origin and effect. Non-representational work, in contrast, is concerned with
multiplying performative methodologies which allow their participants equal rights
to disclosure, through dialogical actions rather than texts, through relation rather
than representation. In particular, therefore, it has tried to enhance ‘performance
consciousness’ (Dening 1996) by turning to examples of the intensification of
presence provided by the performing arts – art, sculpture, theatre, dance, poetry,
music. It is therefore able to draw on a rich archive of experiments with disclosing
and therefore describing and constructing space-times. Much, but not all, of this
work has its roots in 1960s experimentation with ‘focusing the problematic’
through embodied expression and now manifests itself in movements such as
systems theatre, legislative theatre (Boal 1998), and so on, which aim to discover
the ‘tacit performativity of power’ (Butler 199 7 : 159). Others do different things:
Shotter’s experiments with three-way psychotherapy are one case in point.
McNamee and Gergen’s (1998) invitation to a ‘relational responsibility’ is another.
Newman and Holzman’s (199 7 ) improvisational pedagogy is yet another.
Attempts to write and act out studies of intimate partners are one more case (see,
for example, Chadwick and de Courtivron 1993).^26 All are involved in creating
something together, in jointly constructing ways of seeing other possibilities,
in continuously unfolding relations on the principle that there is ‘never anything
like enough contrivance’ (Deleuze 1995: 20).
So, as theory ends, something else takes its place. What that something is I do
not know, and I am not sure that it matters. But that it is different, that it is lively,
and that it represents a challenge to the still elite practices of the current rather
cloying hegemony of the cultural turn, I am sure.
I want to end with the figure of John Dewey, the remarkable pragmatist philo-
sopher who, as if to prove the point, was also active in other worlds (Ryan 1995).
What distinguishes Dewey’s philosophy from that of many of his contemporaries
was its commitment to a ‘sensuous scholarship’ which recognized nondiscursive
somatic practice as crucial to the world (and to philosophy). Such practice could
be used to enrich knowledge: ‘A better measured sense of breathing could pro-
vide a cooler, better measured process of thought; an ineffable flush of energetic
excitement could spur one to think beyond habitual limits’ (Shusterman 199 7 :
167 ).^27
As if to prove the point, Dewey was a keen exponent of and participant in the
Alexander Technique, a system of body therapy. ‘Long a devoted student of
[F. Matthias] Alexander (not simply of his texts but of his somatic exercises) Dewey
wrote encomistic introductions to three of his books’ (Shusterman 199 7 : 16 7 ).
Though Dewey’s commitment to the Technique as demonstrating a new scien-
tific principle now seems of its time, still that involvement has some uncanny
echoes with the present. To begin with, the Alexander Technique still flourishes:
in Britain and North America; you will still find notices and flyers in community
centres, dance studios, and local halls advertising courses as part of a wider turn
to body therapies (including, I might add, dance therapies). Then, in trying to
link thought to the body and in trying to show that thought was embodied,
Dewey’s work is redolent of the work of later and currently more influential writers
148 Part II