"Just
One Question"
Text
documents
The
Creation of a Structure of Inquiry: Just One Question/Solo Una
Pregunta
Defining
My Question/Meeting with my
This
Website As a Possible Pedagogical Tool
The Encuentro: Some Personal Notes From
My Journal (And Comments)
Transcript
of My Interview with Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
A group
of masters degree students in NYU's Performance
Studies program have
I have
a story to tell. In the largest frame
this is a story about my
The
Creation of a Structure of Inquiry: Just One Question/Solo Una
Pregunta
But I
was not in
One of
the things I want to provide through my interviews is an opportunity to
humanize this choice of an object to represent your family. My family didn't
choose to be represented by a menorah (in fact we are not a particularly religious
family to begin
with). I'm interested in contrasting
this act of objectification with representations of people who we can witness
actually making that choice for themselves. I cannot say if I am making a valuative commentary about authority through this contrast;
I'm merely interested in seeing what happens when I do make that contrast and
in how it informs my thinking.
"Performance
is a way of transferring knowledge and social memory; not just language, but
bodies pass on knowledge" -Professor Diana Taylor
I felt it was important to include a mentor figure as part of my inquiry both as a way of ensuring that I take advantage of the resources available to me (at The Encuentro and at NYU generally) and as a way of broadening my inquiry. I chose Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, (hereafter referred to as "BKG") to fill this role. I had read her article "Objects of Ethnography" (from "Exhibiting Cultures" Ivan Camp and Stephen Levine, editors, Smithsonian 1991) and identified her as a thinker and scholar interested in how we imbue objects with value as well as in the performative nature of objects. She is also a professor of Performance Studies at NYU.
My
question changed twice. I started out with "if
your family were to
In the
process of interviewing BKG a couple of things became
clear about the nature of my question. First I discovered that the word "icon" while
possibly
interesting as a way of sparking what BKG called
"a fresh response," was unusual enough that I needed to monitor how
it functioned; this word could have the opposite effect from what I desired and
actually serve to shut the respondent down. The other thing that became clear
was that I had not successfully included the notion of "representation
from an outside party" as part of my question; I would never personally
choose a menorah to represent my notably unreligious family. The menorah
reflects the German church
community's idea of my family. In fact, when the church contacted my
Aunt requesting a menorah from our family, rather than providing a "family
menorah" as they seemed to be suggesting, she went to the Jewish Museum
and bought a new one - which is now the object representing us in the
church.
When
I
explained this to BKG she suggested that I perhaps
consider adding the idea of a museum to my question: "If a museum were going
to
represent your family by one icon, what would it be?" I was excited by the articulation
of a power
dynamic inherent in the idea of being represented in a museum. I rewrote my question: "If
a museum were
to choose one object to represent your family, what would it be?"
I began
my interviewing process with the above question and immediately
Being
face to face with actual people also affected what I wanted to
It
occurred to me that while I was interested in the inferred power
I ultimately
asked eighteen people the above question and got eighteen different
I am
interested in the possibility of the "Just One Question" website providing
a
structure of inquiry that might be useful for other students. Really, please
do steal this site, (you can
literally steal it by going to "View source" in your menu bar, replicating the
code and filling
in my boxes with your own material). If
the structure I've outlined here is useful to you or your students, replicate
it! How might that work? (continue...)
I
imagine it functioning something like this: a student, or scholar, is
interested in exploring a large topic such as, for example, pet owners'
relationships to their animals, or the performative
nature of spectatorship. Rather than beginning their inquiry in a customary
scientific fashion, defining their hypothesis and then proceeding to prove it,
they instead start by articulating a question with the understanding that it
is through the exploration of this question (in conversation with respondents
as
well as with scholar/mentors working in their chosen area of interest), that
the student/scholar will come to a more informed and multi-dimentioned
hypothesis. I imagine this as a tool for the beginning of an inquiry though it
might also be useful as a way of shaking up an existing inquiry to shed new
light on an old research topic.
