The
Emancipated
Spectator
‘have called this talk “The Emancipared
Spectaton"* As T understand i, a cle is
slays challenge. ses forch che pre
supposition thar an expression makes
Sense, that there ie link between sepa
fate terms, which also means between
‘concepts, problems, and theories that
Scem at Rist sight ro bear no direct relation to one another. In a sense,
thistle express he perplexity that was mine when Marten Spangberg
invited me to deliver what i supposed tobe the “Keynote” eture ofthis
academy. He told me he wanted me to introduce this collective reflection
‘on “spectarorship” because he had been impressed by my book The
Ignorant Schoolmaster [Le Maitre ignorant (1987)]-Lbegan to wonder
‘what connection there could be berween the cause andthe effect. Tiss
‘anacademy that brings people involved inthe worlds of art, theaer, and
performance together to consider the issue of spectatorship today. The
Tgviorant Schoolmastr was a meditation on the eccentric theory and the
strange destiny of Joseph Jacotot, a French professor who, at the begin-
ring ofthe nineteenth century, unsettled the academic world by asserting
that an ignorant person could teach another ignorant person what he
id not know himself, proclaiming the equality of intelligences, and calling
for intellectual emancipation against the received wisdom concerning
the instruction ofthe lower classes. His theory sank into oblivion inthe
mm ofthe nineteenth century. thought ie nocessary to revive iin the
1980s inorder to stir up the debate about education ands politi stakes.
But what use can be made inthe contemporary atti dialogue, of a man
“JACQUES RANCIERE
whose artistic universe could bee
‘mized by names such as Demosthenes,
Racine, and Poussin?
‘On second thought, it occurred to me
thatthe very distance, the lack of any
‘obvious relationship between Jacotor’s
theory and the issue of spectatorship
today might be fortunate, Iecould provide an opportunity to radically
distance one’s thoughts from the theoretical and political presupposi
tions that sill shore up even in postmodern disguise, mos ofthe discus
sion about theater, performance, and spectaorship. 1 gotthe impression
that indeed i was posible to make sense of this relationship, on condi
‘ion that we try to piece together the network of presuppositions that
put the issue of spectatorship a a strategic intersection inthe discussion
‘ofthe relationship between art and politics and ro sketch out che broader
pattern of thinking tha has fora long time framed the political issues,
Around theater and spectacle and Luse those terms ina very general,
Sense hereto include dance, performance, and all the kinds of spectacle
performed by acting bodies infront ofa collective audience).
“The numerous debates and polemics that have calle the theater into
‘question throughout our history can be traced back to avery simple
‘contradiction, Let us call tthe paradox ofthe spectator, a paradox tha,
‘may prove more crucial than the wellknown paradox ofthe actor and
Which can be summed up in the simplest terms. Theres 0 theater with
fut spectators (be it only a single and hidden one, as in Diderot’ fic
tional eepresentation of Le Fils naturel [1757). Bu spectatorship isa
a EE‘ba thing. Being spectator means looking at a spectacle. And looking is
athad thing, for ewo reasons. First, looking is deemed the opposite of
knowing, Irmeans standing before an appearance without knowing the
conditions which produced that appearance or the reality that lies,
‘behind it. Second, looking is deemed the opposite of acting. He who
looks tthe spectacle remains motionless in hs seat, lacking any power
‘ofintervention. Being a spectator means being passive, The spectator is
separated from the capacity of knowing just a he is separated from the
possibilty of acting.
From ths diagnosis itis possible ro draw two opposing conclusions.
‘The ists that theater in general sa bad thing, that itis che stage of il
sion and passivity, which must be dismissed in favor of what i forbids:
knowledge and action—the action of knowing and the action led by
knowledge. This conclusion was drawn long ago by lator The theaters
the place where ignorant people are invited to see satfering people. What
aes place onthe stage i pathos, the man-
itestation of a disease, the disease of desi
tnd pain, which is nathing but che self
division ofthe subject caused by the lack of
knowledge. The “action” of theaters noth-
ing bur the transmission of chat disease
through another disease, the disease ofthe
empirical vision that looks at shadows,
“Theater isthe transmission of the ignorance
that makes people il through the median of
‘ignorance thats optical illusion, Therefore
2 good community is a community that
{doesnt allow the mediation ofthe theater,
‘community whose collective virtues are
directly incorporated in the living articudes
ofits participants.
This seems to be the more logical conclu-
son tthe problem. We know, however, that
not the conclusion that was most often
drawn. The most common con
as follows: Theater involves spectatorship, and spectatorshipis a bad
thing. Therefore, we needa new theater, a theater without spectator
ship. Weneed a theater where the optical elation —implied inthe word,
theatron—is subjected to another relation, implied in the word drama
Drama means action. The theater isa place where an action is actually
performed by living bodies in front of living bodies. The later may have
resigned thei power. But this powers resumed in the performance of
the former, in the intelligence that builtin the energy that it conveys.
