From senseless to sensory democracy: Insights from applied and participatory theatre

DOI10.1177/0263395717700155
Published date01 May 2018
Date01 May 2018
Subject MatterArticles
/tmp/tmp-17W3Orzo0D3BXN/input 700155POL0010.1177/0263395717700155PoliticsRyan and Flinders
research-article2017
Article
Politics
2018, Vol. 38(2) 133 –147
From senseless to sensory
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
democracy: Insights from
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717700155
DOI: 10.1177/0263395717700155
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
applied and participatory
theatre

Holly Eva Ryan
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Matthew Flinders
Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics
Abstract
This article seeks to stimulate a fresh and inter-disciplinary debate which revolves around the
need to move from a ‘senseless democracy’ that is insufficiently attuned to the dilemmas and
challenges of fostering meaningful political engagement to a more ‘sensory democracy’. It achieves
this by first exploring and dissecting recent works within democratic theory that emphasise the
role of ‘watching’ and ‘listening’ within sociopolitical relationships. It then goes on to develop a
set of constructive criticisms by applying insights drawn from the fields of practical aesthetics
and applied theatre. Not only does this exercise allow us to take the analytical lens far beyond
the focus on voice-based forms of expression that have hitherto dominated political analysis, it
demonstrates the value of inter-disciplinary scholarship in exposing sensory-subtleties that raise
distinctive questions for both politics ‘as theory’ and politics ‘as practice’.
Keywords
aesthetics, applied theatre, democracy, theatre
Received: 27th June 2016; Revised version received: 21st December 2016; Accepted: 27th January 2017
Introduction
The existing research on democratic politics is distinctive not just for its size in terms of
data sets, surveys, and analyses or even for its impressively global horizons but also for
the existence of a major and fairly fundamental interpretive disagreement over what is
Corresponding author:
Holly Eva Ryan, Department of History, Politics & Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University,
Manchester M15 6BH, UK.
Email: h.ryan@mmu.ac.uk

134
Politics 38(2)
actually going on. A broadly pessimistic body of scholarship (for the sake of simplicity let
us refer to this as the ‘declinism’ literature) is arguably the most dominant and dates back
to interventions made in 1960s and 1970s that highlighted the emergence of falling levels
of public participation in traditional political activities. Standing very much against this
‘declinist’ interpretation, however, is a seam of less pessimistic scholarship that empha-
sises democratic evolution rather than democratic malaise. Such ‘evolutionary accounts’
suggest that political participation is not necessarily eroding or stagnating, but it is – more
accurately – mutating and taking new forms. Certainly, in recent decades, many of the
more traditional forms of political expression such as voting, party-politics, general
strikes, and worker-stoppages have been overlaid with an increasingly dynamic and fluid
repertoire of civic expression – from occupations and silent flash mobs to ad-jamming,
e-petitioning, and ‘slutwalks’. For some scholars, this journey from a sedimentation to an
accretion of forms for political claim-making is normatively interpreted as a ‘good thing’
(e.g. Keane, 2009). For others, however, it suggests that perhaps something has gone
awry. Hugh Heclo’s (1999) work, for example, highlights the need for some proportional-
ity
in the relationship and expectations between the governors and the governed. The
implication stemming from Heclo’s work is that greater ‘voice’ demands heightened
receptivity. But does the widening of claim-making strategies, access points, and modes
of engagement by civil society actors also suggest that representatives of government
should endeavour to become more – and differently – politically attuned?
In recent years, a small body of scholarship has emerged within political theory, dubbed
‘sensory democracy’. Scholars within this tradition have attempted to address the question
above by angling in on the particular roles played by the processes of watching, listening,
and feeling in fostering, shaping, and improving traditions of democratic practice. While
inquiries into the political effects of sensory engagement have antecedents going all the way
back to Plato’s aesthetics, democratic theorists have been especially slow to connect the
dots between these two spheres of theorising. Against this backdrop, our core argument is
that the fields of practical aesthetics in general, and applied theatre in particular, offer sig-
nificant insights that can be used to critique, refine, and build upon the current state of the
art within democratic theory. Applied theatre for the purposes of this article is an umbrella
term that embraces participatory performance and collaborative drama practice taking place
in educational, community, or political contexts. Projects within this genre are often under-
taken in non-theatrical spaces, and thus, the boundary between actors, writers, directors,
producers, and the audience is sometimes intentionally blurred. Our attempt to trespass (qua
Hirschman, 1981) across disciplinary boundaries in this article aims to reveal some of the
potential benefits of juxtaposing and integrating concepts, tools, and practices that are
developed from within separate fields such as politics and the arts.
In particular, we argue that the key sensory approaches that have been developed
within political studies could benefit from a closer engagement with understandings that
have been advanced in the theory and practice of applied theatre. This includes a more
nuanced articulation of the so-called ‘theatre metaphor’ which is often deployed in poli-
tics, a keener appreciation for the ways and means by which ‘embodied knowledge’ can
be communicated on- and offstage, as well as an emphasis on the role of ‘liminality’ in
fostering more effective learning about ‘self’ and ‘other’ and in creating spaces or
moments in which new political ideas can germinate. In order to make this argument, we
have divided the rest of this article into three inter-related parts. Section one, ‘Seeing and
listening’ explores and interrogates the work of Jeffrey Green and Andrew Dobson on the
‘ocular model of popular empowerment’ and ‘the spectacle of listening’ (respectively) as

