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The Performance of Political Correctness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2011

JANELLE REINELT
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Abstract

This article is about the power of cultural performances to shape and sometimes coerce public opinion and public behaviours. In the process, I intend to defend a concept which has few supporters these days: ‘political correctness’. So prevalent is this concept in our public discourse that its meanings have become habitual, thus ideologically invisible. Beginning with an examination of the term and its history, I situate it in relation to the arts through its relation to censorship, and frame it within the broad field of cultural performances to which it belongs. Concluding with a specific case study taken from theatre, I hope to perform a ‘correction’ of sorts – to reintroduce the term as a positive value and practice in an artistic milieu which has largely rejected its utility.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 134 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2011

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References

NOTES

1 Reinelt, Janelle, ‘The Limits of Censorship’, Theatre Research International, 32, 1 (2007), pp. 3–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 In 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoon figures, mostly of the prophet Muhammad, which triggered an international storm concerning the images. The original publication was part of a discussion of criticism of Islam and self-censorship in the Danish press arising after the murder of film director Theo van Gough in Amsterdam. Muslim groups filed a complaint against the paper for publishing the cartoons under the Danish criminal code statutes against discrimination and blasphemy (prohibiting ridicule or insult of any recognized religion). This complaint was, however, dismissed by the Danish public prosecutor. The worldwide repercussions of these events are well known.

3 ‘Thresholds of Tolerance: Censorship, Artistic Feedom and the Theatical Public Sphere’ was first presented together with the first version of this essay at the Intenational Federation for Theatre Research conference in Lisbon, 2009. Permission to cite courtesy of Chris Balme.

4 Butler, Judith, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 132Google Scholar.

5 Both as of 10 January 2011.

6 Feldstein, Richard, A Response from the Cultural Left (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 7Google Scholar.

7 See Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical Democractic Politics (London: Verso, 1985)Google Scholar; and Žižek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989)Google Scholar.

8 Schechner, Richard, ‘Performance Studies: The Broad Spectrum Approach’, in Bial, Henry, ed., The Performance Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 7–10Google Scholar, here p. 7.

9 Carlson, Marvin, Performance: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 212Google Scholar.

10 Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 28Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 28

12 ‘Excess Hair – You're Not the Only One!’, Spare Rib (November 1983), pp. 32–3.

13 Theresa Brennan, ‘Forward’, in Feldstein, A Response from the Cultural Left, pp. viii–xi, here p. ix.

14 28 October 1990, www.nytimes.com/1990/10/28/weekinreview/ideas-trends-the-rising-hegemony-of-the-politically-correct.html; William A. Henry III et al., 1 April 1991, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972652,00.html, accessed 16 January 2011.

15 See Casper, President Gerhard, ‘Statement to the Faculty Senate, Stanford U, 1995’. See www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/950309corry.html, accessed 6 June 2009.

16 R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._V._v._City_of_St._Paul, accessed 6 June 2009.

17 See www.helium.com/items/734107-political-correctness-is-communism-in-disguise; www.politicallyincorrect.me.uk/; http://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html, accessed 18 January 2011.

18 For a discussion of this debate as an example of democratic struggle see my essay ‘Notes for a Radical Democratic Theater: Productive Crises and the Challenge of Indeterminacy’, in Colleran, Jeanne and Spencer, Jenny S., eds., Staging Resistance: Essays on Political Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 283–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Olga Craig, ‘Felicity Kendall: My Good Life’, Daily Telegraph, 2 May 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/5262867/Felicity-Kendal-My-good-life.html, accessed 17 October 2010.

20 Alfred Hickling, review of Night Collar, Guardian, 9 January 2009, www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jan/09/night-collar-review-liverpool, accessed 17 October 2010.

21 Paul Chapman, ‘Fur Flies over Racist Name of Dambuster's Dog’, Daily Telegraph, 6 May 2009. See www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/5281875/Fur-flies-over-racist-name-of-Dambusters-dog.html, accessed 17 October 2010.

22 For example, Santiago Sierra's staging of ‘Workers Facing a Wall’ (2002) or Vanessa Beecroft's exhibition of African legal and illegal immigrants in a piece called ‘Last Supper’. They wore suits and ate chicken with their fingers (2009).

23 Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October, 110 (Fall 2004), pp. 65–6.

24 Rabina Kahn, ‘Why I've Withdrawn from National Debate’, letter to the Guardian, 5 March 2009, www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/mar/05/rabina-khan-national-theatre, accessed 17 October 2010.

25 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, ‘Laughing at England People Very Nice Left Me with a Nasty Taste in My Mouth’, Independent, 5 March 2009, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/yasmin-alibhaibrown-laughing-at-england-people-very-nice-left-me-with-a-nasty-taste-in-my-mouth-1637583.html, accessed 17 October 2010.

26 Ravenhill, one of the original ‘in-yer-facers’, wrote Shopping and Fucking (1996), and has not pulled back from controversial material, which has included Mother Clapp's Molly House (2000), and the solo piece The Experiment (2009), which he performed himself at the Soho Theatre.

27 I assume that the term means people who live in Hampstead, an affluent London area of the borough of Camden, who are pro-Palestinian, and is an ironic reference to the ‘chattering classes’ of intellectual and artistic residents who are perceived to be far left in their views.

28 Bull, John, ‘England People Very Nice: Intercultural Confusions at the National Theatre, London’, in Huber, Werner, Rubik, Margarete and Novak, Julia, eds., Contemporary Drama in English, Vol. 17: Staging Interculturality (Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2010), pp. 123–44Google Scholar.