The Politics of Protest and US Foreign Policy
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The Politics of Protest and US Foreign Policy

Performative Construction of the War on Terror

Cami Rowe

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The Politics of Protest and US Foreign Policy

Performative Construction of the War on Terror

Cami Rowe

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About This Book

This book offers a study of post-9/11 anti-war organizations in the United States and their role in domestic foreign policy debates.

The moment of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been much cited in political and cultural scholarship and much attention has been paid to the promotion of "War on Terror" policies. The social mechanisms behind the circumscription and regulation of national ideals attracted critical analyses from scholars across disciplines; yet the prevalence of scholarly concern with the negative political devices of the Bush Administration at times seemed to risk reproducing the hierarchies of power that underpinned the very issue of concern, and even the War on Terror itself.

By contrast, this book celebrates the political acts of individuals committed to changing the dominant politics of the Bush era. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with the leaders of prominent anti-war organizations including Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War, the book employs Performance Theory to evaluate the capacity of protest to effect lasting social change. In addition to highlighting an often overlooked aspect of foreign policy formation, this volume demonstrates that Performance Studies can be used as innovative approach to Politics and IR.

This book will be of much interest to students of US politics and foreign policy, theatre studies, cultural studies, and critical security and international relations.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2013
ISBN
9781136654251
1 Setting
It is perhaps an obvious choice to begin an analysis of performative political activism with the physical locations where they take place. Clearly though, spatial options are fundamental to the dramatic potential of productions. Decisions about where and when to stage a performance are a necessary antecedent to all other theatrical elements. The considerations are twofold: producers must decide not only where acts will physically take place in the present, but also contemplate what kinds of places will be represented. This chapter examines both issues, with the aim of teasing out the various ways that occupations of space impact public interpretations of anti-war actions.
Spatiality in politics and performance
I want to begin by surveying the landscape of spatiality more clearly, in the interest of articulating the range of socio-political issues that are informed by performative aspects of space. The ways that locations are filled, utilized and represented impact the way that the public thinks about and experiences them, both in the present moment and beyond. This is of course foundational to the doing of politics, as notions of participation and interaction flow out of the practical possibilities that spatial perceptions convey.
Perhaps most obviously, the arrangement of space dictates where we are located when we are looking, and how we relate to what we are looking at, or being looked at by. Theatrical performances throughout history have utilized a vast array of stage settings that shape audience experiences – whether viewers are surrounded by the action or watching it only from a single direction, how close they are located to a performance, and where that performance is taking place: all impact the perceptions audiences will have of the event.
Spaces are also regulated in regard to who and what might legitimately appear within them. We know from feminist theorizing that public and private spaces are traditionally distinct, and this affects who has access to the business of particular locales. However, these delineations can themselves provide rich opportunities for resistant performance. When Code Pink members wear pyjamas in the streets of the nation’s capital, or wear lingerie to politicians’ homes, they are blending conceptions of private spaces with public political environments. In the same way, soldiers may act as soldiers in spaces that are normally dominated by civilian behaviour, and therefore undermine the idea of a distinctly remote military sphere.
In the field of Performance Studies specifically, the treatment of space is a prerequisite to liminal performances. Victor Turner noted that rites of passage are frequently held in spaces that are specially demarcated as sites of potential transformation (Turner 1982). Forms of performance ranging from ritual to commercial entertainment all rely on this socially-instituted liminality, which may be produced by a small group of self-designated individuals or by the collective traditions of an entire culture. Liminal spaces are marked by particular traits that allow for this function as exceptional sites of possibility. There are restrictions, either codified or tacit, on who may enter these spaces, who is charged with maintaining and preparing them, what kind of behaviour is acceptable within them, and who has the authority to speak there (Schechner 2002, 58). These rules may be temporary or permanent, and often spaces are used in variant ways for multiple performative purposes.
