Human (and Posthuman?) Dancing: An Assemblage

Posthuman Dancing?

I have seen and joined in with many a human dancing. I have yet to enjoy an excuse-me with a posthuman but that time still might come if I last a few more years. Would it be a pleasant experience? Would I know a posthuman if I saw one? How would I ask a posthuman to dance with me? Would I meet the standard required. I’m no superman. Flawed actually. Often repaired and amended. Not very mobile without a stick (short distances and brief moments) or rollator (around the floor just a few times). Would I qualify as a dancing body with either stick or rollator? And what story would my inadequate un-dancer’s body tell? And who would even want to hear or see it? Especially after the first stumbles and trips. Guess that posthuman dancer would be perfect though. And charming? And considerate? Even compassionate?

An Assemblage

Here is a human assemblage of fragments woven with threads from texts where dance has been used to show bodies as agents of knowing and meaning-making through movement and story. The tales told become useful autoethnographies when they progress from simple evocations of personal re-creation toward interlacing mystories and theory. Such tales are valuable when they help us critique the problems that we humans face. I have assembled these pieces as if they were a set of seven-line poems although I will settle for their being regarded as poem-like. They are assemblies or makings of cobbled bits. I prefer to call them I-stories or mystories but I fear the assemblage will be read as banal or simplistic. I hope that it is not totally incomprehensible for that would be a betrayal of writing.

Autoethnography or Mystory?

Autoethnographies and mystories are, inevitably, calls for a reading or a hearing. Dance-stories are, likewise, demands for attention to a performance of bodies. These various ways of storying all contribute to the ongoing conversation about who we all are and about learning from our successes and failures. These stories are often, too, call for justice or for more equality in our social lives or for more freedom (see Butler, 2015; Jones, 2019). Autoethnographers, mystorians, dancers, and other artists try (like all essayists or trialists) to understand us humans in our complexity. As such we triers, we trying adventurers (see Badley, 2015), concern ourselves with both ethics and advocacy, with critiquing social discourse, processes and institutions especially when they are seen as inequitable and oppressive (see Jones, 2019).

However, autoethnography is one of those multisyllabic mouthfuls (nominalizations!) so beloved of academic writers. I’m trying to give them up. But they are addictive. Mystories or I-stories or We-stories sound a little more human and a little less abstract and over-theoretical. Mystories combine the personal with the more public experiences of, say, academic life. They are less conventional than our usual academic texts and more like assemblages or bricolages or montages or patchwork texts. They may even be defined as juxtaposed fragments from other places and other times (see Ulmer, 1989). Mystories are experimental ways of encouraging self-reflective practice, of stimulating students and teachers into creative ways of inquiring into their personal and academic experiences (see, for example, Troutman, 2011).

However, mystories are controversial. One criticism is that most academics are not that interesting or mysterious. A mystory is regarded by some social scientists as intellectually pernicious, as mere introspection rather than as the outcome of rigorous and systematic data collection, an abuse of the privilege of being an academic. Academics are not paid “generous salaries” [sic] to sit around focusing on and obsessing about themselves (see Badley, 2014; Delamont, 2007). I’ll stick with mystory for now and risk being dangerously pernicious.

Dancing Bodies and the Stories They Tell

This subtitle comes from Albright (1997) who demonstrates that dancers use their bodies as sources of cultural identity, as physical and intelligent presences that move with and through gendered, racial, and social meanings. Dancing bodies are therefore not just figures or metaphors but are active my- or we-story-tellers and meaning-makers. I don’t think my reading of Spry (2001) is too fanciful a reading of Albright. My reconstruction is that they both regard dance and performance and writing and ethnography as important ways of helping us critique the problems of our human selves and human societies and human institutions (such as colleges and universities).

