Group at the DEWC organized their
first Women’s Housing March, which has since taken place annually. On
the occasion of the first march, the women put together a factsheet which
included the following information:
The number of homeless people has doubled to approximately 2,174 people
in 2005. (…) 30% of those who are homeless are indigenous people. Recent
immigrants and refugees have been termed the ‘hidden homeless’, disproportionately living in crowded, sub-standard conditions. Given their uncertain legal status and lack of familiarity with Canada, they are the most likely
to ‘fall between the cracks of welfare’ and housing provisions. Women are
also among the ‘invisible homeless’, over-represented in shelters and transitional housing.7
Many other community groups, labour groups and organizations
joined in the march. The research by the group also revealed that ‘cuts to
income assistance, legal aid, women’s centres, attacks on women’s advocacy and support services, lack of childcare support, rising costs of living
and low-income work’ have all had devastating impacts on women.
According to the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD)
Homelessness Count in 2005, there has been ‘an increase of 60% in the
number of homeless women since the 2002 Count (…).’8 In their researchbased activism and the arguments put forward, the Power of Women
Group directly connect the structural victimization and increase in the
numbers of homeless women to ‘Indigenous Women Struggle against
Colonialism, Violence, Racism and Poverty’ as well as to ‘Women Working
in the Sex Trade.’9
The Power of Women group are a continuing part of long-term local
women’s activism. 1970s indigenous women’s activism and struggle in
Canada was provoked by the traumatic consequences stemming from the
1876 Indian Act. ‘In Canada, the 1876 Indian Act redefined Indigenous
identity in ways that disenfranchised and dispossessed large numbers of
women (…)’ (Huhndorf and Suzack 2010, p. 5). Therefore, the long-term
116
E. KRASNY
implications of colonial dispossession and its legislation have proven to be
one of the axes around which Aboriginal women’s struggles and indigenous feminism in Canada pivot. As stated on the Canadian Indigenous
Foundations website:
The Indian Act has been highly criticized for its gender bias as another
means of terminating one's Indian status, thus excluding women from their
Aboriginal rights. Legislation stated that a status Indian woman who married a non-Indian man would cease to be an Indian. She would lose her
status, and with it, she would lose treaty benefits, health benefits, the right
to live on her reserve, the right to inherit her family property, and even the
right to be buried on the reserve with her ancestors.10
The dual oppression by patriarchy and by colonialism informed indigenous women’s resistance and counter-oppression activism. ‘In the 1970s,
Aboriginal women began organizing to battle the discriminatory legislation.’11 The traumas of the 1876 Indian Act also include the imposition of
sexual colonial politics and their long-term harmful impact on women’s
lives. ‘The sexualization of Indigenous women, (…) an integral part of
colonization, worsened the effects of governmental politics and left
women particularly vulnerable to violence’ (Huhndorf and Suzack 2010,
p. 5).
The factsheet assembled on the occasion of the first annual housing
march links poverty and homelessness to the enduring structural impact of
both the historical and the amended current versions of the Indian Act.
‘Poverty amongst indigenous people stems from a legacy of colonial conquest. This has led to massive dispossession of traditional territories, lack
of autonomy, and annihilation of cultures and traditions. (…) Almost 60%
of Indigenous people now live in urban settings with the erosion of their
land base. The majority of Aboriginal women – 72% – live in non-reserve
urban areas.’12
Many of the women at the DEWC are also actively involved with the
annual Feb 14 Women’s Memorial March. Between 1978 and 2001, over
60 women disappeared from the Downtown Eastside, many of them sex
workers and Aboriginal. ‘With over 60 women still missing from
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the trial of William Pickton, the
public has become increasingly aware of the issue of violence against sex
workers, reflecting a larger pattern of violent assaults against women, particularly indigenous women.’13 For years, the missing and murder cases of
CLAIMS FOR THE FUTURE: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, HOUSING RIGHTS…
117
indigenous women and the trial of serial killer Robert William Pickton was
mismanaged. The Women’s Memorial March Committee raises awareness
with regard to the systemic nature of violence that particularly targets
sexualized and racialized women. They organize locally, nationally, and
internationally. ‘The first women’s memorial march was held in 1991 in
response to the murder of a Coast Salish woman on Powell Street in
Vancouver. (…) Out of this sense of hopelessness and anger came an
annual march on Valentine’s Day to express compassion, community, and
caring for all women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, unceded Coast
Salish Territories.’14 The practice also extends to the national raising of
awareness, with other memorial marches held across Canada, besides
international activism. On the occasion of the 2012 memorial march, the
organizers also set out to seek justice internationally. ‘The Feb 14th
Women’s Memorial March Committee and DTES Women’s Centre have
recently made submissions under Article 8 of the Optional Protocol of the
UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women,
and are now seeking justice internationally.’15
In a 2013 text—at once poem, political activism, and theory—Cecily
Nicholson, quotes from the ‘Communiqué’ written by Idle No More and
Defenders of the Land, a network of Indigenous communities in land
struggle: ‘Actively resist violence against women and hold a national
inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and
involve Indigenous women in the design, decision-making, process and
implementation of this inquiry, as [a step toward] initiating a comprehensive and coordinated national action plan.’16
Even though the DEWC is a staunch supporter of women’s struggles
and women’s activism, feminism and feminist practice remain contested
territory for many indigenous women. ‘As (…) women of colour, both
scholars and activists, have long contended, feminism as a political movement and academic practice originated as a means to address the social
problems of the white middle classes’ (Huhndorf and Suzack 2010, p. 2).
Feminism and indigeneity is a contested territory. ‘(…) the label
“Aboriginal feminist” [is] fraught’ (Green 2012, p. 16). Feminist practice
therefore has to ‘acknowledge the fraught historical relationship between
Indigenous women and mainstream feminism as it opens discussions
about the ways Indigenous women can construct a theory and practice
specific to their interests’ (Huhndorf and Suczak 2010, p. 5). Yet, it is not
only the fraught relationship between feminism and indigeneity that such
a project like Mapping the Everyday. Neighbourhood Claims for the Future
118
E. KRASNY
has to be aware of and resistant to, but the equally fraught relationship
between capitalism and mainstream feminism which Nancy Fraser has theorized extensively (Fraser 2013, pp. 209–226). ‘The urgent task that she
[Fraser] sets for feminists is to find the points where neoliberalism and
feminism do not so easily converge, and to disrupt the easy passage of feminist critique into its neoliberal double. To her mind, this requires feminists
to more fully reconnect their analyses to critiques of capitalist economic
processes and with social movements’ (Pratt 2013, pp. 120–121). The
DEWC’s activist research, the women’s public manifestations, and their
political activism on local urban, federal, cross-Canadian national, and
internationally oriented global scale demonstrate that the DEWC connects
their struggles not only to critiques of capitalist economic processes, but
equally to its entanglement with the histories of colonialism. The DEWC
women’s investment, in oppositional consciousness raising and in solidarity
alliance-building, aims for individual and collective transformative effects.
The Audain Gallery, where the Mapping the Everyday. Neighbourhood
Claims for the Future exhibition took place, is part of the massive gentrification pressure marking the Downtown Eastside. Significantly, new university infrastructures just as much as contemporary art spaces, redefine
image and status of entire neighbourhoods and contribute to rising property values and house prices. In the fall of 2010, the Simon Fraser
University School for the Contemporary Arts and the Audain Gallery
moved to a downtown campus located at the Woodward’s Building. This
is a landmark building attended with historical significance, struggles and
occupation. Originally built in 1903 for the Woodward’s Department
Store, the building stood empty after Woodward’s bankruptcy in 1993. In
fact, it was the 2002 housing occupation—known under the name of
Woodsquat—that actually triggered the redevelopment. In 2004, the city
of Vancouver selected Westbank Projects/Peterson Investment Group as
developers for the project; the architectural design work was assigned to
Henriquez Partners Architects. It included market housing units as well as
non-market housing units, and an addition to Simon Fraser University’s
downtown campus. Critical scholarship on gentrification has paid close
attention to the contemporary art and higher education institutions as
drivers of urban redevelopment and gentrification processes. Therefore,
the specific situation of the Audain Gallery—in bringing together both the
contemporary art and the campus component in the midst of a major
process of gentrification—warrants doubt and provokes conflicts regarding the politics and the ethics of alliance-building with its neighbours.
CLAIMS FOR THE FUTURE: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, HOUSING RIGHTS…
119
Sabine Bitter, the Audain Gallery’s then director, stated that due to Simon
Fraser University’s downtown move, ‘questions of gentrification, representation, site-specificity, and research ethics have become crucial’ (Bitter
2011, p. 1).
claims for the future
It is against these complex conditions wrought by the structural effects of
historical colonialism and present-day neoliberal urbanization dynamics
that the women at the DEWC have sustained their everyday survival practices and their long-standing commitment to activism regarding indigenous rights, housing rights, land rights and women’s rights. The newsletters
the Centre has issued since its inception are a repository, an archive of the
women’s work and, most importantly, of their claims. Following my suggestion to work with the Centre’s history in order to demonstrate their
persistence and their work towards futurity—which can be best understood from their claims—a series of workshops with an ad hoc group17 at
the DEWC provided the research necessary to map the claims from the
newsletters, to select them and organize them chronologically for the
exhibition. The list of claims were transformed into a text-based wall
installation spanning the Audain Gallery’s exhibition space as a horizon
line. This key feature of the exhibition consisted of the extensive list of
claims organized chronologically, going around the walls, in several lines
of text on top of each other. All the claims that were presented are included
in this text, so they can be read, and heard, again:
Take Back the Night (1979–)
Stop Violence Against Women (1980–)
Our Hearts Go Out (1980–)
In Loving Memory (1980–)
Battered Women’s Support Group (1980–)
Banner Making Party (1982)
You are Not Forgotten (1982)
Create a Powerful Force of Change (1984)
East Meets West Social Party (1984)
Know Your Rights workshop (1984)
Hope for the Family (1984)
Support One Another (1985)
Role Models (1985)
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E. KRASNY
Positive Parenting (1985)
Working Women’s Drop-In – Ring Buzzer (1985)
A Chance for Women (1985)
We are the Seers, the Healers, the Warriors (1985)
The Common Woman is as Common as a Common Loaf of Bread and
Will Rise (1985)
Gather Together (1986)
Free Soup and Bannock (1986)
Take Back Your Power (1986)
Ongoing Social Action (1986)
No drugs or alcohol in the Centre. We don’t want a reason for the cops to
come here! (1986)
See Some of the Strengths That You Did Not Know You Had (1985)
*All Women Band* A Benefit Performance—all proceeds to raise money
for musical instruments for our Sisters in Oakalla. Women’s Event—At
the Centre. Free if you are broke
Condoms, street Talk and Badtrick Sheets Available (1986)
Gather Together (1986)
Take Back Your Power (1986)
Share Your Memories (1987)
Decrease the Grief (1987)
Bad Trick Sheets (1987)
Assertiveness with a Beat (1987)
Spruce You Up! Tie-dye to 50s music (1987)
Festival for Foods Parade (1987)
Grassroots Fundraising (1987)
Information and Support Sharing (1987)
No Way to Live (1988)
Take the Next Step (1988)
We Announce Our Solidarity (1988)
The Needs of Women Come First (1988)
Welfare Rates Under Attack (1988)
Tenants Rights Workshop (1988)
Becoming yourself through writing (1988)
Fight for Welfare Rights (1989)
Women’s Right to Choose (1989)
Women’s Forum (1989)
Willing and Able (1989)
No Homophobia (1989)
CLAIMS FOR THE FUTURE: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, HOUSING RIGHTS…
121
No Racism (1989)
Projects Collective (1989)
Fight City Hall (89-present)
On December 19th, approximately 2000 people gathered at City Hall to
protest rising rents and growing homelessness (1989)
Red Road Warriors (1989)
Menopause Support Group (1989)
Clean and Sober Group meeting (1989)
Recovery (1989)
Family Clean and Sober Group (1989)
Please do not take things that are not yours (1989)
Hold Your Ground (1990)
Sleeping Hummingbirds (1990)
We’ve Survived the Long Winter (1990)
Always Play Safe (1990)
Impossible Takes a Little Longer (1990)
Their Spirits Live Within Us (1990 –)
Justice for Missing and Murdered Women (1990s)
Justice for Residential School Survivors (1990)
We are also always in need of clothes for women (1990 –)
Campaign to Get Welfare Raised (1991)
Reclaiming Your Power (1991)
Aboriginal Celebrations and Ceremonies (1991)
Sisters in Spirit (1990 –)
The February 14th Women’s Memorial March Committee (1992 –)
We are committed to justice (1992 –)
Tools for Change (1994)
A Safe Place for Women (1994)
Grief and Loss Support (1995)
Visualizing Workshops (1995)
Stop the War on the Poor! (1996)
Raise the Rates (1998)
Bad Date Sheets (1998)
Psychiatric Day Program (1999)
Healing Circle (1999)
Make a Wild Woman Out of You (1999)
Popular Education (1999–2003)
End Legislated Poverty (1999–2004)
The Learning Group (2000–02)
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E. KRASNY
Learn how to make something from nothing (stone soup) (2000)
Today in One Circle (2001)
Welcome Home (2001)
We Must Stand Together for Peace Justice, Freedom and Equality (2001)
Honour our Sisters and Grandmothers (2001)
Join Us Women (2001)
Sisters Resist (2001)
Breaking the Silence (2001)
Positive Body Images (2001)
Appropriate Programming (2001)
There is joy in the struggle (2002)
There is joy in the struggle (2002)
Outings Rock Our World (2003)
University Access: Institute of Indigenous Government Canada’s First
Nations College, in Partnership with the DEWC – Tuition Free (2003)
Stop Police Violence (2003)
DTES, I Love (2004)
Stop Attacks on Women (2004)
Rise Up (2005)
Love and Support (2005)
Imagine the woman who honours the face of the goddess in her own
changing face (2005)
Fight to get power back into women’s hands at the Women’s Centre (2005)
Donations Committee asking for your help (2005)
Pow Wow (2005)
Celebrate a New Beginning (2006)
Build Community (2006)
[first annual] Women’s Housing March (2006)
Our Own Voices: of Pain and Hope (2007)
Vigil and March to Honour Women (2007)
Stop All Forms of Violence Against Women: End Patriarchy! (2007)
Power of Women (2007)
Safe Housing for Women (2007)
An Open Letter to Mayor Sam Sullivan and City Council from Women in
the Downtown Eastside (July 2, 2007)
DTES Community Meeting at DEWC – Men Welcome. Open to All
Concerned DTES Residents and Community Members (2007)
March for Women’s Housing and March Against Poverty! Elders, Youth,
Men Welcome Bring Drums and Your Friends (2007)
CLAIMS FOR THE FUTURE: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, HOUSING RIGHTS…
123
Stop Child Apprehension, Support Mothers (2008)
We Demand an Inquiry into the Missing Women (2008)
People Are Dying (2008)
Social Housing, Healthcare and Childcare Now! (2008)
No More Evictions and No More Condos! (2008)
Stop Criminalizing the Poor (2008)
End Global Hunger and Poverty (2008)
Affordable and Safe Housing Now! (2009)
Stop Ticketing and Arrests Under Project Civil City (2009)
Fight Rapid Hotel/SRO Closures and Evictions (2009)
Stop Police Brutality (2009)
Housing Now (2010)
In Our Own Voices (2010)
No Olympics on Stolen Native Land! (2010)
People Before Olympic Profits (2010)
Survival, Strength, Sisterhood: Power of Women in the Downtown (2010)
Our Lives, Our Voices: Downtown Eastside women find healing through
narrative (2010)
Respect Your Elders (2011)
We will be marching to demand action on women’s safety (2011)
Women’s Coalition of the Downtown Eastside: Women’s Safety 24/7
Women’s Coalition of the Gone but not Forgotten (2011)
Downtown Eastside is a newly formed network of women-serving organizations and women’s groups in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver,
Coast Salish Territories (2011)
Stop the Pantages Development (2011)
Boycott Sequel 138 (2011)
Gentrifuckation (2011)
Housing for All (2011)
Social Housing, Child Care and Health Care for All! (2011)
No more evictions and no more gentrification in the Downtown Eastside!
(2011)
Stop criminalizing the poor! (2011)
DTES is Not for Developers (2011)
Many Paths of Our Resistance (2011)
Participant Groups in the Missing Women’s Inquiry Pressure Premier
Clark to Ensure Access and Justice (2011)
Committee Announces Non Participation in Sham Inquiry (2011)
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E. KRASNY
conclusion
Anniversary celebrations held by cities form part of the official rituals and
political routines; they simply reinforce established hegemonic historical
claims. However, through the collaboration between the women at the
DEWC, the Audain Gallery and myself, claims to the future by indigenous
and mostly elderly Chinese immigrant women active at the centre were
presented and given attention within Vancouver’s 125th anniversary celebrations. This action was made against a backdrop of the sheer complexity of fraught conditions surrounding the anniversary celebration and
Vancouver’s history, critically given the fact that Vancouver today remains
as unceded Coastal Salish territory. When such claims form part of commemoration practices, they become constitutive to resistant historical narratives just as much as they have to be moved forward towards ensuring
future change. ‘The claims and demands, both current and historical,
address issues of poverty, violence and insecurity, social exclusion, the
deferral of rights, and the legacy of colonialism.(…) They are also expressions of conviviality and solidarity between women, between women and
their neighbourhoods, and between the women of the Centre and their
global context’ (Krasny 2011, p. 2). Claims for the future imply that there
is, in fact, a future to be claimed. Therefore, it is important to consider the
act of putting forward claims as an act towards futurity. As the women collectively voice their claims, they enact modes of political subjectivization.
Through their claims-making they perform their rights to and their rights
of citizenship.
notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
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Coutts, 2014, accessed January 2, 2017.
Art and Education Net, date accessed January 2, 2017.
Learning Exchange, date accessed January 2, 2017.
Carnegie Centre, date accessed January 2, 2017.
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Carnegie Centre, date accessed June 5, 2016.
Indigenous Foundations, date accessed January 2, 2017.
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Carnegie Centre, date accessed January 2, 2017.
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13.
14.
15.
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17.
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Carnegie Centre, date accessed January 2, 2017.
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This ad hoc group included Stella August, Muriel Brunelle, Dalannah Gail
Bowen, Shurli Chan, Pat Haram, Audrey Hill, Suzanne Kilroy, Karen
Lahay, Terri Marie, Joan Morelli, Ramona, Sandra, Sara Dell, Sue Lee,
Stirling Sexton, Beatrice Starr, Debbie Ventury, Bernice Verde and Deanna
Wong (translation).
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holder.
Spaces of Citizenship
Sergio Tamayo
IntroductIon
Today, one way to understand the relationship between politics and culture, particularly in Latin America, is by observing how ‘spaces of citizenship’ are maintained. This concept emerges from empirical analyses I
developed, focusing on Mexico. This opens a further area of research:
How is one to reconstruct the formative process of social relations? How
might ‘spaces of citizenship’ be reformulated so that new social subjects
might emerge? These questions may appear obvious, but they pose a radically different way to conceive of societies globally—not only through the
lens of Western traditions of knowledge in industrialized countries, but
also from the perspective of the other ‘half’ of the world. The efforts of
Latin-American scholars have not yet gone far enough in rethinking the
social in a different fashion, or at least in a complementary approach taken
from established Anglo- and Eurocentric positions.
As Bryan Roberts (1999) argues, struggles for rights of citizenship in
Latin America have become the main engine for achieving change in social
and political affairs. Nevertheless, in Latin America, this is an entirely new
phenomenon. For decades, citizenship did not hold any weight: neither in
politics, nor in the national imaginary. Many scholars from Latin America
S. Tamayo (*)
Metropolitan Autonomous University, Campus Azcapotzalco,
Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_9
127
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S. TAMAYO
therefore reviled this term, considering the emphasis on citizenship to be
an ideological weapon deployed by elites to deflect attention from more
pressing social inequalities.
However, the economic, technological, political and social changes
attending globalization have created an adverse effect. These shifts overvalue a handful of concepts in order to provide an absolute explanation for
new social realities. Terms such as civil society, citizenship, and democracy
are used to replace expressions such as class formation, social inequality,
social movements, nationalism, ‘the people’ or socialism.
We understand that this question sets up a dialectic perspective. As
argued by Roberts, the concept of citizenship can easily be subsumed to
private or elitist interests, helping render inequalities invisible. However,
the concept of citizenship and its specific practices also harbors its own
dynamic that has escaped the control of the elites and the state. Citizenship
builds on unstable practices, and these produce an unequal battlefield.
Furthermore, although the institutional results of these citizenship practices can be defined from above, the social struggle for citizens’ rights
might also create opportunities from below.
The concept of ‘spaces of citizenship’ faces this problem directly. In
epistemological terms, it can be understood to arise from the uncoupling
of the structural dynamics of the world system and historical processes,
between system and lifeworld, between structure and agency, between
global and local, between universalism and particularism, between objectivity and subjectivity. These dichotomies are in fact interfaces of the tension of the social world and not only mere polarizations (see Wallerstein
1987; Habermas 1989; Bourdieu 1989; Wacquant 2002; Giddens 1995;
Cohen 1987, 1996; Touraine 1993, among others). Indeed, ‘spaces of
citizenship’ constitute struggles that arise because of the existence of several levels of action and settings that point out the need for mediation.
The balance between such extremes can occur through social action, communicative action, habitus, culture, historical analysis, and the construction of the social subject.
My personal understanding of this takes its starting point from a series
of empirical studies, undertaken since 1990, concerning the construction
of citizenship in Latin America and Mexico. The concept of citizens’
spaces—or ‘spaces of citizenship’—has been brought about, not as a theoretical hypothesis about the social, but rather as the theoretical result of
empirical studies (Tamayo 2010). These studies examine the relationship
between several pieces of a puzzle: city and citizenship; collective action
SPACES OF CITIZENSHIP
129
and citizen participation; the impact of globalization on Latin-American
economies and citizen revolts; the contentious politics of several citizenship projects; and the identity formations resulting from these diverse citizenship projects. Such projects often led to a level of social cohesion
among specific groups, while excluding others. Indeed, ‘spaces of citizenship’ can be understood as a battlefield that testifies, sometimes dramatically, to the resistance of domination, inequality and injustice. It is a
political, real and metaphoric space; it is the domain where social struggle
takes place.
In this article, we will consider three categories that have shaped this
approach: citizenship, space and the relationship between citizen practices
and the city—bonded to the issues of community and political space. What
follows is a definition of ‘spaces of citizenship’.
cItIzenshIp
Latin-American people are experiencing a tremendous identity shift: from
proletarian and ‘the people’, to ‘citizen’. The emergence of this new social
subject in the era of globalization raises the following question: How has
a citizen-based political practice historically transformed and affected cultural conceptions and forms of social organization? Of key importance is
the context in which this question emerges. As a semi-peripheral country,
Mexico has come abruptly and violently into a new model of growth.
Several collective and relevant actors are trying to deal with this new social
reality—notably, the state, entrepreneurial organizations and grassroots
movements. The answer may be simply that citizens change and affect
society through the formation of ‘spaces of citizenship’.
In a strict sense, the terms ‘collective identity’, ‘participation’ and
‘practices of citizenship’ are essential in developing this hypothesis, offering a distinctive way to explain the changes that occur at specific points of
social formation. Being a citizen comes hand-in-hand with a whole process of identity formation. In his text on citizen culture and consumerism
in Latin America, García Canclini (1995) defines citizenship as the fact of
sharing social and cultural experiences that provide a sense of belonging
to a community. This cultural understanding takes into account the fact
that citizen identity is best expressed through solidarity. However, accurate data points out that this cohesion is strengthened by the stigmatization of the foreigner and the la lutte pour la reconnaissance (Honneth
2000). Consequently, when we talk about identity, we do not think of an
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S. TAMAYO
innocent ethical value, but we do assume that it reveals contradictory
cultural practices and is born from an unavoidable tension between the
included and the excluded. The study of citizen identity has to do with
the making of a social subject, but it moves beyond the conceptual mistake of assuming this identity is pre-given or stable. We cannot only
explain citizen identity through integration, inclusion and homogeneity,
from a single and compact vision. Within a collective identity, citizens
confront themselves with difference, exclusion and diversity—both from
outside and from within. This tension qualifies different modes of identity
and, accordingly, distinctive citizen practices.
To employ Melucci (1996), when individuals fight to change or enlarge
citizenship, they are playing out a symbolic questioning of dominant
codes. Through this they create a space of struggle, which we consider to
be a further way to define ‘spaces of citizenship’. This space of struggle is
the particular focus of this work.
In a context of inequality and tension, the community defines the rules
of participation. This means that various types of citizenship are reflected
in social inequalities, the lack of social justice, the allocation of resources,
the limits of individual liberties, and the struggle for power (Bauböck
1994). However, the concepts of citizenship and related ideologies (Shafir
1998; Reiner 1995) strive for equality; attainment of this is their utopia.
In real terms, this label promoting universal rights serves to simply render
inequalities invisible. As Marx explains—later elaborated on by Marshall
(1950)—citizenship is just ‘a skin of a lion’: it can cover up differences
among classes, but it can never negate them. One can be a citizen in being
a soldier, a trader, an entrepreneur, a worker and/or a student. Such roles
become the qualifier of a citizen and define the specificity of the practices
and experiences of making citizenship. Thus, citizenship is not unique or
fixed. Instead, it means different things for different actors, producing
unequal social practices. Citizenship is a shifting process. It is a means,
rather than an end, which operates to transform social relations.
Citizenship is unstable because it is thought out, figured out, longed
for, and worked out in several ways. Social groups build different citizenship projects that oppose one another, such as political parties or social
organizations. These citizenship projects are based on social practices, and
different ideas of citizenship (Dagnino et al. 2010). Some scholars define
this as a ‘substantive citizenship’, in contrast to institutional or formal citizenship (García and Lukes 1999).
SPACES OF CITIZENSHIP
131
The case of Mexico offers further reaffirmation of the three very closely
linked dimensions that build citizenship, which together determine
existing citizenship projects. These three dimensions define practices and
ideas with regard to citizenship. The first dimension is the relationship
between the state and civil society; this involves concepts such as nation
and nationality, as well as the legal and cultural membership of a community. The second dimension is the process that defines—and redefines—
citizen rights that are related to membership and serve to regulate social
behavior. Marshall (1950) points out that citizen rights denote the imbalance of social, civil and political citizenship, and the more recent introduction of the cultural dimension of rights by theorists. The third and final
dimension is participation, understood as the political process through
which one may take part in a community and be involved in the decisionmaking process: one path toward democratization in a society (Tamayo
2010).
Struggles for citizenship can offer clear depictions. Firstly, they illustrate the social struggle between the state and well-organized groups from
civil society. Secondly, citizenship specifically elucidates the struggle
between those who demand an increase in rights, and those appealing for
the abolition of others. Thirdly, it can show the balance between the regulation of citizen participation, the intensification of the democratization
process, and political independence. Struggles for citizenship search for
political hegemony (Mouffe 2003); they look for the feasibility of a citizen
project, representing a clash of class interests. Furthermore, citizen projects are inevitably under the scrutiny of social actors according to their
own vision of the state-civil society relationship, citizens’ rights, and the
limitations placed on participation.
The case of Mexico offers evidence regarding the nature of changes in
political culture and is sourced from the interaction of three social actors:
the political elite, the entrepreneurs, and the grassroots movement—all
confronting each other based on their own claims and interests. All these
actors undertake individual processes to draw on the views of social movements—some from below and the others from above—deriving from the
vision of the governing elite and entrepreneurial class, in order to build
their citizen projects.
The perspective from below defines citizenship as collective and nationalist, demanding an increase of social rights and promoting broader political participation. By contrast, the perspective from above—of traditional
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S. TAMAYO
Social Actors
70-82
82-94
Politic Elites
social
_____________
political-civil
civil-social
____________
political
Economic elite
civil-political
_____________
social
civil-political
_____________
social
Social movements
social
_____________
civil-political
social-civil-political
Fig. 1 Vision and hierarchy of citizen rights and strategy changes during the
1968–1988 period in Mexico, according to social actors. (Source: Tamayo 1999)
liberal conception—looks for an individualistic citizenship. Evidence demonstrates that citizenship means different things for different social actors.
This dynamic can be observed in Fig. 1, showing these changes schematically in Mexico. From 1970 to 1982, the government defined and
increased (although under certain limitations) the social rights of the population, privileging them over political and civil rights. In fact, the state
intentionally minimized and abandoned civil rights—witnessed in presidential speeches as well as in daily practice—and achieved extreme limits
on political rights through the use of corporate control and the absence of
democracy within electoral processes. From 1982 to 1994, the emphasis
was on civil rights—mostly those linked to private property—freedom of
speech and religious liberty. The state tried to have less direct involvement
in economics, denying the benefits of its populist predecessors’ social policy and supporting demands linked to individual property. There was a
general move to restrain social welfare programs.
As for entrepreneurs, they immediately reacted to those changes promoted by the state, compelled by the structural disturbance of the economy. For the first time, they moved politically and as a united class. In
constituting for themselves what Touraine (1988, 1981) defines as ‘the
birth of a social movement’, it naturally follows that social policies were
the last ones they chose to support. From 1982 to 1992, the strategy and
argument of the entrepreneurial class remained largely the same, as did the
support for the Mexican bourgeoisie that was contained in their foundational principles. This finally led to an ideological proximity to the
SPACES OF CITIZENSHIP
133
government’s neo-liberal ideas, each party advocating individual rights
without any constraints (Roberts 1995, 2010; Tamayo 1999).
Finally, Fig. 1 shows that the working class and grassroots movement
were forced to defend rights that were attained decades ago. This explains
why social groups of the 1970s focused on the centralization and prioritization of social and labor rights. With the onset of the economic crisis of
the 1980s, their demands become more pressing. The movement fought
for land, credits, education, social welfare, and better wages. Social citizenship overlapped dialectically with both civil citizenship—especially
human and women’s rights (Tamayo 2000)—and political citizenship,
especially under electoral participation (López Monjardín 1989, 1986).
This scenario led to an open debate in which the grievances of the population were expressed alongside social, civil and political concerns.
Empirical data suggests that several social sectors formed a wide social,
democratic and nationalist movement (Tamayo 1999). Their struggle
tried to combine and forecast demands from different sectors—including
peasants, workers, residents, women, young people and students. With
their help, the movement came up with the detail of a broad and nationwide plan that provided for, in the first instance, a huge range of actions.
The struggle brought about what is termed a ‘space of citizenship’.
As demonstrated, through the survival of a variety of practices and ideas
of citizenship, it is not possible to talk about the existence of only one kind
of citizenship. However, I do not believe it is accurate to talk about citizenships in a plural way, as some analysts with a postmodern bias do. I
consider that there is a citizenship rooted in institutional models and social
controls that determine the social and legal behavior of individuals, both
on an international and on an intra-national level (Bäubock 1994, 1999;
Kymlicka 1996, 1999). Nevertheless, we would do well to pay attention
to practices of citizenship with reference to all the above-mentioned distinctive collective experiences.
In this regard, there is support for the perspective of Giddens (1995;
see also, Cohen 1987) over the way citizenship is constituted. Building on
the work of these analysts, citizenship may be articulated in three realms:
agency, praxis, and context. Agency refers to those structural attributes of
social systems; praxis, to the name of articulated patterns of social interaction; and context describes the situational aspect of these interactions in
time and space.1 Thus, we can say that practices of citizenship are a synthesis of the social experience and struggle of citizens to achieve particular
visions of citizenship, and the socio-historical context in which they
unfold.
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space
The concept of space is essential to the development of the theoretical
argument that follows. In political sociology, the immediate reference to
space is that given to the public sphere (Habermas 1993; Honneth 1996,
2000; Voirol 2003; Braig and Huffschmid 2009). This is an analytical and
abstract concept of the communicative interaction among social actors.
‘Spaces of citizenship’ have an abstract and metaphorical intention but,
alongside this, the space of citizenship exists in both its social and physical
dimensions (Bourdieu 1989; Giddens 1995; Wildner 2003; Wildner and
Tamayo 2002).
Despite the wide variety of perspectives pertaining to space from many
different fields of knowledge,2 I consider Giddens’ view to be the one that
affirms the contribution of historical geography to the study of cultural
space. The analyst here picks up the contributions of Hägerstrand from
geography in the analysis of day-to-day life, suggesting that, in everyday
life, individuals associate with each other through entities that emanate
from scenarios of interaction. These entities are other agents, indivisible
objects (the solid material qualities of the environment of action), divisible
matter (air, water, minerals, food) or domains. Domains imply something
that Giddens calls a regionalization of a space-time: the movement of lifepaths through scenarios of interaction that exhibit various forms of spatial
differentiation.
From this outline, Giddens explains the theoretical and methodological
meaning of the space-time concept within his notion of agency, praxis, and
context in his theory of structuring this. For the specific case of space, the
author focuses on the psychological qualities of social agents—as well as
interactions to be found in face-to-face situations—both locating those
actors in contexts of interaction and extending the inquiry into the interweaving of these contexts. In other words, he places interactions in time
and space at different levels and scales.
In this complex relationship, our own vision of the function of space is
not one of a passive support of objects. Instead, space becomes more of an
actor, created through the dynamic relationship between those objects
with the power of affecting socialization. Therefore, space is a social product and it becomes an active and critical part of social organization.
Individuals act and think in ways which are always located in time and
space. They are beings that inhabit and occupy a place and, in doing so,
they become subjects of their own space. According to André Frémon
SPACES OF CITIZENSHIP
135
(1988, quoted in Di Méo 1998), individuals are active, thinking and rational subjects and cannot be considered mere inert objects. They act over
space but, at the same time, space conditions sometimes determine their
behaviors. An inseparable and permanent relationship exists between living
beings and space, which is both real and imaginary (Di Méo 1998, p. 73).
Yet, in considering space as a social product, its perception—imaginary,
as well as interpreted though the social—is differentiated. This is due to
the fact that it represents a society that is not homogeneous in its constitution, nor in its practice. The social, cultural and political position of individuals and groups informs images of space that, furthermore, determine
the fashion of its visibility as only partially conceivable, as a collection of
many pieces.
The concept of space is useful in re-evaluating expressions of culture in
Mexico City. Case studies made in urban contexts constitute a way to continue the exploration of citizenship practices between 1968 and 1988
(Tamayo 1999). Since this time, research has become more spatially
defined, contained by the perimeters of the city. The process involves the
selection of political events and situations of social interaction in order to
observe the collective behavior of citizens in public space. This forms an
innovative method to introduce ourselves to the means of portraying the
political culture (Tamayo et al. 2015; Tamayo 2016).
There are numerous examples of this; for instance, the influence exerted
on the inhabitants of Mexico City by the armed indigenous rebellion from
Chiapas, organized by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN)
in 1994. At the time, civil society demonstrated its stance of non-violence
in several ways, and was significantly hard-pressed to reorient political
events and governmental authoritarian policies. What happened there was
something that I refer to as a virtual bridge of struggle and communication, formed by relevant actors of the Lacandona Jungle and the city.
Diverse collective actors constituted a space of citizenship in dispute
(Tamayo 2002).
After that—between 1995 and 2000—the people of the city began to
express themselves in crowded events within the urban space, filling streets
and squares. These public demonstrations had their own demands, depicting the political orientation of citizen practices—social rights, civil rights
and political rights—around social welfare, justice and electoral transparency. All these issues generated a broad argument about the borderlines of
citizen participation, giving birth to a conflictual space of citizenship
(Tamayo 2010).
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In the later years, this metropolis became the site of strong confrontation between different social and political projects, each of them sustaining a different utopia and a different vision of both city and nation. The
city became then a receptacle for nationwide cultural dramas and social or
political conflicts; national unions, regional organizations, political movements and indigenous rebellions became manifest, along with other
demands from urban local organizations and civic associations. During the
first decade of the twenty-first century, political parties centralized this
effervescence within electoral campaigns—for example, to elect the
President of the Republic and the new Governor for Mexico City—and
the grassroots movement intensified huge public protest rallies around the
claims of EZLN and other students and social movements.
Thus, public space changed due to several processes (Braig and
Huffschmid 2009): a larger political dispute through the vote of the citizens, an organized debate from the legal political parties, an increasingly
decisive intervention of the mass media and the ideological handling of
public opinion surveys. Public space manifested in the way citizens openly
took part in public affairs, even outside of institutional channels. This situation could be observed by the way citizens behaved collectively during
public events in relation to several electoral preferences and by the degree
of ideological persuasion in the collective imaginary of those political projects. Indeed, several groups and social classes in dispute produced, transformed, and politically appropriated public space.
The study of practices of citizenship shreds the political analysis of the
public sphere and brings attention to the meaning of the physical space in
relation to politics. Spatializing the public sphere has allowed us to remark
on the relationship between the political components of arguments about
several city and nation projects; furthermore, about the political (and necessarily physical) ways to appropriate urban space.
With this theoretical basis, I have studied specific cases through ethnographic approaches to the space of citizenship in Mexico. My object of study
has focused on two types of case: first, the elections in Mexico have been full
of conflict and fraught with violence; second, social protests have multiplied,
witnessed in demonstrators taking to the streets of cities (Tamayo 2012).
On the one hand, electoral rallies reflect the articulation of citizenship
projects toward popular culture of citizens. Political culture is expressed
through interactions and meanings. In short, the elections synthesize symbolic forms of the struggle for power. The situational analysis of the forms
of social and symbolic appropriation of public space, both physical and
SPACES OF CITIZENSHIP
137
metaphorical, reveals interactions and identities that unfold as a field of
deliberation and political confrontation. It is possible to emphasize the
above if we compare the forms of political appropriation between political
parties, both right and left. The mobilization of citizens takes place around
these political projects (Tamayo et al. 2015).
On the other hand, I have studied cases of social protest. I am interested in explaining them as experiences of citizenship. I analyze the way in
which protest builds collective identities through the dynamics of contestation, the repertoires of mobilization, and the forms of symbolic appropriation of public space. The larger national demonstration of the EZLN
Indians, who went from the jungle to Mexico City, was an exemplary case.
This protest produced spaces of political significance at the geographical,
urban and ethnographic level. In this way, the Zapatistas constructed a
space of citizenship in their passage through the country, and in their
arrival to Mexico City. Both these differentiated and connected spaces
were reflected in the way they were physically and symbolically appropriated to public space (Tamayo 2016).
spaces of cItIzenshIp
The term ‘spaces of citizenship’ refers to the conflictual relationship
between practices of citizenship and the constitution of the community.
Community is understood as an identity produced by people in time and
space, as well as a set of interactions among individuals moving at different
scales. ‘Spaces of citizenship’ can be established on an international community level or on a regional or community-based level, such as through
the European Union or the North America Free Trade Agreement (cf.
Habermas 2001; Bauböck 1994, 1999). ‘Spaces of citizenship’ are also
established at the level of the nation-state within its own territorial boundaries (Brubaker 1992). It is possible to consider a community on an ethnic
scale: nations and villages inside a multi-ethnic state (Kymlicka 1996,
1999). The city is another scale of community: the polis as a community
of residents (Hill 1994; Isin 1999a, b). Finally, it is possible to consider a
community coming from elements of the urban structure—such as the
ghettos, neighborhoods and villages of a multicultural city (Rogers 1995).
A community is anchored to processes of identity formation, traditions,
culture, language and history. However, it can also be grouped around
judicial affairs and certain rules that determine collective behaviors. The
main ingredient of community is its political legitimacy. In order to
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legitimize itself, the community requires an inclusive concept of society
that simultaneously allows a radical enactment of exclusion for those who
do not belong. Citizenship is a community—like an association—with
regulations and norms applied to all. It can only be institutionalized within
territorially controlled borders and on the terms of its own membership
structure. However, at the heart of its cohesion is culture. Culture implies
permanence, belonging and common practices. Accordingly, it involves
being physically present within the territorial space. It requires a spatial
limit: the boundaries of citizens’ struggles.