I just
read Keith Jenkinsâ incredible book Why History? In describing his methodology
Jenkins quotes
writer and philosopher Richard Rorty on his attempt
to try and find new ways of looking at history. Rorty's words
resonated so much for me vis a vis this project that I
think it's worthwhile quoting them here: "The method is to redescribe
lots of things in new ways, until you have created a pattern of linguistic behaviour which will tempt the rising generation to adopt
it, thereby causing them to look for appropriate new forms of non-linguistic behahavior· This sort of philosophy does not work piece by
piece, analysing concept after concept, or testing
thesis after thesis. Rather it works
holistically and pragmatically, it says things like "try thinking of it in this
way" or more specifically, "try to ignore the apparently futile traditional
questions by substituting the following new and possibly interesting questions"
It does not pretend to have a better candidate for doing the same old things
which we did when we spoke in the old way. Rather it suggests that we might want
to stop doing those things and do
something else."
This
inquiry was extremely useful for me as "way in." It provided me with a context
from which to explore the Hemispheric Institute and it gave me a jumping off
point to
continue research into the performative value of
objects. Through this investigation I
have come to recognize areas of scholarship that I might not have recognized
otherwise. I knew from the beginning
that I would be researching "performing objects" but I have now broadened
my scope to include narrative studies and performance (beginning with the work
of
Richard Bauman, see bibliography), and the concept of "giving voice".
This process
of investigation also allowed me to explore areas of expertise such as video
interviewing, editing, making material web-ready, and website construction,
that I had never experienced before.
The Encuentro: Some Personal Notes From
My Journal (And Comments)
I was
now also emmersed in the Encuentro
and the concepts of "authority" and "representation" were appearing from many different angles. Here are some of
my notes from The Encuentro to give you an idea of
the experience. I'm interested in the contrast
between my descriptions of doing some of these interviews and the actual
interviews themselves.
I take
the Poche Nostra workshop ("Mortuary Diaramas and Human Altars"). Poche Nostra
("Our Impurity") is a performance collective headed by performance
artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena. The entire workshop is
about performing
"subject" and "ethnographer," and in creating art in the
form of "sedimented images" out of this
exploration.
That
night we watch Poche Nostra's
performance. I am once again
I interview
someone who tells me that the object she would choose to
7/13 Migrating
Religiosities Work-Group
"The rhythm of eternal return" Exodus,
a time when a people will
Wabei
gives a presentation about her family and the performance ritual that has held
so many communities in her region of
Someone
answers my question: "A cock. Well,
that's not exactly an object but it is where everything comes from,
right?" "Whose?"
I ask her. "My father's, I
guess", and she proceeds to tell me a family story of intrigue and
infidelity - all about her father's cock which she says she would portray as
a
playful puppet with an endless desire to go where it wasn't supposed to.
7/13 In the mini-seminar Rosanna Reguillo
brings out objects to "keep us safe": spray to get rid of black magic
and other conjures and antidotes; these are things she doesn't believe in.I think
she intends this as a performance of
the absurdity of superstition. This is
the kind of presentation that interests me least at the Encuentro.
I'm moved by why people have faith, by why they imbue things like aerosol spray
with
value, not in ridiculing
them/representing them for the absurdity of it.
Denise
talks about "the possibility of dislocation" meaning a gesture or
movement or text that is purposefully unrelated to its context. "Life has
nothing original, behavior is all programmed", she says. "The more
dislocation in the gesture, the more room there is for imagination, for theatrical
space... art is opened
("abrir") by the impossible." She says
that meaning is up to the viewer,
not the performer. I write down
"The physical gesture as object, the phrase as object; the word. The economy of it, the grace." I ask myself who is the
viewer in the drama
I
am investigating.
I interview
Denise Stoklos. She says she would choose her
father's
7/14 Migrating
Religiosities Work-group
"Process
of emplacement and displacement" is one of our (workgroup)
Other
themes so far:
-Absence
and presence of the body
-The
space of risk
-Religiosity
as a form of social control
-Religiosity
as a system of knowledge
-Consumption/consumerism
as religious practice (including the
-Commodification of religious objects)
-Representation
(by an other) vs. personal experience of
representation.
