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The elemental rhetoric of performance

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The elemental rhetoric of performance

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THE ELEMENTAL RHETORIC OF PERFORMANCE

by

Jayson Matthew Kellogg

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS)

August 2019

Copyright 2019 Jayson Matthew Kellogg

2
Foreword

This paper would not have been possible without Professor Thomas Goodnight’s expertise
guidance and encouragement. I am grateful to have had such a rich experience with him, one that was full
of both challenges and joys commensurate with pushing ideas into new spaces. I would like to thank my
wife, Arezou, whose support during this process was essential to the paper’s success and my health.
Professor Burghardt Tenderich, who without allowing me the flexibility to work outside of the
department would have made this endeavor all but impossible.

3
Table of Contents

Foreword ……………………………………………………………………………………….... pg. 2
Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………….. pg. 4
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… pg. 5
Rhetorical Performances as States of Matter: An Overview ……………………………………. pg. 9
Hard Forms and Soft Gestures: Performance as a Solid ………………………………………... pg. 14
Fluid Displays and Abrasive Encounters: Performance as a Liquid ……………………….….... pg. 20
Ecstatic Contractions and Violent Expansions: Performance as a Gas …………………………. pg. 30
Synergy and Phase Transitions: Leveraging the Material Dynamics of Performance ………….. pg. 39
Methodological Framework: Systematizing Performances as States of Matter …………………. pg. 42
Concluding Thoughts ……………………..……………………………………………………… pg. 46
Bibliography ………………………………..……………………………………………………. pg. 48

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Abstract

Communication is typically viewed as a mechanical process, were messages are produced,
transmitted and received. This media is then analyzed through a positivist lens, where messages are
calculated and measured for possible meanings and potential effects. This paper, on the other hand, will
provide an alternate way to understand communication beyond this rational-mechanistic model. Instead,
communication will be seen as the expression of material phenomena, mirroring the properties and
characteristics of matter and energy when combined into states of matter. It will reveal how these non-
discursive forces frame the pre-text for any discursive arguments that develop and are spoken/written.
Analysis will concentrate on rhetorical performances, where the human body, singularly or collectively,
acts as the media to express a message. This materialist study of performances will occur through
ekphrasis: where one phenomenon, in this case, performances, are interpreted and read as different states
of matter. What becomes disclosed through this ekphrasis are the underlying affordances and dynamics
different types of performances possess, which have so far gone unarticulated through performative and
rhetorical theory. New types of performance have and are arising due to the internet, their capacity to
change over time and their connection to other types of activity are all aspects that become integrated
through this materialist view. This paper is a speculative endeavor and is a part of the larger materialist
turn in philosophy and communication. It does not intend to provide a unitary theory but develop inroads
into a material reading of performance and behavior. From this initial foray, a series of propositions
follow summarizing key findings. The paper concludes with a methodology to systematize and catalog
further performances.

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§ Introduction
In the introduction to Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle states that rhetoric is the ability in
any given situation to discern what the available means of persuasion are. Aristotle referred to this as the
endekomenon pithanon, which translates as available persuasivity — any and all elements that act on a
subject’s feelings, thoughts and behaviors.
1
This expansive view is what allows rhetoric to be such an
open field of study and practice, not confined to a specific domain or phenomena but connected to every
discipline, from science to religion. The general perception, however, is that rhetoric’s domain is that of
syntax and the formulation of logical proofs. And communication more broadly is seen as to operate
analogous to a machine and understood through a positivist lens. However, in the last few decades of the
twentieth-century communication scholars have begun challenging this model and looking at rhetoric
beyond language, texts and the discursive, investigating how it operates on more fundamental levels
within social life, epistemically and ontologically.

This has led to a materialist turn in communications,
where the preoccupation with texts and their socially constructed meanings has given way to how objects
and material forces contain their own persuasive effects on social life.
2

This paper is part of this material turn in assessing, as Aristotle stated almost two-and-half-
millennia ago, all the available means of persuasion in a given context, and in particular, those which are
physical in nature and that function as the basis (pre-text) out of which the discursive develops. This
embodied rhetoric in matter is expressed by Kennedy as immanent energy:

“Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the
energy inherent in communication: the emotional energy that impels the
speaker to speak, the physical energy expended in the utterance, the

1
Aristote, et al. The Art of Rhetoric. Oxford University Press, 2018.
2
Ambient rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetoric Being by Thomas Rickert and The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a
Philosophy of Elemental Media by John Durham are excellent examples of such types of inquiry.

6
energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced by the
recipient in decoding the message.”
3

This rhetorical energy does not originate nor require reason and language (logos), though it can certainly
be further produced and conveyed by them. Instead, it originates in and through sense perception
(aisthesis) both physical and psychic (feelings), and is, therefore, shared with animals who are alogos
(without speech).
This paper will analyze how this rhetorical energy manifests itself within and through the human
body during public performances. It will analyze how the rhetorical energy of the body is essential not
just in the delivery (hupokrisis) of some spoken message but is itself persuasive through its own material-
energetic presence, individually and collectively. This energetic presence of the body, its rhetorical
energy, has different affordances dependent upon the type of performance it materializes into and carries
out, from collective singing of the national anthem to a flash mob flooding a department store.
Analyzing the rhetorical effect of public performances is not a new endeavor. The most well-
known and regarded unpack and explain performances through literature and religion: Kenneth Burke
reads performance through drama from the way bodies create cause and effect narratives; Jeffery
Alexander reads performance through ritual and theatre in how a performance becomes authentic,
believable, and thereby truthful and desirable to those in attendance. However, these models, no doubt
being very revealing in their own regard, nevertheless, situate performance as serving discursive ends.
Which is to say, the causes and effects of the performance are treated as texts others interpret, deliberate
and then act on. Performances are not treated as performances for their own bodily sake but for the mind.
Instead, in the spirit of the materialist turn, bodily performances will be read as states of matter.

3
Kennedy, George A. “A Hoot in the Dark: The Evolution of General Rhetoric.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 25,
no. 1, 1992, pp. 1–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40238276.

7
This material approach is not the first, though it is far more descriptive, systematic and
penetrative than anything that has come before. Elias Canetti’s famous Crowds and Power compared
different types of crowd formation to crowd symbols. These symbols were fire, crystal, storm, river, sea,
sand along with others were used as a means to personify the dynamics, tendencies, motives and lifespan
of various types of crowds. These symbols Canetti said, “approach[ed] in a new and profitable way”
crowds and shed a new “natural light” on them.
4

What Canetti was doing through this metaphoric comparison, though not at the time aware, was
drawing upon the literary process of ekphrasis — vivid description.
5
Ekphrasis originates from the
ancient Greek progymnasmata manuals used by students of rhetoric. Ekphrasis was the use of rich
language to engage listeners to see some topic or object anew.
6
Over time, it became associated with the
act of translating Greek sculpture into poetry. Translation not in the form of accurate description, though
it had to have a semblance, but capturing and conveying a similar essence and experience by employing
an entirely different medium of expression — the discursive. However, jump ahead twenty-five hundred
years and now this literary technique has expanded. Ekphrasis is now seen as a conceptual framework of
reading one thing through another, such as international politics through geography, ideas as memes (bits
of DNA) or contemporary events through the newest literary genre. What ekphrasis does through its
introduction of a whole new descriptive repertoire is to disclose something in a new light, revealing
uncovered aspects through a whole new conceptual vocabulary to draw upon.
7

Drawing on inspiration from Canetti and in the spirit of the materialist turn of communication,
this paper will analyze public performances through states of matter, commonly known as solids, liquids
and gas. It will draw upon the rich taxonomy of concepts produced by the physical sciences over the last
two-and-half centuries to describe the properties, morphology and behavior of matter and energy. This

4
Canetti, Elias, and Carol Stewart. Crowds and Power. Noonday Press, 1998.
5
This is not to undermine the significance of Elias Canetti as a literary figure.
6
Hawhee, Debra. Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation. The University of Chicago Press,
2017.
7
With the end of metaphysics (Death of God) so to the pursuit of objectivity, instead it is not absolute truth that is
sought but the disclosure of the hidden and manifold world in ever new ways.

8
ekphrasis in many ways is not as far off as it might initially seem, as our language is saturated with
metaphors and descriptions that continually reference back to the properties of matter and energy. They
appear when describing our most basic feelings, such as love being soft and warm, people we dislike as
cold and distant, or complementing a trusted colleague as a solid guy. Remarks are considered
inflammatory, and then the passions become inflamed — emotions are contagious like a fire. Some
people are hotheaded, while others remain cool and calm. Companies have brands: the literal burning and
scarring of one material into another. Our language and conceptions are inundated with such material
ways of defining, describing and comprehending the world — without which our most personal and
significant feelings could not be apprehended and understood.
What becomes readily apparent through these material metaphors are that not only do they have
the effect of grounding the ephemerality of feeling with physical touch, but it reveals different aspects
that went undisclosed through other forms of vivid description. This is because metaphors are conceptual,
creating the categories and conditions for evaluation — a set of relations — that precede the act of
grasping the concept’s attributes and features. Which is to say, the concept discloses how something will
be assessed before it can then be evaluated. As a consequence, a metaphor automatically determines and
selects which of those elements are salient, important and meaningful.
8

What this inquiry attempts to do is arrive at an understanding of performance before associating it
with autonomous, intentional, discursive subjects, and instead reveal the body as a coequal contributor to
rhetoric. It aims to prioritize material aspects over discursive ones. This is accomplished by interpreting
the bodies that come together to generate a performance as a particular state of matter. What will follow is
a way of looking at the body purely as a material phenomenon driven by interactions that are material and
energetic in nature. Through this tropological mapping of performances as states of matter, a different set
of properties and dynamics are disclosed, revealing the way these non-discursive elements are the
fundament for whatever discursive meanings are to arise. This approach is not seeking to develop a

8
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 1981.

9
unified theory but merely develop the in-roads into a new understanding of rhetorical performances that
have so far exceeded prior analysis and description.