The city, the community and the nation-state all become the context
and the environment of citizen practices. They form the battlefield—the
site of several struggles for citizenship. City, national territory or world
regions all represent spaces of confrontation in which the distinctive projects of city, citizenship and nation are played out.
More precisely, the city acquires a different connotation in the analysis
of citizenship. The city is a primary space where community is formed. As
a space, the city is a relational product of its components: architecture,
facilities, images and landscapes, materiality and citizens. The city can also
be thought of as a container for activity, a three-dimensional context for
social action. However, at the same time, it is much more than that. It
becomes, as a fundamental part of daily life, where the demand for citizenship can be made manifest as a result of political action.
The city is a place to stay. The city obtains significance when it is perceived, used, practiced, interpreted and qualified. Whether a city is large or
small, beautiful or ugly, conservative or liberal, violent or safe, it is the
context in which social identities are formed and expressed. A community
begins, and can be qualified as a collectivity where resources and power are
allocated.
As we have seen, projects of citizenship are collective aspirations
which generate citizens’ actions, ideas and utopias about the future of
the social. Space, either within the city or the nation, becomes the battlefield for such aspirations, transforming them into ‘spaces of citizenship’.
This battlefield is not always visible, for it is not an institution in itself,
but a situation of tension and conflict. This is a space of transition and
transgression.
In Mexico, a broadened space for citizenship was created over a twentyyear period: from 1968—when the student movement rose—until 1988,
when the elected President Carlos Salinas de Gortari initiated the neoliberal Mexican project. The most important feature of this transition was
SPACES OF CITIZENSHIP
139
the presence of deep changes in the political economy that modified older
relationships with other countries, creating new international circuits on
the level of larger cities. According to Giddens (1995), this change was
not only a result of the structural properties of the social system, but of
articulated patterns of social interactions and the situational specificity of
these interactions.
Objective factors caused this crisis, but the social response and resistance had an eminently subjective character (Mandel 1980). The space of
citizenship created then was outlined as a transition for transgressing institutions understood as the very essence of the organization of social life.
‘Spaces of citizenship’ as an emerging movement invaded day-to-day life
in a creative, euphoric fashion, through continuous social effervescence
and explosive energy. The changes that took place were sometimes suggested or enforced by institutional commands, but they were always a
result of social antagonisms uncontrolled by the system (Mouffe 2003;
Norris 1999).
Let us go back to the original idea of space at its levels of city and
national territory, and try to link it to the Mexican experience. There is the
fact that citizen space was a political realm, created through appropriation—by citizens—of public space. Citizens interacted and expressed
themselves within the physical space. Accordingly, citizens built a relational space that acquired new meanings for the population. It does not
matter how different social groups express themselves in various cities; if
the objectives are the same, the communicational flows multiply. Thus, a
network of actions is produced from the concrete space of a locality. An
intermediate-level space is constituted (the so-called mesolevel networks),
developing broadcasting processes, in a sense more historical and geographical.3 The citizen, in his or her political action, inhabits and appropriates public space collectively and politically on an interpersonal level, but
individuals are also capable of thinking globally.
Public space acquires meaning because it is symbolically charged with
the ideas and representations of groups of citizens; but it also is significant
because it is a concrete, practiced space, established by citizens. In this
space, several citizen identities can be formed and displayed. It is the scene
for the achievement of citizens as political beings. The city or the community, talking about space, is just that: a space that is qualified by its
characteristics and practices of citizenship.
This idea of citizen space is comparable with Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘social space’ (1989). Let us say that social space represents the
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S. TAMAYO
social world constituted by objective material elements, as well as by
subjective representations; by the social status of classes within that
social space, as well as its cultural expressions. Thus, citizen space is
that world of citizenship made of objective material elements—the
political and symbolic appropriation of a square, public demonstrations
on streets, the repertoire of social mobilizations (see also Tilly 1995
and McAdam et al. 2003)—as well as the representations, perceptions
and ideas of citizenship. Hence, citizen spaces are objective as well as
subjective. They are objectively constituted on two levels: first, the
social appropriation of the physical space involving objects, architectures, regions, city networks and individuals who legitimize such a
space; second, the city, the region, the community and the nation
become objects to be claimed by citizens—the right to the city, to selfdetermination, the right to sovereignty and the right for cultural
autonomy.
On the other hand, collective actors build spaces of citizenship subjectively because they perform, imagine and interpret them. As a result,
spaces of citizenship are built in a social and in a political fashion. They are
changing all the time, and they are dependent on the result of social confrontations. They are simultaneously both spaces of interaction and spaces
of argumentation (Alejandro 1993).
fInal remarks
The concept of ‘spaces of citizenship’ is useful in order to understand various citizen-based practices generated within communities and in cities.
On the one hand, ‘spaces of citizenship’ represent spaces produced by the
idea of political community, such as the polis. On the other hand, we
understand the city as the immediate place for the exercise of citizen rights.
Spaces of citizenship are the result of social struggles. For this reason,
they do not respond to fixed and untouched attributes. Spaces of citizenship are a product out of actions and imaginaries of individuals acting on
the social.
The concurrence between city (or community) and citizenship provides
a way to understand the social and symbolic production of citizen spaces.
The analysis of spaces of citizenship can indicate the complex correspondence between city as space and citizenship as political, social and cultural
practice.
SPACES OF CITIZENSHIP
141
notes
1. This triadic relationship has very important methodological connotations.
In the latest works, a different methodology has been applied, based on the
experience of the Manchester School (cf. Hannerz 1986) and Thompson’s
depth ethnography (1993). Both authors underline the link between the
objective and subjective aspects through context. In empirical matters, it can
be expressed in this way: the relationship between ethnographic space,
hermeneutics, and the socio-historical context (see Tamayo and LópezSaavedra 2012).
2. The notion of space has been defined by Physics, Mathematics, Landscape
Architecture, Geography, Architecture, Urban Studies, Music, Dance, Art,
and so on.
3. A good example of this relational level can be found in the analysis made by
Hedströn et al. (2000), recovering the notion of mesolevel networks to
broadcast the social movements and political party ideologies.
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by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
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holder.
Urban Citizenship: Spaces for Enacting
Rights
Kathrin Wildner
In autumn 2015, one of many demonstrations in Hamburg caught my
particular attention. It was not so much the size of the ‘Never Mind the
Papers’1 demonstration that was impressive, it was the dynamics: the broad
range of participants, the diversity of languages, posters and signs. It was
the first sizeable demonstration that came at the end of the ‘long summer
of migration’ (see Hess et al. 2016). The protest was organized by a coalition of the refugee movement and its supporters, including many newcomers, refugees and migrants who lived in Hamburg. After the first
month of a collapsing border regime with people continuously arriving—
crossing the Mediterranean Sea and national borders in Eastern Europe
(Hess et al. 2016, p. 6)—a fairly intense state of emergency was present in
most big cities within (northern) Europe. Receiving thousands of people
daily led to a lack of shelter and basic provisions. At the same time, an
incredible mobilization of voluntary support and solidarity substituted or
supplemented the failing local institutions (Mokre 2015). By November
2015, the situation was slowly changing; the initial days of emergency
were left behind and everyday life had to be faced. The newly arrived
began organizing with other groups of refugees and migrants and engaging
K. Wildner (*)
HafenCity University Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
e-mail: wildner@hcu-hamburg.de
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_10
147
148
K. WILDNER
more directly with the city. This also involved claiming their rights to
social and political participation. Political participation in this compilation
is discussed as one of the conditions for citizenship; this is precisely how I
would like to frame it here: citizenship not as a formal, institutional and
normative arrangement made by national governments, but as an active
process of doing and negotiating, performed by diverse groups claiming
the right to participate (see Isin 2017; Cvejic and Vujanovic 2015; Lebuhn
2013).
At the time of the refugee struggle, I was involved in a project on urban
learning. The metroZones school of urban action2 was a self-organized, model
project for political education and critical urban reflection; a think-tank for
perception and discussion, for theory and urban debates, for practical tools
and urban interventions. Focusing on questions surrounding the production
of urban space, the refugee movement was an important aspect—looking at
the ways in which new forms of appropriation, negotiation and citizenship in
urban space were invented and, in diverse ways, leading to a re-politicization
of the urban debate (Hess and Lebuhn 2014, Lanz 2015, p. 487).
Based on the hypothesis that citizenship is a performative act (Isin
2017, p. 501ff.), I would like to have a closer look at the spatial conditions
for acts of citizenship: How and which kinds of urban situations can facilitate or prevent accessibility to the city? Are there possible spaces where
citizenship might be provided or invented? How can citizenship be performed? Are there certain tools, skills and expertise required in performing citizenship? And if there are certain spaces which might facilitate
practices of citizenship, how can citizenship be enacted in those spaces?
How can citizenship as a practice be learned?
What role could the metro Zones school for urban action play in providing space and tools for debates and interventions to politicize the urban?
In order to reflect on some of these questions, I will focus on a certain
moment and discussion of the metroZones school for urban action. The text
is a compilation of questions and ideas connected to each other; it is not a
finished analysis. In the same way, the drawings by artist Eric Göngrich are
to be read as graphic comments, in dialogue with the text (Fig. 1).3
The metroZones school for Urban action
The metroZones school for urban action was born out of cooperation
between the Hamburg-based initiative dock europe and metroZones – center
of urban affairs from Berlin. Over a period of two years, a wide range of
URBAN CITIZENSHIP: SPACES FOR ENACTING RIGHTS
149
Fig. 1 This work by Eric Göngrich comments on the diverse claims of a cosmopolitical city and the right to public space, interpreting the everyday practices of
refugees as political protest. (metroZones school for urban action, November 2015)
urban actors, activists and other urban citizens met in Berlin und Hamburg
to discuss, and put into practice, a number of conceptual ideas and methodological tools from critical urban studies for the purpose of urban explorations and interventions beyond academia.4
Therefore, the school actively oriented itself towards those urban dwellers and activists who were curious to think about urban practices in dialogue, to learn from one another in order to connect various urban skills,
experiences and expertise. Understanding the city as a cosmo-polis, made
up of people arriving from very different global contexts, we asked ourselves how negotiate spaces of acting and belonging. Urban action here is
understood in the sense of the German term Handeln; it refers to the act
of negotiating, to be distinguished from working or producing. In the
meaning of Hanna Arendt’s concept of Handeln, acting is understood as
a process of communication and primarily as a political interaction which
takes place in public space (Arendt 1998).
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K. WILDNER
For six months, the participants of the metroZones school met continuously—at events such as public lectures, reading circles and discussion
‘salons’, partaking in practical exercises in workshop sessions and attending a four-day summer camp. The combination of theoretical and practical
approaches, conceptual as well as methodological tools, exercises and performative enactments in public space, produced various formats and situations for collective reflection on urban experiences and practices. The
questions and discussions revolved around issues of production and configuration of urban spaces on different scales: the effect of collective perceptions and actions on everyday life as well as the invention of strategies
and tactics as modes of [urban] citizenship.
Crossing boundaries between disciplines—in the reclaiming of those
border zones of context between everyday practices and activism, art and
science, political and urban education—the metroZones school experimented with diverse formats of urban learning. We understand urban
learning as meaning practices and interactions through which knowledge
is created, contested and transformed (McFarlane 2011). This production
of knowledge, which takes place beyond academic, cultural or education
institutions, is seen as a collaborative process of self-empowerment.
Densities, diversities and unsettledness—considered to be predominantly
urban—are made productive. Therefore, urban learning needs to address
different speeds, ways of speaking and body languages. Precisely through
disruption—of routines, critical reflection on situations usually taken to be
self-evident, attempts at de-normalization and alienation—potential for
(social) change might emerge. This way, urban learning and knowledge
production—useful in everyday practices as well as political action—
become urban strategies in and of themselves.
Aside from questions of the potentials and limitations of the format of
a school—with its corresponding hierarchies between lecturer and learner,
classroom and public space—one of the main questions arising from our
experiment was: how the school could position itself within pre-existing
political structures, or as a political structure in its own right. Could the
school provide a space to act as (urban) citizens?
The DemonsTraTion ‘never minD The PaPers’
In November 2015, the alliance ‘Right to the City – Never Mind the
Papers’ initiated a demonstration in Hamburg, focussing on the everyday
situation and the necessity of political participation for the newly arrived.
URBAN CITIZENSHIP: SPACES FOR ENACTING RIGHTS
151
The call for the demonstration asserted that the basic condition of political
participation was a human right equal to the right to adequate shelter, the
right to work, access to education and medical care.5 Under the slogan
‘Refugees Welcome means Equal Rights for All!’, about 7000 people took
part.
Months before the demonstration, the coalition of self-organized
migrant groups and supporters concentrated on mobilizing people. Beside
a series of networking and organizing meetings of the involved initiatives,
inside the refugee camps, claims were discussed, slogans invented and
posters created; speech workshops were organized to practise the use of
microphones as well as shuttle buses to transport people from their accommodation so they might participate actively in the demonstration.
The demonstration ‘Never Mind the Papers’ in November 2015 coincided with the workshop weekend of the metroZones School for urban
action in Hamburg. As the subject matter of the weekend involved reflection on public space and urban intervention (see Wildner 2003; Yudice
2005), the demonstration seemed to be a perfect source (and cause) to
discuss and rehearse diverse aspects of urban action. Such questions arising
Figs. 2 and 3 Erik Göngrich visualizes public space as a fragmented space of
negotiation, art in public space is seen as a box composed of practices, places,
activities, situations, and stories. (metroZones school for urban action, November
2015)
152
K. WILDNER
as: What is public space? What kind of tools and instruments might be
helpful to intervene in public space? How can they be practised and implemented? (Figs. 2 and 3)
sPaces anD sTraTegies of engagemenT
By means of theoretical inputs and lectures, we started to have a closer
look at various spatial settings and events, looking at discussion in public
space as a mode of negotiation between contradictory positions (Delgado
1999; Wildner 2003). We identified the demonstration as a well-established
means of public political intervention, whereby civil society practices collectivity on the streets and dissent is made visible. Alongside the discussion
of concepts, a main focus for the school lay in identifying tools and practices to intervene or generate visibility in public space (Fig. 4).
At the school workshop, we split into three groups to work with different perspectives. One group decided to take the perspective of observation. Under the guidance of the cultural scientist Anne Huffschmid, this
group prepared a series of questions and a variety of formats of notation
(photography, mapping, use of note-taking, sound recording, in order to
Fig. 4 Eric Göngrich
depicts urban
intervention as a
rehearsal stage, a
possibility or a city
marketing process.
(metroZones school for
urban action, November
2015)
URBAN CITIZENSHIP: SPACES FOR ENACTING RIGHTS
153
carry out participant observation at the demonstration. Spatial settings of
the route and material elements (sound trucks, banners, posters) as well as
slogans and shouting were registered—producing a kind of archive of
collected of elements of protest culture, looking at participating groups
and different ways to perform participation at the demonstration.
Who is giving a speech? About what, and where? Who is invited to talk?
And who claims the right to speak?
The idea of this approach was to create a register that later could be
used for a discourse-analytical observation, going beyond the concrete
situation of the demonstration in Hamburg. The register of elements
become a manifested inventory of politics of participation that is to be
analysed in the contexts of ongoing conceptual debates on the potential
and limits of urban citizenship (Lebuhn 2015) (Fig. 5).
A second group worked on the topic of performative speech-acts as
interventions in public space.6 In this workshop, choreographer Liz Rech
and mediator Petra Barz reflected on the performative aspects as corporal
interventions in public space. Using examples of artistic urban intervenFig. 5 The drawing by
Eric Göngrich evokes a
mutual body, naming
the collective dance as a
political performative
action. (metroZones school
for urban action,
November 2015)
154
K. WILDNER
tion, they discussed the diversity of performances and activism conducted
in public space. By way of practical input, they provided technical and
vocal training. Some of the participants of the workshop were unused to
speaking out loudly and, during the workshop, experienced their own
voice in this way for the first time.
At the demonstration, some of the group took a closer look at the
sound truck and the moderator group. This group not only moderated
the well-prepared speeches by members of the diverse communities but,
during the march, a mobile microphone was also used, allowing people on
the street to participate by actively speaking of their situations—being
given a voice and being heard. Through the school’s exercise at the demonstration, participants experienced the importance of speech and bodily
presence when participating politically in public space. Alongside achieving an experience of collectivity, this moment supported the individual
presence in public space as an important moment of participation.
A third group on this weekend was guided by Erik Göngrich.7 As an
architect and artist, Erik was especially interested to develop tools that
utilized writing and drawing as material elements to intervene into public
space. The workshop began with some drawing exercises, producing simple protest boards that participants then carried into the outside space.
What do I want to say? What happens if I carry my protest board—a
slogan as a statement—into public space? How visible or vulnerable do I
become?
Initially, the boards were tested out in the garden and streets around
the workshop space, a cultural centre in Wilhelmsburg on the periphery of
Hamburg. That Friday evening, the neighbourhood was characterized by
everyday life, with no apparent reason for protest or demonstration. This
meant that the action became something of an artistic intervention, which
left some participants (a number of whom did not want to take their
boards into public space) feeling even more vulnerable. This situation
produced discussion full of controversy around the question of how the
metroZones school could and should take part in the demonstration the next
day. In particular, the meaning of intervention was discussed: What kind
of slogans could be invented, which message would be appropriated—
and, in particular, would it be a misuse of the refugee cause to make an
intervention as a part of the metroZones school? Finally, some members of
the group decided to go to the marketplace in the neighbourhood, talking
to the people about the demonstration and the situation of the refugees,
offering to write a message on a board composed by their conversation
URBAN CITIZENSHIP: SPACES FOR ENACTING RIGHTS
155
partners and bring it to the demonstration in the city centre the next day.
Motivated by positive responses, eventually, the school’s participants did
indeed take part in the demonstration, bringing messages from the periphery of the city to the centre. Again, questions surrounding accessibility,
visibility and possible acts of participation became subjects of discussion.
Urban ciTizenshiP enacTeD
The different examples of the metroZones school, in the context of the demonstration, showed certain conditions of negotiating urban space as
moments of performing citizenship. Taking into account the idea that
people become citizens through their participation in the conception,
construction and negotiation of space (Irazabal 2008, p. 15), certain configurations of public space and elements for citizenship were pointed out.
We agree: People become citizens when they act as political subjects.
One of the fundamental characteristics of a political subject is to make
claims for rights (Isin 2017, p. 501).
Hannah Arendt’s phrase ‘the right to have rights’ (Arendt 1998), which
addresses the right to be part of a political community, is here pushed
further. The right to make claims for rights goes beyond the surface concessions of ‘integration’. Instead, it marks an active positioning of the subject by way of doing things, such as claiming rights (Isin 2017).
In this sense, citizenship is not understood as a top-down arrangement
made by national governments—so called ‘paper citizenship’—but as an
active process of doing and negotiating, in the sense of a performed citizenship (Isin 2017, p. 504). Re-conceptualizing the notion of citizenship
means shifting its centre from the state to the people; stressing pluralist
models; and including participatory, inclusive and insurgent definitions of
citizenship (Miraftab and Wills 2005, p. 202). This understanding of citizenship unfolds over time. Since we understand the moment of acting or
engaging as a fundamental moment in which citizenship comes into play,
we can define citizenship as a time-based and ongoing process of negotiation (see the introduction to this volume). Citizenship here is not a formal—but a substantive position—with bearing on an array of civil, political,
social economic rights, including rights to shelter, water, education, and
so on (Miraftab and Wills 2005, p. 201). At the same time, this concept of
citizenship is not focused on an endpoint—the achieved status—but is a
permanent debate, a temporary and changing condition, acted out in time
and space.
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K. WILDNER
To understand the act of citizenship as a performative act, we have to
look carefully at the time and space in which these performances are acted
out, or in Isin’s words, ‘look at the performing acts through which people
become citizens in exercising or claiming rights and duties’ (Isin 2017,
p. 520). A demonstration represents a temporary space in which citizenship is enacted as a right to speak and be heard, to participate, to be part
of a multitude. The demonstration that came out of the refugee movement—discussed above—‘Never Mind the Papers’, provided such a space
for those who are excluded from the basic rights of state citizenship. By
performing speaking-acts on the street, they ‘transform conventions by
enacting provocative acts’ (Isin 2017); the refugees’ struggles for rights
are made public. In this moment, re-politicizing the urban debate (Lanz
2015, p. 487), they become citizens through their actions.
Here, public space comes into play: through the demonstration, participants collectively become manifest in urban space, turning the streets
into a stage for their claims, visible for everybody to see, ‘transform[ing]
them into temporary places of urban citizenship’ (Lanz 2016, p. 489).
The appropriation of the streets by masses of people, right in the middle
of Hamburg’s downtown shopping district, waving colourful banners,
shouting slogans and eliciting reactions from passers-by, succeeded in creating—despite the heterogeneity of the participants—at least a momentary sense of common struggle and collectivity.
Among urban practices, the demonstration is a ritualized and sometimes spectacular event. Following Engin Isin’s argument for ‘acts of citizenship as quotidian enactments, which might lack the visibility of certain
performative acts but nevertheless can be consequential’ (Isin 2017,
p. 509), we might look in more detail to the collective appropriation of
urban public spaces; for example, in the playing out around the tent of the
‘Lampedusa in Hamburg’ group at the central station, or the dynamics of
the former self-organized refugee protest camp at Oranienplatz in Berlin
(Fontanari 2016). In these cases, the everyday production of space in the
city reflects a heterogeneous and diverse society, seemingly tying together
those central elements of everyday practice that constitute possible versions of a continuous urban citizenship (Lanz 2015, p. 489). With the
metroZones school for urban action, a situation was created to reflect upon
urban spaces and urban citizenship as a localized practice. The school
became a space to exchange experiences, reflect on activities, and discuss
self-empowered political engagement, as well as a performative space for
enacting urban citizenship.
URBAN CITIZENSHIP: SPACES FOR ENACTING RIGHTS
157
noTes
1. ‘Never Mind the Papers’ is a Hamburg-based network of refugee activists,
supporters, the ‘The Right to the City’ movement, Union activists and
other left-wing initiatives, all fighting for an accessible and just city for
everybody. https://nevermindthepapers.noblogs.org, date accessed 13
March 2018.
2. The metroZones school of urban action is a two-year public founded project
(2015–2016) conducted by the Berlin-based group metroZones – center for
urban affairs – www.metrozones.info, date accessed 2 February 2018—and
the Hamburg-based NGO dock europe—www.dock-europe.net, date
accessed 2 February 2018.
3. For each workshop of the metroZones school, an artist was invited to protocol
and comment the discussions by a kind of graphic record, see https://
schoolbook.metrozones.info, date accessed 2 February 2018. For this
paper, I selected some drawings by the Berlin-based artist, Eric Göngrich.
His drawings have a specific focus and narration, presenting his position as
an observer of some moments of the metroZones school as well as an active
participant of the situation: ‘It is not so much about learning, but I try to
understand through my drawings […] I try to summarize the situation in a
subjective and provocative way.’ Eric Göngrich, https://vimeo.
com/209878106, date accessed 2 February 2018 (translation by author).
4. The metroZones Schule für städtisches Handeln was financed for two years
(2015–6) as a model project by the German Federal Institution
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, see www.metrozones.info, date
accessed 11 February 2018.
5. http://hh-mittendrin.de/2015/11/demo-fuer-gefluechtete-zeigendass-alle-menschen-in-hamburg-gleiche-rechte-haben, date accessed 10
January 2018.
6. For further information about the workshop, see Liz Rech (2015) ‘Körper
und Öffentlichkeit – zur performativen Dimension städtischen Handelns’ in
metroZones Schule für städtisches Handeln: ‘Von der Situation zur
Intervention — Zugänge und Stationen’, https://www.metrozones.info/
wp-content/uploads/2016/08/mZ-Schule-fuer-staedtisches-HandelnDossier-2015.pdf, date accessed 10 January 2018.
7. The artist Erik Göngrich was invited to organize a workshop on drawing
and artistic intervention in public space through objects. Additionally, he
was invited to comment on the school workshop by taking minutes through
the action of drawing; the graphic comments in this text thus arose in the
framework of the School for urban action in the autumn of 2015.
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K. WILDNER
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159
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original
author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the
chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to
the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence
and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the
permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
A Space of Performing Citizenship:
The Gängeviertel in Hamburg
Michael Ziehl
A performative perspective on citizenship allows us to overcome conventional views of citizenship and points a spotlight on the question of how
people articulate claims as rights (Isin 2017). In this chapter, I will focus
on this question by using the example of the Gängeviertel—the abandoned quarter in the middle of Hamburg that was occupied by an activist
initiative in 2009. Since then, the Gängeviertel activists continue to publicly articulate claims concerning the self-management of the place and the
right to the city. They apply these practices in situ, and therewith continuously produce a space of performing citizenship. I will illustrate some of
these practices and point out how they contribute to an effective articulation of claims with the help of a spatial entanglement of the public to the
place. With reference to Lefebvre’s concept of the production of social
space, I will show thereby that place-specific conditions play a particular
and important role.
M. Ziehl (*)
Graduate Program Performing Citizenship, HafenCity University Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
e-mail: kontakt@urban-upcycling.de
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_11
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History, Materiality and CHaraCteristiCs
The Gängeviertel is a historic ensemble of thirteen houses, situated in the
city center of Hamburg. Although it is heritage-protected, the city of
Hamburg sold the abandoned quarter and permitted substantial amounts
of demolition, largely to enable the construction of luxury flats, offices
and commercial space. While the demolition was being planned, two artists’ collectives were using storefronts in the Gängeviertel as studio spaces.
When they heard about the plans they decided to mobilize against it. As a
result, in August 2009 about 200 artists, cultural workers and activists
occupied the Gängeviertel in protest against the neoliberal policy of the
city government. They demanded the creation of affordable working and
residential space in the city, the preservation of the historical buildings, as
well as a more participative urban development policy. The occupation—
or cultural appropriation1 as the activists prefer to call it—gained huge
publicity and a lot of people sympathized with the activists. Due to public
pressure, and after intense negotiations, four months later, the Senate of
Hamburg decided to buy the Gängeviertel back from the investor. This
was the start of official cooperation between the occupiers and the city
administration of Hamburg; both began to acquire a development concept for the Gängeviertel. In essence, the new idea provides for the gradual renovation of the thirteen buildings and the creation of publicly funded
social housing, studios, and cultural spaces on about 7500 m2 of floor
space. The entire cost of the renovation was earmarked at 20 million
Euros.
However, the occupiers did not wait until an agreement with the city
government was achieved; they already began to refurbish and to adapt
the thirteen houses informally. On the upper floors studios and workshops
were established, while rooms on the ground floors were prepared for
semi-public usage—such as cafés, galleries and venues. Today, the
Gängeviertel is a vibrant and non-commercial urban space that functions
on the basis of openness, voluntary work, collectives and grass-root democratic structures. Everybody who is capable and interested can be involved
in the decision-making processes and the organizing of groups, take-on
tasks, start a new undertaking or apply for free rooms. These characteristics depend on the self-management2 of the place and became established
after the occupation. Since the renovation began, the Gängeviertel activists increasingly fear that it is the aim of the city government to normalize
the place and its management by cleaning up its unique appearance and
A SPACE OF PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: THE GÄNGEVIERTEL IN HAMBURG
163
installing a professional housing administration. Furthermore, they criticize the fact that cooperation is not carried out openly and honestly by the
municipality and that the mandated redevelopment agency gives too little
regard to their demands concerning the renovation measures. The municipality largely ignored these problems and proceeded as scheduled in order
to remain on-time with the renovation process. Consequently, the
Gängeviertel refused further collaboration and, in February 2015, the
cooperation was close to failure. All project planning stopped and the two
parties started to negotiate over the implementation of further renovations, as well as the continuation of the proposals for self-management
from the initiative.3
ClaiMs, ConfliCts and CitizensHip
Notions of citizenship are diverse, as critical citizenship studies have
shown. As Engin Isin points out, ‘citizenship, while typically understood
as a legal status of membership in the state, if not the nation-state, became
increasingly defined as practices of becoming claim-making subjects in and
through various sites and scales’ (Isin 2008, p. 16). Thus, citizenship
derives not only from someone’s status of having rights but also from
someone’s performance in claiming rights. This performative take on citizenship ‘allows us to appreciate that how people perform citizenship plays
an important role in contesting and constructing citizenship and attaching
meanings to rights’ (Isin 2017, p. 501). Before examining more closely
how the Gängeviertel activists perform their claims, I will consider the
question of how far these claims are connected to issues of citizenship.
Accordingly, it is helpful to distinguish formal and substantive citizenship,
as James Holston and Arjun Appadurai did with regard to ongoing renegotiations of citizenship within cities. As they put it, ‘formal refers to
membership in the nation-state and the substantive to the array of civil,
political, socio-economic, and cultural rights people possess and exercise’
(Holston and Appadurai 1999, p. 4) [emphasis of the author]. The struggle of the Gängeviertel activists—who mostly are formal citizens of
Germany or other nation-states—is about substantive citizenship whereby
they articulate several claims concerning two distinctive scales.
On the local scale of the Gängeviertel, the activists demand the continuation of self-management for the time following the renovation. For
them, self-management is a necessary requirement so that the Gängeviertel
functions as an open and cultural place to live and work. Furthermore,
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they see it as the only guarantee that the place cannot be sold later on.
Concerning the renovation, they urge more participation; they wish to
take more responsibility and make greater contribution within the process
because they are not satisfied with outcomes concerning usability of the
buildings and aspects of heritage protection. To actually meet these claims,
the city government would have to adjust the existing renovation concept
and to assign property rights to the Gängeviertel cooperative.4 That would
entail a relinquishment of control over the place and its development.
Contrary to this, the city government seeks to keep control to ensure the
finalization of the renovation and the long-term development of the place.
City representatives argue that they cannot adapt the proposed renovation
procedure due to administrative directives and are obliged to verify the
accurate application of public investments. Additionally, the government
would have to accept a shortfall in receipts, as the activists of the
Gängeviertel are not willing and not able to pay the actual market value.
City representatives assert that giving such advantage is not compatible
with the principle of equal treatment. Altogether, claims of the Gängeviertel
activists on a local scale challenge governance practices, municipal directives, and property rights concerning the place.5
On the city scale of Hamburg, the Gängeviertel activists claim the right
to the city as a universal right for all urban dwellers.6 To put this claim into
practice they contest the policy of the city government and work against
its growth-oriented and enterprise-friendly agenda. Moreover, they are
proactive in supporting self-organized social and housing projects; they
campaign against the privatization of public property, real estate speculation, as well as for the rights of refugees. Alongside many initiatives of the
‘Right to the City Network’ in Hamburg, the Gängeviertel is part of a
political voice in the city.7
suCCesses and publiC relations
The activists of the Gängeviertel have achieved some remarkable successes
on both local and city scale. Only a few days after the occupation, they
signed a contract allowing them to use the abandoned houses temporarily
without paying rent. Four months after the occupation, they achieved the
buy-back of the Gängeviertel. Shortly thereafter, the city government
announced the abolition of the Höchstgebotsverfahren, according to which
public real estate was sold to the highest bidder without regard to the
concept of usage. In 2010, an association and a cooperative were founded
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165
by the activists, as legal structures for self-management, making legal entities available as contracting partners with the municipality. In 2011, the
activists of the Gängeviertel enforced a cooperation agreement stating
terms of rights and duties during the renovation process,8 and in 2015,
they enforced a general rental agreement for the first three renovated
buildings. Notably, the agreement to halt the planning process can be seen
as an achievement for them, because it was their aim to stop the ongoing
process in order to allow for adjustments and further negotiations.
These successes are the result of intense debates, a huge amount of
organization and paper work, the advice of experienced consultants, solidarity among the ‘Right to the City’ network, and huge support and backing from a substantial part of the public. From the cultural appropriation
until today, the Gängeviertel activists act with respectful regard to public
opinion. They know that, in negotiations with the municipality, the public
sits at the table and that media and social networks play an important role
as distributors and co-creators of public opinion. Thus, actions of claimmaking are designed with a careful view to media coverage and public
relations.9 As Gesa Ziemer pointed out, with reference to Nancy Fraser,
the activists of the Gängeviertel never aimed to create a counter-public as
is typical for many occupiers (Ziemer 2014). Rather, they understand the
public sphere ‘as a vehicle for marshaling public opinion as a political
force’ (Fraser 2007). To mobilize a wide range of the public sphere, they
argue that the self-management of the Gängeviertel is to the benefit of
many people in Hamburg, primarily because its structural openness and
cultural program form an enrichment for city dwellers generally—not only
for those who are interested in art and culture or would like to become
active in self-organized structures. They highlight that the Gängeviertel is
accessible for marginalized urban dwellers, and that they take care to force
the municipality to put heritage protection in place. By doing so, to some
degree, they enact themselves as representatives of social and cultural public interests and ask the question: who is in position to represent these
interests—politicians, as elected representatives of those who have the
right to vote? Or activists like themselves, who proactively get involved in
public issues? In the following, I introduce some practices to illustrate how
demands of the Gängeviertel activists are performed publicly, particularly
at the place in question.
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praCtiCes of perforMing CitizensHip
Cultural appropriation of the Gängeviertel can be seen as the starting
point for the development of place-specific practices of performing citizenship. It was organized by a core group of activists who planned the
appropriation, explored the place, and secretly prepared exhibitions and
installations in the houses. The ‘happening’ was announced as a courtyard
festival throughout the city, and thousands of people came to celebrate in
the narrow passageways among outdoor bars and exhibitions. One by one,
activists opened doors to the visitors but made sure to stay unidentifiable
as responsible persons. Instead of barricading the houses, they were made
accessible and everybody was invited to become a part of the appropriation process. This generated a positive response from a broad spectrum of
Hamburg society and the media. After reports in the local media, the
international press also picked up on the subject. Following the first
reports, politicians began to speak up. Most expressed their understanding
for the reasons behind the action and signaled their willingness to engage
in speaking for the concerns of the initiative. Out of this experience the
Fig. 1 Gängeviertel 2nd anniversary. (Photo: Franzi Holz, August 2011)
A SPACE OF PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: THE GÄNGEVIERTEL IN HAMBURG
167
activists constantly progressed in arranging cultural events. One can say
that they continued with the cultural appropriation but stabilized this process while establishing organizational structures. Currently, exhibitions,
concerts, film showings, readings and public discussions take place somewhere in the Gängeviertel nearly every day. Hundreds of visitors come
every week and take advantage of the mostly free and open-to-all events
and activities. The cultural program is the key means for the Gängeviertel
activists to keep the place vibrant, gain sustained public awareness and
increase the popularity of the place (Fig. 1).
During the G20 summit in July 2017, the Gängeviertel was converted
into a ‘Free Oasis’ with outdoor concerts, exhibitions and rest areas,
together with an infrastructure to supply protesters with food, first aid and
information about ongoing police and protest action. Demonstrations in
the Gängeviertel were prohibited by the court during the G20 summit
because it was located in the official safety zone, where the right to free
assembly was suspended; police forces had the area surrounded over and
over again in order to prevent blockades that might obstruct diplomatic
convoys passing nearby. Nevertheless, hundreds of activists from all around
Europe used the place to organize peaceful protests and to recover from
actions in the streets of Hamburg. Shortly after the summit, the
Gängeviertel activists publicly declared their solidarity with activists of the
Rote Flora, who were blamed by politicians as being responsible for violent confrontations between radical left activists and the police force. As a
consequence, local politicians moved to cut official funding for the
Gängeviertel, and its activists feared that the administration could stop the
negotiations about further renovation. Despite this, the Gängeviertel
activists maintained their declaration of solidarity and sustained critique
on the G20 Summit. Many creative protest actions were supported and
organized by them, raising their public profile—like a rave demonstration
with around 20,000 protesters and a zombie-like performance called
‘1000 Gestalten’ that gained wide attention in international media.
The anniversary of the cultural appropriation is celebrated with a large
program over several days. For this event, the place is transformed into a
festival area with installations, temporary bars and stages. The organization is partly chaotic, but works on a foundation of experience and spontaneity together with a sense of responsibility from most of the visitors.
With this yearly spectacle, the Gängeviertel activists publicly demonstrate
their popularity and general backing in the city society. When the cooperation process with the municipality was close to failure in 2015, the
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Gängeviertel organized a solidarity concert with the Goldenen Zitronen—
an experimental punk band famous for its progressive music and critical
lyrics. The band played in one of the passageways to underline the demand
for self-management by the Gängeviertel activists and marked the starting
point of a solidarity campaign that was undersigned by hundreds of artists
and cultural workers from all around the world.10
There is a continual practice of hosting conferences, public workshops
and discussion events concerning political and social issues. Some are selforganized, others are arranged by non-profit organizations and activist
groups. In this way, the activists of the Gängeviertel attract a critical audience, promote political dialogues and demonstrate its connectedness to
political activist networks and scholars. Inspired by such events, in April
2015, I organized a symposium as a practical part of my research about the
Gängeviertel cooperation process. A workshop, conducted with city representatives and activists, took place to get insight into the aims and interests of the stakeholders, and to figure out common ground so to further
improve the process. It became clear that both sides have different aims
and ideas concerning the future development. City representatives see it
primarily as a determined construction process with a clear ending, resulting in affordable spaces for cultural production and living in the city center. In contrast, the Gängeviertel activists want to maintain the political
significance of the place and maintain its openness for spontaneous developments. After the workshop, a public debate took place titled
‘Cooperations between Municipalities and Citizen Initiatives’. It was my
aim to involve the city representatives in a public debate about the cooperation and development process, but they refused to take part as panelists. Those who did come to the discussion highlighted that they took part
as citizens and did not speak publicly. It seems that city representatives fear
the nature of the public the Gängeviertel creates and prefer to avoid public
debates on-site.
plaCe, stage and sCene
To connect these practices to the concept of performing citizenship, as it
is promoted in this chapter, I again refer to Engin Isin. He contrasts
‘“activist citizens” with “active citizens” […]. While activist citizens
engage in writing scripts and creating the scene, active citizens follow
scripts and participate in scenes that are already created’ (Isin 2008, p. 38).
If we apply this principle to the Gängeviertel one can say that the activists
A SPACE OF PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: THE GÄNGEVIERTEL IN HAMBURG
169
of the Gängeviertel created a scene out of the cultural appropriation of the
place and then used this as the stage to continuously recreate the scene.
Out of an ‘act of citizenship’ (Isin 2008) diverse practices of performing
citizenship were developed. With the help of these practices, they address
their claims to the public and at the same time incorporate parts of the
public sphere into the scene. To better understand this process, I refer to
sociologist Erving Goffman, who argues that all social interactions between
groups can be understood as performances on specific ‘stages’ that consist
of:
front regions where a particular performance is or may be in progress, and
back regions where action occurs that is related to the performance but
inconsistent with the appearance fostered by the performance. (Goffman
1956, p. 82)
Furthermore, there is a third region that encompasses all places other
than those defined as ‘front’ or ‘back’:
The notion of an outside region that is neither front nor back with respect
to a particular performance conforms to our common-sense notion of social
establishments, for when we look at most buildings we find within them
rooms that are regularly or temporarily used as back regions and front
regions, and we find that the outer walls of the building cut both types of
rooms off from the outside world. (Goffman 1956, p. 82)
According to this model, the assignment of people to the three regions
determines their role within social interactions. In case of the Gängeviertel,
people from the outside region are invited to become part of the front and
back region due to the openness of the place and its relatively inclusive
decision-making structures. Borders between inside and outside are blurry
and, therewith, social functions of activists, visitors and the public become
entangled. Consequently, claims are not only articulated to, but also with
and through the public; the Gängeviertel is the particular stage where
these social interactions work successfully. Thereby place-specific aspects
play a notably important role. In order to deepen our understanding about
how people articulate claims successfully, we must take the conditions of
the stage into account where new scenes of citizenship are created. Here,
it is pertinent to refer to Lefebvre’s concept of social space.
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a spaCe of perforMing CitizensHip
Henri Lefebvre’s conceptualized space is an ongoing process of social production and reproduction, characterized by the interrelations of three
equivalent dimensions: spatial practices, representations of space and
spaces of representation (Lefebvre 1991). Lefebvre developed his theory
out of the observation of long-term macrosociological processes.
