Contents of spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/papers/stiv.refrain
[The following text relates to the recent/current string on "the
refrain". Although rather long, I find discussion of D&G's concepts
most productive in terms of some extended development, or
'animation', of the focal concept. The complete text of this essay
will appear in a volume entitled _Articulating the Global and the
Local_, edited by Doug Kellner and Ann Cvetkovich to appear in 1996
at Westview Press.]
Of _hecce'ite's_ and _ritournelles_: Movement and Affect in the
Cajun Dance Arena
As a French scholar attempting to understand "cultural studies"
within the context of post-structuralist theories and their relation
to francophone studies, I read the _Cultural Studies_ volume and
related discussions with special interest. For, upon consulting the
volume's essays and especially its index in some detail, I confirmed
a long-held suspicion regarding an apparently "global" assumption
for undertaking the examination of "local" practices. That is, with
the exception of essays by Meaghan Morris and Elspeth Probyn, the
exclusion from this volume of references to works by Gilles Deleuze,
alone and with Fe'lix Guattari, implicitly points to the practical
limitations imposed on certain voices of post-structuralist theory
for critically approaching the "local." Such a limitation might well
lead one to conclude, for example, that the Deleuze-Guattari
critical corpus is of no utility whatsoever in "cultural studies"
research. Without denying the possible "danger," notably the risk
of totalizing effects on particular "local" practices posed by the
complex conceptual terminology developed throughout the
Deleuze-Guattari corpus, I wish to challenge both the general
limitation and this particular conclusion in terms of the
"global"/"local" dyad. I employ two complementary, "global" concepts
proposed by Deleuze and Guattari in _A Thousand Plateaus_
(henceforth abbreviated ATP), as theoretical tools for examining
specific "local" practices: on one hand, the concepts of
_hecce'ite's_ (i.e. the "thisness" of events) and _ritournelles_
(i.e. effects of differences in the "event"'s repetition), on the
other hand, the dynamic and continuous reconstitution of "spaces of
affect," of forms as well as of feeling, within Louisiana Cajun
dance culture.\3
I will argue that the components of _hecce'ite's_, affect and
speed that constitute an "event," provide a precise means to
describe the reconfigurations in Cajun dance arenas of "spatial
practices" through dialogic interaction between musicians and
dancers/ spectators.\4 These are "affective investments" through
which "the body [understood as more than simply a semantic space and
less than a unity defining our identity] is placed into an
apparently immediate relation to the world" (Grossberg 1986, 185;
cf. also 1988 & 1993). Furthermore, the concept of _ritournelles_
serves to describe more precisely the "event" under scrutiny, not
only the music (lyrics and rhythms) that drives the dance
performance, but also the physical repetition of steps and movements
through which the dancers' propulsion enables them to engage in
dialogue with each other as well as with the musicians. I hope to
communicate some effects of _hecce'ite's_ and _ritournelles_, first,
with reference to the lyrics of one French Cajun song and then with
evocations of dance/music images that must serve as a pale
substitute for on-site experiences.\5 I will argue that these
theoretical, "global" tools not only provide purchase for defining
and understanding a specific set of folkloric interests and
pursuits. I also propose these terms and analyses as a way of
beginning to redress what Jody Berland has identified as a
limitation of discussion of cultural technologies, music "rarely
conceived spatially . . . in relation to the changing production of
spaces for listeners" (39). These analyses will enable me, I hope,
to envisage "cultural studies" as a means of straddling a zone
"in-between" the "local" and the "global" by functioning as a
"territorializing machine" that "attempts to map the sorts of places
people can occupy and how they can occupy them" (Grossberg 1993,
15), in terms of their possibilities for investment, empowerment and
even resistance.
Spaces and _hecce'ite's_
In order both to examine Cajun music and dance as forms of
"spatial practice" and to situate these at an intersection of the
"global" and the "local," I posit a process of reconstitution of
feeling, that I call "spaces of affect," through which Cajun
musicians and fans (dancers & spectators alike) together engage in
continuous dialogical exchange as responses to their reciprocal
(musical and dance) performances. The formulation "spaces of affect"
precisely constitutes a "global"/"local" intersection, as a way of
envisaging (global) modes of reciprocal dynamics and collective
assemblages occurring in the (local) Cajun dance arena in terms of
hecce'ite's_. Specifically, just as dancers form couples to waltz,
two-step and jitterbug in variable responses to the anticipated
musical performance, the musicians prepare in each dance site to
provide the musical style(s) that anticipate the physical, i.e.
performative, dance demands of the particular audience. These
assemblages are based therefore on traits of _hecce'ite's_, i.e.