§ Rhetorical Performances as States of Matter: An Overview
Before reading performances as states of matter in any too great of detail, it is necessary first
sketch out terms and concepts: what are the different states of matter and what are the components of a
performance. This will then follow with a brief outline of how states of matter correlate to performance.
There are many different states of matter beyond only solid, liquid and gas. Often matter can exist
in a hybrid state, possessing properties of two or more states, as with a gel being solid-liquid or foam
being a liquid-gas. Sometimes a state under unique conditions can have properties of all three, known as
the triple point. Therefore, states of matter — solid, liquid and gas — should not be thought of as discrete
categories but as a long continuum with solids on the left and gas on the right, with many different
intermediate or hybrid states existing in-between. Analysis of different types of performance will be read
along this same continuum, beginning with performances that reflect the properties and characteristics of
solids and ending with those that reflect the properties and characteristics of gas. States of matter result
from the particular matter’s reaction to the force of pressure and thermal energy or heat. Thermal energy
is considered a factor in determining a state of matter because all other forms of energy revert and convert
back to heat. Thermal energy is the only kind of energy that separates the bonds holding particles
together. Thermal energy behaves in the manner of a fluid, flowing along a gradient of least resistance
from areas of high concentration to areas that are less until equilibrium is reached for the entire material.
9

Pressure is defined as the physical force acting on the surface area of an object. Pressure occurs both
externally and internally to a state of matter. When matter contains less thermal energy the elements
within have a greater tendency to bond and form together as one substance. This is a form of inward
pressure that holds the elements together; in liquids, it is given the name — surface tension. Pressure can

9
This is also referred to as a system within the field of thermodynamics.

10
also originate as an external force by way of the environment, for example, the way oxygen is compressed
into a liquid and contained within metal tanks. Water responds differently to the force of pressure and
thermal energy than does copper or another kind of material. The variation and differences between how
these different kinds of matter respond to pressure and heat are infinite. As a result, performances are
read through the properties of different states of matter, not through particular types of matter, such as
salt or graphite.
A material is referred to as a phase when its entirety, or that of a homogenous section of it, exists
entirely within one distinct state of matter. When this homogenous section undergoes a change, say from
liquid to gas by the process of vaporization, it is referred to as a phase transition. This phase transition is
caused by changes in pressure and thermal energy. A phase diagram, shown in Figure 1, represents this
force and thermal energy, with temperature on the x-axis and pressure on the y-axis, and their combined
effect on a material to determine what state of matter it will be, which is shown by the titled regions.
Every phase diagram is different for every type of matter being evaluated, due to it reacting uniquely to
pressure and temperature. However, every phase diagram reveals a similar y shaped pattern, with gas
occurring under conditions of more heat and less pressure, and the inverse for solids and liquids. As
mentioned earlier, under unique circumstances, a material can exist in all three states simultaneously
— notice the triple point and critical point on the graph. The critical point is a state where matter takes on
Figure 1. Phase diagram.

11
the properties of both a liquid and a gas, possessing the density of a liquid and the expansive volume of a
gas.
Solids are stable with an unchanging form that is clearly discernible and resistance to change. Its
composition is based on an orderly arrangement of elements equally spaced via a lattice, which repeats
the same configuration over and over again into a repeating pattern. Solids are cool, heat is dissipated
outward and pressure is directed inward. These characteristics are what makes solids resilient to change
and division, and at the same time divisive when in contact with other fluids. When solids do encounter
energy and forces that they cannot resist, their either melt, slowly crumble or shatter instantly into a
countless number of tiny pieces.
Liquids along with gas are fluidic, a substance with no fixed form that exists in perpetual motion;
however, being a middle state between solids and gases, it shares properties with both. It directs pressure
inward allowing liquids to aggregate and pool, taking on a definitive volume. However, this pressure is
also easily directed outward, giving it a continually shifting morphology: movement is reflected in form
and form is reflected in movement. Rivers are a form of movement and a movement of form. Liquids
being fluidic mean the elements are less concentrated together, allowing for endless recombination of the
elements. However, these internal differences can also separate into their own regions within the overall
liquid itself. These internal divisions can be seen with oil rising above the density of water, or other times
mixing into an emulsion as with water and alcohol. Liquid’s make up is like its form, never constant but
always in some state of transition.
Gas has no volume or form. It is expansive like thermal energy as it moves into areas of least
concentration, only when it is constrained and external pressure is applied does it then accumulate,
causing it to react with even more energetic movement. Gas has no bonds or pressure holding it together,
unlike liquids and solids. Instead, every element moves along its own trajectory and speed, irrespective of
the other elements that are identical to it, until it collides with another and then is redirected on a new
course. Gas is overcome with the energy contained within it, directing this heat into outward pressure

12
through its own frenetic movement. The more gas encounters energy, the more it reflects the properties of
energy and not those of matter until the point at which it quite literally becomes energy through igniting.
The defining characteristics of these three states of matter are order and movement. Solids are
highly ordered with no movement while gas, at the other extreme, possesses no order and is in chaotic
flux. As more thermal energy is applied to matter the further it moves along the continuum from solid to
gas: order breaks down, elements become separated, and movement becomes faster and more random.
The continuum, therefore, reflects order on one side and chaos on the other.
Performances constitute a vast range of acts, from the rallying of residents outside a local police
station to the collective singing of the national anthem at a sports arena. Performances foremost express
emotional energy in the form of sensations and feelings (values). This energy is directed inward to those
within the performance, performers, and to those outside it, from audiences to ignorant passerby. Out of
these performances, ideas can be maintained, introduced and molded: such as memorializing a past event,
engendering excitement for a new cause, or renewing interest in one forgotten. The performance can be
the entire rhetoric itself as with a mass-shooter or be part of a more significant rhetorical movement
extending far back in time and throughout space, such as the suffrage movement and its thousands of
performances during the latter half of the nineteenth century

and early twentieth century. A performance
can serve as a reactant or catalyst for a whole series of subsequent performances to coalesce around, as
occurred following the self-immolation by Mohamed Bouazizi and the Arab Spring that followed.
Even with all these different aims, origins and purposes, every performance is constituted by a
core trivium of elements: script, performer and audience. Scripts are everything from where the
performance is held, to what the performer will do, the mise-en-scène.
10
A performer is a person carrying
out elements of the script in the gaze of others — the public and fellow performers. Audience derives
from the Latin root audire, to hear, wherein the eighteenth-century it began to refer to those witnessing an
event. The audience can range from those also participating in the performance to those completely

10
Everything that takes place in the frame of view.

13
unaware that one is even taking place around them. In every performance, each one of these three
elements is present but whose role and significance can vary considerably, from an elaborate preparation
and execution of a script, as in the staging of a dramatic play, to merely having people take a seat in a
restaurant, as in the sit-ins of the 1960s, here the emphasis is solely on the performer.
However, what a performance achieves, on the other hand, is more complex and varied. The most
general description of what a performance accomplishes is a kind of assertion, literal and symbolic,
expressing values, feelings into the public domain through their embodiment.
Performances are temporal, unfolding through time and space, and are both a process, enactment
of something — parade, rally, ceremony — and the production of an effect as a consequence, as in raising
awareness on low wages. Therefore, a performance’s efficacy occurs denotatively and connotatively,
what it does and what it stands in for, the first bodily and the later discursive.
Performances are often categorized by their discursive intentions into a binary of either sustaining
the current state of affairs or opposing them, such as a ceremony versus a riot.
11
However, this
oversimplification prevents performances from being seen not only as a space to resist but as a way to
introduce new feelings, values and ideas — critique. Critique is that which acts as an opportunity for new
meaning to be introduced, not simply opposing what is already present. Negation is a far more
confrontational and chaotic, not seeking dialogue; it frequently intends to destroy and disrupt by force
some other thing. These categories of performance would then be affirmation, critique and negation.
Therefore, the intended goal of any performance — discursively — is to either affirm, critique or negate
something. However, this reading is flawed, in that even performances that are negating are still indirectly
affirming something else. Instead, it is more accurate to see performances as communicating ideas that
are replicated in the performances formal structure, the way the bodies come to gather and present to
themselves and others, which can include ideas that are both affirmative and negative.

11
Bell, Elizabeth. Theories of Performance. Sage Publications, 2008.

14
However, to view performance as a state of matter requires rethinking these discursive categories
altogether. This is achieved by replacing the continuum of affirmation-critique-negation with that of
order-chaos. Performances as states of matter will instead be assessed on the characteristics of their
materiality: morphology, effects, development (phase transition) and attributes. Through this material
reading, the possibility for new ideas to be introduced requires disorder, otherwise, there would be no
space for novelty to enter. Therefore, performances can be seen to function as a pre-text for different
types of discursive ideas, from those already established to those which are not even looking for broader
acceptance. How the three elements of performance — script, performer and audience — unify into a
physical state will be covered in the sections that follow.

§ Hard Forms and Soft Gestures: Performance as a Solid
Solids are those kinds of performances where the script, performer and audience are discernable,
predictable, on-going and unchanging, with a clearly defined and repeatable form. The most stable and
enduring kind of solid performances are crystals. This type of solid possess long-range order, where the
elements at the center of the performance are identical to those at the periphery. These types of
performances exclude audiences in the sense everyone is a performer in the script, eliminating impurities
and preventing defects from developing during its occurrence. These crystal performances serve to
reinforce and further bind the elements of the performance — script, performers and audience —
together. They are often supported through institutions, who developed these performances over hundreds
or thousands of years, evolving from an uncountable number of prior performances. The connections
binding the script, performers and audience arise through a slow condensation of elements, which
eventually congeal together through the process of crystallization. What results is a metastable state of
matter, allowing it to resist perturbations and turbulence.
Through the performance’s continual repetition and enactment, it further generates a stabilizing
effect that becomes self-reinforcing to the constitutive elements. Often the actions carried out by the
performers appear lifeless and devoid of feeling. This is because the performances are carried out due to

15
obligations that are highly regulated through prohibitions, take for example, the decorum of the judiciary
where everyone must remain silent in the courtroom. These performances also take the form of religious
and political rituals. Many of the performers of creedal faiths possess a modern outlook but still actively
participate in religious rituals as committed performers, motivated solely by the stabilizing effects it
produces through the body for one’s psychology and outwardly in the community that is generated around
it. Political performances are those around themes of national pride and solidarity, as in the celebration of
historical moments and anthems honoring allegiance to a country.
These types of solid performances build off one another and integrate themselves into existing
structures, extending the lattice outward or by repeating new iterations via twinning. Because solids have
such permanence, they often serve as the site for other types of performances, acting as a substrate for the
less stable and enduring types of performance. However, there are thresholds, and if enough pressure is
applied to these types of performances they, in turn, become brittle and shatter.
In the examples to follow, solid performances will show in a pre-textual way how they are pre-
occupied with discursive topics that are also centered endurance and stability: truth, objectivity, fact,
belief and in some cases enforcement through violence.
The image on the left (Fig. 2) is of Muslims in the French city of Clichy, a suburb of Paris, protesting the
closure of their mosque by performing prayer in front of city hall, September 2017. The image on the right
(Fig. 3) is a quartz that has formed on the surface of marble, both crystalline materials.

