Kafka Live! Jan Mieszkowski MLN, Vol. 116, No. 5, Comparative Literature Issue. (Dec., 2001), pp. 979-1000. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-7910%28200112%29116%3A5%3C979%3AKL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K MLN is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Kafka Live! -9

!!t

Jan Mieszkowski

Over the past decade, "perforinance" has become one of the most common terms of American academic discourse. Vie~vedby many as a cornerstone of the interdisciplinary analysis that ~villunite the social sciences and humanities, its critical and explanatory powers appear virtually unlimited. In discussions of aesthetics and politics, the status of performance as an anti-formalist, anti-essentialist categon has earned it the title of "the unieing mode of the postmodern." ' For gender studies, it has come to fill many of the fiinctions formerly served by concepts such as power, self-representation, or identification,' while efforts to characterize the relationship between late twentieth-centun liberalism and capitalism have been concerned wit11 its formative role in social systems.:' Given this wealth of work, it is important to realize that the theory of performance has ahvays been a prerequisite for elaborating notions of praxis, creativity or conceptuality and cannot be understood in terms of the innovations of a particular period-be it Modernism, the Enlightenment, or even the Renaissance. From a broader perspective, it becomes clear that the limits of performance as a model of aesthetic or political agency require just as much scrutiny as its advantages. This essay intervenes in the tradition of performance studies by focusing on the debates surrounding what has over the last thirty years come to be called "performance art." These discussions constitute only a small sector of the field of contemporan performance research; similar problems coulcl undoubtedly be addressed through a wide variety of different topics, ~vhetherin contract theor!; the sociologl\ of gender, or media studies. The radical potential of performativity receives its most substantial consideration as a unique JII..\ I I (i(2001) : 979-1000 O 'LOO I b\ T h e J o h n s H o p k i n s L'niver-sitv Press

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political modality in the aesthetic debates following Iininanuel Kant's third Cntzque-in particular, in discussions of art's status as an activity or an object. Perhaps most familiar is performance art's crucial role in the attacks on nineteenth-century aestheticism waged bv Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. Of equal importance, however, are literan productions that did not orertll challenge the genre conventions of their time. In this regard, our focus will be on Franz Kafka's work as both a companion to and a critique of the avant-garde movements that, for the last century, have striven to realize a liue art. Like a number of his contemporaries who lived at a time of great change in literary and artistic events without producing a great deal suitable for cabaret, Kafka has tended to be neglected by the standard genealogies of performance innovation. In the following reading of "A Hunger Artist," one of his final stories, I reposition him at the heart of these debates by presenting his critique of art's pretensions to happen. Written in 1924, "A Hunger Artist" was one of four short pieces collected in a volume of the same title, the proofs for which Kafka corrected on his deathbed. Exploring the dilemmas of artists and their crafts through the figures of a singing mouse who cannot sing, a trapeze artist who won't come down from his perch, and a man whose specialty is fasting before an audience, these stories appear to be in line with the broader interests in performance experiments prevalent among Czech artists and writers of the time. While there is no direct reference to Dada in Kafka's writings, the Prague of the early 20s has been called the "Dada fair of Central Europe," and Kafka was clearly well acquainted with its cafe culture, cabarets, and variety theater.4 The overtly performative dimension of these three characters' activities raises questions as to the nature of their "art," particularly in the case of the deathly thin individual who sits on display in a cage, not eating for forty days at a stretch. Is this man to be regarded as a victim of anorexia, a skilled entertainer comparable to a trapeze acrobat or stripper, or a creator in some more existential sense? When this "Kiinstler" speaks of the "Ehre seiner Kunst" ("the honor of his art"), is he asking for the respect the patrons of high culture might accord a painter, sculptor or pianist, or is he inviting the goodnatured indulgence they would grant a juggler, stage magician, or palm reader? Is it even misleading in this case to speak of art and artists? There is certainly no consensus about Kafka's muvre with which to resolve the issue. For every claim that "the question of the artist and the function of art underlies nearly all of Kafka's work,"

there is an equally adamant rejoinder that "Kafka nerer concerned himself with the artist and his relation to society."' From the outset of the ston, a concern with managing the shorv~ ~ h a t e r kind e r of art or performance it mav be-is paramount: In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist das Interesse an Hungerkunstlern sehr zuruckgegangen. IVdhrend es sich fi-uher gut lohnte, grone derartige T'orfiihrungen in eigener Regie ZLI veranstalten, ist dies heute viillig unmiiglich. Es waren andere Zeiten." During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished. It used to pay v e n well to stage such great performances under one's own management, but today that is quite impossible. We live in a different world now.'

The narrator's declaration that interest in hunger artists has waned hangs over the entire stor!; lending it the improbable fain-tale quality of something that transpired in an age we can no longer comprehend. Curiously enough, there is no explanation for why the change has taken place. Have tastes shifted? Have people become less macabre in their voyeurism or more imaginative in their leisure pursuits? The narrator later emphasizes the change again, without even a guess as to why it happened: M'enn die Zeugen solcher [HungerISzenen ein paar Jahre spater daran zuriickdachten, wlrden sie sich oft selbst unverstindlich. Denn inzuischen ivar jener erwihnte U m s c h ~ ~ ~eingetreten; fast plotzlich war das ~ng geschehen; es n~ochtetiefere Griinde haben, aber wem lag daran, sie aukufinden;jedenfalls sah sich eines Tages der verw6hnte Hungerkiinstler Menge verlassen, die lirber zu anderen von der ~ergnii~qgungssiichtigen Schaustellungen striimte. . . . ( E 196)

X few years later when the witnesses of such scenes called them to mind, they often failed to understand themselves at all. For meanwhile the aforementioned change in public interest had set in; it seemed to happen alrnost overnight; there may have been profourld causes for it, but who was going to bother about that; at any rate the pampered hunger artist suddenly found himself deserted one fine day by the amusement-seekers, who !vent streaming past him to othcr more-favored attractions. (CS 273)

In a narratire that drvells on one set of relations between audience and performer after another, these remarks provide notablv little information about nh) the performance is or is not successful. Stressing the altered circumstances, the narrator hints at a rarietv of causes, but he pointedlv declines to identifi causes, instead proclaiming that the change in the audience's interest is itself not interesting.

