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Performance,
Subjectivity,
Cosmopolitanism
Yana Meerzon
 Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism

“In Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism Yana Meerzon sets the cosmopoli-

tan subject centre-stage and examines its philosophical origins, its importance in
the contemporary political context of the global rise of demagoguery and right-
wing nationalism, and its signifi cance in the contemporary theatre. This rigorous
and scholarly work extends Meerzon’s existing published research on exilic perfor-
mance to examine what she names as today’s ‘theatre of cosmopolitanism’. Defi
ning this theatrical form as originating ‘at two axes of meaning: as a social phe-
nomenon and as an aesthetic condition’, the book draws on a rich and complex
range of sources to offer an impassioned argument for the continuing value of
cosmopolitanism and the cosmopolitan subject in uncertain times.”
—Dr Lisa Fitzpatrick, Senior Lecturer in Drama, University of Ulster, UK

“This is an erudite and detailed study of cosmopolitan theatre, covering a range of

performances from the Global North. Meerzon reviews the meaning and function
of the fi gure of the ‘traveller’ in the twenty-first century in order to think about
subjectivity and the ethical potential of theatre at a time of global upheaval. Timely
and necessary.”
—Marilena Zaroulia, Lecturer in Performance Arts, The Royal Central
School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK
 Yana Meerzon

Performance,
Subjectivity,
Cosmopolitanism
Yana Meerzon
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Canada

ISBN 978-3-030-41409-2    ISBN 978-3-030-41410-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41410-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
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publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Koukichi Takahashi / EyeEm, Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Irina, Dmitri, Alexander, and Eugenie
 Acknowledgements

This project took its inspiration from the conference Local Cosmopolitanisms/
Cosmopolitismes locaux that took place in Fall 2014 at the University of
Ottawa. Later I discussed my ideas with many colleagues and friends, both
in Canada and internationally, to whom I am extremely grateful for their
insights, suggestions, critical thoughts, and interest in this topic. This list
includes Patrice Pavis, Freddie Rokem, Janelle Reinelt, Peter Boenisch,
Christopher Balme, Steve Wilmer, Joerg Esleben, Veronika Ambros, Tibor
Egervari, Ric Knowles, Inge Arteel, Guy Cools, Josette Ferral, Judith
Rudakoff, Margherita Laera, R. Darren Gobert, Magda Romanska,
Szabolcs Musca, and Silvija Jestrovic, among many others.
As I worked on this book, I participated in projects and partnerships
that are particularly echoed in these pages. They include my work with
Katharina Pewny on theatre and multilingualism (2018, 2019) and my
two-volume publication on theatre and immigration in Canada (2019),
generously supported by Roberta Barker, as well as my collaboration with
David Dean, Natalia Vesselova, and Daniel McNeil on the project
Performance, Migration and Stereotypes. A Connection Grant from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada supported
several initiatives related to this project, including the 2017 international
conference, the collection of articles entitled Migration and Stereotypes in
Performance and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), and this volume.
J. Douglas Clayton’s hard work on the style of this book was invaluable.
During the many hours we spent discussing this project, I came to think
of him as a true collaborator if not co-author of this manuscript. Aisling

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Murphy helped with the final touches of the manuscript, looking after
technical aspects of preparing this text for publication.
This book would not have emerged without the generous help of the
artists to whom it is dedicated. I am forever grateful to the many perform-
ers, writers, directors, designers, dramaturgs, and managers of the various
companies, with whom I corresponded, spoke, and shared my ideas
regarding theatre and cosmopolitanism. The map of my encounters is
truly international, if not global. A special thank you goes to many kind
people, although here I can name only some of them. They include Art
Babayants, Ken Cameron, Una Memisevic, Tim Carlson, Candice
Edmunds, Mani Soleymanlou, Natasha Davis, Anton de Groot, Anita
Majumdar, David Herd, Dragan Todorovic, Charlotte Bongaerts, Lars
Boot, Elke Janssens, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, James Long, Maiko Yamamoto,
An-Marie Lambrechts, Lily McLeish, Karthika Nair, Damien Jalet, Anna
Pincus, Julia Wieninger, Fleur Palezzi, and Charlotte Farcet.
I have presented materials related to this work at many conferences,
including the International Federation for Theatre Research (2014,
2018), the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (2017, 2018), and
the European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance
(2018, 2019), as well as gave keynote lectures and invited talks at Ghent
University, Kent University, Northwestern University, University of
Amsterdam, University of Toronto, Masaryk University, McMaster
University, and Concordia Universities.
Some of my ideas that appear in this book were previously published in
the journals Theatre Research in Canada (2015), Modern Drama (2018),
and Ottawa Hispanic Studies (2018) and the book Performing Exile:
Foreign Bodies edited by Judith Rudakoff (2017).
My special thanks go to my family, who were simply stoic in supporting
this project. Without their patience, understanding, and belief, this book
would have never come to life.
 Contents

1 Setting the Stage: Performing the Divided Self of a New

Cosmopolitanism  1

Part I Encounters in Language  33

2 Dramaturgies of the Self: Staging the Décalage of

Vernacular Cosmopolitanism 35

3 ‘Speaking in Tongues’: Staging Hospitality of (Non)

