Heterotelic models as performatives: From speech acts to propositionality

100 HETEROTELIC MODELS AS PERFORMATIVES: FROM SPEECH ACTS TO PROPOSITIONALITY1 Performatives in the sense of speech act theory have long been held for the elementary building blocks of theatre and performance. This article proposes a theory of performative models as autonomous forms that are (1) propositional (to be worked with), (2) reified (things in their own right), and (3) inherently heterotelic (shifting in their purpose between models-of and models-for, and are always put to uses outside the epistemological system that created them). The article contextualises speech act theory with cultural and political events of the 1960s: the act of naming as an exemplary speech act is set against the disintegration of imperial powers and the postcolonial emancipatory initiatives striking back against the oppressive (and often nominalistically prescriptive) pasts. Rather than the acts of naming, the decisive factors are recognition (that a certain event is happening) and consensus (that the event is valid and constitutes a new social reality). Analysing case studies from drama and history, this article also , performances any promises made by actors on stage cannot be reasonably held to account outside the stage, in real life. This profound misunderstanding on promises within the performed social realities of the play. The nature and validity of performatives made in performance is the prompt for this essay. I argue that the situation in performance is epistemologically not a parasitical form but rather a case of performatives more complex and holistic than in real life. 1 In conceiving this essay I have benefitted from an illustrious company of friends and colleagues. I would like to thank them for their suggestions that contributed to the arguments and to the critical reading, as well as brought up several of the case studies. Among the many, I w C. Davis, David Drozd, Campbell Edinborough, Cat Fergusson Baugh, Russell Gilbert, ye, Josh a, Adam Railton, and Freddie Rokem. Heterotelic Models as Performatives 101 proceeds to train it, using brutal methods that are not successful. He finally resorts to a new punishment: He locks the parrot in the henhouse with the chickens for the night. In the morning, the man goes into the henhouse and finds the parrot attacking the last surviving hen. 2 Preamble Speech act theory has had it. Its heyday. As a system it was formulated in the mid1950s by J.L. Austin in a series of lectures. When Austin started to deliver his William James Lectures at Harvard University, he was elaborating on ideas that had occupied him since 1939; he also published on them after the war, and in the three years preceding his Harvard series, he delivered lectures at Oxford entitled .3 It is perhaps no coincidence that his influential theory on such as name a ship, declare a war, make a promise, and other rule-governed forms of behaviour was first thought of in the year of the declaration of World War II and breaches of promise, and developed and delivered in immediate vicinity of McCarthyism and communist show trials. In that era, rule-governed declarations words of accusation, libel, or fabricated lies with vested interests as How to Do Things with Words, two years after his premature death, they entered a world that was on the cusp of a seismic change. Between 1955 and 1962, the critical seven years that included the Suez Crisis of 1956 or the 1960 Year of African Independence, the British Empire and the Old (rule-governed) World had almost disintegrated. Doing things with words depended more and more on what Austin had called the felicitous conditions seemingly self-explanatory sets of circumstances that determined the success of speech acts (or performatives, as they are also called); in the new predicament the world was in, the category of felicitous conditions -How to Do Things with Words, one could argue that the entire theory is a precarious 2 Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography, trans. Joseph and Judith Fabry (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2000) 41. 3 How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, ed. J.O. Urmson and Marina 102 concept that starts disintegrating as soon as Austin gets into discussing the particulars and technicalities. At that point, speech acts are far from simple affairs: the propositional value of the speech act statements becomes tentative, dubious, or even speculative much closer in line with the Leibnizian propositionality of what if. The following two decades saw a flurry of critical activity that tried to the disciplines of linguistics (pragmatics) and the philosophy of language. The most influential proponent of speech act theory, John R. Searle, elaborated on this essentially logocentric approach to communication and social engagement and argued authoritatively, but rather unconvincingly that a theory of language is part of a theory of action, simply because speaking is a rule-governed form of behavior. Now, being rule-governed, it has formal features which admit of independent study.4 As long as speech act theory remains in the realm of language, its tenets and principles are important with their implications for a theory of action, but that does not automatically mean that speech act theory principles are equally valid and determining for action within a social reality (context, body language, speech it is in principle possible for every speech act one performs or could perform to be uniquely determined by a given sentence (or set of sentences), given the assumptions that the speaker is speaking literally and that the context is appropriate.5 The possibility Searle outlines here is speculative and impracticable; his impossible assumption is based on an ontological fallacy of literality or objective 6 brought up more questions than answers when it came to real-life application: contexts and conditions are always uncertain as became ever more apparent in the years in which the theories were published. What the actual pragmatic remit of speech act 4 John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) 17. 