16
Memorial services commemorate traumatic events in a country or nation’s history. This type of
solid performance follows closely behind crystals in its endurance and demands that everyone become a
performer. However, with memorials based in collective memory emphasis moves from the performers to
that of the script. As a result, the longevity of this performance slowly crumbles with time. Every year
there are memorial services around the country for the terrorist attacks on 9/11. In particular, there are
three services held at the site where the planes crashed, with one of them being attended by the
President.
12
These ceremonies are carried out identically through highly orchestrated speeches,
invocations, observances and moments of silences. These performances are predictable and routine down
to where people sit, stand and the order of who speaks, as they acknowledge the sacrifice and bravery of
victims, and the commitment to honor their memory. However, these events being temporal, overtime
degrade and succumb to the corrosive effects of time. Like memorials honoring past wars and those who
died, their periodicity becomes less and less frequent as the event recedes in time. Anniversaries start out
annually and then receded to 10-year and 20-year intervals until being celebrated as centennials, with all

12
The President usually speaks at either the crash site of Flight 93 or in Manhattan at the former site of the World
Trade Towers.
On the left (Fig. 4) police officers arrest an Occupy Los Angeles protester from their encampment on
November 30, 2011. Here a solid performance contains a fluid performance, as demonstrated in their
postures. On the right (Fig. 5) is a 3D model of liquid-crystals in two different alignments when in the smectic
phases.

17
those who have experienced or remembered the event dead as well. The performance of remembrance
undergoes a phase transition into a more liquid state, as remembrance gives wat to imaginative portrayals
of reenactment. Somber audiences and stoic performers transform into curiosity, fantasy and play that are
characteristics of liquid and gas performances. What results is a semi-crystal solid that is no longer rigid
and defined but soft and plastic and in a constant low-level condition of change.
Government testimony is solid performance that is proto-crystalline, less ordered than the hard,
enduring crystal of religious and political ceremonial rites. These types of performances have partial
stability through the rigid element of the performers — government officials conducting the questioning
— allowing for the introduction of elements, testimony, that is itself but allowed through a rigid question
and answer process. The bureaucrats can help to either solidify statements given or prevent them from
becoming integrated through performances of their own that are fluidic. This is why these performers
embody such theatrical display while the testifier, on the other hand, is usually subdued unless prodded to
do so. Like the pattern seen with the previous examples, this solid has a short duration and can only
endure for a short period of time before dissolving. An example of such testimony was that given to the
U.S. Congress by the Citizens for a Free Kuwait during the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on
October 10, 1990. The public relations firm Hill and Knowlton was hired by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a
front group organized by Kuwaiti government officials, to lobby and advocate on their behalf for U.S.
military intervention. Iraq invaded Kuwait two months prior, and in the preceding months the Kuwaiti
government was seeking military intervention by the United States. To spur this decision on and give a
emotional weight to the Bush administration for launching military operations, a congressional caucus
was formed to provide testimony on what had occurred during the invasion. Co-Chairman of the caucus
Tom Lantos worked with Hill and Knowlton on developing a list of speakers for the event. The last of
these to speak was a 15-year old girl named Nayirah, whose real identity was concealed as a means to
protect her from reprisal but also to protect the legitimacy of her testimony. She recounted an emotional
story of Iraqi soldiers entering a hospital’s neonatal unit and removing premature babies from their

18
incubators in an effort to intentionally kill them.
13
Her testimony was then recounted by politicians and
bureaucrats to the public throughout the months following the hearing. President Bush recounted her story
eight times to the nation in the following 44 days; seven senators mentioned her testimony as part of their
justification for voting for war with Iraq.
Nayirah’s script was developed from focus groups held by the Wirthlin Group, who researched
what story would trigger the most alarm and outrage by the public.
14
But as with these other soft solids
and semi-crystalline states, these performances lack the enduring properties of more rigid solids. By early
next year, reports began circulating in major newspapers testimony provided by Nayirah was false. Her
true identity was revealed as the daughter of the Kuwait ambassador to the United States. However, the
performance had cohered long enough for the administration to leverage her fictitious account of events,
days later President Bush announced the start of military operations. If Nayirah’s performance had
occurred in another venue outside of the formal and rigid structure of a congressional caucus it would not
have been able to crystallize. Therefore, the stability for this type of performance relies on integrating
itself within other solid performances, known for producing some of the most enduring and stable
performances people encounter and, therefore, trust.
A different type of liquid-crystal performance that introduces new material but is even more
fluidic are parades. They vary significantly in that some can be more stable and orderly while others can
become gaseous as carnivals. In the spring of 1929, a group of New York debutantes marched in the
Easter Sunday parade under the guise of suffragettes, puffing on “torches of freedom,” or what were
Lucky Strike cigarettes.
15
They marched down Fifth Avenue in front of a lauding crowd numbering in the
tens of thousands, waving and smiling back in celebratory fashion. At the time, most felt it was indecent
for women to smoke, thinking of it only as an activity for men, leading it to be viewed as taboo and

13
January 15, 1992. Deception on Capitol Hill. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/199
2/01/15/opinion/ deception-on-capitol-hill.html
14
Andersen, Robin. A Century of Media, A Century of War. Peter Lang, New York, 2006. Pg. 170.
15
Amos, A and Haglund, M. From Social Taboo to “Torch of Freedom”: The Marketing of Cigarettes to Women.
Tobacco Control 2000: 9:3-8. Retrieved from https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/tobaccocontrol/9/1/3.full.pdf

19
highly controversial for women. A few years prior there were attempts by legislatures to enact laws
prohibiting and punishing women for doing so. The “Torches of Freedom” publicity stunt carried out by a
group of moxy woman was part of a more extensive campaign by Lucky Strike that relied on movie stars
and other forms of thematic appeal besides that of women’s equality.
16
Through this performance, the act
of smoking became instantly popularized and adopted by women; within a few years, the activity became
as ubiquitous among women as was with men. The mass adoption of the gesture of smoking by women
can be seen in crystals as twinning, where repeated formations of crystal growth occur along a shared
axis, expanding outward. The gesture of smoking functioned as a psychic mirror and rhetorical
performance of emancipation, which was just as much about pleasure as it was about equality. So fused
were the two that they became inseparable and indistinguishable, equality as pleasure and pleasure as
equality. This is how crystals nucleate, binding cultural elements so compactly that one element cannot be
understood without its affixation (affiliation) to the other. This was possible because the cigarette was
environed by energies (motives) and pressures in the form of consumerism, individualism, and
progressivism. It was only nine years prior that the nineteenth amendment was passed, granting women
the right to vote. In addition, the performance aligned and inserted itself within a larger performance. The
women used the existing elements but only slightly modified the script, turning the celebratory event into
one that affirmed their own performance of smoking. It leveraged the stability this performance gave and
the energy it channeled, and it expanded upon this with cigarettes and the slogan “torches of freedom,”
itself being another affirmative gesture. With the suffrage movement only having recently ended, there
were many cultural cavities to be occupied by women, consumerism being one of the biggest.
Solid performances are frequently used as a substrate (the name given to a material that provides
the layer on which another can cohere and form) for liquid and gaseous performances that are much more
disorderly. This was the case with the series of kneelings during the national anthem, resistance
performances, by NFL football players during the 2017 season. It began with quarterback Colin

16
Smoking was framed as method of weight control and sex appeal.

20
Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem before the game. Here this semi-solid performance
relied on the existing substrate, the performance of the national anthem serving as a site for his own. The
gesture sparked controversy and mimicry (twinning) like that of the suffragettes; however, this
performance was not attempting to bond with the other performance it resided with, but instead deform it
for as long as possible. As a consequence, it possessed little endurance as it was opposed to a larger
performance which it relied upon, leading to the end of the performance and Kaepernick’s career. This is
not to suggest these performances are not significant in contrast to the ones they are resisting. This
performance of resistance did introduce a form of minor stability for those aggrieved, alienated and
resentful. However, for everyone else, it introduced instability into their own performance, as the
audience were co-performers and for the broader audience watching it on television.