“The true sense of the theater must be predicated on that acting power.
“Theater has to he brought back to ts rue essence, whic isthe contrary
cof what is usually known as theater. What must be pursue isa theater
without spectators, theater where spectators will no longer be spect
tos, where chey will learn things instead of being captured by images
cal form and inst
Since the advent of German
Romanticism, the concept of the-
ater has been associated with
the idea of the living community.
Theater appeared as a form of the
aesthetic constitution of the com-
munity: the community as a way of
‘occupying time and space, as a set
of living gestures and attitudes,
that stands before any kind of polit
as a performing body instead of
an apparatus of forms and rules.
and become active participants in a collective performance instead of
being passive viewers.
This turn has been understood in wo ways, which are antagonistic
in principle, though they have often been mixed in theatrical perfor
‘mance and ints egtimization. On the one hand the spectator mast be
released from the passivity ofthe viewer, who is fascinated by the
appearance standing font of him and identifies with the characters on
the stage. He must be confronted withthe spectacle of something
strange, which stands as an enigma and demands that he investigate the
reason for its strangeness, He must be presed to abandon the role of
passive viewer and take on that ofthe scientist who observes phenom
na and secks thei cause. On the other hand the spectator must eschew
the role ofthe mere observer who remains still and untouched in front of
8 distant spectacle, He must be torn from his delusive mastery, drawn,
ino the magical power of theatrical action, sehere he will exchange the
privilege of playing the rational viewer for
the experience of possessing theaters true
vital energies.
‘Weacknowledge these two paradigmatic
atiudes epitomized by Brecht's epic theater
land Arcaud's theater of cruelty. On the one
hhand the spectator must hecome more dis-
tant on the other he must lose any distance.
(On the one hand he must change the way he
looks for a hetter way of looking, on the
‘other he must abandon the very position of
the viewer The projec of reforming the the
ater ceaselesly wavered betwoen these 10
poles of distant inquiry and vital embod
‘ment. This means thatthe presuppositions
underpinning the search for a new theater
are the same as those that underpinned the
dismissal of theater. The reformers ofthe
theater in fact retained the terms of Plato
polemics, rearranging them by borrowing,
from Platonism an altemative notion of theater. Plato drew an oppos
tion between the poetic and democratic community ofthe theater anda
“true” community: a choreographic community in which no one
remains motionless spectatog i which everyone moves according toa
‘communitarian shythm determined by mathematical proportion
The reformers ofthe theater restaged the Platonic oppsition berween
chorea and theater as an opposition between the tue living essence of
the theater and the simulacrum of the “spectacle.” The theater then
became the place where passive specatorship had to be rurned i
contrary—the living ody of community enacingits own principle. In
this academy's statement of purpose we read that “theater remains the
‘only pace of direct confrontation ofthe audience with sel a calles:
tive” Wecan give that sentence a restrictive meaning that would merely
fon; communitycontrast the clletve adience of the theater with the individual vistors
to an exhibition or the sheer collection of indvidals watching a movie.
But obviously the sentence means much moze. It means that “theater
remains the name for an idea ofthe community as living bods. econ:
‘veysan idea ofthe community as selfpresence opposed tothe distance
‘ofthe representation,
Since the advent of German Romanticism, the concept of theater has
boon associated with the idea of the ving community. Theater appeared
asa form of the aesthetic consittion—meaning the sensory consti
‘on—of the community: the community asa way of occupying time and
space a8 set of ving gestures and attitdes that stands before any kind
‘of politial form and institution; community asa performing body
instead of an apparatus of forms and rules. i this way theater ws ass
ciated with the Romantic notion of the
aesthetic revolution: the dea ofa revol
tion that would change nor only laws and
institutions but transform the sensory
forms of human experience. The reform
‘oftheater thus meant the restoration of
authenticity as an assembly ora ceremony.
‘of the community. Theater i an assembly
where the people become aware oftheir
situation and discus their own interests,
Brecht would say after Piscator. Theater
is the ceremony where the communit
is given possession ofits own energies,
Artaud would state, Itheater is held to be
an equivalent ofthe true community, the
living body ofthe community opposed to
*heillsion of mimesis, comes a8 no sur
prise tha the attempt at restoring theater
to its erue essence had as its theore
hckalrop the evtique ofthe spectacle
‘What s the esence of spectacle in Guy
Dehord’s theory? Is externality. The spectacle is the reign of vision,
Vision means externality. Now externality means the dispossession of
‘one's own being. “The more man contemplate, the less hes," Debord
says. This may sound anti- Platonic. Indeed the main source forthe
‘que ofthe spectacle is of course, Feuerbach’s critique of religion. Ie
what sustains that eritique-—namely, the Romantic idea of truth as
uunseparateness But that idea itself remains inline with he Platonic dis
pparagement of the mimetic image. The contemplation that Debord
denounces isthe thearieal or mimetic contemplation, the contemplation
‘of the suffering tha is provoked by division, “Separation i the alpha
and dhe omega of spectacle,” he writes. What man gazes cin his scheme
ithe activity that has been stolen from him is his own essence torn
away from him, cured foreign to him, hostile to him, making for a col
lective world whose reality is nothing but mans oven dispossession.
