Coreografia e pornografia

Choreography and Pornography 1 (working notes for an essay to come) Andre Lepecki A) In her bo ok Pornography, the Theory (w hich is tellin g ly subtitled, “What Utilitarianism Did to Action”) literary th e­ orist Frances Ferguson advances the m ain reason w h y pornography is a key en tryw ay in to the ration ality that produced m o d ern ity and its corporeal realities: “por- nography raised issues for modernity that were not being addressed” by o th er d iscip lin es or practices. For Fergusson, on e o f the m ain issues that pornography raised, is that w h en “talking about pornography” one is also and inevitably and always talking about those ‘basic techniques d eveloped by utilitarian philosophers [such as David H um e and Sam uel Bentham ] and practitioners that w ere designed to capture actions and give them extreme perceptibility.” (p. ix). Now, I could not th in k o f a b etter d efin itio n o f chore- ography, w h ich in d eed can be described as a “techn ique designed to capture actions and give th em extrem e 67 perceptibility.” A technique moreover, whose history, as a body discipline o f extrem e kinetic perceptibility, par­ allels exactly the rise o f pornography as a repurposed genre in European modernity. [Insert here note on how pornography re-emerges in the 17th century » Foucault in his 1978 lecture Governmentality sees the rise o f governing and govern­ ance endure sustained rationalization as emerging “from the m iddle o f the 16th to the late 18th century. “Government as a general problem seems to me to explode in the 16th century” (Foucault.) Note how Arbeau’s Orchesographie, 1589 is published in French (not Latin), follow ing in a very interesting way the 1539 Ordinance of Villers-Cotterets that made French the official language for all legal publications (Note also how Orchseography is a dialogue between a JUDGE and a LAWYER on this new technology for the first tim e fusing “m ovem ent” and its “w riting”; Note also Feuillet’s Choreographie, 1700. Under the direct force o f Louis XIV] B) So, what happens when we approach the invention of these two new early technologies of action-capturing [a third technology would be cinema, w hich fuses both choreography’s and pornography’s 68 nature as apparatuses of capture, thus com pleting p ho to logically and photo-kin eto-choregraph ically the scopic project o f utilitarian actionism . Interestingly, as Linda W illiam s has show n in her classic b ook Hard Core, the in ven tion o f cinem a is deeply bound to "an unprecedented conjunction of pleasure and power [which] ‘implants’ a cinematic perversion of fetishism in the prototypical cinema's first halting steps towards narrative” p. 39]. What happens, w h e n w e see choreography and p o rn o g ­ raphy as necessary co-developments of a whole new understanding of the function of the body within the biopolitical lo g ic o f governmentality starting to shape the b o d y ’s governance and the governance o f a c tio n s-in c lu d in g th e actions o f desire, the m otilities and arrangem ents o f those actions in to sexual en co u n ­ te r s -fr o m the 16th th rou gh ou t the 18th century; i.e. throughout the form ative years o f choreography and o f pornography as w e un derstand these 2 form s o f writing bodies, of writing on bodies [“pornography”: etymologically “writing on the bodies of whores”], today? As far as p orn ograp h y is con cern ed , Ferguson gives us a clear answ er to th is question: “The revival o f pornography in the late 18th cen tu ry 69 (...) involved biopolitics in a fuller sense than that we have usually appreciated in adopting Foucault s use o f the term because pornography was not routing its claims through beliefs - however affectively in ­ ten se -but rather through descriptions of actions ” And, she continues: “pornography does not merely recommend particular sexual experiences, as if to have its actors say ‘try this, you’ll like it.’ It also, as is most intensely clear in de Sade’s writings, arranges its participants.” It is in this double sense, as intense description and as prescribed arrangement of bodies in action (that may or may not be sexual action) that pornography constitutionally operates always in a double field of affects and effects: 1) on one hand, pornography participates in a gen- eralized policing and disciplining of the body, by turning “the im palpability o f action itse lf” into a visible, measurable, describable, and repeatable set o f conduct (which can be turned into a new repertoire o f sexual chore-techniques); 2) on the other hand, pornography plunges so intensely into its project o f hyper-description for the sake o f ex­ plicit “extreme perceptibility,” that it finds itself inevita­ 70 bly d row n in g in d e liriu m : not necessarily the delirium o f sex, or the d eliriu m o f fleshes and fluids m ingling in uncountable pleasures, but rather, the d e lir iu m o f k i ­ n e tic r a tio n a lity : that m ode o f re a s o n in g g o v ern a n ce that understands every single hum an action as som e­ thing that can be subjected to optic capture, accurate description, proper archiving, and eventual re p ro d u c­ tio n or r e p re ssio n as a ctio n —d epen din g on w h eth er that action is sanctioned or censored. But as p o r n o g r a p h y resurfaces as a n ew genre (liter­ ary and behavioral: sexual and im aginative; k in etic and critical) along w h at w e could call b io - c h o r e o -p o litic a l p ow er, som e u n exp ected epip hen om en a start to leak out o f its relations to p o litical utilitarianism . Namely, p ornograph y’s v ir tu a l (since w e are talkin g here about w riting) se x u a l k in e tic is m reveals its capacity to un do biopow er. It does so b y brin g in g to the perceptual surface counter-techniques of pleasures and micro-perceptu­ al repertoires of actions that threaten the v e ry project o f biop olitical d iscip lin arian co n tro l o f conduct. This is particularly clear in the w ritin gs o f de Sade. NOTE: De Sade’s w ritin g s are central to 2 projects I w ould like to analyze in depth in the essay to come: M ette In gvartsen ’s “To C om e” (2005) and Ralph L em on’s “The G raphic Reading R oom ” (2015), p articu­ larly L em on ’s in vitatio n o f Y von n e Rainer to read out 71 loud from Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom before an audience for one hour. As Pierre Klosowski wrote in his 1947 book on de Sade: “Sade, liquidating the norms o f reason, pursues the dis­ integration o f man”; He “wishes to free thought from all pre-established norm ative reason”. Meanwhile, choreography had already learned that its norm ative impulse was also being put under threat by those very entities it wanted to govern: a) bodies in interaction, b) bodies in intram otion, and c) the “autonomies o f affect” (Massumi, 2003). In the age o f bio-choreo-power, choreography learned that to render actions hyper-visible through m ethodical engagement o f language and image was, simply, an impossible task: since actions, language, and m otions keep escaping total description, keep eluding apparatuses o f capture. NOTE: PIERRE RAMEAU. How throughout “The Dancing M aster” (1725) Rameau continuously express­ es his anxiety regarding his capacities to linguistically express and to draw that w hich is essentially un-capturable: m ovem ent (Deleuze; Bergson). The rise o f choreography at the same time as por- nography is the outcome o f a new materialism (new for the 17th and 18th century) that starts to justify the 72 principles g overn in g in d ividual action according to a new lo g ic o f cosm o-th eo-an th ropo-political conse­ quences: “what Michel Foucault identifies as the "invention of Man”: that is, by the Renaissance humanists’ epochal rede­ scription of the human outside the terms of the then theocentric, “sinful by nature” conception/“descriptive statement” of the human, on whose basis the hegemony of the Church/clergy over the lay world of Latin-Christian Europe had been supernaturally legitimated (Chorover, 1979). While, if this redescription was effected by the lay world s invention of Man as the political subject of the state, in the transumed and reoccupied place of its earlier matrix identity Christian, the performative enact­ ment of this new “descriptive statement” and its master code of symbolic life and death, as the first secular or “degodded” (if, at the time, still only partly so) mode of being human” (Sylvia W ynter). This n ew au tokin etic invention, m odern Man, is the in ven tio n o f a p rin cip le o f m o to r autonom y (the “auto-m obile” [Sloterdijk]), w h ich thus necessitates p o licin g , g o v e rn a n c e , u p on this m otor- autonom y o f the in d ivid u al social/sexual actor-m over. No w onder the SU N -K IN G m ust be a D A N CIN G KIN G , but also a CH O R EO G RA PH ER . No w o n d er Sade places the actions of 120 days o f Sodom o n the last days o f Louis X IV reign, i.e., post the p u b lication o f F eu illet’s Choreographic. Again, Pierre K losow ski finds in de Sade the p rin cip les of this im p e r s o n a l k in e t ic lo g ic , groun ded in the “m a­ terialist p h ilo so p h y ” o f La M ettrie, H elvetius, but also 73 w ith strong influences from Spinoza (which de Sade’s Julliette reads, at a certain point) being both made explic­ it and critiqued from w ith in by taking the choreo-sexual-political logic o f it to the very lim its o f its un-reasonability. Klosowski summarizes: “To admit matter in the state o f perpetual m otion as the one and only universal agent is equivalent to consenting to live as an individual in a state o f perpetual m otion.” We can see the dangers o f this perpetual capacity for m otion if set free from biopower. C) In short: both choreography and pornography do have norm ative drives, and scopic-utilitarian genealogies; H O W EV ER -once those drives are taken to their abso­ lute lim it, rationally and somatically, discursively and sexually, im aginatively and fleshly, they start to danger­ ously underm ine governm entality, through that very excess that founds the body as perpetual