a bout the a uthor
Maiya Murphy is a scholar, teacher, creator, and performer. She is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. She has written on Lecoq Pedagogy, Cognitive Science, Collective Creation, Physical Theatre Approaches, and Dance. She also makes theatre with her collective, Autopoetics.
Everything moves
CHAPTE r 1
Introduction
—Jacques Lecoq1
This is the heart of the concept of enaction: every living organism enacts —John Stewart2
This book puts the theatre pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq in conversation with the cognitive scientifc paradigm of enactivism. while these approaches to theatre making and understanding cognition come out of different theoretical and practical traditions, they share fundamental commitments to embodiment and action. Because of this commonality, Lecoq pedagogy—shot through enactivism—can be understood in a different way, and aspects of enactivism—illuminated by Lecoq pedagogy— can be examined anew. while I will propose some of the ways that Lecoq pedagogy might invigorate concepts and practices in enactive research, the core of this project is to present an enactive explanation of how Lecoq’s commitment to movement in his pedagogy has little to do with physical accomplishment in actor training. rather, Lecoq implicitly casts his training as frst and foremost a project of cognitive development. To illustrate this, I use principles from enactivism to demonstrate how Lecoq pedagogy induces a cognitive change in the actor and at a deeper level, how enactivism allows us to see the more profound ramifcations of the Lecoq-trained actor’s creative agency.
© The Author(s) 2019
M. Murphy, Enacting Lecoq, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05615-5_1
when I invoke Lecoq pedagogy, I refer to both the work of Jacques Lecoq during his life (1921–1999) and the work anchored in his pedagogy but carried out within the vast Lecoq pedagogical diaspora around the world. Lecoq remained the leader of his school, L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, 3 throughout his lifetime. His team of teachers was made up, in large part, of his own students. He offered a pedagogical year of training to some of his students who wished to learn about how to teach the approach he developed over the years. Some students went on to open their own schools and offer Lecoq-based training and pedagogical programs. other students (who may or may not have completed the pedagogical training) still pass the work on to their own students in a variety of contexts such as workshops or training programs in which Lecoq’s may be one among many of the approaches offered. Certainly there is diversity in the way this work is taught—Lecoq himself developed and changed his work over time. while Lecoq’s work was never frozen or monolithic, there are certain principles and exercises that tended to reoccur in his teaching and continue to appear in the work of his students. It is this collection of enduring principles and exercises that I consider, for they continue to be transmitted in studios throughout the world. when I use the terms “enactivism” or “enaction,” I refer specifcally to the cognitive scientifc ideas emanating from, or consonant with, the cognitive scientifc interdisciplinary paradigm of enaction that has been infected by felds such as neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and phenomenology. Also not monolithic, the enactive approach is highly polyvocal, and is still in the process of development. To clarify my engagement with enaction, I subscribe to the general outlines of this paradigm as sketched by John Stewart, olivier Gapenne, Ezequiel Di Paolo, and fellow contributors in Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm of Cognitive Science. 4 I will explain the details of these outlines in later chapters. Acknowledging the complexities, instabilities, and processual natures of both Lecoq pedagogy and the paradigm of enaction, I rely on certain coherencies of their main practices and principles to see how they might provide new insights into each other and into the nature of embodied cognition in theatre. I will highlight their respective coherencies and connect the dots between them as I detail both Lecoq pedagogy and the enactive framework.
Situating thiS lecoq-cognitive Science encounter
This book aims to contribute to conversations already taking place between cognitive scientifc approaches and theatre studies.5 In the discipline of theatre studies, scholars have written important studies on dramatic literature, spectatorship, and acting. Book-length discussions of acting include the work of rhonda Blair, John Lutterbie, and rick kemp. Blair’s book, The Actor, Image, and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience, reframes Stanislavsky-based acting in terms of cognitive neuroscience to propose how the actor’s entire process does multifaceted, deep, and broad cognitive work. Lutterbie’s Toward a General Theory of Acting: Cognitive Science and Performance deploys Dynamic Systems Theory to offer a fresh articulation of overarching principles across a variety of acting traditions in the west. kemp’s Embodied Acting: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Performance considers how body-based approaches to actor training resonate with principles of embodied cognition and how actors might take advantage of that resonance to improve the practice of acting. while both Lutterbie and kemp discuss Lecoq pedagogy, kemp’s interest in Lecoq’s focus on the body shares aspects of my own interest in Lecoq’s prioritization of movement in actor training. My approach to understanding Lecoq pedagogy in relation to cognitive science is distinct from kemp’s in three ways: where kemp is most interested in its practical ramifcations, I focus on epistemological and ontological ones; where kemp’s practical interest in improving actor training largely focuses on the executional level of actor training and performance, my more theoretical interest focuses on the foundational level of Lecoq’s training; and where kemp considers a number of cognitive scientifc principles alongside Lecoq pedagogy, I work with the enactive approach in particular. Through a sustained investigation of two specifc approaches, Lecoq pedagogy and enaction, I consider how they both offer a conception of what embodiment is, what it can do, and where—beyond creativity and cognition—it can lead us. The main thrust of embodied cognition (within which are a variety of perspectives, disagreements, and investments) is that cognition is not located in the organ of the brain only; the mind is not “embrained.” rather, embodied cognitive approaches suggest that the entire human body participates in making cognition. Enaction also takes embodiment as a foundational principle, but emphasizes cognition as a dynamic process. for enaction, an organism’s whole body is always already embedded
