I must confess from the
outset that I know very little about the Prague School, so my comments will be
limited to my impression of Ken’s article supplemented by references from the
Johns Hopkins online encyclopedia of literary criticism. That said, the aspect of Prague School
structuralism that interests me most is the historical specificity of its aims
and goals, particularly as Ken is employing it in his work. I am struck by the mathematical quality of
the formulae that Ken uses; they suggest a desire to draw precise
distinctions—even if only for the purpose of formal analysis—between actor,
stage figure, character, and spectator.
I would be very interested by an attempt to situate this desire for such
precision in a historical context; has this desire manifested itself in
previous forms of criticism? If so, why
and to what ends? If not, why did it
make an appearance at this particular historical juncture, and how is this
critical model related to concurrent developments in theatrical
production?
In order to put this desire for precise distinctions in something of a
historical context, I am going to defer—briefly, I promise—to a text with which
I am much more familiar: Denis Diderot’s Paradox
of the Actor. Written in 1773, this
text simultaneously displays crucial resonances and dissonances with the desire
for distinction that I derive from Ken’s use of Prague School
structuralism. Just as Ken’s formulae
draw a sharp line between actor and character, so does Diderot in his
text. Diderot argues against the
reliance on sensibility in acting—actors, in other words, should avoid trying
to feel the same emotions felt by their characters; they should remain aloof
from the figures that they represent and maintain cool heads even as their
characters rant and rave upon the stage.
Yet Ken’s formulae likewise draw a sharp line between the stage figure
created by the actor and the character perceived by the spectator; Diderot,
however, does not seem to dwell upon this dividing line. In fact, for Diderot one measure of
successful acting seems to be a confluence between the two terms that the
formulae labor to keep separate.
Diderot describes characters—especially tragic characters—as ideal types
that actors do not so much create as they seem to pull from the ether, from the
sphere of artistic or eternal truths.
Describing the preparation of the famous Parisian actress Clarion,
Diderot maintains that “doubtless she has imagined a type, and to conform to
this type has been her first thought; doubtless she has chosen for her purpose
the highest, the greatest, the most perfect type her imagination could
compass.” Later he describes Clarion in
performance by claiming that “as it
will happen in dreams, her head touches the clouds, her hands stretch to
grasp the horizon on both sides; she is the informing soul of a huge figure,
which is her outward casing, and in which her efforts have enclosed her”
(16). In perceiving the sublime
creation of the actor, the spectator seems to share access to this ideal type;
the spectator, in other words, does not produce a complementary character based
on the stage figure produced by the actor—rather, both actor and spectator
enjoy something of a shared experience, inasmuch as they share an experience of
an ideal truth.
To be sure, Diderot on the one hand and the Prague School formulae on
the other are involved in the pursuit of different aims; Diderot is trying to
describe the qualities of excellent acting, while the formulae attempt to
establish the social relation between actor, spectator, and stage
production. Yet I am most drawn to
exploring these different pursuits and placing them in their respective
historical contexts—Diderot, for instance, still holds faith in the existence
of ideal truths and rules of art; this faith seems lost in in the Prague School
approach, which views such truths and rules as contested terms continually
constituted and reconstituted within social relations. Such a view, of course, is quite
characteristic of its era. In fact, my
brief online exploration of the Prague School suggested not only that the
School held this view, but also that its characteristic view was beset by some
very characteristic tensions. My Johns
Hopkins encyclopedia entry listed both “functionalism” and “empiricism” as
features of Prague School structuralism.
The first feature attends to the meaning-generating function of signs
within a given social context; the second feature insists this function is comprehensible
through scientific analysis of signs themselves. Yet I detect a tension—prevalent in much structuralist criticism
and at times addressed by post-structuralism—between these features. The detached analysis that is demanded by
empiricism entails a suspension, at least temporarily, of attention to the
social context of the analysis itself that is demanded by functionalism. The principle of detachment, in other words,
is in tension with the insistence that all signs are embedded within a social
matrix marked by individual interests.
This tension seems typical of many Modern era critical methods, and I
see that Ken attends to this tension in the final pages of his text. Ken employs a number of structuralist
formulae within which actors produce stage figures and spectators produce complementary
characters for the stage figures; the labors of actors and spectators are
marked by directional arrows that link actor to stage figure and spectator to
character. Here is an example used by
Ken on page 4 of his text:
AE1>>FE1>>CE1<<S
In this example, an actor of a given ethnicity (AE1) creates
a stage figure of the same ethnicity (FE) while a spectator (S)
creates a complementary character of the same ethnicity (CE1). In each case, the arrows indicate a specific
relation of producer to product. Yet at
the end of his text Ken argues that the “products” exert a productive relation
on the “producers” themselves.
Referring to stage figures and characters as transformative aspects of
our social environment, Ken writes that “we are perennially wrought and
reshaped by our environment at the same time that we experience moments of
identity arrest in which we solidify boundaries in anticipation of an encounter
with an other. The process of
engagement perforates these boundaries, and we emerge transformed” (14). A tension again emerges between the
unidirectional arrows in the formulae and the multidirectional influences that
link individual and environment to one another. Is this not much like the tension between the “empiricism” and
the “functionalism” of the Prague School?
While the arrows suggest an abstract detachment of individual from
environment, Ken alludes to the inevitable embeddedness of the individual
within the environment. I look forward
to discussing Ken’s use of Prague School structuralism in more detail—hopefully
in reference to discrete performance events that will benefit from his
thoughtful analysis.
Cerniglia, Ken. Becoming
American: Ethnicity in Popular Theatre, 1849 – 1924. Unpublished (?) manuscript.
Diderot, Denis. The Paradox
of Acting. Trans. Walter Herries
Pollock. New York: Hill and Wang,
1957.