Translation 75

Part II Encounters in Body 115

4 Dramaturgies of the Body: Staging Stranger-­Fetishism in a

Cosmopolitan Solo Performance117

5 Staging Cosmoprolis: Constructing the Chorus Play155

ix
x Contents

Part III Encounters in Time, Space, and History 195

6 Dramaturgies of the Gaze: On the Intimate Realities of

Cosmopolitanism197

7 Staging Affective Citizenship: Constructing Communities

of Hope237

8 To Be a Cosmopolitan: Concluding Remarks275

Index285
 CHAPTER 1

Setting the Stage: Performing the Divided

Self of a New Cosmopolitanism

Today, as the French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky argues, we have

entered a new phase of Modernist culture: it is now characterized by the
exigencies of hyper. ‘Hyper capitalism, hyperclass, hyper-power, hyper-­
terrorism, hyper-individualism, hypermarket, hypertext’ (Lipovetsky
2004, 155) are directly connected to the economic practices of late capi-
talism. Global wars, the information overload, the acceleration of time,
and the malady of hyper-consumption all result in the processes of con-
structing, deconstructing, and reconstructing subjectivity. ‘The hyper-
modern individual’—Lipovetsky writes—‘lives a life characterized by
flexibility, adaptability, and a demand of continuous improvement, both in
the work place and throughout his/her general life’ (153). For this indi-
vidual, the global supermarket and the workplace have turned into places
of worship.
Bojana Kunst arrives at similar conclusions, declaring, ‘contemporary
society places great emphasis on creativity, imagination, and dynamism’,
so that the only tangible product of late capitalism is ‘models of subjectiv-
ity’ (2015, 19). Kunst examines the role played by the performing arts in
re-fashioning this subjectivity. In response to her own question of ‘how
and what does art actually produce in contemporary capitalism?’ (17),
Kunst suggests that the only commodity created by the performing arts is
the artist at work (19).
Using these statements as a starting point, I seek in this book to analyse
how this new subjectivity is constructed and staged in the theatres of

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Y. Meerzon, Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41410-8_1
2 Y. MEERZON

hypermodernity. The focus and theoretical approaches in this book, how-

ever, differ from those of Kunst, who studies theatre and cultural perfor-
mance, which reflects its own modes of production and is tightly connected
to the material and economic conditions of labour. I am interested in
individual artists, their craft, and the philosophical discourses that underlie
this production of subjectivity. Specifically, I am drawn to those works that
produce subjectivity as a reflection of one more exigency of the hyper: the
new regimes of mobility (Schiller and Salazar 2013). They include mass
migration, refuge and asylum seeking, political and self-imposed exile,
economic migration, work-related travel, and tourism. However, instead
of juxtaposing stasis as settlement and migration as movement in their
relational perspectives, I see regimes of mobility as shaping the world of
hypermodernity in the dimensions of simultaneity, relationality, and tem-
porality and evoking the image of a new nomadism, which re-enforces
non-belonging and produces anxiety in settled populations (Landry 2017,
26). Paradox and incongruity are the basis of this new nomadism, as it
generates cosmopolitan cultural practices and consciousness and at the
same time leads to neo-nationalism and false patriotism. New nomadism
functions as a civic city, where diversities converge and interact (27). It
also spawns questions of who can be considered a responsible citizen, as
we increasingly witness more and more people declaring multiple cultural,
linguistic, and civic affiliations. Marked by its cultural heterogeneity, the
civic city serves as a model of the post-migrant society or new cosmopoli-
tanism, emerging as an alternative scenario to the practices and mytholo-
gies of the nation state. At the centre of this construction is the
hypermodern individual, someone perpetually on the move between work
and leisure, rushed to produce and achieve, often switching languages and
cultures, partners and values, driven by various commitments.
We must remember, of course, that not all travellers and travelling are
created equal. In this book I make a fundamental distinction between the
so-called jet-setters as privileged travellers, whose status in the power-­
geometry of global mobility is defined by their wealth and power (Massey
2014, 62), and refugees and asylum seekers, whose movement across the
space-time continuum is forced and precarious. As a Western academic
who travels on a Canadian passport conveniently approved and acknowl-
edged by the international community, I admit that my work is marked by
my privileged position and freedom of movement. It was not always like
that: my own journey of immigration was marked by various anxieties,
hard work, and personal sacrifice. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to
 1 SETTING THE STAGE: PERFORMING THE DIVIDED SELF OF A NEW… 3

recognize my privilege as a hypermodern individual. By the same token,

this book is a study of theatre performances made by and addressed to
hypermodern individuals like myself, who possess the financial, legal, and
linguistic means to access them. Like Marilena Zaroulia, who examines
‘the relation between the so-called European “refugee crisis” and the mul-
tiple meanings and performances of excess’ (2018, 181), I analyse perfor-
mative representations of migration aimed at ‘those of us who have not
had a direct experience of forced displacement’ and whose meaning there-
fore ‘exceeds us’ (181). The major question I seek to answer is: what val-
ues can the performing arts offer a hypermodern nomad? Indeed, what’s
Hecuba to him or her? For Bojana Kunst, the answer is clear: our assump-
tion that art can have some political and/or social impact is invalid (2015,
20); the only function it can fulfil is to become a repository of philosophi-
cal observations and emotional experiences. I concur with this statement
but take her position further in this book, arguing that watching a theatre
performance live and experiencing it as an embodied practice can foster
self-reflection: it can create an epiphany, a fortuitous philosophical moment
of self-recognition. The cosmopolitan spectator is obliged to contemplate
their position as a privileged subject and encouraged to step outside the
historical moment in which they live. In this post-Brechtian gesture of
alienating self from self, cosmopolitan theatre can impose a moment of
recognition. Not only can it make a person of privilege suddenly recognize
the other within themselves; it can incite them to take the first step towards
an ethical dialogue with the other outside the self. In making these sug-
gestions, however utopian they may sound, I follow, on the one hand,
Zygmunt Bauman, who advocates dialogue as the only way to overcome
the indifference, if not animosity, that late capitalism produces towards
strangers (2016, 2017), and, on the other hand, Erika Fischer-Lichte,
who has already suggested that the transformative power of performance
can involve spectators in an active loop of aesthetic and affective experi-
ences, which invokes questions of ethics and sets in motion the mecha-
nisms for one’s encounter with oneself (2008, 40–52). In her more recent
work, Fischer-Lichte distinguishes between three modes of this transfor-
mative aesthetics, such as ‘the aesthetics of impact, of autonomy and of
reception’ (2018, 18), which ‘transform the viewer into an emotional,
feeling subject and, in this respect, is comparable to the empathy aesthetics
of the eighteenth century’ (16). Transformative aesthetics is based on the
act of somatic and emotional encounter between the stage and the audi-
ence; it envisions a viewer in a state of ‘permanent activity’ (11),
4 Y. MEERZON

