On the Performance Lecture “Thought-Action Figures” – Tamalone van den Eijnden

“It matters what thoughts think thoughts.
It matters what knowledges know knowledges.
It matters what relations relate relations.
It matters what worlds world worlds.
It matters what stories tell stories.”[1]

On May 23, 2018 Jon McKenzie and Aneta Stojnic gave a performance lecture on “Thought-Action Figures” as part of the TiM lecture series. It was a passionate playdoyer for going beyond what they called “ideational thinking,” which is concerned with (supposedly) rational thought and exclusive of many other ways of thinking the world. In this sense, the format of the performance lecture could be seen as performing this idea already on the level of ‘knowledge transmission.’ The performance lecture was dispersed with ‘creative interventions.’ McKenzie and Stojnic would slip into different roles, enter into conversation with each other, and interact with some props (such as Action Figures, a sofa, two laptops and a screen). Also, the different sequences were often fragmented, and did not follow each other in a strictly linear order. Nonetheless, the manner ideas were presented was still quite similar to how ideas are communicated during a ‘traditional lecture.’ The audience would not speak back (even though at the end we were encouraged to dance on stage), ideas were mostly formulated in coherent sentences, the entire performance seemed highly scripted, and the sonic and visual sequences mostly served a secondary purpose. This, however, should not be seen as criticism, since they seemed to be highly aware of it and even played with this idea. For example, Stojnic entered the stage after McKenzie already started his talk, criticizing him for always giving the same kind of lecture.

Western thought, they ‘argued,’ has been predominantly concerned with the Platonian episteme, which typically entails eidos (ideas), logos (logic) and dialectics (method). What they proposed was a revival of Homerian doxa, which embraces imagos (images), mythos (stories), and mimesis (ritual). The Platonian conception of thinking, according to McKenzie and Stojnic, is epitomized by Rodin’s The Thinker, the introverted male, who does not even look into the world, let alone is ‘in touch’ with it. McKenzie and Stojnic refer to this sitting-thinking pose as a “Thought-Action Figure” (TAF). It is a physical activity that comes to lead to, and stand for a specific way of thinking. More dynamic figures have been proposed by thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin, who connected thinking with the activity of walking. TAFs are not bound to human action, McKenzie and Stojnic propose that also the ladder, the tree or the rhizome may be seen as such.

Since all these TAFs are somehow linked to some ‘great males’ McKenzie and Stojnic proposed also a variety of feminine TAFs, for example, they briefly alluded to Irigaray’s figuration of lips, and other ways of thinking inspired by the specificities of the female body, such as the hymen and the clitoris. They also suggested new ones, such as thinking-with-the-pussyhat, a hand-crocheted pink hat with little cat ears, which has been used widely in the USA to protest against misogyny.[2]

Certainly, these TAFs are all making valuable contributions in diversifying and complexifying the way we think about thinking. It would have been nice, if at this point they likewise could have made reference to TAFs which go beyond a binary conception of gender (while simultaneously being feminist), such as for example Vilém Flusser’s and Louis Bec’s explorations of the thinking of the Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, Donna Haraway’s idea of tentacular thinking, or Rosi Braidotti’s idea of the nomadic subject. However, my wondering about further TAFs, should not be viewed as criticism, since making the audience wonder about other TAFs could be viewed as an ideal response to this performance lecture.

[2] https://www.pussyhatproject.com/

[1] Haraway, Donna Jeanne. “Tentacular Thinking: Anthopocene, Capitolocene, Chthulucene.” Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016, p. 35.