Interrogating Cultural Representation

COMMENTS ON PROCESS Interrogating Cultural Representation Patricia R. Schroeder The panel, "Interrogating Cultural Representation," was designed to make us question the notion of cultural pluralism, to see it as a loaded term. Interpreted generously, the term suggests a well-intentioned attempt to be inclusive in our theatre practices. Interpreted less generously, it simply means maintaining the hegemony of the status quo. While the three panelists each offered a unique response to the complex issues of pluralism, difference, and representation, their presentations all challenged the notion of inclusion and attempted to redefine community as dialogic or performative rather than identity-based. The first speaker, Judith Stephens, began by describing what she sees as valuable in the work of the Women and Theatre Program. Among the organization's strengths, she noted the strong core of regular members who have attended the annual conference for over a decade, our aggressive outreach to graduate students, and our commitment to creating "a space for lesbian sensibilities." Where the organization has failed, according to Stephens, is that we are "overwhelmingly white." We regularly invite speakers and performers of color from whom we feel we can learn, without really examining what we have to offer in return. Furthermore, Stephens noted, we rarely move beyond discussing "the presence of absence" to actually doing something about it. Stephens also pointed out that in alternate years, the Black Theatre Network Conference overlaps with our own, so many African American theatre practitioners are gathered in another city while we meet at ATHE. In a plea for action, Stephens urged us as an organization to bring this very literal problem of location to ATHE's immediate attention. Several days later, at our WTP business meeting, we drafted a letter to ATHE requesting that they avoid overlapping with the BTN Conference when planning future ATHE Conferences, a motion that was approved in principle at the ATHE Forum meeting on August 5. The second speaker, Miranda Joseph, expanded the way "cultural pluralism " has been constructed to enrich what she identified as the dominant "us" without offering the newly included "others" any real access to power or resources. 81 82 Patricia R. Schroeder She began her presentation by noting that multiculturalism and cultural pluralism are most often strategies for preserving a centrist position in the community . From this starting point, Joseph went on to explore different notions of what constitutes "community" and who benefits from defining and preserving community interests. Her survey included assimilationist, capitalist, Marxist, and feminist definitions of community, in all of which she sees the related dangers of colonization of others, suppression of individual differences, and preservation of naturalized power structures. Whether community membership is mandated by the political right as "unreflective participation in traditional hierarchical relations " or valorized by the political left as "unity and identity," Joseph argued that our understanding of community needs rehabilitation. Based on her ethnographic studies of gay and lesbian theatre practitioners in San Francisco and on the theoretical work of Judith Butler, Joseph redefined community as "those people who participate in common activities," position a definition of community based on shared activity rather than on stable identity or sameness. For the gay and lesbian members of Theatre Rhinoceros , Joseph explained, "you have to go to the parade, donate money or time to organizations, make or at least consume gay cultural products like newspapers and theatre performances." In Joseph's view, this performative definition of community can help us defy the dominant discourses of pluralism, illustrate the inadequacy of tokenism, and refute claims for uniform needs and perspectives currently made in the name of "community standards." The third and final speaker, Susan Carlson, described her presentation, entitled "What Difference(s) Do/Can We Make?," as an assessment of the differences among us (with "us" narrowly defined as the members of the Women and Theatre Program present in the room) and the ways we can use our power to effect academic and social change. Carlson began by defining "us" as a community committed to thinking about women in theatre; she then problematized this definition by noting the many differences among us, differences sharply articulated by the texts we all read in preparation for the conference. How, Carlson asked...