frawley - questioning the carnivalesque

7/31/2019 Frawley - Questioning the Carnivalesque

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Ashley Frawley

University of Kent

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Questioning the Carnivalesque

Is feudal ritual really a convincing model for contemporary revolution?

Many commentators have remarked, almost in passing, on the carnivalesque nature of

protests in recent years. In fact, during the initial writing of this piece, it was difficult not to

notice the peppering of coverage surrounding actions planned around the Copenhagen

climate summit with phrases like, behind the blue face-paint and carnival atmosphere

(BBC News, 2009), and the city centrewill become a carnival of parades (Independent,

2009). Yet few have considered the particular commonalities shared between carnival and

contemporary protests in greater detail or considered the implications that such ritualised

displays of dissent may have in terms of representing a dynamic process for social change.

Carnival as Revolution

In many cases this comparison is not unwarranted, as many groups actively seek to recreate

the carnivalesque in their protest actions. For example, one author writes that

contemporary forms of direct action do-it-yourself protest are finally breaking down the

barriers between art and protest and that, new forms of creative and poetic resistance

have finally found their time (Jordan, 1998: 129). A broad range of groups, from the Biotic

Baking Brigade (which uses public pieing as their weapon of choice) to Reclaim the Streets,

attempt to emulate what they see as the subversive nature of the carnival:

From the Middle Ages onward, the carnival has offered glimpses of the world turnedupside down *It+ celebrates the temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and

the established order; it marks the suspension of hierarchical rank, privileges, norms,

and prohibitions (BBB, 2004:39; RTS, 2002).

Such groups have described their use of carnival as:

[A]n attempt to make Carnival the revolutionary moment. Placing what could be in

the path of what is and celebrating the here and now in the road of the rush for

there and later... It is an expansive desire; for freedom, for creativity; to truly live.

This desire, for the present social order, is revolutionary (Reclaim theStreets!,1997).

For many practitioners, including those who participated in 1999s Carnival Against Capital,

carnivals appeal lies in its being halfway between party and protest bringing together the

volatile mixture of carnival and revolution, creativity and conflict, using rhythm and music

to reclaim space, transform the streets, and inject pleasure into politics (Notes from

Nowhere, 2003: 174). It is a ludic protest offering flexibility, the expression of a diversity of

identities, encouraging people to enjoy and imagine other possible worlds and solicit

contributions to a counterculture fantasia, or a human community garden (Bogad,

2006:55).


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University of Kent

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Even those outside of activist movements have celebrated the growing propensity for

demonstrations, regardless of their outcome, to represent expressions of collective joy in

modern societies which apparently share fewer public rituals (Ehrenreich, 2007: 260).

Moreover, unlike many of the sources cited above, not all actions resembling carnival do so

with such consciousness of purpose. So common have carnivalesque themes in protest

become that it is difficult to imagine an action which does not demonstrate some aspect

thereof, from masking, dance, music and street theatre at G20 protests in 2009 to a lone

attendee at an oil refinery strike clad in a grim reaper costume (and to whom a fellow striker

had yelled, the placard would have been enough! *Black, 2009+).

Indeed, protests may play a similar role in modern social structures as former public rituals

like the carnival of feudal times, but whether one is consciously mobilising what one theorist

calls tactical carnival (Bogad, 2006) or, like the lone grim reaper, merely going through the

motions because thats what one does, the effect is nonetheless more likely to be the

complete opposite of what most practitioners probably have in mind. As will hopefully

become clear momentarily, far from being revolution itself as the introduction to Mikhail

Bakhtins oft-cited volume celebrating the subversive nature of the carnivalesque would

have it, it is about as revolutionary as a new hair product, and equally anti-capitalist. That

is, not only do the vast majority of such demonstrations by and large fail to threaten the

existing order, but they are actually both part of and reflective of that order, and further, act

as a reaffirmation of existing hierarchies and social structures.

Carnivals Against Capitalism

It should be noted that although this critique might be extended to a broad range of protest,

I recognise that not every action has lofty aims of bringing down the existing social order.However, with activists brandishing placards and banners reading, System Change, Not

Climate Change and Abolish Capitalism Now!, one wonders how the actual realisation of

such goals might be accomplished with anything less than a revolution of a very different

sort than those involving hairspray and collective displays of public frustration.

In addition, more and more there is a propensity for the ends to be subordinated to a

primary concern with the meansto planning actions, responding to a perpetual state of

crisis and raising awareness and converts. What precisely a movement hopes to achieve in

the long run and how best such a goal might be attained seems a peripheral (and sometimes

altogether absent) consideration. As one commentator has pointed out, It seems we havevery little idea of what it might actually require to bring down capitalism. As if all it needed

was some sort of critical mass of activists occupying offices to be reached and then wed

have a revolution (Give up Activism, 2001)

If those carrying banners proclaiming that, Capitalism isnt workinganother world is

possible truly believe their own words, the first step is to realise that, personally liberating

though it may be, it may actually be little more than a subtle reaffirmation of capitalism in

the guise of protest.