in its environment and “brings forth the world in which it exists” [italics in original] (Stewart 3).6 This change in infection shifts embodiment from static state to process, and helps to account for the organism’s interconnected relationship to its environment. A strong notion of embodiment in enaction suggests that, in some cases, focusing on neural activity might veil an embrained-mind approach. Explaining the body’s role in cognition by tracing links between physical and neural activity can suggest that neural functions, maps, and representations point to neural causes of, rather than correlations in, cognition. on this view it follows that the rest of the body is only cognitively useful for feeding data into neural functions for processing. The logic in this neural-focused perspective leads to the idea that the brain needs an intermediary mechanism to process information from the body and the world— the homunculus fallacy.7 for enaction, these two issues are vestiges of mind/body dichotomies and computational models of cognition and representation. An enactive approach replaces the issue of how cognition represents the world to us with how organisms enact their worlds. Even when kemp demonstrates how Lecoq pedagogy and other acting approaches might bear upon neural function, he issues a warning about analyzing with the results of brain-imaging technology:
An important caveat needs to be mentioned about these studies: the images that they produce show correlations between brain activities and psychological states, and they do not necessarily show that the brain activity is responsible for the psychological state. while brain imaging offers us much more information about cognitive processes than was previously available, conclusions drawn from the process about brain mechanisms are necessarily broad. (“Lecoq, emotion and embodied cognition” 201)
To chime in with kemp, I clarify that my line of thought is not to suggest that neurons do not exist or function in ways that neuroscientists think that they do. I merely point out that methods of assessing phenomena are inherently laden with priorities and hence, philosophical values. while we may be careful in drawing only broad conclusions about “brain mechanisms,” we must also beware not to attribute any causation to such evidence and inadvertently endow the brain with priority, agency, and distinction from the rest of the body.
My shift toward enaction also permits a differently infected perspective on the nature of embodiment in Lecoq pedagogy. while my project
is born from the body-based work of Lecoq pedagogy, it moves through the practical ramifcations of the training into epistemological and ontological realms. kemp details the way in which overtly acknowledging the parallels between Lecoq pedagogy and embodied cognition allows the actor to better apply the pedagogy to her acting. I am interested in the way that a Lecoq-enactivism conversation proposes new ramifcations for the agency of the actor-creator—the ideal fgure forged through Lecoq pedagogy—and the role of movement in cognitive agency as a whole. Since enactivism sees cognition as embodied and context-specifc, different practices, even under the same banner of embodied cognition, do different things. kemp acknowledges that Lecoq pedagogy does not primarily seek to produce actor-interpreters for psychologically realist text-based work. However, his proposals are mainly for psychological realist performances, and most of them text-based (kemp, Embodied Acting 13). This makes sense considering kemp’s work aims to improve actor training and most of these programs need to equip their students with tools for mainstream theatre that is largely comprised of text-based work. Because Lecoq pedagogy itself de-prioritizes text-based work in its foundational training, I follow suit to understand what might come from an enaction-Lecoq pedagogy conversation that is aimed at addressing the broad goal of the training. Lecoq pedagogy uses particular skills and territories, I suggest, to apply and explore its foundational principles, not to develop expertise in the skills and territories themselves. By focusing on foundational aspects of the pedagogy, I articulate how the development of the actor-creator moves from skill to epistemology, and from epistemology to ontology.
the Pedagogy of JacqueS lecoq
Jacques Lecoq’s initial interest in the moving body was not cultivated by the performing arts, but rather, swimming. His pedagogy grew out of a variety of infuences including sports, outdoorsmanship, physical therapy, and a host of European performance traditions. key theatrical touchstones include the work of Jacques Copeau, through working with Copeau’s former collaborator and son-in-law Jean Dasté, and commedia dell’arte, which he encountered during an eight-year stay in Italy. He frst discovered theatre as a physical education student. Lecoq met the head of france’s physical education, Jean-Marie Conty, who happened to be friends with french theatre luminaries Antonin Artaud and
Jean-Louis Barrault. Through Conty, Lecoq saw Barrault’s famous performance of the man-horse (Lecoq, The Moving Body 3). After cultivating his interest in theatre and movement, including working with Dasté, Lecoq went to Italy to teach at the University of Padua. His time in Italy was so formative that he told one of his students, also from Padua, that it was his “second” birth, his birth into theatre (fusetti 142). Lecoq is unique in that he developed his pedagogy in primarily one place for over 40 years: his private school in Paris from 1956 until his death in 1999—L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. The school continues to be run by his successors. Lecoq did not claim to invent anything new; he gathered material from his wide range of infuences to craft a pedagogical experience that he honed over the rare longevity of his career. All the while, he remained open to the potential for development and change.
Lecoq pedagogy focuses on how engaging and understanding the moving body not only develops the actor’s skill but also teaches her about theatrical creation and creativity as a whole. while Lecoq’s work came out of existing theatrical traditions, it circulated as an alternative to mainstream psycho-emotional approaches to actor training and remained rather isolated from the larger french theatre community. while psychology and affect are by no means absent from Lecoq pedagogy, the moving body is always its primary reference point. Despite the fact that Lecoq had a large number of students over his long teaching career that infltrated mainstream and alternative training programs alike, his full approach remained, and some may say still remains, alternative to the mainstream. The presence of some aspects of Lecoq’s work in western actor training programs, at least since the mid-1980s, has been widespread. However, because Lecoq did not articulate his work in writing very much, and there was not much theatre scholarship on his work until the turn to the twenty-frst century, there is a mainstream sense that Lecoq’s is a niche-approach, suitable only for those who specialize in performing movement.8 The result of this in actor training circles is that Lecoq pedagogy was, and often still is, relegated to a separate “movement” class, instead of being featured as a core component in the actor’s development.