energetically and creatively involved in the act of receiving or co-­

constructing the work of art (13). Building further on this theory, I exam-
ine the performative logic of the encounter as a relational activity
(Bourriaud 1998) and the rhizomatic stillness of multiple selves. By focus-
ing on the fundamental elements of the theatre performance, such as lan-
guage, body, and time/space, I seek to theorize the performative
mechanisms involved in conceptualizing, constructing, and performing
the new cosmopolitanism. The objective is to create a map of the artistic
strategies and philosophical preoccupations that inform the work of the
many artists whose practices and sensibilities are clearly cosmopolitan. The
underlying theme of this book is the notion of the divided self, whereas
the analyses presented are shaped by the focus on motion.

* * *

The Cosmopolitan Subjectivity of the Divided Self

The concept of self as we know it today goes back to the Renaissance and
the work of Petrarch, who ‘by reading the ancient writers had to experi-
ence his own being as a unique and autonomous self which he could
objectify, act upon, and compare to other such autonomous selves’
(Melton 1998, 68). In this process, Petrarch recognized the Western sub-
ject’s tendency to ‘general[ly] turn inward’ as ‘a reaction to the knowledge
that human beings were no longer one with the cosmos’ (68). This read-
ing of the self as a unique entity marked the philosophical thought of the
Enlightenment and the Romantic worldview of the Sturm und Drang
writers, who proposed an idealized model of the self-willed tragic charac-
ter ready for self-sacrifice. Nietzsche’s philosophical nihilism radically
changed the concept of self, which is now recognized as something
invented and projected by the onlooker onto the subject. This led to the
notion of the reading self as something constructed through language and
as an act of memory that ‘provides the continuity which allows a sense of
identity’ (73). Today we often define the sense of self through the act of
encounter—an action that emphasizes the relational nature of the self as
self and the self as other—so that a cosmopolitan subject often emerges as
someone in the process of being re-fractured and redefined. As Peter
Boenisch suggests, ‘today subjectivity is not supported as an expression of
“authentic self” or “ideological misrecognition”’; it asserts ‘a subjective
 1 SETTING THE STAGE: PERFORMING THE DIVIDED SELF OF A NEW… 5

position of formal self-reflexivity that always maintains a distance from

itself and thereby can never become identical with itself’ (2003, 112).
Constructed relationally through a theatre performance, in which infor-
mation and energy are exchanged between artist and viewers, cosmopoli-
tan subjectivity can be revealed (a) historically through the relation of the
self to personal memory and forgetting and to the collective history of a
nation; (b) socially in the relation of the self to society, as seen in identity
politics—the self as other and the self as part of a group; (c) philosophi-
cally and ethically, as the responsibility of the self to oneself and to the
other; and (d) as an aesthetic activity, constructed through the relation of
the self to the self through arts. Cosmopolitan theatre utilizes devices of
relational dramaturgy (Boenisch 2014; Pewny et al. 2014) to bring about
an encounter between the spectator and the work of art, thereby confront-
ing its audiences with resurfacing national, cultural, and ideological tradi-
tions and requiring our ‘radical relation to our histories, subjectivities and
identities’ (Boenisch 2003, 128).
The encounter—both as a dramaturgical device on stage and as a ges-
ture of theoretical conceptualization—serves as this study’s central meta-
phor and facilitates discussion of the complex workings of cosmopolitan
theatre. I use the notion of encounter to speak of the live theatrical work
as a social, performative, philosophical, and aesthetic event, when several
independent subjects come together to form new environments for intel-
lectual, emotional, and affectual collaborations. In its social dimensions,
the encounter can take place at a border-crossing, in a zone of economic
exchange or a (military) conflict, and as a gesture of creating a place for
dialogue or an imagined community (Anderson 1991). In its philosophi-
cal dimensions, it can be an experience itself or ‘the passage and departure
toward the other’ (Derrida 2001, 103). As a performative category, the
encounter can serve as a collision of conflictual forces which takes place
between (1) agents of action in the dramatic world, such as characters; (2)
agents of action in the dramatic world and material elements of the perfor-
mance, such as performers’ bodies, objects, media, and space; (3) the
material elements of the performance; and (4) all the elements of perfor-
mance mentioned above plus the spectator. As a category of aesthetics, the
encounter can be a state of mind or an aesthetic illusion, conditioned by
the act of experiencing a work of art (Wolf 2013, 13–14). The aesthetic
encounter requires the re-centring of the self as an (imaginary) immersion
into the newly constructed world of performance; it implies splitting sub-
jectivity into two separate consciousnesses—an observing ego and an
6 Y. MEERZON

