The Slow Emergency of the Future

Abstract

This article explores The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes (2019) by Back to Back Theatre, an ensemble based in Geelong, Australia, whose members are perceived to have intellectual disabilities – a unique position from which Back to Back comment on the categories of identity and modes of perception of ableist society. Shadow is, in part, a response to the launch of the Australian Royal Commission into the Violence, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability in 2019, which has since confirmed that these conditions are widespread, systemic and of urgent attention. Shadow positions the typically able-bodied spectator as the subject of a negated future in which their fate cannot be disentangled from that of those with whom they believe to have little in common. A group of activists warn spectators of an apocalypse brought about by the invasion of artificial intelligence, wherein the spectators’ survival will be threatened by precisely the same circumstances that those who live with disability currently endure. Such a circumstance is the apotheosis and stakes of what Theodor Adorno calls ‘identity-thinking’ – the reduction of a heterogenous world to knowable and finite concepts and categories at the expense of, and respect for, difference, or the nonidentical. I consider how identity-thinking is a form of ‘slow violence’ (Rob Nixon (2011) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) that manifests in the forms of intolerance and oppression Shadow engages with. I employ negative dialectics, conceived by Adorno as way of resisting such violence, to examine how Back to Back reveal the urgent stakes of identity-thinking and grapple with the possibility of a future in which survival is a collective pursuit.

The awarding of the 2022 Ibsen Award to Back to Back Theatre confirmed the company’s international reputation following the acclaimed tour of their production The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes (2019).¹ Based in Geelong, Australia, the company describes itself as an ensemble whose members ‘are perceived to have intellectual disabilities’, a unique vantage point from which Back to Back makes work that challenges categories of identity and the modes of perception and engrained beliefs surrounding disability. As Bryoni Trezise and Caroline Wake note, ‘Back to Back’s emphasis on perceived disability destabilises the binary between ability and disability and signals an interest in the visual and cultural construction of these categories’ (2013: 120). The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes² is, in part, a response to the Australian Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (2019), which revealed these conditions to be widespread and systemic. Shadow positions the typically able-bodied spectator as the subject of an imminent tragic future in which their fate cannot be disentangled from that of those with whom they believe to have little in common. A group of activists with intellectual disabilities gather to warn the audience that their survival will be threatened by precisely the same circumstances that those who live with disability currently endure. Spectators are told of an impending apocalyptic future brought about by the invasion of artificial intelligence (AI). This is an invasion too late to stop, as they have already welcomed ‘cheap empowering intelligences into their daily lives’, unwittingly compromising their own survival and becoming complicit in their own demise (Back to Back Theatre 2019a: 31). Such a circumstance is the apotheosis and the stakes of what Theodor Adorno calls ‘identitythinking’. For Adorno, identity-thinking is an attempt to master an infinitely heterogenous world by reducing it to knowable and finite concepts and categories that the world inevitably exceeds. What is singular and unique is abstracted, characterized as an example or instance of a broader category or concept in a manner like the classification of flora and fauna under categories of genus and species. Adorno characterizes identity-thinking as a form of violence that manifests in an intolerance to difference and is responsible for the forms of societal inequality and oppression that Shadow engages with.

RESISTING THE VIOLENCE OF IDENTITY: NEGATIVE DIALECTICS

Written in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in the wake of unprecedented destruction, Adorno’s Negative Dialectics is motivated by the ‘need to let suffering speak’, to give voice to the forms of suffering produced by identity-thinking that society fails to recognize (Adorno 2004 [1966]: 5). He writes that ‘in a world whose law is universal individual profit, the individual has nothing but this self that has become indifferent’ to that which does not directly contribute to its self-preservation (362). For Adorno, indifference to suffering belies the way in which few live well at the expense of others.

Negative dialectics is conceived by Adorno as a mode of thought capable of resisting identity-thinking and revealing its violence. Adorno departs from Hegel’s dialectic, in which contradictory elements are resolved in a unifying and progressive synthesis. For Adorno, contradiction does not indicate a need for synthesis, but rather, its impossibility. Negative dialectics seeks to reveal what is excluded from the formation of concepts and identities, singularity and difference, or what Adorno calls the non-identical, and in so doing frees dialectical thought from its affirmative and rational determination (Adorno 2004 [1966]: xix– xx). For David Barnett, Adorno’s retheorization ‘heralds an uncomfortable, awkward dialectic, which does not move effortlessly from synthesis to synthesis but accrues contradiction upon contradiction’, such that the ‘dialectic becomes an unwieldy beast alive with contradiction’ (2017: 47–66). While Brecht harnessed contradiction as a means to make evident the ‘changeability of the world’ (2014: 284), as in the theatre of Heiner Müller, commonly understood to be the postmodern heir to Brecht’s political theatre, the contemporary dialectic now ‘moves and points … nowhere’ (Kalb 1998: 148). Disruption and dissonance provide the ‘moving forces’ of negative dialectical thinking (Adorno 2004 [1966]: 202). Negative dialectics provides a theoretical framework with which to examine how Back to Back challenge the integrity of the concept of disability via a dramaturgy of dissonance and disruption, capable of revealing the complexities of identity-thinking at a time when collective agency is threatened by a future in which all will struggle to survive, and survival is a collective pursuit.