Central foundational exercises include movement analysis, physical improvisation, mask work, and collective creation.9 The goal of Lecoq’s training is to equip actors with the ability to create theatre that does not yet exist, theatre that they will fashion in response to future contexts.
while the second year pedagogy does venture into various theatrical styles, including commedia dell’arte, Greek tragedy, and melodrama, it does so with the aim of investigating how these styles grow out of a broad theatrical bedrock and manifest in their particular ways. This is why there is no particular Lecoq “style” (Lecoq, The Moving Body ix). for Lecoq pedagogy, style is a particular confguration of theatrical dynamics in a specifc context.10 The actor-creator, the ideal fgure forged by Lecoq pedagogy, takes responsibility for the entire process of theatrical creation. This fgure may function not only as an actor who can interpret roles in a variety of styles, but also as a writer, director, dramaturg, or designer, for example. This total theatre artist, versed in the most foundational principles of theatrical creation, may take on a single creative position at any particular time, but bases her work on a deep, broad, and visceral understanding of overall theatrical composition, performance, and communication. She is an expert at using space, time, bodies, and movement as her aesthetic material no matter the task. Lecoq’s frst book in 1987, Le Théâtre du geste, was a collaborative effort with several other authors and includes the word “acteur-auteur.” It is in an introductory section of the book however, which makes it unclear whether this is Lecoq’s invention or that of another editor or writer, such as Jean Perret, who is credited in this section. This can be directly translated to “actor-author” in English, which clearly signals the larger scope of Lecoq’s ideal fgure (Lecoq, Le Théâtre du geste 107).11 Joel Anderson—scholar, practitioner, and member of the translation team for the 2006 English version of Le Théâtre du geste—makes the point that even to choose the french word “acteur” is to rebel against the more traditional french word for actor, “comédien.”12 from the start, Lecoq was pointing toward the agency of his ideal theatrical fgure and distancing himself from the limits of an actor who simply interprets (Anderson).13 As far as I have been able to determine, the term actor-creator in English was coined by Bridget George (co-founder of Touchstone, a Lecoq-infuenced American theatre company) along with Deborah Sacarakis (Zoellner Arts Center), and Augustine ripa (Lehigh University). The team came up with the term for the 1994 Lehigh–Touchstone event that brought both Jacques Lecoq and Lecoq-based companies to the US: “Theatre of Creation: A festival Celebrating the work of Jacques Lecoq and his International School of Theatre.” They coined the term for the festival because they saw a need to better communicate the nature of Lecoq’s actor in English (George). I agree that this term is useful in English to distinguish Lecoq’s fgure from mainstream
twentieth- and twenty-frst-century western notions of actor. Lecoq confrms, “the school pays more attention to creative than to interpretive work” (The Moving Body 172). The term has subsequently been used by English-speaking Lecoq-infuenced performers and trainers.14 further evidence that Lecoq pedagogy produces actor-creators instead of just actor-interpreters includes the many directors and writers, in addition to actors, who have come from his work. Among the most internationally well-known are: directors Ariane Mnouchkine, Julie Taymor, and Simon McBurney; and writers Yasmina reza and Michel Azama.15
By “creation” and “creativity” I am referring to the way Lecoq pedagogy uses these terms, anchored in this broad sense of theatrical creation. fay Lecoq explained that after Lecoq’s passing, the school remained grounded in the main structure that he developed, but it continued (and continues) to expand in new directions, such as writing and voice work (Lecoq, The Moving Body 186). The broad applicability of Lecoq’s work is clear even in the trajectory of his own interests. one of the last signifcant developments in the school is more explicitly removed from acting: Le Laboratoire d’Étude du Mouvement (LEM)—the classes that explore movement, space, and structures, a kind of movement-led theatrical design and architecture laboratory. Lecoq also acknowledged the possibility, perhaps reluctantly, that his work could be taken into other realms beyond the theatre:
If students feel better after doing the course, that is a bonus, but my aim is not to provide therapy through theatre. In any process of creation the object made no longer belongs to the creator. The aim of this act of creation is to bear fruit which then separates from the tree. (The Moving Body 17)
In fact, Lecoq’s work has been carried into what the wider theatre world might call “applied drama” for example, the Lecoq-based school, London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) has developed a new program alongside its more traditional Lecoq-based theatre courses and workshops: Integral Movement and Performance Practice. This healing arts program is led by Thomas Prattki, founder of LISPA, trained by Lecoq, and the frst pedagogical head of L’École Lecoq after Lecoq’s passing. The program uses aspects of Lecoq pedagogy alongside Jungian psychology and other personal transformational approaches to focus on the intersection between “devising, healing, and the educational arts” (LISPA website, 21 March 2017).16
central PrinciPleS of enaction
Enactivism is a newer approach to cognitive science that gathers up concepts from a variety of disciplines. Sparked by Humberto Maturana and francisco Varela’s biological research on cells, Varela expanded the notion of autopoiesis, explained later on, into the area of cognition. Varela’s proposal few in the face of accepted computational and representational theories of mind. Computational theories of mind understand the brain as a hard drive. In these theories, the body is an instrument that feeds information into the hard drive and carries out its commands. representational theories of mind suggest that as the body encounters the world, sensorimotor inputs are fed into the brain where a representational mechanism interprets it. The key here is that the world (including the body’s sensorimotor encounter of it) and the brain are necessarily mediated. The nature of what that mediation mechanism might be remains contested.17 Enactivism, on the other hand, proposes that organisms enact cognition, or actively create it, rather than simply access a world that exists outside of them. The signifcance of this shift is that according to enaction, cognition is understood as fully embedded in an environment and created through embodiment and action. These factors are always dynamically related, intertwined in the complex interaction of a body in the world. The individual in the world is enactivism’s main reference point, which highlights the individual’s agency within a complex and changing interaction with its environment.