§ Fluid Displays and Abrasive Encounters: Performance as a Liquid
Liquid performances retain some of the stability solids possess due to their propensity to
aggregate into a fixed volume. However, these provisional forms are weak and easily deformed, acting as
both an advantage and limitation: as these types of performances are easily formed and influenced but
rarely persist. This occurs from pressure being directed both inward toward conformity and harmony, and
outward toward opportunism and self-expression. As a consequence of their internal structure, liquids
take on anomalous forms and hybrid morphologies: gelatins, solutions and foams. The most significant
difference between solid and liquid performances is that the latter is fluidic, existing in a constant of state
tension, agitation and motion, from the contradictory tendencies of inward consolidation and outward
expansion. The elements — script, performers and audience — do not share bonds with each another but
instead are packed together. They slide over, around and past one another, jostling around in endless
reconfigurations: scripts multiply, audiences change, performers come and go. As a consequence,
minimal hierarchy and order exist in liquid performances, and when they do their provisional and
temporary rallying around a particular site or figurehead. Scripts are kept vague and broad. A framework
is established with specifics getting worked out in an impromptu manner by the performers: who speaks,

21
where to meet and how public attention and visibility will be garnered. These elements unify momentarily
to then breakaway soon after. Liquid performances coat other performers in the guise of counter
performances, relying on solid performances for the containment they intrinsically lack to channel their
expression.
17
Solid performances block other performances from occurring and so require penetration
through deception. These liquid performances use their instability not to assimilate but introduce new
feelings and values, which are nascent and therefore indeterminate in that they have yet to cool and
solidify into a solid discourse. Liquid performances pour, spill, pool and overflow into spaces unless
contained by solid performances, security being the most common. These performances lack of order is
replaced with an ability to form quickly and aggregate in a manner that is both responsive and adaptable.
Short-range order may occur in certain parts of the performance while in other parts little to none exist.
Liquid performances can, therefore, be both homogenous and heterogeneous, intermixing differences
uniformly or separating them out to different areas within a single performance. This can lead
performances to have internal disunion as elements contradict, conflict and collapse with one another. As
energy is increased so do these tendencies, with disorder feeding more disorder, leading to a phase
transformation into a gaseous state. Liquid performances are provisional: driven by disorderly currents
that continually react to the outward environment and the internal energy circulating within them. This
makes them haphazard, unpredictable and of short duration, aggregating and then dispersing just as
quickly. This instability is reflected through the histrionics that often accompany liquid performances in
demonstrations, protest, rallies and marches, without which energy circulating through them would erode
even quicker. Their aim is not to be clear so much as to be novel and visible, explicitly exhibitionist.
These performances function to discover, introduce and critique, rarely enduring long enough to cool and
solidify into a sustained discourse. At times, through friction and resistance with other states of matter,
liquids aerate and foam, taking on a volume that is far greater than before.

17
Daniel Webster famously referred to the anti-slavery movement’s tactics as the rub-a-dub-dub of agitation.

22
Televised political debates are a type of gelatinous performance, a hybrid state with structure
partially derived from the script, which both guides performers actions and to allow them to express their
own. This type of performance serves as an opportunity to try out bodies and ideas before being chosen
and fully integrated into more rigid performances of political office. These performances serve as trial
runs, pre-enactments for later performances the office holder will carry out. Aspects of the script dealing
with questions and answers are prepared in advanced by performers; however, there remain unknowns as
the audience is as unsure of what they are looking to see and hear as the politicians are unsure of how to
perform. Performances become acts of calculation, experimentation and reformulation. The audience is
allowed an opportunity to sample multiple personas as they position and pivot to discovery what suits
their tastes and moods. The debaters position themselves with and against one another through repeated
rounds of questioning and answering.
The 2016 Republican Primary held 12 debates over six months, an effort to fully explore the
range of performances possible by the seven candidates. Following the Republican defeat in the 2012
presidential election, the party reflected on their failure through a 97-page autopsy report titled Growth
and Opportunity Project. Winning the Hispanic vote was an essential part of any future strategy, and
called for “positive solutions on immigration reform” with messaging that “needs to carefully craft a
tone” that would not alienate this bloc of voters.
18
However, when candidate Trump launched his
campaign, he not only focused on this issue but took an aggressive stance toward illegal immigration,
using the debates as a way to deliver his agenda on issues that were either avoided or in opposition to the
other candidates who were heeding the report’s recommendations. However, what set his performance
apart from the other candidates was his confrontational position to both other debaters and moderators.
Here was a reflection of the populism being both a rejection of the standard dogma and also the very style
of articulating that discourse. Candidate Trump used these debates as an opportunity to reposition
(rebrand) himself through anecdotes, stories and statements of his conservative roots and true Republican

18
Growth and Opportunity Project. Republican National Committee, 2013. Pg. 15-16.

23
leanings, especially around the issue of being Pro-Life. In comparison to the more solid performances of
the congressional testimonies, debates are fluid in that the performer is central with a partial script that
can change on an ad-hoc basis. Candidates who are too rigid and inflexible are eliminated. As a
consequence, debates demand instability on behalf of the performers to address topics of controversy,
entertain the public and generate relevant expressions, feelings and values to excite and engage grassroot
voters. Moderators encourage this fluidity by highlighting ambiguity and following up with improvised
questions of their own in response to the candidate’s answers. President Trump carried these fluidic
performances into his style of governing. Often, he is criticized by opponents on the political Left and
Right, and even by those who agree with his platform, for lacking appropriate decorum and violating the
norms of the office. However, this turbulence can be seen as the pre-text for the very populist agenda he
has inaugurated with his authority and powers.
The most common type of liquid performance are solutions, arising in the form of — pickets,
crowds, rallies, demonstrations, protests and marches. These performances have different types of
viscosity (resistance to deformation). Those high in viscosity have more pressure and energy directed
inward: thick, stationary and at times oozing forth; while those low in viscosity have energy and pressure
directed outward: flowing quickly, expanding and gathering new adherents faster than they can be
organized. Viscosity can either decrease or increase when the performance encounters turbulence.
Counter-protesters and police can produce and add energy to the performance, encouraging it to grow,
expand and become more unstable. These elements on the periphery, where friction is highest can
undergo a phase transition and become gaseous and vaporize by either leaving the performance altogether
or responding with violence.
19
Alternatively, the turbulence generated by the friction from police can

19
Mitov, Petr. Sensitive Matter: Foams, Gels, Liquid Crystals, and Other Miracles. Harvard University Press, 2012.
Pg. 50.

24
increase the viscosity of the performance, as what transpired in Ukrainian with the Maiden Revolution in
2013.
20

On March 9, 2015, at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, a student-led protest movement
called Rhodes Must Fall demanded the statue of Cecil John Rhodes be removed from the center of
campus. A figure of incredible influence and controversy for South Africa, as well as the founding
benefactor of the school. The campaign was motivated by a diverse range of energies, the history of
apartheid, high cost of tuition and a slowing economy to name only a few.
21
The campaign was not the
first attempt at removing the divisive statue, with campaigns dating back to the 1950s.
22
The
demonstration arose haphazardly and spontaneously when a female student defiled the statute with her
excrement. This first performance then spurred on a series of other acts of defacement, vandalism and
graffiti to the statue in the following days and weeks. These singular liquid performances arose and
dispersed. However, each subsequent performance accreted a larger audience that persisted longer,
drawing in more energy and matter. These performances fostered feelings which then solidified into
discursive demands that went beyond simply removing the statue: a new curriculum was to be introduced,
more financial aid was to be provided and the hiring of more black professors, to name only a few.
23

These demands were vague in origin but were a discourse in development on how the university could
begin addressing the energies motivating and legitimizing the performance. As the demonstration
persisted and grew and it then gelled into occupations of the administration buildings. With the protest
slowly oozing deeper into the crevices of the institution, coating it with raucous displays of animosity,
upending the solid performances that occurred within, the university was forced to react. On March 23,

20
Herszenhorn, David M, and Andrew E Kramer. December 10, 2013. “Police Push Into Kiev Square as Crisis
Grows.” The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/world/europe/ukrainian-security-
forces-confront-protesters-in-Kiev-square.html.
21
Bond, P. January 1, 2019. South Africa Suffers Capitalist Crisis Déjà Vu. Monthly Review. Retrieved from
https://monthlyreview.org/2019/01/01/south-africa-suffers-capitalist-crisis-deja-vu/
22
Stander, L and Vilakazi, M. (March 2015, 22). Rhodes: As Divisive in Death as in Life. Sipho Masondo City
Press. Retrieved from https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica /News /Cecil-John-Rhodes-As-divisive-in-death-as-in-
life-20150322
23
(March 2015). Change. Retrieved from https://www.change.org/p/the-south-african-public-and-the-world-at-
large-we-demand-that-the-statue-of-cecil-john-rhodes-be-removed-from-the-campus-of-the-university-of-cape-
town-as-the-first-step-towards-the-decolonisation-of-the-university-as-a-whole

25
two weeks following the initial defacement, the administration held an emergency meeting and gave into
the demand for the statute’s removal.
24
Liquid performances such as this one accrete rapidly through their
very disorder, attracting and assimilating other loosely affiliated matter and energy, assimilating these
diffuse feelings and desires into makeshift displays, tactics and demands. To a certain degree, these types
of liquid performances accrue when bodies have no other solid performance to participate in. South
Africa’s unemployment rate hovers around 25 percent, with youth unemployment accounting for 58
percent of the half-a-million without work.
25
This lack of activity allows liquid performances to not only
form but stabilize and gel into makeshift hybrid state performances, of much longer duration, as what
occurred with the Occupy movement around the United States in 2011.
26

24
Hall, M. March 25, 2015. “The Symbolic State Dividing a South African University.” BBC News. Retrieved from
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-31945680
25
Dayile, Q. March 5, 2018. “She has a BA and Master’s Degree but is Still Unemployed.” News 24. Retrieved
from https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/she-has-a-ba-and-masters-degree-but-is-still-unemployed-
20180305
26
This tendency to be displaced and without a role in society is a large factor in what drove the women’s rights
movement. Elizabeth Stanton’s speech to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary was tilted The
Solitude of Self and addressed this need for a women’s role in society beyond activities in the home. This
displacement by lack of work is what also spurred on the Arab Spring throughout the Middle East in 2010,
following the global recession. The movements in their respective countries demanded reforms and the elimination
of corruption, but can be seen more fundamentally as bodies that have nothing else to do. Moreover, many of the
demonstrations coincide with strikes and the abdication of activity in other domains. North Korea’s frequent military
parades and demonstrations serve as an indirect way to prevent other performances from occurring that would
attempt to counter the state’s power and authority.
On the left (Fig. 6) is an Occupy encampment in Oakland, California from October, 2011. On the right (Fig.
7) is a gel whose surface tension (inward directed pressure) has produced a circular and stable morphology.