SHADOW: IDENTITY POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY

Back to Back describe Shadow as being ‘inspired by mistakes, mis-readings, mis-leadings and misunderstandings’, and hope the play ‘reminds us that none of us are self-sufficient and all of us are responsible’ (Back to Back Theatre 2019b). I am interested in how Shadow facilitates experiences of dissonance and disruption that engage the spectator in a negative dialectical experience – one capable of troubling the categories of identity the company seek to challenge. Furthermore, I consider how the performance has the potential to induce solidarity between discrete social groups as a form of resistance to discrimination and oppression. Throughout the performance, the house lights remain on, and the performance space remains bare, save for a few props, including a row of folding chairs. Above the stage there is a banner onto which dialogue is projected throughout the performance and indicates that the meeting is staged ‘[i]n a small community hall in Geelong, Australia’ (1). A group of activists with intellectual disabilities meet to discuss how best to impress upon the able-bodied the gravity and scale of their experiences of violence. Spectators are relayed a confronting history of enslavement and survival:

For thousands of years

people with disabilities have been

… 

devalued,

victimised,

dehumanised,

stigmatised,

sterilised

and euthanised. (Back to Back Theatre 2019a: 12)

The first scenes exemplify the company’s interest in involving spectators in a series of deliberate mistakes, mis-readings and misrecognitions, making explicit the tension between the concept of disability and the material reality to which it refers, and remains incommensurable. Michael attempts to begin the meeting with an Acknowledgement of Country,³ but incorrectly identifies the traditional custodians of the land on which the group meet, offering the excuse that he doesn’t ‘even know these people’, an excuse Scott refuses, insisting that words, and names, do matter: ‘Get an education, inform yourself, FUCKING STEP UP!’ (4). A debate ensues between the activists as to what term the collective might assume to best represent the group, with each member offering a suggestion: ‘disabled’, ‘neuro-diverse’ or activists with ‘intellectual disabilities’ (8). The debate highlights the fact that a single identity cannot possibly capture the diverse experiences of the group, staging a contradiction that shapes how we experience identity-thinking in contemporary society.

While identity-thinking can facilitate bonds of collective identity by foregrounding commonality in the fight for recognition and visibility, the same methods can contribute towards the erasure of difference. As Adorno scholar Oshrat Silberbusch notes, ‘sometimes the very thing that is liberating for the group is a burden for the individual, and vice versa’, adding that ‘personal and collective responsibility is often a shared burden; and that agreement on what defines a group often subtly exacerbates tensions within the group of the individual that fuel reactionary patterns of exclusion or conflict’ (2018: 10). Far from waning since the time of Adorno’s writing, ‘these tensions have not disappeared but create problems whenever attempts to articulate matters of public responsibility have encountered the individual/collective divide’ (ibid.). We are currently witnessing a rise in xenophobic rhetoric evidenced by the following slogans: ‘Make America Great Again’ (Donald Trump, Republican Party), ‘Make Australia Great Again’ (Clive Palmer, United Australia Party), ‘France for the French’ (Marine Le Pen, the National Front). Typically deployed to bolster the political agency of marginalized groups, identity politics has been harnessed for exclusionary and oppressive purposes in an intolerant context resonant with the context that shaped Adorno's writings.

The activists struggle to determine a collective identity and maintain the distinctions and idiosyncrasies that shape their individual experiences. In assuming a distinct collective identity, they also risk distancing themselves too greatly from the very people they are trying to ‘help’ and seek solidarity with – the able-bodied. Such tensions appear to mire the group’s ability to function democratically, to involve each member in the opportunity to have their opinion and experience count. Further complications arise when the group doubts the intellectual capacity of fellow activist Mark, played by Mark Deans, a performer with Down’s syndrome, and his ability to contribute to the meeting. His fellow activists are wary of exploiting him, as Mark will do ‘anything they say’ (6). While Sarah argues that the group ‘should empower everyone to have a voice’, Michael questions whether ‘you [can] ever presume to know what would be good for someone else’ (ibid.). Given that no final collective identity is decided upon nor a single member’s authority prioritized, these tensions are left to percolate throughout the work.