Many scholars, scientists, and philosophers have developed the enactivist framework, resulting in a few different emphases. Matthew Bower and Shaun Gallagher make a distinction between what they call strong and weak embodiment in enactivism. Since enactivism is an embodied approach that eschews the idea that cognition is the domain of only the brain, it focuses on how the body participates in cognition. The extent of this participation is key to the distinction between strong and weak embodiment in enactivism. A weak embodied approach to enactivism is one that, while still considering the brain to be embodied, does not take the ramifcations of embodiment as seriously as strong versions. for instance, a weak enactivism might suggest that the body participates in feeding information to the brain, but the brain does the cognitive heavy lifting. In another example, the body is more closely allied to cognition, but it still needs some kind of representational mechanism to interpret what it encounters. A strong embodied approach suggests that the
body’s participation goes beyond simply feeding sensory-motor information; in fact it may go so far as to claim that the body decisively shapes the mind’s function, as in the title of one of Gallagher’s books, How the Body Shapes the Mind. 18 A strong embodied version says that without the body, there is no mind, or that the body is the mind. This shift in emphasis is important, and my analysis of a conversation between Lecoq pedagogy and enactivism turns upon a strong embodied version of enactivism, which I will continue to explore throughout the book, and will detail in Chapter 3
Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Marieke rohde, and Hanne De Jaegher outline fve central principles in enactivism. Attending to these principles can organize our departure into enactivism and how it relates to Lecoq pedagogy. The fve central principles are: autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, and experience [italics in original] (Di Paolo, rohde, and De Jaegher 37).
Autonomy refers to self-determination, that an entity is defned as distinct when its activities are governed by its own internal laws (Di Paolo, rohde, and De Jaegher 37). That is not to say that it is isolated from the environment, but rather that its interactions with the environment serve to sustain the organism’s self-constitution. Philosophers and scientists who have made use of enaction19 have borrowed the term needful freedom from Hans Jonas to describe the relationship between an autonomous entity and its environment: “needful” because the entity depends on the interaction to sustain itself, but “free” in that its interaction with the environment is for the sake of maintaining its distinction from it (Di Paolo, rohde, and De Jaegher 38). In biology, one of enactivism’s roots, we might normally refer to the autonomy of a cell. However, enactivists have used autonomy to describe any individuated system such as an individual person’s cognition or even the notion of a self, Miriam kyselo does. Thinking about the actor-creator and autonomy can articulate how the pedagogy is a process of forging an individual and self-determined cognitive mode. The actor-creator forges her cognition through a process of “taking” what she needs from the interactions with elements of the pedagogical environment including themes, exercises, prompts, instructors, or other actors. The actor is not just collecting creative tools, but rather, fashioning an autonomous identity as an actor-creator.
Enactivism proposes that sense-making is inherent in the emergence of cognition, rather than a separate step in the cognitive process. Sense is not something that exists only in the environment for the entity
to capture or decode. Because autonomous systems have a goal—to sustain themselves—they inherently have a “perspective on the world” [italics in original] (Di Paolo, rohde, and De Jaegher 39). Based on this perspective, sense cannot help but emerge in the process of living. The enactive approach recognizes that for an autonomous entity, sense is generated simultaneous to, because of, and through its own process of constitution. In this light, there can be no autonomous entity without sense-making capabilities. Giovanna Columbetti explains how we can connect the dots from sense-making to meaning-making. If individuation and sense-making go hand in hand, no environment is ever neutral; it is meaningful to the organism from the start. “This idea amounts to the recognition that meaning is generated within the system for the system itself—that is, it is generated and at the same time consumed by the system…meaning is always relational” [italics in original] (Columbetti, “Enaction, Sense-making, and Emotion” 148). In terms of Lecoq pedagogy, as an actor begins an exercise, she is simultaneously forging her own identity as an actor-creator and creating a matrix of meanings for it. According to enactivism, if sense-making is inherent in an autonomous system with a particular point of view, then it follows that this perspective-in-action provides an initial tendency toward agency—an entity can and must act upon the world in order to maintain itself. The actorcreator’s own particular body, style, experience, and imagination in relation to her environment create her unique perspective. Applying this notion of sense-making to Lecoq pedagogy explains how the process of the exercises cultivate identity, meaning, and agency. Columbetti also connects notions of meaning to emotion: she cites how neuroscientists such as Jaak Panksepp and Antonio Damasio see self-regulation and adaptivity as part of what makes up emotion. for Columbetti, the principles and processes of sense-making in autonomous entities are also the same processes that underpin emotion (“Enaction, Sense-making, and Emotion” 150). In this enactive view, “emotion” is considered an instance of “relentless sense-making activity of the precarious living organism” [italics in original] (Columbetti, The Feeling Body xvii). Columbetti defnes affect as a broader category that includes “related phenomena such as emotions, feelings, moods, and mood disorders” (Columbetti, The Feeling Body xiii).20 Connecting the dots from an organism’s embodied action, to individuation, to sense-making, and fnally to affect, maps an enactive path to explain Lecoq’s principle that motion begets emotion.21
Emergence refers to the way that cognition is made through a person–environment interaction. It exists neither only in the person nor only in the environment. This is in opposition to notions that cognition is simply an organism’s ability to activate pre-existing cognitive structures or the environment’s ability to imprint on an organism. from an organism’s point of view this process of emergence is autopoiesis. A cell, for instance, emerges from and is sustained through constant interaction with its environment. The process of autopoiesis can only occur through emergence.22 Autopoiesis is the specifc process through which a living system accomplishes its autonomy. This is characterized by the principle that the living organism produces its own components and its border with the environment. Because the actor-creator arises from within the biological structure of a human, I will refer to it as autopoietic as well as autonomous. If we consider the actor-creator as a product of emergence, we can see how Lecoq’s particular dedication to motion is signifcant. The actor cannot just simply decide to become an actor-creator, she must put her body (which includes her physicality, “mind,” imagination, and affectivity) into interaction with the environment of the pedagogical structure to give rise to her version of this fgure.
