Abstract:
What is at stake, in terms of
representation, when I write "we" - as though unproblematically; and
proceed, then, to predicate that subject - as in, for example, "we
became posthuman"? In this paper I attempt to 'rehearse' some of the
implications of that question itself in the light of recent events on
the world stage, while also recognising, as I do so, that "we", used in
much published writing emerging from the University, is also a
rhetorical convention, as is the use of the (dehistoricizing) present
tense, along the lines: "Freud argues that...".
Is it impertinent to want to enquire here, after events of
September 2001, into the reach and the appropriateness of the ways in
which some of us conventionally refer, and of easy recourse to the
eternal present (tense), in much writing identifying itself as
'theoretical'? Some of us refer easily to 'historical context', without
considering perhaps either the 'history' of 'theory', or the
geographical and epistemological reach of 'context', as we do so. I came
to these sorts of questions in part because I have recently begun to
re-read a number of texts concerned, each in their own way (but
obliquely), with the post-WWII history of the twentieth century. These
range from the earliest publications of Barthes, up to N.K. Hayles' How We Became Posthuman
(1999). They demonstrate - or perhaps I should note that my own early
21st century re-reading (or reconfiguring) of these texts demonstrates -
a certain continuum of perspective and agenda; a critical project or
range of critical projects which might now be characterised as
Euro-centric (and in some cases Americo-centred). Some of the later
texts are fin de siècle or '(pre-)millennial' - as is the case not only for Hal Foster's Return of the Real (1996) and Hayles' How We Became Posthuman (1999), but equally for Derrida's On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (1997/2001).
Each turns out to be (whether it acknowledges this or not - and often
it does not) concerned with geographically and economically - determined
values, modes of action, and approaches to that subject identified by
Hal Foster to be late or advanced capitalist. In this sense, most, while
applauding inclusiveness, exclude otherness. My own references to these
texts, it is important to recognise, are calculated in terms of what
has been called the Christian calendar. Might we not need, after 11
September, to ask what else is 'staged', by this wholly banal exercise
in inclusion/exclusion?
Susan Melrose is Professor of Performance Arts at
Middlesex University. After completing doctoral research at the Sorbonne
(Nlle) in the early 1980s she established and ran postgraduate
profession/vocation-linked theatre and performance courses at Central
School of Speech and Drama and Rose Bruford College London. She has
taught in Turkey, France, Tunisia and Australia and counts comparative
performance studies and cultural diversity among her research interests.
Related Links:
www.sfmelrose.u-net.com/
Contact:
s.melrose@mdx.ac.uk