experiencing ego (16). This ontological split of self—as the participating

self and the observing self—becomes the major mechanism for construct-
ing subjectivity in cosmopolitan theatre and thus constitutes the object of
this study. In other words, in this book I aim to shift the discussion of the
ethics of encounter from the self (us)/other (them) paradigm to the self as
other formula and produce a new understanding of subjectivity as embod-
ied self, conditioned by its material and cultural situation. Thanks to our
ability to speak, act, narrate, and ascribe actions to other persons, we can
stage our own vulnerability and our relationships with the world. The
embodied self never functions through abstract categories of being: one’s
corporeality is tightly interconnected with and reflects one’s historical sit-
uation, biography, and sense of the present. Theatre has the unique power
to stage this encounter of self as other. It favours encounter as its special
creative methodology and uses the ‘dialectics of a standstill’ as the specta-
tor’s meeting point with oneself as other (Rokem 2000, 182). To better
understand this dynamic, I suggest a theoretical model of the theatrical
encounter as an atomic cell with the divided self of the cosmopolitan artist
in its centre. This model stems from my previous research into the aesthet-
ics of theatre in exile (Meerzon 2012), in which I defined the exilic condi-
tion as a past/present or here/there binary. This binary configures the
exile’s life journey as a tripartite beginning-middle-end structure, in which
the journey unfolds from the point of departure to the point of arrival,
with no return possible. In this book, I propose to rethink this trajectory
by opening the past/present binary of exile into the simultaneity of cos-
mopolitanism: a rhizomatic process of becoming that reflects the position
of the cosmopolitan subject who is constantly on the move and forced by
the conditions of labour, politics, or physical and economic upheaval to
seek new opportunities elsewhere. This type of intercultural encounter is
reflected in cosmopolitan performances, which frequently focus on the
multicultural and multilingual urbanite torn between the accelerated time
of hyper-consumption and hyper-productivity and the stillness of nothing-
ness, when an individual feels ‘crushed by the empty period of time in his/
her life’ (Lipovetsky 2004, 60). These performances mirror the effects of
cultural globality, which constructs a cosmopolitan persona out of the
divided self (Fig. 1.1).
The nucleus of the proposed model stands for this fluent identity of the
cosmopolitan subject. The floating outer orbits of the model represent the
artistic and personal challenges faced by the cosmopolitan artist, including
the economic conditions of work, the chosen subject matter, the material,
 1 SETTING THE STAGE: PERFORMING THE DIVIDED SELF OF A NEW… 7

Fig. 1.1 Alamy stock

vector by Paulo Gomez.
(Image ID: H7JNX4)

and the media. Much like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, these float-
ing orbits stand for exterior variables which also influence the making of
the divided self. These variables reflect the instability, ambiguity, and irreg-
ularity of the cultural, financial, and material circumstances that condition
the work of a cosmopolitan artist. So often theatre performance becomes
a space for individual artistic encounters where imagined communities of
global risk (Beck 2011) can be enacted and analysed. Speaking of the
divided self in such general terms, I realize, presents a certain danger of
involuntarily slipping into essentialist thinking, which associates travel
with privilege. It can also approximate cosmopolitanism to political and
social utopia, envisioning the figure of the cosmopolitan traveller only as a
privileged subject, standing apart from and above the realities of modern
migration. To avoid this slippage, in what follows I trace a brief history of
the figure of the cosmopolitan traveller or stranger and how its place and
reception have changed in Western philosophical thought.

* * *

The etymology of the Greek word cosmopolis implies an unresolved para-

dox. Cosmos refers to a universal order as established by nature; polis
8 Y. MEERZON

speaks of the order made by people. Positioned between the state and
the cosmos, cosmopolitanism signifies negotiation across differences; the
tactics of dialogue, listening, and compromise define its mediations. The
ideology of cosmopolitanism—as it is known in Western philosophical
traditions—originates with Diogenes’s postulate ‘I am a citizen of the
world’ and the stoics’ migratory practices, marked by their curiosity and
respect for new places and people. Diogenes’s saying suggests that one’s
loyalties as a citizen do not necessary lie with one place, but with the
universe (Appiah 2005, 271–278). This idea links today’s cosmopolitan
subject to the practices of mobility. These practices imagine and con-
struct a cosmopolitan subject as radicant, a being ‘caught between the
need of a connection with its environment and the forces of uprooting,
between globalization and singularity, between identity and opening to
the other’ (Bourriaud 2009, 51). Permanent exile is the destiny of the
radicant, while their lifestyle reflects the political and economic practices
of late capitalism. Being ‘[a]n object of negotiation’ and ‘a mode of
thought based on translation’ (54), this radicant ‘can no longer count on
a stable environment; he is doomed to be exiled from himself and sum-
moned to invent the nomad culture that the contemporary world
requires’ (77).
Michael Cronin identifies these practices as cultural cosmopolitanism
(2006), whereby the cosmopolitan subject acts as an involuntary transla-
tor of its meanings and experiences (11), someone who can stand outside
singular locations and traditions, interrogating oneself and the world.
Transnational artists, whose work comprises the bulk of the case studies in
this book, are cultural cosmopolitans, since they constantly work across
languages, multiple modes of artistic and economic production, and poli-
tics. They also negotiate forms of artistic production and reception; thus
they help create the conditions of performative in-betweenness (Fischer-­
Lichte 2014, 12–13), in which an encounter between the agents of action
takes place and where their subjectivity—oneself as the other in the con-
text of one’s personal life experiences and as the subject of history—
is staged.
Although historically cosmopolitanism was already popular with the
early Christians, who believed that ‘people of all nations can become
“fellow-­citizens with the saints”’ (Kleingeld and Brown 2014), this con-
ceptual thinking did not gain momentum until the Enlightenment. The
rise of international trade, the growth of the Western empires, and the
discovery of the new lands contributed to the idea and practice of world
 1 SETTING THE STAGE: PERFORMING THE DIVIDED SELF OF A NEW… 9