This first mystory is a felt-text

The dancer steps out from behind the curtain

Exposing the managerialist at the controls of academic-Oz

Using her profane dancing to tell her story

Which challenges all master narratives

Her being expert in the theatre of gender

Privileging her body as maker of knowing and meaning

(adapted from Spry, 2001)

A Human Dance Begins

A different I-story-teller introduces her own human dancing fiction. I listen and take a few notes for my assemblage. She admits, first, that she makes her stuff up but soon convinces herself that her voice, the voice of a dancer, has authority deriving from her hard body made limber and supple and ready to go. She visits classes in elementary schools and colleges spreading “Dance’s holy word” as her head fills with her own “yack.” She answers fearful, forbidding, questions about art and her “whorish dances”—“the thrusted hip, the sudden bump and grind before an attitude” (see Moore, 1998, pp. 47-48).

She stays with an old friend who teaches anthropology at a local college. He has confessed that out of friendship for her he had always exaggerated his interest in dance: “I didn’t get it . . . I kept trying to figure out the story.” His son, Eugene, is seven and has cystic fibrosis; his life a race with medical research. He says “It’s not that I’m not for the arts . . . The arts are so nice and wonderful. But really: I say, let’s give all the money, every last fucking dime, to science.” Eugene has degenerated, too much liquid in his lungs. “Stickiness” he calls it. But now Eugene dashes toward her, slides forward, lands on the floor. He has painted his face orange hoping she’ll find it funny. She says “Eugene you look beautiful” but he says “No I don’t! I look witty . . . show me your dance video” (see Moore, 1998, pp. 49-51).

Dance begins when hurt combines with boredom

It’s the body’s reaching, bringing air to itself

It’s the heart’s triumph

The victory speech of the feet

The refinement of animal lunge and flight

The purest metaphor of tribe and self

It’s life flipping death the bird

(adapted from Moore, 1998)

Posthuman Dancing (1)

These posthumans think autoethnography is something like dancing

They doubt ethnography yet see it as precious and political

A vanguard, a nod to what lies beyond, to what is possible

Autoethnography is and remains the dance they make

The vital, ritual bringing of multiple bodies onto page and stage

Intimate and vulnerable, angry and strong, necessary and problematic

[Posthuman] flesh to [posthuman] flesh scholarship

(adapted from Gale & Wyatt, 2019)

Fractured Human Dancing

Metatarsals broken, no victory speech of the feet here

Knees arthritic, no animal lunge into flight

Hip dynamically screwed, angry—yes, lumber vertebrae fused, strong—no

Ribs and sternum cracked

A single body-with-organs, one donated, intimate and vulnerable

Fractured [human] bone and punctured [human] flesh

Weak [human] dancing in a post-scholarly frame

(Badley, 2018a)

Bearded Academics Dancing

A gently-mocking picture-card

Five antic bearded academics dancing

One bald and fat and just about moving on his sandaled feet

Two in blue with one arm raised signifying—nothing? or joy?

Another, an activist on the move

And a white-haired, white-bearded, be-suited old prof

Not dancing but lecturing to those trying to listen above the music of the dance

(based on Fawcett, n.d.)

Dance Brings Such Intense Joy

When you are young, dance is a sign of crossing the boundary

To try to get somewhere and dance more

Watching Astaire produces that sense of something elusive and miraculous

Dance brings such intense joy

But it’s hard to verbalize, a private pleasure

As you get older there’s a kind of humiliation in it

And you ask “Am I ridiculous?”

(adapted from Smith, 2016)

Madiba Dance

Hope overcoming hurt

An abused body reaching free air

A great human heart’s triumph

Having done bird on Robben Island

Released finally into freedom’s care

A victory story of self, tribe, country and for the world

An old boxer’s stance, a joyous, smiling dance

(based on The Guardian, 2018)

Dancing With Words

I am driven to write, compelled by a constant longing to choreograph

To bring together in patterns and configurations that move the spirit . . .