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"A Hunger Artist" thus unfolds as a story in flight from the fact that the event that sets it in motion is anything but gripping material. As if addressing someone embarking on a career as a sideshow promoter, the narrator's first lines warn that producing such events is no longer profitable. m'hile this decline in interest is evidently a business concern, this need not make us feel insecure about our investments, for the narrator never speaks of "we" in a way that would suggest we are reading about our "then" and "no~v."Kafka's interpreters have nevertheless felt the need to supplement the story with historical details, as if to demonstrate that "A Hunger Artist" can be situated in relation to our era and is not simply a fairy tale.x In other words, confronted with the continuity the story proposes between spectatorial interests and the interests of business, critics respond by recasting the issue of falling interest as an economy of self-interest. In effect, "we" seize on a decline in the hunger artist's interest value as a chance to learn something about ourselves and our interests, a gesture that may suggest, among other things, that we do not find ourselves interesting enough. U%ile interest is ahvays dependent on principles and principals it does not fiilly determine, it is also by nature double: Interest always spawns an interest in interest, and one relates to interest (or the lack thereof) only with and through yet another interest.'' At the same time, interest never establishes itself as the overarching principle of the narrative. m'hen near the end of the story the hungerer is relegated to a side-cage in a circus, the narrator's description of the people pushing by to see other sho~vscharacterizes the viewers' non-encounter with the artist as entirely independent of their reaction to (much less interest in) him. Indeed, once interest's explanatory status is replaced by another paradigm for understanding the story, it is almost as if it had been forgotten entirely. As the initial account of the artist's career continues, the complications surrounding the dynamics of the performance take center stage. "Damals," says the narrator, "beschaftigte sich die ganze Stadt init dem Hungerkunstler; von Hungertag zu Hungertag stieg die Teilnahme; jeder ~uollteden HungerkCinstler zumindest eininal taglich sehen" (E 191).1° The enthusiastic spectators who come to view a caged man ~ v h odoes not eat are complemented by overseers who are on watch to ensure that the hunger artist does not (ch)eat. On the one hand, the narrator stresses that the guards are merely a "formality," for those familiar with the artist know that he never eats during his fasts since the "Ehre seiner Kunst" forbids it (E 191). On the other

hand, the longer the artist's performance goes on, the more it is assumed that he must be cheating. By definition, nothing is seen in this perforinance, but the inore nothing is seen, the greater the suspicion that something is masquerading as nothing, i.e., that some eating must be going on, even if nobody catches the artist inJlngrunti. The overseers respond to this dileinina by shirking their duties in order to give the artist a chance to eat, thereby confirming, as we have been told, that they are a "mere formality," although for precisely the opposite reason suggested, that is, because it is supposed that he inust cheat rather than because it is obvious he will not. Attempting to counter this lackadaisical regulation, the artist sings and tries to draw his observers into conversation, doing as much as he can to make it clear that his inouth is not busy with mastication. This elicits further wonderment from the guards, although not the kind for which the artist had hoped: "Doch half das ~venig:sie \\underten sic11 dann nur iiber seine Geschicklichkeit, selbst wahrend des Singens zu essen" (E 192).11 A performance that cannot confirm that it has taken place supplements itself with other performances, each one only furthering the conviction that the original performance is not happening. Hunger art invites protest; it begs for proof that it is what it claiins to be, but ironically, the power to provide such proof remains radically external to the art. The artist sits in a cage on display and is viewed daily by inost of the townspeople, but no observation can be thorough enough to ensure that he has performed hunger. Ultimately it is suggested that only the artist can know ~vllathe is "really" doing: "[Nlur der Hungerkiinstler selbst konnte das ~vissen,nur er also gleichzeitig der von seinem Hungern vollkomrnen befriedigte Zuschauer sein" (E 192-3)." The performance of hunger art is defined by its permanent exposure to the possibility that it is not a performance at all. \$%at status ~vouldthe performance presented in Kafka's s t o n have in contemporary debates about performance art? In her widely cited discussion of performance work, RoseLee Goldberg writes, "By its very nature, performance [art] defies precise or easy definition beyond the simple declaration that it is liue art by c~rtists" (9-italics added)." This "new" meaning of live-which since the sixteenth c e n t u n has meant the opposite of dead-appears with the advent of radio and film, i.e., with the technological reproduction of sounds and moving images. Noting that the word was first used in this sense in the 1930s, the 0k:I) defines: "Live: Of a performance, heard or

JAN hlIESZKOWSK1

\latched at the time of its occurrence, as distinguished from one recorded on film, tape, etc. Also quasi-adr."14The air of simplicity surrounding this concept is clouded once it is noted that its evident straightforrvardness rests on an implicit conflation of different models of immediacy. This is already apparent in casual conversation, where "lire" is used to refer either to a ternporcll correspondence between a perforinance and the presentation of the performance"Broadcast while actually performed; not taped, filmed or recordednor to a shared site of perforinance and reception, a spntznl coincidence: "Inrohing performers and spectators who are physically present."" Far from confirming its status as a given, the lire reveals itself to be a construct, a complication that in many respects defines contemporary debates in cinema, media, and performance studies. Theorists of the lire try to distinguish the absence of mediation for which performance art strives from an attempt to establish a pure presence unmarked by repetition and difference. In their view, performance art takes as its target precisely the idea-some would say the "fiction"-of a controlled mediation, aiming instead to realize a medium no longer defined by the distinction between essence and appearance or r i l e and example on which most of modern aesthetics relies. There is, however, another tradition of perforinance art that strives to realize not an immediacy of presentation but a live event, an event whose specificity is based less on the proximity of an audience or the coincidence of production and reception than on its resistance to being defined by spatial or temporal parameters. Beginning with Dada, the attempt to articulate such an artistic "occurrence" has been organized around the effort to submit art to the power of chance. Hans Richter describes a foundational anecdote of the movement: Dissatisfied u i t h a drauing h e had b e e n working o n for some time, Xrp finally tore it u p , and let the pieces flutter t o the floor o f his studio o n the Zeltweg. Sorne time later h e happened t o notice these same scraps o f paper as they lay o n the floor, and was struck by the pattern they formed. It had all the expressive power that h e had tried i n vain t o achieve. How meaningful! How telling! Chance movements o f his hand and o f the fluttering scraps o f paper had achieved what all his efforts had failed t o achieve, namely expiession.'"

The crucial point of this parable is that Dada seeks neither to establish itself as a discourse of meaninglessness, nor to lay claim to some sort of supernatural rapport with fate, but rather attempts to embrace the event of a contradiction whereby "random" movement

becoines the medium through which "something of the mind and the personality of the author" is expressed (Richter 54). Dada "happens" by disrupting the coordination of act and intention, of imagination and articulation, in virtue of which soinething would customarily said to be made or be performed. Art thus becoines something that befalls us, something that we believe to occur precisely and only because it is unclear ~vhetherit is the product of premeditation or spontaneity volition or non-volition. As Walter Benjamin describes it, "[TIhe work of art of the Dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him [es stieR dem Betrachter zu]. . . . " I 7 This "art" forces us to conceive of it as an event that is neither natural nor man-made, as soinething ~vhichis neither the product of an act nor the effect of a cause. "I don't consider [Dada] an art form," says Eric Xndersen, a participant in the Dada revivals of the 1960s, "Itjust takes p l a ~ e . " ' ~ This tradition of performance art as an art of events rather than of physical immediacy is further developed in the Happenings and Fluxus movements of the 1950s and 60s, particularlv in the work of Allan Kaprow, who sought to "facilitate" random occurrences. The activities carried out by participants in the first "happeningsn-~chich included, ainong other things, turning on and off light bulbs, finding assigned seats at a dinner table, or touring a neighborhood-were often scripted, but, having insisted that these should be the most banal and evenday of tasks, Kaprow went fiirther and sought a participatory mode that could not be prearranged. Accordingly, people were instructed to undertake actions that \vould inevitably involve unpredictable variables and require a degree of improvisation, such as attempting to walk down a crowded sidewalk in a straight line. The contours of the happenings grew more and more nebulous, often amounting to no more than brief sightings of random passersby and, as Kaprow himself was quick to concede, it became increasingly unclear what it meant to say that one had or had not taken place. He writes: " [R] elying solely on chance operations, a completely unforeseen schedule of events could result, not merely in the operation but in the actual performance; or a simultaneously performed single moment; or none at ail."'" Like hunger art, the work of Dada and its inheritors paradoxically hnpp~nsas a challenge to the very schemas of determination and consequence that make it possible to say that something has or has not taken place.20Ho~$.ever seriously one takes this tradition and its political pretensions (or lack thereof), it clearly develops as a stark alternative to the performance