the mutual "relations of movement and rest" and the capacities of
participants on both sides of the stage front "to affect and be
affected" in interactive exchange (ATP 261). As Henri Lefebvre
notes, music and dance rhythms "embrace both [the] cyclical and
[the] linear," and it is "through the mediation of rhythms (in all
three senses of 'mediation': means, medium, intermediary) [that] an
animated space comes into being which is an extension of the space
of bodies" (206-207). I maintain that these variable experiences of
speed and affect circulating intensely between musicians and
dancers/spectators contribute both to the incessant reconstitution
of "spaces of affect" within specific performance arenas *and* to
the often contradictory and usually conflicting preferences of
musicians and fans alike regarding concomitant musical and dance
practices, a conflict to which I will return in the essay's final
section.\11
While this argument is necessarily limited by the absence of our
(reader's and writer's) envelopment in the _hecce'ite's_ of a Cajun
dance arena, the dynamic process that I designate as "spaces of
affect," I ask the reader to cast her/his memories back in time and
space to those peak "events" when feelings and movement coalesced
into indescribably, ineffably privileged experiences, occurring
perhaps all too infrequently as we get older. It might have been on
a playground on a warm spring night with a few friends gathered
around, or in a summer camp activity with hundreds of children, or
alone on a rooftop or in a field gazing at the stars. It might have
been on a sailboat, or surfing, or on dangerous white water or on a
lonely trail. It might have been with a lover, a child, in a foreign
country, in the street, or the backyard over the barbie. It might
even have been in front of the classroom, or around a seminar table
with students and colleagues, or alone with pencil in hand or before
the computer monitor, in those fleeting moments of creation and
understanding, of joy at making no apologies for what it is "we do."
If the lyrical "excess" that I have just produced seems more
appropriate for an article on Lamartine than on either "local" Cajun
dance spaces or on "global" theoretical discourse, this affective
evocation remains entirely within the problematics of _hecce'ite's_,
i.e. the "in-between" zone in which "local" investments and
resistances engage broader issues of enunciation, articulation and
power, i.e. the very "becoming of place and space" (Grossberg 1994).
As Deleuze and Guattari ask, "What is the individuality of a day, a
season, an event?" they respond that "a degree, an intensity, is an
individual, a _Haecceity_ that enters into composition with other
degrees, other intensities, to form another individual." And just as
"these degrees of participation [...] imply a flutter, a vibration
in the form itself that is not reducible to the properties of a
subject . . . that prevent the heat of the whole from increasing,"
this is all the more reason "to effect distributions of intensity,
to establish latitudes that are 'deformedly deformed,' speeds,
slownesses, and degrees of all kinds corresponding to a body or set
of bodies taken as longitude: a cartography" (ATP 253). They muse on
the variety of modes of individuations, of _hecce'ite's_, that
"consist entirely of relations of movement and rest between
molecules and particles, capacities to affect and be affected" (ATP
261): demonology, _contes_, haiku; wind in Charlotte Bront , "five
in the evening" in Lorca, meteorology in Tournier, a walk through
the crowd in Virginia Woolf, a group of girls in Proust (ATP
261-263, 271). And were one tempted to accept "an oversimplified
conciliation, as though there were on the one hand formed subjects,
of the thing or person type, and on the other hand spatio-temporal
coordinates of the haecceity type," Deleuze and Guattari insist:
You will yield nothing to haecceities unless you realize
that that is what your are, and that you are nothing but
that. . . . You are longitude and latitude, a set of speeds
and slownesses between formed particles, a set of
nonsubjectified affects. You have the individuality of a
day, a season, a year, a _life_ (regardless of its
duration) -- a climate, a wind, a fog, a swarm, a pack
(regardless of its regularity). Or at least you can have
it, you can reach it. (ATP 262)
"But where are the Cajuns?", the reader (and writer) may well
ask at this point, i.e. where do "local" practices (Cajun dance and
music) intersect all this talk of molecules and particles, this
swarm of "global" concepts?" The analysis that I propose is
precisely an attempt to understand the "event," specifically in the
Cajun music/dance arena, from an "in-between" perspective by
proposing the concept of _hecce'ite's_ as consisting not "simply of
a decor or backdrop that situates subjects, or of appendages that
hold things and people to the ground" (ATP 262). Rather, I wish to
understand _hecce'ite's_ in the music/dance arena as "the entire
assemblage in its _individuated aggregate_, . . . defined by a
longitude and a latitude, by speeds and affects, independently of
forms and subjects, which belong to another plane" (ATP 262, my
emphasis). This facet of my project, to situate the "global"/"local"
through a perhaps ineffable "in-between" of _hecce'ite's_ conceived
in it-/themselves, leads to a quandary that Guattari recognized: "As
soon as one decides to quantify an affect, one loses its qualitative
dimensions and its power of singularization, of heterogenesis, in
other words, its eventful compositions, the '_hecceities_' that it
promulgates" (1990, 67).\12 Yet, if _hecce'ite's_ are elusive, when
"quantified," it is through the concept of _ritournelles_ that I
hope to extend my consideration of the "individuated aggregate"
within the Cajun music/dance arena.