uncapturable sets o f m ovement. Indeed, as pornographers starts to m inutely and closely describe, or as readers start to attentively introject pornographic descriptions, its convoluted actions, m o­ tions, gestures, noises, the enfleshed assemblages that compose the pornographic rhetorical arrangement of 74 sexual intercourses eventually lead both pornographer and reader to face the fact that any rational hope for objective, rational, “in d ifferen ce” is n o th in g but “fruit less”- t o use L in d a W illia m ’s felicitous expression [in Hard Core] d escribing the total e p iste m o lo g ic a l co lla p se that in evitab ly derives from those inescapable a ffe ctiv e surges (surges o f excitation, surges o f outrage, surges o f boredom , surges o f laughter, surges o f lust, etc.) that pornography o c c a s io n s -e v e n on the m ost analytical/ neutral/objective-inclined o f m inds. Introduce G ra p h ic-Read ing Room (Fall 2015, T h e K itch en) Yvonne Rainer: If the 18th cen tu ry in itia tes p o lizeiw izenshaft d e Sade sees at th e k ern el o f pow er th e v io lence o f anarchy, but w h ic h th e State disavows, even though practicing it. In this sense , de Sade is prescient and so isY Rainer: m in u te 54:19. D) To w rite and to read p o r n o g r a p h y is to dilute analyti­ cal m ind, even if m om entarily, in d eliria o f flesh, meat, words, im ages, im aginations, and m ore or less volun tary m ore or less in vo lu n tary m otions. In p o r n o g r a p h ic d e sc rip tio n , v e ry p articular “autonom ies o f affect” take over the b o d y o f the reader, o f the view er, o f the cartog­ 75 rapher o f bodies in sexual inter-action: quantitatively, h earts accelerate, b lo o d rushes outwards, a rteries con­ tract, organs intumesce, m in d s spin, m o u th s salivate, fin g e rtip s tingle, spasms ripple the flesh, the w hole body fuses w ith im agination in an am algam o f affects and m o tion s taken up by fe v e r - b e it lu st fever or d is­ gu st fever. Taken over by that very thing that pornogra­ phy wants to capture (i.e., by the hyper-m obility o f the infinite kinetic and affective inter-actions that make sex remake bodies), it is the w hole project o f biopolitical ra­ tionality that falls apart. As the pornographer describes w ith ever more detail the “perceptible (sexual) body for an otherwise impalpable abstraction,” we sense how ab straction can also be deeply palpable, palatable, and moving, since its nam e is p leasure , which, unieash edcuts across th e disciplinarian/utilitarian project, as the pornographer (whe th er w r it er or reader) drops paper and pen, is taken over by the delirious force containedin every detailed corporeal description and surrenders to masturbation, or a plunge into inconfessable fantasies— those even m ore impalpable, ev en more invisible, even more uncontrollable, truly autonomous, actions of the lustful mind. E) From de Sade: “The salon shall be heated to an unusual temperature, and illuminated by chandeliers. All present shall 76 be naked: storytellers, wives, little girls, little boys, elders, fuckers, friends, everything shall be pell-mell, everyone shall be sprawled on the floor and, after the example of animals, shall change, shall comingle, entwine, couple incestuously, adulterously, sodomistically, deflowerings being at all times banned, the company shall give itself over to every excess and to every debauch which may best warm the mind.” (Note on “p ell-m ell,” from O ld French pelle-melle, m ixture o f skins.) The orgiastic d isin tegration o f m an throu gh the a n i­ m a l-lik e m ixtures o f bare skins and a-rational m in d s b o ilin g to th e p o in t o f u n d oin g governm ental ration ­ ality is p articularly clear in de Sade, w here, as Pierre K losow ski notes, porn ograph y is the genre that allows de Sade to create a p ow erfu l “critique o f norm ative reason,” w h ich , at its ou tm ost lim it, ends up “liquidating the laws o f reason, as it pursues the disintegration o f man.” (p. 5 [1947])Paradoxically, it is the c h o r e o g r a p h ic n a tu re at th e co re o f p o r n o g r a p h y (the arrangement o f bodies, the m aking bod ies h yp er-visib le for the sake o f describable inter-actions) that un d erm in es from w ith in the utilitarian /d iscip lin arian dream o f m aking the entire social field visible, to arrange that v isib ility according to predeterm in ed m otion s, and to regulate s e x u a l m o tio n as kin d o f so c ia l e n g in e e r in g . 