What is going on in the realm
between the speaker and the audience? In this text a study is made of
the intricate play between the speaker and the audience in a specific
situation. The performance studied is chosen from a clip on Youtube
in which the famous gender theorist Judith Butler addresses the
audience/participants at a gathering with Occupy Wall Street in 2011.
The purpose in this text is to use phenomenological methodology to
understand what is happening in this video clip. The assumption is
made that Butler's speech and the audience repeating her words is
about interaction.
The
video clip (Judith Butler at Occupy WSP 2011) is one of several
documentations on Youtube of a speech Butler gave at the
manifestation of Occupy Wall Street in Washington Square Park, New
York, New York in the fall of 2011. During the first 50 seconds there
is a prelude of the repetition of what the speaker says as a woman
informs the audience about the agenda of the meeting – using this
manner of the audience being, or providing, their own sound system.
After the preliminaries Butler starts to speak about 50 seconds into
the clip. In my action of scanning video clips on Youtube this one
caught my attention, probably because apparently the organizers of
this manifestation did not supply any sound system for the speaker.
So, was this really what I was looking for?
When
scouting for video clips on Youtube I retreived two additional video
clips; one clip of the judo kata Nage no kata (2006) and one of the
Swedish poet Bruno K. Öijer reading a poem (2008). Being a judo
player I find the katas (fixed forms) fascinating – you are
supposed to perform them in a certain order and form to show your understanding of judo
in your own way, within your physical limitations. I thought that the
differences between a judo practitioner and an ordinary member of an
audience in what is being seen would be big. Regarding the poet
Öijer´s recitation what caught my attention was the difference
between Öijer's serious recitation and his gesture after he
finished, clenching his fist in an almost obscene gesture. In
comparision with the Butler video clip they seemed flat, here I
thought there was something going on that was more complex. But what
was that, was it all occuring only in my head?
At
first there was something looking like collaboration between the
speaker and the audience. Secondly I thought I spied reactions in
Butler on the initial repetitions
of her words. Thirdly, the fact that I found this intriguing left me
no alternative than to choose the video clip featuring Judith Butler.
What is going on in the video clip?
What
happens during Butler's speech is that Judith Butler says: “Hello
everybody” and the audience repeats the phrase: “Hello
everybody”. The next phrase is: “I'm Judith Butler”. Even this
is repeated by the audience, with some laughter, and even Butler
herself seems to find it amusing having the entire audience argueing
that they all are Judith Butler. Butler seems to anticipate thethe
oddity by pointing her left hand and giving the thumbs up when the
audience says: “I'm Judith Butler”. Even in the commentary field
on Youtube the video clip received comments like, for example,
Amandinedinedine's: “ha ha, okay we're both Judith Butler! Anyone
else is?” This indicates that the practice of repeating a speaker's
words verbatim is not common practice, not even within political
activism.
This
manner of getting the message through has more of collaboration over
it than the more common action-reaction pattern often practiced when
a speakar stands in front of an audience. At face value what is
happening in the video clip is that Judith Butler is trying to
address the audience, lending them her support for their activism. In
doing so, she adapts to the situation (no loud speakers) and lets the
audience repeat her words and thus amplify them. She even has to
deliver her speech in chunks small enough for the audience to be able
to repeat. It, in turn, adds a rhytm to the speech.
Phenomenological views on the video clip
How
phenomenological is this approach to identify a field of study? Did I
really use the husserlian epoché and refrain from judging the
existence of that something that caught my interest in the video clip
as described by Gallagher & Zahavi (2008:23)? What caught my
interest was rather the opposite, the obvious actions I thought I
watched made the choosen video clip stand out for me. If we are to
really discard the obvious it is hard work to watch the world around
us.
A: Phenomenology as methodology
Studying
a video clip using phenomenology as a methodology is a challenge. I
will return below to the selection of clips as an example of how even
the selection is made using my precognitions of an event. In
the following I will try to stick to the idea that what is going on
in the video clip is interaction. Firstly there is something looking
like collaboration between the speaker and the audience. Secondly I
thought I spied reactions in Butler on the initial repetitions of her
words. Thirdly, the way these actions influenced me looking at the
video clip leads to a kind of interaction as I write these comments
on the video clip.
When
I watch when Judith Butler at minute 0:56 into the video clip gives a
thumbs up and a smile as, what I interpret as, a response to the
audience repeating her words: “I'm Judith Butler” my
interpretation is obviously based on my previous experience of
similar situations. Bodily behaviour, expression and action are,
according to Gallagher & Zahavi (2008:148), essential to some
basic forms of consiousness. Following that thread of thought
Gallagher & Zahavi argue that mental states can be apprehended in
the bodily expressions of the people who have these mental states. In
accordance with this thinking my perception of Judith Butler's
thumbs up and smile as her being positive towards the audience
repeating her words is of course my interpretation of her body
language. I choose, for reasons that lies embodied in me, to see
Butler´s action as a positive reaction on the audience's action. In
reacting on the audience Butler interacts with her audience.