Either, according to the Brechtian
paradigm, theatrical mediation makes
the audience aware of the social situ-
ation on which theater itself rests,
prompting the audience to act in con-
‘sequence. Or, according to the Artaudian
‘scheme, it makes them abandon the
position of spectator: No longer
seated in front of the spectacle, they
are instead surrounded by the perfor-
mance, dragged into the circle of the
action, which gives them back their col-
“S| lective energy. In both cases the theater
isa self-suppressing mediation.
rom this perspective there sno contradiction between the quest for
aatheater that ean realize its tre esence and the critique ofthe spectack
“Good” theater is posted as a theater that deploy its separate reality
‘only inorder to suppress to turn the theatrical form nto a form of life
‘of the community. The paradox of the spectator is pat ofan intellee
‘ual disposition hats, even in the name ofthe theater, in keeping with
the Platonic dismissal of the theater This framework is built around 3
‘numberof core ideas that must be called into question. Indeed, we must
{question the very footing on which those ideas ae based. lam speak:
ing ofa whole set of relations, resting on some key equivalences and
some key oppositions: the equivalence of theater and community of|
secing and passivity, of externality and separation, of mediation and
simulaerums the opposition of collective and individual, image and
living reality, activity and passivity, sel
possession and alienation
This set of equivalences and oppos
‘ions makes fora eather tricky deamatargy
‘of guileand redemprion. Theater scharged
swith making spectators passive in oppo
tion to its very essence, which allegedly
consists in the sel-aetvty ofthe comma
nity. AS a consequence, it sets iself the
task of reversing its own effect and com>
ppensting forts own guilt by giving back
tothe spectators their self consciousness
or self- activity. The theatrical stage and
the theatrical performance thus become
the vanishing mediation beeween the evil
ofthe spectacle and the virtue ofthe rue
theater. They present to the collective
audience performances intended to reach
the spectators how they can stop being
spectators and become performers of &
collective activity ithe, according tothe
:n paradigm, theatrical mediation makes the audience aware of
al situation on which theater itself rest, prompting the audience
ro act in consequence. Or, according tothe Artaudian scheme, it makes
them abandon the postion of spectator: No longer seated in font ofthe
spectacle, they ae instead surrounded by the performance, dragged ino
the circle ofthe ation, which gives them back their collective energy. In
both cass the theater isa slfsuppressing mediation,
“This isthe point where the descriptions and propositions of ntellec:
tual emancipation ener into the picture and help us reframe it. Obviously,
this idea ofa selF-suppressing mediation is well known tous. Kis pre
cisely the process tha is supposed to take placein che pedagogical rla-
tion. Inthe pedagogical process the role of the schoolmaster is posited
as the act of suppressing the distance between his knowledge and
the ignorance ofthe ignorant. His lessons and exercises are aimed atcontinuously reducing the gap between knowledge and ignorance.
Unfortunately, in order to reduce the gap, he must reinstate ir cease
lesl. In order to replace ignorance with adequate knowledge, he must
always keepa step ahead ofthe ignorant student who is losing his igno-
ranee. The reason for ths is simple: In the pedagogical scheme, the
ignorant person is not only the one who does not know what he does
norknow; heisas well the ane who ignores that he does not know what
he does nor know and ignores how to know it. The master isnot only
he who knows precisely what remains unknown to the ignorant; he
also knows how to make it knowable, at what time and what place,
according to what protocol. On the one hand pedagogy is set up as
proces of objective transmission: one piece of knowledge ater another
piece, one word after another word, one rule or theorem after another.
This knowledge is supposed to be conveyed directly from the master’s
‘mind oF from the page of the hook tothe mind ofthe pupil. But this
equal transmission is predicated ona relation of inequality. The master
alone knows the right way, time, an place for that “equal” transmis
sion, because he knows something that the ignorant will never know,
short of becoming a master himself, something thats more important
than the knowledge conveyed. He knows the exact distance berween,
ignorance and knowledge. That pedagogical distance berwoen a dete
‘mined ignorance and a determined knowledge isin face a metaphor. It
isthe metaphor ofa radical break between the way ofthe ignorant stu
dent andthe way ofthe master, the metaphor ofa radical break berween
‘vo intelignces
“The master cannot ignore tha the so-called ignorant pupil who sisi
feoat of him in fact knows a lot of things, which he has learned on bis
‘wn, by looking ar and listening tothe world around him, by figuring
‘ut the meaning of what he has seen and head, by repeating what he
has heard and learned by chance, by comparing what he discovers with
what he already knows, and so on. The master cannot ignore thatthe
ignorant pupil has undertaken by these same means the apprenticeship
that isthe precondition of all others the apprenticeship of his mother
tongue: But forthe master thisis only the knowledge ofthe gnorant the
knowledge ofthe litle child who sees and hears at random, compares
and guesses by chance, and repeats by routine, without understanding
the reason forthe effects he observes and reproduces. The role ofthe
‘maser is dhs to break with that process of hit and-miss groping It isto
teach the pupil the knovledge of the knowledgeable, ints own way—the
vay ofthe progresive method, which dismisses all groping andall chance
by explaining items in order, from the simplest tothe most complex,
according to what the pupil is capable of understanding, with respec t0
hisage or social background and socal expectations.