26
Other types of liquid performances occur in an even more unstable state, where the boundary
between audience and performer becomes indistinguishable, scripts multiply and contradict each other,
with performers quarreling within and without. The largest protest march to ever occur in U.S. history
was the Women’s March of 2017, which took place the day following President Trump’s inauguration on
January 21. Over four million demonstrators rallied in cities across the country, with more occurring
throughout Europe. Nearly half-a-million marched in New York City and Washington D.C. each, with
hundreds of thousands marching in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. The march formed haphazardly as
Teresa Shook, Vanessa Wruble and Mari Fougler coincidentally began publishing Facebook pages of
their own to organize a march and rally in Washington on behalf of women’s issues.
27
As people joined,
registered and donated to these groups, demands for leadership to reflect inclusion and diversity were
raised. In response, leaders representing minority groups became included, such as Tamika Mallory and
Linda Sarsour. This new and more diverse group of leaders, however, did not result in a broader more
homogenous performance; instead, it became subdivided, disparate and convoluted. Teresa Shook, one of
the founders, said the march was not anti-Trump; however, signage at the events conveyed otherwise.
Many marchers felt it was a counter-performance to the President’s inauguration, which occurred the
previous day. With the performers in the march growing so did the scripts, to include illegal immigrant
rights, abortion and the environment.
28
With the movement claiming to be in support of women, it, in
actuality, only supported those who identified with the political Left, pooling their concerns solely. This
is further reflected by the fact that President Trump had just won 53 percent of white women voters, the
very demographic who originally began scripting the performance. The march in Washington ended at the
National Mall in the early afternoon, where prominent figures, leaders and celebrities addressed the

27
Stein, P and Somashekhar, S. January 3, 2017. It started with a retiree. Now the Women's March could be the
biggest inauguration demonstration.: More than 100,000 people said they will march for women's rights. The
Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/it-started-with-a-grandmother-in-
hawaii-now-the-womens-march-on-washington-is-poised-to-be-the-biggest-inauguration-
demonstration/2017/01/03/8af61686-c6e2-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.694ebdfa5cdd
28
Chira, S and Alcindor, Y. January 21, 2017. “Defiant Voices Flood U.S. Cities as Women Rally for Rights.” The
New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/women-march-protest-president-
trump.html

27
crowd. Madonna spoke sarcastically of her wish to blow up the White House saying, “But I know this
will not change anything.”
29
Senator Elizabeth Warren expressed more optimistic feeling by saying, “The
sight is now burned into my vision forever…We will use that vision to fight harder.”
30
Such large
performative gatherings serve as reservoirs of diverse feelings, with the speeches themselves (discursive
elements) doing little more than give cause to these feelings, as the words themselves are drowned out by
the murmurings of hundreds of thousands of attendees. Marches such as these are like rock concerts, with
the audience there less for the music than to be part of the energy of the crowd as co-performers, the
boundary between performer and audience is entangled and continuously changing. Following the event,
the leaders of the women’s march split over accusations of anti-Semitism from one side and lack of
inclusivity by the other.
31
A second women’s march was held two years later, but with the performers
now split between rival camps, attendance was less than a fifth of what it was just two years before.
32

Both the energy and matter spurring on the prior women’s march had all but dispersed and dissipated.

29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
31
Stockman, F. December 23, 2018. “Women’s March Roiled by Accusations of Anti-Semitism.” The New York
Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/us/womens-march-anti-semitism.html
32
Golden, H. January 22, 2019. “How Many People Attended The 2019 Women's March? Here's How The Crowd
Size Has Changed.” Elite Daily. Retrieved from https://www.elitedaily.com/p/how-many-people-attended-the-2019-
womens-march-heres-how-the-crowd-size-has-changed-15865178
On the left (Fig. 8) are counter-protesters clashing with demonstrators at a Pro-Trump rally on the campus
of the University of California Berkeley, March 4, 2017. On the right (Fig. 9) is a solution becoming
aerated and turned into a foam, part of an annual foam festival held in Galicia, Spain.

28
Demonstrations such as this one can become even more unstable when the performance mixes
with a counter-performance. Counter-performances attempt to dilute the existing liquid performance away
either by inundating it with a greater volume, where it acts as a solvent turning the other into a solute, or
by fomenting a volatile reaction that forces it to undergo a phase transition.
33
When two solutions interact
and do not emulsify the resulting friction causes aeration and gas, the most erratic and chaotic type of
liquid performance.
The Rhodes Must Fall campaign’s energy spread to other western countries with a history of
racism toward blacks (similar matter and energy). Only a year later, cities across the southern United
States began hearing demands for the removal of their Confederate statues commemorating veterans of
the Civil War. Many of these statues were built several decades after the war and were just as much
motivated by groups wanting to reinforce feelings of segregation as to memorialize the past.
34
The most
contentious of these removals that year occurred in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, where the vice
mayor requested the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Emancipation Park downtown.
35
The issue
dragged on into the following year as a lawsuit began and a subsequent injunction was filed, which
blocked the city from going ahead with its removal.
36
Throughout this time small rallies formed outside
the city hall during key announcements, by those who were in favor of its removal and from those
opposed.
37
On May 14, white nationalists gathered to protest the statue’s possible removal with a
torchlight rally, which was immediately disbanded by police within 10 minutes.
38
This was followed up
by another lawful demonstration by Ku Klux Klan members on July 8. This second protest being

33
Paul W. Cleary, Soon Hyoung Pyo, Mahesh Prakash, and Bon Ki Koo. 2007. Bubbling and frothing liquids. ACM
Trans. Graph. 26, 3, Article 97 (July 2007). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1276377.1276499
34
The same year the Robert E. Lee statue was completed the state of Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, a ban
on interracial marriage.
35
Provence, L. March 22, 2016. “The Battle of Lee Park: Lines Drawn Over General Lee.” C-Ville. Retrieved from
https://www.c-ville.com/battle-lee-park-lines-drawn-general-lee/
36
In prescient fashion the lawsuit forewarned that removal of the statue would result in a cascading of events that
could not be undone.
37
May 2, 2017. Judge Issues Temporary Injunction to Halt Lee Statue Removal. NBC 29. Retrieved from
http://www.nbc29.com/story/35306157/update-judge-issues-temporary-injunction-to-halt-lee-statue-removal
38
Bromwich, J. May 14, 2017. “White Nationalists Wield Torches at Confederate Statue Rally.” The New York
Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/14/us/confederate-statue-protests-
virginia.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer

29
authorized by the city led them to issue a warning to the public to stay away; however, this announcement
also inadvertently signaled opposition groups about the event. As a consequence, a counter-rally quickly
formed and grew into a counter-protest on the same day, flooding the area and surrounding the 50 or so
Ku Klux Klan demonstrators with over a 1,000 counter-protesters. Within 30 minutes it was over when
the police began firing tear gas to disperse both crowds.
39
Events escalated further as another follow-up
rally was held in August by the same group. Three days before the rally, the city ordered the
demonstration to be moved to a different park away from downtown and the statue; however, the order
was revoked by a judge, as it violated their right to free speech.
40
At around 11 a.m. on August 12, white
nationalists gathered at McIntire Park and began their march toward Emancipation Park. Police set up
barricades to separate counter-protesters. However, before protesters even fully arrived, counter-
protesters had once again flooded the scene and encircled the entrance into the park. Clashes immediately
began breaking out on the periphery of the march as they entered the downtown district. Police were
unable to control the crowds and declared it an unlawful assembly, clearing everyone away by noon; this
was followed by a state of emergency announced by the governor. Less than an hour later, a car drove
into a crowd of these same counter-protesters who were still assembled downtown, killing one and
injuring 19.
41
The counter-protesters were for a second time able to end the rally by white nationalists,
first through dilution and the second time by facilitating sections of the liquid performance to vaporize
through the friction they caused and provoked. These violent altercations can be seen as foam, where the
liquid performances agitate one another through friction, aerating and becoming volatile.

39
Spencer, H and Stevens, M. July 8, 2017. “23 Arrested and Tear Gas Deployed After a K.K.K. Rally in Virginia.”
The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/us/kkk-rally-charlottesville-robert-e-lee-
statue.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer
40
Bromwich, J. August 9, 2017. “Airbnb Cancels Accounts Linked to White Nationalist Rally in Charlottesville.”
The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/us/airbnb-white-nationalists-
supremacists.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer
41
Stolberg, S and Rosenthal, B. August 12, 2017. “Man Charged After White Nationalist Rally in Charlottesville
Ends in Deadly Violence.” The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/us/charlotte
sville-protest-white-nationalist.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer

30
§ Ecstatic Contractions and Violent Expansions: Performance as Gas
The third state of matter is gas. Unlike solids and liquids, which are condensed states of matter
with pressure directed inward, gas is directed entirely outward. This results in a formless and diffuse
substance, which is continuously expanding in all directions and intruding into every crevice through its
outward pressure and frenetic activity. Gas, therefore, behaves more like energy itself, moving along a
concentration gradient to areas of lowest density. It leads these performances to have the shortest duration
of all, with the energy it releases rippling across time and space. The word gas is derived from the ancient
Greek word khaos, meaning emptiness or void. Khaos was a personification of the unformed cosmos: the
raw state out of which all existence sprung. Gaseous performances reflect an analogous condition and
precursory role, initiating a chain of events that have lasting repercussions, both generatively and
destructively. These performances lack any consistent order over time, with the elements having no
relation to one another except during the moment in which they collide. Twitter mobs and deepfakes are
instances of this, where random and spontaneous uses of mediated performances are taken out of time,
place and context to become then charged with new energy compromising and shaming the person
presented. The performative elements — script, performer and audience — separate and move along their
own trajectories, resulting in unforeseen, random, and confusing configurations of performativity, from
flash mobs to mass-shootings, which remain inexplicable in their cause and origin. These types of
performances arise with little or no mediation and can be coordinated and carried out by one. They infuse
and penetrate into mundane and restricted spaces overcoming external constraints and pressures
— terrorist attacks — or expanding outward into the periphery of civilization where little else exists
— Free-festivals. Gas is similar to liquids in that its movement is fluidic; however, unlike liquids which
serve as occasions for innovation and discovery, gas performances only introduce degrees of disorder
through unrestrained acts. Performers are motivated by impulsivity, freedom and the desire to create
controversy and confusion — enclosed energy demanding immediate release. These performances can
become so chaotic confusion arises as to whether a performance is even occurring. The audience can
abruptly become unwitting performers just as much as they are forced into initially being spectators.