Embodiment, as understood by enactivism, holds that “the body is the ultimate source of signifcance” (Di Paolo, rohde, and De Jaegher 42). This means that the body is the main reference point, source, and destination in the enactive process. Enactivism sees all activities of “mind,” such as cognition, as products of the entire corporeality engaged in the world. “Mind,” in this case, is not locked inside the brain. Therefore the body is the ultimate personal, autopoietic point of reference—it functions because of and in an environment for the sake of sustaining its activities. In this way Lecoq’s insistence on the body as the main point of departure demonstrates a fundamental commitment to shaping, frst and foremost, cognition.
Experience, as the last central tenet of enactivism, highlights how the entity constantly calibrates the emergence and maintenance of its identity. A cell must constantly calibrate its relationship to the environment in response to what it is experiencing. on the larger scale of the human, this emphasis on experience coheres with phenomenology, which has productively animated enactive thought. I see this tenet as a way of rounding out the notion of agency in the actor-creator. Lecoq pedagogy invites the actor-creator to overtly refect in a few ways: through repeating activities, watching as an observer, and receiving instructor
feedback. These refective efforts are both action-led activities, such as repeated attempts at an exercise, and discursive discussion and digestion.23 formally, shaping experience through doing is prioritized. Discursive engagement, however, is still present and plays an important role in calibrating the actor-creator’s experience.24 The embodied experience induced by the pedagogical structure regulates the actor-creator’s overall engagement in a purposeful way. Aspects like the sequence of stages within exercises can be crucial, as can what information is or is not fed into the exercise. within these pedagogical constraints, the actor-creator constantly refers back to her experience, refnes her actions, and in so doing, calibrates her progress. from an enactive perspective, her refective actions emerge through an interaction with the environment, create her own identity, and forge her particular creative agency. This is all made possible through the embodied aspect of the pedagogical experience.
hiStorical forceS and kindred develoPmentS
Enaction and Lecoq pedagogy may be considered as reactions to similar historical pressures. They also offered similar solutions to alleviate those pressures. They both developed in the midst of twentieth-century displays of technological power in warfare and information technology; both were likewise deeply shaped by and disappointed in efforts to extend these kinds of prowess into overarching conceptual frameworks. Enaction moved away from computational models of the brain, mind, perception, thought, and action, seeing them as insuffcient for explaining the dynamic, lived phenomenon of cognition. while the computer was revolutionizing information technology at an unprecedented scale, some scientists and philosophers who would come to embrace enaction saw limits to the application of this framework to cognition. Lecoq’s experience with world war II and the scale of its destruction, made possible by advancing technologies of war, catalyzed a necessity to remake a devastated Europe in a different way; the old rules had failed.25 These reactions against perceived limits and applications of technology occurred despite the fact that technological thinking had initially shaped, or at least enabled, both enaction and Lecoq pedagogy. whereas early cognitive science conceived of cognition as a “meat machine,”26 this gave way to computing frameworks that helped scientists move toward conceptions of cognition that became less mechanistic and more dynamic
and interconnected (Clark 7). This dynamism and interconnectivity became even more boldly articulated in enaction. Lecoq’s french theatrical heritage includes the absorption of ways of seeing, segmenting, and shaping the body instigated by photographers, scientists, physiologists, inventors, physical education enthusiasts, and artists. This work was often made possible (and sometimes funded) by a french government that wanted to shape citizen bodies to succeed in war efforts.27 Scientifc approaches to the body and its movements were also applied to making it more effcient for industry, such as frederick winslow Taylor’s principles of scientifc management, and these resonate within the work of body-based artists such as mime Étienne Decroux.