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art with which we are more familiar today, the body art of the 1970s and 80s which emphasized the artist's "lire" exploration of his or her corporeality in front of an audience. Of course, it is argued that body art actually calls its own perforinance into question in precisely the way we have identified in the Kafka story insofar as it suggests that the performative agent is indexical rather than iconic, a sign rather than a (re)presentation of itself or of its corporeal concreteness. In a well-known study of the topic, P e g g Phelan writes: "Performance uses the performer's body to pose a question about the inability to secure the relation between subjectivity and the body per se . . . Performance marks the body itself as loss. . . ."" It is still unclear, however, whether the body thus conceived is or is not subordinate to the injunction that art happen. The performance artist Martha Wilson offers the explanation routinely provided by practitioners of the genre: "[Plerformance artists remind their audiences: There is no artifice here, this is happening now. . . ."lL Far from straightforwardly inroking the live as the immediate presentation of a living body, Wilson's remarks underscore the fact that the "here" and "now" of performance are not confirmed by the presence of the liring artist. The need for a supplemental reminder that the "here" is here and the "no~v"is norv is a need for an abstract reference to the fact that something is "happening." Without confirmation that "this" is happening-however diverse or extreme "this" may appearhere and now are never enouqh - to confirm that "this" is this. In other words, the living artist supplements the occurrence of the happening, rather than the other way around. In the process, the activity of the performance artist actually calls into question the flexibility and critical acumen for which performance art is so prized, condemned as he or she is to reminding us that "this" is "this" and not something else. It is a bizarre art indeed that subordinates life itself to the imperative that something take place, something that may be neither art nor life. Returning to Kafka's story it is far from obvious which of these traditions it prefigures. The nebulousness of the hunger artist's activity the uncertainty about whether he is doing anything at all, seems to hint at the presence of a tangible physical danger, as if his corporeal existence was the main point after all. The ostensibly peaceful, if bizarre, atmosphere of the narrative is forever on the verge of tipping over into something far more violent, as when the narrator observes, in a disarmingly casual tone, that the people

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watching over the artist are "rnerk~irdigerweisegervohnlich Fleischhauer" ("usually butchers, strangely enough") (E 191). The macabre side to this tale about a skeleton behind bars is heightened by the sense that at any moment the artist may be about to become a sacrificial lamb, a victim of cannibalism, o r even a meal for a circus anirnaLY3In short, the challenge of hunger art is both abstract-Does it exist? Mhat does it mean for such an art to exist?-and concreteDoes this art not "occur" precisely by putting the physical body of its artist in jeopardy "on stage"? At this juncture, it is important to note that the story never proposes that the audience's doubts about the artist and what he is doing are the source of his popularity problems. Having monitored the artist's activities for some time, the town's impresario has discovered that after about forty days the public begins to lose interest in the spectacle. The change, ho~vever,is not attributed to any growing assumption on the part of the to~vnspeoplethat the hunger artist must be cheating. As was suggested earlier, the logic of the artist's performance and his public's reactions to it follow no common pattern and are at times perplexingly indifferent to one another. The tension is clearest when the impresario halts the hunger art after its fortieth day. In the story's most descriptive scene, a passage distinguished by an elaborate blend of biblical, maternal and sexual imagery, the townspeople, captivated by a combination of fear and amazement, help the half-stawed figure from his cage and watch as he takes his first bites of food. Only when it ceases does hunger art allow for a truly s~iccessf~il spectacle that raises n o questions about what is "really" happening and brings the town together as a group. At the same time, this semblance of social unity is produced by ignoring the hunger artist, ~ v h ois incensed that he must stop p e r f ~ r m i n g . 'If~ anything, his objections are open to more misinterpretation than was his hunger performance, for the to~vnspeople assume he is unhappy because he is hungry rather than because he has been forced to stop fasting. At this point, the impresario intervenes, deciding that it is the faster's unruly behavior, not some violation of his art, that warrants an apology: Doch hatte fiir solche Zustiinde cler Impresario ein Strafmittel, das er gerrl anwandte. Er entschllldigte den Hungerkiinstler vor versammeltem Publikllm, gab zu, dal3 nur die dllrch das Hungern henorgerufene, fur satte Menschen nicht ohne weiteres begreifliche Reizbarkeit das Benehmen des Hungerkunstlers verzeihlich machen konne. (E 19.5)

JAN MIESZKOWSKI

Yet the impresario had a way o f punishing these outbreaks which h e rather enjoyed putting into operation. He would apologize publicly for the artist's behavior, \\hich !\.as only to be excused, h e admitted, because o f the irritability caused by fasting; a condition hardly to b e understood by wellfed people. ( C S 272)

As if this were not enough, the impresario goes even fiirtller and

refutes the artist's claims that he is OK by producing photographs of him that supposedly make it clear that he is on his last legs. The story does not explain why these still images are more persuasive evidence of exhaustion than the living body itself, but it is stressed that their appearance immediately makes the artist stop protesting. Margot Norris has persuasively argued that these "frozen" images are an extension of the artist's performance itself. As he fasts on and on, she writes, "He becomes a frozen tableau vivant, a human being who never eats and therefore virtually never inove~."~" In these terms, hunger art becomes a kind of bodily expression only by facilitating supplemental, non-corporeal representations. The problem with this interpretation, as we will shortly see, is that the artist may present us with supplements to his performance that are not first and foremost representational. At this point in the narrative, a logic of displacement is in evidence. Rather than trymg to understand the hunger artist's activity as a meaningful process in its own terms, readings of this story have tended to follow the impresario's cue and searched for a way of understanding the fasting as a labor in the service of higher ends, eliding it of any autonomy as an act or event.'" Kafka's tale thus becomes a story about asceticism or religious devotion, a Romantic striving for an unrealizable absolute, or a misunderstood creator confounded by the ignorance of the society in which he lives. In these terms, hunger art is not an interest in its own right, and it enters only imperfectly into an economy in which an audience could take an interest in its interests. In a similar vein, the artist's hunger is ordinarily deemed a source of hardship and misery, and he is assumed to be physically (and probably mentally) ill. As they align themselves with the impresario, readers of Kafka's story also align themselves with the townspeople, who assume that the hunger artist is simply being modest when he informs them that fasting is actually the "easiest thing in the world." To be sure, the artist's determination and dedication, particularly his refusal to give up his craft long after it has ceased to be popular, prompt the narrator to tell us that he is "fanatical," but this does not