31
These reversals and shifts disrupt the identity of both those participating and witnessing the performances,
engendering feelings from panic to laughter, as actions alienate and upend the scene. Gaseous
performances are both caused by and create further turbulence to the point where they can consume
themselves, converting the matter into energy that is then discharged outward in a gesture of excess. This
occurs through a series of thresholds, each concentrating more pressure and energy within the gas. The
first is when a liquid undergoes phase transition into a vapor, here it can still be easily converted back into
a liquid with enough external pressure. As energy continues to increase, it then enters into a purely
gaseous phase, where if continued will autoignite into fire. Each successive stage contains more
concentrated energy under more pressure until finally, it explodes.
42
Through this process, matter is
converted and transformed into incandescent energy, forcing the surrounding matter to either inflame with
it or at the very least being forced to react to it. When performances aflame, bodies react uncontrollably
into states of pandemonium and ecstasy. Scripts, performers and audiences proliferate into a multitude of
momentary performances as they collide, bounce and recollide until all the energy is consumed.
The most stable gaseous performance is the aerosol, a colloidal gas with suspended liquid or
solid granules. Aerosols appear as — dust, smoke, steam, fumes, viruses and pollen. Suspended particles

42
Dryer, Frederick. Spontaneous Ignition of Pressured Releases of Hydrogen and Natural Gas into Air. Combustion
Science and Technology., 170: 663-694, 2007. Taylor & Francis Group.
On the left (Fig. 10) is Mob that has just bashed in the front door of the Santa Clara County Jail in San Jose
to lynch two suspects accused of kidnaping Brooke Hart on November 26, 1933. On the right (Fig. 11) is
water in aerosol form drifting to the ground.

32
form on a smaller scale allowing their reduced density and size to become swept up by the energy
forming the gas. These suspended particles at times undergo their own life-cycle of condensation,
nucleation, coagulation, and evaporation.
43
Here the more stable elements, islands of regularity, exist
within the unstable medium of the gas. Mobs are an example, possessing traces of order within a larger
maelstrom of activity. The term mob originates from the 18th century and is based on the Latin phrase
mobile vulgus, which translates as an excited or fickle crowd, denoting brevity, change and
capriciousness.
44
Mobs are brief performances that arise suddenly over an inciting incident that releases
an intense and excessive amount of energy, such as a perceived unjust crime that outrages a community.
What separates it from a riot is that there remain elements of stability: consensus is formed and actions
are coordinated, targeting a specific person or location. The lynchings that took place throughout the
southern United States in the latter half of the 19th century and first half of the 20
th
century are such
cases. From 1882 to 1939 there were over 5,125 reported extra-legal executions. This amounts to, on
average, two to three lynchings per week until the end of World War I.
45
These extra-legal executions
vary significantly; some functioned as entertainment with tickets being sold, where the audience could be
become co-performers by shooting the victim on stage. At times, the extra-legal executions were carried
out in secret, witnessed only by those carrying them out. In other cases, mock trials were held in an
attempt to legitimize the execution. Once condemned, the body could be simply hung from the branch of
a tree or become a gruesome spectacle of torture, dismemberment and incineration. Lynching was a
performance that was at times made up of many other sub-performances, from the spreading of rumor, the
search and capture of the lawless perpetrator, to then their trial, execution and celebration by the
community; not all them, however, needed to occur. The only consistent element was the rumor mill and
the scripting of a typically black male. Elements of the performance became contradictory as they whirled

43
Ramachandran, Gurumurthy. (2015) Introduction to Aerosols. Midwest Emerging Technologies Public Health &
Safety Training Program. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blvos4ppeNM
44
Muse, John. Flash Mobs and the Diffusion of Audience. Theater 2010 Nov. 1 Volume 40, Issue 3, pg. 9-23
45
Fuoss, Kirk. (1999). Lynching Performance, Theatres of Violence. Text and Performance Quarterly, Vol. 19, No.
1, pg. 1-37.

33
together into their own unique momentary configuration before the scene quickly disappeared back into
the perfunctory atmosphere of congenial life.
Not all mobs are associated with violence. Flash mobs are motivated not out of revenge but for
frivolity and self-amusement. An outgrowth of the internet, these formations are a fusion of virtual space,
where information is gathered, shared and disseminated, with the physical, where scripts are executed and
documented. These performances solicit and organize strangers online to meet at predetermined public
venues. Once assembled, participants inundate and swarm the location to perform a very limited
performance, best characterized as disrupting and subverting the implicit conventions and norms
governing bodies in the particular public space, only to then abruptly disperse minutes later. The term
flash mob was coined back in 2003 by blogger Sean Savage, following the first such performance
directed by Bill Wasik, writer and cultural critic for Harper’s.
46
More often than not, flash mobs demand
little more from performers than their mere physical presence, such as gathering at Macy’s to admire a
rug in mass, as in the one initially staged by Wasik.
47
However, as these performances have grown in size
and prevalence so has their effect — one of the most memorable being organized by Improv Everywhere
in 2008. On a winter day in the afternoon, more than 200 participants gathered outside Grand Central
Station in New York and walked into its foyer as commuters. As the time reached 2:30 p.m., in
synchronized fashion all the performers froze in mid-movement. A couple was locked together in the
middle of kissing, some had their arms raised pointing upward toward departure and arrival times, one
hunched over starring at a foldout pamphlet of train times and routes, another remained motionless as he
kneeled on the ground picking up fallen papers, many others went simply stiff. As the seconds wore on
commuters looked on in confusion and dismay, some capturing it with their cameras and many others
asking fellow travelers what was happening. A custodian in his cart radioed back to the office angerly
over not being able to get through a crowd of apparently frozen people.
48
The subversive effects from this

46
Muse, John. Flash Mobs and the Diffusion of Audience. Theater 2010 Nov. 1 Volume 40, Issue 3, pg. 9-23
47
Ibid.
48
“Frozen Grand Central.” YouTube, Improv Everywhere, 31 Jan. 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3P
JDxuo.

34
performance create a doubling of the performers and audience, whereby the attendant crowd after getting
turned into spectators then becomes unwitting performers due to their navel-gazing and frustrated
reactions. These second performers may not even be aware they are performing as they are preoccupied
with their own gaze. Flash mobs are motivated by a desire to revolt against norms and alienate those
around them through their capricious and subversive displays. The performers are rewarded with an
experience in which they can revel in their power to assemble in mass, occupy and disrupt a social setting,
turning bystanders into a stupefied, mesmerized or apoplectic state. There have been cases when these
benign pranks have led to violence, as was the case of several flash mobs in Philadelphia during 2010,
which lead to looting and assaults.
49

Riots are like mobs, being a reaction to some eruption of energy. However, they are supplied
with more energy and matter, performing without any cohesive script binding the performers together and
with little regard to the audience witnessing their acts. Riots set their revenge indiscriminately,
vandalizing and looting property randomly and opportunistically. Riots tend to erupt even more
haphazard and unexpectedly, although there are perturbations revealing themselves beforehand. This was
the case with the riots that flooded London and other British cities in August of 2011. That year saw
several marches and protests occurring over austerity measures imposed by the European Union in the
wake of the financial recession. On August 4, Mark Duggan a suspected felon was shot and killed during
a shootout with police in Tottenham, a northern borough of London. In response, two days later an anti-
police demonstration of some 200 residents gathered outside the local police station to protest his killing.
As the rally grew into the night, violence broke out over rumor that a 16-year-old girl was assaulted by a
police officer outside the station. With more energy being supplied to the situation, it underwent a phase
transition into a gas state as fighting broke out between police and residents. Hundreds more police
arrived fighting and arresting what were now armed residents, covered in bandannas and wielding

49
Urbina, Ian. 24 March, 2010. Mobs Are born as Word Grows by Text Message. The New York Times. Retrieved
from https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/us/25mobs.html.

35
makeshift weapons.
50
Looting and further violence then began breaking out in adjacent districts of
London the following day. By day three, looting and violence had spread into 22 predominately ethnic
neighborhoods around London, and in cities across England — Birmingham, Manchester, Salford,
Liverpool and Nottingham. As soon as police would arrive in one neighborhood, the rioters would
disband and disperse to then only reappear in another part of the city. The rioting quickly exhausted the
state’s ability to contain it and impose order on it.
51
To quell the riots, Prime Minister David Cameron
deployed an additional 10,000 police, making it the largest riot England faced in decades. The
government’s commission, Riots, Communities and Victim Panel, estimated that there were over 15,000
rioters. It estimated they caused over 400 million dollars in theft and damage, with over 2,500 shops
looted. Five rioters died and many more police were injured. In the aftermath, police conducted an
extensive investigation, leading to over 4,000 arrests and the formation of all-night courts to prosecute
over 2,700 cases. This was possible in large part due to the CCTV system that documented over 20,000
hours of footage for investigators to examine. Some of this footage showed looters at retailers casually
picking through clothing racks and swapping stolen goods. Primarily, stores selling mobile phones video
games and clothing were targeted.
52
A year on from the riots, there were over 100 officers still working
through cases for possible prosecution. With the riots originating from what was initially concerns over
police brutality and excessive violence, accusations that were later disproved in 2014, to the then rampant
looting that followed, revealed to many that the performance was motivated merely by a frustration by the
performers at not being able to attain the same material aspirations as the rest of society, leading to what
sociologist Zygmunt Bauman referred to as an episode of violent consumerism.
53

50
Somaiya, Ravi. 7 August, 2011. London Sees Twin Perils Converging to Fuel Riot. The New York Times.
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/world/europe/08britain.html
51
Newburn, Tim. The 2011 England Riots In Recent Historical Perspective. The British Journal of Criminology,
Volume 55, Issue 1, 1 January, 2015, pages 39-64.
52
Lewis, Paul. 7 August, 2011. Tottenham Riots: a Peaceful Protest, Then Suddenly all Hell Broke Loose. The
Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/aug/07/tottenham-riots-peaceful-protest
53
Newburn, Tim. The 2011 England Riots In Recent Historical Perspective. The British Journal of Criminology,
Volume 55, Issue 1, 1 January, 2015, pages 39-64.

