This thesis looks into the relationship between dance and politics. It argues that dance is both a method of intervening in other symbolic languages and a system of inscription that is intertwined in that moment of intervention. Dance as a political language has a subversive potential; it can challenge verbal political statements. In the thesis I work with and against Jacques Rancière’s interpretation of politics as re-distribution of the sensible and with Aletta Norval’s reading of Rancière’s conception of democracy as egalitarian inscription which I expand and read as egalitarian embodied inscription. I show that Rancière’s focus on politics as rupture disables the recognition inscription as continuity. I show that dance enables a reading of politics as both rupture and continuity, an intervention that leaves traces that endure after it ends. Through a genealogy of the concept of the Dionysian I show that philosophers and dance practitioners alike have read dance as both subversive and affirmative, an intervention and a system of inscription that acts independently of spoken discourse. I show that Isadora Duncan created the first political moment in modern dance as a re-distribution of the sensible; at the same time although she created egalitarian embodied inscription she did not leave a codified system of movement, and did not contradict her politics in spoken language. I show that Martha Graham created the second moment of re-distribution of the sensible in which she created a codified movement language that subverted politics in spoken words. Finally, I revisit Rancière’s work and bind his discussion of human rights with the problematic of the tension between rupture and continuity. I re-read both these arguments with my interpretation of dance as political and argue that it yields a reading of dance as enabling the creation of human rights claims. Dance is both subversive and affirmative.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:629526 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Mills, Dana N. |
| Contributors | Freeden, Michael |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9a7c8578-b13c-4036-813c-867a53dc2e77 |
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