Verbatim Mac

Performance Links

Theory must contribute to material change—the aff forecloses theory’s ability to cause material action. Their characterization of performance as preferable to theory essentializes experience and opposes knowledge production for social change

Ebert 93 (Teresa, Professor of Humanities at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Albany who specializes in Critical and Cultural Theory, Feminist Critique, Marxist Theory and Globalization Theory, “Ludic Feminism, the Body, Performance, and Labor: Bringing ‘Materialism’ Back into Feminist Cultural Studies” https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1354189.pdf)//meb

But first I need to address the question of theory. It has become customary, among ludic postmodernists, to dissociate oneself from "theory": theory is seen as an act of "totalizing" that, as I have already indicated, has become synonymous in ludic cir- cles with "totalitarianism." For instance, Judith Butler-who is, in spite of her disclaimers, one of the elite theorists-distances her- self from theory by assuming the familiar pose of "ignorance" (which, of course, in ludic discourses is the genuine mark of "knowing"). She states, in a recent essay, that she "do[es] not understand the notion of 'theory,' and [is] hardly interested in being cast as its defender . . ." ("Imitation and Gender Insubor dination" 14). J. Hillis Miller, another elite theorist, regards him- self basically as a "local" reader-a producer of pleasure or what he calls the 'joys of reading"-and claims that he is a "theorist" almost by accident; he practices theory, as the title of his most recent book indicates, only "now and then" (Theory Now and Then). Similar acts of distancing have almost become part of a ludic ritual among those elite theorists who command considerable power and prestige in the academy precisely because they are theorists. Jane Gallop, for example, prefaces her well-known book on Lacan by not only proclaiming her "inadequacy" and her "attempt to read (Lacan) from that position" but also granting it a special status as "both Lacanian and feminist" (Reading Lacan 20). How- ever, we should not take literally their distancing of themselves from theory: this gesture is itself theoretical in that it puts in question one notion of theory (theory as explanatory critique) and favors another (theory as play, as affirmation and not explana- tion). Since I oppose the notion of theory as play-affirmation of that which already exists-and argue for theory as explanatory critique, I need to say more about the role of this "different" kind of theory that I am producing here. It is not enough to write a "different" theory if such differ- ence does not fundamentally challenge the way theory often par- ticipates in power relations. A new and different theory must contribute to the struggle to build a more multicultural and equal socioeconomic order. But the "new" and "different" are easily commodified in patriarchal capitalism as mere variety in a sup- posedly "free marketplace" of choice, thus promoting the illusion of diversity and free will and concealing the oppressive restric- tions on people's possibilities. In other words, the idea of theory as play and the notion of theory as explanatory critique are treated in the contemporary academy as simply two different choices. In such a view choices are understood as merely a matter of personal taste or preference, as if such tastes and preferences are not them- selves historically produced. However, the two understandings of theory are not only related to each other but they also contest each other in their assumptions and presuppositions and in the socio- economic orders they legitimate. They are, in other words, not simply two different choices, but two contesting modes of under- standing existing social institutions and political arrangements as well as the role of gender, sexuality, race, and class in such ar- rangements. In short, there are material and historical conflicts between them. Theory as play or performance and theory as ma- terialist explanatory critique should not just be pluralistically ac- cepted as two (free) choices but rather rigorously examined so that their historicity and their (political) role in contemporary feminism are clearly articulated. Feminist theory, I believe, must be a politically transforma- tive practice: one that not only disrupts the specific conditions and features of a racist, patriarchal, and capitalist oppression but also transforms the systematic relations of exploitation and moves to- ward producing nonexploitative social arrangements. At the same time, feminist theory needs to be especially self-reflexive and adept at critiquing its own historical situation and limits; at resist- ing the patriarchal appropriation and usurpation of its opposi- tional logic; and at insuring that its alternative practices and modes of knowing circulate and are used on behalf of an eman- cipatory agenda. While many may agree with this principle, its realization is the most difficult and hotly contested issue in fem- inist theory today. In addressing these issues, I thus speak as a feminist engaged in a self-reflexive dialog with other feminists over a critique of the limits, aporias, and presuppositions, in short, the problematic of feminist theory as it struggles to end exploitation. As I have al- ready made clear, I am also speaking from an oppositional space within the postmodern that is a resistance postmodernism. Theory, for many feminists, is seen as masculinist, abstract, elitist, and phallogocentric, and as a form of instrumental reason. Above all theory is considered antithetical to women's experience and thus betrays feminism. At the core of this controversy over theory is the issue of the relation of theory and experience- whether the humanist notion of the experience of the moral self (as in cultural feminism) or the postmodern celebration of the experience of the ethical subject of pleasure, the jouissance of the body (as in ludic feminism).6 Much postmodern theory is, in fact, an "antitheoretical theory." We need only look at Derrida's Post Card, Lyotard's Just Gaming, de Man's The Resistance to Theory, Gallop's Thinking through the Body, or Fish's Doing What Comes Nat- urally to see this opposition to theory as a phallogocentric ratio nalism and the use of such "ludic" strategies as the play of tropes, parody, punning, autobiography (what Ulmer calls "mystory"), and anecdote to deconstruct theory, its concepts and principles. This antitheoretical stance also informs ludic postmodern cultural studies as the anthology Cultural Studies demonstrates. In writing the afterword to the volume, in which she both sums up its major themes and comments on the current state of cultural studies, Angela McRobbie celebrates "the absence of the tyranny of the- ory," which has been displaced by a "speculative 'writerly' approach" (Grossberg et al. 724). But this view of theory, whether adopted by humanists, postmodernists, or feminists, is, to my mind, politically very disenabling.Instead of conventionally (and conveniently) dismissing the- ory as a masculinist and rationalist instrumentalism that acts as an abstract metalanguage or a violent closure of meaning, we need to reunderstand theory as a historical critique of the politics of in- telligibility. By this I mean theory is most effectively understood in resistance postmodernism not in an "idealist" way (theory as metalanguage) but as an explanatory critique of the ways in which meanings are materially formed and social reality is constructed in relation to various strategies of power. This reunderstanding of theory enables us to acquire a historical knowledge of social to- talities and the relations of power, profit, and labor rendering certain forms of daily practices legitimate ("meaningful") and marking others as "meaningless." Theory, in this sense, is a dou- ble operation: it is both the frame of intelligibility through which we organize and make sense of reality, and the critical inquiry into and contestation over these modes of meaning making. Practice is inscribed in theory as I am articulating it here. Thus theory is not simply a cognitivism but a historical site of social struggle over how we represent reality, that is, over how we construct reality and the ways to change it.7 Theory, in other words, is a political practice and not simply a metaphysical abstraction or discursive play. This means that even such a seemingly natural and nonthe- oretical practice as common sense (as Gramsci argues in Prison Notebooks) is a frame of intelligibility, a theory, but one that con- ceals its mode of knowing, representing it as the "way things are." Theory, then, is not opposed to experience but is the necessary supplement of experience (to use Derrida's term in order to decon struct his deconstruction of theory): theory historicizes experi- ence and displays the social relations that have enabled it to be experienced as "experience." Such a knowledge prevents us from essentializing experience and makes it possible to produce new experiences by transforming the dominant social relations. The pressing issue for social change then is not to reject theory (knowledge) but first to critique how specific theories are produced and used, in the interests of what power relations, and second to engage in the struggle to produce new opposing theo- ries (contesting knowledges)-in short, to participate in the strug- gle over opposing ways of constructing and changing the world. To theorize postmodernism and difference in the terms I am proposing here is an instance of such a contestation over theory: an effort to produce opposing knowledge for social change.