Studies in Theatre and Performance

ISSN: 1468-2761 (Print) 2040-0616 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rstp20

Rethinking practice as research and the cognitive

turn
Robin Nelson
To cite this article: Robin Nelson (2016) Rethinking practice as research and the cognitive turn,
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 36:2, 202-204, DOI: 10.1080/14682761.2016.1162444
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2016.1162444

Published online: 30 Mar 2016.

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Date: 28 September 2016, At: 01:01

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Book ReviewS

of gay-rights, straight-faced, face-to-face put-ons as he exited through the audience (10811).

Pairiso argues that drag and camp attempted to maintain a self-conscious distance from the
images on which they drew (113). But the GAA alternation of gay stereotyping and masquerading as straight citizens could function without that Brechtian technique, making late 1960s
radical theatrical put-ons open to widely diverse participants. Hence, full ego investment and
immaculate liberation were both crucial to making put-ons democratically accessible.
Pearisos Chapter 3 case study of Eldridge Cleaver is a litmus test of radically extreme put-on acts
that could make performers both heroic renegades and vicious revolutionaries. It focuses on examining his political persona (115), especially for its critical and self-conscious engagement with masculinity (120). Enter the 1966-founded BPP for Self-Defence of Oakland, California, which in 1967
was recruited to protect the widow of Malcolm X whom Cleaver was to interview at a memorial
rally in San Franscisco. The Party was invited, Peariso notes, on account of its Panther Patrols. These
tracked patrolling police cars, then, when vehicles/pedestrians were stopped, the panthers emerged
carrying loaded pistols and shotguns, observing from a distance (126). The affront was legal, popular
with black communities, a dark put-on extraordinary for its dangerous audacity. Peariso suggests that
Cleavers self-contradictory thorniness [in] his political career (162) could ensue in his persona as a
performance; thus indicating a historical emergence of new, more self-conscious and aesthetically
complex forms of political resistance in the 1960s (163).
Lacking any really clear-cut Cleaver evidence of performative achievement on that count, my jury
is still out on the case. However, there is little doubt Peariso has successfully shown that awkward
decade was up for it in many compelling ways. His ample Afterword makes helpfully brittle thirdmillennium comparisons between Americas leading media jokers the Yes Men and Occupy Wall
Street/Occupys experiments in forging actually existent anarcho-democratic revolutionary action.
It also launches a sophisticatedly argued call for newly creating politico-aesthetic styles of antirepresentational performance. Which might finally break radical theatrics away from the ancient
constraint of amphitheatres so all power to his ambitions in putting the world properly bent.
Baz Kershaw
University of Warwick
Baz.Kershaw@warwick.ac.uk
2016 Baz Kershaw
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2016.1152799

Rethinking practice as research and the cognitive turn, by Shaun May, London,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 84 pp., 45 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-13752-272-6
In the course of a PhD viva two decades back, the candidate, under discursive scrutiny of her
conceptual influences, sighed heavily saying, nobody told me when I embarked on a thesis in
Theatre Studies that Id need also to undertake a degree in Philosophy. In the years since, the
interrelation between Philosophy and Theatre and Performance Studies has been more positively
engaged, but philosophical perspectives are perhaps still more often drawn upon than fully
explored. It is in this context that Shaun Mays analytic philosophers perspective on Practice as
Research (PaR) and the Cognitive Turn proves useful. New circumstances pose challenges to
monocultures to the point where the very bases of disciplinary knowledge are called in question
and it is timely to revisit some fundamentals of clear thought.