_Ritournelles_ and Affective Territories
I have selected a waltz performed by the group Beausoleil, "La
Valse du Malchanceux" (The Unlucky [Man's] Waltz"), on their album
"Bayou Boogie" for two purposes: the song serves both as an exemplar
for discussing the multiple connotations of the concept of
_ritournelle_, and as a starting point to illustrate, however
approximately, the possibilities of rhythm, movement, speed and
affect that contribute to forming _hecce'ite's_ within the focal
"events." [excerpt: verse 1 + refrain]:
"La Valse du Malchanceux" "The Unlucky [Man's] Waltz"
C'est a la valse apres jouer That's the waltz that was playing
Quand moi, j'ai fait mon idee When I made up my mind
C'est a la valse apres jouer That's the waltz that was playing
Chez ma belle j'ai parti When I set out for her house
C'est a la valse apres jouer That's the waltz that was playing
Quand `a ma belle j'ai demand When I asked for my sweetheart's
hand
C'est ca la valse apres jouer That's the waltz that was playing
Quand ses parents m'ont refuse'. When her parents refused me.
[Refrain]
C'est ca la valse veux tu me That's the waltz I want you to
joues sur le lit de ma mort play for me on my deathbed
C'est ca la valse veux tu me That's the waltz I want you to
joues le jour que je va play for me on the day that I
mourir die
C'est ca la valse veux tu me That's the waltz I want you to
joues jusqu'`a la porte du play for me up to the gates of
cimetiere the cemetery
C'est ca la valse que moi That's the waltz that I call the
j'appelle la valse du malchanceux. unlucky man's waltz. \13
Whereas the term _ritournelle_ translates as "refrain,"\14 I am
interested in the way in which the lyrics of this waltz "return,"
properly speaking, in the stanzas as well. For the repeated lyrics,
"C'est ca la valse apres jouer ...," forms an incantation that
combines the two forms of temporality of _hecce'ite's_, _Aeon_, "the
indefinite time of the event, the floating line that knows only
speeds and continually divides that which transpires into an
already-there that is at the same time not-yet-here," and _Chronos_,
"the time of measure that situates things and persons, develops a
form, and determines a subject" (ATP 262). The verb "jouer" in each
line, except at the start of stanza II, suggests this oscillation
between temporalities since its use creates a "becoming-music" that
permeates all thought and activity, linking the present "C'est ca la
valse" to the indistinct past established in the Cajun locution
"apres" preceding an infinitive. Then, in the refrain itself, this
"return" is modified in an explicitly dialogic manner, no longer the
"apres jouer" of an indefinite past, but the plaintive "veux tu me
joues" of an indistinct and yet inevitable future. The final verse
of the refrain offers a closure of sorts through the
self-referential manner of announcing the title, yet it also
provides the lyrical bridge that leads the song into its
instrumental phases and thus to the very moments in which the
response to the dialogic plea, "veux tu me joues," is actualized.
Thus, "music exists," say Deleuze and Guattari, "because the
refrain exists also, because music takes up the refrain, lays hold
of it as a content in a form of expression, because it forms a block
with it in order to take it somewhere else" (ATP 300). This movement
"somewhere else" occurs, they argue, through music's submitting the
refrain to the "very special treatment of the diagonal or
transversal, a treatment that consists in "uproot[ing] the refrain
from its territoriality" through music's "creative, active operation
. . . [of] deterritorializing the refrain" (ATP 300). I will address
in the next section ways in which such "deterritorializing" occurs
in geo-political terms, but for the moment, I wish to remain on the
dance floor, as it were. For the dancers respond directly to the
implicit dialogic "plea" of the Cajun song not so much in response
to the actual lyrics as through the "creative operation," for
example, of the 3-4 meter that defines the waltz.
These observations allow us to consider a second facet of the
"individuated aggregate" within _hecce'ite's_. A distinct trait or
code of the actual waltz performance in the Cajun dance arena is the
smooth walking step that assures the constant counter-clockwise
pattern of flows.\15 Yet, Deleuze and Guattari insist that "rhythm
is not meter or cadence; . . . Meter is dogmatic, but rhythm is
critical; it ties together critical moments" (ATP 313). The walking
step of the Cajun waltz is linear while also determining spatial
_ritournelles_ that are at once territorializing, i.e. in the
"becoming expressive of rhythm or melody" (ATP 316), and yet in
constant movement toward deterritorialization, what Deleuze and
Guattari call "territorial motifs" that form "rhythmic faces or
characters" in relationship to "territorial counterpoints" that form
"melodic landscapes" (ATP 317-318).