36
Such consumer outrage often occurs individually and reaches online audiences afterward
through social media. Here consumers have lost face or have had their identification with a product
upended from actions taken by the brand. These performances occur at random and often straddle the line
between an outright performance or merely the desire for attention and recompense by the company.
However, with social media, they are quick to become mediated and distributed online, where they
generate their more lasting effects. When Nike launched a new marketing campaign with Colin
Kaepernick, it offended and upset many customers who disagreed with the NFL player taking a knee
during the national anthem the year before. Nike’s commercial lead to several viral performances where
young man burnt their pair of Nike shoes in response, many of them received views in the millions, with
the one by Sean Clancy generating over 11-million views on Twitter.
54

When gaseous performances like this one take on increasing energy the scripts begin to
breakdown and lack coherence; structure persists long enough only for the energy contained to be
released. This intense concentration of energy if contained long enough by pressure eventually combusts.
These types of performances are most commonly carried out by a single performer in an act of violent
rage, never to repeat. In even rarer cases this rage is directed inward in the form of self-immolations. This

54
Hartmann, Margaret. September 4, 2018. Nike Debuts Colin Kaepernick Ad, Conservatives Protest by Burning
Their Own Gear. New York Magazine. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/09/nike-kaepernick-ad-
protests.html?gtm=top>m=bottom
On the left (Fig. 12) is an image from Burning Man 2017 where gathers dance, mingle and take drugs in front
of a traveling sound stage that roams the encampment. On the right (Fig. 13) is an explosion of hydrogen gas,
with particles expanding outward in all directions as they are consumed by energy in the form of a flame.

37
kind of performance ignites at fault lines of political and social breakdown, where the performers are both
at the epicenter of where pressures lie and simultaneously at the very periphery where forces rub up
against one another into intense frictions of energy. Such a scenario is the ongoing occupation of Tibet by
China, which has ignited into a series of self-immolations in 2013, and now number over a hundred.
55
In
the wake of such performances, the dispersed energy is channeled into protests. The most influential of
these self-immolations to cause follow-up performances was by Mohamed Bouazizi's in Tunisia. It served
as the reactant for the Arab Spring in 2010.
56
What develops in response to this performance were a series
of strikes and the months-long protests in North Africa — Tunisia, Egypt and Libya — and then other
parts of the Middle East. Egyptian protesters were miraculously disciplined: remaining nonviolent,
abstaining from entering into altercations with state saboteurs and self-policing their own behavior, all the
while staying organized without central leadership.
57
Tunisians and Egyptians eventually disposed their
ruling figures; however, Libya without any stable structures in place fell into conflict amid competing
groups for power. Governments and the laws they enforce act as behavioral structures that regulate and
discipline subsequent performances. When state formation collapses so to do all subsequent
performances, reverting to liquid and gaseous states.
Gaseous performances can also manifest in the form of revelers who go to reclusive spaces to
carry out their uninhibited performances. These gatherings are known as raves and free-festivals, where
drug taking, intoxication, hallucination, public sex, nudity, cross-dressing, drag and other forms of
exhibitionism are on full display. These events can last multiple days, where performers are free to act out
any script they desire. The biggest and largest of the these is Burning Man. A week-long event held every
year in northwest Nevada, near the Oregon border. The festival began back in 1986 at Baker Beach in San
Francisco, where the anarchist founders Larry Harvey and Jerry James burnt a wooden effigy of a man to

55
Wong, Edward. February 20, 2013. Tibetan Teenagers Die in Double Self-immolation. The New York Times.
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/world/asia/tibetan-teens-die-in-double-self-immolation.html
56
A reactant is a substance that increases the rate of reaction and is consumed through the process, unlike a catalyst
which is not.
57
Anderson, Lisa. Demystifying the Arab Spring: Parsing the Differences Between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.
Foreign Affairs. Vol. 90, No. 3 (May/June 2011), pp. 2-7

38
mark the summer solstice. Attendance to the event is capped at 70,000, with tickets selling out usually the
day after they are made available to the public. Performers encamp in a circle, two miles in diameter,
around a wood effigy that is 100 feet tall, which is set on fire to commemorate the end of the festival.
58

The festival is guided by ten principles laid out by the founders, some of these being: radical inclusion,
radical self-reliance, radical self-expression and immediacy.
59
With the event begun over 33 years ago, a
discourse has slowly developed as expressed in these principles, centered on the complete expression of
the human in ecstatic moments of imaginative glory. These attendees or performers are referred to as
burners (also called nomads and pilgrims) and encouraged to carry out the principles to the fullest during
the weeklong event. The event is carnival were performers are free to mock and transgress the social
conventions that dictate perfunctory performances of day-to-day life.
60
Playgrounds are set up where
burners can play and regress to childhood.
61
With the event being held in a remote location of the Nevada
desert, with frequent sandstorms are no public sanitation services; what results from such discomforts is a
shared identity with tens of thousands of strangers where the grotesque, perverse and indulgent all
converge.
62

These performances which combust can also occur in the center of civilization and produce the
most cataclysmic effects. On September 11, 2001, four large commercial jetliners were highjacked in
midair and flown into the Pentagon and World Trade Towers, with the fourth, Flight 93, crashing near the
border of Pennsylvania and Maryland. These terrorist attacks were cataclysmic in their effect. So much
energy was released by this performance that for all those alive during the event, whether present or not,
can vividly recall where and what they were doing. In such rare occasions, these performances become

58
Brill, Louis M. “The First Year in the Desert.” Burning Man, burningman.org/culture/history/brc-history/event-
archives/1986-1991/firstyears/.
59
“The 10 Principles of Burning Man.” Burning Man, burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/.
60
Clupper, Wendy Ann. “The Performance Culture of Burning Man.” University of Maryland, 24 Aug. 2007. Pg.
18-22
61
Sherry, John F, and Robert V Kozinets. “Comedy of the Commons: Nomadic Spirituality and the Burning Man
Festival.” Consumer Culture Theory, vol. 11, 8 Mar. 2015, pp. 119–147.,
www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1016/S0885-2111(06)11006-6.
62
Clupper, Wendy Ann. “The Performance Culture of Burning Man.” University of Maryland, 24 Aug. 2007. Pg.
18-22

39
cataclysmic and set in motion significant cultural reactions that occur in response, from the formation and
development of new religions and political states (solid performances) to the inauguration of total war.
Heiner Mühlmann refers to these performances as Maximal Stress Cooperation (MSC) events, which go
on to define the succeeding cultural structure by way of decorum and the organization of cooperation and
conflict within and without the society.
63
This terrorist attack resulted in over 3,000 deaths, 6,000
injuries, initiated military operations that have lasted over 17 years and are still ongoing, costing the
government over 6-trillion dollars. A.P. Schmid, an advisor for the U.N., defines terrorism as:
Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (sem-)
clandestine individuals, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political
reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not
the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen
randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively from a target population, and serve as
message generators.
64

Terrorism is a type of performance whose discursive message is reflected in its act, the creation
of panic and chaos. Its rhetorical force is the release of a tremendous amount of energy to break
apart other types of activity, performances, that govern society. Only the most durable solid
performances can resist its effects. The response by the U.S. government into Afghanistan and
Iraq were in part performative attempts at overcoming the rhetorical damage done by the attacks
on 9/11.

§ Synergy and Phase Transitions: Leveraging the Material Dynamics of Performance
The performances surveyed ranged from those that define and impose order — solids — to those
which ignite into chaos and pandemonium — gas. These performances frequently function as rhetoric’s

63
Mühlmann, Heiner. (2005). MSC: The Driving Force of Cultures. SpringerWien, New York.
64
Alex p. Schmid. Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data Bases and Literature (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1983), pg. 70.

40
first appearance, tangible form and most effective medium. Rhetorics are frequently developed and ended
by their capacity to aggregate bodies into ongoing iterative performances, which then develop into a
sustained discourse. Because of their significant role, performances often serve as sites for a counter-
performance, especially those which originate in a liquid or gas form. Every performance is of a particular
type determined by the grouping of its elements, the structure this leads to internal forces that sustain this
form together and the resulting properties it then possesses. However, another set of dynamics appear
when performances interact with one another in opposition or when the internal pressure and energy
change. The following propositions serve as the means to understand these dynamics, along with how
best to instrumentalize performances once seen as states of matter.
PROPOSITION 1
A performance’s primary value occurs through its form, which then
determines the discursive content it expresses.

PROPOSITION 2
Performances are often unarticulated energies in bodies, which
aggregate together from both internal and external pressures.

PROPOSITION 3
Performances serve just as much as a means of expression as they assess
available matter and energy.

PROPOSITION 4
When more matter becomes drawn in to a site so too does energy, and as
a consequence more performances are likely to occur.

Many of the performances analyzed were directly the result of the economic recession
that began in 2008, which then spread around the globe. Governments that had excess
labor saw these same bodies enter into performances against the state.
PROPOSITION 5
Every performance expels energy and pressure provoking counter
performances.

PROPOSITION 6
Different types of performance have different goals. As the performance
undergoes phase transition so too does its behavior and aims.

PROPOSITION 7
The most effective performance leverages other performances’ matter
and energy for itself.

41

One of the first performances described was that of the New York May Day parade where pseudo-
suffragettes snuck into the parade and smoked cigarettes in front of the cheering crowds. This
performance, smoking, was a performance within another performance (parade) and was not resisted as
incorporated and imitated even though the act itself was considered much less solid. Its success lay not
positioning the gesture as a protest, which is what it was already considered by many, but by
incorporating it into a solid performance, forcing it to be integrated in a way that it otherwise could not.
PROPOSITION 8
A successful counter-performances compels the original performance to
undergo a phase transition.