‘The primary knowledge that the master owns isthe “knowledge of
ignorance.” Iris the presupposition of radical break berween wo forms
‘ofintlligence. This is also the primary knowledge that he transmits to
the dent the knowledge that he must have chings explained to him in
‘order to understand, the knowledge that he cannot understand on his
‘own. Its the knowledge of his incapacity: In this way, progressive instru
‘ion isthe endless verification of its starting pint inequality. That endless
verification of inequality is what Jacotot calls the proces of sulifcation
The opposite of sulfation is emancipation. Emancipation isthe pro-
cess of verification ofthe equality of intelligence. The equality of ince
fence isnot the equality ofall manifestations of intelligence. It is the
quality ofmtllgence in all is manifestations means that there so
tap between two forms ofineligence, The human animal learns every~
as he has learned his mother tongue, ashe has learned to venture
‘through the forest of things and signs that surrounds him, in order to
take his place among his fellow humans—by observing, comparing one
‘hing with another thing, one sign wth one fac, one sign with another
sign, and repeating the experiences he as frst encountered by chance. If
the “ignorant” person who doesn't know how to read knows only one
thing by heat, be ita simple prayer, he can compare thar knowledge
with something of which he remains ignorant: the words ofthe same
prayer written on paper. He can learn, sign after sign the resemblance of
that of which e is ignorant to that which he knows, He can do tif at
each step, he observes what iin font of hin tells what he as seen, and
‘vetifies what he has told. From the ignorant person tothe scientist who
builds hypotheses, itis always che same intelligence that is at work: an
intelligence that makes figures and comparisons to communicate its
intellectual adventures and to understand what another intelligence is
trying to communicate rit in turn.
"This poetic work of tanslation is che fest condition of any appren-
ticeship Intellectual emancipation, a Jacotor conceived oft, means the
Awareness and the enactment ofthat equal power of translation and counter
teansation, Emancipation entails an idea of distance apposed tthe stult-
fying one. Speaking animals ate distant animals eho try to communicate
hough the forest of signs. Is this sense of distance thatthe “ignorant
master"—the master who ignores inequality—is teaching, Distance isnot
aneril that shouldbe abolished. cis the normal condition of communica-
tion. Ieisnota gap that calls foran exper inthe art of suppessing it. The
slitance that the “ignorant” person has to cover isnot che gap betweea his,
ignorance and the knowledge of his maser it isthe distance between
what he already knows and what he still does’t know but can leara by
the same process. To help his pupil cover that distance, the “ignorant
master” nced not he ignorant. He need only dissociate his knowledge
from his mastery. He does not each his knowledge to the stents. He
‘commands them to venture forth nthe forest, o report what they se,
what they think of what they have seen, to verify it, and so.on. What he
ignores isthe gap between two intelligences. It isthe linkage between the
knowledge ofthe knowledgeable and the ignorance of the ignorant. Any
distance isa matter of happenstance. Fach inellecwal act weaves a.casual
‘thread between a form of ignorance and a form of knowledge. No kind
‘of socal hierarchy can be predicated on this sense of distance.
‘Wha sche relevance ofthis story with respect ro the question ofthe
spectator? Dramaturges today arent outta explain to thee audience theU
truth about social relations and che best means to do away with domina
tion Butt isnt enough to lose one’ llsions. On the contrary, the loss
ofillusions often lads the dramatunge or the performers to increase the
pressure on the spectator: Maybe he will now what has to be done, if
‘the performance changes him, if it set hin apart from his passive ati
tude and makes him an active participant in the communal worl This
‘sthe frst point that the reformers ofthe theater share with the stuf
Jing pedagogue the idea of the gap berween two positions. Even when
the dramaturge o the performer doesn't know what he wants the spec-
tator to do, he knows at lease thatthe spectator has to do something:
site fom passivity to activity.