Importantly, the inherent possibility of social transformation within liminal spaces does not imply inevitable change. Many performances operate in these in-between sites as a means of negotiating challenges in a way that reinforces or reproduces the status quo. For example, court rooms, political chambers, public squares and many mainstream theatrical performances function primarily in this manner. Yet these sites and others contain the potential for transgression, and the specificities of their varied usage can, in some instances, lead to social change.
The dominant uses of space in War on Terror discourses tended to unify meaning and foreclose potential alternate viewpoints. This is especially true of narratives where representations of place are a defining feature, as for example in stories related to the Twin Towers or Arlington National Cemetery. In these tales, the significance of the sites cannot escape the weighty political and historical issues normally associated with them. By contrast, many anti-war uses of space deliberately imply fluidity and flexibility. This occurs through unexpected juxtapositions of spatial representations – placing depictions of distant geographies or historical locations side by side – and through an emphasis on the changeability of geographic space. For the most part, anti-war actions do not indelibly fix meaning to a particular space, but rather temporarily appropriate, subversively corrupt or deliberately jumble the expected conventions of public spaces. Such uses performatively encourage critical contemplation by viewers. Meaning is produced not only by the alternative narrators, but secondarily through the response of audience members who are encouraged – or indeed compelled – to think in a more challenging and open-minded way as a result. Expectations of one use of space are contested, and this results in changes to audience outlooks that can encourage social transformation to a greater extent.
The actions described below exhibit specific techniques that maximize the potential for liminal spaces to effect social change in this manner. Because I am interested in the carnivalesque aspects of these performances, it is useful to briefly outline some fundamental concepts with regard to carnivalesque spaces. These are notions that have come to us by way of Bakhtin, and have been variously applied and enhanced by theatre scholars over the past several decades.
Theories of carnival take spatiality as a fundamental starting point to inducements of liminal potential. Bakhtin believed that aesthetic representations of the world, and what it contains, are directly related to evolving worldviews about human subjectivity and potential. In particular, time-space arrangements provide the backdrop against which carnivalesque inversions can take place. Bakhtin applied the term chronotope to describe the way that time and space become interrelated and dependent in narrative frameworks, with references to specific geographies giving rise to particular historical moral frameworks (Bakhtin 1981).
In regard to political actions, representations of time-space chronotopes function as devices that channel audience expectations, and are therefore a crucial aspect of performative political actions. Chronotopes impart a certain ideological predisposition to both producers and receptors. While at some points in history the nationalist narrative has relied on a chronotope couched in notions of empire building or geographic outreach, at other times it has focused inwards; at some points it may require a thematic adherence to notions of change and evolution, while at others it is rooted in fixed notions of good and evil based on dominating moral values.
This kind of regulation can be viewed through the lens of other more innocuous manifestations of chronotopic devices. For example, the Hollywood Western has become associated not only with a particular time period, but also with specific portrayals of character types, sceneries and methods of storytelling. The social expectations that accompany the viewing of Westerns restrict the acceptable storylines that can be readily conveyed through this genre. For audiences, the Western brings expectations about baddies and goodies, gunfights and male-dominated storylines. More importantly, a “happy ending” entailing the triumph of the hero and the victory of good over evil is inferred from the very beginning. While it is possible for screenwriters to go against this pattern, to do so results in a certain kind of discomfort for audiences when their anticipations are unexpectedly disrupted.
In political performances, chronotopes convey certain boundaries of socially appropriate behaviour and reception: people generally don’t choose to view a comedy if they don’t wish to laugh; likewise, political speeches won’t be endured without a preconceived willingness to be convinced or dissuaded of a particular ideological stance. At the very least, audiences view political discourse with an eye towards agreeing or disagreeing. Taking this idea further, it may be said that in the post-9/11 aftermath, the political stage was turned to primarily for comfort, political solidarity and nationalist reinforcement – embracing a dominant and exclusionary chronotope of its own and foreclosing to some extent the space for alternative political genre in the form of dissent or protest. In the paragraphs to follow I explore the ways that anti-war organizers attempt to alter dominant chronotopes in order to institute spaces of and for social change. I begin with decisions about the physical arrangement of performance sites, before tackling carnivalesque representations of place.
Arrangements of space
