Embracing the unknown, ethics and dance
pp. 89-98
in: Paul Macneill (ed), Ethics and the arts, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
Dancers sometimes speak of adopting the perspective of not-knowing in the context of their dancing. This attitude has two aspects: one the subjectivity of the dancer (which adopts a mode of not-knowing), and two, the body that creates. According to these artists, the subject-dancer needs to make room for the body by getting out of the way. The idea that subjectivity is no longer central and that the body holds the key is not new. Nietzsche is renowned for preferring the body to consciousness, and for looking towards corporeal becoming as the means by which life can be affirmed. His notion of (self) overcoming could be thought of in relation to the subject-dancer's being in the dark. But it is Spinoza who takes these components into an explicitly ethical domain.Spinoza's famous dictum that "we don't know what a body can do" identifies the twin elements discussed above: the subject who doesn't know, in relation to a body which acts. However, it is one thing to acknowledge that dimming the lights on subjectivity can be aesthetically fruitful, another to call it good. This chapter explores the sense in which Spinoza's understanding of goodness is able to introduce an ethical perspective on dance. It elucidates the good in terms of the body's increasing corporeal power, thought through the notion of active and passive affections. It draws on Deleuze's work on Spinoza in order to explore the ways in which we might conceive of dance practice as a form of the good.