explain why it should be "the easiest thing in the world" to disregard completely the performer's claims about his acti~lty.M%y are we so loathe to allow hunger art to be treated as the art of hungering? There might be no pressing need to describe what an affirmation of a hunger logic might look like were it not for the closing paragraphs of the ston, which include the artist's first and only comments the narrator sees fit to quote directly. Following the decline of the town's interest in hunger art and several failed attempts to convert the performance into a traveling show, the artist is relegated to a circus, where he is left alone in his cage, gradually all but forgotten, and allowed to fast unchecked. l h e r e his performance was previously invisible, now no one even tries to see what cannot be seen: "Er mochte so gut hungern, als er nur konnte, und er tat es, aber nichts konnte ihn mehi- retten, man ging an ihm voruber" (E 198)." Reuniting fin.st with its etymological root in German, kon~zrn,h unger art appears to be freed from the dictates of interest and open to an unlimited horizon of possibilities, yet even this cannot save the artist ("nichts konnte ihn mehr retten") from ignominy or worse, anonymits. The decisive moment is reached when ciicus attendants discover the artist in his cage, wasted a\$apJto the point of near invisibility: "'Du hungerst noch immer?' fragte der Xufsehel; 'wann \$irst du denn endlich aufhoren?"' (E 199)." The narrator has previouslv described the artist's story-telling and singing, as well as his claims about the ease of his undertakings. In a sense, ho\$ever, all of the artist's attempts at communication and self-expression have been failures. Nobody believed him when he said fasting was easy and nobody took his singing or his chatter as proof that he was not eating. Beyond these unsuccessful speech acts, the artist has proven to be even more inarticulate at crucial junctures, for example, when the impresario angers him by interrupting his performances, at which point he bellows with rage like an animal. Only when the vigilant faster has become no more than a bodiless ~vhispei-does hunger art find its voice and confront the possibility that it may be neither art, nor something that can be performed: "\.brzeiht ~ n i rall?", fliisterte der Hungerkiinstler . . . "Ge~vin,"sagte der Xufseher und legte den Finger an die Stirn, um damit den Zustand des Hungerkiinstlers dem Personal anzudeuten, "uir verzeihen dir." "Immerfort wollte ich, dal3 ihr mein Hungern b e ~ u n d e r t " sagte , der Hungerkiinstler. "J2'ir bewundern es auch", sagte der .Iufseher entgegenkommend. "Ihr solltet es aber nicht beltundern", sagte der Hungerkiinstler, "Nun, dann

JAN MIESZKOWSKI

bewundern wir es also nicht", sagte der Aufseher, "wnrum sollen wir es denn nicht be~rundern?""Weil ich hungern muR, ich kann nicht anders", sagte der Hungerkiinstler. "Da sieh ma1 einer", sagte der hufseher, "wnrum kannst du denn nicht anders?" . . . "[Wleil ich nicht die Speise finden konnte, die mir schmeckt. Hatte ich sie gefunden, glaube mir, ich hatte kein Aufsehen gemacht und mich vollgegessen wie du und alle." (E 199-

200) "Forgive me, everybody," whispered the hunger artist. "Of course," said the overseer, and tapped his forehead with a finger to let the attendants know what state the man was in, "we forgive you." "I always wanted you to admire my fasting," said the hunger artist. "We do admire it," said the overseer, affably. "But you shouldn't admire it," said the hunger artist. "M.'ell then we don't admire it," said the overseer, "but why shouldn't we admire it?" "Because I have to fast, I can't help it," said the hunger artist. "MThata fellow you are," said the overseer, "and why can't you help it?" "Because . . . because I couldn't find the food I liked (die Speise, die mir srhmeckt). If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else." (CS 2 7 6 7 7 )

While the artist's confession suggests that his art was not worthy of admiration because it was not the product of an autonomous choice, the force of the imperative to fast is quickly parodied by the explanation that the problem has arisen because it is impossible for him to find anything tasty to eat-a dilemma more whimsical than words such as "will" or "necessity" imply. The predicament is clear: Should one follow the circus attendant's lead and interpret these remarks as evidence of mental instability (or at least of a confusion induced by starvation), or is the artist actually saying something essential about his vocation that may radically change our conception of it? If the hunger artist is taken at his word, Kafka's story can be accused of reducing asceticism to a lack of interest. Alternatively, it can be argued that the artist's final "admission" is an indication that he "makes some spiritual progress, in that, at his dying moment, he is no longer proud of his achie~ement."'~ In fact, neither interpretation does justice to the shock value of these final remarks. Far from simply invoking a distinction between spiritual nourishment and material food and drink, they imply that hunger was neither a means nor an end, but a side-effect of the fact that the artist could find no food to his tastr-meaning that his art was grounded not in skill, genius, or even persistence, but in an illusion born of a lack produced by the

quirks of a picky eater.'" Only contingently, it would appear, does hunger art prove to have had anything to do with art or hunger. Having introduced this potentially shocking information, thereby seemingly transforming everything we had to this point assumed about our performer, the narrator brings the story to a quick close. the artist expires, his eyes reveal "dan er weiterhungre" ("that he continued to fast"). No tears are shed, and the cage is immediately turned over to a panther, for whom the cramped circumstances evidently do not serve as a hindrance: "[Nlicht einmal die Freiheit schien er zu vermissen" ("he seemed not even to miss his freedom") (E 200). The panther's feline body appears to carry its freedom with it, and most importantly, it immediately gets the food it likes. While the contrast between the panther and the artist is patently obvious, this very clarity obscures the fact that the precise nature of their differences is far from self-evident. The panther's freedom is a freedom of the mouth and jaw-"[Ilrgend~vo im GebiB schien [die Freiheit] zu stecken" / "die Freude am Leben kam mit derart starker Glut aus seinem Rachen" (E 200)3'-but the good luck by which the panther finds something to its taste ("die Nahrung, die ihm schmeckte," E 200) suggests that it is anything but discriminating. Physical autonomy underwrites no higher sensibilities. The animal's freedom remains only the freedom of instinct, i.e., the freedom of having no taste at all.:+' In contrast, the artist has been given the "freedom" to pursue his art to its logical conclusion, but he has not had the opportunity (whether due to luck, fate, or personal failings) to exercise his taste. However extreme the artist's behavior may seem, there is always the possibiliry that he only looks like a self-sacrificing ascetic and has merely been hampered by circumstance. Of course, to pursue the implications of these details in this way may already amount to falling into the trap of taking the artist's closing statements too seriously and forgetting that it is entirely unclear who in the scene is to be taken at his word. In this regard, we need to ask whether the artist's closing statements should be understood as mere commentary on his art-e.g., as an explanation of its conditions of (im)possibiliy-or rather as a part, perhaps even an essential part, of his performance proper. The key lies in what the artist says when he exercises his own "Freiheit im GebiB" and, unlike the panther, speaks: Verzeiht mir alle. Forgive me evenbodt.