Nevertheless, his concept is applicable to smaller scale processes that take
place within shorter timeframes—like the struggle over the Gängeviertel.11
If we apply his spatial triad to the articulation of claims in the Gängeviertel,
one can understand all the practices of performing citizenship as a part of
spatial practices. This dimension refers to the material foundation of
space—like walls, buildings and streets—and also encompasses the everyday usage of material structures. Concerning the articulation of claims in
the Gängeviertel, its many venues, galleries bars and cafés, the open building structure and the overall situation in the inner city of Hamburg are of
particular importance. They weave the place into the fabric of urban life
and so make it possible to reach a wide range of the public throughout the
city. Moreover, the small-scale configuration of buildings supported the
appropriation of the thirteen houses and the maintenance of selfmanagement structures that, still today, facilitate the many practices of
performing citizenship in situ.
Representations of space refer to conceptualizations and planning, as
well as the creation of images with the help of words, pictures and signs.
Thus, all planning and concept work concerning the renovation and the
development of the Gängeviertel should be seen as representations of
space; additionally, publications, media reports and—on a more abstract
level—the public discourse about the Gängeviertel, all refer to this dimension. It is far less based on the physical characteristics of the place because
representations of space are largely produced outside of the Gängeviertel—
in planning offices, editorial departments, the public sphere and so on.
Spaces of representation concern subjective imaginations that are connected to the space, along with the attribution of significance and associations of symbolic meanings to material objects. In case of the Gängeviertel,
this dimension plays a particularly important role. The historic significance
of the Gängeviertel appears to visitors through the building’s historic
materiality. Provisional outbuildings, art installations, street art and overall
repair of the buildings all contribute toward an esthetic that gives expression to the self-management of the space. The walls of the Gängeviertel
A SPACE OF PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: THE GÄNGEVIERTEL IN HAMBURG
171
are carriers of meaning and stand in clear contrast to the appearance of the
surrounding highly-priced and formalized real estate downtown. Thus,
they function as a unique stage set for the ongoing performance happening within the place.
In the case of the Gängeviertel, the production of social space depends
to a high degree on practices of performing citizenship that actually take
place. The production of space intensively interrelates with the process of
performing citizenship in all dimensions. Public articulations of demands
contribute to the symbolic significance of the place. Politics of the city
government and municipal development plans are crucial for the intensity
and the design of practices of performing citizenship. Architectural planning of the renovation to some degree predetermines the esthetic of the
place and its subjective perception by visitors. I assume that such spatial
interrelations are of particular importance in understanding how practices
and acts of claim-making unfold effectivity. This applies in particular to
struggles with strong connection to specific places. The Gängeviertel
activists are by now successful in asserting themselves against the city government because of the space they continue to create and hold. Here, they
articulate claims to, with, and through the public. At the same time, they
perform the rights they demand to some degree as they realize the selfmanagement of the place. In this way, they articulate their demands as the
right to the city and put it into practice simultaneously.
As the case shows, to perform citizenship successfully might depend on
the ability of citizens to open up and maintain a stage where they enact
claims publicly, and effectively interrelate them with the preconditions of
the place of claim-making, thus creating a space of performing citizenship.
To have transformative impacts on the execution and design of rights,
such spaces of performing citizenship have to establish a local social system
that clearly differs from the society it is intertwined with. Such a space can
unfold the power to challenge and question particular rights that shape
society as it manifests a new social reality within a particular place.
notes
1. ‘Cultural appropriation’ in this chapter stands for the peaceful appropriation of the abandoned houses with the help of cultural performances and
artistic means. It fundamentally differs to current notions within the critical discourse on ‘whiteness’.
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2. I use the term self-management following Henri Lefebvre’s understanding
(Lefebvre 1976, p. 120). As Neil Brenner puts it, self-management for
Lefebvre connotes ‘a political orientation through which various sectors of
social life – from factories, universities, and political associations to territorial units such as cities and regions – might be subjected to new forms of
decentralized, democratic political control through the very social actors
who are most immediately attached to them’ (Brenner 2008, p. 240).
3. For more information about the Gängeviertel and a more detailed description of the cooperation process, see Ziehl 2016.
4. The cooperative was founded by the activists in 2010 in order to undertake
the management of the houses from the municipality and the redevelopment agency. Members of the cooperative are required to make a minimum subscription of at least one share (500 Euro). Membership of the
cooperative is not limited to the activists; supporters can also become
members and participate in decision-making.
5. For more information about the protest of the Gängeviertel activists and
their entanglement with the urban development policy of Hamburg, see
Novy and Colomb 2013 and also Fraeser 2017.
6. Henri Lefebvre conceptualized the right to the city as follows: ‘The right
to the city, complemented by the right to difference and the right to information, should modify, concretize and make more practical the rights of
the citizen as an urban dweller (citadin) and user of multiple services. It
would affirm, on the one hand, the right of users to make known their
ideas on the space and time of their activities in the urban area; it would
also cover the right to the use of the center, a privileged place, instead of
being dispersed and stuck in ghettos (for workers, immigrants, the “marginal” and even for the “privileged”)’ (Lefebvre, in Kofman and Lebas
1996, p. 34).
7. To fully meet the claim for the right to the city, it would not be enough to
fundamentally change the current policy of the city government. Rather, a
fundamental transformation of social, political, and economic structures
would be necessary, with far-reaching consequences for processes of democratic decision-making and also the current notion of citizenship. Thus,
claims concerning the right to the city often are connected to a national, if
not global, scale. For a critical discussion of the relation between the right
to the city, citizenship and representative democracy, see Purchell 2002.
For more information about the ‘Right to the City’ network in Hamburg
in the context of local urban development, see Birke 2016.
8. The cooperation agreement between several senators and the Gängeviertel
activists is the fundament for the cooperation process and a unique piece of
paper—there is no other example in Germany of a contract like this
A SPACE OF PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: THE GÄNGEVIERTEL IN HAMBURG
173
between a city government and organizations that developed out of an
occupiers’ movement.
9. For a press review of the Gängeviertel, see http://das-gaengeviertel.info/
medien/pressespiegel.html, date accessed 29 January 2018.
10. For the list of supporters, see http://das-gaengeviertel.info/nc/b/soli.
html, date accessed 29 January 2018.
11. It is not my aim to analyze the spatial production process that takes place
in the Gängeviertel in all its aspects; rather, I am briefly outlining the relations of the practices of performing citizenship and Lefebvre’s three
dimensions of space. Furthermore, within the limits of this chapter, I cannot go into detail about Lefebvre’s complex concept; it has been discussed
by several scholars in recent years. For a profound discussion see, for example, Schmid 2008.
referenCes
Birke, P. 2016. Right to the City– and Beyond. The Topographies of Urban Social
Movements in Hamburg. In Urban Uprisings – Challenging Neoliberal
Urbanism in Europe, ed. M. Mayer, C. Thörn, and H. Thörn, 203–232.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Brenner, N. 2008. Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of State Productivism. In Space,
Difference, Everyday Life – Reading Henri Lefebvre, ed. K. Goonewardena,
S. Kipfer, R. Milgrom, and C. Schmid, 231–149. New York: Routledge.
Fraeser, N. 2017. Fantasies of Antithesis – Assessing Hamburg’s Gängeviertel as a
Tourist Attraction. In Protest and Resistance in the Tourist City, ed. C. Colomb
and J. Novy, 320–339. London: Routledge.
Fraser, N. 2007. Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and
Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World. http://eipcp.net/
transversal/0605/fraser/en. Accessed 29 Jan 2018.
Goffman, E. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: University
of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre.
Holston, J., and A. Appadurai. 1999. Cities and Citizenship. London: Duke
University Press.
Isin, E.F. 2008. Theorizing Acts of Citizenship. In Acts of Citizenship, ed. E.F. Isin
and G.M. Nielsen, 15–43. London: Zed Books.
Isin, E. 2017. Performative Citizenship. In Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, ed.
A. Shachar, R. Bauböck, I. Bloemraad, and M. Vink, 500–523. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Kofman, E., and E. Lebas. 1996. Lost in Transposition: Time, space, and the City.
In Writings on Cities, ed. E. Kofman and E. Lebas, 3–60. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lefebvre, H. 1976. The Survival of Capitalism: Reproduction and the Relations of
Production. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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———. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Novy, J., and C. Colomb. 2013. Struggling for the Right to the (Creative) City in
Berlin and Hamburg: New Urban Social Movements, New Spaces of Hope?
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37 (5): 1816–1838.
Purchell, M. 2002. Excavating Lefebvre: The Right to the City and its Urban
Politics of the Inhabitant. GeoJournal 58: 99–108.
Schmid, C. 2008. Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space: Towards
a Three-Dimensional Dialectic. In Space, Difference, Everyday Life – Reading
Henri Lefebvre, ed. K. Goonewardena, S. Kipfer, R. Milgrom, and C. Schmid,
27–46. London: Routledge.
Ziehl, M. 2016. Cooperation with Resistance: The Development of the
Gängeviertel in Hamburg. In City Linkage – Art and Culture Fostering Urban
Futures, ed. T. Haupt, C. Rabe, and M. Ziehl, 75–85. Berlin: Jovis.
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Bielefeld: Transcript.
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PART III
Citizenship and (Non-)Performance:
Premises/Critique/Speculations
Performance as Delegation: Citizenship
in ‘Lloyd’s Assemblage’
Moritz Frischkorn
With an annual turnover of 7734 million Euros in 2016, Hapag-Lloyd is
one of the world’s biggest container carriers. Its business activity, first and
foremost, is logistics. This large-scale transportation company is based in
Hamburg. In 2012, the city of Hamburg itself held nearly 37 percent of
the company in shares. This, in fact, makes Hamburg citizens one of the
company’s major owners.1
Logistics can be interpreted as one possible conception of the art, science and practice of moving things. It is like ‘choreograph[ing] a ballet of
infinite complexity played across skies, oceans and borders’ (UPS 2010),
claims the well-known UPS commercial of 2010. However complex and
expansive it may be, this choreography of things remains largely invisible
and unnoticed – similar to what Keller Easterling states in her notion of
infrastructure space. The term describes spatial infrastructures that manage and control the relation and movements of objects and thereby govern
human behaviour: ‘Contemporary infrastructure space is the secret
weapon of the most powerful people in the world precisely because it
orchestrates activities that can remain unstated but are nonetheless consequential. Some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world are
M. Frischkorn (*)
Graduate Program Performing Citizenship, HafenCity University Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_12
177
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being written, not in the language of law or diplomacy, but in these spatial
infrastructural technologies […].’ (Easterling 2014, p. 15).
In as much as logistics is part of spatial and choreographic infrastructures of this kind, its very quality lies in an unnoticeable efficiency – the
fantastically frictionless secrecy of operating underneath the radar of a
general public concerned with seemingly more important matters. All the
while, it is on the basis of these largely invisible choreologistic infrastructures that Western liberal subjects act as apparently free and autonomous
citizens.
Thinking of Hapag-Lloyd, one might mention the fact that in the mid19th century the name ‘Lloyd’ was used as a general term for a shipping
company. Yet, it also points to an actual place and person: Edward Lloyd,
who, in 1688, opened a coffeehouse on Tower Street in central London.
One could argue that this forefather of modern choreologistics, by opening a coffeehouse, took part in the foundation of an important spatial
technology of citizenship; for in both the Habermasian discourse on The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and in Richard Sennett’s
The Rise and Fall of Public Man, the coffeehouse holds a key position in
the emergence of a modern bourgeois public sphere. Concurrent to the
realms of power of the state and economics, the public sphere is posited as
a normative ideal of inclusive deliberation and thereby allows for new and
different practices of citizenship (Habermas 1962).2 Richard Sennett
explicitly highlights the performative dimension of the 18th century public sphere (Sennett 1974; Cvéjic and Vujanovic 2012). And the coffeehouse, as Craig Calhoun argues, is important to this specific performance
of citizenship as part of its ‘institutional base’ and as ‘a new infrastructure
for social communication’ (Calhoun 1992, p. 291).
‘But where does the coffee come from?’, post-colonial scholar Nikita
Dhawan asked in a recent talk in Hamburg (Dhawan 2016), referring to
the coffee sold and consumed at Lloyd’s and other coffeehouses all over
Europe, that fostered the emergence of a modern public sphere? It is obvious what she hints at: beginning in the 17th century, coffee is industrially
produced in Asian and South American colonies, based on exploitative
slave trade and work. Both the luxury crop and the workforce needed to
plant, maintain, harvest and refine it are taken from West Africa (and
Ethiopia, where coffee supposedly originated from), made eminently
transportable, and forcibly exploited. Only in as much as coffee thus
becomes affordable as a mass product can it fuel the performance of the
coffeehouse as spatial infrastructure of the public sphere. But what are the
PERFORMANCE AS DELEGATION: CITIZENSHIP IN ‘LLOYD’S ASSEMBLAGE’
179
implications of this entanglement of a bourgeois public sphere with colonial enterprise? Is there a structural, or only a historic dilemma at the heart
of modern liberal citizenship? Who is allowed to perform in what role and
function? And who is forced to work at the invisible choreologistic base of
what Arendt terms ‘the space of appearance’ (Arendt 1958, p. 199),
unnoticed and never to appear themselves?
In the following, it is argued that citizenship is always situated in multiple assemblages that include divergent sets of invisible – often exploitative – infrastructures and choreologistic modes of abduction. In as much
as any act of citizenship can only exist based on these infrastructures, it
employs modes of delegation that, voluntarily and involuntarily, stay invisible. Citizenship is then necessarily based on other delegated
performances.3
Thinking about the constitutive dilemma inherited from the 18th century coffeehouse and the (exclusive) performance of citizenship it allowed
for might be a way of challenging an easy conception of delegation that is
central and constitutive of modern politics.
In political terms, delegation is that specific form of outsourcing that
explicitly implies transfer of legitimation or authority to someone else, or
a body of higher order, while at the same time implementing modes of
accountability. The following definition is given in the International
Encyclopedia of Political Science:
[…] delegation occurs in politics whenever one actor or body grants authority to another to act on behalf of or to carry out a function for the first in the
political process. In such general terms, delegation is ubiquitous and a defining feature of politics beyond individual actions. Voters delegate to elected
officials in representative government; governments delegate to ambassadors in foreign affairs; legislatures delegate to committees the authority to
study policy issues and report bills and to the authority to make policy.
(International Encyclopedia of Political Science, 2011, p. 548)
Yet, when looking at the logistical choreographies that emerge in the
name of Lloyd’s, we can shed light on another, more problematic dimension of delegation, one that is not based on voluntary transfer of legitimation or authority, but rather on practices of exploitation and abduction.
Generally speaking, we here deal with delegated performances and
exploited bodies located in epistemological, ontological and geographical
realms and regions that are actively negated, and therefore excluded from
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M. FRISCHKORN
the practice and legal framework of citizenship itself. How do we account
for all of that? Or do we potentially have to move beyond counting,
accounting, and accountability, beyond credit and credibility, to deal with
this largely invisible, yet highly political dimension of citizenship and
delegation?
In order to tackle these questions, we here sketch out how one specific
choreologistic network – that will be called ‘Lloyd’s assemblage’ – is at the
heart of the modern performance of citizenship. Lloyd’s, we here speculate, could be the point of departure for understanding the entanglement
of the notion of bourgeois public sphere, coffeehouse culture, coffeeplantations, colonialism, slave trade and, finally, insurances, financial trade
and risk management. Can a notion of performance as delegation help us
to take the emergence of ‘Lloyd’s assemblage’ into focus?
Performance as Delegation
Generally, a performative is a discursive, gestural or bodily act that participates in the generation of a social situation. A performative ‘does’ what it
names, it enacts what it means. Nonetheless, any such performative creation or production is bound by conventional social procedures that have
to be iterated (Austin 1982; Derrida 1988). A performative is thus always
composed both of moments of repetition and of drift, or shift. Within the
arts and cultural sciences, the notion of performance is often linked to the
promise of experimentation or transformation (Fischer-Lichte 2008). It
entails the possibility of altering conventions because it does more than to
merely represent them. Concurrently, it can be read as the imperative to
become effective, governed by convention and context from its beginning
and thereby fostering dangerous neoliberal regimes of ‘self-responsibility’
(McKenzie 2001; Butler 2015, pp. 5–12).
In its history, the concept of performance is most often related to two
central notions: execution and embodiment. When talking of performance
as execution, we claim that an action matches an already existing quantifiable standard or that it follows a pre-written social script. Talking of performance as embodiment, we highlight the physical-material presence and
the taking into service of bodily capacities. In performance, a material
body is put on the line: it becomes visible, it exposes itself, gains voice and
agency, all the while being rendered subject to contextual judgements,
norms and conventions.
PERFORMANCE AS DELEGATION: CITIZENSHIP IN ‘LLOYD’S ASSEMBLAGE’
181
In linking performance and delegation, we argue for a shift away from
the old opposition of performance and representation – where it is performance that exceeds practices of representation. This reflection might serve
as counter-argument against easy celebratory claims of the ‘transformative
power’ of performance, sometimes articulated within artistic theories of
performance. As Lepecki reminds us in his most recent book (Lepecki
2016), we have to take into consideration how performance is constituted
by a ‘structural paradox’: it ‘can be read as both experimentation and normativity’ (McKenzie 2001, p. ix). By contrast, we here want to focus on
actual and real-worldly distributions of agency that performance enacts,
shifts or sustains.
It is in the vein of Adam Smith, maybe, that we can then talk of performance as delegation and thus as a specific mode of a ‘division of labour’
(Smith 1993): performance always entails the possibility to delegate work,
in the sense of making someone else execute a task. This is what
choreographers normally do – they hire dancers, highly trained bodies that
can successfully execute virtuosic movements. Regarding the social realm,
the nexus of script and delegated execution is developed further in Judith
Butler’s theory of gender: While we are interpolated by a hetero-normative
regulatory matrix that shapes our behaviour, this matrix becomes effective
only insofar as we actually perform it in our daily routines (Butler 1990,
1993).
But let us deepen, or rather turn around the logic that is analysed here.
As Bruno Latour and others have argued, in executing an action – contained within my daily performances (that are surely highly pre-scribed in
social terms) – I always rely upon a heterogeneous field of co-operating
entities, a milieu or network that enables these actions. Within this theoretic framework, to perform means to become the delegate of a wide array
of enmeshed, inter-connected bodies, human and non-human. Already in
1992, Latour explicitly speaks of delegation to non-humans when analysing the socio-political power of technology (Latour 1992). But most
explicitly, the aspect of delegation is expressed in his model of mediators,
which is at the base of his understanding of agency. In mediated agency,
Latour argues, ‘action is […] shifted or delegated [my emphasis] to different types of actors which are able to transport the action further through
other modes of action, or types of forces altogether.’ (Latour 2005, p. 70).
Latour’s concept of delegation as transfer or translation of agency
makes apparent how any form of expression, including performance, is
predicated upon the take-over of a potential that is – at least partly –
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M. FRISCHKORN
located in the surrounding milieu. Interestingly, in a text from 2010,
Judith Butler develops a similar idea in relation to performativity. Here,
she speaks about the performativity of economics that, according to her,
necessarily relies upon organizations of human and non-human networks,
including technology. In her analysis of pricing patterns, a performative
always activates a broad network of entities, human and non-human alike:
Hence, even when Bernanke speaks, it is not simply that a subject performs
a speech act; rather, a set of relations and practices are constantly renewed,
and agency traverses human and non-human domains. What this means,
though, is that performativity implies a certain critique of the subject, especially once it is severed from the Austinian presumption that there is always
someone who is delegated [my emphasis] to speak or that performative discourse has to take the form of discrete verbal enunciation. (Butler 2010,
p. 150)
The concept of a ‘sovereign’ speaker is lost, for one presumes that
agency itself is dispersed. At the very crossing point of performance and
delegation, we are thus able to formulate an extended notion of performance. Here, performance names the historic and artificial process in
which a set of relations between bodies – their practices of moving and
reacting with one another, the institutional structures that thus emerge
and their technological and choreologistic dimension – is constantly
renewed.
In short, a system of relations, that one could also term assemblage,
re-generates itself over time, performatively and through its performance.
Any such assemblage exists only insofar as it is built from interacting components, yet at the same time acts both as a resource and a constraint to
those components. As forms of co-functioning and co-evolution of divergent parts, assemblages both enable potential movement and action, as
well as inhibiting other movements or action-possibilities of their components. Indeed, Manuel De Landa – whose conception of agencements
might be deemed rather technical but is used here for its abstracted clarity – writes: ‘[…] a whole provides its components with constraints and
resources, placing limitations on what they can do while enabling novel
performances.’ (De Landa 2006, pp. 34–5).
Within an assemblage, agency is distributed and will thus constantly be
taken over by other components; it is delegated upwards, downwards, but
most notably, delegated sideways or transversally. This means that for the
PERFORMANCE AS DELEGATION: CITIZENSHIP IN ‘LLOYD’S ASSEMBLAGE’
183
performative to become effective, the whole network has to be activated.
With this notion of performance as delegation within assemblages, one
can now explicitly account for the fact that acting or performing is not
only a voluntary act of appearance, but always involves an involuntarily
component. One becomes a delegate of an assembled field of differently
abled bodies, of heterogeneous networks too manifold and too big to be
made fully transparent. In as much as one takes over agentic potentials,
thus one acts beyond being able to pay back what we will here call one’s
‘agentic debts’.
In arguing for an understanding of performance as delegation (and vice
versa), we have outlined a possible use of the concept that is different
compared to the political conception of delegation mentioned above.
While delegation is a prevalent and necessary mode of transferring authority and legitimation in modern politics – a transfer of authority that constantly has to be checked, monitored and balanced by means of instituting
modes of accountability – in this model, delegation always begins with a
distribution of agency. As agency is always predicated on the activation of
manifold sets of relations and comprises material, technological, animal
and human entities, in as much as I perform, I thus become the delegate
of a distributed field of agency without necessarily having been legitimized
to do so and beyond being fully accountable.
When assimilating these arguments into our discussion of citizenship,
what becomes apparent at this convergence point – the point where performance can finally be understood as a takeover, as borrowing, reception,
acquisition, and transfer of agency – is a structural dilemma. Citizenship
necessarily begs for transparent and well-balanced modes of exchange of
legitimation and authority regulated by delegation and its counterpart of
accountability. Yet, as performance – that is in its dimension as practice – it
always implies the collaboration, the usage or using, the mediated transfer,
or, even more so, the exploitation of a wide field of other and differently
abled bodies and entities, and maybe does so beyond fantasies of full transparency or accountability. These forms of exploitation will often include
modes of choreologistic abduction, even if they may not be limited to
those.
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lloyD’s assemblage
When Edward Lloyd established his coffeehouse in 1688, it was quickly
frequented mostly by men: sailors, merchants, ship-owners and businessmen in the shipping industry. Lloyd – because he was at the centre of the
information flow – was able to provide them with reliable shipping news
that also took shape in the form of a newspaper named Lloyd’s, published
thrice weekly. For this reason, it was here that important agents of the
growing shipping industry gathered to discuss insurance deals. The dealing that took place eventually led to the establishment of insurance markets such as Lloyd’s of London, Lloyd’s register and several related
shipping and insurance businesses.
Compellingly, at the very moment in history when the slave trade is
being established on an ever-bigger scale, we find (among other things)
the very coffeehouse of Lloyd’s (and its infamous offsprings) at the centre
of the gigantic colonial enterprise. As Eric Williams, the famous early anticolonial historian, reminds us in Capitalism and Slavery: ‘Lloyd’s, like
other insurance companies, insured slaves and slave ships, and was vitally
interested in legal decisions as to what constituted “natural death” and
“perils of the sea”.’ (Williams 1944, pp. 104–5).
While only able to briefly sketch these entanglements here, what we can
take into focus when looking at what may then be termed ‘Lloyd’s assemblage’, is the installation – performatively and as performance – of a whole
new set of relations, practices and technologies. Elucidating ‘Lloyd’s assemblage’, we begin to see that the 17th century on the one hand witnessed the
emergence of a bourgeois spatial technology of citizenship – namely the coffeehouse which helped to spawn its nowadays emphatically welcomed offspring, the public sphere. On the other hand, these structures are inherently
entangled with entirely different sets of materials, practices and technologies.
They include the foundation of the Atlantic slave trade and its related legal
frameworks – which are hinted at in the above citation, and which can easily
be linked to what Achille Mbembe terms ‘necropolitics’, that is, modes of
sovereignty that reside ‘in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live
and who must die’ (Mbembe 2003, p. 11). Furthermore, ‘Lloyd’s assemblage’ is constituted by new techniques of accounting for risk: the concept
of insurance or, more generally spoken, risk management, which is, at least
in its early form, born from within the shipping industry (aside from fire
insurances). In his fantastic and alarming book, Specters of the Atlantic, Ian
Baucom narrates the terrifying events on board of the slave ship Zong,
PERFORMANCE AS DELEGATION: CITIZENSHIP IN ‘LLOYD’S ASSEMBLAGE’
185
where, in September 1781, 133 slaves were thrown overboard for the
Liverpool owners of the ship to be able to file an insurance claim for their
lost cargo. And, indeed, Baucom closely links these events to the workings
of insurance companies such as Lloyd’s and a newly flourishing market for
financial trade based on speculation established in the 18th century
(Baucom 2005).
What becomes apparent, first of all, is how the modern performance of
citizenship has never been a national affair in the first place. Political theorist Aihwa Ong has argued that citizenship – which used to be a relatively
coherent assemblage of rights, entitlements, a nation state and its territory – today becomes more and more disarticulated from its original
entanglement with the nation state and is thus reconfigured:
We used to think of different dimensions of citizenship – rights, entitlements, a state, territoriality, etc. – as more or less tied together. Increasingly,
some of these components are becoming disarticulated from each other, and
articulated with diverse universalizing norms defined by markets, neoliberal
values, or human rights. (…) The space of the assemblage, rather than the
territory of the nation-state, is the site for new political mobilizations and
claims. In sites of emergence, a spectrum of mobile and excluded populations articulates rights and claims in universalizing terms of neoliberal criteria or human rights. (Ong 2006, p. 500)
Ong’s argument can be extended. Modern citizenship has always comprised multiple and international infrastructures of domination and a
largely invisible and exploitative choreography of logistics. In its peculiar
choreologistic logics, ‘Lloyd’s assemblage’ turns everybody (and everything) it transports into liquid quanta – to be shipped, insured and eventually disposed of as ‘cargo’. As Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, in their
essay ‘Fantasy in the Hold’ remind us, it is through the shipping of slaves
that practices such as ‘containerization’ – the technology for the capture
and transportation of this paradigmatic ‘commodity that speaks’ – lay the
foundation for modern logistical capitalism and world-spanning systems
of domination and exploitation of whoever or whatever cannot be counted
or categorized as ‘person’ or fully-human. For that matter, ‘modern logistics is founded with the first great movement of commodities, the ones
that could speak. It was founded in the Atlantic slave trade, founded
against the Atlantic slave.’ (Harney and Moten 2013, p. 92).
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If, in fact, as we want to suggest, a modern performance of citizenship
is predicated on the cooperation and exploitation of multiple bodies, bodies that are actively or unknowingly excluded from the Western public
sphere by being rendered mere material of choreographic modes of abduction, what consequences does that have for the notion and practice of citizenship? Today, one could think of the super-exploitative conditions under
which the tablets and smartphones are produced that actually provide the
material infrastructure for some of the highly mediatized public protests of
the last years (Dhawan 2016). How can we identify the inherent logics of
these choreologistic assemblages?
What is installed in ‘Lloyd’s assemblage’ primarily is a way of accounting for risk, accounting for the risk of cooperation as bourgeois citizens –
which is a cooperation that is predicated on mediated agency, not to say
domination. It happens at sea, and, as Burkhardt Wolf tells us: ‘The land
is full of dangers, whereas the sea yields risks’ (Wolf 2013). Now, dangers
can be overcome, but risks can only be calculated, they have to be counted
and accounted for. And is this not the mode of operation of ‘Lloyd’s
assemblage’, of logistics in general? Its logic resides in the desire to manage, that is, to quantify and render quantifiable the risk of capturing, transporting and speculating on all these different commodities that speak,
these mute or muted objects that ask for participation nonetheless, and
that we involuntarily become delegates of in our daily performances, political or not. How is it that we want to account for these movements, these
other performances, this work and generativity, these local and global,
human and non-human forces that our performance as citizens bases itself
upon, but which might, at least partly, stay oblique, beyond transparency,
beyond critique? How can our sense of delegation, as risk that needs to be
calculated and governed in the name of (financial) speculation, be complemented with another take on delegation – one that welcomes it as debt
that cannot be paid back?
‘The […] transport of things remains, as ever, logistics’ unrealizable
ambition,’ Harney and Moten remind us (Harney and Moten 2013,
p. 92). With this claim in mind, and thinking back to a conception of
logistics as ‘infinitely complex choreography’, I wonder how to propose an
even more speculative notion of choreography, one that overtly affronts
the choreologistic modes of abduction and exploitation outlined in this
text. How to think of choreography as a mode of documenting, as a practice of care and trust, as a certain giving up on agency? Is it the art of listening to other, nonlinear, unmanageable movements, never to be
PERFORMANCE AS DELEGATION: CITIZENSHIP IN ‘LLOYD’S ASSEMBLAGE’
187
captured fully? And, while performance used to carry the meaning of
freely placing one’s own body in the spotlight, on the line, on the street –
could it become the practice of taking responsibility of one’s entanglements beyond what one can rationally account for? How could we do so?
We citizens (of Hamburg, or other cities), who come to realize that we
have been and still are, more than ever, silent accomplices of choreologistics, every day, not only as share-holders of Hapag-Lloyd.
notes
1. The city has less bearing on the company today, as it sold some of its shares
and also because of a planned merger of Hapag-Lloyd AG with its competitor UASC (United Arab Shipping Company) in 2017. Yet the three biggest
shareholders of Hapag-Lloyd AG – the Chilean shipping company CSAV,
the City of Hamburg and Kühne Maritime – still have an agreement to pool
52 per cent of the shares in Hapag-Lloyd in order to take key decisions
together (Welt 2016; Hapag-Lloyd 2016; World Maritime News 2016;
Onvista 2016).
2. It is important to mention Nancy Fraser’s critique of the Habermasian
notion of bourgeois public sphere which puts into question the normative
ideals implied for the public sphere from a gender perspective (Fraser 1990).
3. I take the notion of delegated performance from a lecture by André Lepecki,
given at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, February 2013 (Lepecki
2013). In the lecture, he uses the notion of delegation in relation to work
by Bruce Nauman and Santiago Sierra to designate an entanglement of
practices of command, the production of subjectivity and an embodied
dimension of performance. Furthermore, Claire Bishop published an article
entitled ‘Delegated Performance’ in which she utilizes the term to describe
artistic practices that are based on hiring non-professionals to perform
(Bishop 2012, p. 91). In this paper I hope to give a somewhat different,
more extensive meaning to this notion.
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(Re)Labelling: Mimicry, Between
Identification and Subjectivation
Thari Jungen
When in 2015 the purported ‘summer of migration’ occurred, the question
of how to deal with the pressure of assimilation within the discourse of citizenship became ubiquitous. Citizenship is not only a legal and bureaucratic
tool of exclusion, it is comprised of cultural and social interaction.
Furthermore, the unspoken and informal knowledge carried within the
practice of citizenship leads to modalities of exclusion and participation. In
this sphere, legal means are to a large extent ineffective. That gap within the
daily practice of citizenship is plastic, providing for the racist, sexist and
homophobic practices of ‘othering’, as well as production of a space for
resistance. Within the triangle of habitus, status and origin, the social and
cultural capital also produces the homogenous desire for normalcy. Although
resistance does not depend solely on differently empowered realms, the
question of agency in the practice of ‘othering’ occurs. Inside the labelling
concept of Erwing Goffman (1986) and the theory of subjectivation of
Michel Foucault (1988), the practice of ‘othering’ betrays its ambivalent
basis.1 Therefore the need of a tool, without high level of restraint, difficult
approach or complicit methodology, may be answered in this essay, within
exploring the practice of mimicry as a subversive tool of reflection.
T. Jungen (*)
Graduate Program Performing Citizenship, HafenCity University Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_13
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By referring to the concept of the postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha
(2004a), I will try to explain the ambivalence of mimicry practices in the
following, between a repetition of the predominant discourse and the production of a reflective space through overstated repetition. While doing
so, the historical figure of the jester – shown here in persona of Marthurine –
gives an example of the ambivalence of the Janus-faced discourse of mimicry (cf. Lemaignan 2009). The carnivalesque fool, sanctioned around
1622, acts as a figure moving freely between the spheres of sovereignty
and citizenry (cf. Lemaignan 2009). In March 2016, around 400 years
later, a collective of so-called refugees, organized the Carnival al Lajin_
Al-Lajiàat. This carnival shows a reformed traditional yet contemporary
practice to react to labelling and stigmatization in precarious social situations. Referring to Michail Bakhtin, the notion of carnival includes a collective form of mimicry which he described as ‘laughter from below’,
therefore I will question in the following if mimicry, as a practice of exaggerated humorous repetitions, gives one the chance to emancipate oneself
from the unsaid and informal habits of labelling and stigmatizing.
Marthurine, le fou: the eMancipation of a feMale
Jester
Mimic parodies – as a pervasive method to play with language, combined
with gesture – are historically determined due to the historical figure of
the jester. As the following will illustrate, Marthurine, le fou, a famous
jester from renaissance times, gives an example of how to play with selfdefined rules (cf. Lemaignan 2009). She was a female jester at the court of
King Louis XIII – regarded as père du peuple (‘father of the people’) – at
the Louvre, Paris. Mathurine was one of few women to have the role of
court jester – a position which was, above all, dominated by men. As mentioned in literature, she was a former head of an army canteen, sharptongued and smart. The alleged homosexual King Henry III was thrilled
by her wisdom and humour, worshipping her burlesque costumes.
Marthurine played a dual role in the French absolutist state; she embodied
the figure of the court jester but was also writing a yellow press newspaper,
brimming with secret information from the court. In this way, Marthurine’s
actions were Janus-faced, as simultaneous citizen and jester in the postGutenberg era.
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Since she was in a powerful but delicate position, being in close contact
with the inhabitants of Paris as well as being a member of the court,
Marthurine was in a unique situation with regard to the exchanging of
information between her, the people and the monarch. Nowadays she is
remembered for two accomplishments: for her self-made costumes (she
created several male and female characters, wearing outfits that she
designed herself, such as fictional soldier’s uniforms) and the trading of
hidden messages in her newspaper Les Caquets de l’Accouchée.2 Although
the content of the paper was labelled as gossip, her yellow press supplied
the inhabitants of Paris with internal confidential information. The paper
was secretly printed at the king’s court and was regularly distributed by
Marthurine from the Pont Neuf, thereby gaining new information through
her encounters.
MiMicry as a fool’s GaMe
Marthurine, or more widely the figure of the jester, at once embodies a
counter-figure of the predominant discourse, through the undermining of
hierarchies. As a character, she conveys a reiteration of the theoretical discourse through the use of parody and jokes, here described as the practice
of mimicry by Homi Bhabha (cf. 2004a, p. 85). Since Bhabha is speaking
in his theory from a postcolonial perspective, I would like to broaden his
approach. It is salient to note that, in addition to the ‘othering’ strategies
of racist discourse, sexist and even homophobic practices also colonize
their subjects within the predominant discourse. Therefore, my notion of
a postcolonial theory does not strictly refer to the idea of migration and
colonized people as the labelled other in purely racial terms, but also within
the context of sexism and homophobia.
Within the performance of mimicry lies, on one the hand, the desire to
become or produce an equality that clearly will never be reached; on the
other hand, the obscurity of this performance gains the potential to process, to incorporate and even to absorb the alleged primal image, to indicate it is reflecting the alleged profound reality.3 Here primal image and its
imitation no longer exist, but a copy has absorbed the primal image. The
imitation of the primal image becomes an accident of its imitation – an
invisible accident, in consistent danger of being absorbed – and not conversely (cf. Didi-Huberman 2001, pp. 15–21). With the Freudian theory
of the doppelgänger, the discussion about the strangely familiar, rather
than just mysterious fear and uncanniness, became an interesting topic for
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psychoanalysis, philosophy and the discourse around race. When Sigmund
Freud (2003, p. 267) stated, ‘[t]he prefix un in this term is the marker of
repression’, he is describing those actions that remain uncanny, even if the
subject seems to be performing ordinarily. When speaking of doppelgänger, within the repetition of a subject, the primal image stays invisible –
without separate existence, remaining bound to the whole. The similarity
seems to be uncanny because of its random allocation of the signifier and
the signified. The double takes the role of a crossover, a mash-up, indicated through the ambivalence of a ghostly afterimage. Bhabha explains
mimicry as an overstated repetition that doesn’t quite repeat but forces
slippage; while the doppelgänger replaces the primary image, mimicry
stresses and re-emphasizes it in order to have an impact on reflection.
Marthurine is an example of a figure that is capable of undermining
hierarchies. She exploited her role as a jester to hold up a mirror to the
king, because she was allowed to within this role. A jester, in an absolutist
court, was the only person permitted to convey newly gained information
and damaging news truthfully. She observed the atmosphere of the city
and would gather word from public voices overheard while riding on her
horse through Paris. When telling her jokes to the king, she often presented herself as a soldier in self-made regimental dress. In her spoof as a
soldier, she was able to raise her voice on behalf of the citizens of Paris. In
wearing the costume, she uses a sort of fool’s cap as an implement of
invulnerability and invisibility. The fool’s cap symbolizes her independent
agency by mocking the king and his politics, the inhabitants of Paris, as
well as herself. With this form of mimicry, the narration of Marthurine
discloses the ambivalence of the predominant idea of normalcy, when she
is performing a position ‘that is unmarked by the discourse’ (Bhabha
2004a, p. 114).
Marthurine’s paper is called Les Caquets de l’Acouchée – meaning cackling – and is a synonym for gossip (cf. Lemaignan 2009). Yellow press
journalism uses fake interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and
a parade of false learning from presumed experts; here this kind of journalism plays an essential role in degrading the power of the monarchy by
using the technique of mimicry to carry Marthurine’s insights into the
court.4 The paper suggests the idea that gossip could contribute to an
emerging public sphere of political debate. Through her supply of an independent publication, Marthurine shaped a movement of empowerment,
with the chance to speak with one own voice. Gossip plays an important
role here: ‘Les Caquets’ is an illustration of how the slippery, sloppy
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talkativeness of gossip might have operated as public critique, despite the
attempts to silence it.
Homi Bhabha explains mimicry practices – such as the humorous and
overstated reiterations of stigmatizing arguments, comments or situations – as routines that reflect the demand for identity – its slippage, its
excess, its difference (Bhabha 2004a, p. 122) as a dual approach: ‘As colonialism produces mimicry itself, mimicry “emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge”’ (Bhabha
2004a, p. 121). Here, Bhabha illustrates the powerful nature of colonial
mimicry, but leaves it there; there is ambiguity as to whom it gives power;
consequently there is the suggestion that the colonized can use it to subvert
the colonizer. Bhabha argues that colonial mimicry is ‘the desire for a
reformed, recognizable other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the
same, but not quite’ (Bhabha 2004a, p. 122). In that sense, the other
becomes almost the same as the colonizer, but never quite fits in with the
hegemonic cultural and political systems that govern both of them. The
actions of mimicry reveals concurrent fascination and disgust, which is the
experience of a decentralized figure of ambivalence. The process of mimicry represents the Janus-faced idea of colonialism and ‘othering’, with its
desired and simultaneously stigmatized otherness of race, sex and gender.
Bhabha continues to show that for (colonial) mimicry to work, it must
continue to express its difference, which he terms ambivalence.
While Bhabha is speaking of an imperceptible strategy, mimicry opens
a field for action and agency as a result of discourse as conscious resistance.