A seemingly unplanned disruption threatens to derail the meeting, which Simon is tasked with facilitating. He stands facing the audience before appearing to dry – as if he has forgotten his lines:

Simon

I can’t remember what I need to say.

Michael

Something like – ‘We are a group of people with

disabilities … ’

Scott

Fighting oppression and injustice.

Simon

My mind’s gone blank. (5)

While the performance remains entirely scripted, given the degree of resemblance between the characters and performers, spectators are often unsure of whether they are watching a disabled person, and/or an actor performing disability and/or an actor genuinely struggling with the task of performance. Back to Back emphasize rather than resolve these tensions for spectators, who are held in a state of confusion regarding the status of the speaking subject – unsure of what they are seeing and hearing. The company’s artistic director, Bruce Gladwin, notes their interest in fuelling the tension between reality and fiction via the arousal of confusion in spectators: ‘[t]he audience is going, “There’s a guy with Down’s syndrome. I wonder if he’s playing a person with Down’s syndrome?” I think that’s a tension that the audience is never released from’ (cited in Schmidt 2013: 197). Ensemble members are often adept at playing ‘performance personas’, based on and drawing from the real-life self of the performer (Bailes 2011: xvi). This technique is in part a product of company processes: Back to Back often work on a major piece for up to twelve months and ensemble members are often involved with Back to Back over a period of years. In addition, while a role may be devised by a particular ensemble member, another may stand in for them.

Such deliberate misleadings form a dramaturgical signature for Back to Back, with similar stagings of performers ‘drying’ occurring in previous productions. In their analysis of Food Court (2008), Bryoni Trezise and Caroline Wake suggest that Back to Back’s ability to fuel tension around the status of the staged phenomena collapses distinctions between performer and character to the point that ‘fiction and reality are forced to collide’ (2013: 129). The effect of Back to Back’s dramaturgical approach, for Trezise and Wake, is to ‘keep spectators in a zone of deferred perception, such that a fixed vision of either self or performer can never fully arrive’ (121). The seemingly spontaneous exchanges and failures in Shadow are too deliberate mistakes, mis-leadings and misrecognitions – carefully constructed and masterful performances that bring the spectators’ assumptions about the abilities of the performers to the fore.

Gladwin recalls a post-show discussion of a previous touring production in which a spectator, who worked in the disability sector, did not believe that the ensemble members could produce work of such high calibre, thereby making explicit their assumptions about the limitations of performers with intellectual disability (cited in Grehan and Eckersall 2013: 246). This presumption may be due to misguided beliefs, such as the idea that performers with intellectual disability are incapable of constructing illusion or fiction, and only of appearing as ‘themselves’. In his analysis of Back to Back’s Food Court Dave Calvert observes that ‘[t]he actor, concerned with the dramatic representation of character, is expected to possess mimetic flexibility, while learning disability is understood as a fixture of identity that constrains mimetic prowess’ (2016: 140). Calvert is drawing on Theron Schmidt’s observation of engrained assumptions that intellectually disabled individuals ‘can’t act, and so when we encounter these beings on stage we encounter them for themselves rather than for whom they appear to be’ (2013: 190). Back to Back’s dramaturgical emphasis on cultivating uncertainty as to the status of the performing subject can be understood as encouraging spectators to engage in a ‘lingering with the particular’ (Adorno 2005: 77), an aesthetic experience that facilitates encounters with what Adorno calls non-identity – the singularity of objects that refute the integrity of the concept applied to it. The negative dialectical method thus harnesses contradiction and uncertainty as a means to demonstrate that there is an ‘indeterminate possibility in the object’ of the subject’s perception that resists its reduction to preexisting frames of reference (Bernstein 2004: 39). Paradoxically, the non-identical can only be accessed via contradiction, that is, it can only be acknowledged via the application of the very concepts that otherwise inhibit its expression, as this is what produces contradiction: ‘contradiction is nonidentity under the aspect of identity’ (Adorno 2004: 5). While Adorno’s thought, and the paradox of identity, appear to come to an impasse, the negative dialectical method proceeds by holding the claims of established knowledge up to the reality it purports to understand, by striving ‘by way of the concept, to transcend the concept’ (15).