The
actions in the video clip seem to convey meaning – I watch a woman
speaking to an audience that repeats her words. I immediately
construct my own meaning of this, not necessarily the meaning going
on at the original event. As Gallagher & Zahavi states, it is not
as if we have to make a detour defining what is going on (2008:148).
We rather instantly make a mental picture of what is being said and
done – and we extract meaning from it, based on our previous
experience of the world. The meaning we may extract does not
necessarily correspond to the meaning that is conatined in the
figures of the figures or the event we are watching.
The
video clip in question is recorded at a political rally which may
influence the audience. They are participants in a political activity
and may not be a typical audience, if there are such. Even if Judith
Butler has icon status in gender studies the rest of the participants
may not see her as a performer. My thought is that this is an event
that you do not buy a traditional ticket to – instead your ticket
to the event is your political persuasion. That may even up the
difference in status between partaking in the audience and speaking
to the audience.
B: Difficulties with the phenomenological approach
The
difficulties that arise using the phenomenological approach towards
a field of study is among other things that it is hard to leave out
all the luggage of precognitions of what I watch in this video clip.
That is an attitude that is hard to come by – in a philosophical
manner of speaking what are we other than the sum of all our
experiences? During my working life the standard question when put in
front of something new, whether it was a new technology, a new manner
of organizing or a a new method of keeping track of expences was:
“What it this like?” The idea was to get to grips with the new
using something old, thus making connections that helped gain
understanding.
Gallagher
& Zahavi argue that when looking at the world a true
phenomenologist should abandon the auto-pilot of perception
(2008:65). That is, in order to truly understand what is happening
around us we must leave our ready-made conceptions of what we are
seeing. The mind can be said to take short cuts, if it recognizes, or
assumes it recognizes something it makes us think: This is a text for
a take home exam, this is a class room, this is a lecture hall or
this is a woman speaking in front of an audience of political
activists. All assumptions based on previous knowledge about how
things generally appear in this manner stand in the way of the
researcher's road to a full insight in what is happening, right in
front of the researcher's eyes.
Final comments
The
assumption was made at the start of this text that the audience´s
repetition of Butler's words was about interaction. I want to add
that any audience-performer relation can be said to be about
interaction – a skilled performer watches the reactions of the
audience and continues from that, maybe even choosing different paths
for the performence depending on the audience's reactions.
It was interesting trying to
deploy some phenomenological thinking on the choosen video clip. The
difficulties are about abandoning our preconceptions, based on
experience, bordering on prejudice. At this point in time, I look
upon phenemonology as a possible aid in tracking what meaning people
ascribe to what they are doing in their lives. It
is the observer's lot to never be entirely sure of what is being
observed.
I
am primarily trained in Ethnology and I sometimes find that my
observations are more about me reacting to what I watch than about
what I am actually watching. That may hold true even for eye
witnesses that seldom have seen the same action occuring when the
police interrogates them. Some people find it irritating that others
do not remember that one of the cars involved in a certain accident
was blue – other people may rember it as dark or black. We are all
living in a world that we share, but we see it differently because of
our different experiences.
It
is of course not possible to argue significant results or profound
insights from a short review of a video clip. The fact that I found
this video clip intriguing was probably essentially a result of my
being observant of the obvious – I had not previously watched any
event with the feature of the audience repeating the words of the
speaker. In spite of that, the ideas emerging from the studied video
clip are sources to be dealt with in the future.
What
seems to be clear is that when we say that we are someone else, we
are either lying or pretending/playing. There is no doubt who the
real Judith Butler is in this video clip. She is already standing up
in the video clip (but so are some in the audience).
* Paraphrase
of the 1968 documentary film “Will the Real Norman Mailer Please
Stand Up?” about Mailer´s participation and arrest for
transgressing a police line in the September 1967 March on the
Pentagon.
References
Gallagher,
Shaun & Zahavi, Dan. 2008. The
Phenomenological Mind – An Introduction to
Philosophy
of Mind and Cognitive Science, London:
Routledge.
Judith
Butler at Occupy WSP. 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYfLZsb9by4
(retrieved
January
1st 2013).
Judo
Nage No Kata demonstration video. 2006.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7hDH_KHf9o
(retrieved
January 1st 2013).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYZdU6Yr8L8
(retrieved January 1st 2013).