Ultimately, because mimicry requires this ‘slippage’ to function, it gives
power not only to the colonizer, but also becomes the subversive tool of
the colonized. Albeit Bhabha intends mimicry as a subliminally utilized
strategy, it seems to be an important addition to the toolbox of resisting
commonplace racism, sexism and homophobia. The figure of the jester,
embodied by Marthurine, exhibits the ambivalence of mimicry since she
employs the double face of the situation.
The diverse mimicry practices that Marthurine uses can be seen as a
probing of rules, habitus and status social systems of order when political
commentary is insubstantial. Foolish ways of mimicry, such as Marthurine’s
cross-dressing, may produce arbitrary laughter, focusing on light relief.
Additionally, Marthurine exploits the opportunity of dealing with conflict
without using involved theoretical arguments or setting the scene for tragedy. Jokes, as Freud argues (1992 [1915]), are constructing a level for a
playful game, allowing insights into conflict through emphasizing and
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taking resistance by surprise. Mimicry practices function as joyful doubles of reality. Legally, socially and culturally the community is exclusively regulated by citizenship regulations; hereby mimicry enables
playful use of the rules and regulations for reinterpretation. The appeal
lies in the disruption of the political framework, in trying to create new
scenarios through repetition – a chance to revisit. Generally, practices
of mimicry refer to social and political regimes, they are markers of the
democratic processes. Through these practices, affiliation and exclusion become a visual and effective means to recover agency of formerly
uncontrollable dictates. While Stuart Hall emphasizes that the very
parts of institutional habits that cannot be destroyed are to be found
in, ‘[…] informal and unsaid ways through daily practices’ (Hall and
du Gay 1996, p. 32). By detaching oneself from acquired cultural conventions and schemes, mimicry gains agency through taking a hybrid
position. Bhabha’s concept traces the production of a domain that
doesn’t utilize the theoretical arguments of the discourse around race
and discrimination. Through humour, a distorting mirror reflects the
colonist’s desire for a reformed, recognizable ‘other’ as a subject of
difference. The colonialist sees mimicry as double vision in which the
disclosure of ambivalence toward colonial discourse also disrupts its
authority.
CARNIVAL AL LAJIIN_AL-LAJIÀAT: conteMporary
practices of MiMicry
In political, legal and humanitarian discourse, individual and practical
activities –undertaken to gain agency – often remain unseen or even invisible. While still questioning what are the ways to gain agency in situations
leading to stigma, how does one deal with labelling? Or, to ask this another
way around: how can one relabel the stigmatized? On 20 March 2016, a
group of so-called refugees, in collaboration with the campaign ‘My Right
is your Right’ and several cultural institutions, organized the Carnival
Al-Lajiìn_Al-Lajiàat (Arabic for ‘female refugee/male refugee’) in
Berlin-Kreuzberg – one of the most famous and discussed Berlin quarters,
proclaimed for the past 30 years as a multi-cultural district.5 Here, carnival
symbolizes the element of mimicry that reveals diversity, beyond the dominant discourse. Samee Ulaah, one of the organizers of ‘My Right is your
Right’, told me that the Carnival Al-Lajiìn_Al-Lajiàat is inspired by
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Michail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival (cf. Bakhtin 1984). Carnival is a popular ancient heritage ritual where art and life meet within a collectively
performed play, allowing moments of exaggeration and the grotesque.
According to Russian philosopher Bakhtin, in blurring the borders
between actors and spectators, carnival reveals a rich variety of voices that
join to deny convention, disobey hierarchies and stimulate genuine human
exchange – a currency leading to agency, that additionally is polyphonic.
The carnival has many forms of expression (Fig. 1).
Happening on a grey weekend, in the middle of the ‘alternative’ kiez of
Berlin-Kreuzberg, the procession of the Carnival Al-Lajiìn_Al-Lajiàat
seemed to be a combination of carnival and demonstration; a caravan of
decorated vehicles and people wearing costumes, referring to their very
different backgrounds and ideas of carnival. New images and costumes
were introduced to the established guise of the fool within the western
carnival. In welcoming all, the carnival offered many international ideas of
the grotesque forms of mimicry. The initiative came from a small collective
of refugees from their base in the studio of the Maxim Gorki theatre of
Berlin. Backed up by a collective of city theatres (Stadttheater), such as the
Berliner Ensemble and Schaubühne, as well as Deutsches Theater, the
Carnival Al-Lajiìn_Al-Lajiàat became a spectacle of impressive diversity.
Fig. 1 Carnival Al-Lajiìn_Al-Lajiàat in Berlin-Kreuzberg. (Photo: Thari
Jungen)
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By focussing on the idea of the laughter of solidarity amongst the camouflaged, no logos of any political or cultural institution were shown. In
addition to the support of the theatres – loaning their costumes and stage
equipment – countless citizens, urban activists, and organizations of refugees became involved. The idea of carnival, with the original meaning as
‘celebration of the flesh’, was performed through the streets with the participation of more than 5000 people.6
When one of the costumed participants wanted to start the countdown
to a small performance in the back of a truck, he asked: ‘Should we count
in the German language?’ The gathered jovial group he was addressing
answered the question firmly with: ‘No!’ Instead, somebody proclaimed
loud and clear: ‘Everybody should learn to count in Arabic!’ – which was
then put into effect immediately after. By raising the voice within a spontaneous assembly of strangers, the very idea of assimilation and participation through language produced an unexpected response to the contrary,
thereby gaining agency by incidental comment on the political situation.
As Mikhail Bakhtin (1984) determines: ‘Carnival contains a laughter from
below, directed to the privileged and the ruling order’ (Fig. 2).7
Fig. 2 Many participants of the Carnival Al-Lajiìn_Al-Lajiàat manifested their
solidarity and sympathy for so-called refugees through display of puppets and costumes. (Photo: Thari Jungen)
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In a similar way to Marthurine, the so-called refugees not only brought
about the carnival, they also published a newspaper: Daily Resistance.8
Projects such as this are establishing public spaces of critique and selfempowerment by using mimicry and parody as one way of speaking out.
Both of these projects – the newspaper Daily Resistance and the group
‘My Right is your Right’ – were inaugurated by people who have fled; they
are dedicated to people in the refugee camps and made by people from the
refugee camps. In both instances, they mock their own situation to break
the isolation. They return from the imposed status of a supposed
Mängelwesen (being a person without rights or agency) to being individuals with diverse wishes, needs and realities.9
In looking at the practice of labelling let us give insight into how attributions by others are formed, dependent on and regulated through habitus, politics and legal rights.
Stereotyping is not the setting up of a false image which becomes the scapegoat of discriminatory practices. It is a much more ambivalent text of projection and introjection, metaphoric and metonymic strategies, displacement,
over-determination, guilt, aggressivity; the masking and splitting of ‘official’
and phantasmatic knowledges to construct the positionalities and oppositionalities of racist discourse.10 (Bhabha 2004b, p. 117)
Mimicry, as an approach of ethnology, reveals the dubiety of concepts
such as identity and similarity; moreover the notion of mimicry discloses
the most important categories of imitation as in ‘belief and desire’ (de
Tarde 1979 [1890], p. 217), as shown in the very different practices
within the regime of normalcy. Since mimicry can become an act of resistance, through joking, mocking, ‘vogueing’ or specific rites, it reveals the
ambivalence of the homogenous desire for normalcy, assimilation and
power within modern nation states. Mimicry practices using gaps within
bureaucratic, social and political regulations to re-examine the practice of
relabelling and subjectivation in daily life.
When the German ‘Welcome Culture’ (Willkommenskultur) emerged
in 2017, Simone Dede Ayivi – a female black activist – wrote an article in
the German newspaper Die Zeit, wherein she was referring to a black volunteer in one of the refugee camps who had been interrupted in her work
when another helper said: ‘Du musst nicht helfen. Wir helfen!’ (‘You must
not help. We help!’, author’s translation).11 It is no surprise when even
voluntary workers of the supposed ‘Welcome Culture’ themselves are not
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immune to labelling and stereotyping as racist practices. This example,
however, shows how diverse constructions of labelling have become
acceptable to us, as well as showing the ambivalence involved in the application of such labels. The practice of labelling has become ingrained within
every day identification. Labelling involves the selection of particular characteristics by the labeller; these are exaggerated and simplified and so selfidentity and behaviour may be determined or influenced by the terms used
to describe or classify.
Those labels or fantasies of selected characteristics, that are gaining the
effect of a ‘natural’ inscription, are unchangeable according to Homi
Bhabha. ‘Like fantasies of the origins of sexuality, the productions of “colonial desire” mark the discourse as “a favoured spot for the most primitive
defensive reactions such as turning against oneself, into an opposite, projection, negation.”’ (Bhabha 2004b, p. 116) Racism, as Mark Terkessidis
(1997, pp. 172–87) points out (and here sexism may be added in as well),
is not a prejudice but rather very much of a part of the assembly of social
values, as well as part of collective knowledge. “Labelling is referring to the
modern nation state’s heightened demand for normalcy” as I would equate
with the predominant discourse (Goffman 1986 [1963], p. 7). Erwing
Goffman states that today’s stigmas are the result not so much of ancient
or religious prohibitions, but of a new demand for normalcy. This demand
does not only affect the colour of the skin, but specific cultural and social
codes. Living in a divided world, according to Goffman, there are the forbidden places where the revelation of otherness means vulnerability and
risk, where people of colour are sorely tolerated, and other places where
people of colour are more easily accepted without need to dissimulate, to
camouflage and hide in order to protect themselves (Goffman 1986
[1963], p. 13). ‘What are unthinking routines for normals can become
management problems for the discreditable’ (Goffmann 1986 [1963],
p. 88). Here, Goffman points out, the ambivalence and the plurality of the
roles and patterns that exist and can change according to the very different
situations. Within labelling, seen as an act of signification, lies a device that
reduces, normalizes and fixes the difference of subjects and communities
with their imposed identity. The conscious repetition of such practice belies
a vital, very physical sense of discomfort, thus prompting the mind to
reflect on the reasons behind the need to adhere to the use of labels.
Performances – such as playing with language, highlighting, manifesting
shifts and transformations – are usual forms of subversive (language) politics against the hegemonic and homogenous influence of western cultures.
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The performance collective Kanak Attack engages in a wide range of subversive language politics; by electing to use an ethnolect known as ‘kanakisch’
they offer their own new interpretation of the abusive and racist origin of
the term Kanake.12 Their ethnolect uses a typically Turkish accent, full with
exaggeration, providing a jokey response to the ubiquitous stereotypical
labelling of the Turkish. Thus ‘kanakisch’ became a popular form of slang,
even throughout the non-Turkish community in Germany. Mimicry creates the possibility to explore symbolic situations through provocative performance, in the copying and representation of social situations, personal
individual characters or role models.13
Although stigmatized and labelled subjects do not actually represent a
passive, homogenous collective at all, rather they are persons with agency,
diverse wishes and competencies. In asserting their legal rights, they
engage in different creative forms to achieve a better daily life within their
differing statuses of citizenship. Conversely, this does not imply the ignoring of particular histories, trauma or fears. Additionally, it does not prompt
an agreement based solely on the terms of the current legal or political
situation.
In contrast to the external valuation made by Goffman of the labelling
concept, Michel Foucault describes the idea of subjectivation, within technology of the self as a mental attitude. He conceives of the subject as a
being, existing and therefore a quasi- complete subject, logically described
as a ‘final production’. Foucault suggests to negotiate the procedures of
subjectivation as an object of analysis instead of defining the category of
the subject itself. The central thesis of Foucault (1980) points out that
what is done, the subject itself, defines the very moment of creating history – or saying it the other way around, erroneously we imagine practice
defines itself out of creating and forming.14 Through examining the historification of subjectivation, Foucault breaks with the notion of sovereign
and constitutive subjects, while perceiving subjectivation according to
becoming subject, and therefore gains the ability to decentralize the
subject.
Mimicry sheds light on the variety of instruments, objects and methods, as practical methodological tools of analysis that makes labelling
practices more visible. Imitation and mimicry are considered forms of
performance itself that highlight differentiation in the modes of production of representation, politics and identity. The political dimension of
imitation seems always to refer to a presumed society of origin, and by
doing so it constructs an exclusive fictional community (Bielefeld 1997,
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p. 99). The inevitable alliance of the origin and the mimicry itself seems
to be concurrent with the predominant idea of the society of origin,
moreover appropriated by imitation and, at the same time, re-emphasizing its antagonistic qualities; the falsification, the false, if not to say the
fraudulent. These negative external ascriptions are common daily acts of
stigmatization. The gap – between the process of identification and the
person subjected to this process – enables one to emancipate and reflect
on the truth through the means, or strategy, of mimicry.
By saying that this process of imitation is never complete, Bhabha
argues that there is always something lacking. There are always cultural,
historical, and racial differences which hinder one’s complete transformation into a subject that is not subjectivated and not labelled from the
outside. According to Nikita Dhawan and Maria do Castro Varela (2015,
p. 221), I would formulate that the agency of the colonized lies in shifting
the meaning. Every attempt at stereotype – with whom the colonized,
stigmatized or labelled ‘other’ is determined as fixed to a definitive picture – is nevertheless inevitably fragmented in itself and self-contradictory.
Here, Bhabha shaped the term hybridity that describes the cultural and
psycho-social effects of colonialism, and also points to the inherent ambivalence of the discourse (meaning every discourse) within. By doing so, he
attains a level of visibility, revealing the ambivalence of the dualism of orient and occident, as well as of colonizer and colonized, or the exclusive
and inclusive (cf. Young 2004, p. 26).
conclusion
Jokes, spoofs and parodies aim to reflect the sphere of emancipation and
empathy through reiteration. In trying to reclaim the question of equality – through the creation of alternative views of daily life, and a utilization
of the subject’s vulnerability to linguistic and parodic mimicry – there
emerges a discourse on debasement and reflection. Irony questions our
ability to define ourselves in reference and deference to others. The theory
and its practice reflects and retransfers – it sets up a ‘live’ perpetuating
capacity for rethinking – whereas discourse, increasingly routinely
criticized for its limitations, becomes an end in itself, existing purely to
serve the needs of western academic discourse rather than seeing theory as
a tool of intervention, or seeing theory as supplementary to practice.15
Moreover, by actively highlighting the contradictions and objections of
society though personal appropriation and exploiting the potential of
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humour to reach others, practices of mimicry can become acts of resistance. Furthermore, such performed technologies of the self, demonstrate
the ambivalence of the homogenous desire for normalcy, assimilation and
power in modern nation states.16 Diverse subjectivation and labelling
practices in everyday situations are calling for the intervention of jokes and
humour, although mimicry practices are only minor supportive acts of
self-empowerment that do not in themselves replace – or necessarily
change – any legal or political situation. They refer to the ambivalent discourse of appropriation and assimilation as both practices and theory of
mimicry. The carnival, in particular, perfectly expresses the idea that citizenship is more than a legal right; citizenship also consists of a demand for
social, political and cultural agency.
notes
1. Erwing Goffman’s theory on stigma deals with techniques of the self, by
analysing the specific interactive practices of individualities with their pictures from outside, answering to the institutionalized scripts with regard to
their respective external perception. While Michel Foucault’s notion of the
‘technologies of the self’ references regulation and governmental practices
within the perspective of flexible, normalized spaces for different possibilities of lifestyle attended to the individualities. Cf. Michel Foucault (1988)
Technologies of the Self. Also, Goffman, Erving (1986) Stigma: Notes on the
Management of Spoiled Identity.
2. Cf. Edouard Fournier: ‘Feu de Joye de Mme Marthurine’, in Variétés historiques et littéraires, (Paris, Jannet), 1855–1863, p. 274. See also: La
cholère de Mathurine, contre les difformez reformateurs de la France, À sa
grande Ame, (Paris), pp. 168–73.
3. Here, the term performance is used as an ephemeral concept – not necessarily attached to definitive categories as, for example, within the arts – but
inside the alliance of acting as a conscious statement, practice or movement, referring to Michel Foucault’s term of self-technology (Foucault
1988).
4. The term ‘yellow press’ or ‘yellow journalism’ appeared first in Ervin
Wardman’s New York Press in late January 1897, as a concise expression
for ‘new journalism’. Over the years, the term is used to describe misconduct in news-gathering. ‘The term has served as a derisive shorthand for
denouncing journalists and their misdeeds, real and imagined’ (cf.
Campbell 2001).
5. For more information about the collaborative project please see, www.
myrightisyourright.de, date accessed 18 February 2018.
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6. The meaning of the original Italian term ‘carnevale’ refers to carnem
(meat) and levare (remove). The etymology embedded in its meaning is as
a dared festival where the flesh of bodies is removed by costumes. Translated
as ‘flesh farewell’ in the figurative sense, the term also marks the festivity as
a Christian tradition when Lent begins, forty days before Easter.
7. Since the Bolshevik committee eventually took responsibility to release
(belatedly) Bakhtin’s famous study Rabelais and his World (1984), the
question relating humour to government, power and discipline was first
allowed to be asked publicly only after 30 years had passed by. The potential benefits of parody, spoofs and jokes as daily – not necessarily – political
acts, is expressed within the dissertation of Mikhail Bakhtin, writing from
a subversive classification. For further reading please see, Robin Andrews
(2011) ‘Bakhtin: Carnival against Capital, Carnival against Power’ in
Ceasefire, 09/ 2011, www.ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-2,
date accessed 26 January 2017.
8. www.dailyresistance.oplatz.net, date accessed 18 February 2018.
9. Arnold Gehlen points out that to rule the world a man, apart from the
owned deficiencies (Mängel), must not only be able to take action, he has
also to be capable of development. Gehlen emphasizes that the degree to
which a human being is defenceless is commensurate with its surroundings, thereby he proposes to strengthen both institutions and organizations in both the state and private sectors (for further reading please see,
Gehlen 2016 [1940]).
10. Comparing both terms – labelling as well as stereotyping – the practice of
stereotyping forces, in Homi Bhabha’s words, the codifying of whole communities while the discourse of labelling seeks to normalize individuals (for
further reading please see, Bhabha 2004b, p. 117).
11. Simone Dede Ayivi describes in her article, entitled as ‘Wir müssen über
Rassismus reden’ (‘We need to talk about racism’, author’s translation) her
perspective as a black German citizen due to the period of the so-called
‘summer of migration’. cf. www.zeit.de/kultur/2015-10/integrationrassismus-fluechtlingshilfe-10nach8, date accessed 18 February 2018.
12. Kanak Attak is a community of different people from diverse backgrounds
who share a commitment to eradicate racism from German society;
amongst others they are known for their ethnolect ‘getürkt’. Their manifesto states: ‘We sample, change and adapt different political and cultural
drifts that all operate from oppositional positions’ [author’s translation],
cf. www.kanakattak.de, date accessed 18 February 2018.
13. Oliver Marchart (2007, p. 80) points to the fact that Bhabha’s theory of
subversion, like every other theory of subversion, has a problem in proving
its threat toward power – because it isn’t revolution or open protest. He
relegates to the fact that power structures themselves need a certain
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amount of subversion in order to exert power, as well as preserve their
stability, while also remarking a difference to other forms of protest.
Contained within the subversion of mimicry, there aren’t any defined
claims and goals, thus cannot be proven or quantified, only be theoretically
formulated.
14. For further reading and a more expansive overview of this discourse, the
following is recommended: Paul Veyne (1997) ‘Foucault Revolutionizes
History’ in Davidson, Arnold I. (ed.) Foucault and His Interlocutors,
pp. 146–82.
15. Focussing on the gap between theory and practice: Elleke Boehmer (2013)
‘Revisiting Resistance’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Postcolonial Studies,
pp. 307–21.
16. By referring to the concept of citizenship, as Seyla Benhahib (2008, p. 35)
states, ‘[…] we face a paradox internal to democracies, namely, that democracies cannot choose the boundaries of their own membership democratically’. Although this state-centred perspective may be criticized, through
the agreement that citizenship must also be defined as a social process
through which individuals and social groups engage in claiming, expanding and losing rights (Isin and Turner 2002, p. 4). Since Engin Isin,
amongst other theorists, speaks of the practice of ‘acts of citizenship’, they
describe those moments and habits through which subjects actively produce citizens by governing themselves (Isin 2009, p. 367).
references
Anonymous. 1616. La cholère de Mathurine, contre les difformez reformateurs de la
France, à sa grande Amye. Bordeaux: Jean Milot.
Bakhtin, M. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Benhahib, S. 2008. Another Cosmopolitanism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bhabha, H.K. 2004a. On Mimicry and Men: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse. In The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
———. 2004b. The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge.
Bielefeld, U. 1997. Das Eigene und das Fremde. Neuer Rassismus in der Alten
Welt? Hamburg: Junius Verlag.
Boehmer, E. 2013. Revisiting Resistance. In The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial
Studies, ed. G. Huggan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, W.J. 2001. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the
Legacies. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Castro Varela, M. do M., and N. Dhawan. 2015. Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Einführung. Bielefeld: Transcript.
de Tarde, G. 1979. Les lois de l’imitation: etude sociologique. Paris: F. Alcan.
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Didi-Huberman, G. 2001. Das Paradox der Phasmiden. In Phasmes. Cologne:
DuMont.
Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings,
1972–1977. New York: Vintage.
———. 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst:
The University of Massachusetts Press.
Fournier, E. 1855a. Feu de Joye de Mme Mathurine (An Advertisement Placed)
in Variétés Historiques et Littéraires. Paris: Jannet.
———. (ed.) 1855b. Les Caquets de l’Accouchée. In Les Essais de Mathurine,
Paris: Jannet.
Freud, S. 1992. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Trans. Joyce Crick.
Harmondsworth/New York: Penguin.
———. 2003. The Uncanny. Trans. David McLintock. Harmondsworth/New
York: Penguin.
Gehlen, A. 2016. Der Mensch: Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt. Frankfurt
am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Goffman, E. 1986. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled. New York:
Touchstone.
Hall, S., and P. du Gay. 1996. Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage UK.
Isin, E.F. 2009. Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen. In
Subjectivity, 29/S1. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Isin, F.E., and S.B. Turner. 2002. An Introduction. In Handbook of Citizenship
Studies, ed. E.F. Isin et al. London: Sage UK.
Lemaignan, M. 2009. Mathurine ou la question d’un tiers espace de l’hétérodoxie,
dans La Confession catholique du Sieur de Sancy d’Agrippa d’Aubigné’ in
L’Atelier du Centre de Recherches Historiques. http://journals.openedition.
org/acrh/1234#quotation. Accessed 10 Mar 2018.
Marchart, O. 2007. Der koloniale Signifikant. Kulturelle ‘Hybridität’und das
Politische, oder: Homi Bhabha wiedergelesen. In Kultureller Umbau, Räume,
Identitäten und Re/Präsentationen, ed. M. Krönke et al. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Terkessidis, M. 1997. Woven into the Texture of Things. Rassismus als praktische
Einheit von Wissen und Institution. In Evidenzen Im Fluß: Demokratieverluste
in Deutschland; Modell D – Geschlechte – Rassismus – PC, ed. A. Disselnkötter.
DISS: Duisburg.
Veyne, P. 1997. Foucault Revolutionizes History. In Foucault and His Interlocutors,
ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Young, R.J.C. 2004. White Mythologies. Writing History and the West. London/
New York: Routledge.
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Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
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holder.
Paralogistics: On People, Things and Oceans
geheimagentur and Sibylle Peters
A FIRST REPORT
This is a first report from a long-term research into paralogistics. It covers
about seven years of inquiry and travel over the course of several projects
that dealt with questions around Hamburg port, shipping, radical seafaring, cruise ships and seafarers’ rights, with piracy and the right to the sea –
most of them conducted by the performance collective geheimagentur.1 At
the beginning of this journey, I did not know that this research was about
paralogistics. In fact, the whole concept of paralogistics, including the
term itself, is a recent invention – or rather discovery – that allows me to
put experiences, difficulties and insights of these last years and months
into perspective.
What might be agency, based on our connectedness through the sea?
Paralogistics provide answers to the question of how to act together in
ever changing entanglements of people, things and oceans. Often, paralogistics are hiding under the radar, but once you find and connect to them,
they turn out to be everywhere. Then they can produce a feeling of evidence that is ubiquitous and contagious and paralogical. One might
geheimagentur (*)
Hamburg, Germany
S. Peters (*)
FUNDUS Theater, Hamburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_14
209
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GEHEIMAGENTUR AND S. PETERS
suspect that paralogistics are related to logistics, as the paranormal is to the
normal. In that sense, paralogistics talk to the ghosts of logistics and
through them.
This is a report from an ongoing research process which intentionally
manoeuvers between academic discourse on the one hand, and accounts
from artistic experimentation and explorative travel, on the other. It traces
paralogistical connections and movements more than formally investigates
them, and it also includes dead ends and failing proofs. Ultimately, paralogistics are not just about how to hack logistics, but possibly also about
how these hacks fail to be quite logical.
WHAT IS HYDRARCHY TODAY?
In 2010, a group of Somali pirates hijacked the cargo ship MS Taipan that
was sailing under German flag. Dutch naval forces captured the pirates and
brought them to Hamburg for trial. It was the first piracy trial in Hamburg
since 1624.
At the time I was working at the Theatre of Research, a children’s theatre that had been turned into an institute for transgenerational art-based
research.2 Given that there was no birthday party without a treasure hunt,
and that a kid pirate called Captain Sharky was depicted on their toothbrushes, the children were curious: ‘How come the pirates have escaped
from the movies and why does nobody like them anymore, now that they
are real?’ The children were asking questions we all had, but no one dared
to ask. Therefore, geheimagentur and Theatre of Research decided to
invite them to dress up in their pirates’ costumes and record their questions for real pirates on video.
Exploring the idea that everyone on this planet is connected to everyone else through no more than seven links, we asked friends of friends of
friends if they knew any Somali pirates. After a remarkable odyssey we
finally found the pirates in Eastleigh, the Somali part of Nairobi, in the
club room of a hotel. The pirates were more afraid of us than we were of
them. Watching the kids’ videos made them relax. They opened up and
really tried to give an account of what had happened, for the kids of
Hamburg to understand:
‘How did you become a pirate in the first place?’
‘How do you like Pirates of the Caribbean?’
‘Have you ever killed somebody and doesn’t it hurt you in the heart?’
‘Would you like your children to become pirates, too?’
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
211
Among the pirates we met there was an old man who had been part
of that first group of fishermen who had thought of themselves as acting
on behalf of the non-existent coastguard of the non-existent state of
Somalia, trying to reinforce the three-mile zone which had been violated
by corporate fishing fleets that had taken away the livelihood of Somali
fishermen. There also was a fragile-looking guy of 17 who had just
escaped from Somalia and whose body spoke of lifelong hunger. Because
he was so light he had been forced to be the first of his crew to climb up
that shaking ladder onto the deck of the containership with a machine
gun hanging round his neck. His bosses, who had safely stayed ashore,
gave him 10,000 dollars out of the million-dollar ransom. Money that
soon after was taken from him again, when he was robbed on his way
out. He had never been on a ship before and did not intend to set foot
on one again.
Paralogistics is first and foremost a take on logistics, coming from outside of the logistical systems to hack and interrupt them for access.
Have you ever looked up the bow of a containership from a little boat
floating next to it? Next time you do a harbour trip in one of the small
tourist boats, envisage your only way to escape from oblivion was to climb
onto that deck up there in the sky and claim that monster of a ship as
yours. Imagine what an extraordinary kind of courage it takes to do that,
the courage of those who had no part in the global order of things, until
they realised that one of the major logistical lifelines of global capitalism
was right there, on the horizon, within their reach.
While we brought the answers of the pirates, recorded on video, back
to the children of Hamburg and transformed their dialogue into a stage
performance, the Atalanta naval mission slowly managed to reinstate what
has lately been called ‘supply chain security’. The shipping industry of
Hamburg founded a centre to train private anti-piracy forces for their
ships. These forces, trained in a remote industrial zone of the city, were
more than discreet; they never took prisoners and no one in Hamburg has
ever heard of their actions again.
Considering that the shipping industry of Hamburg had made donations to the Theatre of Research in the past, we realised that by connecting
children and pirates in this improbable dialogue we had enacted a link that
had already been there, but which somehow was hidden from our sight.
We understood that, being citizens of Hamburg, one of the biggest ports
in the world, there were many links between us and other people
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somewhere else,3 and that it was not by accident that these links remained
hidden and remained offshore somehow. We understood that something
crucial had happened to the logistics of the port during the last decades.
And not just to our port; London, New York, Hong Kong – port cities
around the world have moved their docks and terminals out into special
zones with no connection to the urban space we live in.4 Containerisation
has brought the mass expulsion of labour from the ports. At Hamburg’s
Euro Terminal, no more than five people are needed to unload the biggest
containerships in less than a day. Less than 20 people work on a big containership and none of them are from Hamburg. Instead, the captain and
his officers are most likely from Russia and the crew is from the Philippines.
Because they stay at the terminal for only one day at a time, they no longer
get to visit Hamburg, not even the famous brothels of St. Pauli. For the
first time since the city was founded, citizens of Hamburg do not sail the
seas anymore.
From Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s book ‘The Many-Headed
Hydra’,5 we learned about the heritage of piracy. We learned about Atlantic
piracy as an improbable alliance between liberated slaves from West Africa
and a first form of the European working class which was forced into service on the ships of the European empires, effectively the first factories.
Linebaugh and Rediker call this alliance ‘Hydrarchy’. geheimagentur collective asked: What might hydrarchy be today?
A first step to finding out, we thought, would be to reclaim our right to
the harbour as citizens of Hamburg. So, we tried. Some of us worked at
the seafarers’ mission, some of us kept a small historical steel ship afloat,
some of us lived in an old shipyard. We did research about the boom of the
cruise ship industry that had recently taken over big parts of Hamburg
port. In summer 2015, geheimagentur collective temporarily opened an
‘Alternative Cruise Ship Terminal’ in the middle of the port, where for a
few weeks different kinds of experiences of the port were facilitated and
created.6
Learning by doing, we became knowledgeable about the power structure of Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) – a half-private, half-public organisation that owns the land and makes the rules in Hamburg port. We
found that, in the name of safety and security, HPA keeps everyone out of
the port who is not ‘relevant for port economy’. Of course, only Hamburg
Port Authority gets to decide who and what fits this criterion. Nobody can
live in Hamburg port or to open, for instance, a café on a boat without the
permission of HPA, which is very hard to get. In the port, it seems we are
all illegal migrants.
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
213
THE LOGISTICAL TURN
Meanwhile, people all over the world were squatting the streets and
squares of their cities in the name of real democracy. The Tahir Square
Movement, the Syntagma Square assemblies, the Occupy Movement in
the US, the Indignados in Spain, and many others – and geheimagentur
started to work within a network of artists, activists and researchers to
explore this new ‘art of being many’.7 We met people from Tunis, Cairo,
Madrid, New York, Athens and Istanbul. And we asked ourselves if in
some way, the pirates of Puntland Somalia were to be counted in. But we
did not understand what the connection between these struggles was,
until we read Deborah Cowen’s book, The Deadly Life of Logistics,8 in
which she constructs a relation between Somali piracy and the Occupy
movement:
Much like ‘The Many-Headed Hydra’, the seemingly disparate lives of these
movements are connected through the infrastructures of logistics space.
Alongside profound differences in strategy, tactics, and the logistics of
struggle, together with the very real distance (socially and spatially) between
these collectivities, there has also at times been exchange between members
and overlap in organizers, events, and ideas that point to the potential for a
different occupation and organization of logistics space. (Cowen, p. 227)
Cowen, as well as thinkers like Keller Easterling,9 Sandro Mezzadra and
Brett Neilson,10 or Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, argue that capitalism
currently is taking a logistical turn.11
Logistics – the science of the supply chain – comes from warfare and, in
warfare, has traditionally been a service dominated by the master discourse
of warfare: strategy. Of course, logistics is also of crucial importance for
trade, where it is also in a position of service to the system of production
that has for the longest time been seen as the core of the economy. In this
position of service, to either strategy or production, logistics has connected warfare to trade and trade to warfare for thousands of years. But
when containerisation had its breakthrough – not least due to the
U.S. Army’s use of containers to keep supply chains open to their troops
in Vietnam – something changed for logistics and made it rise up over its
former masters. The free movement of capital around the globe, the digital revolution alongside the fact that the internet has become a gigantic
catalogue to order from, crisis-driven migration between continents and
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the primary importance of energy systems: all of this contributed to the
rise of logistics. Thus today, strategy follows logistics in warfare, and production took its position in a system of circulation, in a gigantic supply
chain that more and more models society as such. In a paper on Extraction,
Logistics and Finance, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson write:
‘Stemming from military practices, logistics organizes capital in technical
ways that aim to make every step of its “turnover” productive’ (Mezzadra
and Neilson, p. 5). Capitalism itself has become the movement of
movements.
UPS,12 global player of logistics, describes this as follows: ‘Everybody
loves something. We love logistics. We love its precision, its epic scale,
its ability to make life better for billions of people. Each day, our customers count on us to choreograph a ballet of infinite complexity
played across skies, oceans and borders. And we do. What’s not to
love?’13
Logistics seems humble. Its subordinate position turns out to be its
strength. It focuses on operations which seemingly only build the platform, create the conditions for human life to happen. Customers count
on it to supply what is needed in some other place, where life is supposed to happen. Logistics is not considered a part of that, it does not
have to be thought of in terms of the public and the social. It is just a
service. To really be of service it mainly has to be one thing: it has to
be safe and secure. Or else, how is it supposed to provide what is
needed in that other place where life is happening? But in its growth,
global logistics takes the space where life was supposed to happen and
turns it into logistical zones designed and defined by the safety of the
supply chain.
Look at the things that surround us, such as clothing, furniture, technical equipment. Make a guess: how much of it has been shipped before it
arrived where you find it right now?
Rose George turned the answer to that question into the title of her
book, Ninety Percent of Everything.14 In it, she cites the chief of the British
navy: ‘Today we suffer from sea blindness’ (George, p. 4). George extrapolates, ‘There are no ordinary citizens to witness the working of an industry that is one of the most fundamental to their daily existence’ (George,
p. 2). But citizenship needs witnesses. If there are no citizens to witness
something, there is no citizenship in that which is not witnessed. George
points out that citizen rights do not apply for everyone working on a
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
215
containership. ‘Imagine you have a problem while on a ship. Who do you
complain to, when you are employed by a Manila manning agency on a
ship owned by an American, flagged by Panama, managed by a Cypriot in
international waters?’ (George, p. 10).
Obviously, ports are crucial sites for – maybe even something like the
DNA of – the logistical turn. And this goes for all kinds of ports: airports,
the tiny ports that connect digital streams of information to local interfaces, and, of course, seaports. Therefore, to observe what happens in
ports, and what does not, might provide us with some insight about what
to expect from the logistical turn. Is there a chance to persist, to claim, to
squat or inhabit it? How are we going to take part in the dance of logistics?
In what ways are we already dancing in this ballet across skies, oceans and
borders? What if precision and epic scale are not exactly our strong side,
and what if we suck at ballet?
Looking at seaports as crucial sites of this development, what do we
see?
We see that we see nothing. We see that we are blocked out, we are
blinded. And even if we really try and manage to enter the port zone to
investigate, we find ourselves confronted with a striking difficulty to name
and to politicize anything that happens there. Sea blindness starts ashore.
Epic scale also plays a role in that. In the world of logistics everything
has to be as big as possible: ships, terminals, rivers, everything. Global
scale is not human scale, and logistics generally does not like people much;
it likes algorithms that try to create circuits of movements that rely on
human agency as little as possible. Standing at the gate of a containership
terminal, dwarfed by a form of capital that resembles the sublime – something that is so huge it is not even entirely here, but always partly somewhere else. Too big to even form something like a locality. Too big to
concern us local dwarfs.
Supply chain security is another important factor in this scenario. It is
not new, but it is diversifying and by now can appear in the disguise of
workers’ rights or children’s health considerations. It goes along with a
closed system of insurance calculations, which make us all accountable for
the security of the supply chain and make it almost impossible to intervene, to create new, alternative supply chains. Safety is just too expensive.
It is so expensive that only corporate capital can pay for it. And thus, there
is only corporate capital left in the port, and there are fences and gates and
cameras to shut everything else out: for your own safety. There are only
operators, no citizens, in logistical space.
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For centuries, Hamburg port has created the connections and the
means to sustain a city of free people. The concept of the free port as a
special economic zone was partly invented here (Easterling, p. 27 ff.). Of
course, exclusion, extraction and exploitation always had a part in this.
However, relying on the free port, Hamburg declared itself independent
of kings and territorial empires centuries ago. The zone of the free port
has been the key to this independence; it has enabled the growth and persistence of the biggest European city that is not a capital and has also
helped to establish something like a citizenship by the seas. What is happening to this tradition, to this form of citizenship, after the port itself has
been turned into a logistical zone beyond citizenship? Can the use of
paralogistics be a tactic to reclaim the ports?
THE BEACH OF BADAGRY
During the most successful years of Somali piracy, containerships stopped
coming to Mogadishu port. Containerised sea trade came to a complete
cessation there. But sea trade itself did not.
In their documentary From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf, the artist collective
Camp from India show footage of a different kind of sea trade that works
under the radar of the global logistical machine. It stems from a coastal
zone in India, somewhere north of Bombay, where special environmental
conditions allow people to build massive wooden boats without big
machinery, based on traditional craftsmanship. Hundreds of these simple
cargo ships are then used to transport cargo between India, Africa and the
whole Gulf region – a trade that is governed by people from the Indian
province, who employ their families, friends and neighbours. The documentary consists solely of edited footage that people on those ships shot
with their own cellphones. These videos show hard working conditions,
but also give the impression of self-determination, of companionship and
of living with and by the sea.
When geheimagentur temporarily opened the Alternative Cruise Ship
Terminal in Hamburg port during the summer of 2015, Shaina Anand
from Camp from India came to visit. Together, we discussed the idea of
building a ship like that in Hamburg. Could that reconnect us to a civil
and self-determined kind of seafaring? To a practice that, once upon a
time, was essential for our city and for the claim to citizenship? Or would
that just be a romantic regression?
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
217
In summer 2016, we saw ships like this again elsewhere. Not as big, not
for crossing the oceans, but nonetheless cargo ships made from wood, in
a natural dry dock. It was our last day in Nigeria and after seven days of
full-on research, day and night, on informal trade between Hamburg and
Lagos port, we had only one wish: to get out of this 20-million-peopleno-public-infrastructure-monster of a city. Get out of the traffic, get out
of the crude oil hub, get out of that never-ending street market, that zone
of EFRITIN, and go to the beach. The beach of Badagry. 20 miles of
white sand. No international resort, nothing much but coconuts and fishermen and people driving their motorbikes along the shoreline because
there they could go faster than on the bumpy road. The waves of the
Atlantic were just perfect, a surfers’ paradise that seemed untouched,
unseen, unheard of. And then there were these huge boats made from
tropical wood overarching the beach. Actually, this was not quite a beach.
It was a shipyard. The ships were made right here, probably to serve as
cargo ships for the informal trade with Benin, the border being just ten
miles away.
When we saw them, we realized that we would not have found them if
we had not followed the informal sea trade from Hamburg to Nigeria,
created by migrants, and that we would not have understood what we saw
if we had not watched Camp’s documentary. And that we would never
have watched it if we had not opened the Alternative Cruise Ship Terminal.
And that we would not have done that if we had not been involved in the
improbable dialogue between pirates and children. And next thing we
could do, together with our Nigerian business partners, would be to find
out about these cargo ships and try and buy one, and turn it into a little
cruise ship for our Alternative Cruise Ship company. And then all would
fit together in an extremely seductive version of a happy ending, that
comes with the feeling that everything is connected, people and things
and oceans. That they arrange themselves and each other, that they never
stop arranging each other, floating, bending, and not only building
machines, but bodies full of needs and desires. And that we, as part of
these bodies, are constantly following the moon and the tides around the
planet, riding and at the same time creating, the currents.
