WSCA Conference

So I realized I had never really been to an academic conference before this weekend. I had been to the mini Black History Month Conference and the Peace Prize forum at Luther, I went to the Big Gay Conference two years in a row-but it was mostly just party-time and anger inducing. But this weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Western States Communication Association Conference. It was great because most everyone is from the West and thus and the conference itself was in Colorado only an hour away from where I live.

I was able to see some really great presentations on research being done in the field of communication studies (and some not so good too.) Most of the panels, paper presentations I attended were on my favorite aspect of communications: Performance Studies and many of them also focused on the "new queer studies" or the second generation of queer studies which does a lot more with multiple and overlapping productions of identities instead of mainly focusing on sexual orientation and gender presentation. Much of the work I saw was by graduate students many in my own department doing really interesting and progressive work interrogating "others" through interrogating the self. Mostly this gave me some hope for having a career in academia and being able to do good work even as a graduate student.

But what was most helpful were seeing the responses to papers delivered by grad students and professors alike (which happened to be administered by my performance studies professon Dr. Calafell.) Some major themes I saw specifically in regards to performance studies s being accountable to others and to the discipline of performance itself. The most heavily critiqued individuals were those who did not use performance studies scholars in their citations on papers about performance studies. In my mind this is a total disregard for the people that came before who have put their hearts, minds, and souls (through writing, performance etc...)on the line and it is somewhat disrespectful to not include their work.

It calls to mind Bowman's piece on "Killing Dillinger: Mystory" where he critiques those people who may dabble in performance studies but will not take into account the history, the repercussions and more generally what is at stake for performance scholars who engage in the kind of work that uses the self as a site of interrogation. He in fact critiques people who dabble in performance saying they won't even stick around long enough to find out the future of the discipline because they do not have the kind of investment in the work as do those who are strongly committed to the work.

There was also critique about what actually constitutes performance studies work which, is I believe related to the aforementioned point. As Ellis and Bochner say, "Not everyone can do autoethnography let alone do it well," nor ca everyone do performance studies and performative writing/ethnography. Not that I don't think people should not try-they just need to be honest about their work and credit those who came before-including performance scholars, feminists of color, feminists, and queer theorists. It is not performance studies to simply use the "I" first person in the paper-or to incorporate parts of the self into one's paper that is solely based on the work of rhetoric scholars. This lacks the reflexivity that performance studies so eagerly wants to engage with.

Performance is so much more than that. First as I see it, it takes a deep level of commitment to the discipline. This involves several things but one of them means facing rejection, facing the fact that other parts of the larger discipline are going to think performance is a joke and that looking at the self has no credibility. But if one is committed they see the value that this kind of work can do-seeing that it has the potential to not only change the academy but more largely implicates the world to change also. Two it means knowing and crediting those who came before, risked before and have been vulnerable before. I believe this means having a good historical basis for understanding the discipline-understanding how performance originated and paying homage not only lip service to those who have grappled with these issues before. Third it means a deep commitment to the other (Madison, Alcoff). This means being committed to fairly representing the other through our work including intimate others (Ellis) who we are deeply connected to. This means holding ourselves accountable and rising our own integrity in the ways we write about others and take up issues about representing the other in our work. This means not making fun of people even if we disagree with the way in which they handle themselves in certain situations. Performance scholarship should never be used to get back at someone, instead it should be used as a tool to open up dialog. This moves me to my fourth observation about performance. It should always be opening up possibilities for dialog not shutting them down. In this way performance is especially useful as a pedagogical tool. While dealing with controversial subjects performance should seek to hear fro multiple and variant positions and never silence anyone. In this way in my brain I see that performance is directly connected with feminist and queer epistemologies which, desire to uncover marginalized voices while being committed to an invitational dialogic perspective for engaging in conversations about controversies. My fifth observation is that by investing in the other we put ourselves at stake. This means we risk the self, making the self open and vulnerable for people to see and at times criticize. By implicating ourselves we show our commitment to risk for both ourselves and others. In sharing our own personal experiences we invite others to share of themselves and thus, we become vulnerable to one another thus, implicating ourselves in the work making us accountable.

It was good to see the critiques of people's work because it shows that other more advanced scholars want to help those of us who are new to the discipline. They want us to succeed and do things well-they want us to open ourselves up and make us think harder more critically, to stretch ourselves. And they do this while being generally supportive and showing an ethic of care, which is greatly appreciated.