Anthropology of Ritual and Protest


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University of Kent

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Any anthropologist would be keenly aware of Victor Turners 1969 thesis concerning the

role played by what he termed the liminal in social rituals, and the propensity for ritualised

public expressions of dissent to reaffirm and sustain the existing social order. In particular,

his description of what he calls, rituals of status reversal bears a striking resemblance to

protest actions and demonstrations of the present day. For Turner, these rituals are

characterised by their liminality: lying at the threshold betwixt and between the positions

assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention and ceremonial (Turner, 1969: 95).

In such rituals, hierarchies are temporarily inverted and normal codes of behaviour

suspended. The stronger are made weaker; the weak act as though they were strong, often

engaging in mimicry, masking and public castigation of structural superiors (ibid.: 168).

Although such events may be calendrical or cyclical in nature, they can also erupt during

times when those superiors are perceived to have so disrupted the balance between

society and nature that disturbances in the former have provoked imbalances in the latter

(ibid.: 184). If this description reveals a number of striking parallels, then it is likely that the

two also share many of the same functions. According to this conception, whether

calendrical or arising at moments when the whole community is threatened due to

historical irregularities altering the natural balance between what are conceived to be

permanent structural categories, carnivalesque demonstrations of dissent perform the

function of bringing social structure and communitas into right mutual relation once again

(ibid.:178). That is, for all the attempts to rehabilitate the notion of carnival as a subversive

practice intrinsically valuable in its representation of resistance and modelling of a

different, pleasurable and communal ideal, its essential problematic remains. Namely, its

failure to do away with the official dominant culture, its licensed complicity (Stallybrass and

White 1986:19).

This would not be so problematic however, if it were not for the fact that demonstrations

seem less and less to act as a symbolic tool in a larger repertoire of resistance than a go-to

method for a vast array of causes. At the risk of being far too pessimistic, it is important to

delineate clearly the limits of this type of activism and to point out that doing cannot be a

substitute for thinking. Serious change cannot be effected without action, but aimless

hyper-activismdoing because something must be donecan actually channel energies

away from any seriously progressive project aimed at large-scale social change. Moreover,

while many actions have an immediately recognisable carnival-like atmosphere (ie, mask,

music, dance, etc.), even those that appear more serious may nonetheless possess many of

these aforementioned qualities. In order to draw out some of these parallels, it is necessaryto look in more detail at three aspects of carnival that are becoming more and more

commonplace in protest todayliminality, the suspension of norms and codes of behaviour,

and lastly, the ritual inversion of hierarchiesand to consider their role in sustaining the

existing social order.

1. Liminality

The liminal is defined as the in between state set temporarily apart from the normal pace

of everyday life. It is an event in the life cycle of a society whose transience arises from the

fact that its social purpose is not to actually overthrow existing hierarchies but to


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University of Kent

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therapeutically engage in role play, to act out revolutionary emotions as a form of catharsis,

providing a discharge of all the ill-feeling that has accumulated (Turner, 1969: 179).

So unreflectively is the term temporary used by many protest movements when describing

their aims to open up spaces, or to, in the words of a banner unravelled at a Camden street

party/demonstration in 1995, RECLAIM THE STREETSFREE THE CITY, that it would be easy

to believe that such actions are really, challenging official cultures claims to authority,

stability, sobriety, immutability and immortality by cheekily taking over a main traffic artery

(Jordan, 1998: 141). However, it is precisely its temporary nature that leads to the exact

opposite end.

Interestingly, while Bakhtin was writing his now famous Rabelais book to which so many

practitioners trace the roots of their revolutionary acts of subversion through carnival,

another early Soviet thinker Anatoly Lunacharsky warned that carnival is a safety valve for

passions that otherwise might erupt in revolution, an occasion which allows the lower

orders to let off steam in a harmless, temporary event (Docker, 1994:171). Indeed, when

the liminal phase comes to an end, it is often the case that frustratingly little ground has

been gained. When the ludic protest disbands, spaces that had been freed up for

temporary countercultural demonstrations of resistance are harmoniously handed back to

the hustle and bustle of everyday life and commerce.