Ryan and Flinders
135
some of the most sophisticated endeavours to signpost a more ‘sensory democracy’.
Section two, ‘Enriching the debate’ then demonstrates the insights – both theoretical and
empirical – of practical aesthetics and applied theatre to illuminate how they can chal-
lenge, develop, and deepen the work of both Green and Dobson in ways that add signifi-
cant value to their analyses and prescriptions for reform. The final section, ‘From senseless
to sensory democracy’ summarises and then reflects upon the broader implications of this
article, especially its emphasis on the virtues of inter-disciplinarity.
Seeing and listening
The changing sensory position of politics (and, therefore, politicians) is laid bare by even
the simplest analysis of technological development throughout the 20th century. In the
1920s, the mass production of radio sets (wirelesses) allowed the public to actually hear
politicians for the first time and from the 1950s politicians began to be seen with the
advent of mass-produced televisions (Sanders, 2008). During the late 1970s and through-
out the 1980s, a number of parliaments and legislatures around the world approved the
televised broadcasting of proceedings (e.g. the American Congress from 1977 and the
British House of Commons from 1989). Put simply, the communication of politics
changed dramatically during the 20th century with the public’s field of political vision
and hearing constantly expanding. Since the millennium, this process has accelerated to
the extent that the communication process is increasingly immediate and interactive.
Real-time reaction ‘worms’, ‘live blogs’, and ‘Twitter trackers’ all facilitate immediate
public feedback. The outcome of all of this, as Tambini (1999) suggests, is a qualitative
shift in the way that politics is done. Not only are politicians and the mainstream media
broadcasters forced to engage in new ways as new mechanisms and channels for scruti-
nising their activities become available, but also ‘as new media are interactive they insti-
tutionalise citizens’ right to reply, to select information, and to communicate directly with
one another or their representatives without the gatekeeping influence of editors’ (Tambini,
1999: 311). As a result of these developments, some have come to characterise the Internet
in terms of a new, virtual, and ostensibly public sphere.
Indeed, information about politics and public affairs now flows continuously into the
public forum with the effect that politicians are constantly held under surveillance and
‘called out’ publicly for their failings. These developments have been assessed positively
by many. John Keane’s (2009) magisterial analysis of ‘The Life and Death of Democracy’,
for instance, concludes with a focus on the emergence of a ‘monitory democracy’ that
celebrates the expanding range of online and offline mechanisms for exercising voice and
indeed, power. On the other hand, scholars such as Hugh Heclo (1999) have questioned
the benefits and implications of this explosion of political...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT