tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512870689197311087.post101968945823733289..comments2023-05-09T02:31:07.268-07:00Comments on CTCS 587: TV Theory 2017: Core Post Week 2Tara McPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09874394027026185133noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512870689197311087.post-77618550136289417442017-01-17T01:33:10.647-08:002017-01-17T01:33:10.647-08:00Sasha, I really like the connections you are makin...Sasha, I really like the connections you are making between performance and television (through the dual reading of Phelan and Zettl), as they both become discursive terrain for the making of what you call the “liveness of life.” I want to extend this line of thinking a bit. What this phrase suggests to me is the link between the aesthetic rubric of immediacy (“liveness”) and its sometimes material stakes of life/death. Perhaps when you mentioned Butler, I immediately thought of her move from “performativity” to “precarity.” That is, the subject is not simply constituted through reiterative gestures, acts, and performance. Rather, as Butler elaborates in Precarious Life, the legibility (or rather illegibility) of a subject in the arena of performativity characters certain lives as “precarious”—lives who “do not qualify as recognizable, readable, or grievable.”<br /><br />Following your dual reading of performance/performativity and the televisual, I wonder if we can say something similar about subjects who cannot operate comfortably within the aura of “liveness.” In other words, if we bracket the debate regarding “liveness = truth” for a moment, how is the effect of “liveness” distributed across non-normative bodies, bodies of color, etc.? Do these bodies cause a rupture in the aesthetic of “liveness?” I am thinking most specifically about the series of horrific police brutality videos that show a “live” account of state-sanctioned violence and murder. And, without a doubt, in each of these instances, there are always subsets of comments that are skeptical about the footage. In the sense that “liveness” can convey a sense of social reality, certain bodies, at times, cannot traffic in this privileged aesthetic. <br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10841378690944984051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512870689197311087.post-30877589127052933832017-01-16T23:21:20.338-08:002017-01-16T23:21:20.338-08:00I am not sure to what extent I can say "I am ...I am not sure to what extent I can say "I am with you in your 'open[ness] to the potential merits of liveness’” as your openness may be directed towards other aspects than what your response reminded me of in relation to the experience of liveness: my fascination with simultaneity or quasi-simultaneity on television (but elsewhere as well) in the sense of being able to witness (in a limited way, and from a particular point of view, etc, yes) a spatially distant event; to be more precise, to co-witness it with many others from various locations, which indeed incites in me a (partial nonetheless touching) sense of connectedness. In any case, we might agree on doubting that liveness as such could be exhausted by an explanation that takes it to be as the mere workings of ideology (and that, as a consequence to this, it should necessarily be discredited).Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05176370085096625626noreply@blogger.com