77 Jacobs: “Both the pornographic literature and the philosophical treatises o f the new science postulate a private space where nothing matters but the force o f projectiles, the com pulsive pushing and pulling of bodies”. This is also one o f the points that Sim one de Beauvoir makes in her essay “Must We Bum Sade?” (1955)- b u t she takes that further to find in that com pulsion the very source for a critique o f the kinetic-violent nature ai the heart o f the (irratio n a lity that fuels the compulsion to power in the era o f governm entality. But, perhaps, at this point, we could give the word to a choreographer, to expand on this point: [QUOTE: Yvonne Rainer reading in TGRR, m inute 9-19 // M inute 34.14] F) Explain why de Sade s 120 days of Sodom is the intertext to make this text to come. Two main reasons. First, because de Sade has emerged explicitly in a recent choreo-pornographic project by American choreog­ rapher R alph Lem on, titled The Graphic Reading Room (2015), where Judson choreographer and feminist 78 film-m aker Y v o n n e R a in e r was asked by Lem on to read from 120 days... [C om m ent on Rainer’s several re­ marks throu gh ou t h er one h ou r long reading o f m ostly Sim one d e B e a u v o ir’s “M ust w e burn Sade?” on the critical-political im petus in Sade’s w ritings, particularly his anarchy, and on the irratio n ality o f the rationality behind State pow er/violence.] [NOTE: The com p lete lin e up o f books/readers for Lem on’s The G raphic Reading Room was: 1. Lynn Tillm an: W eird Fucks (2015): read by Lynn T illm an 2. Chris Krause: I Love D ick (1997): read b y Tim Griffin 3. D ennis Cooper: Frisk (1992): read b y M atthew Lyons 4. David W ojnarow icz: Close To The Knives: A M em oir o f D isintegration (1991): read by M iguel G uitterez 5. Kathy Acker: Rip O ff Red, G irl D etective (1973). Empire o f the Senseless (1988), In M em oriam o f Identity (1990): read b y A p ril M atthis 6. Samuel R. Delany: E quinox (1973): read by O k w u i O kp okw asili 7. Charles Platt: T he Gas (1970) 8. Iceberg Slim: P im p (1967): read b y Fred M oten 9. M ary M cCarthy: M y C on fessio n (i 954 ) : rea(^ by Gary Indiana 10. M arquis de Sade: 120 Days o f Sodom (1785), Sim one 79 de Beauvoir: Must We Bum Sade (1953) read by Yvonne Rainer Secondly, because de Sade situates the action o f 120 days taking place in the last years o f Louis xiv reign (16431715)- again the relation to Feuillet is crucial. There is a kind o f m axim al micro-cartography of power in dse Sade, particularly the power o f Liberal Reason, and the kind o f sovereignty it affirmed as the new juridical-political ground for human existence. It is telling that historian Margret C. Jacobs, in her essay “The Materialist World o f Pornography,” reminds us that “during the reign of Louis xiv (1643-1715), the pornographic and the obscene began to battle with the authorities of the church and state”. This is im portant for the history o f choreography not only because Louis XIV was a dancer-king, not only was he the founder o f the first Academy o f Dance (1661), but it was under his direct sponsorship that the first book bearing the word “Choreography” was p u b lish e d -h er­ alding thus the first appearance o f this new science of movement discipline, this technology of action-visibility, this new way to graphically and discursively manage body discipline, in 1700. [NOTE: must include here discussion of Mark Franko’s essay on engravings and paintings depicting Louis XIV and Franko’s political readings of the rhetoric o f power in the prom inent display o f the 80 k in g ’s le g s as bein g in itse lf a theater o f pow er over kinetic p rin cip les o f sovereignty (lin k to m y essay on “ch oreop olicin g”.] It is interestin g to see the conflation in R a lp h L e m o n ’s work betw een choreography and pornography through literature. In his recent project titled The Graphic Reading Room, w h ich accom panied the ex h ib itio n o f his visual art w orks and th e op en in g o f a new perform ance piece at T h e K itc h e n in NYC (Fall 2015), Lem on invited Yvonne Rainer to read 120 days of Sodom. G) P o rn o g ra p h y is to se x w h at c h o re o g r a p h y is to dance. Sex d o es to dance w h at porn ograph y d o es for ch ore­ ography. [Link M ette In gvartsen ’s blue bodies in the first part o f “To C om e” w ith M argaret Jacobs’ in sigh t on h ow m a te ria lis t p h ilo s o p h y ’s k in e t ic r a tio n a lit y is akin to p o rn o g ra p h y : “The un iverse o f the bed ro om created by the m aterial­ ist p ornograph ers stands as the analogue to the p h ys­ ical u n iverse o f the m ech an ical p hilosop hers. In both, bodies w ere strip ped o f th e ir texture, co lor and sm ell, o f th eir qualities, and encapsulated as en tities in m o- 81 tion, who’s very being is defined by that motion." Link the voicing o f previously taped orgasms in “To Com e” w ith Rainer’s observation on m inute 32 o f her reading from Sade and Beauvoir: “I am curious. Are y ou h ere fo r de Sade, o r fo r m e?”] Notes 1. These notes for a text to come were the base for a brief talk I delivered at the symposium “Experiments in Sex” held at NYU's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. I am grateful to Ann Pellegrini, CSGS’s director, for her invitation. I am also thankful to the postgraduate students who took my seminar “Choreography and Pornography” at NYU in the Spring of 2016. These ideas were developed alongside them. Thanks also to Marten Spangberg for his invitation to contribute to this volume and to his relentless capacity to insist. 82