Such a constant interplay of "expressive qualities" forms
appropriative "signatures that are the constituting mark of a
domain, an abode" (ATP 316). This interplay is evident, I believe,
from particular dance responses that the waltz generates in the
dance arena, with several circular patterns usually contained within
each other, all propelled by the rhythmic support from and dialogue
with the musicians' expression. In the Cajun dance arena, each
couple forms a unit with its own territorial individuation, and the
very convention of the "lead" (male) and "following" (female)
assures the smooth integration of this individuation into the
assemblage.\16 The individuated aggregate thus responds to a rhythm
"caught up in a becoming," say Deleuze & Guattari, "that sweeps up
the distances between characters, making them rhythmic characters
that are themselves more or less distant, more or less combinable"
(ATP 320). One only need experience dancing with a novice partner,
male or female, or even more pointedly, alongside couples unable or
unwilling to follow the coded "flow," to understand Deleuze &
Guattari's formula, "It is a question of keeping at a distance the
forces of chaos knocking at the door" (ATP 320). For such chaos, and
even physical damage, can result on the dance floor through
ineffective communication from the "lead" through hands, arms and
often cheek-to-cheek contact, or as is more often the case, between
couples ineffectively maintaining the territorial "critical
distance."
Thus, to this fluid individuation of "becoming-expressive of
rhythms," of the "signature" marking the domain or abode on the
dance arena, corresponds a certain "decoding" or deterritorializing
within the dance arena as the couples continue moving around the
floor. Whatever flourishes introduced by the "lead" that the partner
"follows" -- turnout combinations and even back-and-forth shuffles
(the varsovienne) in uncrowded dance arenas; the simple
conversational step (rocking back and forth in place) in the crowded
space (Plater and Speyrer 53-56, 106) --, these movements all shift
the partners into different patterns within the counter-clockwise
flow, allowing for the "expressive qualities" at once to mark a
familiar abode (e.g. the shared "style" of the coded waltz
repertoire) and yet to maintain the territorial "critical distance"
of distinct spatial differentiation. This combination of affect and
speeds/slownesses thus contributes to maintaining a tension between
deterritorializing, apparently "decoding" forces of movement and the
simultaneously territorializing function on the dance arena.
Then, at each song's end, another facet of the _ritournelle_
becomes evident as the couples clear the dance floor and situate
themselves as spectators on the sides until the first strains of
next song call them back to the floor, or leave them to participate
as observers. In discussing the "event" in _Pourparlers_, as well as
in _The Fold_ (103-112), Deleuze insists that "the event is
inseparable from _temps morts_ . . . [that are] in the event itself,
it gives to the event its thickness [_e'paisseur_]" (_Pourparlers_
218; my translation). That is, the moments of alternation between
songs are as constitutive of the _hecce'ite'_, understood as
"event," as are the activities in the music/dance _ritournelle_.
Thus, the _temps mort_ (literally, the "dead time," or suspended
moment) is the complementary face of the flow continuing from one
song to the next since it is in this "moment" that socializing
occurs, that dancers can trade instructions on steps, or can simply
recoup their energy. Moreover, the "signature" of this domain or
abode manifests itself further at the juncture of the _temps mort_,
for it is in this "pause" that the musicians prepare and the dancers
anticipate the regular alternation between waltz (3-4) and two-step
(4-4) meters. Indeed, any deviation from the equal alternation
between these two forms, waltz to two-step/jitterbug and back to
waltz, serves to "sign" or characterize the particular dance arena
as more "traditional," i.e. with a dominance of waltzes, or more
"progressive," i.e. with a dominance of two-step/jitterbug numbers.
Similarly, the kinds of dance steps chosen by dancers in
response to songs of the faster 4-4 beat mark the particular dance
arena and its possibilities for reconstitution of "spaces of
affect." In certain dance halls, especially in rural Louisiana, that
attract an audience of older dancers, the two-step is de rigueur as
the dance response "appropriate" to songs of the 4-4 beat, and
performers of the Cajun jitterbug are sometimes actively discouraged
from practicing this step. To understand why, the participant in
the Cajun dance arena immediately notes the flow and transformation
of patterns therein, not only in comparison to the usually regular
counter-clockwise flow of the waltz space, but especially in terms
of the possible lateral shifts occurring during a two-step number.
That is, the two-step dance arena appears as a faster, fluid version
of the waltz floor since both are walking steps, with the two-step
requiring a regular rhythmic shift of the feet through eight
beats.\17 The two-step also generates the complex deterritorializing
effect that occurs with the waltz pattern, that is, of a quite
literal, counter-clockwise _ritournelle_ around the dance floor,
with variable configurations of flows and speeds held in check by
the size of both the dance assemblage and space.