All of
these themes are relevant to my inquiry.
I interview
two people. One, an anthropologist,
says she would choose
7/15 Migrating
Religiosities Work-group
I'm
increasingly fascinated by this idea of representation. I am not represented
by
the menorah in
* * *
Throughout
the seminar we have all passed continually back and forth through
Interview
with Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
--The following is a transcript of an interview with
Professor Kirshenblatt-Gimblett that I did on the nature of asking
respondents
about family objects.
NM: I'm going to give you a little context. I think
I mentioned to you that my father was a German Jew born in Berlin and the
thing I'm looking at right now is the story
of a menorah that's in a church in a town called Selchow,
just east of Berlin where they lived and owned a lot of land and property·
there's a restitution claim that's about to be settled and when it heated up
the parishioners of this town church sent a letter to my Aunt asking for a
menorah. Part of what I'm interested in
here is a structure of inquiry. How do
you go about looking at an object that represents your family? The question I'm
thinking about asking is "If
your family were to be represented by an icon, what would that icon be?" So I'd
like your response to that question
and also I'm going to ask you about bibliography because obviously your work
deals with the changing value of objects.
BKG: by object you mean an
object or an image or a symbol?
NM: I think I'm leaving that question open
intentionally. It is "Spectacles of
Religiosity" that we're talking about (in the conference). In my family it is
a religious icon that I'm
investigating; should I be more specific?
BKG: Not necessarily. My first
response, without even thinking, would be a photograph of my youngest sister
who died. My second response would be a glass mortar
and pestle that belonged to my father's mother. The third response, and these
are not in any particular order of importance, would be the paintings that
my father has made over the last
fourteen years about his memories of growing up as a boy in Poland during the
interwar years and probably I'd put those first really.
NM: So you immediately went to your own
representation.
BKG: No, I think these would
all be meaningful to other people.
NM: And in your answer you are the authority who is
choosing these icons. If
you were to ask the question as a power outside the family·?
BKG: I really think (it would be) my father's
paintings.
NM: I'm interested in your input as a mentor figure/scholar/thinker
on how to ask people about family objects...
BKG: Well, some questions are
hypothetical and speculative which is pretty much how you put it to me. Then
there are situations in which people have actually made choices and decisions
because
they were situations in which
people had to act or did act. So another
way to look at it would be to identify those situations and to look at what
objects, symbols, whatever "icons" people chose in those particular settings.
For example when people move they have to make choices about what to leave
behind
and when they move under very difficult
or urgent circumstances they make very radical decisions and one of the reasons
I mentioned the brass mortar and pestle is it's one of the things my
grandmother brought over from the old country. I have a number of other things
of hers as well but I like (that) because it was something from everyday
life, it's not the sort of thing you use
anymore but it does sort of represent an entire world that was connected to
her. It was the kind of thing that many
women brought with them. They had to
choose between candlesticks, feather beds, mortar and pestle.. those were the
kind of things they'd bring. People
brought these things partly because they thought they would need them and
partly, it must mean partly that they valued them, they thought they wouldn't
be able to replace them, they would have difficulty, whatever... So those were
actual choices they made and
because they're so radical, they brought so many with them and so few of those
things now survive, they come to have value in time for others that's different,
that includes but is different, from how they were valued (before). The second
way is to look at interiors and
to
see what it is that (people) have and have positioned in a special place or
treated in a special way that tells you that these things are of value. They
may very well be photographs for
instance. Or in peoples' wills, what
they leave to people in their wills. Those are really concrete, they're not speculative,
they are decisions that people have made and they are made in a context,
they're not made in the
abstract, and they are made under very particular circumstances that put
particular pressures on the question so that you really have to come up with
a
response. So, wills and gifts, particularly
gifts that were not purchased but that one owns and gives. Or gifts that are
anticipated that when a child is old enough or when so-and-so gets married
or when a
first child is
born, that are put aside or planned in anticipation of an event. And then, the
reason why the paintings are
interesting is that it's not a case of something from the past that has been
sealed and preserved and then put into circulation as a kind of legacy, but
they are rather created in the present (and these were created very
collaboratively), they're created in the present and they have a very different
relationship from objects that survived from the past into the present. They're
of a different order. But I would say that in that regard,
photographs are made to be remembered - a lot of objects have that quality, some
of them just are and some by dint of their history they take on that function,
but some objects from the get-go are created to capture memory: photography,
video, websites·they might be quilts, scrapbooks, mementos, souvenirs.