But some of those currents are quite old, and within them something is
transported through time that will never find a happy ending. And thus,
just when you feel happily connected with everything, the ghosts of logistics might come and speak to you, opening up a paralogistic dialogue.
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Back in the city we got ready for the flight back, when a guy turned up
at the bar of the hotel, just in time for last orders. ‘My name is Memory’,
he said, ‘like memory. Do you know the card game?’ He asked me about
my day, and when I told him about the beach of Badagry, he smiled: ‘Did
we know’, he asked, ‘that Badagry was ground zero of human trafficking?
Did we know that that beach saw the very beginning of the Atlantic slave
trade and that just a few miles from where we were, there was a famous
and bloody stone that was called the stone of no return, because everyone
who had passed that stone had turned into a thing to be shipped? No, we
had not known that. But there was Memory standing right in front of us,
raising his glass to our safe journey.
In The Undercommons, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten sometimes
seem to speak with the voices of the shipped with the voices of those who
had walked past that stone of no return. In their discussion of the logistical
turn they argue that modern logistics was born there, that the Atlantic
slave trade is the first model of modern logistics. This does not mean that
all logistics involve the slave trade, but it does indicate that the position
afforded to people in logistics tends to be that of the shipped. However,
this is no position, no standpoint. At least not when it comes to the circuits of capitalism. Harney and Moten write:
If the proletariat was located at a point in the circuits of capital, a point in
the production process from which it had a peculiar view of capitalist totality, what of those who were located at every point, which is to say at no
point, in the production process? What of those who were not just labour
but commodity, not just in production but in circulation, not just in circulation but in distribution as property, not just property but property that
reproduced and realized itself? The standpoint of no standpoint, everywhere
and nowhere, of never and to come, of thing and nothing. (Moten and
Harney, p. 100)
If this is what happens when logistics takes over, the question of what
logistics might be from ‘our point of view’ cannot be answered, as logistics
moves us and moves us around until we become the shipped, those who
have no standpoint.
I asked Memory if he would agree that if Badagry is ground zero of the
Atlantic slave trade, it also had to be ground zero of hydrarchy? As by
producing the shipped, it also produced new alliances of the shipped,
pirates’ alliances, that crossed borders of continents and races and powers
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
219
in a new planetary dimension? But Memory did not know that, and I had
to get to the airport to fly back to Hamburg. Maybe I was too stoned to
make myself clear.
THE SHIPPINGS OF THE SHIPPED
The weed dealers from our neighbourhood were the ones who finally
cleared our heads and started to cure our sea-blindness beyond our projection of the Hamburg port. They added a most important piece to the
puzzle. When we had opened the Alternative Cruise Ship Terminal we had
postulated publicly that the citizens of Hamburg had lost their relation to
their port and were not using it anymore, which is why the port was now
sold to them as spectacle in festivals and cruises. And that might still be
right, but then we found out that the non-citizens of this city do use the
port. Not so much for transporting weed. No, they were using the port
for the same reason they had started to sell weed in the first place; they had
recently come here from West Africa. Hence, most of them had no citizen
rights, which means no access to the market where they could sell their
labour and become a properly exploited member of what is left of the
proletariat. So, they tried to find access to the entanglement of people,
things and oceans in a different way.
They told us that some time back, in the early 1990s, people had come
to Hamburg from West Africa to find that there is an abundance of things
that are thrown away here, but were wanted in West Africa, or – as they
prefer to put it – things are moving, are moving in Lagos, in Gambia, in
Ghana. Fridges, TVs, hairdryers, hoovers, water heaters, remote controls – basically everything used in a household and everything with a
plug. And that if they could find a way to collect these things and ship
them from Hamburg to West Africa that would make a big difference in
the lives of their families. Ever since, most people coming from West Africa
were trying to do that one way or the other.
geheimagentur conducted extensive interviews with some of them.
Everyone who had recently come from West Africa had the same answer
to our question, whether they knew someone related to this business or
not: ‘All the people I know.’ All our interview partners introduced themselves as businessmen. Some of them had studied logistics back in West
Africa. During the interviews the impression of talking to refugees faded
and, though most of them had in fact had horrific reasons for fleeing their
country, we realized that we were at the same time talking to a first or
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GEHEIMAGENTUR AND S. PETERS
second wave of aspiring African businessmen, of lower middle and working class people from Africa, who were trying to turn things around and
were looking at Europe from the perspective of what to extract from it,
what to set in motion, for the only reason that it is moving in Lagos. All
of them stressed that they were able to do this now because the internet
allowed them to build informal logistical networks between Hamburg and
Lagos with their phones, including ways to regulate money flow.
We learned that another crucial element of these paralogistics are cars.
However, cars are not only cars in this informal supply chain, they are
containers. The car makes use of a hole in the system, as customs will
charge you for the car, not for what is inside the car. Therefore, to send
stuff to West Africa, you first buy a car, a scrap car will do, and then fill
every cubic inch of the car with stuff.
Hidden in the industrial zone in the east of Hamburg – in close proximity to that centre where the anti-piracy forces are trained – there is a
place that is organized by this trade. In Billstraße you find everything that
is moving in Lagos. The place does not look much like Hamburg, it looks
more like Tin Can Island in Nigeria. Whereas logistics makes every port
look the same, a paralogistic zone is more like a passage to a completely
different place. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of trade Hamburg Port
Authority has in mind when it comes to what they call ‘development
towards the future’ (Hamburg Port Authority).
Most of the West African movers and traders from our neighbourhood
recently came to Hamburg via the Mediterranean Sea in little boats and
ships from Libya, headed towards the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa as
an access point into Europe. Larry Macauley, an activist for refugees’
rights, born in Lagos and now living in Hamburg,15 has also come via that
route. He told me that the little ship packed with hundreds of people in a
way that reminded him of Hollywood movies he had watched about the
slave trade. The ship was balanced with human bodies and was in danger
of tipping over whenever someone moved. The chance of survival, Larry
said, was equal to the ability of the people to stay motionless for 21 hours,
to keep the balance, to function together as weight. I told Larry about my
plan to do a project about the shippings of the shipped, about the informal
trade between Hamburg port and West Africa, and he connected me
online to his friend, George Adetayo Adewoye from Valuehandlers
International Limited, and sent me to Lagos to see the other side.16
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
221
HAMBURG PORT HYDRARCHY AND THE AFRICAN TERMINAL
Within the program of the Alternative Cruise Ship Terminal project in
summer 2015, people from different initiatives and backgrounds took
each other on local cruises to share their practices of reusing the port. A
network of people emerged who are active in Hamburg port while trying
to stay under the radar of Hamburg Port Authority – a network of port(non)-citizens one might say. In the end, they built a raft together, the
Hydra, and sailed with it from the terminal situated in an old shipyard to
the centre of the city. There, next to the town hall, a demonstration on the
water took place reclaiming the right to the port for all citizens.17
To follow up on this collective effort, Hamburg Port Hydrarchy was
founded in January 2016. Mirroring or mocking Hamburg Port Authority,
Hamburg Port Hydrarchy is on a mission ‘to develop Hamburg port
towards a hydrarchical future’.
First, eight members of Hamburg Port Hydrarchy received small grants
to travel to different port cities all over the world. They visited ‘radical
seafarers’ and the so-called ‘offshore art’ scene in Brooklyn, New York.
They took part in the uprising of Venetian citizens against the cruise ship
industry. They explored the history of the boat people, as well as the current situation of seafarers trapped on board of bankrupt ships in the South
China Sea. From each trip, teams brought back to Hamburg port an array
of connections, insights and sometimes proposals for a different future.
These were presented on board the MS Stubnitz, an old ship for industrial
fishing turned into a cultural venue, in a performance consisting of lectures, installations and assemblies. On the MS Stubnitz, Hamburg Port
Hydrarchy was collectively performed for the first time, as an experimental
claim to a citizenship by the seas that does not yet exist. Transmitting from
the old radio room, the Department of Paralogistics argues for a paralogistic approach to hydrarchy by accessing logistical systems through the
backdoor, through waste and ruins, through passages that open up in the
frictions that logistics is allegedly trying to overcome.
Finishing my own research trip to Lagos Nigeria I came home to a
flood. A leakage had turned my basement into a hot tub. The janitor
showed up and we smoked a cigarette together, contemplating the damage. It turned out that he had sailed West African waters for years as a
member of the former GDR fishing fleet. He had once worked on the MS
Stubnitz that had served as a swimming factory, to which other vessels
brought their catch to be frozen and stored. Tin Can Island, the port of
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GEHEIMAGENTUR AND S. PETERS
Lagos, he remembered, was largely pirate territory back then; they had to
keep watch all through the night. However, he also said that the GDR had
good and fair business relations with African states. With the Stubnitz, and
other ships like it, the GDR provided technical equipment for industrial
fishing and therefore got a share of those states’ fishing contingents. When
the currency of the GDR went down, the industrial fishing fleet of the
GDR went down with it. Overnight, it became unaffordable to be fair.
The MS Stubnitz was rescued by sound artist Urs Blaser and a bunch of
boat punks and is still afloat today. It is now moored at Baakenhöft in
Hamburg port and serves as a venue for experimental music and performance. During German colonialism, the ships coming from Namibia were
moored not far from here. The huge Afrika Terminal, build in the 1960s
and now out of use, is still located next to the MS Stubnitz. In spring
2017, during the theatre festival – Theater der Welt – the warehouse will
be open to the public for the first time and will temporarily become a
venue for theatre and dance. Nobody knows yet what is going to happen
to it next.
After presenting on board of MS Stubnitz, Hamburg Port Hydrarchy
will develop an experimental assembly of hydrarchical setups, all to be
tried out at Baakenhöft / Baakenhafen, the last remaining part of the old
Hamburg port that is in close proximity to the city and not yet sold to
investors for ‘development’. One element of that assembly will be the reopening of the Afrika Terminal as an African Terminal in becoming. How
might a paralogistic African Terminal operate? What might it sound like,
look like, move like? And could it be a place for us to learn more about this
new kind of ‘citizenship by the seas’ that we have to invent?
LOOSE ENDS
On our first day of research in Lagos, our guide refused to take us to the
harbour. First, we would have to do this one thing for him and accompany
him to a business conference hosted by the government. When I put my
name on the list of participants, he stood right next to me and whispered
in my ear: ‘Put German Embassy.’ Given my confusion, it seemed about
right so, strangely, I obeyed. Then, our guide introduced me to people he
wanted to impress. Pictures were taken, me shaking hands, smiling, receiving a promotional plastic bag, and showing the bag to the camera.
At the end of our visit, our guides posed for our camera, too, holding
the flag of Hamburg Port Hydrarchy in front of the chart with the business
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
223
plan we had made together: Back in Hamburg port we were to open a
temporary business school, where people who had recently arrived in
Hamburg, as well as long-term citizens, could learn about the informal
trade between Hamburg and Africa and how to do it. In the end, we
would send at least five cars full of stuff that is moving in Lagos from
Hamburg Baakenhöft to Tin Can Island.
This is how to get to Tin Can Island: right before you leave Lagos
mainland and take the bridge that brings you to the terminal, you have to
park the car and take a motorbike taxi. Only the motorbike can pass
between those hundreds of oil trucks, which are blocking the highway.
The trucks are rocking to the left and to the right, almost bumping into
each other each time one of their wheels gets caught in one of the holes in
the road. The names of the companies are written on the trucks with
paint, one of them reads: God’s Will Limited. The motorbikes pass through
the dust as quickly as possible, calculating the moment when trucks are
leaning outwards and not inwards against each other. ‘There’s no new way
to die in Lagos’, people say.
When we arrived at the terminal, a man pretending to be an ‘authority’
took our camera. One hour and 12,000 naira later, we got our camera
back. When adrenalin stopped pumping we found ourselves in a yard
where people unpacked containers and cars with signs on them saying
‘Hamburg to Lagos’. A bunch of kids’ bikes and hoovers spilled out. All
moving in Lagos. One of the traders wore a shirt saying ‘There’s less here
than meets the eye’. The place looked just like Billstraße in Hamburg.
The business conference we were taken to was about agriculture.
During lectures, electricity went on and off. Nobody seemed to care;
speakers just went on speaking in the dark, in the pitch-black room.
Listening to them, I learned that the state of Nigeria wants the country to
change, wants it to become more independent from import, more independent from the oil price. Or maybe does not exactly want, but has to, as
the oil price is down and so is the Nigerian currency – the Naira – that lost
half its value in 2016. It did not help that the government had tried to
fight corruption by limiting the exchange of naira to dollar or euro. We
understood that the informal trade we were about to throw ourselves into
was in serious trouble, and what it means that the agency of everyone
working in worldwide logistics is tied to the oil price, now including our
own.
Later on, we met Aderemi Adegbite, an artist who makes a living as a
line producer for film crews from abroad. His main service is to pay the
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authorities 12,000 naira before white people show up with their cameras.
He lives in Makoko. Makoko is where migrants from Benin first enter
Lagos. They do not actually step on Nigerian soil but build their houses
on wooden stilts in the waters of the Lagoon. Makoko looks amazing. No
wonder that everyone in the art world loved that project shown at the
Venice Biennale in 2013 – Makoko Floating School by the Nigerian architecture practice NLÉ. Only Aderemi Adegbite did not. It turns out that
Makoko community never wanted a floating school: why would we send
our children to a school that can be taken away by the currents or by towing it with a motorboat?
Larry, activist for refugees’ rights in Hamburg, is a proud Lagosian. He
is no fan of the people of Makoko. They are no Lagosians, they live no
Lagosian life; they belong somewhere else he thinks. What would I think,
Larry asks me, if people from Africa were living an African life right here
in Hamburg?
Wikipedia defines paralogistic as a term for a circular argument, a failing
proof.
EPILOGUE: SEARCHING FOR ALTERNATIVE SUPPLY CHAINS
Epilogue
When this text went to print, the core group of the African Terminal consisted of nine members from Gambia, Nigeria and Ghana and three members from Germany. The first transaction – in which the African Terminal
group claimed the space of the old Afrika Terminal to collect goods and
send them to Gambia – had just been successfully finished. However, in
terms of common logistics, the transaction didn’t turn out to be profitable. Even though – due to its partly cultural character – the transaction
was partly funded, it didn’t pay out for the African members of the group
in terms of money. Clearly, the German members of the group were more
frustrated by this fact than their African colleagues. The latter were still on
board with the project and keen on developing the African Terminal further. Asked for their reasons, they referred to the things we learned during
the process but also made it clear that it is simply important not only to be
shipped, but to ship something yourself. Important to collectively take the
subject position of traders and of citizens that is denied to these group
members by the German state. And they convinced us; indeed it seems
crucial to go on trying to find alternative supply chains, to chase that
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
225
dream and to turn logistics around. And it is fruitful to use cultural production as a place to do that. Here, apart from breaking it down to numbers, we can enjoy whatever surplus – or even jouissance – the search for
the alternative supply chain may produce. In this sense, paralogistics overturn – and at the same time reclaim – logistics as what often appears to be
its opposite: a planetary form of conviviality including shared conflicts,
shared resources, shared learning, shared memories and shared
mourning.
NOTES
1. geheimagentur is an open collective working in performance art, cultural
studies and activism, www.geheimagentur.net, date accessed 1 March
2018.
2. www.theatreofresearch.org, date accessed 1 March 2018.
3. In May 2013, a delegation from Colombia turned up at the Labour Day
demonstration in the Wilhelmsburg quarter of Hamburg and demanded
the microphone. They had come to let people know that the charcoal
needed for the newly built power station in Hamburg port is imported
from Columbia, and that mining it had destroyed their villages and their
livelihoods. An alliance of protesters was formed and people managed to
block the port with 30 boats and ships for one hour in protest.
4. See Alberto Toscano (2011) ‘Logistics and Opposition’.
5. Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh (2013) The Many-Headed Hydra:
Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary
Atlantic.
6. http://www.geheimagentur.net/projekte/ein-kreuzfahrtterminal-3/,
date accessed 1 March 2018.
7. Results and insights from this process can be found in the book:
geheimagentur, Martin Schäfer and Vassilis Tsianos (2016) The Art of
Being Many. Towards a new Theory and Practice of Gathering.
8. Deborah Cowen (2014) The Deadly Life of Logistics. Mapping Violence in
Global Trade.
9. Keller Easterling (2014) Extrastatecraft. The Power of Infrastructure Space.
10. Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson (2013) ‘Extraction, Logistics and
Finance’.
11. Fred Moten and Stefano Harney (2013) The Undercommons. Fugitive
Planning & Black Study.
12. United Parcel Services.
13. Cited after Cowen, p. 204.
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GEHEIMAGENTUR AND S. PETERS
14. Rose George (2013) Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the
Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and
Food on Your Plate.
15. http://www.refugeeradionetwork.net/, date accessed 1 March 2018.
16. http://www.valuehandlers.com/, date accessed 1 March 2018.
17. http://www.geheimagentur.net/statement-der-besatzung-des-alternativen-kreuzfahrtterminals/, date accessed 1 March 2018.
REFERENCES
Cowen, Deborah. 2014. The Deadly Life of Logistics. Mapping Violence in Global
Trade. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Easterling, Keller. 2014. Extrastatecraft. The Power of Infrastructure Space.
London/New York: Verso.
geheimagentur. 2016. In The Art of Being Many. Towards a New Theory and
Practice of Gathering, ed. Martin Schäfer and Vassilis Tsianos. Bielefeld:
Transcript.
George, Rose. 2013. Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible
Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your
Plate. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Mezzadra, Sandro, and Brett Neilson. 2013. Extraction, Logistics and Finance.
Radical Philosophy 178 (March/April): 8–18.
Moten, Fred, and Stefano Harney. 2013. The Undercommons. Fugitive Planning
& Black Study. Wivenhoe/New York/Port Watson: Minor Compositions.
Rediker, Marcus, and Peter Linebaugh. 2013. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors,
Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic.
Boston: Beacon Press.
Toscano, Alberto. 2011. Logistics and Opposition. Mute, 3/2.
http://www.geheimagentur.net/. Accessed 1 Mar 2018.
http://www.refugeeradionetwork.net/. Accessed 1 Mar 2018.
http://www.theatreofresearch.org. Accessed 1 Mar 2018.
http://www.valuehandlers.com/. Accessed 1 Mar 2018.
PARALOGISTICS: ON PEOPLE, THINGS AND OCEANS
227
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original
author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and
indicate if changes were made.
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chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to
the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence
and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the
permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
Phyto-Performance and the Lost Gardens
of Riga
Alan Read
The ‘English Garden Effect’—a phrase borrowed from the poetry of John
Ashbery, first written by the novelist Walter Abish in his short story of that
name—describes a process by which a landscape might be rearranged to
conceal its historical determinants by those who might gain from such
scenic concealing. In his story Abish writes, ‘Remnants of the old atrocity
persist, but they are converted into ingenious shifts of scenery, a sort of
“English Garden” effect to give the required air of naturalness, pathos and
hope’.1 I am interested in what such an ‘English Garden Effect’ might
mean for us as artists, outsiders, visitors, to my proposed phyto-place of
performance—looking for a way to work that eschews the opportunistic
occupational mode of the site specific, and thinks itself into site in a more
responsive and responsible fashion.
Phyto-Performance, that is, not just theatres representing vegetal matters—of which The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) might be taken as an early
baroque example—but practices of co-presentation alongside and within
plant processes, could be expected to offer affective insights to the deep
ecology of these rearrangements. Such performances (in the spirit of the
A. Read (*)
King’s College London, London, UK
e-mail: alan.read@kcl.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_15
229
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A. READ
plant philosopher Michael Marder) would undermine casual correlations
between the vegetal, the whimsical, and the romantic, and might reacquaint
us with the robust materiality of flora, the dark side of roots, the infra-thin
movement of leaves. The repertoire of such practices, however, has been
drastically limited within contemporary performance by a humanist theatre
that places homo sapiens and their limb-heavy exertions centre stage.
Phyto interests, from the Greek word for ‘things that grow’, have most
recently been championed in all their unpredictability by the philosopher
Michael Marder, in his ground-breaking book Plant-Thinking.2 Phytothought, you could call it, has been common to the literary and philosophical imagination, vigorously spreading its tendrils since Plato. It is
now relevant to the philosophy of a number of thinkers whose broad
interest is in vegetal life, a decentralizing of the human from plant perspectives, among whom the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari’s work on the rhizome would be the most obvious example.3 But
that casually metaphoric use, and some might say philosophical and interpretive abuse of plants, is not where I intend to take us in this short essay.
First, by way of a brief biographical sketch to establish the somewhat
fanciful link between the vegetal and citizenship here, I would like to
recover something more material from Guattari’s work—to remind us of
the relationship between the questions I am posing on performance and
‘troubled citizenship’ that I think the vegetal invites. These ideas began to
germinate for me in 1992, and were prompted in person by Guattari, who
had come to London (just before he prematurely died of a heart attack in
1994), to discuss his newly published essay The Three Ecologies.
On finally shoe-horning a considerable audience into the modest
Institute of Contemporary Arts theatre space on The Mall (A Thousand
Plateaus, in the translation by Brian Massumi, had been doing great business at the ICA bookshop for years), I recall him insisting, before he could
possibly speak to the assembled expectant group, that this kind of arrangement just would not suffice for the democratic purposes of his work. When
the co-author of Mille Plateaux says he does not like the seating set up,
you take note.
I am committed to the idea that one’s ends and means should be linked
formally (whether that be the way we conduct ourselves academically or
otherwise, in all settings, whether they be conference arrangements or the
street protests these intellectual assemblies often articulate), and so I readily agreed that we should remove the tiered bench seating, designed to
ensure everyone could see, and seat everyone on the floor in a circle
PHYTO-PERFORMANCE AND THE LOST GARDENS OF RIGA
231
around Félix, who promptly positioned himself sitting at their centre,
therefore, by definition, with his back to a proportion of the audience who
had come to listen to him. Félix had a rather soft voice and started with
this passage from the work he was with us to discuss, The Three Ecologies:
Now more than ever, nature cannot be separated from culture; in order to
comprehend the interactions between eco systems, the mechanosphere and
the social and individual universes of reference, we must learn to think
‘transversally’. Just as monstrous and mutant algae invade the lagoon of
Venice, so our television screens are populated, saturated by ‘degenerate’
images and statements. In the field of social ecology, men like Donald
Trump are permitted to proliferate freely, like another species of algae, taking over entire district of New York and Atlantic City; he ‘redevelops’ by
raising rents, thereby driving out tens of thousands of poor families, most of
whom are condemned to homelessness, becoming the equivalent of the
dead fish of environmental ecology. (Guattari 2000, p. 43)
Well, that was Félix Guattari at the ICA in 1992, prescient at least. Few
who were present appeared either to know what he was talking about—
never really having heard of Donald Trump—nor could they readily get
the analogy to algae, as they could not hear what he was saying and his
pronunciation of algae was quite baroque. It took a brave heart to suggest
at this stage that, given we were all there to listen to Félix, we might want
to return to a seating arrangement in which he could be heard—a less
formally democratic proposal maybe, but a functional one at least. So we,
or I should say, the stage managers and I, set about putting the theatre
back into the shape it had been especially put into an hour before, pulling
the retractable seating out again, much to the exasperation of the ICA
technicians who muttered something about their labour clearly being the
one absolutely infinite resource available to intellectuals who require optimum circumstances for their own labour, with little respect for the call
these demands place on others tasked with putting out chairs, taking them
away, then putting them out again, in pursuit of the ideal democratic
arrangement.
Within this disturbance to the shape of a gathering, Guattari’s idea of
‘transversality’ was already underway within that room. There and then, as
much in the form of the discussion and disagreement about the seating
and ways of resolving that local dispute as it was in his startling theoretical
diagnosis, his forensic analysis of the newly empowered rentiers of the
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Reagan and Thatcher years, those beyond any constraint of something
once called society—Donald Trump’s instinct for gated communities,
camps of the über elite that, like algae, would proliferate across the fetid
lagoon of the cosmopolitan class. Beyond the remarkable vegetal allegories that I will return to in the balance of this essay, I was aware—as early
as the mid-1990s—that another elite, an educated elite circulating through
the theoretical groves that I was responsible for organizing there, at the
ICA, had little sense of the question posed to them by those who were
responsible for moving those chairs around at their will. A question of the
disaffection of labour and also a question that Donald Trump himself
would notice provided him with an opportunity and an electoral mandate
of 52% some years later. That at that time a certain ‘will to power’ was
manifest within a liberal elite who were beginning to deploy intersectional
theory to constitute themselves as polymorphously free of—or at least
playful with—multitudinous identity formations, at the same time as forgetting to re-inscribe their analysis with any due regard for that other
multitude with less than one identity, long left behind by successive government attacks on education and the welfare state. I think these reflections could be inscribed within frames of citizen and non-citizenship.
I returned to Guattari’s material thinking about algae and the politics
of oppression when Michael Marder4 visited us at King’s College London,
where I moved a few years after that time at the ICA. There, Marder
offered an audacious, panoramic survey of philosophy’s entanglements
with vegetal thinking. For instance, selecting one hidden herbalist among
many, Friedrich Nietzsche—as Marder drew to our attention—dwelt very
precisely upon the vegetal in the form of the ‘jungle’—or as it has been
more recently translated by Kevin Hill in Nietzsche’s newly translated
notebooks, ‘primeval forest’—in his notes on The Will to Power (2017)
which were, without his permission and indeed against his expressed view,
collected together and published after his death by his sister, Elisabeth
Forster-Nietzsche in 1901. But Nietzsche did so only after a detour
through the ‘arrant misrepresentations’ and ‘counterfeits’ of psychology.
In fragment 704 in ‘The Will to Power in Nature’ (written between
November 1887 and March 1888), Nietzsche questioned ‘Man’s’ striving
after happiness. To understand anything about life Nietzsche, unusually
perhaps for the philosophical tradition, insisted on an expanded sense of
life, a ‘formula that must apply to trees, and plants and animals’. Nietzsche
even takes the trouble to notice the structural problem when asking what
PHYTO-PERFORMANCE AND THE LOST GARDENS OF RIGA
233
a plant might strive after, a false unity which does not exist, given the ‘fact
of million-fold growth’.
Michael Marder has, since that event, where we first heard these ideas,
discussed this passage in Nietzsche’s work,5 fleshing it out, or more appropriately, inter-leafing it with some fascinating material insights borne of his
fascination with plant practices. Unbeknownst to themselves, who appear
to know little of Nietzsche’s view perhaps, Michael Marder suggests that
scientists confirm Nietzsche’s hypothesis in examining kin recognition of
plants. Specimens of the plant Cakile edentula, for instance, produce more
roots when they share a pot with strangers (that is, plants of the same species, grown from seeds that derived from a different mother plant) than
when they germinated in the same pot as their kin (defined as plants grown
from seeds collected from the same mother plant). So, Marder is drawn to
suggest that Nietzsche’s interpretation of the ‘fight’ amongst trees in a
jungle is also a ‘theoretical fiction’, which in turn naturalizes the struggle
for survival in human societies, rather as the work of Konrad Lorenz had
done with supposedly red of tooth and claw animalities of the midtwentieth century, against the conclusive research of Ashley Montagu that
reframed atavistic nature as altruistic nature.
Such striving, such ‘will’, will always occur in the face of something that
Nietzsche says ‘resists’, as he posits: ‘For what do the trees in a jungle fight
each other? For happiness? – For power! –’. But amongst these competitive
columbines there are other million-fold symbiotic forms of species coexistence which with some plant thinking, Marder suggests, some properly environmental thinking of the kind I will offer in this essay, might
operate in more sympathetically entangled ways. It is not that ‘the jungle’
offers another metaphor with which to squeeze the pips of the vegetal, but
rather, a material/historical site where kinship relations between plants
have been observed; where to strive to ‘be in the sun’ could be conceived
as more than an ontological imperative against entropy, where to persevere
in being is itself the genesis of the performative comportment that will
always trouble presumptions of citizenship.
In thinking about some of our performance concerns, namely, movement, our awareness of the surrounding world and life itself, Marder
reminds us, we do not tend to associate thinking with plants. If we consider them at all, we think of plants ‘shrouded in obscurity’—as Marder
cites Thomas Aquinas in his introduction to Plant-Thinking. We maybe
fail to recognize ourselves in plants. And thus, plants provide us, Marder
would suggest possibly unwittingly, with a welcome short-circuit in the
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anthropocentric machinery. That is, the machinery that ceaselessly compares us with other animals and, having found comparisons wanting, coopts other animals in our interests for our instrumental ends. It is, Marder
proposes, a good thing that we do not recognize ourselves in plants. It is
their foreignness that might trouble us, but it is this ‘otherness’ that protects us from too easy assimilation of what they intrinsically are—‘Not
us’.6 I would stress here that this writing will have failed if you think what
I am promoting is an appetite to cast, to draft in, plants into performance;
to squeeze them for their pips, to mimic their movement or to transplant
their roots.
But, I would suggest here that a fresh approach to movement, to surroundings and to life itself—in the spirit of Marder’s vegetal thinking—
might be recognized in plants if we look and listen carefully enough. Just
so we can leave some of our zoological bias at the door, movement itself
immediately throws up some problems for thinking phyto-centrically. Our
ideal movement, we might have to admit at the outset, is an animal movement; by which I mean we have the capacity for locomotion. The whole
rhetoric of human disability with regard to movement is based upon just
such a spurious norm. Just think of words like crawling and striding for
their comparative place within an unwritten hierarchy of power to measure
something of this loco-normativity. In saying this, and celebrating human
locomotion over other movements, we forget, that plants move at their
edges, their leaves, at their centre, their stem, and indeed, most voraciously, underground.7 Growth itself—though in its own time and always
patient compared with our pre-emptive leaps and impatient spasms—is a
kind of movement.
So, while we might not be able to recognize ourselves in plants, we
perhaps should be able to recognize—Marder ingeniously suggests—the
vegetal inside us. The ‘otherness’ of vegetal life within us is a good antidote
to anthropomorphism; we should begin here to recognize something of
the plant in us, not us in them. And this perhaps is where the affective
response to performance might begin to make sense vegetally.
Phytocentrism thus halts the anthropocentric urge of humans—for us to
situate ourselves as central to a biosphere—which, irrespective of the cultivations of indigenous peoples and the mass-farming of their successors,
got on quite well before us. The decentralized nature of plants themselves
then, poses some interesting questions for us in performance. By putting
plants in the centre, Marder insists—probably in light of a familiar
PHYTO-PERFORMANCE AND THE LOST GARDENS OF RIGA
235
questioning of his project—do we not just repeat anthropocentrism and
its humanist ills?
Well, not exactly, as they—plants, that is—are not unified organisms. It
is difficult to tell where a part of the plant begins and ends, it is difficult to
pinpoint identity in vegetal life. The truth of the matter, for Marder at
least, is that to place the plant at the centre of our life is to ‘decenter the
center’—the centre implodes along with the penumbra.8 And that might
not be such a bad thing when we seek ways of performance that can draw
upon the abandonment of plants as a means by which such abandonment
itself can become the spur to the recovery of lost techniques, disciplines
and practices for plants’ better protection. The performance Lost Gardens
is an exemplary act in just one such homeopathic register (Fig. 1).
Lost Gardens, in which I was a participant in the 2013 Riga Homo
Novus Festival, was directed by Christine Umpfenbach from Munich, who
explores social realities in her performance pieces, focusing on migration,
Fig. 1 Lost Gardens, Riga, 2013, Dir. Christine Umpfenbach. (Photo Copyright
Homo Novus Festival)
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labour, and the realm of the city. The performers one meets in Lost
Gardens, as in other Umpfenbach projects, are mostly non-actors—people
engaged in other professions, older people, children. They could be your
neighbours. Umpfenbach collaborates on this occasion with Latvian video
artist Katrı̄na Neiburga and Austrian artist and scenographer Rudolf
Bekic—who had been living in Latvia for a number of years, working with
hand-made objects and mechanisms. Zane Zajančkausk, a Latvian editor,
curator, producer and a researcher of communities, worked as director’s
assistant on the Lost Gardens project, researching ‘small garden culture’
and helping in the project’s admirable and complex commitment to
extended communication with the local groups and individuals who
wished to be involved in the event.
The programme for the event sets out the context like this:
In May 2013, a lane was cut through the allotment gardens in Bolderāja to
free up the space for railway tracks as a part of the Riga Free Port development plan. Gardeners lost their gardens, fences were knocked down, trees
were cut, garden houses were burned down or were demolished by bulldozers. The traumatic event had a big impact on the lives of these gardeners,
who after spending every summer there, now have no place to go. Many of
them started 40 years ago as young families to cultivate this area from being
a swamp into the place in which trees, fruits and vegetables could grow and
flowers would bloom.9
The ‘English Garden Effect’ comes to mind as we group here amidst a
landscape of ‘rearranged’ structures, gardens and fences. It is clear that
there has been some ‘rebuilding’ for the purpose of this event, but not so
much as to conceal the shattering experience these carers for the soil have
experienced. We gather hesitantly, in loose assemblages of between 10 and
14 folk—a community of those who have nothing in common, while
looking on at a community who most definitely do. Loss (Fig. 2).
We are split into separate witnessing alliances rather than anything
approaching an ‘audience’, and gently we are asked to follow one of six
leaders. We are given a piece of cut fruit or vegetable—something with a
distinctive colour—to mark us out from the other groups, as though we
might not remember to whom we belong. And indeed, as we walk together
slowly through the gathering twilight gloom of a late summer evening in
Riga, there is something to be said for this small token of identity. For as
one engages with each ‘station’ in the landscape—a small shed here, a
PHYTO-PERFORMANCE AND THE LOST GARDENS OF RIGA
237
Fig. 2 Lost Gardens conversation station. (Photo Homo Novus Festival)
makeshift stand there, a soup being cooked here, a television playing an
episode of some injustice there—the sense of one’s own self begins to dissipate and mix with the horticulture that this land was once given over to,
before the bulldozers came and made way for the Free Port Authority
development that would pour asphalt over 40 years of shared nurturing of
this land.
The protagonists in this performance are the displaced gardeners and,
peculiarly democratically, a representative from Riga Free Port (who lectures us on the bus en route to the location), who explain their perspectives
on what had happened and recall the event through their points of view.
This is how two of these participants are described:
Asja bought her garden 30 years ago for her father in order to help keep him
busy and give him a purpose in life. After his death, she continued to maintain the garden to help her relax. One day, she returned to the garden to find
it had been burned to the ground. She wrote to the Free Port authority
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asking for explanations as to why she was not given notice of the
demolition.
Anatolijs and his wife grew fruits and vegetables in their garden so they
never had the need to go to the market to buy fresh products. He and his
wife stood there watching his fruit trees being cut down. Together with his
granddaughter Liza, he explains how his garden house was relocated by a
crane to an area 30 meters away from the original location.10
Each of the stations one visits as part of the two-hour event is a small
bricolage edifice within the landscape, hewn from the materials at hand.
Each station is attended to by one of the residents, who in several cases
prepare food from the ground nearby and serve a hot bowl of broth or
salad and fruits as we perambulate. The pace of each of these hosting gestures—that become the time of the theatre event—is closer to the patience
of the slow-grown plants that, in this instance, appear more as co-actors in
a network of distributed performances across this threatened landscape.
The evening ends, in as much as it can end, in a tent situated in the
landscape, with a glowing fire outside and a supper laid out within, served
by those who have been telling their stories of displacement. They stand in
simple tableaux in the opening of the tent as we watch on from inside,
looking beyond them to the long sunset across the landscape that is now
not theirs.
The coaches wait for us in the discrete distance, as though to remind us
that this country, this contra, is only what it is because of the other it is
not: the city to which we are about to be returned, passing through the
advertising lights of the petro-chemical companies and banks that edge
Riga’s fringe.
If plants remind us of anything, it is of the power to wait—both the
ability to wait, and the capacity to let others wait. Peter Sloterdijk suggested that democracy could be said to be based on a proto architectonic
ability to build waiting rooms, and perhaps glasshouses are just the antithesis of such things.11 Yes, they allow humans to wait for plants, but their
controlled environments represent a strategic quickening of natural
growth. If Lost Gardens, in its lugubrious pace, wandering dramaturgy and
peripatetic pauses showed us anything or invited us to feel something, it
was that the time of the landscape and the time of those carers for that
landscape—different as they were—contrasted with the time of development. The Riga Port Authority operated to rhythmic imperatives that
were just wholly at odds with those who not only had waited four decades
PHYTO-PERFORMANCE AND THE LOST GARDENS OF RIGA
239
for trees to grow amongst them, but were now willing to wait for four
hours in the twilight as we made circuits around their makeshift stalls,
insisting on trying just about everything that was on offer from their
addled ground. There were structures in this landscape, yes, but glasshouses and their urgencies were nowhere to be seen, before or after the
heavy-duty lifting gear arrived in this miserable-en-scene.
Lost Gardens allows us to consider what Phyto-Performance might look
and feel like. There is a commitment here to the cycles of plant growth
and retreat. On the one hand, the horticulture of the Rigan allotments sets
the pace for the event we wish to enter into, as an audience with its own
festival chronotopes to maintain. The programme of the Homo Novus
Festival offers so many delights that we could move onto, but the entangled, pedestrian pace of this event seems to demand our attention beyond
such accelerated departures elsewhere to see ‘yet more culture’.
How much longer might we be free to stay here amongst the infinite
smells and senses of the landscape should we have nowhere special to go?
Festival time, and its topsy-turvy characteristic that Bakhtin made so much
play of in his idea of the Carnivalesque, is here substituted by something
altogether more alluring for me: plant time. Here there is no topsy-turvy,
no day out from the remorseless ministration of power; indeed, the entire
event is conducted under an umbrella of ever-present melancholy, of subjection, of the cruel optimism that comes from being down there with
plants and knowing one’s place when it comes to capital investment. But,
critically, finding the words and recipes of the earth and at that very
moment expressing that relationship, might be of some significance to the
future of the land. Vegetal matter is setting the pace in this environment
as Asja is unable, or unwilling, to turn the flame up under those root vegetables and expect them to hurry along for the sake of theatre. They will
take their own time to simmer, and that, for me at least, feels for the
better.
Lost Gardens digs a vegetal environment and, in so doing, constructs a
site of uncertainty, if it is anything, and therein lies its eloquence. The
people doing the speaking here—namely, Asja, Zeta, Kosta, and Nina—
are, in their doing, marking their own infidelity to what lies in those propagation beds, doing what they so beautifully but fantastically suggested
the plant-ish humans might be doing in such warm-damp places. Here,
that labour of oratory on behalf of plants and humans is a properly
performative process; it is a Phyto-Performance that, in the playing out,
recognizes and measures the degree to which it falls short of its subjects.
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Phyto-Performance has no need to translate its matters of concern into
matters of fact. That is the stuff of science. It is the ‘English Garden Effect’
that rearranges these ‘old atrocities’ into ‘ingenious shifts of scenery […]
to give the required air of naturalness, pathos and hope’.12 PhytoPerformance has always, already, been the ground of the English theatre,
as well as its canopy in the plant-adorned proscenium arch. When actors
take their leave from responsibility to their character-lives on stage, they
do so to a place called the Green Room. Adjacent to the stage, to the side
of the wings, in all English theatres from the late eighteenth century on,
the Green Room has this designation for ecologically informed reasons. It
was the home of the ‘green thread’ of the stage and provided shelter to the
theatre’s environmental credentials and vegetal potential. The Green
Room was so called because it housed the Greensward, the carpet that
would be rolled out from the wings, across the width of the stage, to mark
the forthcoming scene as one set outdoors, external, a grassy one; one that
was inclusive to the possibility of plant—as distinct to drawing room—
matters. The Green Room has long since lost its grass, occupied as it is by
those actors who do not know why ‘the old atrocities still persist’, while
audiences look on, in the dark, in serried arrangements of naturalness,
pathos and hope.
NOTES
1. Abish, Walter (1980) ‘The English Garden Effect’ in In The Future Perfect,
p. 1.