The Alt-Right rally in Charlottesville spurred on the formation of counter-protesters from the Left, who
circumvented the original performance by adding energy and pressure to it where it then began to undergo
a phase transition into a gaseous state (the violence arising from their clash). This then forced the police
to intervene and shut it down. It was irrelevant whether the Alt-Right demonstration was lawful or not.
The Left created a material state, gas, that demanded a second counter-performance (a counter-counter-
performance), solid, by police and the declaration of a national emergency. For the riots that occurred
throughout England in the summer of 2011, the looters were only suppressed due to an overwhelming
solid performance by the police, who were forced to call upon an additional 10,000 reserve officers,
almost equaling the total number of looters. This begs the question of how many more looters would have
been needed to throw the entire state into a security crisis. During the Iraq War estimates on the number
of insurgents ranged between 15,000-20,000; however, it required a continuous military presence of over
150,000 over several years before the violence eventually subsided.
65
Gaseous performances, such as riots
and counter-insurgencies, aim to quite literally exhaust the other side of its own matter before it expels all
of its energy.

65
Belasco, Amy. July 2, 2009. Troop Levels in the Afghan and Iraq Wars, FY2001-FY2012: Cost and Other
Potential Issues. Congressional Research Service. Retrieved from https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf

42
§ Methodological Framework: Systematizing Performances as States of Matter
Building upon the analysis in the preceding sections, a methodological approach is devised that
can be used to delineate and correlate performances to states of matter in a way that is systematic,
consistent and congruent. First, an assessment of the underlying epistemologies of analyzing a
phenomenon must be known. Once these are in place, they can be transferred from one domain of
phenomena (performance) to another (states of matter) without concern of something being overlooked.
This will be accomplished through bridging Stephen Pepper’s “world hypotheses” or “root metaphors”
with that of the Material Science Tetrahedron (MST).
Pepper’s four epistemic modes are — mechanism, formism, contextualism and organicism. These
root metaphors operate as different approaches for producing knowledge from observable phenomena
(danda or basic facts), which then allows inferences and deductions to be made. These modes can be
categorized into a typology based along two dimensions: dispersive versus integrative and analytic versus
synthetic world theories, see Figure 16. Dispersive treats facts as is: facts are interpreted as they appear
not situated within a larger whole, integrative being the opposite. Analytical theories treat basic facts as
they are with synthesis derivative. Mechanism is a hypothesis that looks at how individual elements
combine to perform a particular cause-effect function. In this way, mechanism is both analytic and
On the left (Fig. 14) Gallium, which has a melting point of 85.57 degrees Fahrenheit, undergoes a phase
transition from a crystalline solid into a liquid. On the right (Fig. 15) the Taiwanese Parliament in July 2010
breaks out into a brawl between opposing parties during assembly, a common occurrence in this particular
legislative body.

43
integrative, looking at a phenomenon from its separate components and then seeing how they work
together for a particular task. For mechanism, causality is predicated on the notion of purpose. Examples
would be Locke and Descartes’ theories of mind. Formism is based on the principle of similarity. Objects
which share the same characteristics (a set of qualities and relations between those qualities) are said to be
similar and belong in the same class, phylum, etc. Through this view, things are understood by
arrangement based on their immanent qualities, for example: size, shape color, etc. For this metaphor,
causality is determined by the way shared elements produce a specific character, either instrumentally by
design or naturally through nature. This approach is seen in Platonic philosophy and Darwinian evolution,
with Plato deriving features that are transcendent and Darwin immanent. Contextualism foregrounds the
event surrounding the phenomena’s occurrence. This entails understanding the complex and rich
processes that proceeded and preceded it. For contextualism, causality is predicated on the notion of
circumstance. Post-structuralism is a philosophical outgrowth of this root metaphor, where everything is
contingent on context. Organicism is derived from the metaphor of a living thing, which is understood as
existing and moving through different stages: birth, maturity and death. It is a complex process, governed
by rules, which are integrated within a larger unfolding process. For organicism, causality is predicated on
the notion of law and other theories of change. Hegel’s dialectic and Jung’s concept of individuation
would serve as philosophical systems privileging this model.
66
These root metaphors are intended to

66
Pepper, Stephen C. “Chapter VII: A General View of the Hypotheses.” World Hypotheses: A
Study in Evidence, 7th ed., University of California Press, 1972, pp. 141–150.
Figure 16. A typology of Pepper's Root
Metaphors
Figure 17. Material Science Tetrahedron

44
describe the ontology of phenomena and the way we come to perceive them through a particular
orientation to knowing. Each of these modes requires the use of the other three but foregrounds one over
the others as the most important.
67

A congruent but vastly different epistemological model, the Material Science Tetrahedron (MST),
see Figure 17, is designed for assessing the role of various materials for applied purposes.
68
Material
science is an interdisciplinary field originating out of physics and chemistry, focused on the engineering
of matter for a particular outcome. The MST is the conceptual tool used to see how a material’s
manufacture, structure, properties and life-cycle culminate in determining its applicable use(s). The
tetrahedron connects the four modes — process, structure, properties and performance — for analyzing a
material so as to thoroughly understand its capabilities and their interdependent relationships. Whereby
changing one of these effects affects the remaining three in turn. Processing is analyzing a material in
terms of how it was created, what physical and chemical changes were required to produce the material.
A physical change (process) does not affect the underlying substance, such as with water when it
transforms from ice to a liquid. A chemical change, on the other hand, is when the substance itself
undergoes transformation, as when gasoline is burned and turned into carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide
and water. Structure are the elements and the way they are arranged to form a particular material and
consequent morphology. The example shown earlier was of carbon and how through enough pressure it
can take on the three-dimensional structure of a tetrahedron or the two-dimensional one of graphite.
Properties are the material attributes which become apparent through responses to stimuli. These
properties manifest themselves into three categories: mechanical, physical and chemical. Performance is

67
Pepper also discusses animism and skepticism; however, these metaphors provide no descriptive power that can
be corroborated.
68
Howell, Paul. (2008). Earth, Air, Fire and Water: Elements of Material Science. Kendall/Hunt Publishing
Company, Dubuque, Iowa.

45
the assessment of a material based on the given application, for example, steel withstanding the stress of
deformation.
As is readily apparent, these two different epistemic frameworks, one to analyze social
phenomena and the other how to instrumentalize a particular material are at their core identical, see
Figure 18 for a comparison. The only real difference is that MST is oriented towards how to
instrumentalize (mechanism) the object under study; nevertheless, it sees its four modes of apprehending
on their own terms. Process is identical to organicism, as both assess the origin and life-cycle of a thing.
Structure is identical to formism, the analysis of a phenomena’s constitutive components and their
respective configuration. Properties is identical to contextualism, whereby properties are only made
apparent through the particular conditions in which they are situated. Performance is identical to
mechanism; the purpose of an entity is assessed and determined by the role it is designed to serve.
This underlying congruence between these two epistemic frameworks will allow for a comparison
to be established, where the phenomena of performance will be read through the structure and properties
of various states of matter.
69
This methodological framework can serve as a tool to bridges between the
rhetorical performance and its parallel material state.

69
MST is being applied to general states of matter not particular materials; however, it serves the same functional
purpose.
Figure 18. The analytical approach to compare a performance with a state of matter.

46
§ Concluding Thoughts
How bodies present themselves to others communicates more than body language (tone and
intentions), but frames whatever discourse is to be developed and articulated. What this reading has
revealed is that the morphology of a performance, the visible form it takes, indicates what will be
articulated by the performers discursively — affirmation, critique or negation. This morphology indicates
the properties and the characteristics that will manifest, from effects to life-cycle. Presented in Figure 1
and Figure 19 are two phase diagrams, the one discussed at the beginning of this paper and the second
reinterpreted to map the different types of performances discussed throughout.
Many other types of material substances could have been discussed, such as polymers, synthetics
and other rare materials with more complex and unique properties. There were also many more types of
performances that could have been analyzed and read through states of matter: exile governments, vigils,
sporting events, war and stampedes, to name only a few. What was interpreted as a performance was kept
narrowly within a defined range of acts, those done explicitly in public for others. However, the
connections between bodies displaced by the recession and then their subsequent participation in political
protests, reveals that this trope and the idea of performance can be extended further into sociology, where
the presentation of the self with others, outside of an explicit rhetorical appeal could also be thought of as
a material in nature. The most apparent case of this being the activity of work, which regulates the
Figure 1. Phase diagram.
Figure 19. Phase diagram of rhetorical
performance.

47
majority of people’s day-to-day lives. Further exploration of this trope could explore performance’s
relationship to other material objects, for example, architecture and the way it serves to limit, contain and
contribute to certain types of performative states. The forces of pressure and thermal energy could be
further expounded upon through their relationship to thermodynamics. Many of the participants of
Burning Man are programmers from Silicon Valley who are in highly disciplined fields and attend such
an event as a counterpoint to this solid type of activity and energy. This contrast reflects the
thermodynamic principle of equilibrium. Just as there is a strong relationship between the morphology of
a performance and the discursive messages it generates, so to the internal images which galvanize the
minds of performers mirrors the material states they then go and carry out, for example, those
participating in gaseous performances are driven to a sublime encounter, which derives from sublimation
the process of a solid turning directly into a vapor. Here the literalness of the performance merges with
the symbolic image guiding the performer. The idea of pressure can be further explored, how it acts as
both a passive force — an external constraint — and as an active force — internal force — thereby
behaving more like a type of energy.

48
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Creator Kellogg, Jayson Matthew (author)

Core Title The elemental rhetoric of performance

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 08/08/2019

Defense Date 08/04/2019

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Communication,demonstration,Energy,Government,March,Materialism,materialist,materialist turn,matter,OAI-PMH Harvest,occupation,Performance,Politics,Protest,Public Relations,rally,Religion,rhetoric,social,Women’s March

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Language English

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Advisor Goodnight, Gerald (committee chair), Jutkowitz, Alexander (committee member), Tenderich, Burghardt (committee member)

Creator Email jkellogg@usc.edu,kellogg.jay.public@gmail.com

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