Momentum Building

Hi All

Sounds like you're resolving your discussion around the issue of bouncers and exclusivity, which sounds interesting. You've probably made some decisions in conversations on Friday but it's not really showing up on the blog yet so it would be good if you could clarify your project plan here. What exactly are you doing? I have the impression that it involves filming yourselves playing the role of bouncers, possibly anonymously, but that's as much as I can glean from the posts. To this end, Georgia's interview was interesting but how are you going to build in this? Are you interviewing one bouncer or several? Have you jettisoned the idea of the silent disco and of looking more closely at subcultures? Is the project about the power to exclude and to be excluded? If so, this is interesting but you need to spell out, firstly, WHY it is an issue worth dealing with and secondly, WHAT you are doing? Who is being filmed? How many are being filmed? Is it an interview or series of interviews? What happens then and how will it be turned into a public event? Who is your audience?

Some good texts were turned up by Charlotte, Kim and Pat. It would be good to use them to try to tease out the broader issues that you're trying to get at here.

I also had a passing thought about Judith Butler's idea of the 'petty sovereign', which I thought might be useful if you're talking about the powers of exclusion. Butler is concerned with the way that in a 'state of emergency' border guards and others often have enormous powers that are unchecked by any higher authority. She is talking of course about a very different issue to yours, but the term 'petty sovereign' might still be useful to you in terms of constructing your rationale - the idea that certain people are invested with the powers to exclude. They are not appointed by the governement, as in Butler's text but perhaps they still put into play, normative assumptions of a particular society - who are the 'trouble makers' ; who is likely to kick off? Her use of this term can be found in Precarious Life:Powers of Miurning and Violence p. 66. As part of your rationale, you could argue that these petty sovereigns are in fact everywhere - local strongmen whose own biases give them enormous powers in particular settings. Ranciere has an analogous idea - that of the police, who are able to effect to 'distribution of the sensible'.

Also it's worth looking at Erving Goffman's The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (one of the essential readings if you haven't already seen it) because it discusses the way that we put of a front or act in 'real' everyday life, so it you're thinking of doing some acting, this might come in handy.