5 Searle, Speech Acts 18. 6 Searle, Speech Acts 24-25. Heterotelic Models as Performatives 103 theory was beyond a narrow, analytic theory of language, became a prompt for increasingly technical and hair-splitting studies. Speech act theory, even in those early stages, had to come with numerous correctives and addenda seminal book Speech Acts the of misapplication and problems of reference. The process of disintegration continued. international des Soc Marges de la philosophie, 1972) was translated by Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman a few years later and published in the 1977 inaugural issue of Glyph.7 second issue of the journal and the chasm between the two schools of thought the Anglo-American analytic philosophy and French deconstruction theory opened wide, with both sides fanning the flames of their differences.8 Searle 9 and continuing with a rigorous repetition of the tenets of analytic, and strictly - gthy rhetoric flair of deconstruction and its confrontation ad personam: his title and his rhetorical device throughout the essay is a fictional character of Sarl ( , a limited company), theory when put to the test. The chasm between the two schools never closed. While deconstructionist theory was immensely influential, time has not been kind to it either: its self-contented relativism contributed significantly to the disintegration and seems to have become a symptom of the epistemological change - 7 other related texts: Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988). 8 Glyph, 2 (1977): 198-208. 9 104 nihilistic relativisation of historic truth such as in the infamous affair of its leading proponent Paul de M unrepentant con man was sh icles for a pro-Nazi Belgian publication, Le Soir 10 anti-Semitic publications, his defenders among them Derrida, himself Jewish used deconstructionist techniques to undermine the evidence. A potent critical tool, honed in 1960s France to deconstruct oppressive power structures, became a tool in Holocaust denying and the creeping methods of post-truth. A statement not made by any of the deconstructionist theorists, but by Bill Clinton during his Grand Jury Referral.11 Speech acts became increasingly uncertain and relative, and much more than the small print on the instructions leaflet of how to do things with words. To be sure, these are not particularly effective critical guides to analysing how performatives work in practice. This article is about performance and performative models, for which both the theories are necessary precursors. I do not aim to rehabilitate speech act theory or deconstruction; both are probably beyond redemption perhaps apart from the absurdly reduced awareness that making a statement is one of the ingredients constituting social reality, and that any statement has elements of uncertainty and is incapable of controlling its meaning, respectively. The point of departure for this article is an observation made by Searle in his 1977 reply to Derrida. Here, Searle promise or make a statement we had better not start our investigation with promises made by actors on stage in the course of a play or statements made in a novel by novelists about characters in the novel, because in a fairly obvious way such utterances are not standard cases of promises and statements. We do not, for example, hold the actor responsible today for the promise he made on stage last night in the way that we normally hold people responsible for their promises, and we do not demand of the author how he knows that his characters have such and such traits in a way that 10 Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth (London: William Collins, 2018) 57-58. 11 On 21 September 1998; quoted in Kakutani 68. Heterotelic Models as Performatives 105 we normally expect the maker of a statement to be able to justify his claims. Austin descri not, for example, be promises made by actors in a play if there were not the possibility of promises made in real life. The existence of the pretended form of the speech act is logically dependent on the possibility of the nonpretended speech act in the same way that any pretended form of behavior is dependent on nonpretended forms of behavior, and in that sense the pretended forms are parasitical on the nonpretended forms.12 It foll any promises made by actors on stage cannot be reasonably held to account outside the stage, in real life. That is, of course, a profound misunderstanding on emit of their promises within the performed social realities of the play. That misunderstanding not only on is rooted in a popular, non-critical understanding of performance. The nature and validity of performatives made in performance is the prompt for this essay. I argue that the situation in performance is epistemologically not a parasitical form but rather a case of performatives more complex and holistic than in real life. In what follows, this article discusses several examples of performatives from plays and from history. Rather than narrowing down the theory of action to speech acts and their felicitous conditions as criteria of their validity and success pursued, for instance, by Stanley Fish, who applies it, in a somewhat pedestrian Coriolanus13 I adopt the concept of performative models and social consensus. My approach is not relativist in a deconstructionist sense, nor absolutist in the sense of traditional speech act theory that presupposes an objective social reality. While certain events may have various interpretations or be seen even as self-contradictory in the relativist Rashomon effect, there are principles and even laws that govern physical as well as social reality, from irreversib and legal authority, to matters of interpersonal trust and personal integrity. 