Lecoq and enaction developed not only within the context of these important historical developments but also within particular historical ways of thinking. Both resist Cartesian dichotomies of body and mind, not to mention binaries and dichotomies in general. This resistance also leads both to anti-representational stances. Although Lecoq worked in a hotbed of theatrical modernism—twentieth-century Paris— he had a complicated relationship with it, working both in contrast to some of its major commitments and yet still being infuenced by others (McConachie, “Jacques Lecoq and the challenge of Modernist theatre 1945–1968” 35–42). Pardis Dabashi explains how modernism questioned the ability to know and represent the world objectively, generating a desire for “epistemic erasure” (Dabashi 80). Dabashi suggests that the modernist “investment in non-knowing” undergirds aspects of Lecoq pedagogy. Lecoq’s exercises are often framed as investigations rather than transfers of knowledge, and as such, are based on this premise of non-knowing. So while the existentialist answer to modernism’s push toward epistemic erasure is to evacuate all meaning from existence, Lecoq proposes an alternative. for Lecoq, what matters is complicité—or the joint, playful, complicit relation of performer and spectator (Dabashi 85). In other words, Lecoq saw the theatrical task not as a transference of stable or unstable knowledge from performer to spectator, but rather as the establishment of a complicit, joint investigation. Lecoq’s response to the so-called “crisis of Cartesianism” was to transform a modernist subject–object preoccupation28 into an investigation led by the moving body. In this case, representation is no longer the primary duty of the theatre or the actor.
Enaction’s reaction against the strict divide between the subject and object in scientifc inquiry is one manifestation of its anti-Cartesianism.29
Part of the crisis that led to the development of enaction is what Varela, Thompson, and rosch identifed as the gap between science and experience in the study of cognition. As traditional scientifc inquiry objectifed cognition, it also deauthorized the experience of consciousness (phenomenological or otherwise) as a “proper” mode for its investigation. for Varela, Thompson, and rosch, this was frst of all hypocritical, since scientifc inquiry is always enabled through the scientist’s experience of experimentation, no matter how it is structured. Second, they suggest that there is unique value and rigor to methods of experiencing consciousness. In fact, these methods could (and should) productively shape scientifc inquiry into consciousness itself. In The Embodied Mind, they show how one long-standing experiential tradition that has much to say about consciousness, Buddhist meditation and philosophy, might close the gap between scientifc inquiry and experience. for Varela, Thompson, and rosch, mind and body are not separate to begin with. They argue for a fundamental unity by demonstrating how techniques that eschew a Cartesian divide can give new insights into how consciousness and cognition work. for Varela and his colleagues meditative techniques could even participate in scientifc inquiry. Because enaction refutes the Cartesian body/mind dichotomy and defnes cognition as emergent interaction, it also rejects an important consequence of Cartesianism: representation. The notion of representation is a byproduct of a Cartesian binary because if the mind and body are separate, there needs to be a mechanism to mediate between them to account for their cooperation or interaction. one common mechanism of representation, the symbol, was useful in the early stages of cognitive science. However, Andy Clark calls the development of cognitive science “an escalating retreat from the inner symbol: a kind of inner symbol fight” (140). In other words, it was a fight from the notion that symbols must do the intermediary work of representing information. Like Lecoq pedagogy, enaction proposes an emergent embedded process as an alternative to representation and its binaries of mind/body, subject/object, and subject/environment.
for enaction and for Lecoq, the body’s relationship with its environment is key to imagining alternatives to conceptual paradigms based on Cartesianist binaries and technology. The alternative frameworks buried within both enaction and Lecoq look to the body for inspiration—for enaction: biology, the notion of autopoiesis, and the sensorimotor; for Lecoq: the physical body in motion. These inspirations are all, in effect,
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Déclaration du Gouvernement lue le 20 novembre à la Chambre des Députés, par M. Georges Clemenceau, président du Conseil, ministre de la Guerre.
11 Décembre 1917.
Les Alliés occupent Jérusalem
Le général Allenby se propose d’entrer officiellement à Jérusalem demain, accompagné par les commandants des contingents français et italiens et par les chefs de la mission politique française.
Déclaration faite par M. Bonar Law, à la Chambre des Communes, le 10 décembre 1917.
..... A l’occasion de cet événement, un Te Deum sera chanté dimanche prochain 16 décembre, à 3 heures, en l’église métropolitaine Notre-Dame, pour remercier Dieu d’avoir délivré du joug turc la Ville Sainte, berceau du Christianisme.
Note communiquée à la Presse par l’archevêché de Paris.
Le Comité protestant français de propagande organise une manifestation interalliée pour célébrer l’entrée des forces anglaises, françaises et italiennes à Jérusalem.
Note communiquée par le Comité protestant français.
6 Mars 1918
Fin de l’état de guerre sur le front oriental
Le Gouvernement provisoire est déchu.
La cause pour laquelle luttait le peuple, c’est-à-dire la proposition de la paix démocratique et le contrôle des ouvriers sur la production et la constitution d’un gouvernement du Soviet, est assurée.
Appel du Comité révolutionnaire militaire de Petrograd aux citoyens de la Russie, publié le 10 novembre 1917.
..... Dans ces conditions, tout le traité de paix devenant un ultimatum, que l’Allemagne appuie immédiatement par la violence d’une action armée, la délégation russe a signé sans discussion les conditions de paix qui lui étaient dictées.
Radiotélégramme envoyé le 2 mars 1918 au soviet des Commissaires du peuple à Petrograd par les membres de la délégation russe aux seconds pourparlers de paix de Brest-Litovsk.
Un traité formel d’armistice a été signé de nouveau avec les Roumains. Les négociations de paix vont commencer sans délai.
Communiqué officiel allemand du 6 mars 1918.