This effect is altered dramatically, however, when even one
couple shifts from the two-step to the jitterbug. In the typical
dance arena, e.g. at Randol's Restaurant in Lafayette, LA, a few
couples on the periphery of the dance floor may be able to maintain
the fluid counter-clockwise, two-step movement throughout the song,
but can do so only by carefully negotiating their dance pattern
around and between the couples performing the more static jitterbug
moves. Of course, each couple performing the latter remains
constantly in motion. However, they simultaneously and necessarily
stake out a specific "territory" on the dance floor by engaging in
the regular push-pull, rotating parallelogram of the basic move
combined with the intricate upper-body arm movements that can make
the well-performed jitterbug so dazzling. Despite the dynamic
impression that a jitterbug performance creates, one implicit
statement that dancers make in shifting from the two-step to the
jitterbug concerns their regard for the fragility of the territorial
boundaries established in the fluid, counter-clockwise movements of
the two-step. Indeed, those dancers who maintain a steadfast
allegiance to one step or the other may find their efforts thwarted,
for example, by the aggregate of jitterbug couples who effectively
block the possibility for counter-clockwise flow or, conversely, by
the two-steppers who tend to move forward against and even through
the jitterbug pairs.\18
We here encounter the fundamental question of "distinction," the
"judgement of taste" to which Pierre Bourdieu has devoted an
exhaustive examination. As he points out, "explicit aesthetic
choices are in fact often constituted in opposition to the choices
of the groups closest in social space, with whom the competition is
most direct and most immediate" (60). Deleuze and Guattari speak of
this as "the disjunction noticeable between the code and the
territory," the latter "aris[ing] in a free margin of the code" and
formed "at the level of a certain _decoding_" (ATP 322). The
implicit message communicated by the choice of steps in the dance
performance, for example, may correspond for some dancers to their
affirmation of cultural identity, i.e. to a certain means of
determining margins and differentiating their own "becoming
expressive" in relation to such margins. Grossberg is thus correct
in arguing that shared taste for some texts (and practices, I would
maintain) "does not in fact guarantee that [the] common taste
describes a common relationship. Taste merely describes people's
different abilities to find pleasure in a particular body of texts
[and practices] rather than another" (1992, 42). Still, as Bourdieu
argues, "the most intolerable thing for those who regard themselves
as the possessors of legitimate culture is the sacrilegious
reuniting of tastes which taste dictates shall be separated"
(56-57). The assertion of "taste" clearly manifests itself toward
the conventions admissible in certain dance arenas, notably the
predilection for less "embellished" waltz moves or for the two-step
over the jitterbug. The specific territorial differences are thus
marked _through_ the code (i.e. conventions) evidently shared by
some dancers, and despite its complexity and fluidity, this message
comes across clearly to the musicians. For they are likely to
respond directly to the performers' and spectators' particular modes
of "becoming-expressive" through their own variable musical modes of
"becoming-dance," yet attendant to the fluctuations of "taste"
manifested in particular dance arenas.
Text/Pretext & Dialogue
The links between music and dance performances lead us to note
several other facets of _ritournelles_ that occur within the Cajun
music/dance arena. First, however the limited, but vital repertoire
of Cajun songs may be interpreted by musicians observing both
differing elements of cultural tradition and manifestations of fans'
tastes, it is clear that the repertoire's dissemination through
recordings certainly constitutes important linguistic and cultural
statements about musical self-representation and affirmation of
Cajun identity. Yet, the reconstitution of "spaces of affect" relies
not on these recordings, but on the _live performance) of the songs,
usually the same songs within the Cajun repertoire. Moreover, since
most dancers/spectators are now unlikely to understand these lyrics,
the frequent experience of these songs is in the form of _pretext_
for dancing and socializing in bars, restaurants and (now less
frequently) in _bals de maison_. This alternate and, I would argue,
principal status of the songs does not necessarily preclude a
linguistic communication. However, the examples of the Bruce
Daigrepont Band's usual venue (Sunday evenings at the New Orleans
club, Tipitina's) or Thursday night sets of the group File' at the
Maple Leaf in New Orleans are quite revealing: the vast majority of
spectators and dancers at these events do not understand French,
much less Cajun French, nor do they even hear clearly, much less
attend to the "message" contained in these lyrics.\19 Yet, dancers
and musicians have no difficulty whatsoever in reconstituting the
exhilarating "spaces of affect" through their mutual
"becoming-music"/"becoming-dance."
