Endris, Jaelyn (2023) Critical passivity: a reparative approach to dance criticism. Doctoral thesis, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis choreographs critical passivity as a reparative theory for feminist criticism. I argue that a critical passivity reorients discursive critical practices towards affective, bodily knowledges. I theorize critical passivity through an attention to how these often-feminised knowledges emerge within and through theorizing about watching dance. I articulate critical passivity through my close readings to reveal how one is moved by affective, material encounters with dance. I offer critical passivity as both a theory and as a feminist critical disposition. Critical passivity imagines a feminist approach to dance criticism that is reparative, affective, and moving. I contend that critical passivity imagines hopeful futures for feminist thinking that resist how white, patriarchal institutions historize, weaponize, or exorcise feminist thoughts and actions. My research methods primarily draw upon reparative approaches to feminist critical practices, which I blend with expanded concepts of choreography. These modes resist patriarchal, logocentric thinking to centre feminized knowledges that are otherwise epistemologically marginalized. Drawing upon Eve Sedgwick's concept of reparative reading, I similarly consider how critical passivity resists paranoid readings in favor of more localized, reparative readings. I draw upon femininity studies and femme theory to conceptualize passivity as reparative and hopeful. This feminist and queer scholarship offers an alternative linage for theorizing femininity. I argue that passivity offers an empathetic ethos that promotes critical strategies for softness, surrender, surprise, and openness. I utilize close reading in this thesis as a reflexive, iterative praxis predicted on openness and care rather than foreclosure and domination. I conceptualize spectating dance as "reading" dance to collapse distinctions between performance and text. I draw upon deconstruction and post critique to maintain a necessary ambivalence towards paranoid feminist dance-based critical practices. I suggest that critical passivity's ambivalent disposition situates reparative modes within and alongside paranoid readings to imagine hopeful futures for feminist criticism.