21 Mars 1918
Offensive générale de l’armée allemande
Ce matin, vers 8 heures, à la suite d’un violent bombardement par obus explosifs et toxiques de nos lignes avant et zone arrière, l’ennemi a lancé une puissante attaque sur un front de plus de 80 kilomètres entre l’Oise (région de La Fère) et la Sensée (région de Croisilles).—Dans l’après-midi, de puissantes attaques effectuées par des masses considérables d’infanterie et d’artillerie ont rompu notre système défensif à l’ouest de Saint-Quentin.—L’ennemi a occupé Nesle et Bapaume.
Extraits des communiqués officiels britanniques des 21, 23 et 25 mars.
Nous sommes maintenant entrés dans le stade le plus critique de cette terrible guerre. Il y a un moment de calme dans la tempête, mais l’ouragan n’est pas encore terminé. Il rassemble sa force pour se déchaîner plus furieusement et avant son épuisement final il se déchaînera encore beaucoup de fois.
Discours prononcé à la Chambre des Communes, le 9 avril 1918, par M. Lloyd George.
21 Mars 1918
Offensive générale de l’armée allemande
L’ennemi a tiré sur Paris avec une pièce à longue portée.—Les troupes françaises ont commencé à intervenir, dès le 23 mars, dans la bataille en cours sur le front britannique. Elles ont relevé une partie des forces alliées et pris la lutte à leur compte sur ce secteur du front.—Noyon a été évacué pendant la nuit.—Nos régiments, luttant pied à pied et infligeant de lourdes pertes aux assaillants, n’ont faibli à aucun moment et se sont repliés en ordre sur les hauteurs immédiatement à l’ouest de Montdidier
Extraits des communiqués officiels français des 23, 25, 26 et 28 mars.
Je viens vous dire que le peuple américain tiendrait à grand honneur que nos troupes fussent engagées dans la bataille.
Déclaration du général Pershing, commandant en chef l’armée américaine, au général Foch, au cours d’une réunion tenue sur le front le 28 mars.
Le Gouvernement anglais et le Gouvernement français se sont mis d’accord pour donner au général Foch le titre de “commandant en chef des armées alliées opérant en France”.
Note communiquée à la Presse le 10 avril.
26 Avril 1918.
Arrêt de l’attaque allemande en direction de Rouen, tendant à séparer les armées anglaises des armées françaises
La bataille a repris ce matin avec une extrême violence. Sur une étendue d’environ 15 kilomètres, depuis Grivesnes jusqu’au nord de la route d’Amiens à Roye, les Allemands ont lancé des forces énormes, révélant une volonté ferme de rompre notre front à tout prix (C. O. F 4 avril).—Après une puissante préparation d’artillerie, l’ennemi a déclenché ce matin une forte attaque sur tout le front entre la Somme et l’Avre (C. O. B. 4 avril).—Après une série d’assauts furieux, l’ennemi a réussi à prendre pied dans le bois au nord de Hangard (C. O. F 24 avril).—L’ennemi a pu progresser à Villers-Bretonneux (C. O. B. 24 avril).—Notre ligne a été presque intégralement rétablie. Villers-Bretonneux est de nouveau entre nos mains (C. O. B. 25 avril).—Nous avons enlevé le monument au sud de Villers-Bretonneux, pénétré dans le bois de Hangard-en-Santerre et conquis la partie ouest du village (C. O. F 26 avril).
Extraits des communiqués officiels français et britanniques.
1er Mai 1918
Arrêt de l’attaque allemande en direction de Calais
Ce matin, après un intense bombardement depuis le canal de La Bassée jusqu’au voisinage d’Armentières, d’importantes forces ennemies ont attaqué les troupes britanniques et portugaises qui tenaient ce secteur de notre front (9 avril).—Nos troupes ont évacué Armentières, rendu intenable par les gaz (11 avril).—Bailleul est tombé entre les mains de l’ennemi (16 avril).—Nos troupes ont réussi à entrer dans les villages de Meteren et Wytschaete, mais les attaques renouvelées de l’ennemi ne leur ont pas permis de s’y maintenir (17 avril).—L’ennemi a pris pied sur la colline du Kemmel (26 avril).—Des postes tenus par l’ennemi dans le secteur de Meteren ont été enlevés par nos troupes. Les troupes françaises ont amélioré leurs positions dans le voisinage de Locre (1er mai).
Extraits des communiqués officiels britanniques.
10 Mai 1918
Embouteillage du port d’Ostende
Une brèche d’environ 60 pieds a été constatée à l’intérieur du môle de Zeebrugge, à l’extrémité de la côte. A Ostende, les navires coulés ont été vus à l’entrée de la jetée, obstruant la plus grande partie du chenal.—Le beau temps de ces derniers jours a rendu possible de constantes reconnaissances aériennes sur Bruges et le canal de Zeebrugge à Bruges et la prise de clichés photographiques. Le résultat montre qu’aucun changement ne s’est produit depuis le 23 avril et que la plus grande partie des sous-marins ennemis et torpilleurs qui ont leur base sur la côte des Flandres ont été immobilisés à Bruges depuis les opérations d’embouteillage à Zeebrugge.—L’opération ayant pour but de fermer les ports d’Ostende et de Zeebrugge a été complétée avec succès la nuit dernière: le vieux croiseur Vindictive a, en effet, été coulé entre les jetées et en travers de l’entrée du port d’Ostende.