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Whilst interdisciplinary approaches have proved broadly fruitful, crossovers can have unfortunate consequences. When research grounded in one disciplinary field draws only partially
upon another, there is a danger of terminological misunderstandings, conceptual misapplication
and, at worst, error and confusion. May acknowledges that different publications serve different
purposes and there is not always scope, even in extensive studies, for full exploration of core
principles. With this situation clearly in view, May helpfully reviews research and literature in two
relatively recent and related aspects: arts research at the Cognitive Turn, notably neuroscientific
approaches, and PaR. His aim, following Wittgenstein, is to untangle conceptual knots (2) and
to set these sub-disciplines on even more solid foundations.
Though the book addresses logical error in the tradition of analytic Philosophy, it is specialist
only in this sense and is accessible to anybody interested in sound argument and research. Indeed,
Mays ultimate objective is to encourage further work in Performance-Neuroscience inquiries
as well as PaR and, at the end of the book, he points some interesting ways forward. His critique
by way of conceptual clarification is aimed positively at avoiding the construction of elaborate
edifices on shaky foundations. In dealing discretely with problems of, first, the Cognitive Turn
and, secondly PaR, May helpfully keeps the reader posted in respect of the direction of travel,
indicating how arguments made in one section might relate to, or be illuminated by, those
in another. The relation between mind and body and various modes of knowing are guiding
threads throughout, along with a disposition to avoid the logically inappropriate mistaking of
one thing for another.
With regard to the Cognitive Turn, May reviews Poppers seminal concepts of falsifiability
and demarcation. He proceeds to critique more recent work in performance-neurological studies
and Bruce McConachies suggestion that falsifiable theories should form the foundation for a new
paradigm in performance studies (20). Drawing on established positions in analytic Philosophy,
May addresses three fallacies: conflating correlation with causation; confusing necessary and
sufficient conditions; and the homunculus, or mereological, fallacy (22). He cites a number of
instances in published works where one, or more, of these fallacies is evident, not with a view
to scoring cheap points from the lofty heights of philosophical critique but with a collegial
commitment to the proper development of a sub-discipline by way of sound research. One of
his concerns is a danger that wrapping an obvious truism in neurological specificity makes it
seem like much more is being asserted or explained than actually is (26).
In respect of PaR, May critiques intellectualism (the notion that only know that self-conscious knowledge articulable in propositional discourse is valid). Drawing on Ryle and
Wittgenstein, he advocates know how as a distinct category of procedural knowledge manifested
in the intelligent use of a skill. It is in the painstaking unpicking of arguments and explication
of positions, an activity sometimes overlooked in the cited literature, that May achieves his
aims. In respect of my own understanding of PaR, for example, Mays implicit connection of
the need in complementary writing for thick description with Wittgensteins bedrock notion
of This is simply what I do (56) is clarifying. Similarly, the concept of epistemic action and its
distinction from pragmatic action (59) and Mays unpacking of them in relation to PaR (60)
illuminates something I have been teasing at for years but had not fully grasped. Furthermore,
I had not realised that I was hovering between a strong and a weak anti-intellectualist position
and though, like May, I remain somewhat undecided, I am now clearer about the issues. May
concludes that theres a good reason to distrust both reduction of know-how to know-that and
reduction of know-that to know-how (74) and consequently I now better understand why I
speak of them as being in dialogical inter-engagement, resonating with each other. May also
helpfully clarifies when PaR is research and when it is not, and the function of complementary
writing in academic contexts (63).
But, above all, this book is useful in its weft of arguments affirming a variety of modes of
knowing and the need to apply appropriate criteria to each. Whilst a scientific methodology

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Book ReviewS

and Poppers falsifiability might be apt in empirical research contexts, there can be no privileged
discourse or methodology for research in todays sceptical and interdisciplinary environment.
Rather than asserting a singular truth language, the process of extended knowing is better served
by keeping different modes and methodologies in play and respecting how each might contribute.
May reiterates that the key criterion for sound research is rigour but convincingly argues that,
given a range of language games, it is inappropriate a category mistake to attempt to apply
falsifiability to PaR as much as to metaphysics (41). Having demonstrated that doing-thinking
is as valid as abstract propositional discourse, he concludes, following Wittgenstein, that the
bedrock of our knowledge is our practices (68). I am now more convinced not only that, but
how, this is the case.
Robin Nelson
Manchester Metropolitan University
r.a.nelson@mmu.ac.uk
2016 Robin Nelson
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2016.1162444

The only way home is through the show: performance work of Lois Weaver,
edited by Jen Harvie and Lois Weaver, London, Bristol, Live Art Development Agency,
Intellect, 2015, 320 pp., 24.50 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-78320-534-9
This is a beautifully composed, feminist, politically inspiring and insightful volume that traces
the career, work, influence and impact of Lois Weaver and, as co-editor Jen Harvie points out,
her collaborators (14). Indeed, the collection is dedicated to collaboration, while the spirit and
shape of the book itself is highly collaborative as Weaver and Harvie bring together practitioners,
critics and academics who all have their own first-hand testimonials and reflections to offer. It
is lavishly and purposefully illustrated; as the visual editor (14) working with designer, David
Caines, Lois has put together documentation that includes personal, behind-the-scenes photographs and production images. In addition to the contributors short pieces and commentaries,
the study also contains fragments of texts from the numerous works Lois has created, whether as
a solo artist or in collaboration. These include lyrics to songs performed by her alter ego, country
singer turned lesbian performance artist, Tammy; extracts from the Split Britches repertoire;
and a version of her Diary of a Domestic Terrorist. An illuminating foreword by career-long
collaborator Peggy Shaw introduces the idea that gave the study its title: the passionate dedication
and commitment to performing, and the pre-show moment of nervous knowing you have to
go on before you can go home (7).
The organising principle of the book is not chronology (although details about Loiss early
years and her age-related piece, Still Counting, that recounts and calculates her life from year
1 to 65, do bookend the study, respectively). Instead, the six main sections raise and focus on
key questions or matters that underpin the evolution of Loiss multi-faceted practice as a lesbian, femme, feminist artist, teacher and activist: How do you start?; What does it mean to be
femme?; Oh, for the love of work!; How do you make things work?; Why Tammy? Why not?;
and What would you hang on your line? To amplify, the reflections clustered under each of
these detail: biographical background and beginning years of Loiss career; her femme-feminist
performances; working methods; her years at WOW coupled with alternative modes of hosting
public conversations; her alter-ego Tammy; and some of her less well-known performance and
activist work (12). As Harvie acknowledges in the introduction, given this structure, resonances