2. Marder, Michael (2013) Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life.
3. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (2004) A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
4. Michael Marder, author of Plant-Thinking, and Through Vegetal Being
(with Luce Irigaray).
5. The Philosopher’s Plant (2014).
6. See Marder, Plant-Thinking, pp. 3–4, where he describes plants as ‘wholly
other and foreign to us’.
7. Plant-Thinking, p. 12, where Marder discusses the ‘spatio-temporal’
nature of plants.
8. Marder, Plant-Thinking, pp. 1–13. See especially the opening pages of this
introduction, in which this manifesto is laid out with incisive flair.
9. See Homo Novus web site archive: http://www.homonovus.lv/eng/performances.php?s=lost-gardens, date accessed 10 March 2015.
10. See Homo Novus web site archive.
PHYTO-PERFORMANCE AND THE LOST GARDENS OF RIGA
241
11. Peter Sloterdijk (2005) ‘Atmospheric Politics’ in Making Things Public:
Atmospheres of Democracy, pp. 944–51.
12. Abish, ‘The English Garden Effect’, p. 1.
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Abandoned Practices. http://abandonedpractices.org. Date accessed 1 June 2015.
Abish, Walter. 1980. The English Garden Effect. In In the Future Perfect, 1–21.
London: Faber.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix. 2004. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Continuum.
Guattari, Félix. 2000. The Three Ecologies. Trans. Ian Pindar, and Paul Sutton.
London/New Brunswick: Athlone.
Krauss, Rosalind. 1979. Sculpture in the Expanded Field. October 8: 30–44.
Marder, Michael. 2013. Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. New York:
Columbia University Press.
———. 2014. The Philosopher’s Plant. New York: Columbia University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2017. The Will to Power. Trans. Michael A. Scarpitti, and
R. Kevin Hill. London: Penguin.
Ophir, Adi. 2000. The Order of Evils. New York: Zone Books.
Read, Alan. 2008. Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement: The Last Human Venue.
New York: Palgrave.
Shiva, Vandana. 1988. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India. New
Delhi: Kali for Women. http://gyanpedia.in/Portals/0/Toys%20from%20
Trash/Resources/books/stayingalive.pdf. Date accessed 10 Apr 2015.
———. 1997. Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Boston: Southern
End Press.
Sloterdijk, Peter. 2005. Atmospheric Politics. In Making Things Public: Atmospheres
of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 944–951. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
Stengers, Isabelle. 2007. Diderot’s Egg. In Radical Philosophy, 144, July/August.
http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/MaterialismDiderot.pdf. Date accessed 10 Apr 2015.
Thoreau, Henry David. 1916. The Maine Woods. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Weiss, Allen. 1999. Unnatural Horizons: Paradox and Contradiction in Landscape
Architecture. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.
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Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original
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the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence
and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the
permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
Of Mice and Masks: How Performing
Citizenship Worked for a Thousand Years
in the Venetian Republic and Why the Age
of Enlightenment Brought it to an Abrupt
End
Mirjam Schaub
IntroductIon
While the plague raged in 14th century Venice—eradicating countless
patrician families, who were what kept the Maritime Republic alive with its
unique system of office rotation and power distribution—the Venetians
reinvented their endangered community and polity, with the help of a
uniform white mask (larva or volto), a black hood and a three-pointed
hat.
Presumably, it was in protest against the Black Death—that killed rich
and poor without exception—that this so-called maschera nobile or bautà1
Translated from German by Alice Lagaay
M. Schaub (*)
University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein, Halle a.d. Saale, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_16
243
244
M. SCHAUB
was first borne. But it soon developed into a powerful social equalizer, for
it permitted the Venetian Republic to regard its own police and spy state
as necessary interventions in the fight against corruption and, at the same
time, allowed its citizens to lead a relatively untroubled life beyond convention and constraints. As a social mask, the bautà grew in popularity
between the 14th and 18th centuries, and it played a role at almost every
public occasion, as can be seen in countless Canaletto, Longhi and Guardi
paintings. Above all, it revolutionized social life by allowing a simple form
of anonymization, thus guaranteeing Venetian citizens of both sexes libertine, even voluptuous, practices while respecting etiquette.
The mask reflects the richness of Venetian social and political inventions. The Venetians did not believe in the good of man, which is one of
the reasons why the republic survived a thousand years of crusades and
slaughter but not the century of enlightenment. Instead, the Venetians
believed in institutions, in imposing restrictions to control unwelcome
human behaviour. They racked their brains over procedures that would
prevent human beings from choosing the easy way. Acknowledging the
fact that destroying and doing harm was simple in comparison to the difficulties of re-installing trust and credibility, they invented sophisticated
practices and countless precautions from which they expected more benefits and practical wisdom. They had little expectations of weak—but only
too corruptible—human beings.
The success of the Venetian Republic depended on its profound pessimism, its distrust in human goodness. Instead of wanting to change the
nature of man, say, by affirmative self-declaration, it created a system of
procedural interventions and institutional coups whose purpose was to
counteract abuse and corruption, like a corset used to fight formlessness.
In the context of a book on ‘Performing Citizenship’ that focuses
rather on contemporary problematizations, the horizon of this essay suggests a new perspective from which contemporary citizens and civil rights
movements might perhaps reconsider their usual form of general institutional critique by drawing inspiration from the inventiveness with which
historical Venice sought to limit abuses of power, using institutional means
and procedures.
Admittedly, the richness of their inventiveness was triggered by a negative image of humanity that Napoleon was not alone in considering premodern and hostile to reason. But in this regard, one might ponder
whether our ‘enlightened’ and idealized image of mankind might not
actually be its own comeuppance when accusations of misconduct are
directed at a few ‘black sheep’, instead of the tendency for misconduct
OF MICE AND MASKS: HOW PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP WORKED…
245
being recognized as a conditio humana. The Venetian Republic—which
subsisted for a thousand years (from around 797 to 1797) without any
means of providing for itself except through clever trade—relied heavily
on the quick undermining of any suggestion of corruption.
This constellation allowed the citizens of Venice to consider control
and freedom of movement, spying, libertinage, and veneration not as
opposites, but rather, as reciprocal fires in the expression of their unique
concept of performing citizenship. That their political inventions be considered pre-modern or anti-enlightened would appear, as shall be shown,
to be based on historical prejudice and is therefore in urgent need of
revision.
offIce rotatIon and the dIstrIbutIon of Power
After the deliberate closing (serrata) of the politically powerful ‘caste’ and
its limitation2 to old, established, aristocratic families in 1297, the ideal of
ruling among equals was faced with the problem of balancing power and
control by the same permanent staff.
The republic could not tolerate being steered (from political responsibility) by the idle. Not even impoverishment was considered an acceptable
excuse for the non-fulfilment of aristocratic duties. Little more than two
hundred families, who had inhabited the lagoon for generations, were
involved in creating the cautious laws of the republic. According to these
laws, only male aristocrats over 25 years of age, who had gone to university in Padua3 or become bowmen to the galleys, were entitled to take over
the legislature and the judiciary of the Republic of Venice. The republic
kept a turnstile of official jobs that rotated between a fixed number of
noble families. No official position was to be occupied for more than 12
or 18 months.
Interestingly, it was their deep and constantly evolving knowledge of
real, banal and all-too-human weaknesses that explains why political selfdetermination, trafficking, cunning, scrutiny and libertinage were so
closely intertwined in Venice as to become indistinguishable. Seen in this
light, Giacomo Casanova’s escape from the lead chambers of the Doge’s
Palace succeeded not only thanks to the intervention of senator Matteo
Giovanni Bragadin, but also due to the impersonal program, which
emerged from the unique political self-understanding of the Venetian
Republic.4 What if the republic had imprisoned Casanova in 1756, only to
let him flee after 15 months, in order to make him return later as a gifted
and devoted spy for the flourishing Venetian commonwealth?
246
M. SCHAUB
how to avoId corruPtIon when everyone Is
corruPtIble?
Instead of identifying inequality as a disadvantage, Venetian politics were
purposefully set out to overcome a scandalous form of equality that was
considered a threat to society. For it was the long-anticipated equality of
all members of the Venetian society, regarding their common corruptibility,
which led to a unique political alliance. This alliance concerned the precautions necessary to undermine or disarm any pseudo-reasons for bribery, such as general distrust in the public order, people’s likelihood to
choose the paths of least resistance, or clandestine compensation for inadequacies and injustices, and so on.
The chosen method was to organize all social classes—patricians, commoners, craftsmen, soldiers—from the point of view of their similarities,
in order to secure a lasting base for social peace. This was achieved by
introducing independent organizations such as the guilds (from the
retailer to the card-maker, from the soap-maker to the mascot maker or
goldsmith), from which strong, secular fraternities (scuole) derived. Their
leading members henceforth wore the costume of the patricians (toga
veneta). The chairman of the fishermen’s guild even took his seat as ‘Doge
of the pescatori’ next to the noble Doge during the annual procession—
Festa della Sensa or Festa dell’Ascensione—to celebrate the symbolic marriage between the city and the sea.
Thus, even those who had no political decision-making power were still
able to participate in the symbolic chain of power transmission. Venetian
society worked much like a Märklin railroad according to the principle of
miniaturization, whereby train compartments with varying levels of comfort ran and rattled without disturbing each other’s circuits. While the
noble patricians constantly changed their offices, the cittadini—commoners or civics—ensured continuity by dealing with the administrative offices
of the executive.
The bourgeois Grand Chancellor of the republic, appointed as the chief
executive for life, was the only Venetian not to bow before the noble
Doge. He was privy to all the secrets of the state but had no right to vote
or speak in any council. The coats of arms of the 45 bourgeois Grand
Chancellors that ruled Venice between 1297 and 1797 were placed prominently on the walls of the Doge’s Palace, as were the Doges’ portraits in
the marble section—albeit locked away in a wooden cabinet, hidden to the
eyes of ordinary visitors. If, since 1315, the hand-painted coats of arms of
OF MICE AND MASKS: HOW PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP WORKED…
247
the noble families and their names were collected in the Golden Book of
the City, then the citizens’ names were to be found in the Book of Silver.
Each social class mimicked the rituals and privileges of the class above
them in the stato misto of Venice, reflecting them while introducing slight
differences. This ensured the satisfaction of all and established a degree of
distance built on familiarity.
Given the small number of staff members that had known each other
for generations, abuse of authority in Venice was never considered to be
the unfortunate affair of a few ‘black sheep’. Quite the contrary, corruption was exactly what was expected of everyone all the time.
Venetians were such pessimists that, by 1275, they had invented an
elaborate system of precautionary measures. It consisted of a wellorganized mixture of personal votes and impersonal lotteries, alternating
between random, intuitive and strategic decisions and supplemented by
prescribed interruptions of office that sometimes lasted as long as the
office itself. Thus, for a thousand years, all urgent or controversial political
tasks rotated successfully among the male, adult members of only 204 different patrician families (case vecchie), without a single family ever gaining
too much power.5
Thus, corruption was prosecuted forcefully, and the misuse of power
often resulted in expropriation and exile. In order not to be suspected of
corruption, local traders in Venice were not allowed to put foreign merchants up in their houses, nor allowed—under any circumstance—to
accept any gifts.6 Those operating outside the republic, if suspected of
mischief, would immediately be brought back to Venice, imprisoned in
the Doge’s Palace’s wet pozzi and, later, publicly executed. Thus, an example was set between two bloodthirsty pillars of the Loggia of the Doge’s
Palace, installing a strong and close-knit network of mutual control, fear
and retaliation.
PartIcIPatIon and exclusIon wIthIn the doge’s
Palace
Thus, in the Doge’s Palace of Venice in the 14th century, ideas of political
participation and exclusion became both effectively and architecturally visible, that remain to this day uniquely radical in the history of Europe: the
political inclusion of many (within the patrician republic), and the simultaneous exclusion of almost all (by the police and spy state), coexist as
equally welcomed powers, in peaceful harmony and great spatial proximity.
248
M. SCHAUB
After two devastating fires (1574 and 1577), and on the ruins of a
12th-century citadel built without a defence system, the bells of the
Trotteria of the campanile of St. Mark’s Cathedral would ring out on
Sundays and the electoral patricians would gather in the Sala of the Great
Council (Maggior Consiglio) within the renovated Doge’s Palace. The
whole palace itself can in fact be considered as no more than a pretext to
have built a space of this magnitude (55 by 25 metres) with the capacity
for so much participatory impetus. The ceiling seems to float, unsupported by columns. Venetian carpenters simply erected an inverted ship’s
hull over the gigantic ceiling to absorb the weight of the sides. If you look
closely, you can still see how many rusty nails penetrate the ceiling—and
its bombastic paintings—in order to make the construction safe.7
Thanks to the repeated reduction of the electorate by means of a lottery
and the steady reconstitution of numbers through numerous rounds of
deliberation, the system—which was especially designed to install the
Doge for life as the highest representative of the republic—was indeed
hellishly complicated but, ultimately, exceptionally fair. Five times the lottery would decide, five times the electors would debate the pros and cons
of the remaining candidates. Since it was impossible to predict whether or
not one would still be a member of the electoral college at the end of ten
rounds, pre-arrangements were simply hopeless.
In this bombastically magnificent room—modestly called the room of
the 900—not only the Doge, but also the sixty senators, the nine treasurers (procuratores) and all the important offices were elected. It was also the
venue for special ceremonies, such as the occasion of Morosina Grimani’s
inauguration to the office of the Dogaressa (1597), and the place where
the Venetian ambassadors would present their reports on the world beyond
the lagoon. These reports, the so-called relazioni, were famous for their
considerable accuracy, since only an exact study of the gestures and states
of mind of driving forces could be used to predict the future plans of
action by foreign peoples with some certainty. These portrayals by Venetian
diplomats had to be written and stored in the archives where, still today,
they remain a fruitful source of information. Clandestinely, Venetians celebrated themselves as clever traders and as equally clever informers, which
guaranteed the lasting mastery of la serenissima, the most illustrious
republic. By refraining from judgement for the sake of precise descriptions, the reports were so insightful, that they even became much
admired—and envied—by foreign powers.
OF MICE AND MASKS: HOW PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP WORKED…
249
Fig. 1 Giovanni
Bellini, Doge Leonardo
Loredan (after 1501), oil
on tempera on poplar
wood, 61.6 × 45.1 cm,
National Gallery,
London
The art of reading minds through studying the characteristics of facial
features, and the knowledge of how to index and interpret the slightest
show of emotion, belonged, as it were, to early childhood education in
the Venetian Republic. It was in Venice, not Florence, that the art of
portraiture was born, with the Bellini brothers, Giorgione, and later
Titian and Tintoretto. Precisely because the exhibition of Venetians was
strictly forbidden in public places, patricians and wealthy citizens first
began to commission portraits for themselves for private display only.
Even the Doge was only allowed to have his portrait painted for his own
private collection, like Leonardo Loredan—painted by Giovanni Bellini
after 1501 (Fig. 1).
In the narrow streets of Venice, it was essential to always know exactly
whom one might encounter by chance, and to be able to greet them by
name and actual status—no easy task given the annual office rotation. To
solve this problem, the Venetians invented an unconventional and effective solution: the mask.
250
M. SCHAUB
the venetIan BAUTÀ: a socIal Mask and Its MultIPle
functIons
Of course, the masks in question differed from the ones people are most
familiar with now. Not the traditional, colourful carnival masks of harlequin, lawyer, dottore or capitano (since the late Middle Ages), nor the
grotesque half masks of the actors of the commedia dell’arte (since the
16th century); these were used to emphasize character, or exaggerate certain features, they did not primarily serve to anonymize. The austere white
mask that is meant here is often depicted in the paintings of Canaletto
(1697–1768), Pietro Longhi (1702–1785) and Francesco Guardi
(1712–1793).8 In allowing a person to look dignified and yet unrecognizable as a particular person in the middle of the public sphere, the so called
bautà enabled its bearer to mind his or her own business. Visible but
opaque, singular but anonymous, the mask would allow the person to
disappear in the crowd, like a black dot with a white stipple.
In terms of external appearance, this type of mask complemented the
traditionally black, ankle length coat (tabarro) of the Venetian merchants.
The whole outfit consisted of five garments and accessories: a black hood
(bautà), a silk chest cape, a short gown of black gauze, a three-pointed hat
and a white larva for the face. The larva was placed over the chin but
pointing sharply upwards so that the person could eat and drink whilst
remaining unrecognizable under the mask. For brevity, this mask was
commonly referred to as bautà in its entirety and compiled with the
tabarro. It became appropriate for both men and women. In fact, it soon
became impossible to tell whether a woman or a man was wearing it,
because the clothes hidden under the long cloak became yet another
opportunity to dress up in disguise.
This mask was invented by the nobles but was soon no longer restricted
to them. Although it started as a maschera nobile, its overwhelming popularity gradually made it into a social mask.9 It was worn outside the carnival season for every conceivable social occasion—in the streets, at weddings,
banquets, processions, during elections, theatrical and theatre shows,
indeed, even in honour of the Indian rhinoceros Clara (Fig. 2).10
In the simplest way, the bautà made it possible for people—who otherwise knew each other perhaps all too well—to become inconspicuous,
unidentifiable and equal. What a relief it must have been to have been able
to pass unidentified in the small republic, whose entire social realm
otherwise depended on one presenting the appropriate attitudine and
OF MICE AND MASKS: HOW PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP WORKED…
251
Fig. 2 Pietro Longhi, Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice (1751), oil on canvas,
60.4 × 47 cm, National Gallery, London
contegno—the right facial expressions and dignified physical postures. The
purpose of this mask was not to facilitate role-finding or roleplay, but to
allow for distance and anonymity. Even one’s voice would sound strange
and hard to place, darkly sonorous, when resonating from under the
leather mask. Whoever encountered such a masked person on the street
would certainly have had to bow to them and say, ‘Hail, honorable mask’
(‘Siôra, Maschera’).
252
M. SCHAUB
Exclusive to Venice, the precise origins of this social mask still lie in the
dark. In the context of the gruesomely raging pestilence of 1348, one
might plausibly imagine that it came about as an alliance between forces of
nature and the morbid pleasure people got from blurring differences of
rank. The chronicler Lorenzo de Monacis notes a few years after the
events,
Right at the beginning of this plague, within a few days, [it] removed leading figures, judges, and civil servants who had been elected to the Grand
Council, and then those who had taken their place. In the month of May it
increased so much, and the contagion became so strong that the squares,
courtyards, tombs, and cemeteries filled with corpses.11
Tens of thousands died within a few months; Dorsoduro, Santa
Croce and Cannaregio were basically depopulated. In June 1348, the
Grand Council was unable to grant resolutions, due to the loss of most
of its members. However, what remained of the Senate continued to
rule: ordering quarantine, forbidding alcohol, and even banning the
wearing of mourning clothes in an attempt to raise the general mood.
Meanwhile,
…the moderates, the restrained, the chaste, the sober, died as the drunks
and the sluggishers died, the frugal and extravagant, the bold and timid,
those who fled, as well as those who remained behind, all without confession
and the sacraments of the Church. Even the pious clerics and priests were
seized with horror, and the plague also killed them. The whole city was a
grave.12
The uniformity of death stifled one particular ritual of the nobles, dating back to the Roman Republic, which was the ritual of taking death
masks from the deceased. They would normally wear the masks of their
ancestors—who otherwise were on display in the atrium—at each funeral.
It is thus conceivable that the uniform larvae of the white bautà arose out
of the nobles’ growing protest against these restrictions during the first
plague. Indeed, to this day, the mask still looks like the unfinished, raw
prototype of a mask. Such a presumed origin, in line with the gloomy
veneration of the whole appearance, would also explain why the bautà was
traditionally worn outside the carnival season. The first plague broke out in
Venice at the end of March 1348, and only receded in the late summer of
that year.
OF MICE AND MASKS: HOW PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP WORKED…
253
Ignazio Toscani—who in the 20th century dedicated a monograph to
the bautà—argues that its success, its uncanny popularity, was due to the
versatility of its use and the ambiguity of its functions. He suggested that
the bautà compensated for the experience of social constriction by providing anonymity as protection. It transcended the finesse of the envoys, in
the same ways as Venetian portraiture did, by promising relief from reciprocal facial examination. At the same time, it allowed for secret scrutiny of
others under the protection of one’s own mask. It thus respected the
Venetian code of modesty, in that it appeared as a sign of pure honourable
value. It equalized what was different (people and their class), and thereby
neutralized what might otherwise be considered a cause for enmity (the
mask as a uniform). It protected one against blackmail (as in the case of
the election to be held publicly in St. Mark’s Square) and when facing
one’s creditors; indeed, it helped one not lose face in any circumstance. A
good example can be seen in the case of public begging, which was in fact
not a rare occurrence, for there were many impoverished patricians who
were obliged to fulfil their political duties nevertheless. The Venetian
social mask was, in short, an institution of far-reaching socially equalizing
potential, reconciling the particular with the general, or anonymous and
the general, or anonymous with the particular.
The Venetians discovered the virtue of anonymity; that it need not be
considered as a threat, but as protection, a promise. They understood that
from under the appearance of equality, diversity and a variety of desires
could in fact blossom and flourish. It can thus be seen as a kind of logical
counterpart to the territorial and social constraints, which, combined with
the limitations brought about by the presence of the sea and the closed
nature of the different social classes, but at the same time guaranteed the
extraordinary liberties that characterized Venice (both inwardly and outwardly). The freedom to wear the bautà became the subject of countless
restrictions and conditions, which had to be renewed at ever shorter intervals because no one seemed seriously concerned in adhering to them. A
special magistrate for dress codes, the Magistrato all Pompe, was founded
in 1514. The mask also presented a particular challenge for the secret
police because it facilitated the clandestine transportation of weapons, as
well as surreptitious changes of gender identity.13
It is no surprise, therefore, that the Venetians understood well that, in
addition to their exotic goods from all over the world, their knowledge of
human beings was a valuable means of power—with its own particular sellby-date. Consequently, they developed techniques to collect, examine,
254
M. SCHAUB
stretch, mix, weigh, exchange, sell, or buy that knowledge profitably. No
individual piece of information would ever be taken at face value, but
would become the subject of an intricate procedure of examination. Thus,
in analogy to the commodity business, businesses dealing with knowledge
began to flourish—services especially designed to counteract the easily
perishable nature of knowledge and the fragility of cunning, using secrecy
and person profiling. Participation of the many was not desired here.
why the PatrIcIan rePublIc and the PolIce state
were Mutually dePendent In venIce
Just one floor above the Maggior Consiglio was an elaborate architecture
of secret passages, false wall panelling, torture and denunciation. The
archives of the Doge’s Palace were no less meticulous than those of the
Vatican, despite the complete lack of religious zeal. They gathered not
only folkloristic, but concise, applicable knowledge regarding foreign peoples. Simultaneously, they worked to acquire more knowledge about the
predilections of their own noble families than a present-day Facebook
‘friend’ could even imagine.
Management of the Doge’s Palace functioned, as Ursula Krechel’s
award-winning novel Landgericht (2012) describes, as
[...] a cave, a beehive, chamber to chamber, [where] from wall to wall people would be punished, and prosecuted [...], witnesses would be channelled
into chambers, interrogated, defended.
The non-public part of the Doge Palace,
vibrated, [...] lived, [...] crushed, and in the end spat out judgments. It was
a large, oiled machine. You would put your hand in the mouth of truth, and
it would come out, bitten, scratched, bloodied. Or it would have remained,
miraculously, just as uninjured as before. You had been released for lack of
evidence.14
In fact, there was a ‘mouth of truth’ in all public places in Venice but,
in 1797, when Napoleon and his troops invaded the city during their
Italian campaign, they could not distinguish it from denunciation. The
bocce di leone were publicly displayed letter boxes for complaints, especially
designed to prompt the citizens of Venice to remain vigilant over misuse
OF MICE AND MASKS: HOW PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP WORKED…
255
and corruption. The inscription was always the same. It called for the written denunciations of anyone found suspicious of granting privileges, or of
speaking cryptically in order to obscure the ‘true interest’ of their
intentions.
However, the rules stated that any anonymous such letters were to be
destroyed and left unread. A denunciator was required to sign with their
name. It was only after an in-depth investigation, and if several complaints
were collected around a given suspect, that a possible prosecution was
made. The denouncer would also be prosecuted if what he claimed proved
to be false; if his suspicion was confirmed, on the other hand, then his
name would remain undisclosed to the public.
When, in 1797, the French attacked the Venetian Republic and its institutions—forcing the 120th Doge to abdicate—one of the first things they
destroyed, in order to break the power distribution amongst noble families, was not only the only copy of the handwritten Golden Book, but they
also demolished and mutilated the lions’ mouths. Most importantly, however, was their forbidding of the wearing of masks in public under any
circumstance. Their intention was to crush the symbols of an autocratic
police and spy state, which no longer belonged in the century of enlightenment. Yet, without knowing it, in so doing, they hit the logistic heart of
the Venetian power distribution, which did not organize participation and
exclusion by reference to different groups of people or different classes,
but rather, assigned both to the same people as equals among equals.
Corruptible nobles, merchants and citizens were treated equally, and only
tamed by institutional wisdom and clever procedures, not by reason,
insight or deliberation.
The patrician republic and its police state were inseparable in Venice, just
as the black bautà was to the white larva (volto), and just as inclusion and
exclusion, strict secrecy and the greatest possible participation applied, not
to different people and different things, but to everyone and everything
equally. In the republic’s self-conception, the Grand Council (Maggior
Consiglio), the Council of Ministers (Minor Consiglio), and the feared
secret police—the Council of Ten—pursued similar tasks such as seeking to
undermine corruption, but with different means. The primary task of the
resulting police and spy state was to investigate high treason amongst patricians, like activities involving gunpowder and plotting (often made possible
thanks to the use of the mask). Greatest possible participation, paired with
a strategic use of the lottery system, had a similarly preventive effect on corruption as strict secrecy had among a constantly rotating staff.
256
M. SCHAUB
Their understanding of the fallibility of each individual led the Venetians
to limit the power even of the unique jurisdiction of the Council of Ten.
Measures were put in place to undermine corruption: limited terms were
implemented with yearly elections, the participation of the Doge and his
six independent consultants (consiglieri) was required, the presence of
‘avogadori de comùn’ (attorney general) was necessary to testify to the
legality of the secret ballot. The Council of Ten also elected three chairmen (capi), who were compelled to rotate every month on their own
terms and whose names were kept strictly secret. No patrician family was
allowed to send forth more than a single member to this council at any
given time. And, as a precautionary measure in especially politically
charged cases, the investigating capi were even locked up in the Doge’s
Palace to prevent any influence from outside.
the systeM of overlaPPIng coMPetences
The republic had its doctrines, which historians of the enlightenment mistook for paranoia. In the course of the trial against the Doge Marino
Faliero for treason in 1355, the Council of Ten was flanked by a further
council, the zonta (the Council of Twenty). This was twice as strong and
equipped with similar competences so that, for instance, controversial
death sentences would be shouldered by thirty, rather than just ten people. Consequently, both magistrates began to keep each other in check,
developing a curious system of balances between rivalling councils. Thus,
the Council of Ten and the Council of Twenty gradually developed into
double committees, which, over time, claimed all sorts of overlapping
competences for themselves: state acquisition, secret police, chancellery of
the Doge, war ministry, morality police; thus, controlling the alms of the
cloisters, the health of the prostitutes, the ban on public duels, masks and
masking habits, fun in the street theatres, and so on.
It took centuries for the Great Council and the Senate to undo these
double structures. Indeed, it was not until 1644 that the zonta was disbanded, for the Venetian patricians soon got the hang of it, with their
mandates limited in time and the obligatory breaks before entering into a
new office; if dysfunctional dynamics could not be resolved (such as dubious power struggles between certain noblemen), then certain offices and
institutions would simply be doubled up. The Venetian rules of conduct,
to which the serenissima owed its proverbial serenity, was thus as follows:
Political conflicts can be defused by means of targeted, institutionally
OF MICE AND MASKS: HOW PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP WORKED…
257
anchored competence overlaps. This is achieved by temporarily doubling
up a particular office with rotating staff. The gist is to create mirror councils that are mutually interrelated and keep each other in check; in other
words, by undermining and ridiculing each other, say, by arriving at opposite conclusions to the same simple question as, for instance, with regard
to the question of whether or not to allow the Venetian society mask
(bautà) to be worn in public on a particular day.
And so, it is no wonder that Casanova was once condemned, once
helped to escape, and then declared honorary citizen of Venice, before
being sent to France and Bohemia as an informer. In the end, he left his
birthplace, full of contempt forever. To the Venetian nobili, to which he
never fully belonged, he devoted a pamphlet in 1782: Né Amori, né Donne
(‘Neither Love, nor Women’).
In the twenty-fifth chapter of his posthumous recollections (Histoire de
ma Vie, in the French original)—after having become acquainted with
forms of government in Austria-Hungary, Prussia and France—Casanova,
with a sideways kick to his home town, declared:
Like all worm-bitten institutions, it continues to exist. Most of today’s governments resemble those old dams whose foundations are completely
decayed, and which remain in their place only by virtue of their own
weight.15
notes
1. The term bautà literally meant the black hood, but soon became an
umbrella term for all the components of the costume.
2. This limitation doesn’t simply mean that the 3500 members of noble families rule over 136,500 others. We will soon see why.
3. The historian Renan therefore sees at work an ‘Averroean rationalism of
Paduan scholars’. [Author’s translation]—Ignatio Toscani: Die venezianische Gesellschaftsmaske. Ein Versuch zur Deutung ihrer Ausformung,
ihrer Entstehungsgründe und ihrer Funktion. Inaugural-Dissertation der
Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken 1972, p. 108.
4. Casanova’s nom de guerre as spy is Antonio Pratolino.—Giacomo Casanova:
The Story of my Escape from the Prison of the Republic of Venice, otherwise
known as ‘The Leads’, written in Dux in Bohemia in 1787. Translated from
the French edition by Andrew L. Lawston, Kindle Edition 2014.
5. After the first plague in 1348 had extinguished whole families, and the
Genoese had given up the siege of Chioggia in 1381 (with the help of
258
M. SCHAUB
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
all Venetian citizen), the total figure of noble families was increased at
once by 30 bourgeois families, the case nuove. Later, after significant
losses against the Turks in the 17th century, the case novissime gained
access to peerage by paying large amounts of money to the Venetian
state. Over the centuries, the number of male nobles over 30 years of
age and with families with at least two children—in other words, those
qualified to elect the Doge and all other offices—varied between 1000
and 2746.
Cf. Insa Holst (2007) Handel im 15. Jahrhundert: Der Kaufmann von
Venedig, in: Venedig (810–1900): Macht und Mythos der Serenissima,
GEOepoche Nr. 28, (Hamburg), 48–63.
Wolfgang Wolters (2010) Der Dogenpalast in Venedig. Ein Rundgang
durch Kunst und Geschichte, (München).
Unfortunately, in the National Gallery of London, the bautà is still falsely
labelled as a ‘typical Venetian carnival mask’. Nothing could be more
wrong.
‘The social role is not an “arbitrary corset of behavior” but a distinct social
element […]. It thus stars at every “seam”, where the individual meets his
social milieu, that is, where man and the impersonal system of relationships
merge into a role which man has to play in society’ [Author’s translation]—Toscani (1972) (typo-script in German), p. 99.
The rhinoceros was exhibited as a fierce beast, as her keeper carries a whip
and shows a horn of a bull instead. But alongside the disguised Venetian
nobles, it quickly becomes apparent that with her ears flattened at her
head, Clara is really just a badly dressed, harmless ruminant.
Lorenzo de Monacis, as quoted by Eva-Maria Schnurr, in: ‘Venedig: Die
ganze Stadt ein Grab’, in: Der Spiegel, May 30, 2012. See, http://www.
spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelgeschichte/d-85776628.html.
[Author’s
translation]
Ibid.
Originally reserved for the patricians, it was soon also worn by members of
other classes, as well as by educational travellers (such as Goethe in 1786).
Through the semi-transparent black gauze, anyone could tell a person’s
status by ‘reading’ the clothes that they were wearing underneath.
However, it soon became fashionable to dress up under the bautà as well,
like as a clergyman, for example, in order to enter into a convent of women
without causing suspicion.
U. Krechel (2012) Landgericht, (Jung und Jung, Salzburg/Vienna),
p. 58.
Author’s translation. For further reading, cf. Jörg-Uwe Albig (2007) ‘Der
Verführer, 1725–1798: Casanova’, GEO Epoche—Venedig (810–1900):
Macht und Mythos der Serenissima, 28, 142–156.
OF MICE AND MASKS: HOW PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP WORKED…
259
references
Ackroyd, Peter. 2009. Venice. Pure City. London: Chatto & Windus.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans.
Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Albig, Jörg-Uwe. 2007. ‘Der Verführer, 1725–1798: Casanova’ (‘The Seducer,
1725–1798: Casanova’*). GEO Epoche – Venedig (810–1900): Macht und
Mythos der Serenissima 28: 142–156.
Casanova, Giacomo. 2014. The Story of My Escape: From the Prisons of the Republic
of Venice Otherwise Known as the ‘Leads’. Trans. Andrew Lawston, Kindle edition. North Charleston: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Crowley, Roger. 2011. City of Fortune. How Venice Ruled the Seas. New York:
Random House.
Directorate of the Doge’s Palace. (ed.) 1959. Der Dogenpalast. Kunsthistorischer
Führer. Venice: Officine Grafiche Ferrari.
Ferrari, Simone. 2010. The Doge’s Palace in Venice. Milan: Skira.
Gualdoni, Flaminio. 2010. [Pietro] Longhi. Milan: Skira.
Holst, Insa. 2007. Handel im 15. Jahrhundert: Der Kaufmann von Venedig.’
(‘Trade in the 15th Century: The Merchant of Venice’*). GEO Epoche – Venedig
(810–1900): Macht und Mythos der Serenissima 28: 48–63.
Krechel, Ursula. 2012. Landgericht. Roman, 58. Jung und Jung: Salzburg and Vienna.
Norwich, John Julius. 1977/2012. A History of Venice. London: Penguin.
Rademacher, Cay. 2007. “Spanische Verschwörung” (1618): Tod in der Lagune.
(‘Spanish Conspiracy’ (1618) Death in the Lagoon*). GEO Epoche – Venedig
(810–1900): Macht und Mythos der Serenissima 28: 110–122.
Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Trans. Julie Rose,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics. Trans. Gabriel Rockhill, London:
Bloomsbury. (Le partage du sensible. Esthétique et politique, Paris 2000).
Strempel, Johannes. 2007. Flottenbau, um 1570. GEO Epoche – Venedig
(810–1900): Macht und Mythos der Serenissima 28: 94–104.
Toscani, Ignazio. 1972. Die venezianische Gesellschaftsmaske. Ein Versuch zur
Deutung ihrer Ausformung, ihrer Entstehungsgründe und ihrer Funktion
(‘The Venetian Society Mask. An Attempt to Interpret Its Formation, Origins
and Function’*). Inaugural Dissertation for a Doctorate in Philosophy,
Saarbrücken. (Typoscript).
von Hadeln, Detlev Freiherrn. 1911. ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte des Dogenpalastes’
(‘Contributions to the History of the Doge’s Palace’*). Jahrbuch der Königlich
Preussischen Kunstsammlung 32: 1–33.
Wolters, Wolfgang. 2010. Der Dogenpalast in Venedig. Ein Rundgang durch Kunst
und Geschichte (‘The Doge’s Palace in Venice. A Tour of Art and History’*).
Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag.
*Translation by author
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Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
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by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
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permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
PART IV
Emerging Agencies
Perform, Citizen! On the Resource
of Visibility in Performative Practice Between
Invitation and Imperative
Maike Gunsilius
‘I did not choose this theatre course. I do not want to go on stage’. Leyla,
a 13-year-old student with whom I was working in my artistic research
project School of Girls I, said this when we were preparing a public presentation of our research about what it means to be a female citizen—in the
sense of being an active member—of our postmigrant1 society. I was disappointed, irritated, disempowered. Actually, my project was about inviting
the 12 co-researching girls to take the stage, so becoming visible and audible as citizens in public. I noticed that I presupposed performing on stage
would be a desirable moment of agency and would form an emancipatory
approach to my research setup. However, Leyla’ s statement made me
rethink the relation between visibility, performance, agency and
citizenship.
Consequently, this chapter asks: what exactly do we offer by inviting
young citizens to become part of a performative research project? Who
and what exactly has to become visible on stage, and in what way, to provide an experience of self-efficacy and to create agency, or maybe even
M. Gunsilius (*)
Graduate Program Performing Citizenship, HafenCity University Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_17
263
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M. GUNSILIUS
produce citizenship? The essay looks first at the theoretical relation
between visibility,2 performance, agency and citizenship in general and
then goes on to question the promise of visibility in the context of cultural
education projects. The text finally relates these two areas of investigation
and asks how the resource of visibility can be used in performative practice
to generate agency—for both children and adults.
Citizens BeCome AppArent And perform
Whenever we talk about citizenship being more than just a national status
connected with civil rights and duties, we talk about it as a question of
social rights and participation (Marshall 1950). Following Allman and
Beaty, citizenship describes the idea of a subject position that articulates
itself by ‘a set of learned and constantly reproduced practices and conducts, as well as expectations and claims’ (see Allman and Beaty 2002;
Peters 2016). Agency as a condition of such an articulation can be defined
here as the capacity to choose how to act within a social structure.
Articulations and ‘acts’ (Isin 2008) of citizenship—including claims and
fights for it—are constitutively connected to the public sphere (Arendt
1998; Butler 2004, 2011; Mackert 2006; Isin 2008; Schaffer 2008;
Holston 2009; Spivak and Butler 2011; Hess and Lebuhn 2014).
However, the relation between citizenship and public visibility/audibility
is seen ambivalently within the citizenship debate. In Hannah Arendt’s
notion, human acting—strongly connected to speaking—is generally performed in front of the eyes of others, of a public. More than that, identity,
for her, is constitutively performative: the self ‘appears’ visible in the world,
speaking and acting.
With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this
insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves
the naked fact of our original physical appearance. (Arendt 1998, p. 176)
Intersubjective acting as the moment of becoming visible and audible
in front of each other creates a ‘space of appearance’ (Arendt 1998,
p. 199), it constitutes the citizens’ stage—the public. Power and freedom
for Arendt emerge when people act and create something together. The
efficacy of this acting lies in its execution, in its performance itself (see
Arendt 1998, pp. 198–9). The hesitant reception of Arendt, and her
concept of acting in public within feminist and postcolonial theory,
PERFORM, CITIZEN! ON THE RESOURCE OF VISIBILITY IN PERFORMATIVE…
265
results from the critique of her distinction between public and private
that traces back to the model of the Greek polis, without questioning the
exclusion of women and others from this public (Benhabib 1998; Spivak
and Butler 2011). Focussing on this exclusion from appearing and performing on the world’s stage, Judith Butler brings in the term ‘intelligibility’, explaining that norms provide a structure in which an emerging
subject position is recognized and recognizable. But, if a human way of
living is foreclosed by repressive social norms, this life is excluded from
visibility, from intelligibility, from agency as the possibility to ‘matter’
(Butler 2004, 2011). Postcolonial theory has identified the lack of access
of marginalized groups—especially women to rights and to means of
social, cultural and political participation—as a missing possibility to be
seen and heard in public. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, as well as (her
readers) Nikita Dhawan and María do Mar Castro Varela, insistently
point out that her notion of ‘the subaltern’ (Spivak 2011) is not to be
understood as an identity, but rather, it is asking to move focus from the
capacity of the marginalized subject (or group) to the mechanisms of and
the power structures behind his or her marginalization—to make active
exclusion visible.