JAN MIESZKOWSKI

Following the impresario's lead, the artist has taken it upon himself to make his performance "verzeihlich," but at first glance, the ensuing exchange is as unsuccessful as his previous attempts to communicate with others. The attendant answers the artist's initial request and subsequent clarifications mechanically, gesturing to his associates that they are dealing with someone who is mentally impaired. What interest-self-interest, spectatorial interest, performance interest-is served, however, by playing along and responding ritualistically "M'e forgive you" before there is any indication as to why the artist is asking for forgiveness? Why is it vital for the attendant that the artist's remarks-again, the first ones cited by the narrator-be summarily dismissed? "Verzeiht mir alle." The first and last whisper of hunger art is a more complex performance than it may initially appear." To be a sincere and worth! plea, a request for forgiveness must be presented with conviction, like a demand. "Forgive me" must mean, "Forgive me because I should be forgivenn-any less adamant an entreaty ~ o u l d seem undeserving. On the other hand, forgiveness is only forgiveness if it does not h a w to be given, i.e., a request for forgiveness remains one only insofar as it has no power to prefigure or presuppose the repl! it seeks. X request for forgiveness must make a demand, yet by definition, what it demands can be the object of no demand. Suspended between these restrictions, a performance that begins by asking "Forgive me" necessarily remains incomplete until it has been answered with "M'e forgive you." In this respect, the circus attendant's reply to the artist is not necessarily evidence of his control over the situation, and it may indicate that he does not understand the solicitation with which he is confronted, or that according to the ritual's logic he has no choice but to answer, even if his answer sounds routine or insincere. If "Forgive me" is a request that cannot determine the response it receives, what law-religious, ethical, or aesthetic-dictates that there will always be a response, even if it is "only" a formal quip, or mere silence? The attendant's need to stress the formality of his reply with a gesture to his associates indicating that the artist is insane suggests that the attendant is aware that the answer 'You are forgiven" is by no means an unambiguous-much less a voluntary, or even sane-act and cannot be relied on to bring the conversation to a close. The more the attendant strives to speak as though he does not take what the artist says seriously, the more implausible it becomes for him to have spoken to the artist in the first place. In other words, the longer

the exchange continues, the more the attendant becomes a foil: a pretext for the request for forgiveness or a dutiful participant in a ceremony chanting "M'e forgive you" on command. If to speak to the hunger-speaker is to find oneself subordinated to the logic of hunger speak, then from the artist's perspective, "Forgive me" may be a completely sane, perhaps even the only possible, reply to the query, "When will you stop fasting?" If the only response to "Forgive me" is another speech act, this might mean that forgiveness-whatever it may look or sound like-is nothing more or less than the utterance "MTeforgive you." The circus attendant would be quite surprised, however, to learn that uttering "We forgive you" indicates that he has understood the artist's request, much less actually meant anything in reply. In this sense, "Forgive me" asks, "Forgive me for asking you to decipher what 'Forgive me' means," which suggests that "Forgive me" is a self-defeating exclamation that undermines itself by generating a further need for forgiveness in the ver). act of asking for it. Still, while we may be inclined to assume that we ask for forgiveness for something we say or do, the reverse may be equally true: X request for forgiveness may be the prerequisite of any and every speech act, the act's anticipation of its own inevitable misfiring.'" "Forgive me" would thus constitute not the artist's commentar). on his art, but an intensification of the fasting itself, the opening of his performance onto the hunger of a language for which his various spectators will have no phrase or expression that can serve as a nourishing remedy. In these terms, I2r-zrih~n-a de-reference or de-signifi~ation:'~-isthe act, or better, the sideshow or side-act, which traverses any and every articulation, at once celebrating and lamenting the fact that language presents itself as both the paradigm of performance and the ultimate obstacle to such a paradigm."" liz~ihungseeksIhzrihung for I4rz~ihung for the very possibility that there can be an utterance-"Forgive men-that demands a response it cannot acknowledge for a hunger over which it has no control. One may object that the preceding analysis relies on the assumption that linguistic performance has a paradigmatic status for performance as such. Mter all, if the idea that language is inherently performative has been well received by those interested in characterizing all human praxis as performative, analyses that appear to identify language and praxis have been the source of considerable unease. The proposal that there may be no such thing as a non-verbal act is frequently attacked because it is held to accord language a

994

JAN hIIESZKOWSK1

universal status, a gesture which, it is argued, runs counter to the pluralistic spirit of multicultural, interdisciplinary criticism. This anxiety, however, is misplaced. Discourses for which the notion of a non-verbal act is of little or no interest invariably prove to be exposks of language's essential unreliahility on both an epistemological and a practical level." Conceived of as the model of performance, language is the most thoroughgoing challenge to its own ability to assert knowledge or perform acts. Efforts to critique post-structuralism for "absolutizing" language (in fact, it does precisely the opposite) are symptomatic of a deep-seated anxiety about calling the communicative and representational powers of discourse into question, an anxiety that remains widespread despite the lip-service so often paid to the notion of difference. From this perspective, the lesson of hunger art is that all performances take place as the confirmation of and attempted escape from a hunger for V i ~ i l z u n ga, hunger that paradoxically both precedes and follows the performance and which both relies on and seeks to free itself from the possibility that language is the model for and impediment to any concept of performance. At the height of his powers, forgotten in a cage where he has wasted away to the point that he barely remains a corporeal being, Kafka's hunger artist becomes a performance artist by requesting forgiveness for his art. His request is "live" not because it is delivered by a living speaker or happens in front of a present audience, but because it treats its own performance as the ultimate guarantor of and challenge to the capacity of any and every art to perform. His hunger art challenges the models in virtue of which it is to be understood, but not simply by revealing that the artist fasted for contingent reasons rather than out of religious conviction or because of a personal desire for unparalleled accomplishment. The request for forgiveness opens the performance of hunger up to a hunger of language that the performance can neither recognize as a guide or model, nor dismiss as some external "other." Hunger art happens when its own performance of hunger is suspended by the para-performance of linguistic fasting that no artist, spectator, or impresario can call his or her own. In these terms, Kafka's story allows us to formulate some general conclusions about the challenges confronting the projects in the social sciences and humanities today attempting to establish performance as the paradigm of aesthetic or political praxis. To perform is both to invoke and to supersede a pre-text, pre-tense or preliminary form, what we will call a pre-performance." In order to become more

than the mere repetition of a pattern o r model, a performance must overstep the determinations, capacities, o r intentions of its preperformance, effectively showing that the pre-performance is simply a formalit). o r a pale imitation of what is to follow In this respect, a performance may even reveal that the pre-performance-what was to be per-formed, "carried through in due form" (OED)-is first constituted by the performance itself. To "carry out in due form" is thus both to form and to deform, which is to say that every performance is the transformation of a pre-performance into something both preand post-performative. At the same time, a performance never entirely dispenses with the mold, model, o r intention that shapes o r incites it. Indeed, if it does not constantly refer to what it per-forms, a performance is itself only a form or the instance of a form, a model o r the example of a model. In other words, defined by the way it overtakes, overreaches, or overcomes the form it per-forms, a performance must falter in transcending this form o r become one itself. a pretensr to action, a performance never completes the modulation from form to act, which is to say that the pre-performance never becomes fully postperformative. In short, a performance is the completion of an act, but considered as an act of completion, it can never present itself as complete. Often praised for its capacity to ironize, performance is ironically the praxis least able to mark the difference between a real and a feigned act o r between a genuine agent and a pretender to action. At the very moment it solidifies its claim to d p a m i s m , flexibility and critique, any performance is necessarily open to the charge of being toothless o r solipsistic, a parody of nothing more than itself. Far from simply celebrating performance as a tool in the fight against identity politics and the bourgeois subject, Kafka's story suggests that our accounts of the relationship between aesthetics and politics are ~voefullyinadequate to decide whether the freedom of this faster in a cage is a paradigm of liberty o r slavery, much less how this freedom's status changes if we call it art o r maintain that it is "jjust" a performance. For contemporary performance studies and its critique of the representational structure of events, his work offers an urgent warning about the pitfalls of assuming we know what it means to say that art happens.