When selecting a site for protest actions, many choices face the producer: will the space be one already demarcated for political performance and observation, or will the action occur in unexpected places? Will the action be fixed within the particular spatial limits of a building or park, or will it move, as in a procession or march? Will the performance be repeated in several different spaces, or preserved as relevant to only one geographic location? Will strict boundaries be enforced between actors and audiences, or will there be interplay between them (both physically and actively)? Some spaces are chosen as a simple result of what is readily available or present. But whether consciously selected or not, the arrangement of performance space imparts distinct limitations and possibilities to the performative potential of political acts.
For most people, notions of performance immediately bring to mind images of stages, usually placed at the front of a room and facing an anonymous audience. This type of staging, most common in Western commercial theatre, reinforces the divide between actors and audience – the actors present narratives on stage and the audience receives and interprets. Interaction between the two groups is kept to a minimum, although the performance is bound by ritualistic actions of both audience and actors – ticket purchase, lighting changes, applause and the like (Schechner 1988). Transferring this notion to politics, we see this set up in elite political broadcasts such as speeches, campaign debates and presidential press conferences. The unspoken implication here is that our political leaders are there to impart information which can be interpreted variously by public audiences, but members of the public are not in a position to directly engage with or intervene in the action “on stage” in front of them. The political interests and identities that are created are therefore the work primarily of the actors/“actors” centre stage in the political scene; public audiences chiefly receive meaning and incorporate this into notions of national norms and political imperatives.
By contrast, we don’t generally think of protest actions as taking on this mono-directional spatial form. Protest is generally thought of as messy, deliberately subversive and laden with potential inclusivity. For the most part, it is only loosely planned and structured, relying heavily on the improvisation of participants. Anti-war activists in recent years have creatively broken new ground in regard to the locations of protest. Amid increasing mediatization and the rapid online broadcasts achieved by daring or unusual forms of protest, activists ranging from Code Pink to the Tea Party have experimented with more daring uses of public space. While the traditional use of public buildings, city streets and the National Mall are still central to enactments of protest and civil disobedience, activists have creatively made use of a wider range of locations to broadcast their political messages. Furthermore, some unique ways of using those spaces have resulted in greater impact on public audiences.
Delimited stages
Despite these innovations, I want to begin this exploration with an account of some of the more typical protest actions that use space in ordered, pre-planned ways. This includes permitted marches, demonstrations and advertised events that make use of spaces in a “normal” and expected manner.
One unique example of this sort was the staging of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan by Iraq Veterans Against the War in March 2008. Held over four days at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington DC, this event was comprised of extensive testimony from more than 200 veterans of War on Terror conflicts. Of all the actions performed by Iraq Veterans Against the War, this is perhaps the most well-known and far-reaching event. Video clips have been widely circulated online, and the transcripts were published in book form later that year. In sessions entitled “Rules of Engagement”, “Racism and War”, “Gender and Sexuality” and more, testifiers offered detailed descriptions of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. The audience – mainly comprised of media representatives and supporters of the IVAW testifiers – listened attentively and were clearly emotionally moved by the graphic details of modern combat.
I will discuss the testimonies in more detail in later chapters, but for now I want to focus on the way that Winter Soldier involved an arrangement of performance space that is patently uncommon in anti-war activism. The entire event exhibited a maximum degree of separation between IVAW members and the audience, which was selectively invited to attend. The event was closed to the public, and only approved members of the press, IVAW friends and supporters, and a small number of academics were allowed access. On arriving at the event, audience members were asked to queue as their names were checked and security badges were issued. The auditorium itself was arranged as a proscenium stage, with a long table upon a raised platform where testifiers sat facing the rows of audience members. Curtains were drawn behind the testifiers, masking the backstage goings-on from the public. This created a strong sense of boundary between IVAW members and those of us watching, as the proscenium staging strictly regulated the positions and interaction of testifiers and audience. The resulting authority that was lent to the IVAW testimonies discouraged audience input or critical engagement. By using a form of staging more common to political speeches, press briefings and commercial entertainment, the Winter Soldier participants were assigned specific roles that limited active participation and meaning-making to the producers of the event (Schechner 1988, 161). While the formal presentational format endowed the proceedings with a sense of authority and officialdom, it replicated a model of performance that hints at the passive receipt of knowledge by the public. It is important to point out, however, that Winter Soldier did in large part defy the participatory limitations inherent to its staging format, by encouraging the interaction of testifiers and audiences in lunch and coffee breaks, and the limiting aspects of the staging should be balanced against the sense of earnestness and political import that resulted.