mobility; these events also enabled the ‘emergence of a notion of human

rights and a philosophical focus on human reason’ (2014). From Diderot
to Hume, from Voltaire to Jefferson and Kant, the philosophers of the
time subscribed to the ‘attitude of open-mindedness and impartiality. A
cosmopolitan was someone who was not subservient to a particular reli-
gious or political authority, someone who was not biased by particular
loyalties or cultural prejudice’ (2014). For example, the French philoso-
pher Montesquieu, a true patriot of his own country and one of the first
advocates of such cosmopolitanism, was himself a renowned traveller. He
recognized cosmopolitanism as ‘the notion of human sociability’ (Kristeva
1991, 128) and advocated the wellbeing of any community in its function
as ‘an international society made possible by the development of trade’
(130). Montesquieu saw Europe as a unified nation based on respectful
interactions between neighbours, so that ethics was detrimental to his
political programme. He warned his fellow contemporaries against the
dangers of the juridical distinction between the rights of a man and the
rights of a citizen. ‘Montesquieu’s cosmopolitism was the consequence of
his fundamental concern to turn politics into a space of possible freedom.
His “Modernism” is to be understood as a rejection of unified society for
the sake of a coordinated diversity’ (133). In the philosophical work that
followed Montesquieu’s thought, including Voltaire’s Candide, the idea
emerged of the journey into a foreign land as a process of learning some-
thing new about others and something profound about oneself. In
Voltaire’s time, it was customary ‘to leave one’s homeland in order to
enter other climes, mentalities, and governments’, but it was also under-
stood that this departure was to be ‘undertaken only to return to oneself
and one’s home’ (133). In this philosophical context, the foreigner could
turn into a mythological figure or ‘the metaphor of the distance at which
we should place ourselves in order to revive the dynamics of ideological
and social transformation’ (134).
The rise of pejorative narratives about the cosmopolitan as a cross
between a trustworthy, sedimentary patriot and a suspiciously mobile for-
eigner began in the early nineteenth century and arose out of the practices
and ideologies of the nation state. Even earlier, traces of these narratives
can be found in the writings of Diderot and Rousseau, as well as in the
1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, the foundational doc-
ument of Western democratic consciousness: ‘Basing itself on a universal
human nature that the Enlightenment learned to conceive and to respect,
the Declaration shifts from the universal notion—“men”—to the
10 Y. MEERZON

“political associations” that must preserve their rights, and encounters the
historical reality of the “essential political association,” which turns out to
be the nation’ (Kristeva 1991, 148). In this context, a private person pos-
sesses less value than a citizen; the latter turns into a political object, whose
‘national identification is the essential expression of his sovereignty’ (149).
As a citizen, this individual has now become identified by their duties
towards the nation, whereas the foreigner turns into a stranger, someone
who ‘does not belong to the group’ (95), and so must be denied all the
privileges that come with citizenship. The negative consequences of such
discourse have been reflected in the juridical and political systems of the
nation states. The rhetoric of an anthropological or folk nationalism was
articulated in the cultural and geographical imperative of a nation, rooted
in the rituals of simple people, who eat, live, pray, and dance together
(Sennett 2011, 58–60). The identity of a national subject became directly
linked to the concepts of territory and time as something given in its linear
and uninterrupted forms, so that a true national subject would not possess
self-awareness or self-estrangement, which originates in the experiences
and narratives of displacement, foreignness, and strangeness. The political
consequences of such nationalist philosophy and the upheavals of history
made banishment and exile a commonplace in the twentieth century
(Brodsky 1995, 22). They created the figure of the unwelcome and suspi-
cious stranger, who ‘comes today and stays tomorrow’ (Simmel 1950, 402).
Georg Simmel, the nineteenth-century German sociologist and phi-
losopher, positioned the stranger in the discourse of distance, uncertainty,
and disturbance, declaring the practice of free travel dangerous (1950,
402–405). As a form of mobility, foreignness presupposes freedom, the
stranger’s acceptance of both the anxiety and the excitement of the jour-
ney. To Simmel, however, mobility can turn a reliable citizen into an
uncontrollable engine of diversity. The foreigner, Simmel explained, is a
trader. An isolated encounter with a trader can be beneficial to the econ-
omy; but if the foreigner settles, they can disrupt a self-sufficient commu-
nity. Not being committed to the customs or habits of the group, the
stranger ‘embodies that synthesis of nearness and distance’ (404). This
synthesis makes the stranger’s view objective; but with objectivity comes
detachment from one’s responsibilities to the group. By recognizing
objectivity and freedom as two paradoxical but interconnected conditions
of the experience and mindset of the stranger, Simmel set the stage for
Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of the flâneur (1983) and Edward Said’s
work on exile (2000).
 1 SETTING THE STAGE: PERFORMING THE DIVIDED SELF OF A NEW… 11