2. Norms and laws are suspended, public spaces are given over to the common people

During carnival, ordered spaces are given over to disorder and mockery and traditional

norms and expectations of behaviour are lifted. The streets are taken over by the festivities

and in some places city halls are given to courts of fools. Women might cut mens ties orkiss any man that comes their way, and everywhere the rules of modesty and order, both

written and unwritten are temporarily suspended. Hierarchical societies dissolve into

communitas (a transient community of equals formed from an otherwise stratified social

structure) and those structurally subordinate are given license, during that liminal sphere of

time, to break the rules in an act of ritualised transgression.

Similarly, in many protest activities, the streets are given over to the festivities, to the

marchers and demonstrators. Those who would not normally associate often intermix and

intermingle in a playing out of communitas and, as in the sanctioned carnival, the ordinary

social norms and order are temporarily suspended. Often, participants attempt to maketheir rule breaking more visible, through risqu dress, costuming, impromptu dance,

performance and other art. However, contrary to what many proponents assert, this

mobilisation of carnivalesque forms does not, as one author writes, break the rules in order

to make them more visible and in so doing, open up paradoxical space and the

opportunity for critique (Rhodes, 2002:135), but rather it implicitly strengthens the very

rules it hopes to transcend.

It is when rules are broken that their necessity becomes all the more vivid. In our daily lives

we usually fail to appreciate the importance of structured narrative in communication until

someone breaks the unwritten codes that render that communication coherent. In the sameway, when the abandoned placards have been swept up and the first cars and pedestrians


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University of Kent

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are released from the bottleneck to take back the formerly liberated streets and town

squares, the city seems to breathe a collective sigh of relief as the normal routine resumes

unscathed.

The stark contrast between order and disorder serves as a reminder of why the streets

arent our streets! (as protestors at the G-20 shouted while clashing with police) to do with

what we like (or, to an outsider, alienated from the display, what they like). Moreover, as

Zizek (2003) illustrates using The Matrixas a metaphor, like the countercultural heroes of

the film, one might think that liberation is being practised through the act of breaking

natural laws, but the paradox is that these miracles are possible only if we remain within

the virtual reality sustained by the Matrix and merely bend or change its rules; our real

status is still that of slaves. The question becomes then, whether to perform a postmodern

strategy of resistance, of endlessly subverting or displacing the power system, or a

more radical attempt at annihilating it (Zizek, 2003). However, unlike the film, the breaking

of rules and the temporary liberation of space are often described as being radical and

revolutionary in and of themselves, and the larger questions are so subordinated to

practice that even asking them has become taboo.

3. Ritual inversion of hierarchical roles and the castigation of superiors

As previously mentioned, in the liminal in-between space of the traditional carnival, the

usual hierarchical roles are reversed. In the Rhineland a woman dressed in black storms the

city hall and is given the key to the city by the mayor; elsewhere, a mock king and queen are

paraded through the streets or a cast of fools might parody an assembly of their governors.

Similarly, in protest activities, these themes may be accomplished in a number of ways,

from theatrical performances to costumes, masking and mimicry. A protest in July 2009against the UKs complicity with Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip, which made its way through

Hyde Park, saw small group of protesters donned anti-semitic dress and acted out ethnic

stereotypes, while others, dressed as skeletons and holding plastic severed limbs, engaged

in a symbolic dance in front of a blood soaked Israeli flag. Less controversially, at the G20

march protesters dressed as bankers, businessmen and top hatted capitalists. Elsewhere, a

group of mock pro-capitalists march in suits or gowns and pearls, spraying champagne

while holding a giant banner that shouts, Capitalism Rocks! accompanied by signs reading,

Money is My Life and Privatize More Stuff!

While the aforementioned protesters at the Gaza strip demonstration were likely a marginalbunch within the wider group, one commentator describing the scene pointed out that

protesters seemed unfazed by this scene (Rothschild, 2009). As we have already seen,

typical social norms are lifted in the transitory liminal sphere of the protest/carnival. A

symbolic realm is created where people are given licence to castigate their superiors, to

break taboos, act out revolution and ultimately to discharge the accumulated tensions in a

display where all can get their just deserts.

An ethnographer writing in the 1960s describes the Hindu festival of Holi as one in which a

highly structured society dissolves into a communitas, and the low are given license to

candidly confront and castigate their superiors for their accumulated sins. In front of whosehouse was a burlesque dirge being sung by a professional ascetic of the village? the


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University of Kent

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anthropologist describes, It was the house of a very much alive moneylender, notorious for

his punctual collections and his insufficient charities (Marriott in Turner, 1969:187). In

1920s Ghana, eight days were given over to a time when the perfect lampooning of liberty

was allowed, scandal placed on a pedestal, and villagers allowed to freely shout the faults

of superiors and inferiors alike without the threat of punishment (Bosman in Turner,

1969:178). Paradoxically however, this purifying power of mutual honesty has the effect of

regenerating the principles of classification and ordering on which social structure rests,

since through levelling, the liminal phase reminds and implies that the high could not be

high unless the low existed (Turner, 1969:180). As Turner writes,

...nothing underlines regularity so well as absurdity or paradox. Emotionally, nothing

satisfies as much as extravagant or temporarily permitted elicit behavior. Rituals of

status reversal accommodate both aspects. By making the low high and the high low,

they reaffirm the hierarchical principle. By making the low mimic (often to the point

of caricature) the behavior of the high, and by restraining the initiative of the proud,

they underline the reasonableness of everyday culturally predictable behavior

between the various estates of society (1969:176).