Non-identity is made evident by the negative dialectical method that draws our attention to moments in which we perceive objects and individuals as more than what we once did. This insight that is provided by negative dialectics contains a latent potential for solidarity and reparation. For Adorno, such an encounter – though driven by dissonance and disruption – motivates the subject to ‘make up for what it has done to non-identity’ (145). Negative dialectics can thus inform an attempt to maintain an ‘uncoercive gaze upon the object’ of perception (Adorno 1998: 130). Back to Back’s cultivation of indeterminacy can be understood as a strategy that resists the reductive logic of identitythinking via performances that allow spectators to ‘perceive perceived disability … rather than simply disability’, to transcend the concept of disability via its performance (Trezise and Wake 2013: 120). Such a dramaturgy generates uncertainty as to the status of the performing subject, facilitating non-identical moments in which elements of the staged phenomena resist conceptualization, and, in turn, goes some way to reveal and challenge engrained assumptions about the abilities of the ensemble members.

Tony McCaffrey argues that expectations of performers with intellectual disability to learn scripted text or blocking are often based on ‘a binary notion of the capacity/incapacity of the actor and how the (assumed abled) audience will view this’, meaning that actors with intellectual disabilities are still often held to ableist standards to meet audience expectations (2018: 193). These expectations reveal the ‘sedimented, hierarchical structures’ that condition both social perceptions of disability and ‘dramatic Aristotelian theatre as an institution’:

a characteristic of the institution of dramatic theatre is the validation of the actor’s ability to learn lines of text and to ‘own’ in performance a complex score of motivated verbal and movement text. This functionality is likely to be challenging for some people with intellectual disabilities. (McCaffrey 2018: 192)

Such expectations reveal an ‘epistemological bias’ within the institution of theatre itself (ibid.).

McCaffrey’s identification of an epistemological bias within the institution of theatre speaks to a wider epistemological violence addressed by scholar and activist Patsie Frawley. In her response to the announcement of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, Frawley (2019) suggests that one of its primary goals should be to uncover the fact that barriers exist in the judicial system that work against those seeking justice for institutional abuse. Frawley notes that institutional abuse can go unacknowledged because '[p]eople with disabilities are sometimes seen as lacking credibility as witnesses', an observation that locates an epistemological bias within the justice system (2019: n.p.).

A SLOW VIOLENCE

The forms of epistemological bias these scholars highlight can be understood as a manifestation of the violence of identity-thinking, an organizing principle that comes at the cost of the erasure of the non-identical – crucial differences between the self and other. Such a phenomenon might be characterized as a form of ‘slow violence’ (Nixon 2011: 2). Rob Nixon coins this term to address the way global warming is producing a slowly evolving world-ending event at a pace that appears at odds with its gravity. Nixon’s theorization is helpful when exploring the way in which Shadow engages with the erasure of nonidentity that has contributed to the generations of abuse, neglect and marginalization for the disabled community, but that, as the Royal Commission made clear, is often obscured from society. According to Nixon, violence is ‘customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting into instant sensational visibility’ (2). By way of contrast, slow violence is ‘incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales’ (47). Slow violence has 'cataclysmic' effects, but ones that are often neglected, meaning our response to them can be 'postponed, often for generations' - a circumstance that might be described as a slow emergency.

In Shadow, the slow violence that constitutes the elimination of the non-identical is staged via the company’s engagement with artificial intelligence.⁴ The company offers an ambivalent reading of such technology, illuminating both its capacity to help as well as hinder communication. To return to the early scenes of Shadow, Sarah points out that regardless of how the group may choose to be identified, ‘you can tell we have disabilities as everything we say is put up on a screen’ – disability has already been signalled by the presence of the surtitles above them (9). There is some debate over the ethics of the technology within the group:

Sarah

It’s patronising.

Scott

It’s just voice recognition.

Sarah

Subtitling is offensive.

… 

I don’t want to be spat on and polished (ibid.).

The moment throws the paradox of such technology into sharp relief – it at once undermines the authority of the speaking subject and assists the spectator in processing the staged phenomena. To continue to defer to the surtitles would make the spectator complicit in the forms of technology that homogenize human experience and demean human expression. Such tension reveals the consequences of living in a time of precarious interdependence, in which our seemingly innocuous engagement with everyday technologies can contribute to the suffering of others.

Given that some of the performers speak slowly or abruptly, the surtitles likely prove useful for spectators. However, such scenes serve to bifurcate the spectator’s attention. One response may be to focus on the performers, ignoring the surtitles. However, spectators are likely drawn to surtitles throughout the performance, not only to better understand the performers, but out of an interest in discerning discrepancies between what is happening on stage, and how it is captured by the technology above it. Attention then oscillates between the surtitles, their distracting effect and the performance on stage – facilitating an awareness of the limitations of the technology by drawing attention to elements of communication that it failed to capture – the intonation of speech, and the bodily expression that accompanies it.