12 -205. 13 Do Things with Austin and Searle: Speech Act Theory and MLN, 91.5 (October 1976): 983-1025. 106 In referring to models, I am elaborating on my concept of models as autonomous forms (material or immaterial) that are propositional (to be worked with) and reified (things in their own right).14 Models are inherently heterotelic, shifting in their purpose between models-of and models-for. A model is made for a purpose, as a functional, holistic proposition, and it is always put to other uses, defining feature its heterotelic indeterminacy. O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse By any other word would smell as sweet.15 Queen Elizabeth as uttered when smashing the bottle against the stem.16 Instead of going with Austin and Searle into the felicitous conditions and other vagaries of what makes this event a legitimate and valid act of naming, I offer a different theoretical approach.17 Rather than seeing this as a mere act that either happens, or does not, let me consider it as a performative model: me this ship the Queen Elizabeth 14 For a de The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance Historiography, ed. Tracy C. Davis and Peter W. Marx (London and New York: Routledge, 2021) 400-401. 15 William Shakespeare, The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet (London: printed by Thomas Creede for Cuthbert Burby, 1599), lines 827-38. The spelling has been modernised and punctuation included. 16 Austin 5. 17 For an alternative approac Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, ed. Savas L. Tsohatzidis (London and New York: Routledge, 1994) 350-64. Holdcroft discusses the same exam Heterotelic Models as Performatives 107 Witnesses of this event recognise it as the act of naming a ship and probably anticipate it. The notion of recognition is crucial here: it is a model a pattern, a form that is part and parcel of the cultural knowledge we have acquired. (There may be cultures where it is unthinkable to give names to a ship. In such circumstances, no such recognition would occur.) Having recognised the model of naming, witnesses consider the circumstances what Austin calls the felicitous conditions. In a more dynamic, real-life set-up of this scene, the success of the naming depends less on the abstract, analytical notion of felicitous conditions but on our social awareness: Even if we are out of earshot or even out of sight; even if we cannot understand the language of the christening; even if the person uttering the sentence makes a mistake; even if the ritual (i.e., the performative model we have recognised) is somehow botched and broken; the ship has been named Queen Elizabeth by social consensus because such is the social custom of the culture that frames it. This act of naming a ship also happens if this scene is part of a theatre performance only with the difference that the naming is valid within that frame. The model itself does not change, neither its validity within the relevant frame. It is the social consensus that gives it its absolute validity in real life as well as in the theatre. (The fictional ship in the play has been christened Queen Elizabeth as absolutely as -life example.) While it might seem that this is a speculative example and the framing by the social custom of the culture is a technicality, the opposite is true. If the ship had just been captured from the enemy, appropriated and rechristened Queen Elizabeth, will the enemy on recapturing it know the ship by its new name, let alone feel the need to rechristen it? Let us consider a historic act of naming, rather than the fictional example that Austin gives. In his account es to Walter Raleigh of an event that took place on the coast of the New World on 4 July 1584: Majestie, Virginia).18 18 Representations 33 (Winter 1991): 7. 108 act of naming Virginia, and the English social consensus retained the name and sealed it by its colonisation. While Austin, conceiving his speech act theory at the height of the British Empire, and Searle writing in the city of Boston, would well have taken this act of naming as complete, the social consensus framed by the political system and the culture is defining and absolute. It may well be that the State of Virginia soon names too, and Virginia is, once again, not only named Wingandacoa but also consensually known as such. In 1964, two years after the publication of How to Do Things with Words, an interesting act of naming occurred. The boxing champion legally,19 he insisted on being called his new adopted name for the rest of his life. The model of naming is the same, but the social consensus was gradual and even painful and physically performative as in his 1967 bout with Ernie Terrell, in which Ali batters Terrell insisting: 20 The postcolonial act of renaming was an important cultural moment since the Speech Acts, the Martiniquan , a postcolonial riposte to Shakes between Caliban and Prospero: PROSPERO: Important? Well, out with it. alled Caliban any longer. telling to the name Caliban. PROSPERO: Where did you get that idea? CALIBAN: Well, because Caliban my name 19 Never Legally Changed N USA Today Sports, 11 July 2016, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/sports/boxing/2016/07/ 11/muhammad-ali-name-change-cassius-clay/86956544/ (accessed 10 November 2020). 