Thus, the corresponding active appreciation of Cajun music by
musicians and dancers/spectators alike is a socio-cultural
phenomenon that creates different "spaces of affect" in given Cajun
dance arenas, where "music is a deterritorialization of the voice,
which becomes less and less tied to language" (ATP 302). This
observation leads me to another component of this "affective
economy" (Grossberg [1988, 285]), the overall lack of uniformity in
the dancers'/fans' response. This component allows us to illustrate
one final facet of _ritournelles_ and also to address the
aforementioned "geo-political" aspect of deterritorialization by
comparing urban Cajun music/dance sites to rural settings. As I have
previously noted, the reconstitution of "spaces of affect" is
determined by the allegiance of dancers/spectators to particular
musical sensibilities toward Cajun music, and this allegiance goes
to the heart of the complex tensions existing in southern Louisiana
regarding Cajun self-representation in relation to the dominant
cultural formation. This is at once a question of the "frames" into
which musicians and dancers/spectators may be situated vis-a-vis the
cultural "event" *and*one of the dialogical relationship that
develops among and between musicians and dancers/spectators.\20
On one hand, considerations of "distinction" place couples in
constant communication regarding the steps that territorialize the
dance arena to greater or lesser degrees. Thus, borrowing from Lewis
(195), "inner games" may unfold on the dance floor and thus
constitute "nested" sub-territories therein in relation (and even
resistance) to the more general flow of dance movement. However,
whatever the differences and difficulties of articulations of
"taste" toward the dance steps (and musical interpretations), the
_hecce'ite's_, with their variables of rest and speed and their
concomitant expression and investment of affect, extend across and
around the dance floor, encompassing even those not participating in
the active dance movement per se. Indeed, by my use of the terms
"dancers/spectators" throughout this essay, I have meant to suggest
this all-encompassing articulation that is constitutive of "spaces
of affect," an expression enveloping spectators and musicians as
well as dancers in the "dance flow."
On the other hand, without precluding the model of "nested
frames," I prefer to envisage this dance space by drawing from
Bakhtin to argue that _ritournelles_ in all their forms develop in a
"dialogical" relationship between musicians and dancers/spectators
(cf. 1981, 270-275). In many *rural* dance halls and certain
festivals of southern Louisiana, *centrifugal* relations prevail
between musicians and dancer; that is, these relations are oriented
outward, away from the musicians, with an emphasis on the
performance of the dancers, in synch with the musicians' expression,
but beyond them. In these centrifugal contexts, not only do the
musical groups most locally popular respect the fans' desire for
familiar and relatively simplified musical forms, some local
populations themselves (usually older fans) frown on, if not
actively discourage, the responsive dance innovations, notably the
Cajun jitterbug, that frequently accompany the more "progressive"
musical cadences. Elsewhere, such as in many *urban* dance arenas,
and especially in concert and festival settings outside Louisiana,
the *centripetal* or musician-oriented relation occurs. Such
circumstances (to entertain usually passive audiences and free-form,
rock-nourished dancers) create demands on musicians for the "fusion"
and experimental sounds that bands like Beausoleil, Fil and Wayne
Toups & ZydeCajun bring to their music.\21
This negotiation of "centripetal"/"centrifugal" relations
between dancers/spectators and musicians allows us to address how
the "global" and the "local" intersect within the elements of
_hecce'ite's_ and _ritournelles_. The contrasting dance sites and
modes of exchange therein certainly determine different
possibilities for reconstitution of "spaces of affect,"
possibilities that concern the "global" appropriation of Cajun
cultural forms by apparently external, American mass culture. It is
clear that the creation of renewed "spaces of affect" through the
dynamic interaction between musicians and dancers/spectators allows
Cajuns (and even so-called "Cajuns-by-choice") to participate
literally and figuratively in the "two-step" of self-representation.
However, this process is complicated, I maintain, by the shifting
articulations of Cajun identity in relation to the ever-present
"instability of frontiers" imposed from conditions of the
surrounding hegemonic formation (Laclau & Mouffe 136). That is, the
joyful, affirmative strength that emerges in musical lyrics and
forms (including dance steps) may strike back and at times assert
its own counter-invasive mode of territoriality in the face of
various forms of appropriation. Indeed, just as many lyrics in Cajun
music emphasize precisely this individual integrity in the face of
adversity, the attitudes of fans and musicians alike clearly support
Bourdieu's contention about marking "distinction," that "the song
[and, I would argue in this context, the dance], as a cultural
property which (like photography) is almost universally accessible
and genuinely common . . . calls for particular vigilance from those
who intend to mark their difference" (60). Thus, whereas certain
groups (notably, in some chapters of the Cajun French Music
Association) explicitly "prohibit" members from dancing the
jitterbug (aka "the jig") at Association sponsored events, other
fans (particularly among the fluid uptown New Orleans dance crowd)
appear to insist on more free-form interpretations of the dance
steps, waltz and jitterbug alike.