The bifurcation of attention achieved in this scene is enhanced by the fact that the surtitles are referred to as ‘voice recognition’ technology by one activist early in the play, technology that ‘hears our voice and turns it into text’ (9). While the text appears to be produced in real time in response to live dialogue, it is likely that this too is a deliberate mis-leading, as much of Back to Back’s work employs surtitles. Unlike subtitles, which are produced as a whole text that then runs in sync with moving images or performance, surtitles are produced as shorter pieces of text that are then displayed only upon a certain cue. In Shadow, these surtitles are cued to the performer’s words, and as such there is a slight lag between speech and text that resembles the lag of speech recognition technology that is produced in real time. The technology, which appears to be receptive to deviation in live performance, is in fact entirely scripted. As Sarah notes, the technology is not sentient, not ‘a person’ or ‘real’, but a ‘frick-n-machine’, or as Scott puts it, ‘[a] playlist of common responses’ (9).

Non-identical experience in Shadow facilitates what Helena Grehan, in her analysis of Shadow, describes as the ability to ‘listen slowly and deeply – to attune ourselves to what is being said in all its complexity and to value the interpretive act’ (2019: 54). In drawing attention to such instances of discrepancy and dissonance, the performance encourages spectators to decode those signs and signals that are not captured by the screen above, and to risk any misunderstanding that may occur in the effort to do so.

SURVIVAL AS A COLLECTIVE PURSUIT

In the final moments of the play, there is a reversal in the established hierarchy between performers and spectators. Here the activists speculate about how ‘people will be treated’ when ‘[a]rtificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence’ (23):

Simon

Maybe slaves.

Scott

Like how we treat a chicken or a turkey?

… 

Scott

Or, a person with a disability.

The audience is then told that we’re ‘resisting’, that we’re ‘still not getting it’ (ibid.), rhetorically inverting the epistemological bias the members of the ensemble often face. Here the spectator is positioned as the subject of an imminent future in which their survival will be threatened by precisely the same circumstances that those who live with disability currently endure:

Get used to having a label around your neck.

You will be surrounded by low expectation … 

You will need to learn to speak up for your rights.

Others will want to highlight your limits … 

You, your husband, your children and your children’s children are going to have an intellectual disability. (23–33)

Here, the audience, a diverse group of individuals, is reduced to a homogenous entity by virtue of this abrupt and direct address. By virtue of this reversal, it is now the spectator who lacks agency and the ability to comprehend their predicament, and the performer who holds the knowledge of lived experience, having already survived such conditions. Ability has effectively been inverted.

While Shadow’s negation of a viable future is delivered via this seemingly hostile confrontation, the scene in fact crystallizes the need for freedom in the present and can be understood as a heightened engagement with society’s existing failures. Such a treatment of the future conceals a utopian aspect. Alison Kafer argues that ‘the futures we imagine reveal the biases of the present; it seems entirely possible that imagining different futures and temporalities might help us see, and do, the present differently’ (2013: 28). Instead of fostering a rational understanding of society’s contradictions, Adorno considers art to be political when latent violent and contradictory structures are implicit in the artwork’s structure. Shadow engages with forms of ‘slow violence’ society often conceals, but that threaten the possibility of a viable democratic future. It is in the fictional foreshadowing of a negated future that the potential for human experience in the present is realized. For Adorno, ‘the false, once determinately known and precisely expressed, is already an index of what is right and better’ (1998: 288). By virtue of its dramaturgy of dissonance and disruption, Shadow engages the spectator in a negative dialectical experience – one that is capable of strengthening spectators' respect for non-identity. Shadow’s theatrical innovations thus have the potential to foster solidarity between performers and spectators, and thus grapple with the possibility of a future in which survival is a collective pursuit.

This research has been supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

I am grateful to the peer reviewers and editiors of this journal for feedback on drafts of this article, as well as to my supervisors, Drs Meg Mumford, Theron Schmidt and Caroline Wake, for their feedback on a version of this paper.

Notes

1 The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes premiered at Carriageworks in Sydney on 25 September 2019. In this article, I refer to a version of the playscript provided by the company (2019a) as well as my own thick descriptions of a performance during the 2019 run in Sydney.

2 Henceforth I will refer to The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes as Shadow.

3 The traditional owners of the land on which Carriageworks stands are the Gadigal people of Eora nation. Michael mispronounces Wadawurrung, the traditional custodians of lands near Geelong, where the company is based.

4 For Adorno’s contemporary Walter Benjamin, the marriage of art and technology in the twentieth century heralded new hope for the politicization of the masses. For Adorno, however, the advancement of technology signalled the progressive domination of humanity over the natural world. For more on the debate between Benjamin and Adorno see Kurlyo (2020: 619–36).