Extraits des communiqués publiés par l’Amirauté britannique les 24 avril, 30 avril et 10 mai.
16 Juillet 1918.
Arrêt de l’attaque allemande en direction de Paris
Dans la deuxième partie de la nuit les Allemands ont déclenché un violent bombardement sur toute la région comprise entre la forêt de Pinon et Reims. Ce matin l’attaque ennemie s’est produite sur un très large front entre ces deux points (27 mai).—Dans la soirée du 27, les Allemands ont réussi à franchir l’Aisne entre Vailly et Berry-au-Bac (28 mai).—Sur la Marne, les Allemands ont atteint les hauteurs à l’ouest de Château-Thierry. Nous tenons la partie de la ville située sur la rive gauche (2 juin).—A 4h 30, l’infanterie ennemie s’est portée à l’attaque de nos positions entre Montdidier et Noyon (9 juin).—Les Allemands ont réussi à prendre pied dans Cœuvres et Saint-Pierre-Aigle (13 juin).—Les Allemands ont attaqué ce matin depuis Château-Thierry jusqu’à la Main de Massiges. Nos troupes soutiennent énergiquement le choc de l’ennemi sur un front d’environ 80 kilomètres (15 juillet).— Au sud de la Marne, les Allemands n’ont pu dépasser la ligne Saint-Agnan—La Chapelle-Monthodon (16 juillet).
Extraits des communiqués officiels français.
16 Juillet 1918
Contre-attaque et offensive de l’Aisne au sud de la Marne
Nous avons contre-attaqué l’ennemi sur le front Saint-Agnan-La ChapelleMonthodon. Nos troupes ont enlevé ces deux localités (C. O. F 16 juillet).—Nous avons attaqué ce matin les positions allemandes depuis la région de Fontenoy-surl’Aisne jusqu’à la région de Belleau (C. O. F. 18 juillet).—Après avoir brisé l’offensive allemande sur les fronts de Champagne et de la Montagne de Reims dans les journées des 15, 16 et 17 juillet, les troupes françaises, en liaison avec les forces américaines, se sont portées, le 18, à l’attaque des positions allemandes entre l’Aisne et la Marne sur une étendue de 45 kilomètres (C. O. F. 18 juillet).—Nous avons traversé l’Ourcq (C. O. A. 18 juillet).—Sur notre gauche nos troupes sont entrées dans Soissons (C. O. F. 2 août).—Les résultats de la victoire acquise par la contreoffensive entreprise si glorieusement par les troupes franco-américaines le 18 juillet ont été complètement obtenus aujourd’hui: l’ennemi, qui a subi sa seconde défaite sur la Marne, a été repoussé en désordre au delà de la ligne de la Vesle (C. O. A. 3 août).—Fismes est en notre possession (C. O. F. 4 août).
Extraits des communiqués officiels français et américains.
8 Août 1918
Offensive du nord de l’Oise à l’Ancre
A l’aube, ce matin, la 4e armée britannique et la 1re armée française sous le commandement du maréchal Sir Douglas Haig ont attaqué sur un large front à l’est et au sud-est d’Amiens (C. O. B. 8 août).—La ville de Montdidier est tombée aux mains des Français (C. O. B. 10 août).—Lassigny est tombé (C. O. F. 21 août).—Nos troupes ont repris Albert (C. O. B. 22 août).—Nous avons occupé Roye (C. O. F. 27 août).—Nous avons atteint Nesle (C. O. F 28 août).—Nous avons occupé Chaulnes (C. O. F. 28 août).—Nous avons enlevé Noyon de haute lutte (C. O. F. 29 août).—Les troupes néo-zélandaises se sont emparées de Bapaume (C. O. B. 29 août).—Les troupes australiennes tiennent Péronne (C. O. B. 1er septembre).—Nous tenons Ham et Chauny (C. O. F. 6 septembre).—L’ennemi a été complètement rejeté de SaintQuentin (C. O. F 2 octobre).—La 1re armée a battu complètement les six divisions qui lui faisaient face. Dès la première heure elle s’emparait de Guise (C. O. F. 5 novembre).—Hirson est entre nos mains (C. O. F. 9 novembre).
Extraits des communiqués officiels français et britanniques.
20 Août 1918
Offensive entre Oise et Aisne
A l’est de l’Oise, nos troupes ont attaqué les lignes allemandes sur un front de 25 kilomètres environ depuis la région de Bailly jusqu’à l’Aisne (20 août).—Nous occupons Coucy-le-Château et Coucy-la-Ville (5 septembre).—Nous avons pris le village d’Allemant et le moulin de Laffaux (14 septembre).—Nos troupes ont occupé le village et la lisière sud de la forêt de Pinon: Vaudesson, Chavignac et le fort de la Malmaison sont entre nos mains (28 septembre).—Nous sommes parvenus jusqu’à l’Ailette que nous bordons au nord de Craonne (12 octobre).—Nous avons pris La Fère. Les troupes de la 10e armée sont entrées à Laon (13 octobre).—Avec la coopération des troupes italiennes nous avons enlevé et dépassé Sissonne (14 octobre).—Entre Sissonne et Château-Porcien nous avons pénétré dans toutes les parties de la position Hunding où l’ennemi tenait encore (5 novembre).—Nous avons atteint la voie ferrée de Mézières à Hirson (9 novembre).—Les troupes italiennes sont entrées à Rocroi (11 novembre).
Extraits des communiqués officiels français.