Yet, in the very negotiation between seemingly conflicting
articulatory practices, particularly between apparently "outside"
and even "global" forces in relation to a locally perceived "inside"
of the cultural frame, musicians often express, and their fans often
exhibit, a deterritorializing ambivalence toward the musical and
cultural identity and heritage being reinforced. For, in seeking to
reach ever wider audiences and thereby attain forms of popularity
(and economic rewards), musicians necessarily contribute to the
inherently equivocal articulations and thus to an active
reterritorialization by the dominant cultural formation. That is, in
seeking an audience beyond what is frequently viewed as the
_confines_, or limited "market," of Cajun society in southern
Louisiana, musicians and their fans often willingly participate in
the appropriation of the culture's forms of expression by these same
"invasive" forces. To the literal commodification of Cajun music and
zydeco (e.g. in Frito-Lay and Burger King promotions), one can also
add examples of such commercialized cultural re-presentations as the
film "The Big Easy" and the 1990 Dolly Parton/Louisiana ABC
television special.\22
A final example will illustrate how facets of _ritournelles_ in
the dynamic dancer/musician dialogue can help clarify the apparent
socio-cultural ambivalence through strategies that arise from
"global"/"local" negotiations. For one dance/music segment in
particular, available commercially, suggests the active and
prevalent possibilities of communication between dancers and Cajun
musicians, precisely *through* the fusion of rock, zydeco and Cajun
sounds responding to the pressures of "global" forces of the
American music industry. The final scene from the Les Blank et.al.
documentary, _"J'ai Ete au Bal". The Cajun and Zydeco Music of
Louisiana_, emphasizes both the centripetal, musician-oriented
dialogic pole and the centrifugal, "becoming-dance" of this music,
performances-in-dialogue that take place by featuring dancers
responding to the music of Wayne Toups and his band ZydeCajun. This
name alone defines the deliberate musical fusion, as Toups says, "a
new wave Cajun; it's Cajun music of the future" (Interviews 162).\23
Toups's poignant introductory statement reveals his awareness of
the precarious equilibrium between innovation and tradition,\24 and
the filmmakers then introduce the final number that stands in sharp
contrast to the film's previous Cajun performances in terms of its
setting, instrumentation, and especially Toups's distinctive musical
and fashion statements. Besides the location in a car-port (a modern
version of the traditional site for the _bal de maison_) and the
predominantly young crowd of dancers, the instrumental break
presents not the traditional fiddle, but the electric piano and lead
guitar, followed then by Toups's own impassioned performance on
electrified accordion. The instrumental finale is Toups's showcase,
with the accordionist, clad in muscle shirt, headband and garish
jams, emphasizing the transformative power of the traditional lyrics
of the song "Allons`a Lafayette," from music to dance and back
again, with electrified instrumentation and the mixture of Cajun,
zydeco and rock cadences. As for the dancers, because of the
accelerated 4-4 beat, the two-step simply becomes too difficult,
especially on a dance floor through which the smooth negotiating
necessary for this step would be impossible. Thus, the jitterbug is
an entirely appropriate response to the pace set not only by the
energetic beat, but also by the territorializing elements in this
particular "becoming-expressive of rhythm or melody" (ATP 316).
This film segment brings into sharp relief the strategies
deliberately pursued by bands like Toups's Zydecajun and Michael
Doucet's Beausoleil in order to negotiate implicitly the
"global"/"local" pressures: while surviving commercially with
recording contracts and attracting listeners and dancers, new and
old alike, with their "fusion" sound, these bands also seek to
integrate and thereby to develop and extend their cultural heritage
with and through this very sound. Live performances of these and
other groups show the extent to which they remain concerned (though
certainly not in the terms that I adopt) with maintaining the
waltz/two-step _ritournelle_, with enhancing the _hecce'ite's_, i.e.
the combined elements of speed and affect, and thus and especially
with maximizing the performance dialogue between musicians dancers/
spectators in venues outside as well as within Louisiana.\25 Thus,
in contrast to critics (notably Ancelet 1990, 1992, and Marc Savoy)
who have addressed the "global"/"local" conflict in the apocalyptic
or oppositional terms of dilution of Cajun heritage, I understand
this dialectic as variations on _l'invention du quotidien_ (the
invention of daily life), i.e. the negotiated and shifting
construction of diverse "spatial practices."
It is precisely the continuing capacity to define diverse "spaces of
affect" through the constitutive facets of _ritournelles_ in Cajun
music and dance that assures future possibilities of innovation and
renewed self-definition within the Cajun heritage. The
Deleuze-Guattari methodological perspectives that I continue to
explore are productive, I believe, for understanding the expressive
potentials and thresholds inherent to the "local" intersections of
dance and musical performances. For while "global" concepts, such as
_hecce'ite's_ and _ritournelles_, allow us to examine the varied
forms of the dance/music dialogue in which dancers/spectators and
musicians engage at each dance/music site, these concepts also help
establish connections toward the ongoing socio-cultural dialectic
engaged in the same sites, in the dance arenas upon which the
"local" and the "global" intersect and often collide. These
geo-political negotiations of "forms and feelings" are precisely the
proper focus of a "cultural studies" understood not in a limited,
"territorialized" sense of dueling disciplines, but rather as
"(de)territorializing" openings toward and negotiations between
adjoining theoretical and conceptual articulations and strategies.