JAN LIIESZKOWSKI NOTES 1 Michel Benamou, "Presence as Play," in Perfornnncr in Postnodern Culturu, eds. Michel Benamou and Charles Caramello (Madison: Coda, 1977) 3. Kick Kaye echoes that performance "may be thought of as a primary postmodern mode" (Portmodmzrm and P~rformnncr [Kew York: St. Martin's, 19941 22-3). Marvin Garlson gives an excellent review of the debates about modernism and poststructuralism in his Prrformnncr: A O'ritical Introduction (Kew York: Routledge, 1996) 123-143. 2 Judith Butler's books on gender performativity are the most influential in the field. See Gender Troublr ( N e w h r k : Routledge, 1990) and Bodzrr that ,tfattpr: On thr 1)iscursi.o~Limits of "Srx" (New York: Routledge, 1993). 3 The political stakes of performance have preoccupied Slavoj Zirek in many of his books. See in particular Thr Sublimr Oblrct of Idrolog?' ( K e w b r k : Verso, 1989). Bar Kershaw's new ~vork,The Radzcnl in Performancr: Brtrurrn Bwcht and Baudrzllnrd (Kew York: Routledge, 1999), is exemplary of recent attempts to characterize modern democratic capitalism as a "performative society." 4 See Jindrich Toman, "Now you see it, now you don't: Dada in Czechoslorakia, with notes on high and low," in ?'hr E n s t a Dndn (Mit, Cn'sir and thr Arts: ?'he Histor) of Dndn (volume 4 ) , ed. Stephen Foster (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). 3 Allen Thiher, I:rnnz Knfkn: '4 Stud) of the Short Fiction (Boston: T\rayne, 1990) 80; Meno Spann, Franz Ka@a (Boston: T~vayne,1976) 166. Ko existing document clarifies Kafka's interest in hunger artists, and it has been argued that this story confounds interpretation because it gives us nothing that can be related directly to Kafka's personal life: "'Ein Hungerkiinstler' continues to defy interpretation, illumination, and fortunately rubrication because it is one of Kafka's most serious works and one featuring a totally nameless hero or anti-hero without those biographical features which the critic might apply to Gregor Samsa or other Kafka heroes who reflect, however obliquely, Kafka's experience" (Adrian Del Caro, "Denial Versus Affirmation: Kaka's Ein Hungrrkunstl~rasa Paradigm of Freedom," Modprn Austrian Liternturr, 22: 1 [1989], 35). Against this view, others have suggested that the story is all too autobiographical and should be read against the backdrop of Max Brod's account of Kafka's final days when, his larynx horribly swollen, the author~vastedaway unable to eat. On a less gruesome l e ~ e lit, is worth noting that Kafka wrote about the problenls he fared in staying nourished and getting his writing done. See Mark hf. t Austhrticzrm in thr H(1psburg Fin dr Szkk Anderson, Knfkn'r Clothes: O m t l n ~ ~ nand (Oxford: Clar-endon, 1992) 87f. Food and eating are, in an) case, common motifs in Kafka's stories. On this topic, see Gilles Deleure and Felix Guattari, Kufin: Tozutlrd (1 'Minor Lztrnatuw (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986).

6 Franz Kafka, Eniihlungun, Tnschenbzrchazrsg(~bein 8 Binden, ed. Max Urod (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1989) 191. Hereafter cited as E. 7 Franz Kafia, Thr Contpktr Ston'us, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Srhocken, 1995) 268. Her-eafter cited as CS. 8 It has been maintained that empirical hunger artists both pre- and post-date the story's writing. "There really were hunger artists," writeslames Rolleston, and he goes on to descr-ibe the eye~vitnessaccount of a colleague who saw such a performance in Frankfurt in 1952 ("Purification unto Death: 'A Hunger Artist' as Allegory of Modernism," in Approtlchrs to Tenchzng K(1fka's Short Fiction, ed. Richard G r q [New York: MLA, 19951 135). Writing about performers at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, lLTalter Bauer-1L'abnegg stresses that the typical hunger artist was not, as in this story, a graphicall)

emaciated irldi\idual. So-called skeletal Inen constituted a distinct variety of freak show, while drawings of their hunger artist counterparts indicate that the latter Ivere often portly individuals (Zzrkzrs und Artistie) ill Frtlnz Krlfk(zs Il'erk [Erlangen: Palm 8s Enke, 19861). Kafka's gaunt per-former, argues Bauer-bl'abnegg, is essentiall\ a corlflation of the two. 9 At o n e point, the narrator suggests that the decline in interest re\eals something str-onger than disintereqt, but again offers n o explanation for- the change: "[Wlie in einerll g e h e i ~ n e nEirl\erstandnis hatte sich iiberall geradezu eine Abneigung gegerl da\ Schauhungerr~ausgebildet" (E 196). ("ELenwhere, as if by secret agreement, a posithe re\ulsiorl fr-om professiorlal fasting was in e\iderlceX [CS 2731 .) 10 "At o n e time the whole tolvn took a lively inter-est i11 the hunger- artist; from day to day of his fast the excitenlent ~ n o u n t e d eve~?bodv ; warlted to see him at least once a da!" (CS 268). 11 "But that was of little u\e; thev only wondered at his cle\.erness in being able to fill his mouth even ~vhilesinging" (CS 269). 12 "[Olrllv the artist himself could know that; he was therefore hound to be the sole completelv satisfied specrator of his own fast" (CS 270). 13 Prrforrnnncr Art: From firtitr-irm to thr Prp'rptrnf (New York: Harm N , Abrams, 1988) $1. 14 Thr O.wfrirri E~lglirt~ Dittzonar~,eds. J.A. Simps011 a n d E.S.C. bl'einer (Oxford: Czlarendon, 1989). 15 Theqe defirlitiorls are fr-om the Amerlcctn f h t n , q t L)ictiona~:y(ed. IL'illiam Morris [Boston: Houghton Aliftlin, 19821). T h e new Enccrrtci Il'orld En,qllsh Dzctionnr). puts ? \ e n nlol-e enlpha\is o n the corlstructed qualitv of h e , defining it: 1. "Broadcast as it happens." 2. "In person." 3. "Recorded while ;I performance is happening" (Sew YOI-k:St. Mar-tin's. 1999). The third serlse of the term 110 longer refers dir-ectly to a "here" a n d "rlo~v'."h ut to the technolog) for presening a n d transnlittirlg "here" a n d "rlow" illto subsequent "heres" a n d "rlo~vs."\tlhate\el- the ultimate inlplications of such accusatio~ls,they underscore performance art's status as o n e moment in a long tradition of ~trategiesfor coordinating time a n d space rsith represerltational and narrative content, a tradition far older than T\' o r radio that irlcludes, among otherc. Karlt, Aristotle, a n d Plato. 16 Halls Richter, r)nria: .4r-t a~lriA~iti-Art,trans. David Britt (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997) 51. For more histor) of Zurich Dada xvritten by its participants, see also Hugo Ball, Fl;,qht out of 7>?11r:'4 Dctilci Dicrrj, ed. John Elderfield (Sew Ebrk: ed. Hans J. \?king, 1974): Richard HuelsenbecL, .\lernoirr of n Dridri I)rrc~r~mp,; KJeinschmidt (Berkele!: I' of California P. 1901). 17 "The Ilork of Art in the Age of hlechanical Reproduction," Illurnincttionc, tran'c. H a r n Zohn (Ne~vYork:Shocken. 1968) 238. German citations are from ($~arnmeltr Schn'Jt11 I::! (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 1991 ) . 18 Quoted in Tlip iMzrfrtr: Thirt? IFctrr of Fluxzlr: Eiiir Doltzrmentntion, ed. I.ars hfovin (Denmark: innam am or^ Filni, 1993). 19 A\rr~nbla,qr,Envzronm~nttctrid H~rppriilngc(New York: H. N. Abrams, 1966) 193. 20 Iiapr-0w.s ~vorkhas been poorlv s e n e d bv the assumption that these undertakings are elusi\c simply because thev hlnr the boundaries hetween art a n d life. Kaprow himself appears at times to articnlate this vie~v,a n d the sentiment i5 echoed b\ many of the artist5 involved in these projects, for example, when Be11 \'autier, a major figme in the Fluxus mo\elnents in Europe, argues: "I$% are t n i n g to d o live art, a n d live art cannot exist becanse . . . if it'\ live it's life a n d then nobody knows about it" (quoted in M o ~ i n .1993). At the same time, Iinprow insists that his