NM: Did you think that the question as I articulate
it is a useful question? Because I can change the question·
BKG: I think it's a good
question. "Icon" is not a word that
people normally use to talk about things they love but the good thing is that
it might prompt people to reflect with a fresh response and depending on how
they responded there could be all kinds of follow up questions: do you own
anything that you think a museum would value? Or more specifically do you own
anything that you think a museum would value because of its relationship
to your family? Or is there anything that you own that you
have or would put in a will to give to a child or nephew· again something
that's value stems first-and-foremost from its relationship to your
family. And then there is the question of what is
the relationship that it represents and then why would you give
it to that person?
If what you're interested in is objects that are
particularly resonant and meaningful because of their relationship to family,
then actually providing a set of circumstances within which one might make
choices, would bring something out.
A museum is a place that conveys value. It could be
the opposite because for an object to be truly alive it needs to be part
of peoples' lives and while things
in a museum do have a life of sorts, putting something in a museum does
something to it that is not entirely acceptable, so to speak, not entirely
satisfactory. So it might be something
where someone would say if I have no relatives to give it to and I don't want
to throw it out I could give it to a museum·. So it may be that keeping an object out of a museum is actually
the greatest triumph.
[At this point NM asks BKG
about Bibliography, followed by BKG showing NM three
of
her father's paintings which is included on this site in a separate audio/visual
presentation under Professor Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Talks About The Objects That Tell A Story Of Her
Family.]
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Bann, Stephan The
Clothing of Clio: A Study of the Representation of History·(
Basso, Keith H and Henry A. Selby, editors Meaning In Anthropology, (U. of New Mexico Press, 1976)
Bauman, Richard Verbal Art As Perfomance, (Newbury House Publishers, 1978); Story, Performance, and Event, (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
Braunstein, Susan L. and Jenna Weissman Joselit, eds Getting Comfortable In New
York: The American Jewish Home (
Emoff, Ron and David Henderson, editors Mementos,
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Gall, Lothar The Deutche Bank, 1870-1995 (
Impey,O.R.
and MacGregor, Arthur The Origins of Museums (
Jenkins, Keith, Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (Routledge, 1999)
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara "Objects of Ethnography" from Ivan Kamp and Steven Levine, Exhibiting Culture (Smithsonian, 1991)
Maclean, Marie Narrative As Performance: The Baudelairean Experiment (Routledge, New York, 1988)
Millan-Peulles, Antonio The Theory of The Pure Object (Heidelberg Press, 1996)
Mosse, George L.German Jews Beyond Judaism (
Mosse,
Werner Eugen Jews In
The German Economy: The German-Jewish Elite 1820-1935
(
Mumby, Dennis Narrative and Social Control: Critical Perspectives (Sage annual Reviews of Communication Research; v. 21 1993)
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Peter G. Jews and the German State (
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of Emancipation
(
Stewart, Susan On Longing: Narratives of The Miniature, The
Gigantic,
The
Souvenir, The Collection (
Stocking, George W. Objects and Others: Essays on Museums
and Material Culture
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)
Van Dalen, Anton The Memory
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West, Patricia Domesticating History: The Polical Orignis of America's House Museums (Smithsonian Institution Press c1999)
Nina is a Masters Degree Student in the department
of Performance Studies at