I seek the moment of ecstasy when I am dancing with words

That moment when I whirl with words

When I dance in the ecstatic circle of love surrounded by ideas

In a space of transgression there are no boundary limitations

I write to live

(adapted from hooks, 2000)

Posthuman Dancing (2)

Posthumans use dance to describe the doings of autoethnography

Because dance is about relating to others

About our (post-) human capacity to affect and be affected by others

In dance, touch is affective, gestural, political and promiscuous

And always more than human

Animating a politics of each event

And using (post-) human bodies to reach out to the world

(adapted from Gale & Wyatt, 2019)

A Robust Dance

Creating a personal and professional and political self

Expressing passion and spirit heretically

Beginning a robust dance of agency

Dis-(re-) covering body and voice

Writing and performing ethnography

Generating story from and with her body

Reintegrating body and mind into her scholarship

(adapted from Spry, 2001)

Apotheosis of the Human Dance: “This Is It!” ¹

Dance time, dance time! says Eugene

What music shall we dance to? Let’s play “This is it!”

I’m Mercury, I’m Neptune, now I’m Pluto so far away, says Eugene making up his own dance

We’re doing the planets in school

And which planet is most interesting? Earth, of course

This is it! This is it!

We make a phalanx and march, strut, slide to the music

We crouch, move backward, then burst forward again

We create the mildewy, resinous sweat smell of dance, the parsed, repeated movement

I think of the dancing body’s magnificent and ostentatious scorn

This is how we offer ourselves, enter heaven, enter speaking

We say with motion, in space, This is what life’s done so far down here

This is all and what and everything it’s managed—this body, these bodies, that body

So what do you think, Heaven? What do you fucking think?

Stand next to me I say and Eugene does

Looking up at me with his orange warrior’s face

We step in place

Knees up, knees down. Knees up, knees down

Dip-glide-slide. Dip-glide-slide

This is it! This is it!

Then we go wild and fling our limbs to the sky

(adapted from Moore, 1998)

“I Didn’t Get It . . . I Kept Trying to Figure Out the Story”

In the first mystory assembled here the dancer uses her “profane dancing” body to tell her story, to privilege her body as a maker of meaning. As readers or spectators we make our own meanings as we try to figure out, to interpret, what she is telling us. Indeed, each edition of a journal such as Qualitative Inquiry is in itself an “ensemble of stories we tell about ourselves” (see Inglis, 2003). We readers then decide which of these stories are good for us or bad for us. Our construction of readings is a form of pragmatic ethnography based on admittedly fuzzy concepts that can help us choose the stories we think may be useful in helping promote more freedom or equality or justice or democracy (see Badley, 2004). What matters is whether research, including these dance-stories, serves humanity, helps us progress as manifold creatures, helps us improve and re-form the world rather than crudely, summatively, judge it (see, for example, Gadd, 2018).

I think that most of the dance-stories in this assemblage are good for us as pragmatic humanists. They are, mainly, human dance-stories that celebrate not only joyous and free movement but also freedom of expression and openness. They are good for us because to appreciate and understand their benefits to us, individually and socially, we must have open minds and a desire to create more open, democratic, societies. When we figure out the stories that human dances tell us we come to realize that self-critical open-mindedness emphasizes the human commitment to continuous growth through learning. Such open-mindedness is not only a private good but also a precious collective one. Indeed many humanized humanists argue that supporting all freedoms of expression (including through the stories of dance), of thought, of discussion, and of writing are among our finest human achievements (see Badley, 2018b).

The human dance-stories in this ensemble emphasize a desire to expose injustices such as managerialism, master narratives, gender bias, and imprisonment. They show our human bodies reaching out to others and to the world, expressing our animal exuberance and strength, and shaping our individual and our tribal identities. They assert that even our maimed or broken or weakened bodies are still capable of framing our active minds, of helping to overcome pain and express intense joy as we dance with words, as we combine body and mind in scholarship. They are at times heretical, oppositional, profane, and scornful. But mostly they celebrate, ecstatically, passionately our life on this earthly planet and reject death as we “go wild and fling our limbs to the sky.”