Benjamin’s flâneur was a bohemian and a dandy, a detached observer of

his day and history, someone from an economically stable and educated
class. Benjamin traces the origins of flâneurism to the nineteenth-century
panorama literature with flâneur serving as a detective discovering the
physiology of the emerging urban lifestyle. Strolling is the flâneur’s occu-
pation; it provides them with ‘the best prospects’ of the city and vindicates
their ‘idleness’ (Benjamin 1983, 41). At the same time, the flâneur ‘only
seems to be indolent, for behind this indolence there is the watchfulness
of an observer who does not take his eyes off a miscreant’ (41). This sepa-
ration between the gaze, contemplation, and experience makes the flâneur
a foreigner and a stranger. In fact, in Modernist thought and experience,
the stranger becomes a perfect example and even a fetish of the cosmo-
politan mindset. Stranger-fetishism, Sara Ahmed explains, is rooted in our
prejudice and obsession with the figure of the stranger as alien (Ahmed
2010, 2): the stranger is someone who invades the territory to which I
belong and so (allegedly) destroys the safety of my community. Not sur-
prisingly, we often trace the philosophical and artistic origins of Modernist
philosophy and the historical avant-garde in arts to ‘stateless citizens, ren-
egades, exiles, turncoats’ (Bourriaud 2009, 76). Many avant-garde artists
sought the artistic devices needed to portray the subjectivity of the flâneur
and the sense of rupture and dissonance that marks their consciousness.
Often, they opted for the artistic strategies of fragmentation, suspension
of disbelief, syncopation, distorted point of view, and grotesque to reflect
this condition of being a stranger. They also mixed autobiographical and
memory narratives with surrealist imagery to depict the alienating power
of the voyage as a separation of the gaze from the experience, of appear-
ance from desire, of self from other, and of self from oneself. In this way
they can be said to have often practised the aesthetics of exilic performative
(Meerzon 2012).
If during the twentieth-century interwar period the word ‘cosmopoli-
tanism’ had acquired a pejorative meaning, in the years after WWII, in the
period of post-colonial and independence movements, the stranger turned
into the protagonist of banishment and political exile. Edward Said defined
exile as a condition of loss and forgetting, something ‘strangely compel-
ling to speak about but terrible to experience’ (Said 2000, 1). Whether
forced or self-imposed, exile can easily turn into an ‘unhealable rift, forced
between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true
home’ (1). However, at the core of the exilic drive is the act of resistance:
an individual standing against the state. As banishment, exile often results
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 CHAPTER V.
THE CHOIR ORGAN AS A SEPARATE CASE.

As a Screen to the Player.—Choir Front in the Lower Part

of Case.

LTHOUGH organs now do not consist merely of a Great

and Choir (or Chair) organ, the two cases add much to
the look of an instrument, and the Choir case makes an
excellent screen to conceal the organist. Old organs of
any pretensions are rarely without it, and for church
organs, which stand in a gallery, or in any other raised position, it
should always make its appearance. For a concert-room organ, or
an organ standing on the ground, it is not required. In some German
instruments, the Choir case is so small, that one suspects that it is a
sham, or at most merely a console to hold the keys. In France,
reversed key-boards are coming into fashion; and to hide them, a
screen of pipes is a pardonable deception. A German custom of
putting the Choir Front into the lower part of the case of the Great
Organ, under its pipes, where the key-board is usually placed, has a
very uncomfortable look; although we know that Great and Choir
pipes are often put into the same case, and there is no reason why, if
this is done, the exterior of the case should not show it. Still there is
something strange in the appearance.
 CHAPTER VI.
THE MINOR DETAILS OF AN ORGAN.

Room in the Loft.—Loft should not be used as a Singing Gallery.

—Reversed Key-boards.—Black Keys for Naturals, &c.—
Rows of Stops, perpendicular, horizontal.—Varied Forms of
Pedals.—Music Desk.—Lights.—Looking Glass.—Clock.—
Carving between the Pipes.—Fox-tail Stop.—Electric and
Pneumatic Actions.

T is a pity that many small things about an organ are not a

little more cared for. The cramped room in the loft is
uncomfortable for the player; he is often jammed between
the two cases, or his back touches the balustrade of the
gallery, rendering it a matter of difficulty for any one who
may be in the loft with him, to get from one side of the instrument to
the other, which is troublesome if the player requires assistance, as
is sometimes wanted; and a loft should have comfortable sitting and
kneeling accommodation: an organist and those with him in the loft
ought to have the means of following the service, and hearing the
sermon, with a certain amount of ease. The organ-loft being used as
a singing-gallery is to be avoided, except when it is a spacious
gallery, and even then the organist should have plenty of elbow
room, and be screened off more or less from the singers. A reversed
key-board rather complicates the mechanism, and therefore should
be avoided, as the supposed advantage of the player being able to
see what is being done in the church is problematical, for with his
music before him, it is next to impossible for him to do so. The
organist at Exeter Hall used to face the conductor, but some years
back the key-board was re-arranged in its usual position. The
organist’s place between the Great and Choir of Father Smith’s
organ at Durham, when it stood on the north side of the Choir, was
as good as could be wished. Black keys for naturals, and white
(ivory) for the sharps look well: they are sometimes to be seen in old
instruments, and should be retained; the contrast between them and
more modern key-boards, which have a strong harmonium or
American organ look, is in their favour. Every player has his own
views as to whether the old perpendicular rows of stop-handles, or
the French horizontal rows, are the best, and no one form of pedals,
plain, concave, radiating, or both concave and radiating, gives
universal satisfaction. A good music-desk should be fixed to every
organ: in general they are ricketty things, and will only hold a little
octavo hymn-tune book. The lights, be they candles or gas, should
be securely fixed, and not liable to be knocked against by the player.
A looking-glass, which should be a part of the organ, and not a
shaving-glass hung up with string and nails, should be fixed so that
the player can see down the church; and something better than
fastening with a pin to the side of the desk a shabby bit of paper with
the list of music, &c., might be arranged. In England, Holland, and
Normandy, a clock is occasionally part of the organ case, sometimes
on the Great, and sometimes on the Choir case, and it is a useful
accessory. Sometimes when there is no Choir Organ, it is inserted in
the front of the gallery. In Whitehall Chapel a clock hangs from the
ceiling under the organ-loft, a puzzle how any one can get at it to
wind it up. In some few organs carved wood-work is introduced
between the feet of the pipes, so as to fill up the triangular space.
The pipes in the towers of St. Lawrence, Jewry, have a sort of tall
leaf between them. From a French work I give the following extract:
“A la tribune de l’orgue de la Cathédral de Barcelonne, on voit une
tête de Maure suspendue par son turban. Lorsque les jeux les plus
doux se font entendre, la figure frémit; mais si les sons augmentent
de force, ses yeux roulent dans leurs orbites, ses dents s’entre-
choquent, et toute la face est en proie à d’horribles convulsions. Le
méchanisme qui produisait ces effets a été supprimé.” This must be
the delight or horror of small children, and no one would dream of
such an addition to a modern church or concert-room organ, neither
would the fox-tail stop be inserted, although a person who was fond
of “curios” might put them into a chamber instrument. I do not make
more than the passing remark on the electric and pneumatic actions,
that they are very valuable adjuncts to a large instrument, and afford
great facilities in many ways to the player, as they are well explained
and illustrated in the last (1870) edition of Hopkins’s “Organ.”
NOTES ON ORGANS AT HOME
AND ABROAD.
 NOTES ON ENGLISH ORGANS.
LTHOUGH English cases cannot in general, in size and
carving, compete with their compeers on the continent,
many of them are very good, and might be studied by
modern architects and builders. The contents of our old
instruments are less than those of the same date in
France, Germany, and Holland, and the Pedal Organ was for many
years neglected. Our modern organs now can vie with any; and if
their cases were better, they could hold their own against their
foreign rivals. There are some good modern cases, but they are the
exception and not the rule.
I now give my notes, which from time to time I have made, of our
English instruments.