‘But why not urn things around? Why noe thinkin this case too, that
itis precisely the attempr at suppressing the distance that constiutes the
distance itself? Why identify the Fat of being seated motionless with
inactivity, if noe by the presupposition ofa radical gap between actviy
and inactviy? Why identify “looking” with
“passivity” ifnot by the presupposition chat
looking means looking a the image or the
appearance, that it means being separated
from the reality that is always behind the Emancipation starts from the prin-
SRAAY Uoo chet
the configuration of domination and subjection, Istarts when we realize
that looking is also an action tha confirms or modifies that distribution,
and that “interpreting the world” is already a means of transforming it
of reconfiguring it. The spectator is active, jus ike the student or the
Scientist: He observes, he selects, he compares, he interprets. He con
neets what he observes with many other things he has observed on other
stages, in ther kinds of paces. He makes his poem with the poem that
is performed in front of im. She pariiparsin the performance she is
able o tell her own story about the story thats in front of her Or if she
isable to undo the performance—for instance, to deny the corporeal
‘energy tha itis supposed to convey the here and now and transform it
intoa mere image, by linkingit with something she has readin a baok or
dreamed about, that she has lived or imagined, These ae distant viewers
And incepreters of what is performed infront of them. They pay atten
tion tothe performance tothe exten that they ae distant
This isthe second key point: The specta
tors see, feel, and understand something t0
the extent that they make their poems asthe
poet has done, asthe actors, dancers, or per
formers have done. The deamaturge would
image? Why identify hearing with being ciple of equality. Itbegins when we like shem tose hissing, fel ha feeling,
passive, if not by the presupposition that
acting isthe opposite of speaking, ee.
these oppositions—looking/knowing,
looking/acting, appearancelteality, activity!
passivity—are much more than logical
‘oppositions. They are what Lalla partition
dismiss the opposition between
All Jooking and acting and understand tint tha action n consequence of what,
that the distribution of the visible
itself is part of the configuration
cof domination and subjection.
lerstand this lesson of what they see, nd
they have sen, fel, and understood. He pro-
ceeds from the same presupposition a the
stultfying master: the presupposition of an
‘equal, undistorted transmission. The master
ofthesensible,a distribution of placesand ot ft starts when we realize that |OOk- presupposes char what the student learas is
the capacities or inapacities attached to ing is also an action that confirms precisely what he teaches him. This is the
those places. Prin other terms, they ae alle:
gories of inequality. This is why you can
change the values given to each position
withour changing the meaning ofthe opp
tions themselves. For instance, you can
exchange the positions ofthe superior and the inferior. The spostatoris
tsually disparaged because he dacs nothing, while the performers on the
stage—or the workers ouside—do something with thei bodies. But itis
‘easy o turn matters around by stating that those who act, those who
work with their bodies, are obviously inferior to those who are able to
look—that i, those who can contemplate ideas foresce the futur, ot
take global view of our world The postions cam be switched, but the
structure remains the same. What counts, in ach is only the statement of
‘opposition berween two categories: Thre is one population that canoe
do whar che other population does. There is capacity on one side and
Incapacity on the other
Emancipation start from the opposite principle, the principle of
‘quality. It begins when we dismiss che opposition between looking and
sctng and understand thatthe distribution ofthe visible tel is part of
‘or modifies that distribution, and
that “interpreting the world” is
already a means of transformin
‘asters notion of transmission: There is
something on one side, in one mind or one
body-—a knowledge, a capaci an encrgy—
that must be transferred to the other side,
ino the other's mind or bods. The presup.
position is thatthe process of learning is not merely the effect ofits
‘eause—teaching—but the vey transmission of the cause: What the st
dent learns isthe knowledge ofthe master. That identity of cause and
‘effects the principle of stultifcation. On the contrary hep
‘emancipation isthe dissociation of cause and effect. The para
ignorant master lies therein. The student ofthe ignorant master leans
what his master doesnot know, since his master commands hi to look
for something and to recount everything he discovers along the way
‘hile the master verifies that he i actually looking fort. The student
learns something as an effect of is master's mastery. But he doesnot learn
his master’s knowledge.
‘The dramaturge and the performer do not want to “teach” anything
Indeed, they are more than a litle wary these days about using the stage
asa way of teaching. They wantonly bring about form of awareness‘ora force of feeling o action. But sil they make the supposition tha what
willbe fel or understood willbe what they have putin theie own scxpc oF
petformance. They presuppose the equslty—meaning the homogeneity —
DF cause and effect. As we know, this equality rests onan inequality. Ie
fests on the presupposition that theresa proper knowledge and proper
practice with respect to “distance” and the means of suppressing i.
[Now this distance takes on two forms. There i the distance between
performer and spectator But there is also the distance inherent inthe
performance itself, inasmuch asit isa mediating “spectacle” that stands
between the artists idea and the spectator’ fcling and interpretation
‘This spectacle sa third term, to which the other two can refer, but which
prevents any kind of “equal” or “undistorted” transmission. eis a medi
tion berween them, and that mediation of a third term is crucial inthe
[process of intellectual emancipation. To prevent stlificaton there must,
he something between the master and the student. The same thing that
links them must also separate them. Jacotot posited the book as that
in-between ching. The book is the material ching,
foreign to both master and student, chrough
which they can verify what the student has seen,
form of Platonic assignment of bodies to their proper—thatis, to their
“communal” —place.
