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- Convenors:
-
Dorothy Noyes
(The Ohio State University)
Kyrre Kverndokk (University of Bergen)
Anne Eriksen (University of Oslo)
Send message to Convenors
- Chairs:
-
Anne Eriksen
(University of Oslo)
Kyrre Kverndokk (University of Bergen)
- Discussant:
-
Barbro Blehr
(Stockholm University)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Performativity
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 23 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the aesthetics of exemplarity: the networked process of performance, emulation, and revision through which rules of social conduct are made and remade. What formal and communicative devices mark performances that seek to revitalize established rules or to propose new ones?
Long Abstract:
The rule must be abstracted from the deed,... against which others may test their own talent, letting it serve them as a model not for copying but for emulation.
--Immanuel Kant
Rules invite a range of responses in action. They can be grudgingly acknowledged, bent, evaded, ostentatiously observed, flagrantly transgressed, or painstakingly revised. In the interplay between these last three possibilities lies exemplarity: the networked process of performance, emulation, and revision through which rules of social conduct are made and remade.
A concrete action becomes exemplary when it is understood as pointing toward a model or rule, but the example will also always do much more. The intrinsic abundance of the performed example may strengthen a rule, but also threaten to overthrow or upend it.
This panel addresses the aesthetics of exemplarity as the space of performance that falls between observance and transgression. Rules are most stable when they are least visible. Thus, when a performance calls attention to the rules, and by extension to itself, it is an indicator of conflict and/or change in the air.
We seek papers exploring the communicative and formal means through which particular performances of conduct set themselves up as examples, inviting reflection on the rules as well as emulation by other actors. The aesthetics of carnivalesque or inversive transgression have been much studied. What aesthetic and affective devices do actors call upon not to ridicule an established order, but to propose its revitalization or replacement?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the communicative strategy in a series of historical paintings from the end of the 18th century in Denmark-Norway. I will discuss the paintings' moral examples and their connection to changing ideals in society. How could the tableau strengthen the rule of the Oldenburg dynasty?
Paper long abstract:
In 1778-91 the artist Nicolai Abildgaard created a series of historical paintings for the Great Hall at Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen. Through ten large canvases, this series of paintings presents the virtues and good deeds of the Oldenburg dynasty. The goal of the series was to strengthen the power and rule of the absolutist regime. In the paintings, the kings are surrounded by famous men from their regime. Through moral lessons in patriotism, public spirit, and faithfulness to the king each painting presents moral examples of social conduct. To convey these moral messages Abildgaard used a communicational strategy, widely known in the latter part of the 18th-century, called the tableau. The tableau brought the didactic message to life through idealized moments that the spectator should grasp instantly. All of the paintings present the viewer with moments that are densified, containing both the past and the future, that the spectator could perceive at a glance. The tableau was tied to a common idea of "good taste" and morality and a type of aesthetic discourse aimed at a spectator who was to emulate the examples. This communicational strategy should be seen in connection with the intended audience of the paintings and the revitalization of the absolutist regime. In this paper I will discuss how this communicative strategy invites the viewer to emulation. How could this communicative strategy strengthen the rule of the Oldenburg dynasty?
Paper short abstract:
Trump's challenge to the 2020 US election created an interregnum encapsulating flux in democratic and performance norms. Republicans seeking to affirm the rules faced challenges of audience design in a performance context valorizing transgression. Embodied class habitus shaped differential efficacy.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years, Donald J. Trump's aesthetic of outrage has commanded the noisy, decentralized mediascape of US politics. Progressives fought back through the authority of traditional protest idioms, enhanced by the charisma of the arts. Biden's calming presence won enough weary adherents from both ends to claim the presidency, but most establishment Democrats, seeking to restore a national ideal of exemplary leadership, found themselves at a performative and electoral disadvantage. What of Republicans facing the transition?
The paper examines the public performances of the state officials and the (few) Republican senators who pushed back against Trump's attempt to overturn the election. They faced challenges of audience design, seeking to support the transition without jeopardizing their own positions. How could a performance affirm the rules without violating a popular partisan conception of democracy as the freedom to transgress? How could it garner the necessary collective attention while still allowing its performer to fly under the partisan radar? Embodied class habitus may offer one key to the differential efficacy of these stance-takings in convincing the public that the vote would be respected, and even more to the reputational outcomes for the performers themselves.
In this interregnum, the norms of both democracy and performance are in flux. But most factions are predictable. The Washington establishment seeks to restore the liberal exemplarity that enlivens the rule of law. Progressives create exemplary performances that gesture towards a new order. Trumpian populism battens on the unexampled. The stylistic fluctuations of ambivalent Republicans may be diagnostic.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the figuration of Greta Thunberg as a Vorbild. This will be done by exploring how various notions of “the child” as a trope are used by herself in her performances and in the reception of her as a Vorbild, but also in the attempts to discredit her authority.
Paper long abstract:
“My name is Greta Thunberg. I am sixteen years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations. I know many of you don’t want to listen to us – you say we are just children.” This quote is typical for how Greta Thunberg uses the child as her position of enunciation. As “our children” this trope is commonly used in political speech as a way of describing a future to be saved. By turning this trope into as her position of enunciation, Thunberg has encouraged millions of young people to go on strike for the climate.
This paper will discuss Thunberg’s school strike, by drawing on Dorothy Noyes’ concept of the Vorbild as a person “that stands forward to be imitated”. According to Noyes, the exemplarity of a Vorbild is shaped in the interplay between the performer and the audience, between intention and reception. To be imitate-able, such performances have to be expressed in more or less recognizable ways. This also counts for how Thunberg has used “the child” trope.
This paper examines the figuration of Thunberg’s exemplarity. This will be done by exploring the aesthetics and the rhetoric of “the child” in her performances and in the reception of her as a protester. Different notions of “the child” are articulated in this interplay, such as 1) embodied future, 2) affective and unruly, 3) authentic and 4) innocent and vulnerable. These different notions are combined in different ways to ascribe or discredit her authority.
Paper short abstract:
My paper discusses Wim Hof, the originator of the Wim Hof Method, as an exemplary figure in the therapeutic regime. Wim Hof typifies a form of corporeal exemplarity that combines “natural” bodily technique with extraordinary performance ability and authorizes this combination by scientific fact.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses the Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hof, also known as the “Iceman”, as an exemplary figure of the contemporary therapeutic wellness regime. Wim Hof is a Guinness world recorder (e.g. for “swimming under ice and prolonged full-body contact with ice”) with a gripping yet relatable personal life story. Moreover, he is the originator of the Wim Hof Method, a reflexive somatic technology that couples frequent cold exposure (i.e. ice swimming) with Tibetan Tummo -inspired breathing practice and mindfulness meditation. In short, Wim Hof has taken the alleged health benefits of cold exposure, breathing practice, and meditation to a new level, claiming to be able to teach anyone to access their autonomic nervous system and thereby alter one’s immune and bodily function. A crucial factor in the fame and (mythic) narrative of Wim Hof and his method, however, relates to the fact that Hof has subjected himself and his student groups under various scientific, clinical tests in support of his somewhat lofty rhetoric. Expanding linguistic/semiotic anthropological work on “indexical orders”, I look at Wim Hof as mobilizing and typifying a form of corporeal exemplarity that ostensibly combines accessible and “natural” bodily technique with extraordinary performance ability (noted in the world records) and authorizes this combination through the cold register of scientific fact. Such friction between mythic/narrative aspects and evidence-based forms of exemplarity renders Wim Hof and his method somewhat threatening to the established order by proposing its revitalization but still playing by its rules.