LONDON.
FATHER SMITH’S ORGAN IN ST. PAUL’S.—This instrument,
when it stood where it was originally intended to be, on the Choir
Screen, both looked and sounded well. The case, which was a very
exceptional one for Father Smith, who hardly ever varied from his
four-tower arrangement, had fine carving by Grinling Gibbons, and,
with the Choir Organ in front, harmonised well with the handsome
oak Stalls. Some years ago it was pulled down and put over the
Stalls on the north side of the Choir, where, to my taste, it did not
look or sound well, and the Choir case was placed in front of the
large transept organ, where it looked small and out of place. The old
case is now divided, and placed on each side of the Choir, the old
Choir case put in its proper position, before one half of the Great
case, and a new Choir case of similar design made to complete the
other. The contents are by Willis, and it is a good specimen of a
modern cathedral organ.
ALL HALLOWS, LOMBARD STREET.—A pretty case of peculiar
design, which used to stand in the gallery at the west end of the
Church, but is now placed on the floor in the south-east corner. The
case consists of two towers, one on each side of the instrument, with
a circular opening between them, filled with pipe-work, above which
stands a small tower, with a flat of pipes on each side. There is a
quaintness about it which I like.
CHRIST CHURCH, NEWGATE STREET.—Has a large fine
organ standing at the west end of the Church; its four towers,
surmounted by mitres and crowns, give it a Church and State look.
Although the case is large, there is nothing very striking about it; but
the quality of its contents is good.
ST. CLEMENT’S, EASTCHEAP.—The organ stands on the south
side of the Church; it formerly stood at the west end, and is very
similar to that at All Hallows, but of a more elaborate design,
consisting of two large towers, between which is an oval of pipes,
upon which stands a small tower, with an oval of pipes on each side,
above which stand two small flats of pipes. Modern taste has heavily
painted the pipes; in fact, I never saw so much solid paint put on
metal pipes; and in my opinion when they were plain gilt they looked
much better.
ST. LAWRENCE, JEWRY.—The organ, which stands at the west
end of the Church, has as fine and as correctly designed a case as
can well be. The carving is excellent, and the old French rules for
designing an organ case have been carried out with the best effect.
Since I sketched it, a new inside has been put into it, and the case
enlarged in very good taste. It is now, perhaps, to be critical, a little
too square in form, but it ranks among the best in London.
 (Larger)
ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY
3RD. DECR. 1870.

ST. MAGNUS THE MARTYR, LONDON BRIDGE.—This organ,

remarkable as the first which had a swell, is rather peculiar in design.
The dark wood carving is good, and there is a quiet look of solid
workmanship about the case which is much to be commended.
 (Larger)
ST. MAGNUS THE MARTYR—LONDON BRIDGE.
MAY 1871.

ST. OLAVE’S, SOUTHWARK.—The organ, with four towers, and

famous for having a thirty-two feet stop on the Great Organ, after the
manner of large German instruments, stands at the west end, in a
good plain case, but one that would hardly be worth adopting as a
model for another instrument.
ST. SEPULCHRE’S has a handsome large organ, with a Choir
case in front. The wood-work is fine, the mouths of the pipes nicely
shaped, and the effect of the angular tower in the centre good. The
case, I should think, must have looked better before the two wings of
large pipes were added.
 (Larger)
ST. SEPULCHRE—SNOW HILL.
16TH. MAY 1871.

CHESTER CATHEDRAL.
The new organ, erected in 1876, stands in a stone loft, with
marble pillars, under the north arch of the centre tower. It has an
abundance of carved Gothic wood-work, and the pipes are plain gilt.
The mouths of the large pipes are shaped in the French style, but
appear to me a little exaggerated. On the Choir Screen stands the
Echo Organ, which puts me in mind of that in Notre-Dame de
Bruges, on a very small scale. The thirty-two feet pedal pipes (wood)
stand on the ground at the end of the north transept. They were
incomplete when I saw them in November, 1876, and I should very
much doubt if they will prove effective. Water-power and a gas-
engine have been tried for blowing, and did not succeed, and a
steam-engine was being erected.

DURHAM CATHEDRAL.
A fine organ of Father Smith’s usual pattern formerly stood, with
its Choir Organ in front, on the Choir Screen. Some years ago it was
removed and placed on the north side of the Choir; and, in 1876, has
given place to a new divided organ, by Willis, half standing on each
side of the Choir. The arrangements of the old organ loft were very
comfortable; I mention this, as but too often the loft is so cramped
and inconvenient that the player can never be quite at ease.

