Politically dark times arise when the public realm is undermined “by speech that does not disclose what is but sweeps it under the carpet” (Arendt 1995, vii). How does it occur that political practices, even though they are experienced as democratic, can unintentionally nourish authoritarianism? Following this question, the contribution accesses social philosophy through an ethnography of contemporary dance education. Utilizing an approach of aesthetic practices (Hetzel 2021) combined with political theory (Arendt 1998) the ethnography concretizes political action within an art form and transfers the findings to a broader societal and political context.

The ethnographic methodology combines a practice theory informed approach developed in dance studies (Hardt 2023) and life-world-analytical ethnography based in sociological phenomenology (Hitzler and Honer 2015). Based on long-term ethnographic field work focussing dance improvisation in my own amateur and professional dance education I am analyzing differences between the performativity of practices (e.g. authority) and their experience (e.g. supportive, participatory). These contrasting results are being theoretically saturated with theories of practices (Schatzki 2002), phenomenology of the body (Merleau-Ponty 1966), sociology of the body (Gugutzer 2015) and Hannah Arendts political theory (Arendt 1998 and 1992).

The results show how experiences and performativity of practices within dance education can drift apart (1). Transferred to social philosophy it becomes understandable why and how experiences of political action are not always consistent with the their (bodily) performativity (2), providing a theoretical foundation for a self-critical evaluation of current political practices (3).

References

Arendt, Hannah 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Arendt, Hannah 1995. Men in Dark Times. New York und London: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Arendt, Hannah and Ronald Beiner 1992. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gugutzer, Robert 2015. Soziologie des Körpers. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Hardt, Yvonne 2023. Tanz und kulturelle Bildung erforschen - Eine Einführung. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Hetzel, Andreas 2021. „Gehen als ästhetische Praxis“. In: Medienkultur als kritische Gesellschaftsanalyse – Festschrift für Rainer Winter, ed. Matthias Wieser und Elena Pilipets. Köln: Herbert von Halem Verlag.

Hitzler, Ronald und Anne Honer 2015. „Life-World-Analytical Ethnography: A Phenomenology-Based Research Approach“. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 44(5): 544–62.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1966. Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

Schatzki, Theodore R. 2002. The Site of the Social – a philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.