The discussion about visibility, regimes of visibility and representation
shifted from affirmative claims for visibility, raised by antiracist and feminist contexts in the 1980s and 1990s, to the critique of different forms of
representing ‘the other’ as the moment of creating ‘the other’ (Steyerl
2002; Rogoff 2005; Spivak 2011; Schaffer 2008; Varela and Dhawan
2015), and to the claim for the ‘right for opacity’ (Glissant and Wing
1997). The concept of ‘becoming imperceptible’ (Deleuze and Guattari
2002), has been developed further on to the ‘imperceptible politics’ by
Vassilis Tsianos, Dimitris Papadopoulos and Niamh Stephenson
(Papadopoulos et al. 2008). In answer to increasing debates about
migration movements and illegal migration, here, the authors radically
question the concept of the political subject. Visibility, as a resource of
recognition, undergoes change within the neoliberal logic of today’s urban
and national life; a society that values the acting of people in all areas of life
in terms of efficiency and productiveness. The right, or the chance, to
become visible, to be recognized and to perform citizenship, has turned
into an imperative: Be citizen! Citizens often see themselves called upon to
become visible, to perform as active and responsible members of society, as
Nikolas Rose has pointed out:
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This transformation from citizenship as possession to citizenship as capacity
is embodied in the image of the active entrepreneurial citizen who seeks to
maximize his or her lifestyle through acts of choice, links not so much into
a homogeneous social field as into overlapping but incommensurate communities of allegiance and moral obligation. (Rose 2000, p. 99)
Migrants, especially, find themselves under obligation to show their
efforts; for example, to fulfil integration agreements and other conducts,
to ‘earn’ citizenship—as a legal status as well as a possibility of social and
cultural participation (see Rose 2000, p. 98). If the visibility of a citizen is
considered as her or his social inclusion and participation, claims for
imperceptibility can be better understood ‘as “not being included like this,
in that way and under these conditions”’ (Schaffer cited after Lorenz et al.
2012, p. 286); as a pushback of a hegemonic power relation. Claims and
fights for visibility, as well as its rejection, question and negotiate spaces,
ways and conditions of participation and power relations. Agency has to
include a possibility to choose a position towards visibility and performance, either to use this resource for public articulation and appearance,
or else to reject a performative imperative through strategies of invisibility,
disappearance and resistance.
If we look at artistic practice, the ambivalence of visibility and audibility
as a resource of agency on the one hand, and as a regime of representation
on the other hand, remains widely discussed in different artistic fields.
Artistic strategies, like ‘giving a face’ and ‘lending a voice’ to marginalized
positions from an artist’s privileged perspective, are questioned (Schaffer
2008; Steyerl 2008; Lorenz et al. 2012). With regard to performative and
theatrical works with children in the context of cultural education, this
discussion is in its early stages. Visibility, most of the time, is created affirmatively in these projects.
the promise of CulturAl eduCAtion: BeCome VisiBle
And pArtiCipAte!
Cultural education holds a promise, a promise for agency and, following
this, even for citizenship. In the German context, cultural education is
strongly connected to eighteenth-century concepts around aesthetic experiences shaping the human character (The term aesthetic education is used
further on.). Since Friedrich Schiller’s Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education
of Man (Schiller 2000), art and aesthetic processes are seen as means to
empower, or maybe even generate, the free civic subject. On the basis of
PERFORM, CITIZEN! ON THE RESOURCE OF VISIBILITY IN PERFORMATIVE…
267
this promise, many performative projects in the context of aesthetic education—especially projects in which art and educational institutions, like
theatres and schools, cooperate—are about creating ‘cultural, social and
political participation by enabling children to speak and to be seen in public by their brought in or newly developed artistic forms of expression’3
(Sting 2014, p. 44). Curricula and funding guidelines are built on the
promise: performance = public visibility = participation, for young citizens
of our postmigrant society.4 Particularly in times of bigger social change—
like the increase of migration, diversity, and social segregation—in times
when citizenship is transforming radically, aesthetic education seems a
promising tool for solving complex questions of citizenship such as ‘how
can living together work? How can we organize it justly?’
Principally, aesthetic education projects focussing on disadvantaged or
migrant (or both) children and teenagers, often reproduce the dubious
construction of deficient young citizens that have to be motivated by the
arts to work hard, to make the ‘bodily experience of music, dancing or
acting’ that finally leads to the fulfilling ‘success of the collective performance’ in a (maybe even hegemonically structured) public space—for
example, in a theatre (see Mörsch 2011, p. 12, translation by author). The
participants quite often are made visible, are represented (on purpose or
not) as formerly deficient, but now happily empowered subjects who
finally learned some soft skills on their way to becoming active, participating,
performing citizens. To appear, to speak and to act on stage means to be
seen and heard in public, to receive attention and potentially appreciation.
But ‘[…] is someone already self-effective only because he or she succeeds
in drawing the attention of the others on him or herself? Or does the wish
for attention have to stand in for other participatory needs and desires?’
Sibylle Peters asks (Peters 2012, p. 9; translation by author). In other
words, if visibility within a compulsory school project is to provide participation, it has to be used for first creating the experience of self-efficacy
within a social or cultural question, or a process in which one wants to
involve oneself—this applies to children as well as to adults. Of course,
acting on a theatre stage does not have the same social efficacy as acting in
the frame of ‘reality’; it will not change the world’s structures immediately,
or on its own. However, art has the possibility to build up temporary
‘zones’ of ‘acting on trial’ (Peters 2012; Plischke 2016, translation by
author) in which children and adults are able to claim agency, to build up
and enact alternative social orders—and to make this visible in public.
Sometimes, this ‘acting on trial’ even goes beyond the frame of art and
extends into the social arena.
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M. GUNSILIUS
Childhood, as a protected space, constructs children as citizens in
becoming—with temporarily limited rights and duties—who at the same
time are affected by social decisions quite directly. Their demands for
social or cultural participation bring up questions of power and power
relations (Deck 2014). How are these articulated in theatrical and performative projects with children and teenagers? In what way is visibility used
here so far, and how else could we use it, knowing about the ambivalence
of this resource?
BiogrAphiC theAtre And the VisiBility
of the indiViduAl
The concept of biographic theatre has become a common strategy used in
order to connect to complex, and perhaps abstract, topics and questions,
in theatrical works with non-professionals and children. What is made visible here, the young individual and their biographical experiences and stories—from past, present and future associated with certain social, cultural
or political questions—are told on stage to give a narrative quality to their
knowledge, perspective or appropriation of the world. Ingrid Hentschel
has pointed out that biographic theatre has to transform authentic material
into a play between self and world without becoming a theatre of illusion,
but also without reproducing the publishing of privacy as found in social
media. The theatre stage and the assembly of the presentation enables this
play with difference by playing with the contrast of showing and not showing5 (see Hentschel 2016, pp. 258–62). Regardless, in a setup like this,
typically, children perform and speak on stage and parents and teachers are
sitting in the dark watching, while the initiating artist is proudly standing
behind the lighting desk. An intergenerational public dialogue about
questions of power and participation within this constellation is limited,
inevitably a children’s public in which adults make and children become
visible implies a pedagogic framing and reproduces a distinct power
relation.
VisiBility, power relAtions And postmigrAnt soCiety
Researching on children’s agency as citizens within the structure of state
schools in Germany today means to collaborate with the generation in
which the majority situation between people with and those without a
PERFORM, CITIZEN! ON THE RESOURCE OF VISIBILITY IN PERFORMATIVE…
269
migrant background is tipping within German society. Today, nearly 50
per cent of the students have a so-called migrant background,6 whereas
90 per cent of their teachers,7 and 75 per cent of theatre-makers working
with them, do not (Ahrens 2009, p. 25). Educational and cultural institutions have been identified as powerful spaces that create difference and
exclusion (Sharifi 2011, 2014; Mecheril 2014; Castro Varela and
Mecheril 2016). Given this situation, art projects within these structures
inevitably are part of, and reproduce, their exclusive logic. Questions of
participation and power arising within these projects are crucial issues to
be negotiated in a postmigrant society. For example, who allows whom
to speak about what, and to become visible in what way here? What happens if somebody does not want to be seen? What if he or she does not
want to take part? Is it possible for students not to be made visible, or
necessarily be empowered the way I—as the initiating artist—advocate or
facilitate?
VisiBility As A drAmAturgiC JunCtion
Using the resource of visibility for creating agency for children and for
adults within performative practice means to look at it as a dramaturgic
junction for negotiating relations, structures and conditions of acting and
participating as citizens. Instead of adults solely administrating this
resource, children should also be in control and fully able to decide if and
how to use the resource. In effect, this addresses not only the chances and
limits of becoming visible as individuals on stage, but also the strategies of
making something or someone visible. For example, to make the structures and relations that frame encounters between children and adults
visible, including power relations like teacher-student, parent-child, artistparticipant. Or to make other social mechanisms and conditions of participation and exclusion visible. Or to make the co-acting of children and
adults visible.8 Further, we should think about strategies of using visibility
for ‘playing by the rules of the game’ (Sternfeld 2013). What if we used
the theatre stage—the space of showing and making things public—to
play with the difference of showing and not showing? If we used it as a
space for hiding, for not appearing, or for disappearing? What would that
ask of the audience and of other participants in aesthetic education processes—like teachers, artists, parents? And how would that change our
concept of (aesthetic) education?
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A play like this could offer possibilities for collaborative acting in a selfeffective way—not despite, but precisely because, it is irritating previously
accepted common orders.
To look at three examples:
Example I: Public Incantation (Turbo Pascal) – Hiding and Looking
Back
The first example is a work produced by the performance collective
Turbo Pascal. The two artists, Plischke and Oberhäusser, were working
with students of the Hector-Peterson-Gesamtschule9 (most of whom
have migrant backgrounds), on the project Public Incantation
(‘Publikumsbeschwörung’).10 On stage, there is a white box. Students are
inside the box, not visible to the audience. They glimpse out through a
venetian blind, watching and commenting on the audience (Fig. 1).
Later on, they step outside the box and invoke the audience by mirroring the assumed projections of the audience regarding them. The students
call the audience ‘the poor, the deficient, the victims, the lost, the being
rescued persons, the anti-socials’. The artists also take stage and reveal
their own projections before the students in front of them and are subsequently interrogated by them. Children and adults are questioning one
another’s positions.
Fig. 1 Public Incantation, Turbo Pascal 2011, © Alexei Fittgen
PERFORM, CITIZEN! ON THE RESOURCE OF VISIBILITY IN PERFORMATIVE…
271
Example II: The Godfathers (Turbo Pascal) – Showing Relations in
Constructing and Deconstructing Difference and Similarity
In another school project, the artists met 17-year-old Alper. Following
comments quoting Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather in relation to
each other’s bossy behaviour that arose in certain working situations,
Alper and the male artist Frank agreed to work together on a project
focussed around that film. The two male actors—17 and 37 years old—
share and confront their different views of, and associations to, different
figures within the film and thereby present biographically inspired stories
about manhood and power. Both of them build up (fictional) self-images;
but in the next moment, the other one is challenging this image, by proposing his own view and ascriptions (Fig. 2).
Surprisingly, in their face-to-face-encounter on stage, these two men—
both in their appearance as well as in some of their intentions—seem quite
similar, sometimes even indistinguishable from each other. Different
images of each other, alternative perspectives on their relationship, are constructed and deconstructed—teacher-student, father-son, German-Turk,
competitor-friend. They continuously interchange the roles they represent
for one another. All these constellations become visible and negotiable.
Fig. 2 The Godfathers, Turbo Pascal 2015, © Milan Benak
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M. GUNSILIUS
Example III: School of Girls I (Maike Gunsilius) – Resisting Performance
With this final example, I return to Leyla, the girl who did not want to
perform on stage during my artistic research project about female citizenship, with students from Hamburg Veddel. Having observed that women
and girls in the neighbourhood of Hamburg Veddel are underrepresented
in public forms of civic or political practice, I started an art-based research
project with 13 year-old girls from this neighbourhood (students of the
local school). We started looking into how their everyday practices influence their surroundings, their social life and whether and how these practices produce citizenship. We developed tutorials about these practices to
make the girls’—maybe implicit—knowledge explicit: to make it visible. I
had thought about the possibility that the girls’ practices of citizenship
might be not recognized, and perhaps might not be presentable as such.
However, I was sure that their visibility on stage in public would let them
experience attention and appreciation as active citizens who would show
us—the adults—what to learn from them. Leyla, and her friend Sietara
from Veddel, resisted this setup when they said about the project: ‘It is our
school!’ ‘I just want to do nothing here, just chill’ (Sietara). ‘I do not want
to perform on stage’ (Leyla).
What can be learned from this opposition to performing within an artbased research framework?
• The opposition against a pedagogically framed power relation within
an intergenerational encounter like this should be read as a claim for
agency.
• A setup that offers enough space for agency to the participating children first of all includes the choice of whether to take part or not. It
also provides different possibilities for performing and appearing in
public. If it fails to do so, a well-meant invitation quickly turns into
an imperative to ‘perform’ in a double sense: to show one’s effort
and achievement.
• Convinced that it is the responsibility of the initiating artist to build
a clear and strong art-based research setup, this should still stay
flexible enough to allow for unexpected results, or even opposition,
and view this as a chance to rethink and adjust the framework.
Leyla’s statement, expressing her wish not to perform on stage, changed
the presentation of the project quite radically from the one I had planned.
After welcoming our audience, the girls walked off the stage, whereby I
PERFORM, CITIZEN! ON THE RESOURCE OF VISIBILITY IN PERFORMATIVE…
273
Fig. 3 School of Girls I, Maike Gunsilius 2016, © Margaux Weiss
was left there alone. I was the one to present our research about citizenship, while the girls watched off-stage and commented on it with short
remarks and videos. I put on my mother’s old Norwegian pullover and
displayed some posters bearing slogans from protest movements in the
1980s. The girl’s opposition, their ‘wanna-do-nothing’, was mirrored by
biographical images of my childhood and stories about my own socialization as an active, or even activist, citizen in which opposition and resistance were central strategies for me to appropriate spaces of action. In a
monologue, I started a speech towards the girls about rights and duties of
the performing citizen that became more and more paradoxical; this finally
revealed my invitation to perform as active citizens within the School of
Girls I as being an imperative (Fig. 3).
What became visible:
• The clash of interests, motivations and socializations of the different
co-researchers, concerning questions of everyday practices, regarding acting in public and citizenship.
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M. GUNSILIUS
• The power structures within our encounter: a well-meaning white,
middle-class theatre-maker doing research with students of a socially
disadvantaged neighbourhood, 95 per cent of whom have a so-called
migrant background—and at the same time doing research on them.
• The unfulfilled promise of visibility as agency being rejected and
turned around; the girls were in return researching on me in a way
that made my agency as a theatre-maker implode.
On the topic of agency for children and adults, achieved through collaboration and negotiation, we tried to ‘do nothing’, to ‘destroy something’, we tried to appear on and to disappear from stage. We confronted
our different expectations and approaches concerning the School of Girls I,
concerning ambivalent wishes and fears of becoming visible, of performing
in public as citizens. We made our positions visible in a way that was
irritating.
who is performing? how to plAy with the VisiBility
of A soCiAl ConstellAtion on stAge
In these examples, visibility is used for constructing and deconstructing
relations between adults and children on stage, as well as between on- and
off-stage. Visibility is used to negotiate structures, mechanisms and conditions of our ideas and possibilities to participate, to act as citizens.
I tried to demonstrate ways of using the resource of visibility within
performative practice that go beyond the imperative of having to perform
oneself, and thereby to fulfil the paradoxical order for self-empowerment.
Returning to the initial question: What do we offer when we invite children and young people to take part in a performative research project? I
would suggest thinking of this collaborative research process and its public
presentation as a possibility of co-acting—for children and for adults.
Agency, as the capacity to choose how to act (on stage), means to use the
resource of visibility not only for becoming, but also for making visible.
This has to encompass letting all participants of cultural education
processes, including children, define what is seen as worthy to be made
visible and how. It might also include bringing all participants, also adults,
with their different or similar perspectives, on to the stage to create collective forms of agency. It might also incorporate claims to refusal, to denial;
a resistance of citizens against a performative imperative by using the stage
for hiding, for looking back, for disappearing, for irritating each other.
PERFORM, CITIZEN! ON THE RESOURCE OF VISIBILITY IN PERFORMATIVE…
275
notes
1. The term ‘postmigrant’, originally deriving from American cultural and
literature studies, was brought into the German discussion by Sṃ hermin
Langhoff, director of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. The prefix ‘post’
does not name an end of migration, but marks cultural and social transformation and negotiation processes that occur after migration has become
characteristic for (German) society as a whole (Foroutan et al. 2014;
Widmann 2014).
2. Talking about visibility in this text usually means audibility as well. The
visual is connected to the audible appearance of citizens here.
3. For example, Wolfgang Sting describes a cooperation between schools and
artists by TUSCH-projects in Hamburg, See also http://www.tusch-hamburg.de/TUSCH/index.php
4. Compare funding guidelines of German programmes like, for example,
‘Kultur Macht Stark’: https://www.bmbf.de/de/kultur-macht-starkbuendnisse-fuer-bildung-958.html; ‘Kultur Bewegt’: http://www.hamburg.de/kulturbehoerde/kultur-bewegt/; and so on.
5. Although Norma Köhler points out that ‘biographying’ in theatre is nothing that happens in just one direction, that the audience members also
involve themselves in what is shown and told on stage with their own biographical perspectives—on stage it is the biographies of children that are
told and performed on stage (Köhler 2015)—that become visible and
audible in public.
6. 44.9 per cent of the pupils in Hamburg overall have a so-called migrant
background; in the Hamburg neighbourhood of Veddel, it is 95 per cent
(Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung Hamburg 2016).
7. See, Hamburger Netzwerk Lehrkräfte mit Migrationshintergrund:
http://www.wegweiser-kommune.de/projekte/kommunal/hamburg/,
date accessed 13 December 2017.
8. Compare examples such as the works: Haircuts by Children, Eat the
Street, and so on, by Mammalian Diving Reflex, http://mammalian.ca/
projects/, or projects of the Forschungstheater / Theatre of Research,
like Die Kinderbank or Playing Up http://www.fundus-theater.de/
forschungstheater/
9. A high school in Berlin Kreuzberg.
10. The title refers to Peter Handtke’s play Publikumsbeschimpfung (‘Offending
the Audience’) (1966), in which the idea of theatrical representation is
rejected: the audience’s expectations and thoughts are analysed, the audience is watched back from stage.
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Practices of Politicizing Listening
(to Migration)
Nanna Heidenreich
Already, before the ‘summer of migration’ in 2015—the supposed ‘refugee crisis’—strategies such as ‘giving a face’ and ‘lending a voice’ have
become catch phrases in addressing migration and flight. However, no
voice is just nature, reality, truth, or simply ‘there’. In particular, what a
voice is, can do, is also a question of listening. The famous question posed
by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is pertinent here: ‘Can the subaltern speak?’
Pointedly, her response reveals that the answer to this question is based on
the subaltern voice getting heard. In this way, listening plays a crucial role:
it critically allows a voice to be heard. Such active listening is an act of
response rather than a simple act of recording; it does not defer responsibility by placing it on ‘the Other’s’ ability to speak, to find their voice
within the frame given to them in the act of ‘giving’ or ‘lending’.
The German term Aufnahme speaks volumes here with its threefold
translations as recording, admission and inclusion.1 Replacing the long
established German neologism of Nichteinwanderungsland (a country of
‘The point of language will no longer only be about communication, but also about
pleasure and politics’
N. Heidenreich (*)
ifs internationale filmschule köln, Berlin, Germany
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non-immigration), the term Aufnahmegesellschaft became a keyword in
2015. It means host society, referring to the moment of arrival as well as
to civil society’s active engagement in providing support and many of the
services German bureaucracy actually fails to provide for migrants and
refugees.2 What the term misses is the incorporation of duration—it inherits, after all, the well-established frame of non-immigration. The question
therefore continues to be: how to think arrival—The Enigma of Arrival, as
V. S. Naipaul titled his 1987 novel—or, how to think Aufnahme. One way
to do so might lie in the semantic layers of the word: let’s turn to the
sound of Aufnahme, let’s listen to arrival, let’s think migration through
the ear.
Philip Scheffner’s films testify to the art of listening as a form of (political) activation. In 2012, he and his co-author Merle Kröger3 made a film
about the death of Grigore Velcu and Eudache Calderar, two Romanian
Roma who were shot at the German-Polish border in 1992, supposedly a
hunting accident. The German hunters responsible for their deaths
claimed they thought the men they spotted in the wee hours of the morning in a corn field were wild boar; they were put on trial and acquitted.
The families of the men who were killed were never informed about the
trial. Not one single representative of the law nor any other involved party
considered contacting them, thus depriving them of a chance to participate in negotiating justice and having the possibility to make civil claims.
Instead of reading this violent inactivity as individual or group negligence
or failure, rather, this configuration needs to be understood as an expression of structural violence (which does not dilute individual responsibility). Through their film, titled Revision, Scheffner and Kröger set out to
open a space for negotiation withheld by police investigations and court
proceedings. The very space which the systematic violence of racism,
bureaucracy and diffused responsibility foreclosed. In reopening a legally
terminated case for a different agenda, a new ‘hearing room’, ein neuer
Verhandlungsraum could emerge. A space was created in which the families of the victims could participate, as well as all the other parties involved;
a cinematic revision in which reflection on the very form of the witness
testimony gives shape to a listening/recording practice allowing for voices
to be heard which were silenced before. The film did not aim to produce
a different judgment, but created instead the possibility for different versions of contemporary European history to have meaning and resonance.
The violence of the deaths and ensuing silence cannot be undone; thus,
Revision does not resort to the narrative and institutional form of either
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the verdict or of revenge, two familiar sites of ‘justice’. Instead, it opens up
a space for speaking and, more so, for listening. The film documents their
‘revision’, their reviewing, rather than first encounters—the ‘original’
interviews. Each protagonist is shown listening to their prior statements.
Everybody gets the chance to speak, to listen, and to comment.4
One of the participants in this process of revision was Colorado Velcu,
the oldest son of Grigore Velcu. His presence in Revision is striking. He
has a clear command of the position of the camera and of relational configurations in operation in the space that lies between who is behind the
camera and who or what is in front of it, and what actually speaking within
the camera’s frame entails. He clearly has no interest in just ‘giving’ his
face or his voice to the piece. He questioned the filmmakers and actively
configured the meeting grounds, as Philip Scheffner and Merle Kröger
have described in their encounter.5 It is their shared love for Bollywood
that lays the foundation for mutual openings: cinema as a space of negotiation, also in its colorful grand version of song, dance, and endless
passion.
A few years after the completion of Revision, Colorado Velcu, (temporarily) single father of seven,6 moved to Germany with parts of his extended
family—first to Essen, then to Berlin. The relationship between Philip
Scheffner and Colorado Velcu has always been via the camera. They set
out to film their arrival; it is a form of communication (also in the absence
of a shared language ‘proper’). This begins to shift very quickly: the camera becomes several cameras, and Colorado Velcu—with the support of his
family—begins to collaborate on what will become the film And-Ek Ghes…
(2016). Fittingly, the film begins in a recording booth. We see Colorado
Velcu wearing headphones, listening to a recording of his voice. He hears,
we hear
I started a few times to write a personal diary. But that was all. I never managed to keep at it, even for a few weeks. Today, I’ve decided to write. As one
sees, I’ve picked up my pen here in my apartment in Berlin. I begin with my
arrival in Germany, in Essen. As I have to begin there.
He pauses and then begins to speak on camera, addressing Philip
Scheffner, whose reflection we see in the soundproof glass of the recording booth:
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I think it wasn’t so good. We should do it again. We can do it still better.
Let’s do it again.
And from the off, Philip Scheffner:
Ok.
And-Ek Ghes… means: ‘One fine day…’ A song, a promise to the
beloved, to the children, to oneself. Members of the Velcu family—from
Faţa Luncii, Romania—move to Berlin and perform themselves into a
possible future. It is the refrain of the title song that was written by
Colorado Velcu. It is this song that adds yet another layer to the many
cinematic formats and languages deployed and worked through by Velcu
and Scheffner in their film; they transform the piece into a Bollywood style
music video that lays claim to a city and its venues: this is our story, our
scenery, our stage.
Feminist theorist and musician Christina Thürmer-Rohr published an
article in 1994 called ‘Achtlose Ohren. Zur Politisieren des Zuhörens’, translated as: ‘Careless Ears. On the Politicization of Listening’,7 in which she
establishes a connection between Aufnahme and Aufnahme: inclusion and
recording, starting and absorbing, receiving and accommodating, taping
and adopting. Aufnahme is the verb used to describe the current arrival of
refugees and migrants. Aufnahme outlines the bureaucratic processes
migrants have to pass through as imposed by the supposed ‘host’ society,
that is Germany. As Aufnahme, the sites of their registration are called
Aufnahmezentren, or ‘reception centers’. These euphemisms should
indeed be held by their word. Thürmer-Rohr writes:
Listening shows that the Other concerns me. It signals interest in the world,
interest in the Other(s). Listening to is a metaphor for openness, a person’s
being open, hospitality on the inside. S/he who listens makes herself accessible and vulnerable, wants to know about the Other, is concerned by the
Other, wants to answer to the Other. Listening to contradicts the monological consciousness, is not only reception but attention and irritation.8
Listening to is not about recognizing what one already knows,…it leads to
something missing and not to something already known.9
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It doesn’t confirm or indeed reaffirm; it means slackening the realm of
certainty and stepping into an arena of uncertainty.
Thinking about listening is not so much about advocating sound
instead of images, as if the recording of sound would be less imbued with
‘perspective’ than recording with a camera. Listening as a political act is
more about a shift in focus, a shift in the attunement of one sense by using
another. Listening might actually teach us to see (otherwise).
Philologist and communication scholar Lisbeth Lipari, in a short article
called ‘Listening Others’,10 addresses the practice of listening to the others
as ‘Other’. If we fail to do so, she argues, we ‘deny their alterity and limit
our own horizons of meaning. But when we listen to the other as other,
we pave the way for an ethic that can listen others to speech, and in doing
so, put our self-conceptions and dearly held certainties at risk.’11 Lipari
continues by looking at the transitive and intransitive uses of speaking,
listening and hearing. She wants to convey a sense of listening as constitutive of, and prior to, speaking: ‘listening is an invocation, a calling forth of
speech’.12
In this sense, Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak were listening together to the 2006 protests of illegalized immigrants in the US, who
were collectively singing the US national anthem in Spanish. In their dialogue, ‘Who sings the Nation-State. Language, Politics, Belonging’,13
they hear it not simply as an expression of a new—a pluralist, more inclusive—nationalism, but rather, they hear it as the longing for enfranchisement.14 In German, this is translated as ‘Verlangen nach Stimmrecht’,15
that is, the desire to enter the law, the desire for having the right to vote,
and the longing for the right to have a voice: Stimme—voice, and
Stimme—vote.
The doubling of the meaning of voice as Stimme und Stimmrecht,
between voice and vote, gains another angle in the context of the films I
chose as examples—it needs to be revisioned. If we discuss arrival under
the premise of citizenship, that is, as a question of arrival in the sense of
becoming part of the political community (which always also pertains to
the question of rights, even if one considers citizenship as constituted
from below), we need to ask again what this entails, as it is obviously not
simply a question of legal status or passport. In the case of the Romanian
Roma people, they—like all other EU citizens—have the right to establishment (in other words, residence). Yet Romanian Roma are clearly not
treated as equal citizens, and even have been deported from countries such
as France and Germany in blatant violation of the law—acts of unlawful
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violence enacted by the state. So, what if the entitlement to participate is
not defined by one’s passport (as in the case of Romanian Roma who are
citizens with EU membership, but are still not counted in)?
One of the expressions of everyday racism in Germany has become the
demand to speak German (‘Here we speak German (only)!’).
Monolingualism (as attitude) feeds into the use of the German language
as a tool of exclusion and discipline. And yet, the critique of this form of
violent refusal to speak, and thus to listen otherwise, does not mean that
being able to relate to Otherness is based solely on knowledge.
Understanding—or actually, the willingness to understand and to relate—
does not reside in subtitles, and most certainly not in the dubbing, to use
another cinematic term. Eva-Ruth Wemme worked as one of the translators on the making of And-Ek Ghes…. Wemme is the author of the book
Meine 7000 Nachbarn16 (‘My 7000 Neighbors’), a publication based on
the blog under the same name, in which she chronicles her work as translator—and facilitator—with Romanians and, in particular, Romanian
Roma in Berlin. When she was asked to work as a translator for the film,
she expected a familiar situation:
When I interpret between Roma and Gajikané [non-Roma people, ed.], fear
usually rises up against me – in the worst case, from both sides – and I need
good standing. Two meet who can’t understand one another, not just linguistically, and who also don’t even believe understanding is fundamentally
possible.
But:
Working with Philip and Colorado, nothing rose up against me.
Unaccustomed to that, I started to totter. I almost felt superfluous; nothing
hurt when we spoke. There were no cultural presuppositions or dreams that
also needed to be interpreted. Philip and Colorado encountered one another
in a world whose points of reference they had created themselves. They
understood each other; it was only one another’s words that were unfamiliar. A matter of the tools of my trade. And when, beyond the question of
language, they didn’t understand each other, they considered it as something to be expected. People can’t see through one another like shards of
glass.17
The ability to understand might thus be found elsewhere, in a different
form of relation (to language, to speaking, and of course to listening). As
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285
Daniel Hendrickson—musician, author, translator and member of the artist collective CHEAP—writes in his ‘The Rhizome of Babel’,18
Each of us will speak whichever language he or she chooses, as the situation
arises. The choice of language will be left to the speakers, to be negotiated
according to ability, context, or simply personal whim. We will be free to
switch from one to the other as we see fit. We will not be required to speak
only one, and we will not even be required to announce which one it is that
we are speaking. I will not require you to understand me, nor will I blame
myself if I don’t understand you. The point of language will no longer only
be about communication, but also about pleasure and politics. After all,
what is the point of ‘nations and tribes’ if it’s not that we should get ‘to
know one another’? I may very well try to learn your language(s), but if I
do, it probably means that I’m flirting with you.19
*
*
*
The film And-Ek Ghes… ends as it begins, with Colorado Velcu in the
recording booth, a trace of Philip Scheffner visible in the reflection of the
glass. Velcu reads from his diary. Then he looks up and addresses Philip,
the camera, and us: ‘Let’s listen to it again. Let’s see how it turned out.’
NOTES
1. See Julia Tieke’s working through the meanings of Aufnahme in her audio
play ‘Achtung, Aufnahme!’, Recording in Progress! which she wrote and
realized for the series Tonspuren/Soundtracks—I curated this work for the
Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2015. http://hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/veranstaltung/p_128515.php, date accessed 31 January
2017.
2. See the two ‘EFA’ studies ‘Strukturen und Motive der ehrenamtlichen
Flüchtlingsarbeit (EFA) in Deutschland’ conducted by BIM—Berliner
Institut für empirische Integrations- und Migrationsforschung. https://
www.bim.hu-berlin.de/en/about/, date accessed 31 January 2017.
3. Together they formed the production platform ‘pong’ in 2001, http://
pong-berlin.de/, date accessed 31 January 2017.
4. See also the director’s statement on the film’s website: http://revisionfilm.eu/en/2/film-texts-revision/directors-statement, date accessed 31
January 2017.
5. For example, at the conference Wessen Wissen? in July 2016 at the University
of the Arts in Berlin, https://www.udk-berlin.de/forschung/dfg-gradui-
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6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
ertenkolleg-das-wissen-der-kuenste/veranstaltungsarchiv-des-dfg-graduiertenkollegs/wessen-wissen-kuenste-situiertheit-materialitaet/,
date
accessed 31 January 2017.
At the time of the making of the film, his wife—the mother of his children—was in prison in Romania.
Published first in Christina Thürmer-Rohr (1994) Verlorene Narrenfreiheit.
Essays (Berlin: Orlanda), pp. 111–29.
Christina Thürmer-Rohr (1994) Verlorene Narrenfreiheit. Essays, (Berlin:
Orlanda), p. 111 [author’s translation].
Christina Thürmer-Rohr (1994) Verlorene Narrenfreiheit. Essays (Berlin:
Orlanda), p. 115 [author’s translation].
Published in Angus Carlyle & Cathy Lane (2013) (eds) On Listening
(Axminster/Devon: Uniformbooks), pp. 156–9.
Angus Carlyle & Cathy Lane (2013) (eds) On Listening (Axminster/
Devon: Uniformbooks), p. 156.
Angus Carlyle & Cathy Lane (2013) (eds) On Listening (Axminster/
Devon: Uniform books), p. 157.
Judith Butler & Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2011) Who sings the NationState. Language, Politics, Belonging (London/New York/Calcutta:
Seagull).
Judith Butler & Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2011) Who sings the NationState. Language, Politics, Belonging (London/New York/Calcutta:
Seagull), p. 63.
Judith Butler & Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2007) Sprache, Politik,
Zugehörigkeit, translated by Michael Heitz & Sabine Schulz (Berlin: diaphanes), p. 44.
Eva-Ruth Wemme (2015) Meine 7000 Nachbarn (Berlin: Verbrecherverlag).
Eva-Ruth Wemme (2016) Everything Merely Language (Berlin), http://
andekghes.pong-berlin.de/en/10/eva-ruth-wemme, date accessed 26
March 2017. The text was written in German and, in that language, has a
particular beauty, as has all of Wemme’s writings.
Daniel Hendrickson (2011) ‘The Rhizome of Babel’ in Sebastian Cichoki
& Galit Eilat (eds) A Cookbook for Political Imagination (Berlin: Sternberg
Press), pp. 232–5.
A Cookbook for Political Imagination was a publication for Yael Bartana’s
art/political enterprise ‘The Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland’, a
critical investigation of Zionism and of notions of origins and dreams of
return, together with its mix into historical and present anti-semitism, as
well as Schengen/Dublin Europe’s anti-immigration politics.
Daniel Hendrickson (2011) ‘The Rhizome of Babel’ in Sebastian Cichoki
& Galit Eilat (eds) A Cookbook for Political Imagination (Berlin: Sternberg
Press), p. 235.
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permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
Childish Citizenship
Darren O’Donnell
The left’s pivot over the last thirty years towards a politics of identity has
been blamed by some commentators for driving people apart and contributing to the recent rise of an extremist, racist, sexist, homophobic far
right. But, whether that’s true or not, the politics of identity has not provided the tools to create a movement with enough mass to provide alternatives to the current economic order. Judith Butler, a leading figure in
challenging the gender binary in both academic and popular contexts, also
has doubts about the efficacy of identity politics. She believes it ‘fails to
furnish a broader conception of what it means, politically, to live together
across differences’ (Butler 2015), and she turns to the idea of precarity, or
precariousness—living with no stable, reliable and consistent employment—as a concept to rally around, a site of alliance.
If we’re looking for a population with nearly infinite identities expressed
by the individuals within it, all of whom share the condition of precarity,
we don’t have to look much further than children, even the richest of
whom are denied many basic rights, including the right to work for money.
Children are everywhere, all identity groups have them, and all of us, no
matter our identity or our politics, have been a child and experienced the
acute powerlessness that is the child’s condition. Can the child—and
D. O’Donnell (*)
Mammalian Diving Reflex, Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: darren@mammalian.ca
© The Author(s) 2019
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efforts to infiltrate much of the world with the presence of children—provide a strategy for destabilizing the status quo? And if so, can this strategy
attract the critical mass currently missing from the many fractured movements that wrestle with the question of fairness? Our understanding of
what it means to be a child and what children are capable of contributing
is rapidly evolving. I believe we do have the possibility of both subverting
business as usual and finding a common cause to organize around, a
stealthy little cause that, at first, seems naive and innocuous—sure, let the
kids in—but that might radically revolutionize the world.
But it is adults—not children—who are the universal legal subject. As
full citizens, adults can legitimately stake their claim as members of civil
society, with the possibility of political citizenship being central to the
contemporary understanding of citizenship. Children are denied this in
law, they are not full citizens.
What defines children and what constitutes the place and domain of
childhood is not static across time or space. There is huge variation in
what it means to be a child, what their capacities are understood to be, and
how they are expected to behave. Currently, our society largely views children as becoming and not as being. Children are on their way towards a
destination: adulthood. They are constituted as children in opposition to
adulthood and considered to be in a state of preparation for taking on
life’s ‘real’ responsibilities once they are old enough—an age that is locked
in law. They are on-their-way-towards being finished.
Or,
Is it possible to conceive of young people as not headed towards this
more perfected state, but considered for who they are now? This approach
prioritizes the young person’s being over their eventual becoming. This is
the recognition that their being is as legitimate as anyone else’s and that,
ultimately, they not only have a stake in all discussions affecting them, but
that most issues affect them.
This shift away from the psychology of development recognizes that
adults themselves hardly resemble the complete and fully formed entities
that are popularly understood as adults. There is vague definition, let alone
consensus, on what it means to be adult. To be an adult is to be many
things that are regarded as being childlike: vulnerable, mistaken, confused,
petulant, afraid, irrational, despairing (Pedraza-Gomez 2007). Making
mistakes, learning and growing up never stop—so how can we ever mark
where adulthood begins? Incorporating vulnerability does not preclude
competence.
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Adulthood produces the subcategory of childhood; the idea of the
autonomy of adults makes absolutely no sense without the lack of autonomy implied in the idea of children. As we have witnessed the disintegration of the gender binary, so too can we anticipate, if not actively work
towards, the dissolution of the binary that is adult and child. An obvious
first step—as in the approach to gender or race—is to stop associating
essential and unchanging qualities to either of the binaries, adult or child.
When we think of children, we tend to think they are vulnerable and in
need of care, while adults are understood to be able to take care of themselves. But, in reality, each adult and each child have innate capacities and
abilities: Some adults are more childlike than others, some require the
same care that a baby requires for their entire lives, and some children are,
at quite a young age, completely resilient, rational and independent—
qualities more often associated with adults. Again, like gender and race,
any generalizations or assumptions we make about the ‘typical’ behaviours
of children and adults inevitably fall into question in the face of a multitude of exceptions.
In order to re-evaluate and define entitlement to full citizenship, it
requires that the notion of adults—as commonly understood—simply
does not exist. We all can be viewed as remaining as children, we are all
vulnerable and continue to figure out how to cope with complex situations. Ultimately, the existing notions of childhood and adulthood are
stereotypes, with all the coercion that being a stereotype entails (Watson
2009). But beyond a stereotype, childhood is a way to relegate a big chunk
of the population into being an ‘eternal other.’ Political economist Alison
M. Watson claims that:
the implications of children’s ‘otherness’ have not been tackled in a sustained way within the social sciences generally or geography in particular,
because of the genuine difficulty of doing so. The otherness of childhood is
profound, as many of the symbolic orders which routinely but deeply structure adult life, such as time, money, property, sex, mortality, and Euclidean
space melt away as one tries to see the smoother, or perhaps differently striated spaces of childhood. (p. 33)
As a way to address this otherness, feminist legal scholar Martha
Albertson Fineman argues that we need to look at a vulnerability, which is
‘universal and constant, inherent in the human condition’ and that the
vulnerable subject should be ‘at the centre of our political and theoretical
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endeavours’ (Fineman 2008, p. 1). Fineman contrasts this idea of vulnerability with the liberal theory of the autonomous and independent subject,
the ‘competent social actor capable of playing multiple and concurrent
societal roles: the employee, the employer, the spouse, the parent, the
consumer, the manufacturer, the citizen, the taxpayer, and so on’ (p. 10).
This idea of the liberal, autonomous, subject is ‘indispensable to the
prevailing ideologies of autonomy, self-sufficiency, and personal responsibility, through which society is conceived as constituted by self-interested
individuals with the capacity to manipulate and manage their independently acquired and overlapping resources’ (p. 10). As Fineman points
out, this liberal subject does not account for everybody, and it certainly
does not account for the trajectory of a life which has constant variation in
degrees of autonomy, self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, with the
ever-present threat that that autonomy, self-sufficiency and personal
responsibility will be wiped out entirely. It is just an accident away, after all.
And, of course for our purposes here, another problem with the liberal
subject is that ‘s/he can only be presented as an adult’ (p. 11). Instead,
Fineman points to the idea of the vulnerable subject as a ‘more accurate
and complete universal figure to place at the heart of social policy’ (p. 11).