YORK MINSTER.
 One of our largest cathedral organs stands on the magnificent
Choir Screen. It is a huge, square mass of painted pipes and Gothic
carving. The most picturesque part of the instrument is the tuba, the
pipes of which are arranged horizontally, pointing down the nave.
This stop is the best of its kind I know.
This is but a meagre account of English organs, as it only
includes those which I have had the means of studying: I ought to
have written about the Temple organ, that in Westminster Abbey, the
huge instrument in the Albert Hall, and the one in the Crystal Palace.
That in the Temple has been described, much better than I can do it,
by Edmund Macrory, in his “Few Notes on the Temple Organ.” I hope
that some day the Abbey authorities will see how poor, not in tone,
but in appearance, their present organ is. They have ample space to
erect a magnificent case. The Albert Hall organ is an attempt at a
new style of case, which I think is a failure; and the Handel organ
has a very ordinary (except for its size) façade, with four towers, and
the usual painted pipes.
 NOTES ON FRENCH ORGANS.

ABBEVILLE.
T. WOLFRAM.—A fine organ stands in a gallery which fills
the first compartment of the nave, so that the case stands
well away from the west window. The great case has five
towers, of five pipes each, the smallest in the centre, on the
top of which is a winged angel, with a sword in one hand
and a scroll in the other. On each side is a flat of five pipes, then a
middling-sized tower, beyond these are flats of four pipes each, and
then two great towers, which overhang the sides of the case. The
Choir Organ, which stands in front, consists of two flats, of ten pipes
each, and three towers, the largest in the centre, each containing
seven pipes. The Accompaniment Organ (by this term I mean an
organ standing in the Choir, to accompany the Priests’ voices) stands
on the north side of the Choir, in a plain modern flat-topped case, with
a little Gothic work about it. It is played from a reverse key-board in the
Stalls. Tone fair. 1875.
(Larger)
 ST. WOLFRAM—ABBEVILLE
14TH. MAY, 1875.

ST. SEPULCHRE.—The west-end organ has a plain classic face

of oak, with three towers, the tallest in the middle. The Choir Organ in
front has three towers, disposed in the same manner. In a Chapel, on
the south-east side of the Church, is a modern Gothic organ, the front
of which forms a sort of reredos to an Altar, an arrangement certainly
not to be commended. 1875.

AMIENS.
THE CATHEDRAL.—The Great Organ, which stands in a gallery at
the west end of the Church, is one of the oldest in France. It is simple
in design, consisting of three flat towers, with flats between them. The
case is painted blue, and much gilded. It has a Choir Organ in front,
which is an addition, and rather Belgian in style. It is a good-sized
instrument, but does not look large enough for so spacious a Church.
In the north aisle of the Choir is an Accompaniment Organ, in a
common case, with no pipes; air-holes are cut in the wood-work, some
of which show through the backs of the Stalls, from which it is played.
The tone of the Great Organ flue stops is coarse, but that of the reeds
good, and on the whole the instrument is very suitable for the large
Cathedral in which it stands. The quality of the Accompaniment Organ
is very fair. In 1868 I heard them both played at Mass. The players
were good, especially the organist of the large instrument. 1868,
1875.
ST. ——.—In a Church, the name of which I omitted to note, was
an organ, the front of which consisted of a painting of an organ front
(scene-painter’s work). It looked dirty, as if it had been up for some
time. I suppose they were either short of funds to carry out the design,
or there was some yet unsettled dispute pending; such things happen
nearer home than Amiens. 1868.
 BAYEUX.
THE CATHEDRAL.—The large organ stands at the west end of the
Church, with its Choir in front. It stands in a gallery, supported by a
stone arch thrown across the nave. The great case consists of a large
central tower with five pipes, surmounted by an urn, on each side of
which is a flat of seven pipes, then a small tower, containing one pipe
only; again a flat of seven pipes, and at each end of the case is a
tower containing three pipes, which are supported by figures. The
Choir Organ consists of a small tower of five pipes in the centre, with a
flat on each side, and beyond them a taller tower of three pipes. The
tone is full, but wanting in sweetness, and is deficient in bass. Under
the arch, on the north side of the Choir, next the centre tower, is an
Accompaniment Organ, in a very handsome case with three towers,
and of fair quality in tone. About this district, most of the organs stand
on an arch, thrown across the west end of the nave. 1866.

BEAUVAIS.
THE CATHEDRAL.—The Great Organ stands in an exceptional
position, at the south end of the east aisle of the south transept,
standing as forward as the first column of the transept, leaving space
between it and the end of the transept, for bellows, &c. Although one of
the largest organs in France, the case is plain and simple, consisting
merely of three towers of five pipes each, the smallest in the centre,
with flats between, and a Choir Organ in front, consisting of a long flat,
with two circular towers. Above the Great Organ case, stands some
old painted screen-work. As far as the case is concerned, the organ is
not worthy of the lofty Cathedral in which it stands. I did not hear this
organ, so cannot judge of its tone. In the Choir is a modern Gothic
organ, with three gabled flats, and in the north transept is a
harmonium. 1875.
ST. ETIENNE has, at the west end, a good-sized organ of dark
oak, standing in a gallery, supported by two square oak pillars. The
Great Organ case consists of three towers, with five pipes each. The
largest, which are at each end, are supported by angels, and crowned
with vases, and the centre tower is surmounted by an angel. The flats
between the towers are each divided in half by a pilaster. The Choir
Organ, also in dark oak, has three towers, the least in the centre. In
the spaces between the Great Organ case and the sides of the nave,
are wooden arches filled in with lattice-work, behind which is placed a
quantity of pipe-work, so that the organ is really larger than it appears
B
to be at first sight. 1875.

B
In the Museum at Beauvais are two curious
organ pipes, with raised mouldings and painted
decorations, which I believe are some of the
original pipes of the old organ at Gonesse.