Furthermore, the use of symbolic objects, masking and other forms of symbolic dress serves

as a visual representation of the hierarchical role reversal where the low are temporarily

empowered in a world turned upside down (but even, it should be noted, this temporary

empowerment is illusory since it is licensed or sanctioned by the authorities themselves

[Sales, 1983:169]). Second, it takes the power out of those objects by identifying with them,

since *t+o draw off power from a strong being is to weaken that being in our perceptions of

it (Turner, 1969:174). This counts not only for our mimicry of our superiors who have

become a threat to us, but also for the identification with similarly threatening but unseenobjects. So for example, protestors paint their faces blue and mimic a giant blue wave

marching through the streets. In turning the threat into a carnival, fears that may act as a

driver are dissipated and aggressors are made into harmless caricatures.

Unable to understand our problems and fearful of their consequences, we,

mobilize affect-loaded symbols of great power. Rituals of status reversal, according

to this principle, mask the weak in strength and demand that the strong be passive

and patiently endure the symbolic and even real aggression shown against them by

structural inferiors (ibid.:176).

Through the submission of superiors to levelling mechanisms (think of the police lined up

along a parade route, the space given over for the protest) it submits superiors to levelling

mechanisms, sustaining the illusion that we are the ones who hold the power and they

are truly accountable to us.

Unequal societies inevitably create tensions, and thus the greater the drift of the very high

from the very low, the greater the potential for accumulated tensions to erupt. Thus, the

growth in such carnivalesque outbursts are less a measure of the strength of a resistance

movement than a measure of the degree of deviation from the foundational ideal of


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communitasthe illusion that underneath a hierarchical society everyone is nonetheless

equaland the reality of the hierarchy itself.

Demonstrations are a popular form of protest precisely because they are not revolutionary,

because they do not threaten the social order but nonetheless allow for the discharge of

tensions, which is allowed and sanctioned because such channelling of grievances make

them easier to police in the long term (Sales, 1983:169).Thus, in role playing our

powerfulness, the roles of citizensand representatives are reaffirmed through role

reversal so that the representatives are subject to the will of the people instead of the other

way around. Just as in the examples of non-Western rituals and festivals, structure is

cleansed of the accumulated sins and reborn the day after the festival.

The Discharge of Discontent

These three aspects could be extended to include other elements like the reaffirmation of

traditionwherein demonstrators play out non-violent rituals of protest not because it is

the best way to achieve an aim but because it reaffirms the founding myths of Western

(capitalist) societies as achieving revolution by peaceful means. However, these three form

the core of a striking parallel between carnival and protest demonstrations as functional

elements of unequal social structures. Demonstrations form a valuable part of any

resistance movement since, as previously mentioned, nothing can be achieved without

action. The problem arises when action becomes a substitute for deliberation. In order to

solve a problem, the majority of ones energies should be devoted to understanding it.

Should an anti-capitalist movement or a movement to stop a war use the same tactics as

one which hopes to raise awareness of breast cancer?

This perfunctory use of public displays reveals both a disorientation with regard to social

issues and a paucity of thinking about the future. Many of the valuable elements revealed in

contemporary protest movementsthe creativity of direct action tactics, the sheer mass of

people who care enough to leave their houses, the value and necessity inherent in

opposition itselfare ultimately diffused and dispersed through aimless activity that can

name no common enemy and thus claim no common goals except to share in collective

discontent. Indeed, as the protests surrounding the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit

attest, participants came from a varied milieu, from climate activists to indigenous peoples,

denouncing markets, consumerism, animal cruelty, the power wielded by the global north,

and so on (Kanter, The New York Times:2009). Discontent is a valuable driver toward socialchange, but if people truly want the goals emblazoned on their placards, it is not enough to

overturn a social system. Displays of anger and resistance are not revolution itself; unless

channelled toward a rational consideration of the problems that face us, they risk being

dispersed in a display that actually upholds the system it is supposed to challenge.

References


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BBB (Biotic Baking Brigade) (2004). Pie any means necessary: the Biotic Baking Brigade

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Zizek, Slavoj (2003). "Ideology Reloaded". In These Times, June 6. From URL:

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