“This presupposition against mediation is connected witha third one,
the presupposition that the essence of theaters the essence of the com
‘munity. The spectator is supposed tobe redeemed when he is no longer
An individual, when he is restored to the status ofa member of a.com
‘unity, when hei carried off ina flood ofthe collective energy or led to
the position ofthe citizen who acts asa member ofthe collective. The
less the dramaturge knows what the spectators should do asa collective,
the more he knovrs that they aust become a collective, turn their mere
Agglomeration into the commonity tha they vitally ae. leis igh time,
{think o call into question the idea of the theater as a specifically com-
‘munitarian place. eis supposed to be sucha place because, on the stage,
real living bodies perform for people who are physically present together
inthe same place. In that way i is supposed to provide some unique
sense of community, radically diferent from the situation ofthe indi
‘vidual watching television, oF of moviegoers who
sicin front of disembodied, projected images.
Strange as it may seem, the widespread use of,
‘what he has reported about it, what he chinks T@ common power of spec- _imasesand of all kinds of media in theatrical per-
‘of what he has reported
‘This means that the paradigm of intellectual
«emaneipation is clearly opposed to another idea
tators is the power of the
equality of intelligences.
formances hasn't called the presupposition into
guestion, Images may take the place of living
Ihodies in the performance, bur as long asthe
‘of emancipation on which the reform of theater THIS power binds individuals spectators are gathered there the living and com:
has often been grounded—the idea of emanci
pation as the reappropriation of a self that
hhad been lost in a process of separation. The
Debordian critique ofthe spectacle stil rests on
the Feverhachian thinking of epeesentation as an
alienation ofthe self: The human being teas its
human estence away from itself by faming a
cclestial world to which the real human world is
submited, Inthe same way the essence of human activity is distanced,
alienated fom usin the exteririy ofthe spectacle. The mediation ofthe
“third term” thus appears asthe instanceof separation, dispossession,
snd teachery- An idea of the theater predicated on thatidea ofthe spec.
tacle conceives the externality ofthe stage asa kind of tansitory state
that has to be superseded, The suppression of that exterioity thus
[becomes the telos of the performance. That program demands that the
spectators he on the stage and the performers inthe auditorium. Ie,
‘demands thatthe very difference between the 1wo spaces be abolished,
that the performance take place anywhere other chan ina theater,
‘Certainly many improvements in theatecal performance resulted fom
that breaking down ofthe traditional distribution of places (in the
‘sense of both sites and roles) But the “redistribution” of places i one
things the demand that the cheater achieve, as its esence, che gathering
‘fan unseparate community is another thing, The first entails the inven
tion of new forms of intellectual adventure; the second entails anew
together to the very extent munitaran essence ofthe theater appears to be
that it keeps them apart
from each other; itis the
power each of us possesses
in equal measure to make
‘our own way in the world.
saved. Thus it seems impossible to escape the
4question, What specifically happens among
the spectators in a theater that doesn't happen
csewhere? Is there something more interactive,
‘more communal, that goes on between them than
berwen individuals who watch the same show
con TV atthe same time?
| thin tha chis “somthing” is nothing more than the presupposition
‘hac the theater is communitarian in and of self. That presupposition of
‘what “theater” means always runs ahead ofthe pesformance and pre-
dates its actual effects, Buti a theater, of infront ofa performance, just
‘sina museum, ata school, oon the street, there are only individuals,
‘weaving their own way through the forest of words, act, and things that
standin front of them or around them. The collective power thats com>
‘mon to these spectators is ot the status of members of a collective body
Nor s ita peculiar kind of interactivity Ie is the power to translate i
their own way what they ar looking at. Itisthe power to connect it with,
the intellectual adventure that makes any of them similar to any other
insofar as his or her path looks unlike anyother. The common power is
the power ofthe equality of intelligences. This power binds individuals
together tothe very extent that it keeps them apart fom each other iis
the power each of os possesses in equal measure to make our own way in
the world, What has to be pat to the est by our performances—whetherteaching or acting, speaking, writing, making art, ete.—is not the
capacity of aggregation of a collective but the capacity of the anony
‘mous, the capacity that makes anybody equal to everybody. This
capacity works through unpredictable and irreducible distances. It
‘works through an unpredictable and ieeducible play of associations
and dissociation
‘Associating and dissociating instead of being the privileged medium
that conveys the knowledge o energy that makes people active—this
could be the principle of an “emancipation of the spectator,” which
‘means the emancipation of any of us as a spectator. Spectatorship is
fo a passivity that must be turned into activity Its our normal situa
tion. We learn and reach, we act and knosy, as spectators who link what
they se with what they have seen and rok, done and dreamed. There is
no privileged medium, just as there is no privileged starting point
Everywhere there ae starting points and turing points from which we
learn new things, if we frst dismiss the presupposition of distance, se
‘ond the distribution ofthe cols, and third the borders berween tert
ties, We don’t need to turn spectators into actors. We do need to
acknowledge that every spectator is already an actor in his own story
and tha every actor isin turn the spectator ofthe same kind of tory. We
feed? turn the ignorant into the leaned of, merely out ofa desire to
‘overturn things, make che student or the ignorant person the master of
his masters.
