Insights from Performance Criticism

Peter S. Perry, Peter S. Perry

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781506400167
• eBook ISBN: 9781506401126
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

In this volume, Peter S. Perry describes what performance criticism is and shows its application to biblical studies and theology. He draws on the best thinkers and practitioners in this field as well as his own experience to show how performance criticism can open up the meaning of and appreciation for biblical texts. In addition, Perry presents challenges for the future of performance criticism and its role in biblical interpretation generally.

Each volume in the new Insights series discusses discoveries and insights gained into biblical texts from a particular approach or perspective in current scholarship. Accessible and appealing to today's students, each Insight volume will discuss (1) how this method, approach, or strategy was first developed and how its application has changed over time; (2) what current questions arise from its use; (3) what enduring insights it has produced; and (4) what questions remain for future scholarship.

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What Is Biblical Performance Criticism?

To describe biblical performance criticism, I start by explaining how human beings communicate. Performance criticism analyzes and practices certain kinds of communication, specifically repeated behaviors for an audience. Inquiry, imagination, and intervention are three aspects of a performance and its analysis. Biblical performance criticism is the analysis and practice of performances of biblical traditions. The basic method of biblical performance criticism is to prepare, internalize, and perform a biblical text. Although it may make it sound like a step-by-step process, performance criticism is really more circular and interrelated, like nodes on a network that influence each other rather than a recipe to follow.

How Do Humans Communicate?

All interpretation of the Bible, and interpretation in general, depends on a theory of how human beings communicate. Biblical performance criticism is indebted to linguists—scholars of language—who have revised the way we think of language and communication. We now understand that human communication works through the interaction of a speaker, signs (which may include words spoken or written, such as in a “text”), an audience, and their situation—the four elements of a performance introduced in the last chapter.

For much of the last three hundred years, language has been thought of as a code to be deciphered. Some people read the Bible this way: if we only knew the proper translation or meaning of a word, there would be no controversy about what it “means.” From a code mindset, we say, “The Bible says it, I believe it,” as if the fixed print on the page should translate into a fixed meaning for everyone reading it. If language was a code, that might be true: a code means the same thing whenever or wherever it’s decoded and isn’t affected by the person decoding it. When Little Orphan Annie sends a message in code over the radio, any hearers who have a decoder ring are able to decode it, for example, to represent “Eat your Ovaltine.” Yet, even if you can decode who Little Orphan Annie is, what a “decoder ring” is, and what “Ovaltine” is, deciphering these words doesn’t answer why you should care. If you didn’t grow up in the 1940s, have not seen the 1983 movie A Christmas Story, or saw it but don’t remember it, these references will seem strange and this paragraph difficult to understand. If you know what I’m talking about, you may have smiled or even chuckled. How could simply decoding these words do all that? There has to be more than coding and decoding to explain how we communicate.

The study of human communication over the last century has shown that language is best understood as a system of signs and not codes.^[1] Certainly, there is a part of language that functions like a code, but this inadequately explains the way language really works. Like a “one-way” traffic sign on the street, words point a hearer or reader toward the intended effect. By “signs” we mean more than words. Signs may include noises, tone, gestures, facial expressions, and movement that guide a hearer. Consider the way American Sign Language (ASL) works to communicate without sound. ASL is a language—a system of signs— that is used by “speakers” to lead “hearers” to chosen effects.

Thinking of communication in terms of signs takes into account the way words and other signs function differently depending on the situation and audience. Signs cannot be considered apart from the space and time in which they function. Signs are interpreted by an audience that draws on their observations, ideas, imagination, and, perhaps most importantly, their memory to interpret the signs.

Imagine a one-way traffic sign. When you think of it, you are remembering a sign you have seen before and, if you are a driver, your experience of one on the street. You may also recall the experience of driving the wrong way on a one-way street and the emotions of embarrassment or fear that accompanied the experience. That was not my intended effect in originally mentioning it, but the thought may have come to mind especially since I brought it up. Understanding the sign depends not only on decoding the words one and way and the pointing arrow, but also the larger situation of the street, automobiles, and the direction of travel. It may trigger other memories. The communication depends on not only the sign (created by some “author”) but also the audience (especially the audience’s memory) and the situation in which the sign is found. The intended effect is that drivers will direct their vehicles to travel in the direction of the arrow. The audience’s memories may supply meanings beyond the intended effect of the sign’s author.

Imagine a one-way sign out in the middle of a green field with cows calmly grazing nearby. What does this sign mean now? The cows are directed to go “one way”? For some, it would be humorous. Others may be offended, thinking the sign was stolen. A code model of human communication is unable to explain humor, irony, metaphor, or responses by different audiences. On an advertisement for milk, a picture of cows and a one-way sign in a field may try to persuade people that there is only one way: “Buy Milk.” On publicity for an organic dairy, it may be suggesting that organic farming is the “one way.” Human communication depends on the interaction of speaker, signs, audience, and situation, and not on some fixed “meaning” of the words.

Recall the first scene from the last chapter: a father and a son beneath a tree practicing the Ten Commandments. The son asks, “Why do we do this?” How do we explain the father’s sigh in response to this question? A code model of communication would say that the father decodes the pronoun “this” to refer to the activity of reciting the commandments out loud, “we” to refer either to the father and son or the larger cultural activity of recitation, and “why” to be a question of purpose. In other words, the father decodes the question to ask, “What is the purpose of my reciting the commandments to you?” But how is a sigh a response to this question? The code model is unable to explain.

Most readers of this scene, however, would have no problem imagining why a father would sigh to his son’s request. Even if you are not a father or a son, you probably have enough experience (i.e., memories) of children frustrated with their parents’ tedious requests to imagine the tone of the question, “Why do we do this?” We can imagine many different ways the question could be asked: (1) “Why do we do this?,” with a bit of a whine indicating the why is to communicate, “I think this is boring”; (2) “Why do we do this?,” implying with the we that this kind of activity is fine for other fathers and sons but not us; or (3) “Why do we do this?” suggesting that he would much rather be playing basketball. In all these cases, the sigh of the father makes sense: he acknowledges that the son is bored or would rather be doing something else.

In the discussion of this scene in the last chapter, however, I suggested an alternative explanation that a modern reader may not consider. In a situation of persecution of Jews who publicly practice their faith, the son’s question may be, “Why do we do this?,” implying that the activity is dangerous. Someone may see and report them. They could be arrested. The sigh communicates that the father recognizes his son’s fear. Even in this case, the sigh of the father makes sense as communicating his acknowledgment of his son’s emotion and not the content of his question. We can’t say what that emotion is without more information about the son’s tone or the larger situation.

We tend to choose the interpretation that requires the least effort while still explaining the signs that the speaker has chosen. Interpreting the son’s question as an expression of fear takes more effort because it requires more information. It is much easier and quicker for a reader to conclude that the son is being whiny because we have prior memories of whiny children (perhaps even of being one) and can access them easily. To conclude that the son is talking about other children reciting the commandments or that he’d rather play basketball would take more effort to access more information. If the son thought his father would have difficulty understanding that he’d rather play basketball, he would have been more explicit and said, “Why do we do this? I’d rather play basketball.” The father would not have to work as hard to decide what was meant.

In other words, there is a trade-off of effort for effects. Speakers and authors will naturally try to choose the signs they think will most effectively influence their audience toward desired conclusions.^[2] Hearers and readers will naturally select the first meaning that explains the signs in the situation. Hearers of the same words in a new situation, however, may find it difficult or even impossible to experience the intended effects.

This is why reading the Bible can be very difficult for us. The speakers and authors that lie behind what we now call the Bible chose words in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek that they thought would have the most effective impact on their audiences for the least amount of the audiences’ effort. We try to understand ancient audiences as best we can. We try to reconstruct the situations around those audiences and the kind of impact the texts may have had, but this takes a great deal of effort (which is why we will always need more PhDs in biblical studies, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and so on). We keep translating the Bible in new ways in order to lower the effort that new audiences have to expend to experience its impact. In this way, each translation is a new communication event: a translator producing words intended to have an impact on an audience in a particular language and culture. The point of these examples is to demonstrate that human communication involves a speaker/author who creates signs intended for some effect on an audience in a concrete situation. Some key points:

• Language is a system of signs. Words are not codes but signs that a speaker uses to guide an audience toward an intended effect. Possible signs include more than spoken and written words. Signs also include tone, gestures, facial expressions, and movement. Since the Bible comes to us in writing, it is often limited by the media (written or printed words on a page). But when the Bible is re-presented in other media (such as an embodied reading, audio recording, video recording, or hyperlinked text^[3] on the Internet), a more diverse set of signs is av...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• The Performed Text
• What Is Biblical Performance Criticism?
• Performing Habakkuk
• Performing Revelation
• Ten Insights from Performance Criticism
• Conclusions, Challenges, and Considerations
• Appendix A: A Translation of Habakkuk for Performance
• Appendix B: A Translation of Revelation 17–19 for Performance
• Bibliography