Notes
3\ As Bogue (1989) notes, Deleuze and Guattari borrow the term
"hecceities" from Duns Scotus (_haecceitas_) to designate "an
'atmosphere', in the sense both of a particular meteorological
configuration and of a given ambience or affective milieu" (134,
154). Massumi observes further that "the emphasis on the 'thisness'
of things is not to draw attention to their solidity or objectness,
but on the contrary to their transitoriness, the singularity of
their unfolding in space-time (being as flux; metastability)" (183).
4\ On "spatial practices," see de Certeau li; on the "dance
arena," see Hazzard-Gordon. On dialogics, I adopt and adapt concepts
suggested by Bakhtin.
5\ Much rich visual documentation is available in Rhonda Case
Severn's work on "Discovering Acadiana."
11\ Turner (1977) discusses similar phenomena of "plural
reflexivity" in terms of "liminal" or "framed spaces" (33-36). See
also Turner (1982, 20-60).
12\ Bogue (1991) develops the possibilities of _hecce'ite's_ as
"rhizomusicosmology," as do Burnett and Saper, in different ways,
for the hypertext computer environment.
13\ Traditional: Lawrence Walker. I transcribe all lyrics
exactly as printed on the record jacket except two translations that
I revise: the title (from "The Unlucky Waltz"); and in the second to
last verse, from "That's the waltz I was playing when we were
married." Permission for this transcription was granted by Rounder
Records.
14\ See ATP 310, plateau 11, "1837: Of the Refrain."
15\ For a more specific analysis of "flows," see Turner (1977;
1982, 55-58).
16\ On the waltz conventions, see Plater and Speyrer 35-36,
51-56.
17\ Male/lead: 1) L forward 2) R together 3) L forward 4) R
touches L, 1) R forward 2) L together 3) R forward 4) L touches R;
female/partner: 1) R back 2) L together 3) R back 4) L touches R, 1)
L back 2) R together 3) L back 4) R touches L (Plater and Speyrer
57).
18\ Under the influence of recent country-music dance practices,
the re-introduction of line dances in the Cajun dance arena, usually
to slow two-step numbers (formerly danced as the rock "freeze"), has
created a new form of territorialization that can effectively block
all forward, two-step flow and also impede the dynamic jitterbug
movement. Acceding to these diverse, and often conflicting tastes,
the organizers of the 1993 Mamou Cajun Music Festival provided an
open grassy space directly in front of the bandstand for line
dancing, juxtaposed to but away from the wooden dance floor.
19\ See Grossberg (1986, 180-182) on the "'hollow' or
superficial" treatment of musical texts by rock-and-roll fans.
20\ One might define the constitution of "spaces of affect" in
terms of frames of "play" or "games" that are simply boundaries
between "inside" and "outside" (Lewis 191; cf. also Goffman and
Bateson) or that are more complex structures, e.g. embedded or
"nested" frames that underlie play-forms in Western society
(MacAloon 254-265; Turner [1977]).
21\ The "centrifugal"/"centripetal" dyad, and the terms'
necessary overlap through the mixture of both orientations in most
dance arenas, correspond to MacAloon's distinction that opposes the
figurative "festival" (in which a joyous mood prevails) to a
"spectacle" (generating a broad range of intense emotions, not
necessarily joyous) (246; cf. also Lewis 214). It is ironic,
however, that the centripetal "spectacle" usually manifests itself
quite precisely in festivals, usually those organized outside the
local dance arenas of southern Louisiana. On the festival, in
general, and its importance for Cajun self-representation, see
Cantwell 199. On the festive and ludic versus the "solemn," see also
Turner (1977).
22\ See the examination of these re-presentations in Ancelet
1990.
23\ See Stivale for an analysis of Les Blank's strategies of
documentary re-presentation of Cajun music and culture.
24\ Toups says: "You add a little herbs and spices of rhythm and
blues and a little bit of rock 'n roll -- not out of line, there's a
border that you can just go by, and you can't cross the border, 'cos
then if you cross the border, you get away from your roots. So if
you can just add little bits and pieces to it to keep the fresh
feeling and the energy to give to the younger generation, but still
keep that roots, tortured strong Cajun feeling in your heart, you
can go a long ways."
25\ Thus in some ways, these groups attempt to combine what Mark
Slobin sees as distinct, even conflicting practices: on one hand,
these groups "band" with fans through an explicitly commercial
relationship, but also attempt to "bond" with fans as forms of
"affinity groups that "serve as nuclei for the free-floating units
of our social atmosphere, points of orientation for weary travelers
looking for a cultural home" (98; cf. 99-108).
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