Ler me make a lite detour through my own political and academic
experience belong to a generation that was poised hetween to con
-etng perspectives: According to the firs, chose who possessed the intl
ligence ofthe socal system had to pas thei leaening on to those who
salfred under dha system, so that they would then take action to over
‘throw it. According tothe second, the supposed learned persons were in
fact ignorant: Because they knew nothing of what exploitation and
rebellion were, they had to become the students of the so-called ignorant
‘workers. Therefore, initially I tried to relaborate Marxist theory in
‘order to make its theoretical weapons available co anew revolutionary
movement, before setting out to learn from those who worked inthe
factories what exploitation and rebellion meant. For me, as for many
“other people of my generation, none of those attempts proved very su
cessful. That's why I decided to look into the history of the workers?
movement, to find out the reasons for the continual mismatching of
workers and the intellectuals who came and visited chem, either ro
instruct chem of to be instructed by them. It was my good fortune to
discover that cis relationship wasn'ta matter of knowledge on one side
and ignorance on the other, nor was ta mater of knowing versus act
ing oof individuality versus community. One day in May, during the
1970s, as Iwas looking through a workers cozrespondence from the
1830+ to determine what the condition and consciousness of workers
had been at that time discovered something uit diffrent: che adver
tures of ewo visitors, also on a day in May, bur some hundred and forty
year before I stumbled upon their ettersin the archives. One ofthe ro
correspondents had ust been intoduced int the utopian community of|
‘the Saint Simonians, and he recounted o his friend his daily schedule in
utopia: work, exercises, games, singing, and stories. His fiend in aen
wrote to him about a country outing that he ha just gone on with wo
‘other workers looking to enjoy their Sunday leisure. Bur it wasnt the
usual Sunday leisure ofthe worker seeking to restore his physical and
mental forces forthe following week of work. Ir was in fact a break
through into another kind of lisure—that of aesthetes who enjoy the
forms, lights, and shades of nature, of philosophers who spend their
time exchanging metaphysical hypotheses ina country inn, and ofapos-
tles who set outro communicate thei faith to the chance companion
they meet along the road
“Those workers who should have provided me information about
the conditions of labor and forms of clas-consciousness in the 1830s
instead provided something quite different a sense ofikenes or equal
‘They too were spectators and vistors, amid their own class. Their activ
ity as propagandists could not he torn from thee “passivity” as mere
strollers and contemplators. The chronicle of ther leisure entailed a
reframing ofthe very relationship between doing, seeing, and saying. By
becoming “spectators,” they overthrew the given distribution of these
sible, which had i that chose who work have no time lef to stroll and
Took at random, that the members of collective ody have no time to
be “individuals.” Thisis what emancipation means: the blureing ofthe
‘opposition between those who look and those who act, betwen those
who are individuals and those who are members of a collective bod.
‘Whar those days brought our chroniclers was not knowledge and energy
for furue action. Iwas the reconfiguration bic et munc of the distribu:
tion of Time and Space. Workers’ emancipation was not about acquiring,
the knowledge of their condition. Ie was about configuring atime and a
space tha invalidated the old distribution of the sensible, which doomed
workers to do nothing with their nights but restore ther forces for work
the nextday
Understanding the sense ofthat break in che heat of sme also meant
putting into play another kind of knowledge, predicated not on the pre-
supposition of any gap but on the presupposition of likeness. These men,
00, were intelletuals—as anybody i. They were visitors and specta-
tor, just ike the researcher who, one hundred and forty years lates,
would read cei eters in library, us like vistors to Marxist theory oF
atthe gates ofa factory. There was no gap to bridge beeween intellect
alsand workers, actors and spectators no gap between two populations,
‘wo situations, or wo ages. On the contrary, there was a likeness that
had to be acknowledged and put into play in the very production of
knowledge Putting itinto play means wo things. Fist it meant reject
the borders between disciplines. Telling the (history of those worker
days and nights forced me to blue the boundary between ce field of
empirical” history and the field of “pure” philosophy. The stoy that
those workers told was about time, about the loss and reappropriation
‘of time. To show what it meant, I had to put their account in directrelation wth the theoretical discourse ofthe philosopher who had, long,
ago in the Republic, told the same story by explaining that in a well
ordered community everybody must do only one thing, his or her own
business, and chat workers in any case had no time to spend anywhere
other than their workplace or to-do anything but the job fitting the
Uinjeapacity with which nature had endovted them. Philosophy, then,
could no longer present itself as a sphere of pure thought separated from
the sphere of empirical facts, Nor wast the theoretical interpretation of
those facts. There were neither facts nor interpretations. There were two
ways of telling stoves.