Winter Soldier was an exceptional event in its adoption of a commercial-theatre-politics staging. However, many other protest events utilize culturally ritualized uses of space that rely on accepted notions about appropriate behaviour in certain venues. These arrangements are common to political marches, rallies and demonstrations. While it can be very effective, it is also true that this form of political performance effects little challenge to dominant delimitations of public space and participation within those spaces. Effectively, the impact of demonstrators at political events is derived from the sheer number of individuals filling those spaces – and hence the accounting of demonstration attendees has become highly controversial in recent decades.
In 2003, more than 8 million individuals participated in global protests in an attempt to dissuade the “Coalition of the Willing” from invading Iraq. While I don’t intend to suggest that these protests made no difference to the course of international politics (they did undoubtedly impact public perception and force public recognition of dissent by politicians), I do want to note that these events, in their repetition of semi-ritualized political behaviour, did little to contest the fundamental hierarchies of political participation. Furthermore, it seems plausible that the mediatized environment of the early twenty-first century results in less import granted to visible demonstrations of large numbers of bodies, and I question the degree to which large marches or gatherings can still effectively move undecided members of the public. In the age of massive online presence in the form of Facebook and Twitter, does a gathering of bodies register the same impact as in previous decades? My argument here is that for political dissent to be effective, particularly in moments of heightened polemics and circumscription, protests might better engage with the unseen norms that delimit public engagement with foreign policy. In regard to arrangements of space, this often means acting in locations that are outside the conventional spaces reserved for public protest, and that break the rules of condoned and quarantined transgression.
Rearranging spaces
Alternative uses of existing political space
Many of the most effective anti-war actions have indeed embraced this perspective, and made use of spaces in ways that counter political norms. Code Pink centralized the issue of location from their earliest actions. According to Medea Benjamin, the group was interested in targeting individuals who were directly responsible for the policies they wanted to alter. With this in mind, they moved their activism from the streets, where it had been aimed at influencing the public, to the halls of Congress where they could prioritize impact on legislators. (Having attempted this approach for a number of years, Code Pink is now shifting their emphasis to lobbying groups, who they now believe hold the real power in Congress (Benjamin 2012).) Importantly, this relocation involved staging protests in sites that were not consistently used by activists in the past.
Code Pink became a frequent presence at Congressional hearings related to the War on Terror and its funding. They also steadfastly targeted politicians at campaign speeches, fundraising events and policy meetings. Their participation in this sense achieved two things: first, by simply physically placing themselves in the halls of government as legitimate participants, they made incursions to the sense of exclusivity attached to political processes. Second, when Code Pink members performed more overt activism in these locations, they interrupted the ritualistic frames of these rooms and dissolved the rigidity of the legislative process. By using vivid pink costumes, strategically unfurled banners and vociferous interjections, the protesters transgressed the socially demarcated use of political spaces and reworked their liminal potential.
Eruptions
One distinctly transgressive arrangement of performance space comes in the form of theatrical eruptions. Eruptions are the marked opposite of proscenium staging, as described above. These events typically contain little or no pre-planning, and they transform spaces by the significant actions that erupt within them. There are many examples of this in post-9/11 anti-war activism, but one of the most memorable is Desiree Fairooz’s confrontation of Condoleezza Rice. Fairooz is a former children’s librarian from Arlington, Texas, who left her job and moved to Washington to commit herself to full-time anti-war activism. On 24 October 2007, several Code Pink members attended a House Foreign Relations Committee Meeting, where Rice was scheduled to testify. Fairooz found herself seated closer to the front of the room than other activists, so she seized the opportunity. When Rice entered the room, Fairooz leapt from her seat,...

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