Posthuman stories are not so exuberant. They fail to achieve the climactic of apotheosis in any sense of that term. Posthuman dancers “think” that autoethnography is “something like dancing.” They appear to claim similitude rather than equivalence. Yet they see their dance-like ethnography as precious and political because it “nods” to what is possible. “Nods” again is, initially, a weak commitment to human change and world improvement. Their dance-stories, however, do show an angry passion against injustice in their scholarship. The posthumanists promote dance as a (thick?) description of the doings of ethnography that can then affect (improve?) the lives of others and the condition of the world we, humans and posthumans, live in. Dance is “always more than human” because it “animates” our political lives. But what sense of “animates” is intended here? Is it giving “life” or “spirit” to something that is moribund (ordinary humans?) or is it a sense of movement as in filmed cartoons? Apparently, only posthuman dancers can use their posthuman bodies to reach out to the world (see Badley, 2018b, for a fuller critique of posthumanism).

The best human dance-stories are not hard to figure out. They celebrate the earth we inhabit and the lives we live. They don’t just tell us what they mean. They perform for us and show us their delight and intense joy. The sick boy Eugene and his dance partner cry out “This is it! This is it!” in their ecstasy. At their best, these dancers affirm what it means, and looks like, and feels like, to be alive human creatures. Posthuman dance-stories also convey anger and passion but are more difficult to figure out. They seem to display animation rather than human or animal joy. Human dance-stories are occasionally dangerous, risky texts (see Yoo, 2019). Posthuman stories do not quite dance with their words. Human dance-stories are more about art and bodies and feelings and human persons. Posthuman autoethnographies are less about human art and feeling as they claim to be “always more than human.” And some posthuman writers parade rather than dance their antihumanist stance (see Braidotti, 2013).

Human-made dance-stories have their own narrative grammar. Each dance requires a human agent (one or more dancers), who performs an action (the dance), to achieve a goal (an expression of happiness or joy or sadness or an explosion of anger at some injustice) in a specific setting (a home, a classroom, a hall, an outdoor arena) by the use of certain means (such as costumes, masks, make-up, and music). Dance-stories are not just metaphors. They are “metaphors writ large” which help us “cope with the untoward and the unexpected.” Also they become another form of life-writing and self-making in response to historical and personal circumstances (see Bruner, 2002, p. 35, and pp. 109-112, Note 1).

When the father of Eugene, the boy with cystic fibrosis, cries out “The arts are so nice and wonderful. But really: I say, let’s give all the money, every last fucking dime, to science” we could respond:

As individuals and societies we should support the arts and the sciences for we need both because of our manifold human and animal complexity. The neoliberal world is well aware of the crucial importance and (cash-)value of scientific and technological research. But we should also see actors, poets, storytellers, and dancers as makers who create themselves and help us, through their storying and meaning-making, to re-form who we are, to imagine a better world for all its manifold creatures. Our makers write (and dance) dangerously, risking their academic status, risking accusations of self-indulgence or of being pernicious. But what their mystories and autoethnographies can offer, what they provide which is good for us, is both a celebration of human life and “a call for justice” in hope of a better future (see Solnit, 2017). Furthermore, that “passionate engagement” with writing which risks being dismissed as not being “theoretical” enough or “intellectual” enough may help us reach that “moment of ecstasy” when we are “dancing with words” (see hooks, 2000, pp. 2-3).

Finally, we need to keep on trying to figure out the tales that dancers tell us. Their dance-stories should be seen as performance events, as part of public (and private) theater, as methods of investigation, and as embodied contributions to a wider critique of personal and social oppression and suffering. Dance-stories should be seen as mystories, I-stories, we-stories, and ethnodramas that can make social injustice palpable and visible. The best dance-stories will be good for us not only when they bear witness to official oppression but also when they help us create greater democratic solidarity, engender social hope, and help us change the neoliberal world (see, especially, Denzin, 2017). ²