JAK MIESZKOWSKI projects are not exercises in experiencing life "as it is," adding that in happenings "art and life are not simply commingled; the identity of each is [I-endered] uncertain" (82). Kaprow's happenings are an experinlent in what "happens" to the notion of an occurrence if Ive suspend the organizational parameters that normally define what we mean by art and life. 21 C'n~nnrkrd:Thr Polztics ofPmjortr~ancc.(New York: Routledge, 1993) 34. 22 "Performance Art: (Some) Theory and (Selected) Practice at the End of this Century," Art Journtll, winter 1997, 2. 23 The possibility that this story was originally to ha\e included an encounter between the hunger artist and a cannibal is explored by J.M.S. Pasley in "Asceticisnl and (;annihalisnl: Notes on an Unpublished Kafka Text," O~ford Gerrtlnn Studirr, 1 (1966): 102-1 13. 24 "\'drum gerade ~ e t z tnach vierzig Tagen aufhiiren? Er hatte es nor11 lange, unbeschrankt lange ausgehalten; Irarum gerade jetzt aufhiiren, \vo er im besten, ja noch nicht einnlal i ~ besten n Hungern war? \t7arunl ~vollteman ihn des Ruhmes berauben, weiter zu hungern, nicht nur der gronte Hungerkiinstler aller Zeiten zu werden, der er ja wahrscheinlich schon war, aber auch noch sich selhst zu iibertreffen bis ins Unbegreifliche, denn fiir seine Fihigkeit zu hungern fiihlte er keine Grenzen" (E 193-4). ("Tt'hy stop fasting at this particular moment, after fort! days of it? He had held out for a long time, an unlimitedly long time; why stop nolv, ~vhenhe Ivas in his best fasting form, or rather, not yet quite in his best fasting form? Tt'hy should he be cheated of the fame he would get for fasting longer, for being not only the record hunger artist of all time, which presumably he Ivas already, hut for heating his own record by a performance beyond human imagination, since he felt that there were no limits to his capacit! for fasting?" [CS 2711) 25 "Sadism and Masochism in Two Kafka Stories: 'In der Strafkolonie' and 'Ein Hungerkiinstler,"' ,Vlodern Lnnguagr ,Votes, 93 (19%): 437. 26 Norris' ar-ticle explores the sado-masochistic dimensions of the master-sla\e relationship between the artist and impresario in an effort to dislodge the interpretation of "A Hunger Artist" from the spiritualized reading to which it is almost invariably subject. Her piece is certainly one of the best attempts to characterize the artist's acthit! as perfornlati\e. At the same time, it should be noted that in contradistinction to so much of Kafka's other work, the impresario is never simpl! a representathe of a uni\ersal or abstract la~v,and the artist is not ultimately punished (or slain) by an apparatus or superstructure external to him. In other wor-ds, Norris' psychological account is in the end also unable to entertain the idea that hunger- could in any sense be an art. In another discussion of art and ritual in Kafka, Gerhard Neunlann gi\es a pro\ocative account of the hunger- ar-tist as a self-undermining sign s!stem, the collapsing of all the dimensions of a co~nmunicativefield into a single person. See "Hungerkiinstler und hlenschenfresser: Zum Ter-haltnisvon k n s t und kulturellenl Ritual im \Verk Franz Iiafkas," Archivfur Kulturgeschichle, 66:2: 34;-388. 27 "He might fast as much as he could, and he did so; but nothing could save him now, people passed him b y ((:S 2%). 28 "Are you still fasting?" asked the overseer, " I l l e n on earth do \ou mean to stop?" ((:S 2i6) 29 Ronald Gray, Frnn; KclJka (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 19i3) 180. lt'orking from the same assu~nptions,one could go further and claim that the asceticism at work here is so radical that it ~villnot permit itself the \anity of the name asceticism. This ~vouldbe an asceticism that renounces its \ e n claim to renunciation. In its