20 Russell es highly relevant case studies of adopted names and masks that traverse between the arenas of professional wrestling and politics. Heterotelic Models as Performatives 115 this time the propositional performative model being one of threat: joking! I say that to my children! If you telling 32 Bakri is deploying the performative model of threat and frames it, duplicitously, in two ways at the same time: as a genuine threat and as an innocent, avuncular joke. There is little doubt what the model at play is; it is its propositionality and the social consensus that are fluid. There are also examples of performative models of resolution that are obvious in both its determination and its proposition, but not in the social consensus. Let us leave aside the notorious dramatic example from Samuel Beckett s Waiting for Godot of Vladimir and Estragon resolving to go without ever moving. An jewel-encrusted clothing in response to the popularity of pearls from the Caribbean: But it was too late: pearls had already crossed the threshold from the global exotic to the domestic familiar. Trying to legislate against them was like trying to make breathing illegal. Within ten years, the King was obliged to exempt pearls from his general ban.33 The model of a public ban is more than obvious and legally binding a perfect Austin-Searlian speech act but the proposition of the law was ignored and the lacking social consensus rendered it void. 32 Ronson 284. 33 Than All His Tribes: The Excessively Mutable World of a Times Literary Supplement, 8 June 2018, 10. 116 Let me conclude with another complex real-life example of a performative model: the loss of political power, or the fall of a political regime. This case study is remarkable for its indubitable outcome (success), even to the point of being cited as a prime example of the fall of a political regime in real time. And yet, while the model is apparent, its identification that is, the moment of recognition needed for the necessary social consensus is a result of a complex web of cultural knowledge. Historian Yuval Noah Harari retells the situation: On Romania, organised a mass demonstration of support in the centre of of his trademark dreary speeches. For eight minutes he praised the glories of Romanian socialism, looking very pleased with himself as the crowd clapped mechanically. And want to thank the initiators and organisers of this great event in Bucharest, considering it as a open wide, and he freezes in disbelief. He never finished the sentence. You can see [on the surviving footage] in that split second how an entire world -mi- -ra! Ti-mi- - 34 but rather as an articulation of the indubitable consensus that what occurred at that moment, in power or, if you wish, the model of fall of regime. While the outcome was absolute and beyond any doubt, and while that breaking point is also obvious, the identification of the model the recognition that the regime has collapsed is clear only in hindsight. While potentially (propositionally) possible at that point, the model attained its immaterial form only later, as a result of substantial sociopolitical activity and in gradual steps. 34 Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (London: Vintage, 2015) 155-57. For a critical history of the fall of communism in Romania, see, among others, Dennis Deletant, Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989 (London: Hurst and Company, 1995) 359ff. Heterotelic Models as Performatives 117 Looking at the surviving video footage of the fated mass demonstration in momentary loss of bodily tonus, of his vocal security and gestural confidence is clearly visible; this ostensive performative behaviour happens, but it is a minor lapse, not in itself a fall of regime. The eventual outcome is far from obvious from this moment: the social and political consensus was only just gathering momentum and clearly this mid-sentence lapse was not the first or the ultimate sign of loss. In other words, the central performative model at play the one for which that moment is known, recorded in history, and even cited as a crying example (as in Harari) was not an identifiable performative act at that point. It was merely a propositional model, framed in its momentum by many intervening circumstances from the fall of several other regimes in Central and Eastern (invoked by the chanting masses in Bucharest), to the disintegrated Securitate no longer capable of enacting its political power (which was also, in turn, caused by the loss of the social consensus in its validity). There would be other moments that iterated that momentary midbit by bit the momentum leading to the undoubted general consensus. Some of the iterations of that model preceded the fated moment on 21 December 1989, such as the sending of armed forces to sup signs of disintegration of the communist camp, while some of them followed it: attempts a moment later at reasserting his authority (which mass demonstration), to the repressions in the upcoming hours and days. -post repurposing of a performative model. From a historical and political point of view, there is no doubt that this was the tipping point, but that tipping point was not in the model itself but rather in the social consensus that has reached a critical mass. That new awareness repurposed the performative model and framed it as the moment when the regime collapsed. It had not been intended as such; it had been unforeseen and unexpected; it was rather innocuous and seemingly inconsequential and yet. What is crucial is the shared, public recognition of what that minute model eventually meant: the fall of communism in Romania. Performative models as heterotelic entities have the potency to convey numerous purposes thanks to their figurative (metaphoric, symbolic, ironic) qualities. How they are deployed, what uses they are put to, and what interpretations they solicit in its participants depends on the cultural frames, the interests they vest and social momentum they garner.