In addition to social policy, the very idea of citizenship itself needs to be
retooled to include the vulnerable subject as an active political subject,
even as their actions may be quite circumscribed or need the help of others
to be fully expressed. As such, the vulnerable citizen should be the citizen
around which political participation is conceived, designed and
implemented.
Vulnerability, being the idea around which state and other institutions
intervene into the social sphere, opens things up to consider children in
the same moment that we consider adults. Within this framework, children and adults are exactly the same, in that that which is understood to
be universal is now tweaked to include aspects central to the experience of
children—which are also increasingly certain to be aspects of the adult
experience towards the end of life. The liberal universal of autonomous,
self-sufficient and personally responsible individuals means that children
are excluded and become just another ‘Other’ but, within a vulnerability
framework, children are included and, as such, have a right to participate
in the world like any one of us.
Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (The United
Nations 1989), which provides the basis for a way to consider the participation of young people, states:
CHILDISH CITIZENSHIP
293
States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her
own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the
child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the
age and maturity of the child.
While ‘expressing views’ is a narrow way to describe participation,
Article 12 has been taken up and commonly understood as protecting
children’s participation rights (Pare 2015). The realm of these rights is
extensive, outlined therein as: ‘all matters affecting the child.’ It is hard to
think of any important social or political institution, process or system that
does not, to some degree, affect young people: the market, the education
system, the judicial system, the electoral system, the entertainment industry, the medical industry, almost all technology, and so on. The list is endless and, perhaps, is best summed up with one word: everything. Everything
affects children.
Increased participation rights for children are essential—as reasoned
extensively by scholars—for young people to develop a sense of control,
increased ability to handle stressful situations, enhanced trust in others,
self-esteem, the sense of being respected, contribution to education and
development, to learn how to respect the views of others, and so forth. All
admirable reasons, most of which are at the level of the individual child.
But more importantly, the participation of children has the potential to
completely renovate the way in which we think of citizenship, as the inclusion of young people within the political process is very likely to decisively
alter that process.
Advantages emerge for all of us when children are amongst us, ways of
being with each other that are oriented towards efforts at a calm civility.
Adult behaviour is often modified around children, for example, as seen in
the common endeavour to shield young children from aggressive conflict.
In addition to guiding us towards better behaviours, children are also
experts at small joys and masters of play; attributes we can all enjoy and
learn from. So, in these senses, the participation of children as citizens not
only benefits the young, but all of society.
REFERENCES
Butler, J. 2015. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
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Fineman, M. 2008. The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human
Condition. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 20 (1): 1–23.
Pare, M. 2015. Inclusion and Participation in Special Education Processes in
Ontario, Canada. In International Perspectives and Empirical Findings on Child
Participation, ed. T. Gal and B.F. Duramy, 51–73. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Pedraza-Gomez, Z. 2007. Working Children and the Cultural Perception of
Childhood. In Working to Be Someone, ed. B. Hungerland, M. Liebel, B. Milne,
and A. Wihstutz, 23–30. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
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Child. Geneva. www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx
Watson, A. 2009. The Child in International Political Economy. New York:
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Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
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and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the
permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
I Do. From Instruction to Agency:
Designing of Vocational Orientation
Through Artistic Practice
Constanze Schmidt
Henry, a 16-year-old boy, is standing in the entrance hall of a large Chinese
logistics company in the HafenCity in Hamburg. He is playing the
recorder. It is lunchtime; employees are pouring out of the elevators to go
out for lunch. A few of them turn to glance at Henry. Normally, Henry
plays the recorder at small concerts, with his family, or alone, just for relaxation. He even plays it during the breaks of rehearsals when he is stressed.
He always carries his recorder with him. At the moment, he is doing a
mandatory internship at China Shipping, and had the idea that maybe
some of the employees might enjoy hearing him play his instrument.
Shortly afterwards, he said, ‘Of course, it was embarrassing. But it was a
lot of fun too’.
In this particular context, Henry’s playing becomes a micro practice, by
which he triggers something within a micro framework. Such a sense of
I am here.
And as a result, something happens.
C. Schmidt (*)
Graduate Program Performing Citizenship, HafenCity University Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3_20
295
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agency, the capacity to act and to prompt an effect, is probably not experienced so often by young people during their internship. In general,
interns will focus primarily on adapting to given structures at the workplace and in trying not to attract too much attention. Together with
Henry and other ninth-grade teenagers, I have been researching a new
form of vocational orientation with artistic practice. In this context, I initiated internships where teenagers performatively explore different places of
work. The following questions were decisive for our project:
• How can vocational orientation be combined with an education of
agency?
• Ideally, could this take place by introducing an artistic, performative
form of agency?
To answer these questions, I will first refer to given theories and research
around the notions of work, performance, citizenship and agency, and
then describe our specific research setup of a vocational orientation that
was informed by artistic practices.
Working Citizen. the Longing for AgenCy
in Current VoCAtionAL orientAtion
Concerning professions, the German Basic Law states:
Article 12
(1) All Germans shall have the right freely to choose their occupation or profession, their place of work and their place of training. (Basic Law, p. 3)
Vocational orientation has so far been understood as a life-long process in
which an individual can tailor his skills and align his own aspirations with the
professional requirements of the outside world. In school-based vocational
orientation, the parents, employment agency and school support the young
individual’s career choice by providing counselling and informing him or
her about different vocational fields and corresponding requirements.
Working as a teacher in the German school system at a Hamburg academic high school, I have noticed that many teenagers—in view of the
given freedom and an ever-changing world of work—feel overwhelmed
I DO. FROM INSTRUCTION TO AGENCY: DESIGNING OF VOCATIONAL…
297
when it comes to choosing their professional education.1 They tend to
make short-term decisions, without much reflection, which often have farreaching consequences—such as later breaking off from their studies or
education. Students are confronted with two key challenges in the context
of their vocational orientation: firstly, their efforts to obtain good grades,
in the sense of fulfilling external requirements, do not prepare them for
their working life. According to Paul Collard, more than half of the professions that will be socially relevant in the future do not even exist yet.
Young people will thus also need to be capable of one thing in the future:
to invent careers for themselves (cf. Collard 2013, p. 2).
Additionally, many students have neither been taught nor encouraged
how to develop a critical attitude towards our neoliberal working society,
and to develop this attitude within their career choices and life planning.
I understand a vocational orientation in which both of these challenges
are taken into account as being designed around the idea of a working
citizen.
Performing Work
In post-Fordism, labour is no longer defined as a self-explanatory concept.
The same occupation can be perceived by those executing it as either
labour or non-labour. For Paolo Virno, the distinction between labour
and non-labour has become obsolete, and has been replaced by a politically motivated differentiation between remunerated and non-remunerated
life (cf. Virno 2004, p. 117). Thus, it is not solely the occupation itself,
but other factors that will determine what is considered as labour.
Companies nowadays expect their employees to optimally organize
their work themselves; to not only execute a work-related task, but also to
perform it. According to Kai van Eikels, social and communicative skills
(negotiating, communicating, presenting), one’s personal standing and
the corresponding recognition from colleagues, all play a vital role in the
assessment of a person’s proficiency. What is being assessed is ‘their selfenactment – in the double sense of their behaviour and self-presentation
as a performing subject in an inter-subjective network of collaboration’
(van Eikels 2013b, p. 8, translation by author). A person’s occupations are
possibly perceived less as work when fulfilled independently within the
environment of a company based on teamwork. This also involves the
assumption that workers who dedicate themselves to their tasks with their
entire personality are less able to distance themselves from their work.
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C. SCHMIDT
For work performance in a company, particularly the ‘performative sovereignty’ (van Eikels 2013b, p. 4, translation by author) is attractive. A
person can attain performative sovereignty by exposing themselves to situations which they are able to cope with, not through an existing position
of power, but only by virtue of their own behaviour in the given situation.
Acting, in such a situation, affords the performing person the freedom to
shape reality in concrete terms (cf. van Eikels 2013a, p. 32); it never
implies merely executing what has been predetermined. Performative sovereignty thus develops only with the actual performance of actions.
According to van Eikels, the sovereign here disengages from the political—understood here as institutional authority—and appears as a performative sovereignty in processes of work and collaboration.
Labour—in the context of post-Fordism—in the eyes of Paolo Virno
takes on traditional characteristics of political action in the sense of
Hannah Arendt, because ‘it is in the world of contemporary labour that
we find the “being in the presence of others”, the “relationship with the
presence of others”, the beginning of new processes, and the constitutive familiarity with contingency, the unforeseen and the possible’ (Virno
2004, p. 51).
Following van Eikels’ and Virno’s thoughts, citizens thus have the possibility to understand work as a form of political action and to perform it
according to their own needs and desires.
The Concept of a Working Citizen
The concept of a working citizen has been proposed by Ulf Schrader
(2013). He suggests that, in view of an exponential economic growth that
implies the exploitation of ecological and social resources, work—besides
earning a living—should follow the principle of achieving social, ecological and economical fairness. According to Schrader, a working citizen follows a professional self-concept in the course of his working life, in which
he ‘preferably contributes his labour and time for the benefit of societal
objectives relevant to him as a citizen’ (Schrader 2013, p. 1, translation by
author).2 However, Schrader’s approach neglects both a broadening of
the definition of work and the possibility of a fundamental reorganization
of work in our society.
Therefore, concerning vocational orientation and how to design it, I
would like to expand the notion of the working citizen through the following ideas3:
I DO. FROM INSTRUCTION TO AGENCY: DESIGNING OF VOCATIONAL…
299
Colin C. Williams criticizes the fact that, in most US top-down models
for the promotion of security, esteem and identity, a working citizen is
always understood as someone who participates in formal, paid employment. ‘In this view, everything is linked to a paid job, including citizenship
itself as manifested by the lack of distinction drawn between citizens’
rights and workers’ rights’ (Williams 2007, p. 235). Williams promotes
the redefinition and expansion of both grassroots and top-down models of
the working citizen to encompass informal work. By extending the ‘voluntary and community sectors’, integration could be enhanced through
informal work and active citizenship. In this context, Williams assesses the
programme ACC (Active Citizen Credits) as being inclusive and sensible.
The intention of this active citizens’ service is to document, present and
reward endeavours—such as caring and other work, conducted anyway—
for the benefit of their community, for example, by granting tax credits.
Individuals would thus voluntarily engage in a self-designed portfolio of
work of their choice. ‘The result would be the creation of a society founded
upon the principle of multi-activity without a radical policy overhaul’
(Williams 2007, p. 237).
Impulses towards a fundamental redistribution and reassessment of
work in our society are found in the more holistic concepts of ‘time prosperity’ from the post-growth debate. The proposals made by Friederike
Habermann (cf. Habermann 2013, pp. 14–24), and Frigga Haug (cf.
Haug 2013, pp. 26–38) and others open up temporal spaces (cf.
Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie 2013). Their ideas are of interest for the
conception of a working citizen, even if they do not explicitly use the term.
Here, the citizen takes responsibility for the sustainable organization of
paid and unpaid work in our society. Internalized logics of growth are
broken up and gainful employment is reduced to one quarter of the former allotted time. The individual will engage in activities, which she/he
perceives as meaningful, based on the assumption that people are less
interested in optimizing their personal economic situation but instead will
use their own, and other, human resources with great care in all areas of
life.
The German artist Juliane Stiegele extends post-growth concepts of
work organization through the dimension of creativity. The question
‘what is humane work?’ is examined from different perspectives; for example, with regard to ecological responsibility, economic considerations,
social aspects or the need for creativity and culture. In view of ongoing
crises and negative impacts on human existence, Stiegele suggests the
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C. SCHMIDT
redefinition of all fields of work, involving rethinking and actively shaping
them in the sense of creating a social sculpture, similar to the way Joseph
Beuys described it in his ‘expanded concept of art’. The concept includes
the kind of human action aimed at shaping society for the benefit of all (cf.
Beuys 1985). Stiegele finds an answer to the question of what humane
work could be in artistic practice:
If a person shapes things, works beyond his own interest toward a relation
with others and does not lose sight of the overall picture, then he is an artist.
[…] This would also serve as a plausible definition of humane work. (Stiegele
2014, p. 6, translation by author)
In the light of the concepts outlined above, I understand the working
citizen to be an individual who principally acts in a socially, ecologically
and economically fair manner and, within these activities, finds and invents
their own profession.
The Longing for Agency in Current Vocational Orientation
For vocational orientation in adolescence, this concept of a working
citizen provides various ideas that can be structured according to two
interpretations of the term ‘orientation’: orientating oneself in the
sense of determining one’s personal standpoint or as an alignment
towards a profession. A holistic vocational orientation comprises the
development of a differentiated perception of one’s own needs, desires
and skills—including a form of aesthetic intelligence, and the readiness
to allow new perspectives, and to think and act empathically and
socially (cf. Collard 2013). The idea of developing and orientating
oneself on both personal and social values is based on a comprehensive
concept of work, equally including non-paid endeavours like housework, individual work or civic work (cf. Famulla, Butz 2005). Moreover,
Ulf Schrader emphasizes the importance of the principle of sustainability. He notes that this topic has, until now, merely played a minor role
in the academic study and implementation of vocational orientation in
schools (cf. Schrader 2013).
In the light of continual changes in the realm of work, orientation in
the sense of ‘alignment’ refers mainly to aspects like flexibility and adaptation; they have been the subject of controversial discussions in the field of
vocational orientation for some time. While Karin Schober considers them
I DO. FROM INSTRUCTION TO AGENCY: DESIGNING OF VOCATIONAL…
301
to be essential (cf. Schober 2001), Marisa Kaufhold suggests that one
should indeed develop an inner flexibility, but only acquire such new professional competencies that one personally perceives as meaningful. One
should not submit oneself to the pressure of constant adaptation to
changes on the job market (cf. Kaufhold, pp. 223–4). Both positions
underline self-reliance as a necessary feature.
Within the specific discussion on suitable vocational orientation, a paradigm shift—from professional guidance towards the promotion and support of an individual planning ability and capacity to act—has already
taken place. Currently, for practical implementation, this implies that
young people are only offered impulses that will motivate them to shape
their own educational, professional and life planning (cf. Butz 2008).
In my view, the very experience of difference gained through artistic
processes, as Ulrike Hentschel describes (cf. Eckert, Hentschel 2015),
offers a chance to break with habitual modes of perception in the working
world. Following Martin Seel (1993), for Hentschel, the peculiarity of art
is ‘to point to “the world”. The art can only do this by distinguishing itself
from “the world”, thereby enabling the experience of difference or distance’ (cf. Eckert, Hentschel 2015, p. 3, translation by author). Thus,
artistic performative strategies may evade exploitation on the economic
level.
From this, I conclude that what is called for to achieve a vocational
orientation towards a working citizen is a performative, artistic form of
agency.
Agency
Based on Cornelia Helfferich’s compilation of various social-scientific
concepts of agency (cf. Helfferich 2012, pp. 9–39), agency can be understood like this: agency describes a person’s conscious capacity to act and
be effective, which they themselves perceive as meaningful and creative. A
possibility to act depends on social factors. It determines the preconditions for and/or a consequence of agency. A subjective experience of
agency does not necessarily coincide with factual circumstances.
Michel De Certeau sees routine practices as presenting an opportunity
for creative practices of appropriation—individuals decisively integrate
predefined structures into their everyday life in a joyful process of resignification. To him, ‘walking in the city’ exemplifies the process of active
consumption of a place—a city has a system of streets; its inhabitants,
however, take shortcuts that best suit their purposes. Thereby, they create
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new paths, and thus impact the prevailing system. De Certeau ascribes an
element of creative resistance to such tactical practices, whereby an individual would not be aiming at revolution, but rather, simply evading the
control efforts deployed by the ‘disciplining forces’ (cf. de Certeau 1988).
With de Certeau, the term ‘agency’ thus becomes a description of creative processes of appropriation. Agency signifies the capacity to consciously individualize, influence and re-signify prevailing structures.
hoW ArtistiC instruCtions MAy LeAd to AgenCy:
the ProjeCt INTERNSHIP REPORT
The project ‘Internship Report’4 was conceived as follows: in January
2016, ninth-grade students at the Europaschule Gymnasium Hamm in
Hamburg undertook the usual three-week internships in different companies in order to gain their first work experience—for example, at a bank, a
dental practice or a Chinese shipping company. During the preparation of
our vocational orientation project, 22 teenagers and I worked with various
artistic practices. In this context, we discovered that an artistic, performative form of agency could be developed and supported by means of particular art-based instructions. Usually, the tasks related to an internship are
aimed at helping teenagers find out for themselves whether they are suited
for a particular job and the given structures at that workplace—or not. The
instructions of the ‘internship through artistic practice’ served as a research
tool, aimed at testing the work environment and designing one’s own
internship. A series of questions were formulated to guide the process:
• What does the working environment need?
• In carrying out their work, what kind of experiences do the teenagers
see as also pleasing their colleagues?
• How would they like to design their own work?
• What kind of new professions do they invent for themselves?
Based on these questions, the students developed specific artistic interventions within the workplace—using sounds, images, actions or movements—and then documented the reactions of their colleagues.
In the weeks before their internship, the young people had tried out different artistic tasks in businesses throughout the neighbourhood. The special form of instructions had emerged because these teenagers seemed to
enjoy carrying out tasks in general. The students also seemed accustomed
I DO. FROM INSTRUCTION TO AGENCY: DESIGNING OF VOCATIONAL…
303
to receiving clear instructions, as they were used to transparent rules and
their rigorous implementation from school (‘the strictest school in
Germany’ cf. Gall 2012). In my role as artist, and by working with artbased instructions, I could give them ‘license to do things differently’. The
project was aimed at providing the students with small spaces, where they,
for once, would be allowed to bypass the rules set by their environment.
This also enabled them to withdraw from the neoliberal logics of adaptability, usability and achievement orientation, which are found in economy
as in common educational contexts. Instruction-based education is turned
inside out by instruction-based art.
Instruction-Based Art: Permission and Scope for Action
On August 29, 1952, the pianist David Tudor sits down at the grand
piano, starts the stopwatch and closes the piano. In the four minutes and
thirty-three seconds that follow one cannot hear any piano music, only an
occasional coughing from the audience, the shuffling of feet and someone
sneezing. The repeated opening and closing of the piano lid marks all
three movements of this premiere of the composition, whose score was
defined as follows:
I
Tacet
II
Tacet
III
Tacet
By measuring the time, and the opening and closing of the piano lid,
John Cage’s composition 4′33″ (Cage 1960) creates a framework that
directs the audience’s attention to incidental sounds occurring in the
music hall. The recipient is thus referred to his own expectations of a concert. By reinterpreting the sounds all around them as music, the audience
may become aware of their own participation in the concert. Cage
upgrades such ordinary sounds as essential elements of our world. He
reflects the function and the material of art through art itself (cf. LaBelle
2002, p. 48).
Cage’s conceptual compositions had a decisive influence on the Fluxus
movement of the 1960s. In Fluxus, I found the same features and effects
of instructions manifested that became relevant for our project Internship
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C. SCHMIDT
Report. With the introduction of scores, according to Ken Friedmann, a
‘core principle of musicality’ was transferred to Fluxus art (cf. Friedmann
2002). Whilst in the field of music, the ‘musical score’ represents a script
for music notation, the ‘event score’ in Fluxus describes already performed
or yet to be realized actions. Like in Cage’s composition 4′33″, such
actions develop on the basis of everyday activities, which anyone could
perform. As the event score used in Fluxus addresses, in linguistic form,
the original artist themselves, the performer and/or the audience, it
becomes an instruction understandable for all.
The ‘core principle of musicality’ of instruction-based art is not focused
on an original work, but rather, on the specific realization of an event
score by different individuals with the participation of varying audiences in
different contexts and at different times. In Yoko Ono’s work Cut Piece
(1964), performed on various occasions by herself and other artists, people in the audience were instructed to cut off pieces of the performer’s
clothing with an available pair of scissors.
Yoko Ono, Cut Piece
First version for single performer:
Performer sits on stage with pair of scissors placed in front of him.
It is announced that members of the audience may come on stage – one
at a time – to cut a small piece of the performer’s clothing to take with them.
Performer remains motionless throughout the piece.
Piece ends at the performer’s option.5
By conceiving her work as a score, Yoko Ono enabled the transformation
of one idea into multiple different experiences. Ono herself once characterized her performance of 1964 as a spiritual act, as a genuine contribution,
an experience of giving the audience what it wishes to take. The male performer Jon Hendricks, who performed the score in front of and with his
new students of the Douglas College in New York, experienced a transition
in the relationships of authority. During some other performances of Cut
Piece, the audience displayed particularly sexually aggressive behaviour (cf.
Concannon 2008, pp. 83, 85). As the author of the instruction, Yoko Ono
becomes a kind of ‘facilitator’, who provides the active recipient with specific actions and experiences (cf. Umathum 2004). This, and other event
scores, departed from the physical space of art venues; Ono made the scores
publicly accessible in her book Grapefruit (Ono 2000).6
I DO. FROM INSTRUCTION TO AGENCY: DESIGNING OF VOCATIONAL…
305
Artistic instructions question the conventional concept of the author
and recipient. In Cage’s 4′33″, the audience’s participation is rendered
visible through the given specific framework. In instruction-based art, as
in Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, control over the work is partially surrendered by
the author by delegating the realization of the artistic work explicitly to
the recipient. The instruction is completed only through the performance
of the recipients; their participation and artistic decision-making become
indispensable. For Ken Friedmann, the proposition of participation
defined in the scores corresponded with Joseph Beuys’ democratic concept of ‘Everyone is an artist’ (cf. Friedmann 2002, p. 126). In the sense
of an extended definition of art, Beuys understood every human being as
being capable of creatively shaping society (cf. Beuys 1985).
Through the instruction to act, the recipient receives permission. As
Mary Patterson says about Playing Up, a Live Art Game by Sibylle Peters,
performed at the Tate Modern in 2016: ‘The rules of this game are simply
to follow the rules, which are less like rules and more like permissions’
(Paterson 2016, p. 1). In the instructions of this Live Art Game it is stated,
‘that to commit to a task can set you free’ (Peters 2016, p. 6).
Similar experiences, from a special form of instruction—the selfcommitment—were made by contemporary artist Sophie Calle:
I like being in control and I like losing control. Obedience to a ritual is a way
of making rules and then letting yourself go along with them […] I’m
always dreaming of situations where I won’t have to decide anything. Where
I can really let myself go. (Calle, in an interview with Christine Macel.
(Macel 2003 p. 75))
The method of the artistic instruction produces the liberating effect (cf.
Umathum and Rentsch 2006, pp. 9–10) that the composer Igor Strawinsky
describes as a special essence of an artistic attitude and work:
My freedom consists in acting within the tight framework that I have set for
myself for each of my projects. […] Whoever deprives me of my restraint,
also strips me of my force.
The more compulsion you impose, the more you are freed from the
chains that bind the spirit. (Strawinsky 1949, p. 46)
An artistic instruction gives permission and provides new space for
actions and experiences. This new space is designed by the performing
person, who creates their own set of rules.
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Even by refusing the scope for action, the recipient performs an attitude. I would infer that the appropriation of an instruction may lead to
independent, self-reliant action—to agency.
Opening Up Scope for Action Within Institutions
The scope for action—the new space—created with the help of instructions, always develops within an existing space that, according to de
Certeau, has in turn constituted itself through activities and agreements.7
During an internship, these spaces and the supervisory bodies of workplace and of school overlap for three weeks. In this situation, it is not quite
clear which rules actually apply. One may have to break one rule in order
to follow another. This is where, in the guise of school assignments, our
artistic instructions come in. The instructions allow for a new space, which
can be designed according to one’s own rules. Such scope for action is
normally not foreseen within institutions. Neither employers or schools,
nor even authors of such instructions, have complete access to this space.
The prevailing rules of workplace and school thus become unstable.
This process opens up new perspectives onto institutional rules, creating potential for their appropriation. The scope for action here provides a
form of freedom, as defined by de Certeau—by adopting the instructions
for themselves, in using their own approach, the students temporarily
allow a new space to emerge in the frame of their internship. They perform a new space.
Through the medium of their bodies, boundaries between art and
everyday life are dissolved. Action remains action. Through the artistic,
daily and political dimension of action, routine activities at school and the
workplace are affected. By experiencing new scope for action, an intern
has the possibility of attaining a new self-understanding. Thus, there is
potential space for agency.
The Licence for ‘Doing Things Differently’
Two Different Kinds of Artistic Instructions
For the students’ internship, I devised a set of instructions in their research
journals, which they then could use as blank permissions. How would the
teenagers deal with this new scope? What would they wish for at their
working environment that normally was not considered as belonging
I DO. FROM INSTRUCTION TO AGENCY: DESIGNING OF VOCATIONAL…
307
there? Or—in the sense of Cage’s composition—which coughing, which
shuffling of the feet would they choose to make heard?
Generally speaking, there were two different kinds of instructions
involved:
Testing the Working Environment—Instructions
with a Predetermined Micro Practice
The interns carried out a number of activities in order to test reactions in
their working environment. In this phase, the content of the instructions
was based on concepts for a post-growth society, including concepts of
time prosperity. Besides this, they were based on practices that the students had previously used as forms of micro resistance at school against
achievement orientation, for example, ‘talking to their classmates’ or
‘snoozing at their desk’. These sensorial physical practices were examined
with regard to their reflexive, subversive and experimental potential, and
then exaggerated in the form of instructions in the work context. Following
Elke Bippus’ definition, I refer to them as micro practices (cf. Bippus
2015, pp. 216–21). Initially, a constitutive element for micro practices,
according to Bippus, is their pharmacological dimension—as both formative and deformative practice simultaneously (cf. Mikropraktiken).
However, regarding this research project, I would expand her concept to
include individual practices which, when transferred to a new context,
have an interventionist effect. To break the rules was therefore set up as a
new rule and the students were empowered to follow it.
For their internship, some students had in their research journal the
instruction to:
Take two additional breaks, during which you sleep at the workplace for
three minutes.
Pauline, a student, did her internship at a bank. The manager of the
bank took a keen interest in the tasks Pauline found in her research journal. He suggested a solution for following the instruction: not to sleep at
the counter or in the customer area, but in the back office of the bank.
This would provide the opportunity to ‘make everything ok, afterwards’.
In this case, the creative enactment of a predetermined micro practice
within prevailing structures was at stake, and the straightforward character
of the instruction indeed had a productive effect. It gave Pauline permission to break with, or at least question, rules at the workplace by referring
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to the licence of an ‘artistic research task’, in the face of—or even together
with—her superior, the bank manager. The result of this testing of the
working environment was that the bank manager used the newly created
intellectual leeway actually as an opportunity for reflection. In an interview
with both Pauline and me, he talked about what it meant to take your
breaks with self-responsibility or to ‘test the limits’.
Shaping the Working Environment: Instructions with SelfCreated Activities
The other form of instruction given to the students was more open, and
implied self-determination—implementing their own ideas and taking
their own decisions. An example of such an instruction might be:
Perform an activity at the workplace that you enjoy doing and that also
pleases your colleagues.
A girl named Bintou had undertaken a boring internship in a dental
practice. The atmosphere there was marked by mutual disinterest. She had
hardly any tasks to do and she stood around a lot. At this time, many refugees were coming to the dental practice. Bintou is a native English speaker.
After just a few days, she had invented the job of interpreter for herself in
dental practices.
Perhaps she would have engaged in this activity even without the
instruction. By fulfilling her research tasks, however, she consciously
experienced her scope for action and could appreciate her activity as meaningful. After this, she gave herself permission to no longer follow any
instructions from the research journal.
Another performance of this instruction was enacted by Henry, mentioned earlier, by playing his flute in the entrance hall of the Chinese shipping company. After the internship, we jointly reflected the students’
experience, based on an artistic presentation titled Internship Report
(‘Praktikumsbericht’). In making the presentation, Henry took advantage
of his newly found scope for action by making himself heard on a Wagner
tuba (Fig. 1).
Agency became visible in the students’ meaningful and creative appropriations of pre-existing structures. The corresponding instructions provided them with a space they could design for themselves by developing
their own set of rules within the rules of their chosen workplace. In this
sense, ‘To commit to a task can set you free’ meant empowering them to
I DO. FROM INSTRUCTION TO AGENCY: DESIGNING OF VOCATIONAL…
309
Fig. 1 During the presentation, Henry watches footage of himself playing the
recorder in the China Shipping company (Hamburg, 2016)
contribute something of their own to the workplace—independent from
the requirements of the workplace—and so shape the environment for
themselves and others. The instructions required reflection upon oneself
and on existing structures—the act of translation and the playing of a
recorder counted, amongst the young people, as answering human need
that was found in their working environment. They thus performed their
self-understanding as interns within an institution and manifested their
identity as young working citizens.
The instructions, and their performance by the students, can be seen as
an experimental embodiment of the above-mentioned Article 12 of the
Basic German Law regarding the freedom to choose one’s occupation; an
article, in this light, that can itself be interpreted not only as a right but as
an instruction that might be embodied individually in an ever-changing
world of work: Choose your vocation freely. Design your vocation. Invent
your vocation. As working citizen.
The project Internship Report opens up the possibility to experience
one’s own present or future workplace as being malleable through action;
thereby reinterpreting, redefining and appropriating both this space and
310
C. SCHMIDT
one’s occupation in a positive sense. In his composition 4′33″, Cage was
able to provide a framework capable of directing the audience’s attention
to incidental sounds during a concert; sounds which usually are considered disturbing. He distinguishes the ordinary noises of the audience—the
coughing, the shuffling of feet, the snoozing—by redefining them as independent sounds. Based on its instructions, the project Internship Report
provides a comparable framework aimed at directing one’s focus, within
the scope of one’s activities, more towards recognizing individual human
needs that, in the context of neoliberal working relations, are normally
neglected—such as sleeping, language translating and playing the recorder.
If this concept were transferred to the level of social responsibility and
designing of working practices, which opportunities would it signify for
the future of work and the citizens’ participation within the process?
By providing space for agency in Article 12 of the Basic Law, responsibility is returned to each individual in two key respects: the responsibility
to respect and honour one’s own wishes, values and abilities and the
responsibility to perform one’s own activities as civic action. This raises the
question for every subject, according to which values one intends to shape
the space:
Through which practices would a person like to become a working citizen?
This is the chance for citizenship to be reconsidered and negotiated
from the perspective of an active subject being an inclusive phenomenon.
notes
1. Also, Heinz Dedering writes about the overwhelming situation for young
people (cf. Dedering 2002, pp. 25–6).
2. Schrader’s definition of citizenship is oriented on the tradition of the republican understanding of citizenship, by which a good citizen actively contributes to common welfare and voluntarily fulfils duties.
3. In Germany, the concept of the working citizen is currently of particular
relevance in view of its integrative qualities. Until 2014, it could take several
years before persons seeking asylum, or with a ‘tolerated’ status of residence, was granted a work permit. Considering that, especially since the
summer of 2015, an increasing number of people sought refuge in Germany,
the policymakers and economists have made an effort to facilitate entry to
the job market. Reasons for this are the costs of social benefits that otherwise would be due, a shortage of skilled workers in Germany and, not least,
I DO. FROM INSTRUCTION TO AGENCY: DESIGNING OF VOCATIONAL…
4.
5.
6.
7.
311
the prospects successful ‘professional integration’, as 70% of the refugees are
under 30. Here, the law of integration of August 6, 2016 plays a vital role
(Cf. Pro Asyl 2017).
The project was conducted at the Europaschule Gymnasium Hamm in
Hamburg, from November 2015 to May 2016. Concept and research:
Constanze Schmidt; artistic assistance: Teresa Rosenkrantz; educational
assistance: Ulrike Mack.
Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, quoted after Concannon, p. 82.
From my point of view, an interesting approach to enabling the artistic
scores to enter the recipients’ everyday life is George Brecht’s idea of distributing artistic scores via newspapers and postcards (cf. Dezeuze 2002, p. 79).
De Certeau distinguishes between space and place. A place is the structure
of relationships between elements. Two items can never be at the same
place. A place signifies clarity and stability. The space develops from changeable elements—like direction, speed and time—as a ‘polyvalent unity of conflictual programs and contractual proximities’ (de Certeau 1988, p. 117).
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holder.
INDEX1
A
Activism, 2, 10, 19, 21, 31, 40, 52,
57, 58, 64, 67, 97, 107n2, 114,
115, 117, 118, 149, 150, 154,
157n1, 161–169, 171, 172n4,
172n5, 172n8, 198, 199, 213,
220, 224, 225n1, 273
Acts of citizenship, 5, 50, 148, 156,
205n16
Allegory, 33, 39, 232
Appropriation, 81–86, 136, 137, 139,
140, 148, 156, 162, 165–167,
169, 170, 171n1, 202, 203, 268,
301, 302, 306, 308
Arendt, Hannah, 149, 155, 179, 264,
298
Assembly, 21, 51, 57–71,
167, 198, 200, 213, 221, 222,
230, 268
Aufnahme, 279, 280, 282, 285n1
Austin, J. L., 4, 5, 45–47, 50, 52, 180
Autoethnography, 39
1
B
Bakhtin, Michail, 61, 192, 197, 198,
204n7, 239
Balibar, Etienne, 3, 31, 41
Barthes, Roland, 18, 103, 104
Becoming imperceptible, 265
Bhabha, Homi, 192–195,
199, 200, 202, 204n10,
204n13
Bippus, Elke, 307
Body
experiment, 82
in movement, 18
optimization, 77, 86
and ownership,
77–81, 86
Bollywood, 281, 282
Bourdieu, Pierre, 128,
134, 139
Butler, Judith, 6, 39, 45, 58, 59, 67,
68, 71n1, 180–182, 264, 265,
283, 289
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.
© The Author(s) 2019
P. Hildebrandt et al. (eds.), Performing Citizenship, Performance
Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97502-3
315
316
INDEX
C
Carnival, 61, 192, 196–199, 203,
204n7, 250, 252
Casanova, Giacomo, 245, 257
Children
becoming, 268, 290
in opposition to adulthood, 290
performing on stage, 263
relations between adults and
children, 269, 274
Choreography, 2, 10, 59, 60, 177,
179, 185, 186
Circle dancing, 57–71
Claim-making, 165, 171
Colonialism
in historical accounts, 94, 96, 98,
105, 107n6, 118, 119
and insurance companies, 184
and racism, 99, 115
and urban planning, 96
Commemoration, 99–104, 106, 107,
124
Communities
First Nations, 112
indigenous, 117
and marginalization, 113
Container(ization), 36, 83, 138, 177,
185, 212, 213, 220, 223
Corruption, v, 223, 244–247, 255,
256
E
Echo, 95, 96, 98–100, 102, 104,
107n6
Education
aesthetic, 266–267, 269
professional, 297
English Garden Effect, 229, 236, 240
Enlightenment, 243–257
Epistemic object, 33, 34
Experimental system, 34
D
De Certeau, Michel, 301, 302, 306,
311n7
Deleuze, Gilles, 59, 230, 265
Deliberation, 137, 178, 248, 255
Derrida, Jacques, 37, 45–47, 180
Dhawan, Nikita, 33, 102, 178, 186,
202, 265
Doge’s Palace, 245–249, 254, 256
Doppelgänger, 193, 194
H
Habeas Corpus Act, 78
Haircuts, 2
Homosexuality, 192
Hospitality, 30–32, 34, 36–40, 42,
282
Housing rights, 111–124
Human rights
European Convention of, 47–48
and women’s rights, 111–125, 133
F
Feminism
organizing, 114
practice, 112, 117
and urbanism, 113
Fischer-Lichte, Erika, 180
Fluxus art, 304
Fördern & Wohnen, 32
Fraser, Nancy, 118, 165, 187n2
G
Gender, 2, 3, 31, 82, 83, 116, 181,
187n2, 195, 253, 289, 291
hacking, 82
Gentrification, v, 114, 118, 119, 123
Gezi Park, 58, 60, 61
Green Room, 240
INDEX
Hydrarchy, 212, 218,
221, 222
I
Identity
and belonging, v, 30, 42
ethnic, 137
multitudinous formations, 232
in vegetal life, 235
Imagination, 84–86, 94–97, 105, 107,
170, 230
Indigenous
activism, 115, 116, 119
foundations, 116
identity, 115
rights, 111–124
Inflatables, 34, 36, 37
Integration, 30, 59, 130, 155, 266,
299, 311n3
Invisible, 11, 30, 128, 130, 177–180,
185, 193, 194, 196
L
Lagos, 217, 219–224
Lampedusa in Hamburg, 156
Listening
acts of, 93–107
and cultural remembrance, 106
politicization of, 282
Lloyd, Edward, 178–180, 184
Logistics, v, 7, 177, 178, 185, 186,
210–215, 217–221, 223–225,
255, 295
Lottery, 247, 248, 255
M
Mapping, 32, 152
Marijuana, 50
Masks, 2, 83, 243–257
317
Migrants/migration, v, 3, 30, 31, 33,
36, 41, 52, 98, 147, 151, 193,
212, 213, 217, 224, 235,
265–267, 269, 270, 274, 275n1,
275n6, 279–285
Mimicry, 2, 191–203
N
Neighbours, 31, 66, 67, 118, 216,
236
Neoliberal(ism), 49, 80–82, 111, 114,
115, 118, 119, 162, 180, 185,
265, 297, 303, 310
Never Mind the Papers, 150–151, 156
O
Opacity, 265
Otherness/othering, 195, 200, 234,
284, 291
P
Paper citizenship, 52, 155
Pirates, 210, 211, 213, 217, 218, 222
Politics
colonial, 103, 106, 116
in connection to activist networks
and scholars, 168
and delegation, 179, 180
imperceptible, 265
international, 2, 48
and legal rights, 199
Port authorities, 223
Postcolonial city, 96, 99, 102, 107
Postmigrant society, 267–269
Protest, 19, 21, 50, 51, 57–71, 121,
136, 137, 147, 149, 153, 154,
156, 162, 167, 172n5, 186,
204–205n13, 225n3, 230, 243,
252, 273, 283
318
INDEX
Public space/public sphere, v, 2, 8, 23,
25, 50, 57–60, 64, 65, 67, 69,
98, 134–137, 139, 149–156,
157n7, 165, 169, 170, 178–180,
184, 186, 187n2, 194, 199, 250,
264, 267
Publikumsbeschwörung, 270
R
Refugee, 19, 24, 29–34, 41, 115,
147–149, 151, 154, 156, 157n1,
164, 192, 196–199, 219, 220,
224, 280, 282, 308, 311n3
Resistance, 20, 67, 85, 96, 97, 116,
129, 139, 191, 195, 196, 199,
203, 246, 266, 273, 274, 302,
307
Revision, 3, 245, 280, 281
Revolution, 24, 71n8, 83, 204n13,
213, 302
Rogoff, Irit, 265
S
School
of urban action, 148–151, 153,
156, 157n2, 157n7
and vocational training, 296, 300
School of Girls I, 263, 272–274
Sennett, Richard, 22, 178
Sex trade, 115
Slave trade, 178, 180, 184, 185, 218,
220
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 112, 264,
265, 279, 283, 286n13, 286n14,
286n15
Subjectivity
artistic, 107n2
and performativity, 182
relational, 48
right to, 78
SUVs, 41
T
Transversality, 231
Trump, Donald, 231, 232
Tsianos, Vassilis, 26n11, 225n7, 265
U
The Undercommons, 218
Urban interventions, 8, 148, 151, 153
Urban restructuring, 115
V
Vancouver, 2, 111–114, 116–118,
123, 124
Vegetal thinking, 232, 234
Virno, Paolo, 59, 297, 298
Visibility, 66, 67, 97, 135, 152, 155,
156, 202, 263–274
W
Welcome Culture
(Willkommenskultur), 30, 199
Women’s activism, 115, 117
Work
and career, 296, 297
and citizenship, 5, 53, 133,
296–297, 299
as a form of political
action, 298
informal, 299
as a score, 304