Blurring the border berween academic disciplines also meant blurring
the hierarchy between the levels of discourse, betwen the narration ofa
story and the philosophical or scientific explanation of it o the truth
lying behind or beneath it. There was no metadiscourse explcating the
truth of slower level of discourse. What had tobe done was a work of
translation, showing how empirical stories
and philosophical discourses translae each
other, Producing a new knowledge meant
‘venting the idiomatic form that would make
inasmuch as it effects the crossing of borders and the confusion of roles
merely as means of increasing the power ofthe performance without
‘questioning its grounds.
“The third way—the best way in my view—does noe aim a the ampli
cation of the effect bur atthe transformation of the eauselettct scheme
itself, ar the dismissal ofthe set of oppositions that grounds the proces of
stultifcation. It invalidates the opposition between activity and passivity
as well asthe scheme of “equal transmission” and the communicarian
idea of the theater that infact makes it an allegory of inequality. The
‘crossing of borders and the confusion of oles shoulda’ lead toa kind of
“hypertheate” turning spectatorshi into activity by turing represents
tion into presence. On che contrary, theater should question its privileging
of living presence and bring the stage back ra level of equality with the
telling of story or the writing and the reading ofa book. Ie shouldbe the
institution ofa new stage of equality, where the different kinds of perfor
‘mances would be translated into one another
Inall those performances, in fac, ie should
bea matter of linking what one knows with
what one does not know; of being ac the same
translation possible. I had to use that idiom
totellof my own intellectual adventure ac che
risk thatthe idiom would remain “unread:
able” for those who wanted to know the cause
fof the story is true meaning, or the lesson
for action that could be drawn from it. had
to produce a discourse that would be read:
able only for those who would make their
‘own translation from the pont of view of theie
‘own adventure
"That personal detour may lead us back ro
the core of our problem. These issues of ross
ing borders and blurring the dsteibution of
roles ae defining characteristics of theater and
‘of contemporary at roday, when all artistic
Theater should question its privi-
leging of living presence and bring
the stage back to a level of equality
with the telling of a story or the
writing and the reading of a book.
It should call for spectators who
are active interpreters, who render
their own translation, who appro-
priate the story for themselves,
and who ultimately make their own
story out of it. An emancipated
community is in fact a community
of storytellers and translators.
time performers who display their competences
and spectators who are looking to find what
those competences might produce in a new
context, among unknown people, Arist, ike
researchers, build the stage where the man
festation and the effect of thei competences
become dubious as they frame the story ofa
new adventure ina new idiom, The effect of
the idiom cannot be anticipated. Ie calls for
spectators who are active interpreters, who
render thei own teansltion, who appropeiate
the story for themselves, and who ultimately
‘make their own story out of it. An emancipated
‘community isin fact community of storytellers
and cranslators
‘competences stray from their own field and
‘exchange places and powers with all others, We have plays without words
and dance with words; installations and performances instead of “pas
tic” works; video projections turned into cycles of frescoes photographs
turned into living pictures or history paintings; sculprue chat becomes
Ihypcrmetie show ete. Nos, there are three ways of understanding and
practicing this confusion of the genres. There is the revival of the
‘Gesamtkienstwerk, whichis supposed to be the apotheosis of art asa
form oflife but which proves instead tobe the apotheosis of strong artistic
«08 or ofa kind of hyperactive consumerism if ot of hoth a the same
time. There is the idea ofa “hybridization” of che means of art, which
complements the view of our age as one of mass individualism expressed
through the relentless exchange between roles and identities, realty and
vierualiy life and mechanical prostheses, and soon. In my view, thse
‘ond interpretation ultimately lads othe same place as the frst one—t0
‘another kind of hyperactive consumerism, another kindof stlication,
Tawa tata this may sound ike words,
mere words, But I woulda take that as an insult, We've heard so many
speakers pass their words off as more than words, as passwords enabling
Usto enter a new ife, We've cen 0 many spectacles boasting of being no
mete spectacles ur ceemonials of community. Even now in spite ofthe
so-called postmodern skepticism about changing the way we ive, one ses
fo many shows posing a religious mysteries that it might not seem so
‘outragcous to hear, fr a change, that words ace only words. Breaking
aveay from the phantasms of the Word made flesh and the spectator
tured active, knowing that words are oaly words and spectacles only
spectacles, may help us better understand how words, stories, and pe
formances can help us change something inthe world we liven.