most extreme form, it could not be said to d o an) thing at all, a n d ~vouldthus be po~verlesst o protect itself from appearing entirely idle. In this regard, "'4 Hunger Artist" can be read au a mediration o n the third essay of the Grnmlo,q qf.llornls, particularl! Nietzsche's concerns about whether the ascetic ideal can actually be confronted b! anvthirlg but its olv11 self-destrlicti\eness. In his notebooks, Iiatka writes about the "Urler-sattlichen," ".%ketenn ~ v h o under-take hunger strikes in order to elicit a series of seemingly incompatible dictates about what will count as eating a n d fasting (Hoth:eztsr~orbnvitztngcncruf drm I.crnde nnd (tnderr Proyo N U S dr?n .Y(t(hlop, iP,~~chrnbztch~lus,qobr in 8 Hhndm, 242-43). These ascetics differ- from the hunger- artist because his performance never- allo~vs for the sirnultctne~!\ of \oiceq which hail these "Llnersattliche11," nor for the structure of lrtzt nhich punctuates the injunctions to them. 30 The artist's comments about not being able to find the right food could be read as an ironic jab at the philosophy of aesthetic taste. In these terms, the hunger artist would be a L n t i a n subject who is unable to find those m!sterious beautiful objects which facilitate singular- exercises of disinter-ested aesthetic judgment, a n d hunger art \vould be a discourse of whims a n d preferences rather than a set of serious claims about beautv that demand universal assent. 31 "Sonle~vherein his jaws lfr-eedom] seemed to lurk" / "The joy of life str-eamed with such ardent passion from his throat" (CS 277). 32 This "fr-ee" figure in a cage I-ecallsa char;lcterizatior~that L f k a elsewhere I-eser\es for human beings. T h e ape in "Ei11 Bericht fiir eine Akademie" writes: "Oft habe ich in den Llrietks vor meinem i\uftreten irgendein Kii11stlerp;rar oben an der Decke an Trapezcn hantiererl sehe11. Sie schw,lngen sich, sie schaukelten, sie sprangen, sie schwebten ei11;11lder in die h r m e , eirler trug den anderen an den Haaren mit d e ~ Gebin. n 'Auch das ist hfenschenfreiheit', dachte ich, 'selbstherrliche Re~vegung.'D u Lkrspottung der heiligen S a t u r : Kein Bau ~viirdestandhalten vor dem Gelichter des .-\ffentums bei diesern A~lblick"(Elziihlutig~ti, 142). ("In variet~ theaters I have often watched, before my turn came o n , a couple of acr-obats performing o n trapezes high in the roof. The) snung thenlsel\es, the! rocked to a n d fr-o, they sprang into the ail; the\ floated into each other's arms, o n e hung bv the hair- from the teeth of the other: 'And that too is human fr-eedonl,' I thought 'self-contl-olled mo\ement.' What a mocker) of hol\ mother nature! Were the apes to \ee such a \pectacle, n o theater walls could stand the shock of their laughter" [CS 2531.1 3 3 T h e PI-eralenceof Judeo-Christian image17 i11 "A Hunger- Artist" has often bee11 noted. In this regar-d, the narr-ator'\ insistent references to salvation erlcour-age parallels between this final scene in the cage a n d Christ's words at the crucifixior~: "Father, for-give them; for- they d o not know what they are doing" ( 7 h r H o l ~Biblr: A'RLI Kcq~ired Standard EOifio~r[New York: Oxfor-d Lip, 19891 Luke 23:34). The obvious difference between the two passages is that Christ asks for for-giveness for others. a forgi\eness only He can provide. T h e point is not ill-taken, however; for the more cr-ucial corlnection may be the link between eating a n d forgiverless: IVhilc the> n c l e eating, Jesus t o o l a Ic>af of h r c ~ d and . aftel blessing it 11cbroke it. ga\c to the disciples. i ~ %%id, ~ ~"1-ale. d e a : this i s m > hod)." 1-11c11hi. took a cup. and aftel giving . of >OU: ~ C I I this i~ 1111 hloorl of the tlrnnks he ga\c ~t to them. saring, "Lhillk fi0111 ~ t 1111 r r ~ \ e ~ i a l7,hich ~ t . i5 pourer1 out iol- In,lrlr lot- rhc fol-gi\enr\\ of \in\." (\l,rttl~r\\26: 2Gi-28)

In t h ~ stwist to the canrlibal~rnltheme, the ar-tist assumes neither- the place of Christ nor the disciples beca~iseh e proves ina able to partake of the Eucharist o r to In thi\ respect, the al-tist doubly corlfounds offer u p a bod! for tr-ans~lbst;~ntiatim. the logic of a resurrection i11 ~vhichthe dissolution of the body rvol~ldpave the Ivav for its transcendence a n d I-edemption.

1000

JAN MIESZKOWSKI

34 Extending the insights of1.L. Austin, it has been suggested that a speech act can

take place only because it is not an undifferentiated, instantaneous expression of

a self-identical intention and takes place only by repeating or citing an iterahle

statement. At the same time, h! definition a speech act neither describes nor

reports, and to understand it with recourse to anything that pre-exists it is in effect

to transform it into a constati\e reference. To he a speech act, a performahe must

supercede an! principle of codification or formalization. It corresponds to

nothing hut its own act and pro\es itself to he as much determining of as

determined by the circunlstances or context of its articulation. In this sense, any

performative will reveal itself to he essentially mis-aligned with respect to the

intent, goal or aim that precedes it, i.e., assessed as actions, performati\es will

always appear to mis-fir-e or to mis-act.

The notion of iterability has been most decisi~el! discussed inJacques Derrida's "Signatur-e, E\ent, Context," ,L.lnrgins ofPhilosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: U of (;hicago P, 1982) 307-30. Shoshana Felman has explored the ~ a r i o u sparadoxes of speech acts in The L~terarySprrch-Act: Don Jzrnn 7uithJ.L. Aurtin, or Sedzrctzon zn fiuo LunLptlgrs,trans. (:atherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983). On the failure of performative and cognitive language to con\erge, see Paul de Man, "Excuses," .4lkgon'es qfRending (New H a ~ e nYale : UP, 1981). For an effort to go beyond this impasse, see IL'erner Hamacher's "Afformati~e,Strike," in Ilhlter Rmjnrnin's Philosophy, ed, '4. Benjamin and P. Oshorne (New York: Routledge, 1994). 35 The verb comes from the Middle High German z~mzihen("ahschlagen," "sich lossagen"), which is from the Old High Gernlanjlr-tihnn: ver-sagen," "venveigern." Zihrn/zihan initially meant "anzeigen," "kundtun," and later "auf einen Schuldigen hinweisen." In Middle High German, umihen shared the connotation of "lossagen" with entrchuldzgrn (cf. Jacob and IL'ilhelm Grimm, Deutrches J1'drterbzrch [Leipzig: \on S. Hirzel, 1854-1). '4 broader consideration of the theo-linguistico-philosophical dimensions of Verteihung would ha\e to begin ~viththe Greek c~pr~logza and examine the complex relationship between a p o l o e and autobiography from Plato to hugustine to Rousseau. "

36 In this respect, the attendant's gestur-e to his associates indicating the artist is cr-azy onl! supplements the act already undenvay within the artist's r-equest, i.e., the attendant actually nlimics rather than rebukes the artist. 37 The irr-educibl! \erhal structure of the act is most famously explored by Nietzsche in his stud! of the predicati\e and positional polvers of language in ?%-rJZill to Poz~~er and the Genetdog?' of ,Uortlls. His analyses, particularl! the concept of interpretation he de~elops,are in many respects expositions of ar-guments made by Kant, Hegel, and, to a lesser degr-ee, the German Romantics. The most productive studies of Nietzsche's work on this topic include Paul de Man, "Rhetoric of Persuasion," Alkgones ofRending (New Haven: Yale UP, 1981), and bt'erner- Hamacher, "Das \'el-sprechen der-Auslegung," in Spiqqrl und Gkichnis, ed'c. N.Bolz and W. Huhener (Wurzburg: Konighauben und Neumann, 1983). 38 "To perform: to car-r) out an action, command, request, intention, scr-ipt,agenda, promise or undertaking; to car-ry into effect, execute or fulfill; to bring out, bring to pass, cause, effect, or produce a result" (OED).Pefonn was originally pnr-forrner/ perform, .'To carry through in due form," or a modification of the Old French par,fozrmi7: "To furnish, to accomplish or achie~e."